This book was written by a witness to Hitler's rise, an anti-Nazi in Germany who wrote in the preface that he witnessed Hitler spout a "flood of nonsense" in the early years that he later realized was layered onto deep political cunning. He says in 1923 as a student he did his best to annihilate Hitler through protests, ass meetings and giant posters. His perch as an eye-witness made him one of the oldest Anti-Nazi in the U.S. he writes in 1944. "Those who experience history and have a share in its making rarely see the enduring threads but only the whirl of exciting and quickly forgotten details. In 1920, and the years following, my friends and I certainly did not view our modest fist-fights and other encounters wit the National Socialists as an attempt to put a premature end to the career of the modern Genghis Khan."