1924: The Year That Made Hitler

The dark story of Adolf Hitler's life in 1924 -- the year that made a monster.

Before Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, there was 1924. This was the year of Hitler's final transformation into the self-proclaimed savior and infallible leader who would interpret and distort Germany's historical traditions to support his vision for the Third Reich.

Everything that would come -- the rallies and riots, the single-minded deployment of a catastrophically evil idea -- all of it crystallized in one defining year. 1924 was the year that Hitler spent locked away from society, in prison and surrounded by co-conspirators of the failed Beer Hall Putsch. It was a year of deep reading and intensive writing, a year of courtroom speeches and a treason trial, a year of slowly walking gravel paths and spouting ideology while working feverishly on the book that became his manifesto: Mein Kampf.

Until now, no one has fully examined this single and pivotal period of Hitler's life. In 1924, Peter Ross Range richly depicts the stories and scenes of a year vital to understanding the man and the brutality he wrought in a war that changed the world forever.

Peter Ross Range is a world-traveled journalist who has covered war, politics and international affairs. A specialist in Germany, he has written extensively for Time, the New York Times, National Geographic, the London Sunday Times Magazine, Playboy, and U.S. News & World Report, where he was a White House correspondent.

He has also been an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, and a Distinguished International Visiting Fellow at the University of North Carolina Journalism School. He lives in Washington, DC.