Hitler's Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanfstaengl, Confidante of Hitler, Ally of FDR

Conradi, Peter

ISBN 10: 078671283X / ISBN 13: 9780786712830

Published by Carroll & Graf, 2004

About this Item

Rust and dark green paper-covered boards, lettered in silver foil. Former owner's book plate mounted inside front cover, also a few page numbers inked there, with slight marks in margins on those pages, otherwise as issued. Dust jacket shows minor shelf wear, now in mylar. 1st ed. ix,352 pp., illus. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

Seller Inventory # 061585

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Hitler's Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanfstaengl, Confidante of Hitler, Ally of FDR
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 078671283X
• ISBN 13: 9780786712830
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Book Type: Book
• Seller catalogs:
  • Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Russia/USSR
  • Military History

About this title

Synopsis

Ernst Hanfstaengl (Putzi) was court jester, pianist, and foreign press chief for Hitler during his political climb, and later played a lead role in Roosevelt's top-secret project to use disinformation against the Nazis. An urbane Harvard-educated German, Putzi was living in Germany in 1922 when he first heard Hitler speak in Munich. Introducing himself after the speech, Putzi began one of the strangest relationships in twentieth-century politics. As he tried to introduce Hitler to Munich high-society and polish his image in the eyes of the world, Hanfstaengl helped finance Mein Kampf, claimed to have devised the chant of "Sieg Heil," and attempted to set Hitler up with the American ambassador's beautiful young daughter. But he fell out of Hitler's graces, fled to Britain where he was interned, and then transferred to America. There, he worked for his old friend from the Harvard Club, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The star of Roosevelt's "S-Project," Putzi provided information on four hundred leading Nazis, analyses of Hitler's speeches, and a sixty-eight-page psychological portrait of Hitler. Through newly declassified documents, photographs, interviews with members of Hanfstaengl's family, and original writing by Hanfstaengl, Peter Conradi recounts the remarkable life of history's personal link between Hitler and FDR.

About the Author

Peter Conradi is the author of The Red Ripper: Inside the Mind of Russia's Most Brutal Serial Killer, and Mad Vlad: Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the New Russian Nationalism. A graduate of Oxford University, he also studied at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilian University and knows Hanfstaengl's hometown well. Conradi is Deputy Foreign Editor of The Sunday Times (London).