On September 25, 1930, Adolf Hitler appeared before Germany’s Supreme Court and outlined his plans to destroy the Weimar Republic through democratic means. The judge asked, “So, only through constitutional means?” Hitler replied, “Jawohl!”

Barely two years later, on January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed the fifteenth chancellor of the Weimar Republic. Within 53 days of that date, he had effected one of the most astonishing transformations in modern democracy, using the provisions of the Constitution to turn a democratic republic into an authoritarian state. Drawing from his 800-page political playbook, Mein Kampf, Hitler banned or neutered the print press and radio; purged the civil service and installed party loyalists; suspended civil liberties; compromised the courts; imposed Reich government control over the country’s seventeen federated states; slapped draconian tariffs on trading partners; co-opted, imprisoned, or drove political opponents into exile; assumed control over the central bank; and then compelled the Reichstag, the country’s legislative body, to pass an Enabling Act granting Hitler dictatorial power.

Charting the key events of those dramatic days in taut and compelling prose, Timothy W. Ryback evokes the raw political power and increasing inevitability of Hitler’s state capture, amid heroic efforts by journalists and social democrats to save the republic, underscoring Joseph Goebbels’ alarming observation: “The big joke on democracy is that it provides its mortal enemies with the means to its own destruction.”

Praise for Takeover:

“Timothy W. Ryback’s choice to make his new book, Takeover . . . a specific chronicle of a single year, 1932, seems a wise, even an inspired one. Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election . . . Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in bright midafternoon light.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

“If you ever thought that history is only moved by big, sweeping forces, whether of economics or creed or nature itself, think again. In this riveting, intimate account of the final months in Hitler’s rise to power, Tim Ryback makes it plain that simple luck, bald ambition and fallible human hearts can be drivers of earth-changing events.”—Max Rodenbeck, Berlin bureau chief, The Economist

“Ryback admirably capture[s] the shifting moods, political stances, and risk-taking as well as the speculations, uncertainties, and confusion of the political figures who did not know how the story he narrates would end . . . Ryback’s narrative and his portraits of major figures are riveting.”—New York Review of Books

“How does a flawed republic become something entirely different? We know how the Nazi regime ended, but think too little about how it began. This admirable account shows us how fragile and avoidable were those beginnings, and helps us to reflect upon our own predicaments.”—Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny

“An expert account of the dizzying months when Hitler solidified his power in Germany . . . A masterfully narrated story of how a democracy committed suicide, with lessons for today.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“[A] riveting blow-by-blow account of the six months leading up to Adolf Hitler’s January 1933 appointment as Germany’s chancellor . . . A dire and remarkably astute depiction of how fickle and contingent the forces of history can be.”—Publisher’s Weekly, starred review

“That history is not as inevitable as most might believe forms an unsettling undertone throughout the book . . . Takeover is startlingly relevant history, well-wrought and splendidly researched, that reveals how democracies can die democratically.”—Shelf Awareness