Young Hitler
The book is divided into two sections: in the first part, a narrative retells the formative years of the young Adolf Hitler between 1907 and 1918, when he lived as a starving artist on the streets and in the asylums of Vienna, and then joined World War I as a volunteer on the Western Front. When the war ends, Hitler comes into contact with members of the Thule Society in Munich, an association of occultists who had launched a political party, the German Workers Party (DAP).The narration ends in 1920 when Hitler takes over the DAP and turns it into the Nazi Party (NSDAP). In an interview with The Guardian, author Claus Hant explained that the events after 1920 are exhaustively documented in the numerous Hitler biographies. But what the biographies do not investigate is the time before then, when Hitler was transformed from inconsequential artist and drifter to towering political leader. Hant says that he has centered Young Hitler deliberately around this momentous transformation. According to Hant, this decisive turning point in Hitler’s life can only be explained satisfactorily now that recent research has unearthed certain previously unknown data and facts.
Religious aspects of Nazism
In the autumn of 1918 Sebottendorff attempted to extend the appeal of the Thule Society's nationalist ideology to people from a working-class background. He entrusted the Munich sports reporter Karl Harrer with the formation of a workers' club, called the "Deutscher Arbeiterverein" ('German workers' club') or "Politischer Arbeiterzirkel" ('Political workers' ring'). The most active member of this club was Anton Drexler. Drexler urged the foundation of a political party, and on 5 January 1919 the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP, German Workers' Party) was formally founded. When Adolf Hitler first encountered the DAP on 12 September 1919, Sebottendorff had already left the Thule Society (in June 1919). By the end of February 1920, Hitler had transformed the "Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" into the "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" (NSDAP or National Socialist German Workers’ Party). Apparently, meetings of the Thule Society continued until 1923. A certain Johannes Hering kept a diary of these meetings; it mentions the attendance of other Nazi leaders between 1920 and 1923, but not Hitler.