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.
Hugo Wenzel
In January 1933 the NSDAP (Nazi Party) took power and lost little time in switching to one-party government in Germany. While all political parties other than the Nazi Party were banned, the new chancellor, Adolf Hitler was particularly vitriolic in his opposition to the Communist Party. In February 1933 Wenzel moved to Berlin and "went underground". He made his apartment available to the Communist Party "Anti-military group", which was a cover for a party news agency, under the leadership of , to whom Wenzel was related. In July 1933 Wenzel was arrested and detained in a series of prisons and concentration camps. Although he was being held under investigative pretrial detention, in May 1934 he was unexpectedly released due to "lack of evidence". He then worked at the Siemens-Schuckert plant in Berlin. War returned in 1939. Wenzel was rearrested and held at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was again accused in connection with the party "Anti-military group". Wenzel was by now suffering badly with Pulmonary tuberculosis, and on 24 January 1940 he died in the concentration camp.