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.
Artur Dinter
Dinter's thinking in the years after the war became steadily more radical and more racist. In 1919, he had already taken part in founding the "Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund" and was in its leadership until it was banned in 1922. Thereafter he became a founding member of the "Deutsch-Völkische Freiheitspartei" ("German- Peoples Freedom Party") and forged closer ties with Adolf Hitler. After the Beerhall Putsch in Munich in 1923, Dinter was elected in 1924 to the Thuringian "Landtag" as a representative of the electoral alliance "Völkisch-Sozialer Block" ("Peoples Social Bloc"), also becoming factional leader. He drew ever nearer the Nazi Party's position. Hitler appointed him NSDAP State Leader of Thuringia right after getting out of prison at Landsberg am Lech. At the same time, Dinter became publisher of the newspaper "Der Nationalsozialist", which appeared in Weimar. He fell out with his former associates from the VSB, leading to his expulsion from that party. In 1925, after Hitler had been released early from prison after the Putsch, the Nazi Party was founded once again after having been disbanded after the débâcle in Munich. For his "loyalty" to the Party, Dinter received the single-digit membership number "5".