User:Herostratus/Hitler's Thirty Days to Power

"Hitler's Thirty Days to Power" is a satirical self-help book by Henry Ashby Turner. The book satirizes career-guidance and personal-empowerment books, much as Turner's earlier books "Stalin's Dating Tips For Teens" satirized teen-advice books, "A Better, Healthier You: The Mussolini Method" satirized new-age holistic-health books, and "Lose 80 Pounds Or Else! The Kim Jong-il Diet" satirized fad diet books.

The book, supposedly written by Adolph Hitler, consists of 30 day-by-day short chapters with tips that supposedly will enable the reader to rise from penniless Bohemian street rat to CEO of a large corporation to dictator of large country in 30 days, hence the title.

The book's humor comes from puns ("Don't be vague, ask for Prague"), incongruous juxtapositions ("Confidence starts from something as simple as a newly cleaned suit, a fresh haircut, or annexing the Netherlands"), hyperbole ("If the interview went well, a follow-up note is de rigueur; if the interview went poorly, simply have the interviewer and his family executed and move on to your next challenge!") and light-hearted references to racism, mass murder, and war crimes. An appendix, "If Things Don't Work Out", provides detailed advice on converting an underground bunker besieged by a hostile army into a fun and relaxing man cave or party hangout (a Polynesian theme is suggested).

Response was mixed. The Mid-Atlantic Journal published a two-word review ("Too soon") while the Juggalo Review of the Arts and Humanities was less terse. The National Association for Common Decency declared itself "appalled", but other reviewers ignored the book altogether. The United States Congress passed a resolution condemning the book and everything else except more guns. According to Publisher's Weekly, a total of four copies were sold, the remainder being buried in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Wait, what?
That can't be right. Henry Ashby Turner was a serious and distinguished professor of history, not a satirist. Try again please.

Ok, how's this?
"Hitler's Thirty Days to Power" is a 1996 history book by historian and Yale professor Henry Ashby Turner. The book covers political events in Germany during the month of January 1933, which culminated in the appointment of Adolph Hitler as chancellor on January 30.

In Hitler's Thirty Days to Power, Turner concludes that Hitler's rise was not inevitable, but that the end of the Weimar democracy probably was: Turner speculates that by 1933 the likely alternative to Hitler was a Kurt von Schleicher-led military regime, which Turner believes would have confined its territorial ambitions to the recovery of the Polish Corridor, leading to a limited German-Polish conflict but not a general European war – an unfolding of events where, in Mark Grimsley's characterization of Turner's conclusions, "Adolf Hitler would have become a mere footnote in history".

The book was reviewed by many important publications, including Foreign Affairs (by Stanley Hoffmann),, the Times Literary Supplement, Booklist, , the New York Review of Books (by Gordon A. Craig), Kirkus Reviews, History and Theory and other publications. Historian and Hitler biographer Alan Bullock called Hitler's Thirty Days to Power "[T]he best and fullest account of the 'make or break' month of January 1933".

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You're welcome.

Editions

 * (Hardcover)
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 * (Paperback)
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