- Konrad Heiden
Konrad Heiden (
7 August 1901 –18 June 1966 ) was an influential journalist and historian of theWeimar Republic andNazi eras, most noted for his biographies of German dictatorAdolf Hitler . Often, he wrote under thepseudonym "Klaus Bredow."Heiden was born in
Munich, Germany , on7 August 1901 , and graduated from theUniversity of Munich in 1923. His father was a union organizer, his mother had a Jewish background. At the university, he organized a republican and democratic student body and became a member of the Social Democratic Party.Heiden worked for the "
Frankfurter Zeitung " and "Vossischen Zeitung ", but became a freelancer in 1932. A year later, he went into exile; first toSwitzerland , then toFrance . He had seen the rise of theNazi Party from upclose, first attending a party's meeting in 1920.Heiden's book, "The New Inquisition", published in New York in 1939, includes an eerie and accurate prediction of the Final Solution planned by the Nazi regieme:
"To drive 600,000 people by robbery into hunger, by hunger into desperation, by desperation into wild outbreaks, and by such outbreaks into the waiting knife -- such is the cooly calculated plan. Mass murder is the goal, a massacre such as history has not seen -- certainly not since Tamerlane and Mithridates. We can only venture guesses as to the technical forms these mass executions are to take. In his book "Mein Kampf", Adolf Hitler suggested that the people to be killed be kept "under poisonous gas"; however, he speaks of a mere twelve to fifteen thousand. Doubtless the destructive instinct in the ruling class of the regieme has grown in the meantime..."
Heiden died in
New York City , in theUnited States on18 June 1966 , having resided in theUS for 26 years after fleeing from Germany.elected works
*"Der Führer – Hitler's Rise to Power" (
Boston , 1944)
*"Hitler: A Biography" (Zürich , appeared in two volumes, 1936-1937)
*"Birth of the Third Reich" (Zürich , 1934)
*"History of National Socialism" (Berlin , 1932)
*"The New Inquisition" (New York , 1939)ee also
*
List of Adolf Hitler books
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.