"Hitler was Nazi Germany and Nazi Germany was Hitler." Thus it is often presented. While this perspective is true to the extent that Hitler's personality, leadership, and ideological convictions played a massive role in shaping the nature of government and life during the Third Reich, the perspective has led most writers since the end of World War II to ignore other aspects of Nazism in favor of biographies or historical works centered solely around Hitler's contributions to the Nazi Party. This book seeks to fill a significant gap in the literature by concentrating particularly on the Nazi Party and its growth during the years of the Weimar Republic, examining the paramilitary presence in Germany and Bavaria after World War I. Most of the book concentrates on the development of the Nazi Storm Detachment (Sturmabteilung, or SA) before and after the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. By the time Hitler came to power in January 1932, there were perhaps as many as 400,000 of these brown-shirted men creating violence on a daily basis and destroying the shaky underpinnings of the Weimar Republic. These young storm troopers, often self-styled revolutionaries, made unparalleled contributions to the ascendancy of the Nazi Party and Hitler's explosive rise to power. The book features several photographs captured from the Nazi Party's Central Publishing Facility in Munich and passed to the author in the late 1950s.

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