When World War I ended, 29-year-old Adolf Hitler was in a hospital bed, temporarily blinded by mustard gas. Germany had been defeated, the Kaiser had fled, and the army had been humbled, but Hitler never accepted these facts; instead, the future dictator blamed the Jews?a direct threat to the master race of his imagination. By peeling back the layers of Hitler's childhood, his war record, and his early political career, Paul Ham seeks the man behind the myth, and in this biography—illustrated with 16 pages of photos—suggests that Hitler was an extreme example of a recurring type of demagogue: a politician who will do and say anything to seize power, a man who thrives on chaos personifies the darkest prejudices of humankind.