But publishing such a self-aggrandizing portrait would have repelled Germany’s traditional conservatives, so Hitler searched for a writer with impeccable conservative credentials willing to pretend to have written the book. Doing so would come with a double payoff: Hitler’s shameless act of self-promotion would be concealed, while the impression would be created that he already was in receipt of widespread support among traditional conservatives.

This led Hitler to Victor von Koerber, a blue-eyed and blond young military hero and writer. A North-German aristocrat, von Koerber was attracted by the promise of a new conservatism fused with the youthful idealism of National Socialism.

The book—published under the title Adolf Hitler, sein Leben, seine Reden (Adolf Hitler: His Life and His Speeches)—was banned soon after publication, limiting its intended impact. Yet the book sheds light on how Hitler—in a moment rife for demagoguery—managed to rise to the top against all odds.

snip

In the late 1920s, Koerber began issuing warnings about the dangers Hitler posed to the world. But by then, it was already too late to stop him. Once the Nazi Party was in power, Koerber helped a prominent German Jew to get out of the country. And then Koerber began to feed the British military attaché in Berlin with intelligence. Koerber ultimately landed in one of Hitler’s concentration camps, which he barely survived.