Before Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, there was 1924. This was the year of Hitler's final transformation into the self-proclaimed savior and infallible leader who would interpret and distort Germany's historical traditions to support his vision for the Third Reich.

Everything that would come--the rallies and riots, the single-minded deployment of a catastrophically evil idea--all of it crystallized in one defining year. 1924 was the year that Hitler spent locked away from society, in...