Until his death in a Gestapo prison cell, Rudolf Hilferding was one of Europe's most prominent socialist theorists and politicians. A leading economic thinker in the European socialist movement and an important politician in the German Social Democratic Party, he served as Weimar finance minister at the height of the inflation of 1923 and again at the onset of the depression in 1928. At a time when Germany faced one economic and political crisis after another, he led Social Democracy's efforts to strengthen the republic and to achieve its socialist objectives. This biography illustrates how...

Confronting Hitler examines the lives of ten socialist leaders in their fight against Nazism. It reveals the aspects of these people's lives that most decisively shaped their views and actions during the Weimar Republic's final crisis, and it compares the German socialist experience of 1933 with those of other democratic socialist movements in the twentieth century.

Confronting Hitler examines the lives of ten socialist leaders in their fight against Nazism. It reveals the aspects of these people's lives that most decisively shaped their views and actions during the Weimar Republic's final crisis, and it compares the German socialist experience of 1933 with those of other democratic socialist movements in the twentieth century.

This accessible text offers a concise but comprehensive introduction to European socialism, which arose in the maelstrom of the industrial and democratic revolutions launched in the eighteenth century.