A personnel manager couldn't have been more well-meaning in his description. "He was always reasonable, frugal, modest and polite to everyone, especially the officials at the facility," prison warden Otto Leybold wrote about the inmate on Sept. 18, 1924. The prisoner, he added, didn't smoke or drink and "submitted willingly to all restrictions."
The prisoner to whom the warden was referring so reverentially was none other than Adolf Hitler. Still an ambitious beer-hall agitator at the time, Hitler was serving a prison sentence at Landsberg Castle for attempting to stage a coup against the Weimar Republic in November 1923, together with fellow right-wing extremists.
It was a defining period for Hitler and German history. According to his biographer Ian Kershaw, his time in prison Hitler served as the genesis "of his later absolute preeminence in the völkisch movement and his ascendancy to supreme leadership."
Read Full Article »
