Triumph of the Will?: How Two Men Hypnotised Hitler and Changed the World by David Lewis

This book sets out to solve one of modern history's most baffling mysteries. Before the start of World War One, Adolf Hitler was living rough on the streets of Vienna. During four years of fighting he never rose above the rank of lance corporal. His superior's did not believe he had the personality to ever lead. _x000D_ Yet, by 1933, he was on his way to becoming the one of the world's most ruthless, yet charismatic, leaders. What happened to transform him from a purposeless drifter into a man capable of mesmerising and manipulating millions of Germans to his will. _x000D_ The answer, I argue, lies in his chance meetings with two hypnotists. _x000D_ On October 15, 1918, Hitler was blinded during a British gas attack. The frontline doctors diagnose his condition as due, not to physical injuries, but mental breakdown. In the medical jargon of the times he was suffering from "hysteria." This was successfully treated by an eminent German academic, medical doctor and hysteria specialist, Dr Edmund Forster. He used hypnosis to restore the lance corporal site. But the method he chose also led Hitler to becoming convinced that he had been singled out, by some divine power, to lead his country from the humiliation of defeat to glory and world domination. In 1930 he met up with the second hypnotist, a Moravian Jew masquerading as a Danish aristocrat. Eric Jan Hanussen was a clairvoyant, an astrologer, a magician, and a hypnotist. He was also a multimillionaire media tycoon who published hugely popular astrological newspapers in Germany. He befriended the Nazis, funded the brown shirted SA and promoted Hitler in his journals. He became the Fuehrer's friend and showbusiness mentor, coaching him in public speaking and teaching him the techniques of mass hypnosis. My book describes how these three men not only changed world history , but set in motion the events leading to their own brutal ends.