Books on the Holo­caust, Hitler, and oppres­sion are ubiq­ui­tous and yet none answer how Hitler achieved pow­er. Or, what was the make­up of a mind that delib­er­ate­ly inflict­ed unimag­in­able hor­rors on millions?

Meet Friedrich Richard. Richard is an amne­si­ac sol­dier who encoun­ters Hitler in the men­tal ward at Pase­walk Hos­pi­tal in 1918. Hitler, suf­fer­ing from hys­ter­i­cal blind­ness, intro­duces him­self to Friedrich as Wolf. The future Führer becomes depen­dent upon Friedrich for assis­tance, form­ing an unbreak­able bond between the two men.

Friedrich is history’s eyes and ears. He inter­acts with real peo­ple, places, and events through a fif­teen-year friend­ship that wit­ness­es Hitler turn from an undis­tin­guished cor­po­ral into a mani­a­cal dic­ta­tor. In Wolf, Win­ter uses metic­u­lous research to con­struct a por­trait of the evolv­ing Hitler that will sat­is­fy his­to­ry buffs and fic­tion fans alike. More than that, Wolf lifts the cur­tain on what Hitler and his­to­ri­ans have kept closed for one hun­dred years. Wolf reveals those truths like no oth­er book that has ever been written.