Book

From a splendid suite at the Hotel Kaiaserhof in Berlin, Adolf Hitler and his henchmen conducted the negotiations that brought them to power in 1933. This book explains why the hotel’s owners, most of them Jewish, allowed it. Why didn’t they kick him out before it was too late? In answering the question, I take you back to the 1870s, when the Kaiserhof opened, to tour the premises, upstairs and downstairs. We’ll locate the secrets and weaknesses  that  made the hotel’s owners think that acquiescence to Hitler might be the right course of action. Soon, though, the owners were fleeing Germany for their lives, and ten years later, the Kaiserhof lay in smoldering ruins. A case study in spectacular failure, this story is also a warning: In the event of a crisis, businesspeople won’t necessarily know what’s good for them. Or their businesses.

Cambridge University Press

Articles

Hyperinflation in Germany

Smithsonian Magazine
In 1923, the collapse of the Weimar Republic’s economy impoverished millions and gave Adolf Hitler his first chance at seizing power. >>
Einstein's Refrigerator

Lemelson Center – Smithsonian Institution
The refrigerators of the 1920s were deadly. Their motorized compressors easily malfunctioned, allowing the refrigerants—that is, toxic gases—to escape and sicken or kill whole families in their sleep. >>
Inventing Salsa

USPTO.gov
“Once you have a formula, you don’t change it,” said the man who gave Latin dance music its mass appeal. Johnny Pacheco, a musician himself, founded Fania Records in 1964. >>
Hotel Berlin

Bulletin of the German Historical Institute
On September 15, 1932, the manager of Berlin’s Kaiserhof Hotel informed its owners of what they doubtless already knew. >>
World Cruise, 1844

history.navy.mil
On board Constitution in the Mozambique Channel in early November 1844, Captain John Percival ordered that his own coffin be made at once from wood found on the shore. >>
Out of the Limelight

USPTO.gov
Maude Adams, the most famous actress of the early 20th century, worked with engineers at General Electric to invent and patent the largest incandescent bulb to date. >>
George's Religion

Camden House (print)
“Yesterday, the Master told me that because I’m not yet 16 …. my duty is only to look pretty and be nice,” Karl Josef Partsch wrote in his diary on February 9, 1930. >>
A Patent for Girls

USPTO.gov
Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts of the USA and patented the organization’s iconic trefoil badge in 1914. >>
The "Lady Edison"

USPTO.gov
It’s Jazz-Age New York City, and Beulah Louise Henry is rushing around Madison Square. She has paper but needs a pencil quickly, before her new idea for a silent typewriter slips away. >>
The Sled That Steers

USPTO.gov
In the 1880s, Samuel Leeds Allen reinvented winter with the Flexible Flyer, a sled on red steel runners that riders could steer with their hands or feet. >>
Captured Navy Nurses

history.navy.mil
“Protect the babies with all your life,” Lieutenant Commander Laura M. Cobb, a supervisory U.S. Navy nurse, said to the others as they crawled aboard a tractor. >>
Apollo 11: The Rescue

history.navy.mil
It was 4:40 a.m. on 24 July 1969, in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, when the lookouts aboard USS Hornet spotted the fireball. Four minutes later, a double sonic boom ripped through the night. >>
The First U.S. Observatory

history.navy.mil
The first Naval Observatory, its astronomers, and their partners outside the government transformed 19th-century Americans’ relationships to time, space, and the cosmos. >>
Chesapeake Captured, 1813

history.navy.mil
When HMS Shannon captured USS Chesapeake in June 1813, the people of Halifax, Nova Scotia, rejoiced. >>
Black, Female, and in Command

history.navy.mil
Quite suddenly, and contrary to expectations, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed to reopen the Navy to African-American women in October 1944. >>