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.

Articles

  • Gutenberg in front of a printing press

    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. >>

Interviews

Danny Freedman, “The Remarkable Effort to Locate America’s Lost Patents,” Smithsonian Magazine

“Bisno hopes these two Fulton finds will stir the interest and the help of the many caretakers of the nation’s paper trails. Archivists tend to know the value of what they have, he says. ‘They’ve been waiting for somebody to come looking for it.’”

David Roos, “How Safety Coffins Eased Grave Fears of Premature Burial,” How Stuff Works

“People were asking, ‘Are the dead really gone? Are they still here with us?’ says Bisno. ‘The fear of live burial really tapped into that fascination. It’s a figure underground who is with us and not with us, alive and not alive, dead and somehow not dead.’”

“The Many Inventions of Beatrice Kenner,” Smithsonian’s Sidedoor podcast

“The thing I would have worried about, had I been ghosting around that room, is that they were gonna go and steal her invention.”

“100 Alumni Voices,” Johns Hopkins University podcasts

“If you get none of your war aims, and the capital gets besieged and burned, you probably lost.”

“Spotlight On…,” Swarthmore College Bulletin

“I was trying to get past the stuff about what rich and fabulous people were seen to be doing. I wanted to know . . . what it was like to work for one of these massive enterprises.”

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