This book details a striking political relationship between American Ambassador Frederic Sackett and German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning and their attempts to save the Weimar Republic, achieve German nationalist goals, and thwart Adolf Hitler's drive to power. Sackett believed that financial policy was at the heart of German problems and, unless resolved, could be the basis for Hitler's success. Very early in his tenure in Berlin, Sackett saw Hitler and the Nazis as a serious danger to the Weimar Republic and to peace in Europe. The American thought that misrule by incompetent and inefficient Nazis would pave the way for a communist state. Although at first he saw the Nazis as harbingers of worse to come, in time he came to see Hitler as the real threat to democracy in Germany.