It was another two years before politics became interesting again, and that was due to the appearance of one man – Walther Rathenau. Never before or afterwards did the German Republic produce a politician who so deeply stirred the imagination of young people and the masses. Gustav Stresemann and Heinrich Brüning, who enjoyed longer periods of power and whose policies could be said to have moulded two brief periods of history, never radiated the same personal charisma. Hitler alone can be compared to Rathenau,
