The title might mislead. Many of us will expect to read about Hitler's and Albert Speer's grandiose architectural plans, or about the Third Reich's reign of terror. Both topics are here, but only in the final chapter. Most of the book deals with the decade and a half before the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. The title also implies a tighter focus on Hitler than is in fact the case. (He was relegated to the subtitle of the 2007 German original, which Stewart Spencer has translated fluently, with only a handful of terminological infelicities). Long sections of the book follow the growth of the Nazi party in Berlin, at a time when Hitler lived in Munich, at the centre of the party's Bavarian power base. Friedrich offers thorough discussions of several topics that fit together only loosely: Hitler's personal connection to particular sites and events; the internal machinations of the relatively weak Berlin branch of his party; and the efforts of the Berlin party leader Joseph Goebbels to build up Berlin's (and his own) status vis-à-vis the party headquarters in Munich. Goebbels is, in fact, really the central character for much of the book, as Friedrich presents intraparty struggles from his point of view (drawing heavily on Goebbels’ diaries and published writings) and interjects caustic comments on Goebbels’ vanity and grandiosity as well as his relatively weak position in the party.

Berlin was a socialist and communist stronghold, and its Nazi party has been little studied, as Friedrich notes; but he does not try to argue that it was crucial to the Nazi takeover of Germany. Nor is the book really a study of the local party's growth and strength, and certainly not of its ordinary members or its voters. Friedrich's focus is instead on its internal organization and leadership (and that of its unpredictable paramilitary wing, the SA). From the perspective of Berlin and of Goebbels, Friedrich explores the changes and contradictions in Nazi policies and tactics through the Weimar years, such as the party's embrace of legality without renouncing violence, and its efforts to balance bourgeois respectability with vicious anti-Semitism. We read in detail of Hitler's many visits to the capital as he negotiated his way into power. The analyses are sound and clear, but neither Friedrich's sources nor his conclusions are original. The book cites very little archival research and relies heavily on secondary works, with its most illuminating passages drawing on the Berlin press – Nazi, right-wing, liberal and leftist.

The book opens with Hitler's little-known first visits to Berlin while on leave during World War I, which began an enduring fascination with the splendour of the imperial capital. Scattered passages through the book pursue the story of Hitler's attitude towards Berlin. Friedrich argues that despite his apparent inattention to the city and some often-cited disparaging remarks about it, Hitler was always keenly interested in Berlin, and always eager to direct its reconstruction. Friedrich's evidence, though, suggests that Hitler was more concerned with the city's potential than its reality. Only public buildings mattered to Hitler, who believed that since Frederick the Great, or at least in the century since the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Berlin's official architecture had failed to attain a grandeur worthy of Germany. The homes and neighbourhoods of four million Berliners held little interest for Hitler except as a backdrop to his magnificent German capital. The book's final pages – the only material reaching into the late 1930s – detail Hitler's intense engagement with plans to redevelop the city. World War II is entirely absent from the book; for those years, the non-specialist reader might look to Roger Moorhouse's recent Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital, 1939–45 (Bodley Head, 2010). Friedrich's thorough knowledge of Berlin gives the book authority on detailed questions of local geography. Thus, the book might be of most use to Berlin specialists. Scholars of Nazism will find little that is new. But readers not well versed in Nazism may find it difficult to navigate the squabbles among obscure right-wing organizations.