Last week Adolf Hitler lost an old and helpful friend.
In 1919 feverish, ambitious young Adolf Hitler heard a lecture by a disgruntled young construction engineer named Gottfried Feder. Feder, a native of Würzburg, boiled down Germany's economic troubles to too much raffendes Kapital ("international, Jewish, exploitive"), too little schaffendes Kapital ("national, purely German, creative"). Later Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: "When I heard Feder . . . the idea instantly flashed through my head that I had now found my way to one of the prime essentials for the foundation of a new party."
Gottfried Feder marched with Hitler in...