Although focused on the last two years of Freud's life, The Death of Sigmund Freud begins decades earlier, juxtaposing two inhabitants of Vienna in 1909: Freud at fifty-three, well on in developing psychoanalysis, with an already considerable following; and Adolf Hitler in his twenties, living abstemiously, doing odd jobs, scavenging, nursing grudges against art schools that judged him untalented, and giving impromptu, frenzied, at times ridiculed talks in the men's shelter in which he lived—about corrupt establishments, hateful Jews and Communists, and Germany's exalted destiny. The story then skips to 1938-1939 and remains there—when, having been cited for heroism in World War I, politically energized thereafter, and in time triumphant, Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany and at the height of his power, marched into Austria, annexed it to the Reich, and set in motion the steps that led to World War II.