In January 1933 on the very day Hitler seized power in Germany Joseph Roth fled to Paris. There in what he called the hour before the end of the world he wrote a series of articles. The end he foresaw would soon come to pass in the full horror of Hitlers barbarism the Second World War and most crucially for Roth the final irreversible destruction of a panEuropean consciousness. Incisive and ironic the writing evokes Roths bitterness frustration and morbid despair at the coming annihilation of t