 Party membership had surged since January 1933 when the Nazis took power and lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship.Nevertheless, in his autobiography published in 1999 Gerstner evidently identified an inconsistency which could not go unremarked.He had taken the step, he wrote, only "out of hatred against Hitler ... in order [to do] something against the Nazis" ("nur aus "Hass gegen Hitler ...um etwas gegen die Nazis" zu tun").