He described his early economic and political beliefs as a sort of "primitive socialism,"[2] which he came to after noticing the inequities of income in Berwick.

Hoover was an avid reader of history and literature, and compared to the world in his books he saw his small hometown as boring.

Looking back on his youth, he once wrote "I wanted to see far places and to have the adventures which both historians and novelists agreed had happened to me through the ages.

This feeling was exacerbated by visits from his uncles, who had served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.

Given his family's lack of economic means, sending two children to high school was a difficult task, for two reasons.

First, it was difficult to find transportation through twelve miles or rural Illinois (in the winter it was impossible), and he and his sister used various methods before finally taking jobs as servants in Monmouth.

This angered his father who told him, "I remember the young men who enlisted in the Confederate Army when I was a boy in the Shenandoah Valley.

Later that year, he began graduate work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and studied under noted professor John R. Commons.

He found that Hitler's rearmament was revitalizing the German economy; reducing unemployment, improving standard of living, and stemming inflation.

This book sought to alert his fellow Americans to the imminent threat to the peace of Europe posed by Hitler, at a time when there was widespread reluctance to take that danger seriously.

Hoover arrived in Washington, D.C. in 1933 at the request of Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rexford Guy Tugwell.

Hoover served many roles for the OSS, eventually becoming head of Northern European operations in Sweden.

After the end of World War II he was called to Berlin to oversee the German postwar economy.