Vienna, early 1913: The pulsating capital, just months before the world would ignite. A steam boiler of the multi-ethnic state – and a political breeding ground for four impoverished migrants, each drawn to this city for different reasons. All of them would go on to shape the 20th century: as ideologues, dictators, mass murderers. What attracted Stalin, Hitler, Trotsky, and Tito, these "revolutionaries of evil"? What were they searching for here? Günther Haller traces the paths of these four men, taking us through the grand boulevards and back alleys, tenement buildings, factories, and coffee houses, skillfully weaving together four distinctive biographies into a portrait of a magnetizing metropolis.