Nazism

Nazism

The National Socialist German Workers' Party almost died one morning in 1919. It numbered only a few dozen grumblers' it had no organization and no political ideas.

But many among the middle class admired the Nazis' muscular opposition to the Social Democrats. And the Nazis themes of patriotism and militarism drew highly emotional responses from people who could not forget Germany's prewar imperial grandeur.

In the national elections of September 1930, the Nazis garnered nearly 6.5 million votes and became second only to the Social Democrats as the most popular party in Germany. In Northeim, where in 1928 Nazi candidates had received 123 votes, they now polled 1,742, a respectable 28 percent of the total. The nationwide success drew even faster... in just three years, party membership would rise from about 100,000 to almost a million, and the number of local branches would increase tenfold. The new members included working-class people, farmers, and middle-class professionals. They were both better educated and younger then the Old Fighters, who had been the backbone of the party during its first decade. The Nazis now presented themselves as the party of the young, the strong, and the pure, in opposition to an establishment populated by the elderly, the weak, and the dissolute.

Hitler was born in a small town in Austria in 1889. As a young boy, he showed little ambition. After dropping out of high school, he moved to Vienna to study art, but he was denied the chance to join Vienna academy of fine arts.

When WWI broke out, Hitler joined Kaiser Wilhelmer's army as a Corporal. He was not a person of great importance. He was a creature of a Germany created by WWI, and his behavior was shaped by that war and its consequences. He had emerged from Austria with many prejudices, including a powerful prejudice against Jews. Again, he was a product of his times... for many Austrians and Germans were prejudiced against the Jews.

In Hitler's case the prejudice had become maniacal it was a dominant force in his private and political personalities. Anti-Semitism was not a policy for Adolf Hitler-it was religion. And in the Germany of the 1920s, stunned by defeat, and the ravages of the Versailles treaty, it was not hard for a leader to convince millions that one element of the nation's society was responsible for most of the evils heaped upon it.