A Fooled Nation: The Role Of German Morale In Hitler's Rise To Power
With a lock of hair falling over his forehead and a square little mustache on his often somber face, Adolf Hitler seemed a comical figure when he first entered into politics. He was a public speaker who ranted and raved until his voice was hoarse and sweat dripped from his brow. With the help of fanatic disciples and gullible masses, Hitler profoundly changed Germany and the political face of Europe. An evil genius, he unleashed the most terrible war in history and unprecedented genocide in which more than six million Jews died. In addition, he killed five million Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, Russians and believed political enemies.
Hitler is called mad but were the men around him also mad? They were cultivated, educated, learned men. Germany wasn't a backward country, preyed on by ignorance, but one of the most advanced nations in the world; renown for great scientific and cultural achievements. His program was one for evil and destruction and yet the majority of the people in Germany accepted it. How did Hitler come to power? The people of Germany were weakened in the aftermath of World War I and therefore were willing to listen to his ideas. Those ideas have lived on, unfortunately. Many around the world still find inspiration in his words. Also have lived on, the memories. Time has not dimmed these terms: storm troops, gas chambers, death camps, and holocaust. A new generation asks, why?
On the morning of September 15 1930, early editions of newspapers across Germany brought the first reports that Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) had scored a stunning electoral triumph. Only two years earlier, the party had languished in obscurity. The appeal of the Nationalist Socialists was so small that most commentators, those who recognized them at all, saw them as
a minor and declining party. Yet, when the polls closed on the evening of September 14 1930, the NSDAP had become the second largest party in the Weimar Republic...
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