How Did Hitler Do It?

To this day, many remain baffled and continue to debate how Adolf Hitler, an Austrian, rose to power in Germany and convince the German people that another disastrous war was worth fighting. Many continue to wonder what kind hypnotic hold was one man able to put over more than 50 million people. There have been numerous theories but Hitler had many factors working in his favor.

Contrary to the belief that most may have, Hitler did not come to power by force or intimidation like most dictators and despots have. There were no political assassinations or vote-rigging. Hitler and the Nazis were fairly and squarely, very democratically-elected into the government, albeit barely; it was by one vote. As the chairman of the now-ruling party, Hitler was appointed chancellor by a reluctant President Paul von Hindenburg, who was said to have deeply despised Hitler.

To get a better perspective on how millions of Germans were convinced that the Nazis were the answer to their troubles, one would have to go back to the end of World War I. Although Germany was not instigator of the war it was considered the leader of the Central Powers and the main combatant of the Central Powers. Therefore, under the Treaty of Versailles, it was saddled with primary responsibility for the war and was made to pay a huge price. Among its numerous punishments, it was forced to surrender a huge chunk of its territory to the newly-independent Poland and was forced to hand back land that it had won from France in the Franco-Prussia War a few decades earlier. It was also slapped with a huge bill of wartime reparations. Also, under a League of Nations mandate in 1919, all of its overseas possessions had been confiscated and redistributed. And as the final insult, it was no longer allowed to have a standing of more than 100,000 and was forced to destroy most of its heavy weaponry.

Germans were angry, hurt and badly demoralized. In their eyes, the world had singled them out to bear sole responsibility for a war that they did not start. They had been greatly embittered. They weren’t as singled as they thought, however. Austria, which had been the leading power of the vast Austria-Hungarian Empire, had lost its empire under the Treaty of Versailles. Many Austrians were also angry, among them, a former army corporal named Adolf Hitler.

As if Germany had not had enough problems, the worldwide economic depression of the 1930’s hit the nearly-impoverished country even more. At one point, the deutschmark was trading four million to one U.S. dollar. The government had to institute food rations.