adolf hitler rise to power essay

The Rise of Hitler to Power Essay

Introduction, the weimar republic, anti-semitism, reference list.

Adolf Hitler rose to power as the chancellor of Germany in 1933 through a legal election and formed a coalition government of the NSDAO-DNVP Party. Many issues in Hitler’s life and manipulations behind the curtains preceded this event.

Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power propelled by various factors that were in play in Germany since the end of World War I. The weak Weimar Republic and Hitler’s anti-Semitism campaigns and obsession were some of the factors that favored Hitler’s rise to power and generally the Nazi beliefs (Bloxham and Kushner 2005: 54).

Every public endorsement that Hitler received was an approval for his hidden Nazi ideals of dictatorship and Semitism regardless of whether the Germans were aware or not.

Hitler’s pathway to power was rather long and coupled with challenges but he was not ready to let go; he held on to accomplish his deeply rooted obsessions and beliefs; actually, vote for Hitler was a vote for the Holocaust.

Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party in the year 1919 as its fifth member. His oratory talent and anti-Semitism values quickly popularized him and by 1920, he was already the head of propaganda.

The party later changed its name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartel (NSDPA) and formed paramilitary groups in the name of security men or gymnastics and sports division.

It was this paramilitary formed by Hitler that would cause unrest later to tarnish the name of the communists leading to distrust of communism by the Germans and on the other hand rise of popularity of the Nazi (Burleigh 1997: 78).

A turning point of Hitler took place when he led the Beer Hall Putsch, in a failed coup de tat and the government later imprisoned him on accusations of treason. The resulting trial earned him a lot of publicity, he used the occasion to attack the Weimar republic, and later while in prison, he rethought his approach to get into power.

The military defeat and German revolution in November 1918 after the First World War saw the formation of Weimar republic.The military government handed over power to the civilian government and later on revolutions in form of mutinies, violent uprisings and declaration of independence occurred until early 1919.

Then there was formation of constituent assembly and promulgated of new constitution, which included the infamous article 48. None of the many political parties could gain a majority vote to form government and therefore many small parties formed a coalition government.

What followed were a short period of political stability mainly because of the coalition government in place and the later the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919. Many factors caused the rise of the Nazi party to power.

The most notable factor was his ability to take advantage of Germany’s poor leadership, economical and political instability.

The Weimar’s Republic collapse under pressure due to hyperinflation and civil unrest was the result of Hitler’s ability to manipulate the German media and public while at the same time taking advantage of the country’s poor leadership (Schleunes 1990: 295).

The period between 1921 and 1922, Germany was struggling with economic instability due to high inflation and hyperinflation rates prior to the absolute collapse of the German currency. The German mark became almost useless resulting into instability-fuelled unrest in many sectors of the economy. To counter the effects, the government printed huge amounts of paper money.

Germany had to sign the unforgiving treaty of Versailles, which the Weimar Republic was responsible for and was later to become the ‘noose around Germany’s neck’, a situation that caused “feelings of distrust, fear, resentment, and insecurity towards the Weimar Republic” (Bartov 2000: 54).

Hitler built on these volatile emotions and offered the option of a secure and promising leadership of the extremist Nazi party as opposed to the weak and unstable coalition government of the Weimar republic. Dippel notes, “Hitler’s ability to build upon people’s disappointed view of the hatred of the treaty of Versailles was one of the major reason for the Nazi party’s and Hitler’s rise to power” (1996: 220).

The Treaty of Versailles introduced the German population to a period of economic insatiability and caused an escalation of hard economic standards. The opportunistic appearance of an extremist group that promised better options than the prevailing situation presented a temptation to the vulnerable Germans to accept it (Dippel 1996: 219).

During the period of hyperinflation, unemployment rose sharply and children were largely malnourished. The value of people’s savings spiraled downwards leading to low living standards and reduction in people buying power.

People became desperate and started a frantic search for a better alternative to the Weimar Government. Germany in a state of disillusionment became a prey to the convincing promises of Hitler. Hitler promised full employment and security in form of a strong central government.

The Weimar republic also faced political challenges from both left-wingers and right-wingers. The communists wanted radical changes like those one implemented in Russia while the conservatives thought that the Weimar government was too weak and liberal.

The Germans longed for a leader with the leadership qualities of Bismark especially with the disillusionment of the Weimar republic. They blamed the government for the hated Versailles treaty and they all came out to look for a scapegoat to their overwhelming challenges (Thalmann and Feinermann 1990: 133).

In their bid to look for scapegoats, many Germans led by Hitler and Nazi party blamed the German Jews for their economic and political problems.

Hitler made a failed attempt to seize power through a coup de tat that led to his arrest and imprisonment. In prison, he wrote a book that was later to become the guide to Nazism known as Mein Kampf (My Struggle).

The book reflected Hitler’s obsessions to nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism and he insisted that Germans belonged to a superior race of Aryans meaning light-skinned Europeans. According to Hitler, the greatest enemies of the Aryans were the Jews and therefore the Germans should eliminate them at all costs since they were the genesis of all their misfortunes.

These views on Semitism could trace its genesis in history from which it Historians suspect that Hitler’s ideas were rooted. In this view, Christians persecuted Jews mainly because of their difference in beliefs.

Nationalism in the 19 th century caused the society to view Jews as ethnic outsiders while Hitler viewed Jews not as members of a religion but as a unique race (Longerich 2006: 105). Consequently, he blamed the German’s defeat on a conspiracy of Marxists, Jews, corruption of politicians and businesspersons.

Hitler urged the Germans on the need to unite into a great nation so that the slaves and other inferior races could bow to their needs (Bergen 2003: 30). He further advocated for removal and elimination of the Jews from the face of the earth to create enough space for ‘great nation’.

He spread propaganda that for Germany to unite into one great nation it required a strong leader one he believed to be destined to become.

These Semitism views contributed to the sudden change of fortunes for the Nazi party and Hitler because the conditions were appropriate. The Germans were desperate for some hope in the midst of frustrating times due to the failure of the Weimar republic and rising communism (Stone 2004: 17).

They involuntarily yielded to the more appealing Nazism values especially with the promises of destroying communism and improved living standards.

However, in accepting the Nazi party and Hitler, the Germans were giving in to Semitism, which was deeply rooted in the core values of Nazism, and Hitler had clearly outlined them in the Mein Kampf, which laid out his ideas and future policies.

Hitler’s well timed and precise way of “introducing the secure option of Nazism at an appropriate time and taking advantage of a disjointed Weimar republic that faced unprecedented challenges” (Cohn-Sherbok 1999: 12) was one of the many reasons that underscored Hitler’s fame.

He promised a strong and united German nation very timely when the German nation had suffered a dent to their pride and union due to the defeat in the First World War. Hitler’s promise of a strong and powerful nation began to look very appealing causing a large proportion of Germans, who were in disillusionment, to divert their support the Nazi Party (Gordon 1987: 67).

Hitler’s opportunistic approach and perfectly timed cunning speeches as well as his manipulation of certain circumstance were significant reasons for the rise of Nazism and Hitler in Germany.

During the Great depression and release from prison, Hitler introduced large-scale propaganda and at the same time manipulated the media with his ideas. This led to the Nazi supporter’s increase of detests against their opposition and many Germans believed in the cunning lies of Hitler (Kaplan 1999: 45).

He managed to spread lies against the communist society and a case in point is when a communist supporter set the Reichstag building ablaze in one of the civil unrests in Germany, supposedly.

This event caused the communism society to loose popularity and allowed Hitler to activate the enabling act when he came to power. The act marked a turning point in the success of Hitler’s dictatorship and Historians accredit it as the foundation of the Nazi rule.

The communists later realized that the Nazis were responsible for the act at Reichstag building and the act meant to provoke hatred between the communists and Nazi supporters.

Hitler had a very charming personality that made him very easy to get along with people. His likable character and oratory skills enabled him to put forward the strong sense of authority that the Weimar Republic lacked.

This, in combination with other factors, made him very appealing to the desperate Germans, making them believe in the Nazi ideals like Semitism and supporting the Nazi party while concurrently fueling hatred of the ruling Weimar Republic.

Hitler’s ability to manipulate circumstances and situation in the favor of himself and his Nazi Party was reason for their success to rise to power. Hitler waited patiently to take hold of the realms of power before unleashing his full force of dictatorship and hatred for the Jews, which led to the holocaust. It is therefore just to state that every Hitler’s vote was a vote for the holocaust.

Bartov, O., ed., The Holocaust: origins, implementation, aftermath , Routledge, London/New York, 2000.

Bergen, D. L., War & Genocide: a concise history of the Holocaust , 2 nd ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

Bloxham, D. & T. Kushner, The Holocaust. Critical historical approaches , Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2005.

Burleigh, M., Ethics and Extermination. Reflections on Nazi Genocide, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997.

Cohn-Sherbok, D., Understanding the Holocaust , Cassell. London/New York, 1999.

Dippel, J. H., Bound upon a Wheel of Fire. Why so many German Jews made the tragic decision to remain in Nazi Germany , Basic Books, New York, 1996.

Gordon, A. S., Hitler, Germans and the ‘Jewish Question’ , Blackwell, Oxford, 1987.

Kaplan, M., Between dignity and despair: Jewish life in Nazi Germany , New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Longerich, P., The Unwritten Order. Hitler’s Role in the Final Solution, Tempus, The Mill, GLS, 2006.

Schleunes, K. A., The Twisted Road to Auschwitz. Nazi Policy towards German Jews, 1933-9, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1990.

Stone, D., Histories of the Holocaust , Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2004.

Thalmann, R. & E. Feinermann, Crystal night, 9-10 November 1938 , Thames and Hudson, London, 1990.

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Adolf Hitler

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 29, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s Nazi Party , was one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century. After serving with the German military in World War I , Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting during the Weimar Republic to rise through the ranks of the Nazi Party.

In a series of ruthless and violent actions—including the Reichstag Fire and the Night of Long Knives—Hitler took absolute power in Germany by 1933. Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of World War II , and by 1941, Nazi forces had used “blitzkrieg” military tactics to occupy much of Europe. Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism and obsessive pursuit of Aryan supremacy fueled the murder of some 6 million Jews, along with other victims of the Holocaust . After the tide of war turned against him, Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker in April 1945.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a small Austrian town near the Austro-German frontier. After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

Not wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps as a civil servant, he began struggling in secondary school and eventually dropped out. Alois died in 1903, and Adolf pursued his dream of being an artist, though he was rejected from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.

After his mother, Klara, died in 1908, Hitler moved to Vienna, where he pieced together a living painting scenery and monuments and selling the images. Lonely, isolated and a voracious reader, Hitler became interested in politics during his years in Vienna, and developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

Military Career of Adolf Hitler

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, in the German state of Bavaria. When World War I broke out the following summer, he successfully petitioned the Bavarian king to be allowed to volunteer in a reserve infantry regiment.

Deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, Hitler served throughout the Great War and won two decorations for bravery, including the rare Iron Cross First Class, which he wore to the end of his life.

Hitler was wounded twice during the conflict: He was hit in the leg during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and temporarily blinded by a British gas attack near Ypres in 1918. A month later, he was recuperating in a hospital at Pasewalk, northeast of Berlin, when news arrived of the armistice and Germany’s defeat in World War I .

Like many Germans, Hitler came to believe the country’s devastating defeat could be attributed not to the Allies, but to insufficiently patriotic “traitors” at home—a myth that would undermine the post-war Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler’s rise.

After Hitler returned to Munich in late 1918, he joined the small German Workers’ Party, which aimed to unite the interests of the working class with a strong German nationalism. His skilled oratory and charismatic energy helped propel him in the party’s ranks, and in 1920 he left the army and took charge of its propaganda efforts.

In one of Hitler’s strokes of propaganda genius, the newly renamed National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party , adopted a version of the swastika—an ancient sacred symbol of Hinduism , Jainism and Buddhism —as its emblem. Printed in a white circle on a red background, Hitler’s swastika would take on terrifying symbolic power in the years to come.

By the end of 1921, Hitler led the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty . Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich would join the Nazis, notably Ernst Röhm, who recruited the “strong arm” squads—known as the Sturmabteilung (SA)—which Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch 

On the evening of November 8, 1923, members of the SA and others forced their way into a large beer hall where another right-wing leader was addressing the crowd. Wielding a revolver, Hitler proclaimed the beginning of a national revolution and led marchers to the center of Munich, where they got into a gun battle with police.

Hitler fled quickly, but he and other rebel leaders were later arrested. Even though it failed spectacularly, the Beer Hall Putsch established Hitler as a national figure, and (in the eyes of many) a hero of right-wing nationalism.

'Mein Kampf' 

Tried for treason, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but would serve only nine months in the relative comfort of Landsberg Castle. During this period, he began to dictate the book that would become " Mein Kampf " (“My Struggle”), the first volume of which was published in 1925.

In it, Hitler expanded on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic views he had begun to develop in Vienna in his early twenties, and laid out plans for the Germany—and the world—he sought to create when he came to power.

Hitler would finish the second volume of "Mein Kampf" after his release, while relaxing in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden. It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler’s rise it became Germany’s best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there.

Hitler’s second book, “The Zweites Buch,” was written in 1928 and contained his thoughts on foreign policy. It was not published in his lifetime due to the poor initial sales of “Mein Kampf.” The first English translations of “The Zweites Buch” did not appear until 1962 and was published under the title “Hitler's Secret Book.” 

Obsessed with race and the idea of ethnic “purity,” Hitler saw a natural order that placed the so-called “Aryan race” at the top.

For him, the unity of the Volk (the German people) would find its truest incarnation not in democratic or parliamentary government, but in one supreme leader, or Führer.

" Mein Kampf " also addressed the need for Lebensraum (or living space): In order to fulfill its destiny, Germany should take over lands to the east that were now occupied by “inferior” Slavic peoples—including Austria, the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), Poland and Russia.

The Schutzstaffel (SS) 

By the time Hitler left prison, economic recovery had restored some popular support for the Weimar Republic, and support for right-wing causes like Nazism appeared to be waning.

Over the next few years, Hitler laid low and worked on reorganizing and reshaping the Nazi Party. He established the Hitler Youth  to organize youngsters, and created the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a more reliable alternative to the SA.

Members of the SS wore black uniforms and swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. (After 1929, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler , the SS would develop from a group of some 200 men into a force that would dominate Germany and terrorize the rest of occupied Europe during World War II .)

Hitler spent much of his time at Berchtesgaden during these years, and his half-sister, Angela Raubal, and her two daughters often joined him. After Hitler became infatuated with his beautiful blonde niece, Geli Raubal, his possessive jealousy apparently led her to commit suicide in 1931.

Devastated by the loss, Hitler would consider Geli the only true love affair of his life. He soon began a long relationship with Eva Braun , a shop assistant from Munich, but refused to marry her.

The worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 again threatened the stability of the Weimar Republic. Determined to achieve political power in order to affect his revolution, Hitler built up Nazi support among German conservatives, including army, business and industrial leaders.

The Third Reich

In 1932, Hitler ran against the war hero Paul von Hindenburg for president, and received 36.8 percent of the vote. With the government in chaos, three successive chancellors failed to maintain control, and in late January 1933 Hindenburg named the 43-year-old Hitler as chancellor, capping the stunning rise of an unlikely leader.

January 30, 1933 marked the birth of the Third Reich, or as the Nazis called it, the “Thousand-Year Reich” (after Hitler’s boast that it would endure for a millennium).

HISTORY Vault: Third Reich: The Rise

Rare and never-before-seen amateur films offer a unique perspective on the rise of Nazi Germany from Germans who experienced it. How were millions of people so vulnerable to fascism?

Reichstag Fire 

Though the Nazis never attained more than 37 percent of the vote at the height of their popularity in 1932, Hitler was able to grab absolute power in Germany largely due to divisions and inaction among the majority who opposed Nazism.

After a devastating fire at Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, in February 1933—possibly the work of a Dutch communist, though later evidence suggested Nazis set the  Reichstag fire  themselves—Hitler had an excuse to step up the political oppression and violence against his opponents.

On March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving full powers to Hitler and celebrating the union of National Socialism with the old German establishment (i.e., Hindenburg ).

That July, the government passed a law stating that the Nazi Party “constitutes the only political party in Germany,” and within months all non-Nazi parties, trade unions and other organizations had ceased to exist.

His autocratic power now secure within Germany, Hitler turned his eyes toward the rest of Europe.

In 1933, Germany was diplomatically isolated, with a weak military and hostile neighbors (France and Poland). In a famous speech in May 1933, Hitler struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, claiming Germany supported disarmament and peace.

But behind this appeasement strategy, the domination and expansion of the Volk remained Hitler’s overriding aim.

By early the following year, he had withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations and begun to militarize the nation in anticipation of his plans for territorial conquest.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 29, 1934, the infamous Night of the Long Knives , Hitler had Röhm, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and hundreds of other problematic members of his own party murdered, in particular troublesome members of the SA.

When the 86-year-old Hindenburg died on August 2, military leaders agreed to combine the presidency and chancellorship into one position, meaning Hitler would command all the armed forces of the Reich.

Persecution of Jews

On September 15, 1935, passage of the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship, and barred them from marrying or having relations with persons of “German or related blood.”

Though the Nazis attempted to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to placate the international community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics (in which German-Jewish athletes were not allowed to compete), additional decrees over the next few years disenfranchised Jews and took away their political and civil rights.

In addition to its pervasive anti-Semitism, Hitler’s government also sought to establish the cultural dominance of Nazism by burning books, forcing newspapers out of business, using radio and movies for propaganda purposes and forcing teachers throughout Germany’s educational system to join the party.

Much of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other targets occurred at the hands of the Geheime Staatspolizei (GESTAPO), or Secret State Police, an arm of the SS that expanded during this period.

Outbreak of World War II

In March 1936, against the advice of his generals, Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine.

Over the next two years, Germany concluded alliances with Italy and Japan, annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia—all essentially without resistance from Great Britain, France or the rest of the international community.

Once he confirmed the alliance with Italy in the so-called “Pact of Steel” in May 1939, Hitler then signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union . On September 1, 1939, Nazi troops invaded Poland, finally prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

Blitzkrieg 

After ordering the occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, Hitler adopted a plan proposed by one of his generals to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. The blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) attack began on May 10; Holland quickly surrendered, followed by Belgium.

German troops made it all the way to the English Channel, forcing British and French forces to evacuate en masse from Dunkirk in late May. On June 22, France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany.

Hitler had hoped to force Britain to seek peace as well, but when that failed he went ahead with his attacks on that country, followed by an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany’s alliance with Japan demanded that Hitler declare war on the United States as well.

At that point in the conflict, Hitler shifted his central strategy to focus on breaking the alliance of his main opponents (Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union) by forcing one of them to make peace with him.

Concentration Camps

Beginning in 1933, the SS had operated a network of concentration camps, including a notorious camp at Dachau , near Munich, to hold Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz -Birkenau in occupied Poland.

In addition to forced labor and mass execution, certain Jews at Auschwitz were targeted as the subjects of horrific medical experiments carried out by eugenicist Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death.” Mengele’s experiments focused on twins and exposed 3,000 child prisoners to disease, disfigurement and torture under the guise of medical research.

Though the Nazis also imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma (gypsies) and the disabled, above all they targeted Jews—some 6 million of whom were killed in German-occupied Europe by war’s end.

End of World War II

With defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad , as well as the landing of U.S. troops in North Africa by the end of 1942, the tide of the war turned against Germany.

As the conflict continued, Hitler became increasingly unwell, isolated and dependent on medications administered by his personal physician.

Several attempts were made on his life, including one that came close to succeeding in July 1944, when Col. Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that exploded during a conference at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia.

Within a few months of the successful Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces.

But after January 1945, he holed up in a bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. With Soviet forces closing in, Hitler made plans for a last-ditch resistance before finally abandoning that plan.

How Did Adolf Hitler Die?

At midnight on the night of April 28-29, Hitler married Eva Braun in the Berlin bunker. After dictating his political testament,  Hitler shot himself  in his suite on April 30; Braun took poison. Their bodies were burned according to Hitler’s instructions.

With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, 1945, bringing the war in Europe to a close.

In the end, Hitler’s planned “Thousand-Year Reich” lasted just over 12 years, but wreaked unfathomable destruction and devastation during that time, forever transforming the history of Germany, Europe and the world.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich iWonder – Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster, BBC . The Holocaust : A Learning Site for Students, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum .

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The Nazi Rise to Power

The Nazi Party was one of a number of right-wing extremist political groups that emerged in Germany following World War I. Beginning with the onset of the Great Depression it rose rapidly from obscurity to political prominence, becoming the largest party in the German parliament in 1932.

The Nazi Party’s meteoric rise to power began in 1930, when it attained 107 seats in Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag. In July 1932, the Nazi Party became the largest political party in the Reichstag with 230 representatives

In the final years of the Weimar Republic (1930 to 1933), the government ruled by emergency decree because it could not attain a parliamentary majority. Political and economic instability, coupled with voter dissatisfaction with the status quo, benefitted the Nazi Party.

As a result of the Nazis’ mass support, German president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. His appointment paved the way to the Nazi dictatorship after Hindenburg’s death in August 1934.

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• Third Reich
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Before the onset of the Great Depression in Germany in 1929–1930, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (or Nazi Party for short) was a small party on the radical right of the German political spectrum. In the Reichstag (parliament) elections of May 2, 1928, the Nazis received only 2.6 percent of the national vote, a proportionate decline from 1924, when the Nazis received 3 percent of the vote. As a result of the election, a "Grand Coalition" of Germany's Social Democratic, Catholic Center, German Democratic, and German People's parties governed Weimar Germany  into the first six months of the economic downturn.

During 1930–1933, the mood in Germany was grim. The worldwide economic depression had hit the country hard, and millions of people were out of work. The unemployed were joined by millions of others who linked the Depression to Germany's national humiliation after defeat in World War 1 . Many Germans perceived the parliamentary government coalition as weak and unable to alleviate the economic crisis. Widespread economic misery, fear, and perception of worse times to come, as well as anger and impatience with the apparent failure of the government to manage the crisis, offered fertile ground for the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.

Hitler and other Nazi speakers carefully tailored their speeches to each audience. For example, when speaking to businessmen, the Nazis downplayed antisemitism and instead emphasized anti-communism and the return of German colonies lost through the Treaty of Versailles. When addressed to soldiers, veterans, or other nationalist interest groups, Nazi propaganda emphasized military buildup and return of other territories lost after Versailles. Nazi speakers assured farmers in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein that a Nazi government would prop up falling agricultural prices. Pensioners all over Germany were told that both the amounts and the buying power of their monthly checks would remain stable.

Using a deadlock among the partners in the "Grand Coalition" as an excuse, Center party politician and Reich Chancellor Heinrich Bruening induced the aging Reich President, World War I Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, to dissolve the parliament in July 1930 and schedule new elections for September 1930. To dissolve the parliament, the president used Article 48 of the German constitution. This Article permitted the German government to govern without parliamentary consent and was to be applied only in cases of direct national emergency.

Bruening miscalculated the mood of the nation after six months of economic depression. The Nazis won 18.3 percent of the vote and became the second largest political party in the country.

For two years, repeatedly resorting to Article 48  to issue presidential decrees, the Bruening government sought and failed to build a parliamentary majority that would exclude Social Democrats, Communists, and Nazis. In 1932, Hindenburg dismissed Bruening and appointed Franz von Papen, a former diplomat and Center party politician, as chancellor. Papen dissolved the Reichstag again, but the July 1932 elections brought the Nazi party 37.3 percent of the popular vote, making it the largest political party in Germany. The Communists (taking votes from the Social Democrats in the increasingly desperate economic climate) received 14.3 percent of the vote. As a result, more than half the deputies in the 1932 Reichstag had publicly committed themselves to ending parliamentary democracy.

On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler was not appointed chancellor as the result of an electoral victory with a popular mandate, but instead as the result of a constitutionally questionable deal among a small group of conservative German politicians who had given up on parliamentary rule. They hoped to use Hitler's popularity with the masses to buttress a return to conservative authoritarian rule, perhaps even a monarchy. Within two years, however, Hitler and the Nazis outmaneuvered Germany's conservative politicians to consolidate a radical Nazi dictatorship completely subordinate to Hitler's personal will.

Critical Thinking Questions

• How did the German constitution contribute to the Nazi rise to power?
• What pressures and motivations led some officials to arrange for the appointment of Hitler as chancellor?
• What do you consider to be the ideal priorities of government officials to uphold, particularly in times of crisis?
• How can knowledge of the events in Germany and Europe before the Nazis came to power help citizens today respond to threats of genocide and mass atrocity in the world?

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Authoritarian and Single Party States: Hitler: Rise to Power

• Library Resources
• Rise to Power
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Primary Sources

• German History Docs: Nazi Germany Primary sources documenting Germany's political, social, and cultural history.
• German Propaganda Archive A collection of English translations of National Socialist propaganda from 1933-1945 made available through Calvin College.
• Eurodocs: Nazis and WW II Online Sources for European History Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations
• Hitler's Speeches
• Nazism Internet History Sourcebook
• British Archives: Hitler Use the sources to find out how Hitler was viewed.. Was he regarded as a ‘passionate lunatic’ who would take over Europe? Or an odd eccentric who was rebuilding Germany?

• GCSE: Hitler's Rise to Power Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933. His rise to power was the result of many factors: the impact of the Depression, the weaknesses of Weimar democracy and the strengths of the Nazi party.
• Rise of Hitler Extensive list of articles covering Hiler's rise to power, from birth to being named Dictator.
• Rise of Adolf Hitler How did Adolf Hitler rise from an aimless drifter and failed artist to become the most destructive politician of the 20th century? Professor Jeremy Noakes examines a remarkable transformation.
• How Adolf Hitler Turned a Year in Jail Into a Step Toward Power In his new book 1924, Peter Ross Range explores how the year Adolf Hitler spent in jail was a crucial step in his rise to power.
• Photo Essay: Rise to Power Time Magazine
• Establishing Dictatorship Hitler was not inevitable. It would be a critical misunderstanding to buy the self-propagated Hitler myth that it was his “will” and genius that brought him to power.
• The Nazi Party The National Socialist German Workers’ Party—also known as the Nazi Party—was the far-right racist and antisemitic political party led by Adolf Hitler.
• Beer Hall Putsch From November 8 to November 9, 1923, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and his followers staged the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a failed takeover of the government in

Beer Hall Putsch

Defendants in the Beer Hall Putsch trial: Pernet, Weber, Frick, Kriebel, Ludendorff, Hitler, Bruckner, Rohm, and Wagner.

Enabling Act

Adolf Hitler addressing the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, seeking assent to the Enabling Act.

Speech, 1920

Hitler delivers the  Nazi Party Platform  to a large crowd in Munich.

Initial Rise

Hitler and Nazis Come to Power

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Hitler's Rise to Power: A Timeline

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Adolf Hitler's rise to power began during Germany's interwar period, a time of great social and political upheaval. Within a matter of years, the Nazi Party was transformed from an obscure group to the nation's leading political faction.

April 20: Adolf Hitler is born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary. His family later moves to Germany.

August: Hitler joins the German military at the start of World War I. Some historians believe this is the result of an administrative error; as an Austrian citizen, Hitler should not be allowed to join the German ranks.

October: The military, fearing the blame from an inevitable defeat, encourages a civilian government to form. Under Prince Max of Baden, they sue for peace.

November 11: World War I ends with Germany signing an armistice.

March 23: Benito Mussolini  forms the National Fascist Party in Italy. Its success will be a huge influence on Hitler.

June 28: Germany is forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, which imposes strict sanctions on the country. Anger at the treaty and the weight of reparations will destabilize Germany for years.​

July 31: A socialist interim German government is replaced by the official creation of the democratic Weimar Republic .

September 12: Hitler joins the German Workers’ Party, having been sent to spy on it by the military.

February 24: Hitler becomes increasingly important to the German Workers’ Party thanks to his speeches. The group declares a Twenty-Five Point Program to transform Germany.

July 29: Hitler is able to become chairman of his party, which is renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or NSDAP.

October 30: Mussolini manages to turn luck and division into an invitation to run the Italian government. Hitler notes his success.

January 27: Munich holds the first Nazi Party Congress.

November 9: Hitler believes the time is right to stage a coup. Aided by a force of SA brownshirts, the support of WW1 leader Erich Ludendorff, and browbeaten locals, he stages the Beer Hall Putsch . It fails.

April 1: Having turned his trial into a grandstand for his ideas and become known across Germany, Hitler is given a derisory five-month prison sentence.

December 20: Hitler is released from jail, where he has written the beginning of " Mein Kampf ."

February 27: The NSDAP had moved away from Hitler's influence during his absence; now free, he reasserts control, determined to pursue a notionally legal course to power.

April 5: Prussian, aristocratic, right-leaning war leader Paul von Hindenburg is elected president of Germany.

July: Hitler publishes "Mein Kampf," a ranting exploration of what passes as his ideology.

November 9: Hitler forms a personal bodyguard unit separate from the SA, known as the SS.

May 20: Elections to the Reichstag yield just 2.6 percent of the vote to the NSDAP.  

October 4: The New York Stock Market begins to crash , causing a great economic depression in America and around the world. As the German economy was made dependant on the United States by the Dawes plan, it begins to collapse.

January 23: Wilhelm Frick becomes the interior minister in Thuringia, the first Nazi to hold a notable position in the German government.

March 30: Heinrich Brüning takes charge of Germany via a right-leaning coalition. He wishes to pursue a deflationary policy to counter economic depression.

July 16: Facing defeat over his budget, Brüning invokes Article 48 of the constitution, which allows the government to pass laws without Reichstag consent. It is the start of a slippery slope for failing German democracy, and the start of a period of rule by Article 48 decrees.

September 14: Boosted by the rising unemployment rate, the decline of center parties, and a turn to both left and right extremists, the NSDAP wins 18.3 percent of the vote and becomes the second-largest party in the Reichstag.  

October: The Harzburg Front is formed to try to organize Germany’s right wing into a workable opposition to the government and the left. Hitler joins.

January: Hitler is welcomed by a group of industrialists; his support is broadening and gathering money.

March 13: Hitler comes a strong second in the presidential elections; Hindenburg just misses out on the election on the first ballot.

April 10: Hindenburg defeats Hitler at the second attempt to become president.

April 13: Brüning’s government bans the SA and other groups from marching.

May 30: Brüning is forced to resign; Hindenburg is talked into making Franz von Papen chancellor.

June 16: The SA ban is revoked.

July 31: The NSDAP polls 37.4 percent and becomes the largest party in the Reichstag.  

August 13: Papen offers Hitler the post of vice-chancellor, but Hitler refuses, accepting nothing less than being chancellor.

August 31: Hermann Göring, long a leading Nazi and a link between Hitler and the aristocracy, becomes president of the Reichstag and uses his new power to manipulate events.

November 6: In another election, the Nazi vote shrinks slightly.

November 21: Hitler turns down more government offers, wanting nothing less than to be chancellor.

December 2: Papen is forced out, and Hindenburg is influenced into appointing the general, and prime right-wing manipulator, Kurt von Schleicher, chancellor.

January 30: Schleicher is outmaneuvered by Papen, who persuades Hindenburg than Hitler can be controlled; the latter is made chancellor , with Papen vice-chancellor.

February 6: Hitler introduces censorship.

February 27: With elections looming, the Reichstag is set on fire by a communist.

February 28: Citing the attack on the Reichstag as evidence of a mass communist movement, Hitler passes a law ending civil liberties in Germany.

March 5: The NSDAP, riding on the communist scare and aided by a now tame police force boosted by masses of SA, polls at 43.9 percent.   The Nazis ban the communists.

March 21: During the "Day of Potsdam," the Nazis open the Reichstag in a carefully stage-managed act which tries to show them as heirs of the Kaiser.

March 24: Hitler passes the Enabling Act; it makes him a dictator for four years.

July 14: With other parties banned or splitting up, the NSDAP becomes the only political party left in Germany.

June 30: During the "Night of the Long Knives," dozens are killed as Hitler shatters the power of the SA, which had been challenging his goals. SA leader Ernst Röhm is executed after trying to merge his force with the army.

July 3: Papen resigns.

August 2: Hindenburg dies. Hitler merges the posts of chancellor and president, becoming the supreme leader of Nazi Germany.

O'Loughlin, John, et al. “ The Geography of the Nazi Vote: Context, Confession, and Class in the Reichstag Election of 1930. ”  Annals of the Association of American Geographers , vol. 84, no. 3, 1994, pp. 351–380, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1994.tb01865.x

" Adolf Hitler: 1924-1930. " Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

" Adolf Hitler: 1930-1933. " Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Von Lüpke-Schwarz, Marc. " Voting in the Midst of Nazi Terror. " Deutsche Welle. 5 Mar. 2013

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Hitler's Rise to Power: The Role of The Treaty of Versailles

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Adolf Hitler’s Rise to Power, Impact, and Legacy

Introduction, rise to power, political platform and ideology, foreign policy and the second world war.

Adolf Hitler is one of the most reviled figures in human history, and for a good reason. His leadership turned the nascent democracy of the German Weimar Republic into the worst dictatorship in human history and ignited the Second World War with disastrous results for the people of the world. Considering that, it is immensely important to understand how he came to power and which factors made his regime so inhumane. This paper will cover his rise to power, the main facets of his ideology, his policies leading to the Second World War, and the mark that he and Nazi Germany left upon the world.

In order to understand Hitler’s rise to power, one should have an idea of the situation in Germany after the First World War. The Versailles Treaty that codified the official condition of peace with Germany included numerous territorial concessions to the victorious powers or their satellite states – most notably, France, Britain, Belgium, and Poland (League of Nations 1919). As a result, the German public perceived the treaty as a great national humiliation and resented it. The ideas of restoring Germany to its former glory were popular among the population. In this environment, Hitler – himself a veteran of the First World War – decided to join the recently-founded German Worker’s Party, later transformed into Nazi Party, in 1919 (Longerich 2019).

The party’s platform was heavily based on German nationalism and anti-Semitism as opposed to socialism or the government of the Weimar Republic – Germany’s ruling regime at the time. In 1923, Hitler, having already risen to the status of the party leader, attempted a coup to bring the government down but was defeated, arrested, and jailed (Longerich 2019). However, this first failure did not discourage his pursuit of power.

Hitler has been released from jail after serving only a portion of his sentence and resumed his political effort – this time, trying to get to power constitutionally. It required making the Nazi Party a formidable political force on the domestic scene, which was his primary concern throughout the 1920s. His failed attempt to seize power in 1923 was, nevertheless, a great publicity boost because it made his name known all across Germany. Hitler capitalized on that by utilizing his skills as a speaker and propagandist. His political manifesto, Mein Kampf (literally meaning “My Struggle”), was extremely popular in Germany (British Embassy, 1937).

His speeches also had an immense impact on German audiences, combining nationalist and anti-Semitic rhetoric with intense emotionality (British Embassy, 1937). Some contemporary observers claimed that Hitler was neurotic and subject to fits, although these claims mainly came from anti-Nazi sources and should be taken with a grain of salt (Bernstoff 1937). What is certain is that Hitler and his party reached immense popularity throughout the 1920s and 1930s thanks to his intensely passionate political rhetoric.

In his efforts to expand the Nazi party and secure political power for it, Hitler was able to enlist the help of a number of allies who were instrumental in his rise to power. Ernst Röhm, a member of the Nazi Party from its early days, was instrumental in organizing the Sturmabteilung (SA) – the party’s paramilitary forces (Longerich 2019). His assistance allowed Hitler to engage in political violence before he obtained formal control of the police and the military m– after which he promptly disposed of Röhm in 1934. Joseph Goebbels, a skilled propagandist and capable organizer, worked with Hitler since 1925 and was crucial in expanding the Nazi Party beyond Bavaria (Longerich, 2019). Unlike Röhm, Goebbels did not try to challenge Hitler’s leadership and worked with and for him until the fall of Nazi Germany.

Yet Hitler’s most important allies, in a broader sense, were the representatives of the German industry and military elite. Understanding that business support was instrumental in the pursuit of power through constitutional means, Hitler’s party relied on “ongoing contacts between business and National Socialism” since the early 1930s (Longerich 2019, 234). He was also careful to secure at least the superficial support of the old Prussian landed and military elites. The Day of Potsdam in March 1933, when Hitler greeted President Hindenburg, the hero of the First World War, with a reverential bow, was one of his attempts to demonstrate unity with them (Longerich 2019).

It was also a major reason why Hitler arrested and executed Röhm in 1934. The latter’s plans to reform the German army on the basis of the ideologically indoctrinated SA militia alarmed the old military elites, forcing Hitler to choose between the two (Longerich 2019). The choice in favor of the military sealed Röhm’s fate and ensured a functioning, if not necessarily cordial alliance between Hitler and the German military elite.

However, Germany’s descent toward dictatorship and a one-party state was not inevitable, and Hitler and the Nazis also had fervent opponents in their rise to power. There was no clarity about the political direction that Germany had to go in the 1920s, and the debate on this subject could sway either way. In very general terms, one may identify two political options other than Nazism that were available to Germany at the time. On the one hand, there was the possibility of turning Germany into a constitutional parliamentary republic similar to Western-style democracies.

With liberal German parties being generally weak, the main force that epitomized this approach was the German Center Party, which sought to ward off the left and right extremists of the time (Menke, 2019). On the extreme left, there were the communists, who were also a powerful force in their own right and even installed short-lived revolutionary regimes in Bavaria, Thuringia, and Saxony in the late 1910s and early 1920s (Longerich 2019). In order to secure power, Hitler had to prevail against both these opposing forces.

The Nazi leader did so by manipulating the public opinion on sensitive topics: national humiliation in the First World War and economy. Reparations and the loss of territories that have befallen Germany after the war were extremely unpopular. Moreover, the fact that at the time of the November revolution and the 1918 armistice, the war was still waged on French rather than German territory allowed to portray things as if Germany was not beaten on the battlefield by betrayed from within. Hitler seized on the opportunity to portray his presumably “unpatriotic” communist opponents as “November criminals,” steering the public opinion against them (Longerich 2019, 108).

As for the centrists, Hitler attacked them on the economic front. By 1931, hit by the Great Depression and other problems, Germany experienced one of the worst economic crises in its history yet (Straumann 2019 5-6). Hitler blamed the inherent deficiencies of the constitutional government’s weakness for the crisis, inciting the public opinion against the centrist as well. Thus, manipulating the topics of German national humiliation and economic troubles were the main argument Hitler used to win the debate about Germany’s future.

That is not to say that Hitler achieved power through purely constitutional means. He habitually used the party’s paramilitary forces against the opposing political forces, especially before and during the elections (Longerich 2019). With a combination of skilled political rhetoric and coercive measures, the Nazis became the numerically strongest party in Reichstag in 1930, but short of an absolute majority.

Unable to form a coalition government of other parties, President Hindenburg finally succumbed to the pressure to make Hitler the head of government. Soon after coming to power, Hitler passed emergency legislation allowing him to vigorously repress and eventually ban other parties (Beck and Jones 2019). He also eradicated opposition within his own party, including the purge of the SA, and, after Hindenburg’s death in 1934, assumed the role of the President as well (Beck and Jones 2019, 5-6). Thus, by 1945, Hitler was a dictator in full control of Germany.

The central staple of Hitler’s political platform was his particular version of German nationalism that argued for the inherent superiority of the German or “Aryan” race over all other people on Earth. The authoritative state proclaimed to care for the best interests of the German race and required total obedience in return. Nazi ideology and state control permeated every aspect of German society. Military leaders and religious figures were obligated to swear oaths of loyalty to the Nazi regime and Hitler personally (Longerich 2019, 336).

Education was saturated with political propaganda and ensured the political allegiance of students and faculty alike by weeding out the opponents of the regime (Detzen and Hoffmann 2020). In healthcare, “inferior” peoples were proclaimed unworthy of care, while those of “Aryan” descent were required to be healthy regardless of whether they wanted it or not (Bruns and Chelouche 592). This type of state that permeates every aspect of the society it governs came to be known as totalitarian.

Another essential facet of Hitler’s Nazi ideology was fervent anti-Semitism and anti-communism. He followed and largely influenced the then-popular idea that the German defeat in the First World War was due to the sabotage of the part of German Jewry. As early as 1921, he proclaimed that the Germans had to unite under the Nazi leadership or “come under the thumb of the Jews” (Hitler, 1921). In contrast to communists and socialists, who sought to improve the situation of the working class at the expense of the ruling capitalist class, Hitler (1933) proposed a national identity that surpassed the “differences of rank and class.” As mentioned above, this communal identity was based on the sense of inherent superiority of Germans over all other people and nations on the face of the globe.

The same conviction in the superiority of the German race led him to proclaim that Germany needed more territories and population to ensure its competitiveness in the long term. First and foremost, it required uniting all territories with at least some German population under a single Nazi state. Secondly, Germany had to take the necessary territories from the supposedly inferior neighbors to amass sufficient Lebensraum or living space.

The concept of living space was fairly common among the imperialist powers of the late 19 th and the early 20 th century, including Britain, France, Russia, and even Poland (Balogun 2018). However, Hitler took it to the extreme by aiming for the physical extermination of the races and peoples he deemed inferior – most notably Jews and Slavs. Thus, Hitler’s Nazi ideology was inherently aggressive and bound to put Germany into a confrontation with the rest of Europe – the only question was when.

Hitler’s dedication to uniting all German people within one totalitarian state led him to demand numerous border adjustments in Europe after securing his power over Germany. In early 1938, he annexed Austria in the event known as Anschluss (Longerich 2019, 551). Immediately after, he initiated diplomatic efforts to convince Britain and France to let him annex parts of Czechoslovakia with the German population. The Soviet Union, fearful of the possible conflict with overtly anti-communist Germany, proposed European powers to form a system of collective security for German containment (Carley 2010). However, France and Britain viewed the Soviet Union as an equal, if not greater, threat and decided to concede to German demands instead. The resulting Treaty of Munich allowed German forces to occupy parts of Czechoslovakia and effectively negate its potential threat in the event of a war (Hitler et al. 1938).

Some contemporary observers claimed – and, as time showed with good reason – that the policy of appeasement was a road to disaster (Law 1937). Even though Western powers thought they prevented open conflict, it was merely a delay.

Hitler understood perfectly well that his goal of providing Germany with sufficient living space all across Germany was bound to provoke war sooner or later. Correspondingly, since Hitler came to power, he worked vigorously to restore German military might. Throughout the 1930s, he reinvigorated the German military-industrial complex and gradually convinced foreign powers to lift restrictions on German rearmament imposed after the First World War (Longerich 2019).

He also sought foreign allies and found one in Mussolini due to Fascist Italy’s ideological proximity and imperialist ambitions that provided them with a common agenda (Goeschel 2018). Another ally that Hitler proved able to enlist was Japan, and the Anti-Comintern Pact solidified cooperation between the two powers (Mushakoji and Ribbentrop 1936). Finally, mindful of the failed attempts to enlist Western cooperation in 1934-1938, the Soviet Union signed up a non-aggression pact with Germany containing clauses on dividing Poland and the Baltic states (Molotov and Ribbentrop 1939). From this point onward, the war was predetermined.

Hitler’s military leadership in the Second World War did not prove to be as successful as his political leadership in the rise to power. German armies scored quick victories against Poland and France in 1939-1940 and also effectively established control of the Balkans through satellite governments or direct military occupation (Fritz 2018). However, Britain persisted with its war effort and refused to surrender, which complicated the strategic situation.

In 1941, Hitler proceeded with the invasion of the Soviet Union despite the non-aggression pact he signed two years earlier (Molotov 1939). German forces made quick initial progress but were eventually pinned down with stiff Soviet resistance. After Japan’s attack against Pearl Harbor, Hitler made one of his greatest strategic blunders by declaring war on the United States as well (Fritz 2018). The Allies’ superiority in industry and manpower began to be felt – by 1943, Hitler suffered crippling defeats in Africa, Italy, and the Soviet Union (Fritz 2018). With the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944, the failure of German counterattacks, and the continuing Soviet offensives in the east, it was clear Germany lost the war, and Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945.

The results of Hitler’s rule were nothing short of catastrophic for Germany. Having turned the nascent democracy into the worst dictatorship in human history, he steered the country to the Second World War, even more devastating than the first one. As a result of his policies, Germany was militarily occupied and, after that, separated into two states for almost half a century. His military leadership led to the country ending up in a war against most of the world – a conflict Germany could hardly win even under the most favorable circumstances (Fritz 2018). The human costs of the war in military casualties alone amounted to millions of German soldiers and millions more in other participants combined, predominantly the Soviets. With this in mind, it is impossible to argue that, for all his talk about reinvigorating Germany and leading it to a glorious future, Hitler was a catastrophe for his country, and his leadership had disastrous results for the entire world.

The most impactful legacy that Hitler has left upon the world was the Holocaust – the policy of consistent extermination of supposedly “inferior” peoples, most notably Jews. Throughout his twelve years in power, Hitler authorized the killing of up to 5.6 Jews as well as dozens of millions of people belonging to other ethnicities (Chatel and Ferree n.d.). As such, Hitler remains the political leader responsible for the greatest loss of human life in the shortest time span – and a vivid reminder of the dangers of racism and nationalism.

On the other hand, the severity of German atrocities ensured that the victorious powers in the Second World War put the struggle for human rights and international justice on an entirely new footing. Trials of Nazi politicians and war criminals instituted new principles in international law, such as the responsibility for heads of state, the crime of genocide, and the notion that national sovereignty should not serve as an excuse for crimes against humanity (Plesch 2017, 160). In a way, one may say that atrocities engineered and ordered by Hitler – including but not limited to Holocaust – served as a catalyst for devising and enacting a new, broader vision of universal human rights.

To summarize, Hitler left an immense impact on world history, almost entirely in negative terms. His rise to power in the embittered Germany suffering from recurring economic crises created arguably the worst dictatorship in human history. The ideology of German Nazism, which he created and promoted, stressed the inherent superiority of the German people over every other race and ethnicity. Combined with his aggressive foreign politics in pursuit of more territories, Hitler was the single person most responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War and the death of dozens of millions of people. His legacy, equally disastrous for Germany and the world as a whole, serves as a reminder of the extreme danger of nationalism, racism, and totalitarianism. At the same time, it was also a catalyst the united the world’s powers in their attempts to reshape international law so that the Holocaust could never repeat again.

Balogun, Bolaji. 2018. “Polish Lebensraum : The Colonial Ambition to Expand on Racial Terms.” Ethnic & Racial Studies 41 (14): 2561-2579.

Beck, Hermann, and Larry E. Jones. 2019. The Nazi Seizure of Power in Historical and Historiographical Perspective.” In From Weimar to Hitler: Studies in the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic and the Establishment of the Third Reich, 1932-1934 , 1-22. New York: Berghahn Books.

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"Adolf Hitler’s Rise to Power, Impact, and Legacy." StudyCorgi , 1 Dec. 2022, studycorgi.com/adolf-hitlers-rise-to-power-impact-and-legacy/.

StudyCorgi . (2022) 'Adolf Hitler’s Rise to Power, Impact, and Legacy'. 1 December.

1. StudyCorgi . "Adolf Hitler’s Rise to Power, Impact, and Legacy." December 1, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/adolf-hitlers-rise-to-power-impact-and-legacy/.

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Hitler's Rise to Power. (Undergraduate)

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Hitler’s Rise to Power Holds Lessons for the 2024 Election

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Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Amazon and Stitcher .

Adam Gopnik ’s latest essay for The New Yorker explores how Adolf Hitler was able to rise to power in Nazi Germany—which happened largely because people believed they would be able to control him.

Gopnik tells The New Abnormal co-host Danielle Moodie that the same could be said for Donald Trump leading into the 2024 election.

“You had this character who was regarded as a chaotic clown by everyone around him. The conservative minister of defense called him a psychopath,” he said. “Yet all of those people, the media moguls, the respectable conservatives, ended up aiding and abetting him in every way in his search for power and they did it in a way that is, yes, disconcertingly familiar to us.”

“They all thought they could manage him. They all thought they could control him. They all thought that they could take advantage of his movement for their own ends. And that on the day when it all blew up, because it had to blow up because he was a psychopath and clearly not capable of exercising power, they would be there to inherit,” he said.

Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Google Podcasts , Stitcher , Amazon Music , or Overcast .

Gopnik says that those who propped up Hitler believed they could “control the beast” and that they would “end up the ultimate victors.” However, as history shows, that wasn’t the case.

“Those patterns are frightening to see emerging again and again throughout history.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

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