How and why did Hitler rise to power?

DEVLIN Antoni 3G

There were three factors to Hitler's rise to power: He gave the German people hope, improved
the economical situation of Germany and he was therefore easily able to seize political power. In this
essay I will be developing each of these themes in greater detail.

After the first world war, Germany was in a state of poverty and hunger. The German people
and WW1 veterans felt betrayed by their leaders for ordering them to retreat. In the soldiers opinion,
they had neither lost nor won the war. There was also anger directed towards the countries that had
conceived the Treaty of Versailles. From their own point of view, the Germans been unjustly sanctioned
for something that hadn't happened (their defeat in World War 1). The fact that the Germans were not,
for example, allowed to have a military that had more than 100,000 men, outraged them.

As the Wall Street crisis hit the world, Germany became the most hunger and poverty stricken
nation on earth. Unemployment rose to incredible heights as Germany had to make tremendous
cutbacks to pay repair costs to countries mentioned in the the Treaty of Versailles. The German mark
plummeted in value to such an extent that bread and a sausage could cost as much as One Billion
Marks.

Hitler drew profit from the situation, channeling his rage against, what he felt to be, the injustice
that had been done to him and his people (Treaty of Versailles), into powerful, crowd moving speeches.
Most of the time the “Führer”, German for leader, as he was sometimes called, got what he wanted or
got people thinking like him, by speaking to them. Surviving members of the Nazi party had said that,
seeing him for the first time, they did not warm to “him and his mustache” and his ideas. But once they
heard him speak, his views started making a whole lot more sense to a large group of people.

The Germans were sick of their current leaders so when Hitler showed up and gave them
someone to blame all their misfortunes on, these were Marxists and primarily Jews, the Germans
accepted him with open arms, some more than others. His deliberately trimmed hair and angular
mustache, physically set him apart from the other politicians. He organized rallies and, before long, he
had the majority of votes.

Hitler pulled Germany out of its economical troubles by creating employment and giving people
work to do. For example, the creation of Volkswagen, “car of the people”, and the construction of
dozens of dams, highways, railroads, and other public building projects.

Thanks to all these things Hitler became politically well placed. Since the creation of the Nazi
party in 1924, the votes in favor went up, slowly at first, and finally climbing steeply after the financial
crisis. In May 1924 – 6.5% of 1,918,300; December 1924 – 3.0% of 907,300; May 1928 – 2.6% of
810,100; September 1930 - 18.3% of 6,409,600; July 1932 – 37.4% of 13,745,800; November 1932 –
33.1% of 11,737,000; March 1933 - 43.9% of 17,277,000.

All these thing were actually factors in the tremendous build up to the horror that was WW2.
After helping Hitler into the governing seat of the Reichstag, the people could do nothing to stop him
from what he did in the second world war.

Sources: Wikipedia, DVD viewed in class, Family discussions.