Nazism :: World War II History

NazismThe case Socialist German Workers Party al well-nigh 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 hatful who could not forget Germanys prewar imperial grandeur. In the national elections of family line 1930, the Nazis garnered nearly 6.5 million votes and became second only to the Social Democrats as the roughly popular party in Germany. In Northeim, where in 1928 Nazi candidates had accepted 123 votes, they presently polled 1,742, a respectable 28 percent of the total. The nationwide winner 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 attach tenfold. The new members included working-class people, farmers, and middle-class professionals. They were both better better 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 move out of high school, he moved to Vienna to study art, only if he was denied the chance to join Vienna academy of fine arts. When WWI bust out, Hitler joined Kaiser Wilhelmers 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 discriminative against the Jews. In Hitlers case th e prejudice had become maniacal it was a preponderant 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 nations society was responsible for most of the evils heaped upon it.