Adolf Hitler

Braun am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary that is located on the border with Bavaria, is where Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889. When his family was three years old, they relocated to Passau, where he grew familiar with the Bavarian accent, which eventually became a defining characteristic of his talks throughout his life. He experienced frequent conflicts with his father as a child, and the death of his younger brother had a profound impact on him. Instead of being the confident and outgoing boy he had once been, he became gloomy and distant and frequently engaged in arguments with both his teachers and his father.  At the outbreak of the First World War, Hitler was a resident of Munich and volunteered to join the Bavarian Army as an Austrian citizen. He was highly decorated for his army years, and by he was wounded he was taking back greatly. He learned of the German defeat in the war and suffered what he termed as a second blindness. His ideologies started taking shape at this time as his Patriots for Germany begun taking shape at this time.

Adolf Hitler’s Entry into Politics

At the end of the war, he returned to Munich, having no formal education and training, he tried to remain in the army as much as possible. He met Anton Drexler while he was an intelligence agent of the DAP party where he was monitoring it. He was attracted to the founder and his ideologies which were major, antiemetic, nationalistic, anti-Marxist and anticapitalistic. Drexler was impressed by his oratory skills and invited him to join the party being the 55th member of the party.

While at the DAP, he met Dietrich Eckhart who was one of the parties founding members and a member of the Thule society which was an occult. Eckhart left an impression of his ideologies to Hitler and became his mentor. They exchanged ideas and philosophies and became his inspiration in life. To increase its appeal, DAP changed to National socialist German Workers party- NSDAP.

In 1920, March, Hitler was discharged fully from the Army and began working full time for the party. By this time he was highly elaborate in his speeches, and this attracted a large following. The party used trucks and leaflets to advertise the party’s ideology and to inform people of where the next meetings will be. He gained notoriety for the way he delivered his speeches against rival politicians, Treaty of Versailles and bitter sentiment against Marxist and Jews. The party headquarters was in Munich which was seen as the hotbed of anti-Marxist campaigns and the Weimer Republic.

Weimer Republic

The Weimer republic referred to the historical designation of the German republic which was not yet official but existed between 1919 and 1933, Taylor & Flint (2000, p. 183). Deutsche Rein was the official name of this republic since 1871 but was largely considered by the English as the German state.

It was in August 1919 that a national assembly and a new constitution was adopted that gave way to the Weimer Republic. From its formative years, the republic faced a lot of challenges from hyperinflation, issues with the war victors as well as the blame by the nationals who blamed the leaders for the harsh conditions that they felt had been inflicted upon them as a result of the Treaty of Versailles.

Treaty of Versailles.

The Treaty of Versailles was the most important treaty that ended the First World War. The treaty signed in June 1919, ended the war between the Germans and the allied powers. The treaty imposed harsh conditions for the Germans to end the war and among its provisions, its required Germany to accept responsibility for the cause of the war. It also required that Germany should start on a rearmament schedule that would see it concede most of its territories. The treaty also required that Germany had to pay reparation fees for the damages they caused in the war.

Philipp Schliemann who was the leader of the Germans at the time opted to resign rather than sign the treaty which he termed as being murderous and in violation of the countries honor. The conservatives and ex-military leaders objected this treaty and saw it as a violation of their sense of patriotism. Jews, Weimer politicians and the communist who agreed to work with the treaty rather than risk another confrontation and attacks by the west were viewed with contempt and their loyalty was questioned.

Thus, the Weimer Republic that came into force and implemented the treaty of Versailles was blamed for the consequences that soon rocked the country after this. The retired army officials and the conservatives regrouped to fight down the government of the day.

Impact of the Treaty of Versailles

Economic

Alongside restriction of their army size, Germans were restricted on importing and exporting goods which further crippled their economy. The German economy at the time heavily relied on the importation and exportation of firearms, and when this was restricted, they found it hard. The treaty also forced the Germans to surrender their merchant ships and cars which meant that even though they would proceed with business, they would have a lot of difficulties in proceeding with it.

Business empires came crushing, and soon the effects were felt by the common people. Jobs were lost, and people felt the pinch of the treaty sending repulsive reaction across the nation. Workers lost jobs, and business and companies lost grip, and soon closure was on the brink. Families were left in abject poverty.

Political impact.

The implementation of the treaty of Versailles drew in a lot of political reactions. Among them was the call for the arrest and trial of the German Kaiser who was at the helm of the country during this period by the treaty. It never happened however since the Dutch never handed over the Kaiser for trial. The treaty also led to the isolation of German by the international community which viewed her as an enemy and antagonizer of the war.

The Nazi party

The National Socialist German Workers' party better as the Nazi party was a small party not to until the great depression that started in 1929. In the election of 1928, a coalition of socialist parties governed the Weimer Republic. The Nazi party was never drafted into this coalition as it were a radical party in the political framework of the country.

The coalition government ruled the nation for the first six months of the great depression. Burstein's (1996) states that great depression had hit the country hard and had left grim consequences to the nationals. Many people were left unemployed. The citizens viewed the coalition government has to be weak and could do nothing to alleviate the economic conditions of the people.

Thus, the widespread economic misery provided a fertile ground for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. The fear that the nationals had and the anger and failure of the government to provide solutions to end the misery led to the rise of the Nazi party and Hitler into politics mainly through his propaganda ideologies.

Nazi’s ideologies

The Nazi party identified themselves as national socialist. Anton Drencher started the ideology when he started the party and although he believes in socialism, he could not join the Social Democrats and thus started his party that had started as a coalition of workers under the German Workers Party. When Hitler joined the party, he decided to work under the propaganda wing of the party. Hitler worked in the party through his oratory skills had helped the party to recruit thousands of followers. His speeches worked magic and was boarded on creating emotional empathy

The parties number increased by a large percentage specifically when Hitler delivered his maiden speech in 1921 where he talked about 21 point program that the party was focused on achieving. Over 2000 people attended the speech by Hitler which resulted in the party being labeled as the leading radical group in the Munich area.

The warring groups at the inception of the party made it not to last long as different factions emerged. Hitler identified himself as the de facto leader of the socialist group and refused to work with other parties. He later created a coalition with a rebel group that planned a coup, and in the same year, he was involved in the coup that was intercepted by soldiers. He was thrown to prison where he wrote his book Mein Kampf that was the cornerstone of the Nazi propaganda.

Getting out of prison, Hitler realized that the only to ascend into power was by use of government system and not force as he had earlier thought. To achieve this, he worked hard to get back the Nazi party and worked in recruiting new members. In the subsequent elections, the Nazi came into power and Hitler was made its Chancellor.

To get one of their own into power, the Nazi party had to have the winning ideology, and this was achieved through the idea of Volksgameinshaft, which simply meant working together in a combined unity, devotion to community and existence in brotherly love. All Germans were expected to live in harmony and peace with each other regardless of age and background as they were all Germans.

However, this idea was to apply to German and nobody else. The Nazis were to the letter make a specification of what constituted the German person regarding blood and race. This ideology was formed to protect the community from social injustices and to protect the people and the race in general.

The anti-semitic ideology represented only one part of the Nazi ideologies that was tied down to the Volkgemeinshaft. Thus, the idea of community could only work if they exclud3d some people from the community. Racism was used to determine who would be part of this new community. The nazi realized that to unite the people of a political course, they had to unite them culturally in the first place.

To achieve this, they created the perception that the Germans were a superior breed. The Germans, their blood, and the German nation was a superior nation in the world. Blood was important to be considered important for one to belong to race rather than the language. The race was then associated with nationality, and if then the Germans were a superior race, then the other ones being a weaker race had to be forced out of the country.

The Nazis also believed that if they allowed the Jews to be in high places, they would overthrow the government as the cause of the Bolshevik revolution. The Jews, they believed were in charge of all the socialist movement. Socialist movements both in the Soviet Union was run by Jews, and if this were allowed to run, then the Germans would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union were they would have the government toppled. This idea spread fear among the people and had them follow their ideologies.

Further on, they provided another ideology how to rule the government, they presented a system that only Germans were to form the government. All other nationalities were to excluded in the new government. In the new structure, the Germans would elect representatives who would, in turn, elected representatives that would directly present the interest of the people. There was also the central council that would directly look into the business interest of the people.

Economic Factors

The Nazis developed a plan a plan to improve the economic conditions of the people were they had a set mind of ant capitalism, in their view, working for something meant more than owning it. The tax would be levied, but the owners of land would have to bear the burden of paying for the war. Interest on loan was scrapped by the Nazis as they viewed it as a tool only used by the Jews and had a great dislike for it. To curb this, the state had to have only one bank, and all other banks closed.

The Nazi government had the mentality that they would pay off all the depths accrued from the war better than the previous government. The Germans were expected to work hard for the good of the nation, and all those people who made themselves rich through the war would have their property stripped from them, and their companies would be subdivided by the state such that everyone would have a share of the state resources.

Their new economic plans included steps in which they had outline how to help the industrial workers whom they had appealed to in the election period and who had voted for them by a bigger proportion. They had appealed to them as being the party of the poor and thus plans to help the industry workers were needed. To achieve this, they believed that they could use the unions to their advantage to sell the idea of classlessness.

Creation of Nazi-leaning unions would not only sell the Nazi ideology among the members but would also teach the workers in ways that they would increase their performance. By increasing their efficiency, it would mean they would be better products to sell, and that would increase the purchase which they would use to benefit the workers and the wealthy.

Along with this, the Germans also needed to increase the land in which they occupied to provide space for industrial growth and places where they could farm. To this, they had to unite all Germans including those that resided across borders to accomplish the German dream as a nation. The Germans needed new land that would be used by the state to farm and grow industries from.

Farmers during the great depression suffered greatly, and thus the Nazi came up with a draft on how they would protect the farmers from. The Nazi managed to get a lot of votes from the farmers who suffered from high taxes, low credit from the government and falling price commodity in the market. The state would thus control food market to regulate on international competition ensuring that the farmers had better wages, this would, in turn, ensure that they get better taxes that would help in their administration.

Parallels between Hitler's election and Donald Trumps.'

Donald Trumps' ascend into power has been widely compared to that of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis'. The leaders compare in what many have termed a repeat of history through the Trump's administration lacked the military and authoritarian style that was exhibited by Hitler's organization.

Trump has used scapegoating on his ascent to power by blaming foreigners and the minorities for killing Americans and taking away jobs. The Nazi used this to maneuver around and blame non-nationalist for the failure of policies and the weak economy. Other than this, the Nazis used to demonstrate how the world had conspired against the true Germans. An equivalent of this can be found in Trumps who alleges that his critics have managed to create an international conspiracy against him and the Americans in general.

Media control was established in two ways under the Nazi rule, extending the ideological ideas where possible and shutting down the media it was possible for the ruling party to flex its muscles. However, in the American system, this would not be possible though threats at media censorships are only imaginable.

The Trump government has recently enjoyed a hostile relationship with leading media outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post even threatening to use legal action against them. One of the media campaign tools for Trump has been the use of propaganda that sometimes contained nonfactual theories against Hillary Clinton; this can be compared to the propaganda used by Hitler against the Weimer Republic and the Jews.



















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