by Rodney Crutchfield

Created on: March 19, 2009

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889. He was a failure in secondary school, and eventually travelled to Vienna to become an artist, but was rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. It was here that he developed his basic ideas, which he held for the rest of his life.

At the center of his ideas was racism, most especially anti-Semitism. Hitler was also an extreme nationalist, and understood how to effectively use propaganda and terror in politics.

Hitler served for four years in the German army and remained in Germany afterward. In 1919, he joined the German Workers Party, a right wing extremist nationalist group, headquartered in Munich.

Hitler had taken control of the party by the summer of 1921, and it was renamed the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), or Nazi Party for short. Within two years the party had 50,000 members with a militia of 15,000 men. These militiamen were known as the SA or Brownshirts, for the color of their uniforms.

In November, 1923, Adolf Hitler made his first play for power. This uprising was called the Beer Hall Putsch, and it was quickly crushed. Hitler was sentenced to life in prison, but served only a short time before he was released. During his time in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, a book about the Nazi movement and its basic ideas.

While in prison, Hitler realized that in order to succeed, the Nazi party would have to take power legally. This meant that the Nazis would have to be a mass political party which could compete with other parties nationally for votes.

By 1929, Hitler had expanded the party to a national level. Three years later, the Nazi party had over 800,000 members and had become the largest party in the Reichstag, the German Parliament.

By this time, Germany was deep into the great Depression. By the winter of 1932, over 6 million Germans were unemployed. Extremist parties became much more attractive. Hitler promised to create a new Germany, and made appeals to his fellow Germans for national pride, honor, and militarism. Hitler was an excellent speaker, and was able to awaken deep emotions within his listeners.

The German government at this time was led by President Paul von Hindenburg, an ex general in the German army in World War I. He cared little for the republic and was ruling by decree, bypassing the Reichstag. Hitler could clearly see that control of the Reichstag was unimportant, and Hindenburg, under pressure from the Nazis, wealthy industrialists, and other right-wing

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