How many people believed in hitler

They pressured president Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor. The fact that they expected to use Hitler for their own agenda would turn out to be a fatal underestimation. The National Socialists celebrated their victory with a torchlight procession through Berlin.

From the balcony of the chancellery, Hitler looked on approvingly. In spite of the glory, he was still far from being all-powerful at that point. The new cabinet counted only two NSDAP members, but Hitler succeeded in getting them appointed to important positions. He was a minister without portfolio who got to control the police force of Prussia, the larger part of Germany. For the Nazis, this was reason to celebrate their 'national revolution', but many Germans were indifferent to the news.

They had seen many governments come and go and did not expect the new government to last any time at all. Before long, Hitler claimed more power.

The fire in the Reichstag, the parliament building, was a key moment in this development. On 27 February , guards noticed the flames blazing through the roof. They overpowered the suspected arsonist, a Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe. He was executed after a show trial in Evidence of any accomplices was never found.

The Nazi leadership was quick to arrive at the scene. Not a moment must be lost! Anyone who stands in our way will be cut down. It formed the basis for the dictatorship. The civil rights of the German people were curtailed. Freedom of expression was no longer a matter of course and the police could arbitrarily search houses and arrest people.

The political opponents of the Nazis were essentially outlawed. In this atmosphere of intimidation, new elections were held on 5 March The streets were full of Nazi posters and flags.

Nevertheless, the great victory hoped for by the Nazis did not materialise. With Meanwhile, the arrests and intimidation were on the increase. The view that Hitler had brought order to Germany was one that persisted well into the postwar era. Alongside economic recovery, rebuilding military strength and restoring "order," Hitler gained support by personifying the "positive" values invested in national unity and the "Volksgemeinschaft" or national community.

Propaganda incessantly depicted him as the stern but understanding paterfamilias, prepared to sacrifice normal human contentments and to work day and night for no other end than the good of his people. Whatever the frequent criticism of his underlings and the negative image of the "little Hitlers" -- the Party functionaries whom people daily encountered and often found wanting -- Hitler himself was widely perceived as standing aloof from sectional interests and material concerns, his selflessness contrasting with the greed and corruption of the Party big-wigs.

How many fully swallowed the nauseating personality cult can, of course, never be established. Not a few obviously did. But even those able to keep the full excesses of the personality cult at arm's length nevertheless often accepted at least some parts of Hitler's positive image.

The national community gained its very definition from those who were excluded from it. Racial discrimination was inevitably, therefore, an inbuilt part of the Nazi interpretation of the concept. Since measures directed at creating "racial purity," such as the persecution later of homosexuals, Roma and "a-socials," exploited existing prejudice and were allegedly aimed at strengthening a homogeneous ethnic nation, they buttressed Hitler's image as the embodiment of the national community.

Even more so, the relentless denunciation of the nation's alleged powerful enemies -- Bolshevism, western "plutocracy," and most prominently the Jews linked in propaganda with both -- reinforced Hitler's appeal as the defender of the nation and bulwark against the threats to its survival, whether external or from within.

Though Hitler's anti-Semitic paranoia was not shared by the vast bulk of the population, it plainly did not weigh heavily enough in the scales on the negative side to outweigh the positive attributes that the majority saw in him. The widely prevalent latent dislike of Jews, even before monopolistic Nazi propaganda got to work to drum in the messages of hatred, could offer no barrier to the "dynamic" hatred present in a sizeable minority -- though after a minority holding power.

Much research has illustrated a diversity of attitudes towards the persecution of the Jews most plainly visible in varied reactions to the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws in September and "Kristallnacht" in November When the open violence of Kristallnacht proved unpopular, even within Nazi circles, Hitler took care to distance himself publicly from the pogrom which he himself had commissioned.

But, despite extensive disapproval of the methods, there was by now a general feeling that Jews no longer had any place in Germany, and Hitler's association of Jews with the growing international danger which he had done more than anyone to foster strengthened -- at least did not weaken -- his image as the fanatical defender of his nation's interests. Materially, too, many had benefited from the exclusion of Jews from German society, their economic dispossession, and their expulsion.

The "boycott movement" which had begun as soon as Hitler became Reich Chancellor and, in waves, had effectively driven Jews out of commercial life, eventually ushering in the "aryanization" program of that robbed Jews of their possession, operated to the profit of large numbers of Germans. Here, too, many felt reason to be grateful to Hitler. The human cost, paid by an unpopular minority, was for them an irrelevant consideration. The apparently unending run of successes that Hitler could claim during the "peacetime" years of the Third Reich had a further reinforcing by-product.

Armies of petty apparatchiks and careerists owed position and advancement to the "system" that Hitler led. The emphasis upon "leadership" and "achievement" invited ruthless competition, played upon everyday ambition and opened up unheard of possibilities, unleashing a vast outpouring of energy in the broad endeavor to promote the vision of national renewal embodied in Hitler himself.

Literally or metaphorically, many individuals at every level of the regime operated along the guidelines laid down by Werner Willikens, state secretary in the Prussian Agriculture Ministry in February when he declared:. These bonds were not, of course, of uniform strength. Alongside the fanatics were the skeptics and, though they could not express themselves in any meaningful fashion, the dissenters.

Nor was it possible to sustain the enthusiasm for Hitler at a constant height. The outpourings of elation at moments of triumph, such as the announcement of the re-militarization of the Rhineland in , were peaks. They subsided again as soon as the gray everyday returned for most people. Nevertheless, the affective integration which Hitler's mounting popularity during the first years of the dictatorship undoubtedly created was of immeasurable importance.

Whether the adulation of Hitler was genuine or contrived as it doubtless was in many cases , it had the same function. Millions of Germans who might otherwise have been opposed to, doubtful about, or only marginally committed to the regime and Nazi doctrine were publicly seen to give Hitler their backing. This was crucial to the dynamic of Nazi rule. The negative impact, for example, of the "Church struggle" was directed away from Hitler and towards subordinate leaders, such as Goebbels and Rosenberg.

When popular morale sagged in the spring of , the Rhineland spectacular, focused directly on Hitler's "great achievement," served to re-galvanize support for the regime.

The very purpose of the Reichstag "election" of March 29, was to demonstrate the unity of the people behind Hitler for internal as well as foreign consumption. Not for the last time during the Third Reich, opponents of the regime felt deflated and isolated. And Hitler had the backing he needed for further advancement of his expansionist goals. The plebiscitary acclamation which Hitler could summon on such occasions massively strengthened his own position against the different groupings within the regime's power elite.

More important still, Hitler's popularity made him untouchable for those groupings within the national-conservative power-elite, above all in the Wehrmacht leadership and parts of the Foreign Ministry, where fears of a future disastrous war were leading by to the first embryonic signs of opposition to the dangerous course of foreign policy.

Hitler's conquest of the masses had the vital consequence, therefore, of extending his autonomy from any possible constraints within other sections of the regime.

This helped to ensure that the ideological fixations which Hitler obsessively maintained since the beginning of his political "career" -- the "removal" of the Jews and the pursuit of "living space" -- were by the later s emerging not simply as distant utopian dreams, but as realizable policy objectives.

The Nazis were not traditional German nationalists but radical revolutionaries in terms of foreign policy and morality. To what extent do you believe Germans were seduced by Hitler and the Nazis? Or did they make more of a conscious choice?

Germans after World War I were highly politicized. That is why we think of the Weimar Republic as a time of political turbulence and unrest. The active descriptions of politics before , the year Hitler came to power, undermine notions of seduction or brainwashing in the years after. It is not possible to explain the demise of all sorts of political institutions before Hitler in one way, and to explain the power of the Nazis after that in another way.

Germans constantly deliberated questions of race, authority and loyalty. Only a minority became full-fledged Nazis, but most accepted the basic premises of the regime, including the isolation of German Jews. While most Germans had at least a vague idea of the Holocaust, they almost certainly did not endorse mass murder, which is not to say they were not complicit in the persecution of their neighbors along the way to the "final solution.

You call the collection of letters in the "Homelands" book "an indispensible source for understanding the Nazis. The Party also absorbed other radical right-wing groups. Hitler emphasized propaganda to attract attention and interest.

He used press and posters to create stirring slogans. He displayed eye-catching emblems and uniforms. The Party staged many meetings, parades, and rallies. In addition, it created auxiliary organizations to appeal to specific groups. For example, there were groups for youth, women, teachers, and doctors. The Party became particularly popular with German youth and university students. Other politicians thought they could control Hitler and his followers, but the Nazis used emergency decrees, violence, and intimidation to quickly seize control.

The Nazis abolished all other political parties and ruled the country as a one-party, totalitarian dictatorship from to The Party used its power to persecute Jews. It controlled all aspects of German life and waged a war of territorial conquest in Europe from World War II , during which it also carried out a genocide now known as the Holocaust. Antisemitism , the specific hatred of Jews, had existed in Europe for centuries. The early Christian church had portrayed Jews as unwilling to accept the word of God, or as agents of the devil and murderers of Jesus.

This accusation was renounced by the Vatican in the s. During the Middle Ages, State and Church laws restricted Jews, preventing them from owning land and holding public office. Jews were excluded from most occupations, forcing them into pursuits like money-lending, trade, commerce. They were accused of causing plagues, of murdering children for religious rituals, and of secretly conspiring to dominate the world.

None of these accusations were true. The second half of the 19th century saw the emergence of yet another kind of antisemitism. Antisemites believed racial characteristics could not be overcome by assimilation or even conversion.

These ideas gained wide acceptance. When the Nazi Party took power in Germany in , their antisemitic racism became official government policy. Hitler and other Nazi Party leaders played a central role in the Holocaust. In countries across Europe, tens of thousands of ordinary people actively collaborated with German perpetrators of the Holocaust, each for their own reasons, and many more supported or tolerated the crimes.

Millions of ordinary people witnessed the crimes of the Holocaust—in the countryside and city squares, in stores and schools, in homes and workplaces.

The Holocaust happened because of millions of individual choices. In much of Europe, government policies, customs, and laws segregated Jews from the rest of the population, relegated them to particular jobs,and prohibited them from owning land. Although life for Jews had improved in many parts of Europe—including Germany—in the century prior to the Holocaust, these prejudices remained. When the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in , many Germans tolerated Nazi antisemitic policies because they supported Nazi attempts to improve the country economically.

There is no credible evidence that Hitler had any Jewish ancestors. Read Adolf Hitler: Early Years — to learn more. The Germans and their collaborators used paper records and local knowledge to identify Jews to be rounded up or killed. Records included those created by Jewish communities of their members, parish records of Protestant and Catholic churches for converted Jews , government tax records, and police records, including registries of Jews compiled by local, collaborating police.

In both Germany and occupied countries, Nazi officials required Jews to identify themselves as Jewish, and many complied, fearing the consequences if they did not.

In many countries occupied by or allied with Germany during World War II, local citizens often showed authorities where their Jewish neighbors lived, if they did not themselves help in rounding them up.

Jews in hiding everywhere lived in constant fear of being identified and denounced to officials by individuals in exchange for money or other rewards. Of course, Hitler and many Nazis leaders did not have blonde hair or blue eyes, but as with all racists, their prejudices were not consistent or logical. This was especially true for Jewish men: circumcision is a Jewish ritual, but was uncommon for non-Jews at the time.

Jewish men knew they could be physically identified as Jewish. Read Locating the Victims to learn more. Similar to their fellow Germans, German Jews were patriotic citizens.

More than 10, died fighting for Germany in World War I, and countless others were wounded and received medals for their valor and service. The families of many Jews who held German citizenship, regardless of class or profession, had lived in Germany for centuries and were well assimilated by the early 20th century.