} ñThe Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, a racist and an aggressive nationalist, created a powerful dictatorship in Germany in the 1930s.ñ
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was the son of an Austrian custom's officer and, like the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, a veteran of the First World War (1914-18). It took Hitler longer to come to power than his Italian counterpart. His first attempt to stage a coup in Munich in 1923 was a failure, and he ended up in prison. There he wrote the book that laid out his political programme, ºMein Kampfº ("My struggle"). Hitler advocated an aggressive German nationalism. All Germans were to be brought together in a single state. The Nazis believed that the "Aryan race" - of which they saw the German nation as the purest representative - was superior to all others. The Germans were to impose their rule on the inferior, sub-human races, such as the Slavs. They were to colonize the Slav lands of eastern Europe, and reduce the Slavs to the status of slaves. Hitler regarded the Jews as the worst of all races, a malicious people threatening the existence of Germany. He bizarrely believed that Jews were in control both of communist Russia and of the capitalist economies of Western Europe and North America.
~Hitler's rise to power~
The economic crisis of the early 1930s, known as the Great Depression, hit the German economy especially hard. It put over six million Germans out of work. This catastrophe made German voters turn to extremist parties. Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) Party became the largest single party in the German parliament. In January 1933, the German Chancellor Paul von Hindenburg invited Hitler to lead a coalition government. Within months, the Nazi leader had obtained sweeping powers. Socialists and communists were arrested and trade unions closed down. It took Hitler less than two years to complete the establishment of a totalitarian dictatorship in which every area of German life was controlled by the Nazi Party, the only political organization in the country.
Repression was organized by the 200,000 members of the Nazi elite, the SS (ºSchutzstaffelº). The SS was led by Heinrich Himmler (1900-45) who was also the head of the Gestapo, the state police. The methods of the police and the SS were exceedingly violent. They resorted to murder and torture to crush opposition. Concentration camps were created, such as those at Buchenwald and Dachau. Education was tightly controlled by the regime, serving to teach Nazi principles of racism and nationalism. Hundreds of thousands of children were enrolled in the Hitler Youth organization. Propaganda was organized by Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945). He used radio and cinema to spread Nazi ideas, and also created spectacular parades and rallies. The Nazis' most powerful propaganda weapon, however, was Hitler's power as an orator. His speeches were dramatic events that whipped crowds into a frenzy of enthusiasm.
