1. Adolph Hitler:

- born in Austria, served in the German Army during the war
- he used instruments of democracy to destroy the republic and create a dictatorship
- proclaimed the validity of blood, instinct, and will
- his thought was a patchwork of 19th century anti-Semitic, Volkish, Social Darwinism, antidemocratic, and anti Marxist ideas
- Nazism rejected both Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment traditions and sought to found a new order based on racial nationalism
- Hitler despised liberalism, intellectualism, pacifism, parliamentarians, internationalism, communism, modern art, individualism - he attributed to the Jews
- Hitler concentrated the evil in one enemy - he provided the masses with a simple, and emotionally satisfying explanation for all their misery. By defining themselves as the racial and spiritual opposites of Jews, Germans of all classes felt joined together in a Volkish union.
- after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch (1923) - Hitler: would gain power not by force/ by exploiting the instruments of democracy - elections and party politics
- joined the German Workers' Party (DAP) which he turned into the National Socialist Workers' Party (NAZI, NSDAP) (1921)
- added a paramilitary mass army (Sturmabteilungen, SA) with its elite (Schutzstaffel, SS)
- favored an extremist form of social darwinism (struggle for life in society, race as the driving force in history)
- focused on jews as a national threat (Mein Kampf) and capitalized on the Great Depression

2. The Nazis in Power:

1930: Nazis won the election and entered the Reichstag

1932: Nazis won majority in the Reichstag => the Fuhrer appointed Chancellor (January 1933) (Hindenburg)
- use of terror against political opponents (socialists) and Jews => July 1933: Hitler outlawed all parties

1934: Hitler eliminates the SA in order to obtain an oath of allegiance from the army

- Reorganization of German society:

1. workers enrolled in the German Labor Front
2. youth organizations under Nazi control (Hitlerjugend)
3. control of the state police by the SS (Heinrich Himmler)
4. network of concentration camps for disabled, Jews, and political opponents

The Third Reich was organized as a leader - state: Hitler, embodied and expressed the will of the German people.
Hitler made concessions to the traditional ruling elite:
- German businessmen prospered (no control over political decisions)
- the profits of industry rose, but the real wages of German workers did not (rearmament did end the unemployment crisis)
- some clerics resisted Nazism, but the German churches (Evangelical and Catholic) - as organized institutions - capitulated to and cooperated with the Nazi regime
- Nazi propaganda, directed by Goebbels, used to shape the new man committed to Hitler, race and Volk
- artists, writers, professors, church leaders assisted in the propaganda effort and helped make possible the rapid regimentation of cultural life

1935: Reich citizenship law => Jews denied full citizenship

* clandestine rearmament => Germany left the League of Nations (1933) => war industry solved Germany's unemployment

Steps toward the war:

Hitler dreamed of forging a vast German empire in central and eastern Europe to give the German nation the living space and security - he felt was required (as a superior race)
Western statesmen had warnings of Hitler intentions - failed to rally their people and take a stand.
Britain an France responded to German aggression with a policy of appeasement
Reasons:
- haunted by memory of W.W.I - to avoid another catastrophe
- Britain was unprepared for war between 1933 - 1939
- Versailles treaty treated Germany too severely - Britain makes concessions to Hitler
- US - standing aloof from European troubles
- France and Britain feared and mistrusted the Soviet Union => the grand alliance of W.W.I was not renewed
- French army was prepared to fight only a defensive war
- failure of leadership and domestic unrest (France)

1935 - German government starts to rearm - violates the Versailles treaty

1936: German troops occupied the demilitarized Rhineland ( violates the Versailles treaty)

1936 - 1939: Hitler intervened in the civil war in Spain and helped Franco to establish a dictatorship (overthrows the Spanish republic)

1936: the alliance between Italy, Germany, and Japan (Rome -