On 20th April 2021, the whole world witnessed the 132nd birth anniversary of the most famous dictator in the history of mankind – Adolf Hitler. But have you ever thought how Hitler became who he was, the great dictator? Like how could a single man persuade millions of people to hate a whole race of humans!
Hitler, with the Nazi party, implemented a number of techniques and strategies over German masses on his way to achieving dictatorship. He actually started it with the basic one – killing logic! In Germany, regular bonfires events took place where Nazi officials used to burn the books that were written by non-Germans, especially Jews.
Any of the books of literature, economics, liberalism, arts, democracy etc. that questioned the Nazi ideology was burned. They claimed those books to be ‘un-German’ and wrong. The Nazi propaganda minister – Joseph Goebbels, once justified this by saying that the future German men would not be just men of books but of character.
Pseudoscience was largely prevalent and profaning was non-existent under Hitler’s rule. Suspicious research papers were published which stated that the Germans belonged to a superior race and the rest of the world were under a sub-human category.
Universities in Germany were constraint by the Nazi party and the subjects taught there were also strictly limited to furthering the Nazi ideology. The Nazi-oriented media used to spread out conspiracy theories that the Jews were responsible for the defeat of Germany in World War I. In 1933, Germany was struck under poverty, and due to the relentless hate spread by Hitler, people began to believe that.
But how did Hitler rise to power in the first place?
When Germany lost World War I; its imperial government collapsed and workers’ strikes spread across the Nation. All this was seen as a humiliation by many nationalists as they believed that the war could’ve been won if the army hadn’t been betrayed by the politicians.
For Hitler, these views became an obsession, and his paranoid delusions led him to pin the blame on Jews. Then he joined a small nationalist political party. His manipulative public speaking launched him into leadership of the Nazi party.
Combining anti-Semitism with populist resentments, the Nazis denounced both Communism and Capitalism as Jewish conspiracies to destroy Germany. But Nazi party was not that popular, and eventually it was banned by the government and Hitler was jailed for treason. But upon his release, he again began to rebuild the movement.
In 1932, Hitler ran for president, losing the election to decorated war hero General von Hindenburg. But after Hitler had become popular, and some advisors and business leaders convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. Hitler steadily expanded the power of his position from that point and soon achieved the right to have emergency powers. And when President Hindenburg died in 1934, it was clear that there would be no new elections in Germany. Hitler’s speeches exploited people’s fear to drive their support behind the Nazi party.
