Adolf Hitler's Rise to Power

Adolf Hitler's Rise to Power is a frequently searched topic on Google and YouTube, but until this week, there was little to be found in terms of an academic lecture on the subject.  This week, I released a half hour lecture on Hitler's Rise to Power that is divided into three parts and is availabe on my YouTube channel.

Part I (1889-1921)

Click above to view the first part of my lecture on Hitler's Rise to Power.

The first part of the lecture starts at the beginning with Hitler's birth in Austria.  As a boy, he encountered two philosophies that would impact him for the rest of his life:  Pan-Germanism and Antisemitism.  One of the most prominent politicians in Austria during Hitler's youth was Karl Lueger, the mayor of Vienna, whose Christian Social Party employed antisemitic propaganda in its campaign posters.

Hitler left Austria for Bavaria shortly before World War I and after the war broke out, he enlisted in the German Army.  For a brief time after the war ended, Hitler continued his military service, embedding himself in the radical German Workers Party as a government agent.  In this capacity, he became sympathetic to the party's anti-capitalist, anti-Marxist, and anti-Semitic messages and continued as an active member after he was discharged from the army. 

Far-right parties like the German Workers Party embraced conspiracy theories, such as the "stabbed in the back" myth, which held Jews and Marxists responsible for the German defeat in World War I.  Those who subscribed to this way of thinking believed that Germany had lost World War I because of internal enemies.  After all, how else could Germany have been defeated by a coalition of British, French, and American forces representing two of the three largest industrialized nations of the day?

In 1920, the German Workers Party re-branded itself as the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP).  Hitler played a key role in expanding the radical party's appeal both in his capacity as a gifted public speaker and in designing the party's swastika logo himself.  In 1921, Hitler was elected as the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party. 

This 1919 Austrian cartoon is representative of propaganda promoting the "Stabbed in the Back" myth after World War I.

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Hitler and the Nazi Party

Part II (1921-1929)

Click above to view the second part of my lecture on Hitler's Rise to Power.

The 1920s transformed Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party from a relatively unknown fringe party into one of the leading political parties in Germany.  In 1923, the Nazis attempted a paramilitary coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch.  This attempt to overthrow the German government by force was unsuccessful and led to the imprisonment of Hitler and other Nazi Party leaders.  While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a two volume work that was part biography and part political manifesto.  Mein Kampf became a hugely popular work that allowed Hitler to share his political ideology with the disaffected classes in Weimar Germany.

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