Word: hitlered
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...real origin of the suspicions about Germany's future is, of course, its dark past, namely the crimes committed during the twelve-year reign of Adolf Hitler. Hitler, after all, did not commit those crimes by himself; other Germans piloted the bombers over Warsaw, and other Germans operated the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Though the majority of today's Germans were not even born when those crimes were committed, the nation remains tainted by the Nazi legacy that endures in the world's memory...
While millions of people know about the horrors of Hitler's Third Reich, it seems all too widely forgotten that German history did not begin in 1933. Nor did it begin in 1871, when Bismarck created the autocratic Second Reich. German history goes back more than 2,000 years, to a murky era when a variety of Germanic tribes lived in a land that, according to Tacitus, "either bristles with forests or reeks with swamps." Even then, German tribesmen had a reputation as fearsome fighters, and it was immensely important to the future history of Europe that they annihilated three...
Central to the question of what went wrong is the question of whether Hitler's rise to power was inevitable. Was there some fatal flaw in the history of Germany that predestined it to the swastika and the gas chamber? In one sense, everything that has happened may seem inevitable, simply because of the fact that it did happen. Yet it is extraordinary how narrowly Hitler triumphed, how many accidents and variables had to line...
...Hitler's National Socialist Party, which had only 17,000 members in 1926, metastasized to 120,000 in 1929, to 1 million in 1930. Wealthy industrialists began contributing handsomely. In the Reichstag, the Nazis held an insignificant twelve seats until the elections of 1930. By 1932 they had 230 seats, the largest bloc in the Reichstag...
...still did not have a majority in 1932, and the constitution permitted President Hindenburg to name any Chancellor he wished, authorizing him to rule by a series of presidential decrees. The first time Hindenburg summoned Hitler and asked him to support a conservative regime headed by a dapper courtier named Franz von Papen, Hitler demanded full power for himself; Hindenburg not only refused but dressed Hitler down for lacking "chivalry." In the last pre-Hitler elections in November of 1932, the Nazis lost strength, from 230 seats to 196. The party was an estimated $5 million in debt, unable...