Word: nazis
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Recovery did come eventually, with lots of American and British loans, but the Wall Street Crash of 1929 started a worldwide depression to which the shaky German economy was especially vulnerable. Unemployment soared. The feeble Social Democratic coalition government collapsed. And Adolf Hitler, whose Nazi Party held an insignificant twelve seats in the Reichstag, suddenly became a voice that attracted attention. He was one of the first 20th century figures to master radio as an important political medium. His message: Down with the system. Vote for a leader who will bring us back to greatness...
...their last free (or semifree) elections, held March 5, 1933, the Germans gave their new dictator 44% of their votes. Hitler never won a majority in an election, but that 44% brought the Nazis, along with their right-wing allies of the Nationalist Party, their first majority in the Reichstag. So Hitler presented the Reichstag with an "enabling act" that would surrender most of its powers to what was now very much his Cabinet. Some Communists and socialists -- those not already in jail -- protested, but while the Nazi delegates cheered and shouted, the Reichstag docilely voted itself out of business...
Throughout these ugly years, though, the majority of Germans seemed fairly content with their New Order. "The Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans," recalled William Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, who went to report on Germany in 1934, "and a newly arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous and brutal dictatorship. On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with...
...Hitler welcomed the powerful and famous of other lands -- for example, the celebrated American aviator Charles Lindbergh -- to his refurbished capital. And despite the fuss over a black American, Jesse Owens, winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the team that scored the most points overall was Nazi Germany...
...actually made an abortive attempt to seize Austria in 1934, when some 150 SS men dressed in Austrian army uniforms burst into the Chancellery in Vienna and shot down Conservative Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. That was supposed to be the start of a Nazi coup, but Justice Minister Kurt von Schuschnigg rallied the police and had the assassins arrested. Italy, which had guaranteed Austrian independence, mobilized four divisions on the frontier. Hitler backed down. By 1938, however, he had built a threatening army and had won the support of Italy's Mussolini (they had signed a secret protocol in 1936 creating...