Having recently completed this book I thought I would “pen” a short review. This was an excellent and in-depth read. As the first of a three-part series, it takes us from the very beginnings of the Nazi party through its slow growth among the disenfranchised and unemployed, the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler’s short jail sentence, the re-engineering of the party to appeal to a broader segment of the German population, its growing popularity culminating in the elections of 1932, and then finally to Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933.

While there were plenty of facts throughout I wasn’t well versed in, I was particularly struck by just how hard the hyper inflation of the 1920s and then later the Great Depression hit the Germany economy, and by the scale of and commonplace nature of the violence among the various paramilitaries, of which the SA were but one group. In fact, each of the major political parties of the time had their own paramilitary group, often consisting of those who were too young to have taken part in WWI and veterans who had suffered through the Great War and now were no strangers to violence. What’s more, much of European society from the German bourgeoisie to the Catholic Church had a great fear of communism, brought about by the revolution in Russia, and many chose Nazism for its promise to bring together the German people, end the divisiveness of political parties that was tearing Germany apart, and safeguard traditional German values. The Nazis were a chameleon-like organization, willing to play up or down whatever aspects the party possessed to appeal to different audiences. And in many ways, a vote for the Nazi party became a protest vote against the perceived failures of the Weimar Republic.

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