Initial rise of Hitler and the Nazis

adolf hitler got his start in the military during world war one he's a dispatch runner on the western front he actually gets fairly decorated and by most accounts this is where he finds meaning he finds meaning in being part of the military he finds meaning in frankly the war itself but then in 1918 we of course have the end of the war well first you have the the the abdication of the kaiser you have republican government people who want to form a republic take control and then they sign an armistice with the allies in november and this is not well received by hitler and frankly it's not well received by many in the military from their point of view they somewhat delusionally believed that the that germany would have won world war one if they weren't stabbed in the back by these november criminals by the folks who had taken over after the after the kaiser so you have this whole stab in the back theory stab in the back by those who had taken over and signed the armistice and this wasn't just believed by folks like hitler this was believed even by very senior people in the military this right over here is general ludendorff one of two two people the other gentleman hindenburg who were in charge of the entire german military he believed in the stab in the back theory he thought that they would have won if they didn't sign the armistice if these november criminals these people who had taken control of the government did not sign this with the allies and then you go to 1919 from the point of view of people like hitler things only got worse you have the treaty of versailles that applied all the war guilt to the germans you have these huge reparations that would even be paid in resources you have the former german empire significant amount of its territory is given over to to to the allies or to form new states then you also have the the establishment of the the formal establishment of the weimar republic it's called the ymar republic because the new german constitution is drafted in the town of is drafted in the town of weimar and it sets it up as a parliamentary democracy that's why we now call it that's why it's called a republic but it's a little bit of bizarre of a parliamentary democracy it actually gave a good bit of power a directly elected president that had a reasonable amount of power especially in emergencies and that would become relevant later on when hitler actually comes to power over a decade later but then in 1919 hitler was still looking you know he was very upset about the war ending he stays part of the military and part of the military he's assigned to start infiltrating or spying on the german workers party so spy on and the acronym in german is the dap but the english translation would be the german workers party but he actually gets quite impressed by the german words by the germans the german workers party which is really ultra nationalist and when we talk about ultra-nationalist it's all about german race superiority it's it's it's in line with this whole idea that they would have won the war if they weren't stabbed in the back and it's also anti-communist anti-communist it's anti-capitalist and it's anti-ethnic minorities in particular anti-jewish anti-jewish and all of these ideas hitler found very impressive and just to be clear you know a lot of times when people talk about ultra-nationalist groups they associ they often will call them as ultra right wing ultra right wing and this bears some clarification because the right wing is also often con viewed as very capitalist but ultra nationalists really put the nation and kind of the the the race that they view as indicative of the nation above all other concerns so yes they were anti-communist they were anti-distribution of of wealth you know communist believe in no classes as little private property as possible the alt the not the the german workers part didn't believe in that they were anti-that but they were also anti-unfettered capitalism especially capitalism that might get in the way of the nation's interests but he becomes very impressed with them and he actually joins he actually joins as the 55th member so you can imagine this is a very as it this at this point is a very very small party but then we fast forward to 1920 by 1920 the party leadership has taken note of hitler they find that he they actually notice him when he's arguing with people and that other people are listening he's actually a really great orator and so they allow him to give more and more talks he has more and more authority and in order for the party to have more of an appeal especially to nationalists in general they change their name they add to german workers party they add the nationalist socialist nationalist socialist german workers party dap german workers party or the nsd ap and if you pronounce nationalist in german it sounds something like and i'm going to butcher it right now naturalists not synonymous and so if you were to shorten it they call themselves the nazis they call themselves the nazis and hitler actually designed the logo for the nazis which in which included this symbol right over here the swastika and the swastika is worth talking about because it was really this bizarre corruption of a very ancient symbol the the hitler and the nazis created this entire mythology around the germans being the descendants of the aryans or being the purest example of the aryans that the aryans are the the superior race that's responsible for all of civilization's advancement it was a delusion because frankly there was an ancient aryan race but the the best the the most indicative descendants of them are frankly the persians or the indians and actually the swastika symbol here you might actually even see it as a hindu temple it does not mean all of what we associate with nazism now it actually is an ancient hindu symbol of auspiciousness of good luck but the nazis usurped it but for them this was a very important idea to create this this this mythology around race superiority and to even have a symbol like this as opposed to say something like a cross that's a religious symbol anyone can have a belief could believe and say christianity and and say hey i'm a christian but the swastika at least in hitler's mind in the nazis mind was a racial symbol so it's it represented it represented their superior race and obviously if their race was superior a lot of what they call what they consider the ills of of germany were caused by by by being infiltrated with what they considered less pure races like jews and also infiltrated with less pure ideas like like the ideas of communism but hitler gets more and more recognition with the party the party membership continues to grow and by 1921 you have a a you have some disagreements in the party some people threaten to splinter off and when when hitler says hey look if this is gonna happen i'm gonna i'm gonna leave the party they realize that he has so much value to the party that the party would just dissolve if hitler leaves and so they make him the chairman hitler takes control hitler is the chairman of the nazi party chairman and by this point hitler is well known on or he becomes he's becoming more and more well-known on the speaking circuit and we now have several thousand members of the nazi party although it's still a fairly small group but then things start to get a lot worse in weimar germany you start having hyperinflation you start having hyperinflation the government keeps printing more and more currency a lot a lot of it in order the economy is weak it's trying to pay reparations and so what you have here this is actually one of the most famous cases of hyperinflation in world history you see the value of their currency it devalues from 1919 to 1923 not by a factor of a thousand or a million or a billion but nearly a trillion so the the the currency becomes frankly worthless then in 1922 or this is all the hyperinflation is happening this entire time and you see it accelerates through 1922 and then 1923 but then in 1922 you have mussolini comes to power in italy and he comes to power through his march on march on rome and mussolini is a fascist that's where the word comes from he's a member of the fascist party and i the fascists ideas were very similar to the nazis it was all about extreme nationalism all about racial superiority a very strong government and this is hitler finds quite inspiring you have the the the weimar republic is having difficulty economic difficulty you have many other groups including the communists attempt their own coup d'etats they fail but things are getting less and less stable then you fast forward to 1923 the inflation is getting super bad about as bad as inflation can get the currency is worthless the economy is going in a tail spill going into a tail spin and on top of that because germany can't pay the reparations to france anymore france occupies the roar so the rural region is occupied occupied by france and you might remember from the terms of the treaty of versailles the tsar region was already being occupied and all that coal was being shipped out to france the rura region was another significant region of coal and steel production and now the french are fully occupying this they're forcing a lot of the civilians out of the region they're forcing a lot of the workers to work in the in the in the mines and the and the and the factories and then they're shipping all of that supply out to france so this adds further it further debilitates the economy but it's a huge humiliation the treaty of versailles and the minds of germans especially in the minds of nationalists was bad enough but now you have this huge humiliation by the french and this isn't just amongst the nationalists the the general german population is getting very very very very upset about this and so this gives a lot of fuel to extreme nationalist groups like the nazis so this fuels the nazis and based on the estimates i've seen entering into the year they're starting to have in excess of 10 000 members starting to be several tens of thousands and by we as we get into the later part of the year we're approaching i've seen estimates of forty thousand forty thousand to fifty five thousand members of the nazi party that's just formal members and then on top of that you might have non-members who are growing increasingly sympathetic and so what we'll see in the next video at the end of 1923 hitler sees this as his chance he's inspired by mussolini the economy is in a tailspin the the germans have been further humiliated by the french and they're starting to get quite the nazis in particular are starting to get quite popular