Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures an Essay on the Rise of Adolf Hitler Essay

When Adolf Hitler and his party of National Socialists were elected into power, Germany was in quite a rut. The stock market had crashed, it was the middle of the great depression, and Germany was still in uproar over the Treaty of Versailles. The public was desperate to find someone to take them out of this terrible place, and because they were willing to listen to the outlandish ideas that Nazis had, what they got was far from that. Adolf Hitler was a phenomenal public speaker and he was very firm in his own beliefs. He managed to pin every German fault on someone else, creating a sense of power in the German public, and thus why he was elected. The times were so desperate, Germans turned to a mentally unstable man for help. Hitler became leader because the living conditions were so bad in Germany that he was the only guy it made sense to turn to, which is a problem in itself. The Treaty of Versailles is a big reason why Germany was having such bad troubles. The main terms of the Treaty stated that : â€Å"- Germany to give up Alsace-Lorraine to france – The Rhineland to be demilitarized and placed under Allied occupation – Germany to lose West Prussia and Posen to Poland – Danzig to be made an international city – Germany to surrender all its overseas colonies – Germany to be deprived of its warships and aircraft and to have its army limited to 100 000 † (Lynch 2004: 4) The German Public felt that the terms of the treaty were unfair and were humiliated by it. The Nazi party felt the same, and when Germans discovered this they felt more comfortable siding with them. It was because of these people and the overwhelming sense of humiliation in Germany that the Nazi government (when elected) violated the treaty in many different ways, and ultimately caused WW2. The times that these people lived in would have been difficult for any country to handle, not just Hitler and the Nazis and Germany. The economy in Germany was terrible after the first war. Not only were they already in debt for the money they used to finance the failure of a war that they had, but now because of the war guilt clause they had another $5 billion debt to pay off. Instead of paying out of their own pocket, they decided to begin printing more money until they could wax off their debts. However this did not help the economy, but hindered it instead. The more money Germany printed out, the less it became worth as a currency, creating mass inflation. This put Germany in an even worse economic situation, and the worse that situation got, the more popular the Nazi party became. The party took advantage of the economic struggles in germany, and the better the situation got, the less people felt the need to side with the Nazis. In May of 1924 the Nazi party had 32 seats and 6.6 percent of the vote in Germany. In December of 1924, these numbers dropped to 14 seats and 3 percent of the vote, and worsened in Ma y of 1928, at 12 seats and 2.6 percent of the vote. However, in the beginning of the 1930’s (Lynch 2004: 10), the economy steadily got worse and worse, and the Nazi party gained more recognition and was finally elected. The times had become so rough that the mentally unstable Hitler became a beacon of hope. At the end of the day, Hitler became leader of Germany because of economic instability, and because the public hated the Treaty of Versailles. The times were extremely difficult and due to the Nazi’s extreme views on how to fix Germany’s problems (and the fact that they only had 2 opposing parties), they were elected into the Reichstag. So what does this mean? It means that the times were what made the people turn to Hitler, not Hitler just flat out being an awesome guy.