The Nazis didn’t just seize power—they were voted in. It’s hard to imagine, but there was a time when Adolf Hitler was a name on a ballot in a democratic election. He was openly fascist and anti-Semitic, but the people chose to make him their leader. They supported him while he dissolved democracy.

SEE ALSO: 10 Bizarre Tales About Adolf Hitler

It’s easy to write off the rise of Nazism as a momentary lapse of reason, but the truth isn’t that simple. The people who voted for Hitler really thought they were making the best choice.

10 The War Guilt Clause

The fuse that sparked World War II was lit as soon as World War I ended. When peace was signed with the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans were forced to sign the “War Guilt Clause.” They had to put in writing that the war had been their fault alone.

Major restrictions were put on Germany as a result. They were forced to concede major parts of their territory. They were held responsible for all damages in the war and forced to pay 132 billion goldmarks in reparations, an expense that took up 10 percent of their annual national income.

Their military was kept in extreme checks. The German army was limited to 100,000 men, with no air force allowed at all. To most of the world, this was the beginning of a golden era of peace. But to many Germans, these were unfair restrictions that left them crippled.

From the very start, right-wing groups like the Nazis campaigned to tear up the Treaty of Versailles. They called it a “dictated peace” that oppressed the nation. At first, most Germans were so tired of war that they didn’t fight it. But, as the consequence of the treaty played out, that started to change.

9 The French Occupation Of The Ruhr

The German government couldn’t keep up with its reparations payments. By 1923, they were missing payments regularly, claiming that the burden was too much for them to handle. But the French were sure that this was a deliberate offense meant to test how far the Germans could provoke them. They struck back.

French and Belgian troops marched on Germany and took a part of the country called the Ruhr. This was Germany’s main center of coal, iron, and steel production. Without it, the German economy was completely crippled.

The people of the Ruhr tried to resist the occupation through passive resistance. They marched on strike, refusing to work for the French occupiers. It didn’t do any good. The French arrested the protesters and brought in their own workers to operate the mines. Peaceful resistance, the Germans were learning, was not working.

When the Germans caught up on their payments in 1925, the French left the Ruhr. By then, though, it was clear that land could be annexed and taken from the Germans at any moment. Slowly, the idea of tearing up the Treaty of Versailles was starting to seem more reasonable.

8 Hyperinflation

When the Ruhr was taken, inflation got out of control. The German mark had already been spiraling down in value. During World War I, the Germans had put 160 billion marks into their military. Now they were 156 billion marks in debt and owed 132 billion marks in reparations. With the Ruhr taken, they had lost one of the main forces in their economy.

The inflation in Germany was unbelievable. In 1914, before the war started, US$1 was worth 4.2 German marks. By 1923, the year the Ruhr was taken, US$1 was worth 4.2 trillion marks.

People across the country were starving. Money became completely worthless, and every penny a German had in savings was worth no more than kindling. People started to insist on being paid with food because nothing else had value.

In that year—1923—emigrations from Germany tripled. People were fleeing the country in which they’d lived. The suicide rate was skyrocketing. And in Germany’s darkest year, a young man named Adolf Hitler began his rise to power.

7 The Rise Of German Communism

The Nazis weren’t the only party on the rise. Communism was taking hold in Germany as well. No Communist group outside Russia was more powerful than the Communist Party of Germany.

The Communist Party was formed in Germany in 1918, the year that World War I ended. When the Russian Revolution took over, though, the German Communists changed. They threw their full support behind the USSR. They wanted Bolshevism for Germany.

A minority of people—about 10–15 percent of Germany—liked the idea enough to vote Communist. For the rest of the country, though, this was a threat, and the rise of Communism was something deeply troubling and dangerous.

The Nazis played into this fear. They spread stories about the dangers of Bolshevism and the threat that a Red revolution might happen at home—and it worked. As the Communists became more popular, the rest of the population turned more right-wing in response.

Soon, the Nazis were sending out a group of thugs called the Sturmabteilung to start brawls with Communists on the streets—and it didn’t hurt their popularity at all. Bolshevism, the German people agreed, was a real danger. Hitler was just a man tough enough to keep it at bay.

6 The Barmat Scandal

In 1924, the German government got caught accepting bribes. The Social Democratic Party, led by Chancellor Gustav Bauer, was in power at the time. They’d given millions of dollars to two Dutch investors, the Barmat brothers, who had promised to turn it into a fortune through currency speculation.

The Barmat brothers failed. Their investment company collapsed, and the German government lost millions. People started questioning why they’d been trusted with Germany’s money, and in the ensuing investigation, the answer became clear. Chancellor Bauer had been accepting bribes from the Barmats for years.

Chancellor Bauer was kicked out of office, and the Nazis jumped on the opportunity to make this a propaganda campaign. The Barmat brothers were Jewish, so the Nazis filled their papers with caricatures of corrupt Jewish businessmen. This, they argued, was proof that the government was corrupt—and that Jews were corrupt, too.

As late as 1930, the Nazis were still publishing campaign ads that brought up the Barmat scandal. Social Democrats, they said, were “Jews and Jewish lackeys,” voting for “the candidate of the Barmat block.”

5 Widespread Hatred Of Jews

Anti-Semitism existed in Germany before the Nazi Party came to power. By the early 1900s, there were already parties running on specifically anti-Jewish platforms. After the Russian Revolution, hyperinflation and the Barmat scandal struck in the span of two years. As a result, being a German Jew became a lot more dangerous.

While most Germans were going bankrupt, the Jews were viewed as privileged, rich, and corrupt. Jews made up only 1 percent of the German population, but they were 16 percent of all lawyers, 10 percent of all doctors, and 5 percent of all editors and writers. Generally speaking, they were people who had money while others were starving, which won them a lot of resentment.

At the same time, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia was being blamed on Jews. The Germans believed that Jews were behind the growing Communist sentiment and would be a threat down the road.

Anti-Semitism became widespread. It wasn’t just the Nazis—almost every political party used anti-Semitic language in their campaigns. Hotels started refusing service to Jews. Priests started working criticism of Judaism into their sermons.

The Nazis led the charge. They promised to take control of Jewish shops and use them to lower expenses for the poor. The Nazis also started an organization supporting German doctors, helping them take jobs from Jews. They promised to muscle Jews out and keep Germans working—and a lot of Germans appreciated it.

4 The Stock Market Crash Of 1929

On October 29, 1929, the US stock market crashed. This was the beginning of the Great Depression, and few places were hit as hard as Germany.

What was left of the German economy was built on foreign money. They earned their wealth through foreign trade and, since 1924, had covered their costs through loans from the United States. When the Great Depression hit, those loans dried up, and the Americans started calling in the outstanding debts.

Germany was crippled. Industrial production dropped to 58 percent of its previous levels. Unemployment skyrocketed. By the end of 1929, 1.5 million Germans were out of work. By 1933, that number was up to six million.

Hitler was thrilled. With the economy collapsing, the German people were starting to doubt that a Democratic government could get things done. He said, “Never in my life have I been so well disposed and inwardly contented and in these days. For hard reality has opened the eyes of millions of Germans.”

3 The Social Democrats Skirted The Democratic Process

Shortly after the Great Depression began, the Social Democratic Party became more aggressive. As they only had a minority government, they couldn’t get any decisions through without the support of the other parties. So they found a work-around.

Article 48 of the German Constitution allowed the chancellor to make emergency decrees without following the democratic process. The Social Democrats made heavy use of it, first using it to put through a budget without approval from parliament. The people were furious. Socialist leader Dr. Rudolf Breitscheid called the Social Democratic Party a “veiled dictatorship.”

The Social Democrats called another election in 1930, hoping to get a majority so that they wouldn’t have to abuse Article 48. But it backfired. The Nazis campaigned like never before and skyrocketed in popularity.

In the 1928 election, the Nazis had only won 12 seats out of 491. After the reelection of 1930, they were up to 107 seats. In just two years, they went from a fringe party to the main opposition.

The reelection failed. The Social Democratic Party still didn’t have a majority. Although they kept using Article 48 to get decisions through, it didn’t do much to help the economy.

Two years later, another election was held. The German people were tired of the poverty and the corruption. They voted Nazi. What was once considered a group of radical extremists was now the ruling party of Germany.

2 The Reichstag Fire

The Nazis were in power, but they didn’t have a majority. They had only won 37.3 percent of the vote. Like the Social Democratic Party, the Nazis believed that they would have to struggle through with a minority government—until the Reichstag fire.

Days after Hitler became chancellor, a Communist sympathizer named Marinus van der Lubbe burned down the Reichstag, the German parliament building. He had almost certainly worked alone, but the Nazis seized on the opportunity. This, they declared, was proof that the Communists were planning to violently overthrow the state.

The Nazis used Article 48 to put through the Reichstag Fire Decree. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assembly, and restraints on police investigations were all suspended until the Communists could be put under control.

By using Article 48 for three years straight, the Social Democratic Party had already set a precedent. When the Nazis openly raided Communist Party offices and suppressed their publications, many people didn’t see it as a loss of rights. Instead, they saw it as a political party finally taking charge and doing something to make Germany a better place to live.

The Germans held another election on March 5, 1933. This time, though, the Communist Party wasn’t allowed to participate. So, with one opposition party out of the way, the Nazis got a majority government.

1 The Enabling Act

The Nazis were in power, but Germany was still a democracy—until they passed the Enabling Act. With this act in place, the Nazis had full power to enact any law without running it through parliament.

They needed support to do it, though. They need two-thirds of the parliament to vote for it, and they couldn’t do that without the support of other parties. So they pressured the others by reminding them of the Reichstag fire. A Nazi paper headline read, “Full powers—or else! We want the bill—or fire and murder!”

Hitler promised that he would use his increased powers sparingly. He promised, “The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures.”

The parties believed him. The Enabling Act won near-universal support. Only one party, the Social Democrats, voted against it. Hitler jeered them, shouting, “You are no longer needed! The star of Germany will rise, and yours will sink! Your death knell has sounded!”

Hitler had absolute power. The other political parties were dissolved, and soon, the elections were stopped altogether. German democracy was over. Fascism had taken control—and the people had voted it in.

Joseph Goebbels was the mastermind behind Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine, and has been hailed as the inventor of marketing strategies that are still in use today, in addition to creating the idea of ‘fake news.’

However, once the Second World War broke out in 1939, problems in Goebbels’ propaganda paradise soon surfaced. Under the constant threat of invasion, and frequent allied bombings, the German public were not as willing to simply absorb Nazi values and principles. The pressure of war led to blunders in propaganda, along with the ever more eccentric ideas of Goebbels failing to hit the spot with the German population.

Although Hitler’s National Socialist Party was successful in altering the ideology of an entire country, not all of the Third Reich’s propagandist pursuits went to plan.

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10 Hitler’s perfect Aryan baby

In 1935, Joseph Goebbels, launched a campaign in search of the ‘perfect Aryan baby.’

On the contrary to all Aryan values however, Goebbels selected a brunette, brown-eyed baby that opposed much of the Aryan propaganda at the time.

The baby’s face was soon appearing in printed propaganda of every kind across the country. But no one was more shocked to see a baby’s face appear amongst the usually militaristic propaganda of Nazi Germany, than the baby’s parents themselves; Jacob and Pauline Levinson. Particularly when they knew that their daughter was Jewish.

A rebel artist named Hans Ballin, had recently taken the Levinson’s daughter’s picture in his Berlin studio. Ballin hated the Nazi regime, and submitted this photo of Hessy Taft, in the hopes that it would undermine Goebbels’ entire competition.

Whilst Ballin did succeed in humiliating the Nazi regime, the artist’s decision put the Levinsons in a lot of danger, and they ended up having to flee Latvia.^[1]

9 Hitler’s Premier Example of a Full-Blooded Aryan Soldier

Werner Goldberg was a German who was of half Jewish ancestry, and appeared in posters across Nazi Germany as the ideal Wehrmacht Aryan soldier.

On December 1st 1938, Goldberg joined the German army and took part in the invasion of Poland in 1939. Shortly after the outbreak of war, Goldberg’s photograph appeared in the Berliner Tagesblatt Newspaper, with the caption “The Ideal German Soldier.” The photograph had been sold to the newspaper by the army’s photographer, and was later even used on recruitment posters.

Within less than a year, this ‘Ideal German Soldier’ would soon be banished from the army for which he had fought, after Hitler issued an order on April 8th, 1940, which stated that anyone with 1st degree Jewish ancestry must be expelled from the forces.

Not quite the ideal German soldier Goebbels had hoped for.^[2]

8 The Far Too Successful Degenerate Art Gallery

Before the Nazis came to power in 1939, Germany was the centre of Modern Art. Dadaism and the Bauhaus Movement were becoming renowned across the globe, and artists were looking to Germany for inspiration.

However, when the Nazis came to power, the liberty of the German art scene was destroyed. The party could sense the public’s anger towards these restrictions, and concluded that they were simply misled. An art exhibition, entitled, ‘Entartete Kunst’ or ‘Degenerate Art’ was arranged in Munich, in order to showcase why modern art was dangerous and shameful.

Over 650 pieces of art were taken from German galleries and arranged chaotically. Explanations on why the pieces of art did not support the Nazi regime were displayed alongside the works. At the same time, the Nazis opened an art gallery entitled the ‘Great German Art Exhibition,’ which showcased Aryan-approved art only, in a bid to prove the superiority of this art form.

This plan backfired however, and five times as many people visited the ‘Degenerate Art’ gallery. In fact, it was so popular that in one day over 36,000 visitors attended.^[3]

7 Radio Caledonia

Radio Caledonia’s sole aim was to turn the Scottish public against the British government, and was an arm of Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda machine.

Its broadcasts were written and hosted by Scottish fascist Donald Grant, who argued that a Hitler-Controlled Scotland was better than a Scotland ruled by an English Churchill.

Reception of Radio Caledonia in Britain was so poor however, that the station would frequently have lengthy periods of time off air. The Scots Independent actually openly denounced Radio Caledonia and regarded it as a risk, running a column which claimed that the radio station was not helpful to the cause of Scottish nationalism.

Radio Caledonia failed miserably, and ceased airing broadcasts in 1942.^[4]

6 Life Goes on

By 1944 most of the German population were prepared for an inevitable defeat, and a sense of hopelessness gripped the nation.

Even with the end of the war in sight, Goebbels still naively believed that propaganda would distract the German public. After watching, Mrs Miniver, which depicted Londoners banding together against the Blitz bombing, Goebbels decided that Germany needed its own uplifting film.

This film would come in the form of Life Goes On and Goebbels regarded it as his pride and joy; hiring the Third Reich’s leading cast and crew.

Filming began in January 1945, as Allied troops were quite literally driving onto German soil. In fact, by the time shooting of the film started, most of the Berlin buildings and landmarks in the film had already been destroyed by Allied bombings. Goebbels was determined to complete the movie, and even diverted vital materials from re-building efforts to the production instead!

Eventually, the director was forced to shoot his film on the run as the approaching Red Army would continually attack locations where the cast had been filming just hours before.

With only days left before German surrender, the production was finally suspended. The reels of film have never been found, with some rumours stating that they were hidden in the ruins of a cathedral. Historians have tried to track any remnants of the footage, however all that remains of Goebbels’ final piece of propaganda are storyboards and newsreel footage of the production.^[5]

Top 10 Plans Hitler Would Have Put In Motion If The Nazis Had Won

5 Jesse Owens- 1936 Berlin Olympics

The 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, were the first to be televised around the world. Hitler consequently seized this opportunity for worldwide Nazi notoriety and channelled funds towards constructing an enormous new stadium.

At the time, Jesse Owens, a black American athlete, was taking the athletics track by storm- matching the world record for the 100 yard dash whilst only still in High School! American decision makers were aware of Nazi Germany’s discriminatory policies against Jewish athletes and nearly boycotted the 1936 Olympic Games. However, the politicians were overruled by the American Olympic Committee and their attendance went ahead.

Owens in fact openly expressed his desire to attend the Olympic Games, regarding the politicians’ stance against Germany as one laced with hypocrisy. Growing up in a country which endorsed Jim Crow Laws and blatant discrimination- in the eyes of most black athletes, the politicians who were debating the boycott had no moral high ground to stand upon.

The games reached viewers in 41 countries, and much to Hitler’s dismay, it was a black American, Jesse Owens, who instantly became the star of the Summer Olympic Games. Winning four gold medals in track and field events; Owens became the first American to win 4 gold medals in a single Olympics.

Whilst Owens couldn’t single handily halt the rise of the Nazi regime, he did managed to undermine an entire nation’s ideology and steal the spotlight from one of history’s most fanatical leaders.^[6]

4 William Shakespeare

By the end of the 19th Century, William Shakespeare became known in Germany as “our Shakespeare”, and in no other country on Earth were his plays performed more often. Shakespeare was thus a central pillar of Germany’s culture which could not simply be pushed aside by Nazification.

For the Nazis, theatre did not solely function as a political weapon; with Goebbels himself noting that “a good mood is an instrument of war…and even a factor in determining the outcome of war.” In May 1934 therefore, Goebbels introduced the Unified Theatre Law Act, which meant all theatres were officially under his control.

Nonetheless, a dynamic version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet made its way onto the Berlin state theatre stage, and entirely undermined the principles of heroism that Goebbels wanted all main characters to follow. The production consequently contained subversive messages, and yet was proclaimed by Goebbels himself as ‘a summit of German theatre,’ and was even used as a piece of propaganda in a state visit to Vienna. The director Jurgen Fehling took this one step further and openly undermined the Nazi regime’s tyrannical dictatorship through a production of Richard III. The character of Richard of Gloucester was given a limp that directly mimicked Goebbels and the costumes replicated the same style as SA troops. Unfortunately for Goebbels, this was one of the most popular theatre productions throughout the Third Reich.

Shakespeare would not be squeezed and manipulated into such a tight fitting, propagandist straitjacket. Although endless Theatre Laws could dictate a theatre’s reparatory, the Nazis could never gain ultimate control of a population’s imagination.^[7]

3 The V-2

The V-2 rocket was the German army’s most advanced weapon of the Second World War. It was promoted widely as one of Hitler’s ‘revenge weapons,’ and paraded to the public as the weapon which would win Germany the war.

The V-2 was an enormous ballistic missile which carried a one ton warhead, it was rocketed to the edge of space before falling at supersonic speeds onto its unsuspecting target below. The weapon was used predominantly against London and Antwerp during the war, and there was no defence against it at the time.

Although the rocket’s development began before the war, it was not actually ready to be used until the Autumn of 1944- a time when arguably, Germany was already losing. Overall, the weapon inflicted very little damage in comparison to the huge sums of money that had been invested in its development. Only 3,000 V-2s were ever launched and it is believed that they killed a total of 9,000 people; a figure which was far lower than the number of slave workers who perished whilst building the missiles. Even more embarrassingly, the total quantity of explosives delivered by all of the V-2s ever launched, was far less than could be dropped by a single air raid from RAF Bomber Command.^[8]

2 Ark Royal

H.M.S Ark Royal was an aircraft carrier of the British Royal Navy that served during WW2, and was the first purpose built aircraft carrier.

Her reputation was enhanced when her crew successfully sunk the first German U-boat of the war, torpedoed the German Battleship Bismarck and successfully scuttled the German’s ‘Admiral Graf Spee’ – an embarrassing affair for the German Navy.

The Ark Royal soon became known as the ‘Lucky Ship’, narrowly avoiding two torpedoes which missed the ship’s stern by only a few 100 yards, surviving a U-boat attack and an attack from three Luftwaffe Dornier seaplanes.

The successful sinking of the Ark Royal was falsely reported on the German radio several times, with the British crew of the ship even choosing to listen in to the blatant propagandist lies as a form of entertainment. The sinking of the Ark Royal was so pivotal in Goebbels’ militaristic propaganda, that Lieutenant Adolf Francke who led the Luftwaffe attack on the ship and reported a successful sinking, was publicly decorated.

In reality, the bombing had broken nothing but the ship’s cutlery and Winston Churchill himself invited the US Naval Attache to view the Ark Royal in dock, in a bid to both reassure the Allied forces and embarrass the German Navy.^[9]

1 Axis Sally

Mildred Elizabeth Gillars, nicknamed ‘Axis Sally’, was an American broadcaster employed by the Nazis to broadcast propaganda on the German state radio.

In 1942, Gillars was cast in a radio show called ‘Home Sweet Home’, whose sole aim was to make US forces feel homesick. Gillars’ key tactic was to discuss the potential infidelity of soldiers’ wives and girlfriends back home. Gillars also broadcast a show called ‘Midge at the Mike’ which brought American Jazz interrupted by defeatist propaganda across the radio waves of Europe. Most disturbingly however, was her show titled ‘GI’s Letterbox’ in which she broadcast information on captured or wounded American soldiers in order to worry families in America.

Nonetheless, this propaganda did not have the effect that Goebbels had intended, and instead many accounts by US Troops found Axis Sally very entertaining- even gaining fans amongst the forces. How else were the troops going to be able to listen to hot jazz in the midst of war?^[10]

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