Why were Hitler and his Nazi regime initially so popular, and how did their actions lead to World War II?
Young People in Hitler’s GermanyThis photo from 1930 shows Hitler admiring a young boy dressed in the uniform of Hitler’s storm troopers, a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party that supported Hitler’s rise to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. Only a year after the founding of the storm troopers in 1921, Hitler began to organize Germany’s young people into similar paramilitary groups in an effort to militarize all of German society. The young paramilitaries became the Hitler Youth, who eventually numbered in the millions. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
TTHE MOST FRIGHTENING DICTATORSHIP developed in Nazi Germany. Nazism asserted an unlimited claim over German society and proclaimed the ultimate power of its aggressive leader, Adolf Hitler. Nazism’s aspirations were truly totalitarian.