The Motivations of Hitler

Adolf Hitler is a man who is not well-educated. There is little in his background that marks him as especially anti-Semitic or reactionary. He spends years as a bohemian artist who is in and out of homeless shelters. Then he becomes a front-line soldier and survives World War I. Hitler seizes on the populist myths of his time in post-World War I Germany. The military wants to blame someone else for the defeat of Germany. They are threatened by active revolutionary movements, some of them Democratic and others Communists. While the military claim to hate and fear only the Communists, deep down they seem to also despise the Social Democratic, Catholic Center, and other moderate parties. Hitler, like many Germans, is alarmed by the prospect of a Communist Revolution. He seizes on the myths he is told, such as that the Jews are running a...