The first thing that comes to mind usually when we talk about the Nazi regime is their brutal treatment of the Jewish people in Europe during their reign in Germany. We know so much about the infamous concentration camps in Dachau and Auschwitz, the mass extermination in Treblinka, and the cyanide gas chamber as the final solution to the “Jewish Problem.”
However, very few of us know or read about the rise of the Nazi party, who eventually seized power of the whole nation and turned it into a nationalist dictatorship. This book of Evans clearly illustrated the steps the party took to gain control that sent chills down my spine. The most important message that I have gotten from this part of the history is that a so-call democratic system is not a guarantee to the liberty and equality that the popular discourse of our world insistently portrayed. The second most important message is that the law can be bent easily for those who are in power.
The Nazi party formed in Weimar Republic in Germany at the end of World War I after Kaiser Wilhelm II was abdicated in 1918. Even though it never won a majority of the vote in a free election in Reichstag, the Nazi party had its popularity increased from around 4 percent in the 1920s to 37.4 percent in July 1932. By our modern-day standard, winning more than 30 percent of the votes by a single party is not easy at all. The Nazi party used extreme violent tactics to attack its opponents. They have stormtroopper and steel helmet that did the dirty jobs for the party, including abduction, public humiliation, beating up, or even murder. But why would the German people at that time support such party? And why would not the German people at that time have seen the party’s potential in committing the crime of the century and put shame on its nation? The thought of me as a voter, voting for a party that would build a gas chamber for mass murder is inconceivable, yet not impossible. It is a scary thought. One could say that this piece of history happened because of both external and internal factors combined, that is, if Germany was not subjected to the humiliation of the treaty of Versailles along with the economic depression, the Nazi party and their Nationalist (or chauvinist) rhetoric would not have been the music to the ears of the German people. It is true. The blame we so quickly put onto Hitler or the Nazi party for this crime of the century is in fact not possible without the support of the people, the votes of the people. The journey to power was not a short one for the Nazi party and I really recommend you to read this very readable book to understand the process. Hitler was wrong about many things he did but he said something true and we should all reflect on that seriously:
“All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be…The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand your slogan” (168).
Evens, J. Richard. The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin, 2005.