Hitler's rise

There are two parts to this issue: Hitler's rise in power and Hitler's stay in power.

Many conditions in Germany led to Hitler's rise to power and staying in power, including rising poverty and unemployment rates, wide spread resentment of the Treaty of Versailles, German shame and being shunned by the League of Nations, along with the fact that Hitler promised a number of things to the German people that brought to mind an end to the shame and misery of the nation.

Before Hitler began to grow mass support, much of the nation was already unsatisfied with the works of the Weimar Government and it's cooperation with the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. The people did not feel that they were being treated fairly in the Treaty because they felt that it was the German government that had chosen to go to war in the Great War in 1914 but not the german people themselves and yet they were starving as a nation. The soldiers came back to find hardly a job for their noninjured family members, let alone for themselves (since many of them had lost an arm or a leg or an eye or acquired any other injury/injuries that limited the amount that they could work) so they had little choice but to starve or steal food from the wealthier. The Weimar government did not have any choice: either give most of it's money away to the League of Nations or be occupied, but the people saw it as this: our government is not supporting us, there is no food, no employment, mass suffering, we want a change! Part of Hitler's campain was that he was not going to continue to respect the Treaty of Versailles and he was going to provide jobs. Hitler was obviously using a lot of propaganda to portray the Weimar government in the light that a lot of the people saw it in to enforce the idea that supporting that government was not the way to survive. Since propaganda played such important roles in Germany and the rest of the world, it would have very probably been an immense aid to the Weimar government to push for support of itself and to portray the Nazis and Hitler as terrible people. This could have helped a lot to minimize Hitler's support.

The German people were also very angry about being shunned by the League of Nations and the international shame brought to their country. Just like any of the other countries Germany had always been a proud nation and it wanted its pride back. But the defeat of the Great War and the creation of the Treaty of Versailles took away it's pride as a nation. that was another thing that Hitler promised to bring back to his nation. With a current government that was hardly succeeding at all at restoring German pride, of course they were going to quickly support someone who seemed to know how to restore that nationalism that German's held so dear. That was a side of Hitler that many Germans saw as the more positive side of him, though of course, most of them saw his bad side tremendously as well. But many of them were bound to take whatever leader they thought would lead them back to the power and the nationalism that they once had. His condonation of violence as a tactic in politics and hatred of some groups of people were an expected set back since who's going to expect him to get support from those he condemns to non-citizenship. Plus, a lot of Germans did not want a violent leader which cost him a lot of political points as well. But, at the same time, this is the kind of thing that went on in a lot of Germans' heads "I support him and I'm in a party that's gaining power. I go against him, and I'm putting myself at risk of getting seriously hurt or even killed!" With that mentality, a lot of desperate people saw him as the best way out of the crisis.

Then, once Hitler was in power, he began to more strongly enforce the idea that communists and Jews were the main problems in the country and he turned them more and more into the scape goats. a lot of the time, people don't like to blame themselves for the problems in their nation or their lives, so they need a scape goat, which Hitler provided. This makes a person wonder: would Hitler have become as popular as quickly if he had not had those extreme prejudices and used those prejudices to get Germans to gang up on the communists, and, in particular, the Jews, would he have been as successful in gaining power? Maybe he would have been more successful because he would not have blown off so many Germans and may have even gotten a more unified German force behind him to attack and defeat the League of Nations. If this would been true, it is almost a good thing that he was so prejudice (he lacked the support of a lot of geniuses because they were Jews and therefore really shot himself in the foot with that mistake on his part... rather literally). Or, did having scapegoats significantly help him gain so much power? In that case, the more obvious answer: the terror he caused pushed away all internal opponents for fear that they would be killed.