Thoughts of Hitler

One thing about Hitler coming to power that amazes me is that he didn’t come to power through some coup de-etat or some national revolution of blood and battle, he won it through the same conventional types of politics as any other person put into political power. While it’s true that the Nazi Party did do some things that were less than ethical, they still put Hitler in power by popularity. The people couldn’t have known what Hitler would eventually do, and he took advantage of this. Another thing that blew me away this week was that the first concentration camp was made only a few months after Hitler’s election.
The power that was given to Hitler by the German people and the German government is unbelievable. While it’s very improbable that the people of Germany had any idea what was going to happen with the election of Hitler, it is strange for me to imagine any country willingly giving over THAT much power to anyone in politics. I realize that this was another time and our country’s view of politicians is probably drastically different than those of others, especially in the 1930s and 40s. As charismatic as Hitler was, I can’t imagine giving over that much power to him. President Obama is charismatic (let’s just be clear: I’m not comparing him to Hitler!), but I still don’t think that we would give him so much power that he could virtually do anything he desired without having to answer to people below him. Given, the background of Germany was a lot less table than ours at the time and all of the various details are different; it’s just beyond imagining to me.
Another thing that we discussed in class is the theory that Goebbels and Goering may have been the power beyond the throne, so to speak. While I do think that that kind of thing is possible, I don’t think that it’s the case here. I can’t really explain why I feel that this is the case definitively, but it seems to me that with an ego like the one that Hitler likely had, he would not allow anyone to behave as though they could control him. I do think that it’s obvious that not ALL Germans wanted Hitler out of the picture. There were attempts to kill him by his fellow Germans in the double digits. The mention in class the other day that a British sniper team also had the chance to kill Hitler seems possible, even though it might be harder to imagine people closer to him would have a better chance than some random sniper team sneaking into the Wolf’s Den. If any of these assassination attempts had actually been successful, Hitler would have surely been seen as a martyr to the Nazis and possibly many other Germans. As much as we might hate to think that more people died in the Holocaust than had to, it may be that Hitler’s eventual fall was the only thing that kept more and more people from dying.