What problems did the Weimar government face in the early 1920s.

                                       Hitlers mother Klara

 At primary school Hitler wasn’t any differenent to anyone else, just a normal child his two most passionate subjects at school were art and history. Then he and his family moved and he had to change schools, he hated his new school but still enjoyed his two favourite subjects. He left school at the earliest possibility and wanted to go to Vienna Art College, but the college said Hitler wasn’t good enough.

Hitler was heartbroken and didn’t return home; instead he lived a ‘bohemian ‘ style life and was a bit of a hippy. Soon he became a tramp with selling paintings and postcards on the street corners of Vienna. Eventually he heard the news that his mother had died and this tore him apart he was quite glad when his father died but this was totally different. After a while an aunt phoned him and asked if he would like to come and live with her, Hitler declined, he was too proud. Hitler then, dodged conscription saying he was injured and couldn’t fight eventually he was forced to sign up, Hitler loved the war, in the trenches he had a sense of belonging and even if he did get killed he had nothing to lose. Hitler was a good soldier and won many medals for bravery etc. After a while he was involved in a gas attack and was temporarily blinded and sent to hospital, whilst in hospital he heard the news that Germany had pulled out of the war. This infuriated him and Hitler was very depressed and upset at this news, he hated the government, it was because of them that Germany had pulled out of the war. To make this even worse the Kaiser ran away as there was to much pressure upon him, and so the Weimar government took power, Hitler hated them but ended up working for them as a V-man or a spy on other political parties, he would go to rallies pretending to be a member of the public and report back to the government on what each party believed in and any strong parties who could be a threat. One day Hitler went to a rally of the German Workers Party their leader Anton Drexler was speaking and Hitler could understand what Anton was trying to say. Hitler then joined the GWP and Anton put Hitler in charge of the propaganda and was very pleased as Hitler was extremely good at making speeches and attracted that many new members to the GWP he soon became the new leader of the GWP. He wanted to two things, which are where the word Nazi comes from:

NATIONALISM + SOCIALISM = NAZI

Then in 1919 Hitler was elected the Nazi’s chairman or as in the nazi’s programme the Fhrer.

Hitler made one of his speeches in the Munich Beer Hall and a raid took place arresting Hitler and the crowd watching the nazi speech. Hitler got sentenced for eight years but was released after 8 months because the judges agreed with the nazi party’s policies and schemes. Whilst in prison Hitler wrote his book Miene Kampf which translates in our language to ‘My Struggle’. This what made most people sign up for the nazi party as previously to ‘Mien Kampf’ no one knew about the nazi party and so this book also helped the publicity of the nazi party, and soon it was well known across the whole of Germany

In this he wrote about many things such as Anti-Seminism and why Germany should be a single race and single religion and full of Aryan people rather than Jews. He also believed that a single person called the Fuhrer who had total power should rule Germany. He also wanted to abolish communism as he said it was dangerous and could get out of hand. People liked his book and that takes us to our next chapter.