Just looking at pictures of the guy, I just don’t get what was so compelling to the Germans of that era. He was an awkward-looking, peculiar man.
Hitler had charisma and was a spell-binding orator.
As someone able to move the crowds, his powers of persuasion remain unsurpassed among modern politicians.
He told Germans what they wanted to hear and his vow to end the humiliation of Versailles made him attractive to Germans.
Without the gifts I mentioned, he never would have become famous let alone dictator of Germany.
Most Germans weren't able to see him up close, but they could hear him on the radio. Hitler's effective use of radio for propaganda prompted Sisley Huddleston, in his book Popular Diplomacy and War (Rindge, NH: R. R. Smith, 1954) to call Hitler the real inventor of radio.
Propaganda. Goebbels was a genius who had a large part in creating Hitler. His creation was theater on a large scale. Add to the aforementioned Hitler’s speaking ability coupled with the German propensity to follow.
It was a different, dowdier world back then. In the 1970s and 1980s Europeans got rich and everybody was became attractive. Standards were a lot lower than that before.
Plus, a lot of it was the colorful pageantry. Some of that comes out in the pictures. And of course, Germans were already inclined to follow leaders.