I am NOT APOLOGIZING FOR HITLER, but . . . very, very few Americans are aware of the conditions in Germany immediately following WWI.
Germany had lost 2 million soldiers and its ally Austria-Hungary (Hitler’s homeland) 1.5 million. Millions of civilians had also lost their lives, their homes, their livlihoods etc.
Marxists were taking over the government. Many German cities were already run as “Soviets.” The socialists had managed to destroy the currency and trigger hyperinflation.
People were starving, and had been for years, in part due to Churchill’s food blockade which lasted for months even following the Armistice.
The economy was in ruins.
There was no TV or radio, and most of the press was socialist (like now). The only way for political dissent to occur was in large public rallies, and Marxist thugs would beat up people and break them up until Hitler organized some of his fellow veterans to kick the commies’ asses. (These veterans evolved into the SA.)
Of course, Hitler had a messiah complex and was also totally absorbed by the hatred of Jews which he linked to a flawed theory of eugenics (also prevalent in the US and UK at the time) and a “Survival of the fittest” between races. He mistakenly equated Jews with Bolsheviks, another theory that was prevalent at the time. His racial theories and doubtless his madness caused him to attempt to wipe out both the Slavs of Russia and the Jews.
I am NOT APOLOGIZING FOR HITLER. The genocide was TOTALLY ON HIM (as opposed to other Nazis etc.), and was one of history’s greatest crimes. But I think it is a mistake to oversimplify the man, his political philosophy and the nature of the War that never really ended in 1918.
I will say that if not for Hitler in the 1920s, Germany might have fallen to the Soviet Union.
I do agree that inevitably Germany would have fallen to either the Nazis or the Communists.