The Rise of Adolf Hitler

Page 4 of 6

• 1. The drifter
• 2. The early years
• 3. Drifting in Vienna
• 4. A purpose in life
• 5. Demagogic gifts
• 6. Find out more
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A purpose in life

In 1913, Hitler's desire to avoid military service for the hated Habsburg Empire prompted him to move to Munich, the German city of his dreams, a move facilitated by coming into a small legacy from his father's estate. Here he continued a life similar to that in Vienna until, with the outbreak of war in 1914, he enthusiastically volunteered to serve in a Bavarian regiment. Service in the Army at last provided Hitler with a purpose in life, a major project with which he could wholly identify. All the greater, therefore, was the shock of defeat and the victory of the hated Socialists in the revolution of November 1918.

'For it was at this point that anti-Semitism emerged as the core of Hitler's 'world view'.'

Yet Hitler was desperate to remain in the Army rather than to have to face a return to his pre-war existence, and the evidence suggests that he was willing to come to terms with the new order to achieve this end. Fortunately for him, the Right soon took over and he was recruited by the Bavarian Army's Intelligence/Propaganda section to undergo political indoctrination.

Employed to preach German nationalism and anti-Socialism to the troops, he proved a great success. He was also sent to report on the DAP, where he drew attention to himself at a meeting by his effective performance in the discussion and was invited to join.

He was probably prompted to accept partly by sympathy for the party's ideas and partly by pressure from his superiors, but also because he had concluded that participation in the DAP offered him, as a nonentity, the only available opportunity to win support for the beliefs that he was now burning to express.

For it was at this point that anti-Semitism emerged as the core of Hitler's 'world view'. Defeat, revolution, and the humiliating Treaty of Versailles (1919) had challenged Hitler's whole sense of worth and personal identity.

Like many Germans, but even more so since he had effectively chosen German identity, Hitler needed to find an explanation for this catastrophe. And the explanation being vigorously canvassed by the extreme Right in Munich, and one that was generating a strongly positive popular response, was that the Jews were to blame.

This explanation chimed with the anti-Semitic theories which Hitler had absorbed in Vienna but which, in the light of his day-to-day positive experiences with actual Jews had not made much impact. Now, in very different circumstances and reinforced by the arguments of right-wing intellectuals in Munich which Hitler now encountered, these theories began to make sense, indeed to provide the total explanation which he was seeking.

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Published: 2001-06-11