Lesson 2: Rise of Hitler

At the end of WWI, the Treaty of Versailles set up conditions for Germany. Many historians believe these conditions enabled Hitler to rise to power in the 1930s.

Hitler was like hundreds of thousands of other Germans— some of them in the army, some of them not— in 1919— disturbed by their nation's defeat, deeply unsettled by the political revolutions that occurred at roughly the same time, and looking for an answer. He found it in a political organization that already existed called the German Workers' Party. And he rapidly became a dominant figure in the movement because he had a gift for public speaking. In early 1920, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or the Nazi Party for short. facinghistory.org