The ideology of Adolf Hitler

In the southern city of Munich an obscure demobilized Austrian corporal, Adolf Hitler, was rising fast through the ranks of the ultra-right-wing National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party. Through the sheer force of his personality, Hitler transformed the party from a ramshackle group of disgruntled ex-soldiers, initially dubbed the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party), into a tightly organized force that attracted increasing support not only in Bavaria but in many other German cities (the party had 3000 members in January 1921). Hitler's philosophy appealed across the political spectrum from out-of-work soldiers to dispossessed small businessmen, disgruntled army officers and government officials whose pensions and savings had been eroded. He preached that Germany had to be great again and that the "collaborators" of the Weimar Republic needed to be overthrown to allow that to happen. Once the shackles of the Versailles Treaty were gone, then Germany and her people would be prosperous and free again, or so Hitler said.

Hitler saw politics as a struggle in which only the fittest would survive. Ultimately, he believed that the struggle had to involve destroying Germany's true enemies, the Jews and Slav communists, who were trying to prevent its people achieving their destiny. In Hitler's world view, the Jews and Slavs had conspired against Germany during World War I, and fermented revolution at home just as the army was about to achieve victory on the battlefield. This was the "stabbed in the back" myth that had a great resonance with the confused and dispirited German public at the time.

In his twisted world, Hitler had no qualms about the methods to be used to achieve supreme power in Germany. In his Darwinian view, street fighting and other forms of political violence were just an extension of the struggle for the German people's survival. Given the desperate conditions in Germany during the early 1920s, it was not surprising that such views attracted support from ordinary people who had little idea of what their future would hold. Hope was a precious commodity in 1920s Germany, and Hitler seemed to offer it.

The SA

Bavarian politics of the early 1920s were a particularly violent sub-genre of the German political scene, and revolved around meetings in Munich's famous beer halls. Fuelled by strong beer and fiery rhetoric, bloody street fights between rival groups were common. The Nazi Party was in thick of this maelstrom.

To take the fight to his communist rivals, in 1921 Hitler organized a party militia dubbed the Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment) or SA, under a former army captain, Ernst Röhm. Soon nicknamed the Brown Shirts because of their distinctive uniforms, the SA stormtroopers were in the thick of riots and other trouble. Hitler also moved to set up a new ultra-loyal paramilitary group that would have the job of protecting him and other senior Nazi leaders. As many SA members were former Freikorps, he needed men who would give him unquestioning loyalty. In March 1923, he set up the Stabswache (Headquarters Guard), which initially consisted of just two men. Within weeks the expanded group was reorganized as the Stosstrupp (Shock Troop) Adolf Hitler. The group's distinctive black uniforms soon became a feature of Nazi Party meetings, and members were always ready to do their master's bidding. At this point Hitler's bodyguards never numbered more than a few dozen men.

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