Why Hitler Came Into Power Essay

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Explaining Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 is doubt a complicated series of events that despite numerous attempts may never be completely answered. In essence, Theodore Abel’s book Why Hitler Came into Power is one such attempt to do so. However, Abel’s primary documentation and originality of his project give strong reasons to consider his view on the matter over many others. Through analyzing his own project, Abel’s categorizes Hitler’s rise to power through four conditions while himself making three additional conclusions about them, essentially delineating their context further. These four conditions are the discontent of the German society post WWI, the broad appeal of the ideology of the National Socialists, the tactics and strategy of the party itself, and lastly the charismatic leader of Hitler. Abel’s conclusion about these conditions are that only as a collective can they help explain Hitler’s rise, that people need to consider the “milieu” of the time, and that these conditions are not themselves innately agents that drove Hitler’s success. …show more content…

The first two conclusions are fairly obvious, but no less are, important to point out. However, the last conclusion is quite a controversial statement. The first conclusion discusses that these four conditions are equally important in understanding Hitler’s rise. There is not one specific condition(s) that gave Hitler an edge to power. Only as a collective, do they provide the backdrop for Hitler’s success. Abel’s second conclusion is that these conditions need to be understood in the context of which they occurred in. It is very plausible that Hitler’s rise would not have occurred in a different time period of history. Essentially, Abel correctly argues that the overarching German social and economic conditions of the 1920-1930’s need to be included in better understanding the four

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