Adolf Hitler's Historic Background
To understand Adolf Hitler and his rise to power it's important to know the historic background.
World war 1 was primarily the result of the german militarism. In many ways it was the most militarized nation and until the end of that war it was dominated by its military. When it was defeated in 1918, the german military leadership, which stopped the war before the military collapsed, convinced the german people that they were betrayed, "stabbed in the back by civilians". It was an irrational excuse, given the military's domination, but it became a popular myth. The defeat in world war 1 was therefore a traumatic shock to most germans, especially to the german soldiers, and almost no one in western europe understood it then.
This resulted in a very weak post-war democratic regime in germany. In addition to that, germany was divided between a 'western' and 'eastern' political and social orientations. Today, when germany is a modern liberal 'western' country it's hard to figure it out, but before world war 2, germany was mostly dominated by the 'eastern' orientation that rejected western liberalism and democracy, and had a militarist aggressive orientation facing east, and the 'western' orientation which represented peaceful liberalism was a minority. However, this minority orientation governed germany's weak post-WWI democracy.
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