Quote:
Originally Posted by Strangler Lewis
since he was elected to rule a country that largely shared his views
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Sidenote: this is not true at all. The German people were suffering the effects of the Treaty of Versailles. They were demoralized and felt oppressed and Hitler took advantage of a movement (set into motion long before he arose) to reinvigorate Germany to seize power for himself. One of the first things he did was eliminate any political opposition, including top military leaders, which might stand in his way. The German people supported him as far as rebuilding Germany and its economy, but they didn't at all wholesale believe in exterminating Jews, world domination and all that. They just wanted a stronger Germany. Remember that a lot of the Jews who were killed were
German. Look into accounts of German life during the war and you'll see that by and large, with the exception of the rich upper class the German populace suffered greatly under Hitler and disliked him as much as, if not more than, anyone else.