many and who took away much of Germany's power in order to protect themselves from retaliation and perhaps out of a sense of retribution as well.
By the end of the 1920s, poor economic conditions created great resentment in Germany, and Hitler made use of this as he sought to promote German interests against all others in the world. Certain groups were listed as Germany's enemies, including Jewish capitalists he blamed for all Germany's woes. Hitler takes an aristocratic view of leadership, though it is not an aristocracy simply of birth. Hitler does not view the people as being equal, and instead there is a hierarchy, a stratification from the lowest to the highest, based not only on ability, with those with the greatest ability being the ones on top while those with lesser abilities fill out the lower tiers, but with a racial and ethnic component as well, with certain races being better than others, presumably because of centuries of breeding. Hitler in Mein Kampf showed hatred of Jews, Communists, and other groups he saw as enemies of Germany, with the Aryan people of Germany being the race destined to rule. Hitler called for strong leadership to enable Germany to resume her rightful place, a place he saw as having been taken away at the end of the First World War.
National Socialism was a means of correcting the injustice of Germany's defeat and lowered position in the world. In the German version, the race had to be purged of elements that were sapping its strength:
The roots and inspiration for such a revival, a return to the nation's vital sources, could be rediscovered in the secular folk community that blood, soil, and history had created and in the institutions which peculiarly German conditions had forged--religious, social, and economic. . . [and] the unifying factor par excellence would be the person of the leader, upon whom all aspects of the faith could focus.
National Socialism developed partially a...