Traditional paradigms that account for the rise of the Nazis and the transformation of the German people include the following reasons: Resentment over the Versailles Treaty, Ineptitude on behalf of the Weimar Republic, Depression and Hyperinflation, and a long-standing hatred of Jews. In his book Germans Into Nazis author Peter Fritzsche disputes all of these notions as primary. Instead, the author argues as his main point that the Germans became Nazis because the Nazis were the most organized party and the best at speaking to their interests and wants. More specifically, Fritzsche argues that the Nazis offered Germans a refreshingly moral vision of the nation that embodied their hopes for the future. However, Fritzsche argued this vision was ingrained among the German people long before Hitler had political influence: “Saturday night, 25 July 1914, when ordinary Germans stepped into the spontaneous parades and when a collective sense of common purpose that transcended differences of class and region and religion seemed to suffuse city streets” (15).
How did a people seemingly longing for democracy and populism end up supporting a Hitler as opposed to a Jefferson? Fritzsche tries to explain this. Most historians begin to trace the rise of the Nazis from the end of WWI. Fritzsche disputes this notion as well and argues that a larger process of democratization and political invigoration has begun earlier in Germany. Before the outbreak of war, Fritzsche illustrates the populist wave of fervor that intermingled politics, nationalism, and social reform – the wave the Nazis would ride to power:
Whenever we think of the outbreak of WWI, we conjure up the stormy, patriotic crowds that gathered in Berlin and Vienna, and in Paris and Petersburg. As Germans and other Europeans rushed to arms, it became clear that war, which is ordinarily conducted by states and armed specialists and nat
...