After World War I in 1918, Germany was a nation with political and social problems. German politicians had signed a document on November 11, 1918, which made Germany a republic, a form of Democracy. This upset many of the communists and socialists and in January 1919, many were rounded up and murdered in Berlin and Munich by German soldiers.

With Germany’s new government, it allowed the Generals to maintain rank and privilege in return for the government’s support of the young Republic and opposition toward Marxism.

On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. This meant that Germany was forced to take the blame for causing the war and had to pay for all the war damages; as well as give up some land to France and Poland and was also forbidden to have any submarines or military aircraft.

This upset many Germans who felt humiliated in front of the whole world for their defeat.

Other concepts of Democracy include responsibility, participation, opportunity and leverage, which means obeying laws, respect for other people’s rights, sharing, taking action, voting and cooperation. Everybody must participate in order to accomplish something. Hitler followed this rule when joining and then recruiting people for the Nazi party. Thousands of people joined the German Worker’s Party and therefore supported the efforts of the Nazis. In the 1932 presidential election, over thirty million of the sixty million people who populated Germany at the time, voted in the Hitler vs. Hindenburg campaign. During the world wide Depression, it was the people of Germany’s responsibility to choose a leader by participating in the voting process.

As we look back on the events leading up to World War II, some people wonder who was responsible for the Nazis. Was it Hitler? The citizens of Germany who supported him? Or perhaps other countries, such as the United States, should have stepped in sooner and taken a stand against Hitler and the Nazi power. While Germany was faced with some hard choices during the Depression, so was the rest of the world. It wasn’t until June of 1942 that the news came out in the New York Times that the Nazis had already killed over 1,000,000 Jews in their secret death camps. President Franklin Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board in 1944 to provide aid in neutral countries, which helped to rescue over 200,000 Jews from death camps. The U.S. and its military allies knew the only way to stop the Nazis was to defeat Germany as quickly as possible in the War.

One soldier, Adolf Hitler, spoke out against Germany’s new government and the treaty. He gained much support by expressing his views of a “rebirth” in Germany by bringing back a strong nationalist government and blaming the Jews for their problems. Hitler once described a speech he had given in his earlier years at the University of Munich. “One day I asked for the floor. One of the participants felt obliged to break a lance for the Jews and began to defend them in lengthy arguments. This aroused me to an answer. The overwhelming majority of the students present took my standpoint.”

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