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Hitler as a child Hitler as a young man.
When World War 1 broke out after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, Hitler was caught up in the patriotism, which swept through Germany, and his hate for foreigners was inflamed. "Germany had high hopes of defeating enemies in World War 1, with their Kaiser promising European supremacy" (source 3). Hitler was a natural on the battlefield. He narrowly escaped death many times and was rewarded with two iron crosses for bravery, which he received from his Jewish Sergeant. However it was during time in World War 1 that all Germans, Jews and non-Jews alike shared the spread of patriotism. "World War I Jews served along with non-Jews, fighting and dying in the armies of Germany. But when the war ended in defeat the German people, searching for someone to blame, looked back to those they had hated in the past, the Jews." (Source 6).
When Hitler recovered in 1919 from a gas attack, he came back to a Germany, filled with sorrow and defeat. Along with many other Germans, Hitler was distressed and angry over the harsh penalties Germany received from the post World War 1doctrine, the Treaty of Versailles. He began attending meetings, which the then small German Workers Party held in Munich, which shared the same views as Hitler did. In 1920, the party was renamed "National Socialist German Workers Party", or Nazis for short. A rising Adolf became head of the propaganda wing of the Party, and was becoming use to his public speaking skills and the ability to "whip up" a crowd. By 1921, Hitler was declared leader of the party and increased the number of members in the party from the original 12 to 128. He had discovered that the appeal of anti-Semitism was a most powerful tool and it was now when Hitler set about by introducing "a creation of a mass movement and his climb to power" (source 1). His main preaching tool was explaining that the Weimar Republic was weak and did not stop the harsh penalties brought forward by the Treaty of Versailles.