As if from nowhere, in 1933, a black cloud of hate began to rise over Europe and quickly darkened the sky. Before the storm was over, twenty years later, some forty million people lay dead in its wake. As a result, the map of the world had been reshaped. The only way to explain how such a thing could happen is to go back to where it all started. At the end of World War One, Germany had many problems. The biggest one was the Treaty of Versailles, which left Germany in financial ruin. As a result, many people became unemployed; these people were looking for someone to blame. The Nazi party had the ideas that the German people wanted to hear, easy answers to their problems. Hitler used this to his advantage by tricking the German people into believing his views.
The Nazi party came to power almost entirely because of certain events. In 1929 the American Stock Market crashed, a powerful symbol of the growing depression. Germany was particularly badly affected, since Germany's economy was partly dependent on Americas prosperity and a large number of loans made by America to Germany were called back and the German economy crashed (Shirer 168-169). Since the German government suffered badly in the depression, the existing Weimar government, put in place by the victorious allies, was blamed (John). Throughout the depression the government became more and more disliked since it was indecisive and no central power, but is not where Hitler entered the picture. Hitler came into the scene much earlier.
Adolf Hitler joined the committee of the German Workers' Party in 1919 and by the summer of 1920 he had become their leader. He then changed the name from the German Worker's Party to the National Socialist German Worker"s Party or the NSDAP. From this name came the short name for its members "Nazis"(Forman 39). The party now needed a symbol, which Hitler created. He rejected the colors of the Weimar Republic and chose a red field to represent blood with a white circle for the Nationalist idea and a black hooked cross the swastika to suggest the struggle towards victory of the Aryan Man (Forman 43).
