When he first got into politics the people and news media considered him a joke. His next time he was considered a raving lunatic. Some of his ravings was telling the people they were the great people whose blood was being contaminated by inferior people. Although not religious he convinced the people that non christian people are bad for the country. He incited riots by his words but did not directly order them so he could have plausible deniability. After gaining control he required open shows of loyalty to him. He attacked his enemies with his rants and his words influenced his sycophants to deal with them.

Those are words from a 1996 documentary using films made in the 1930s and 1940s of Adolf Hitler’s rise and end. A saying in history classes is that history tends to repeat itself. History is full of examples throughout the centuries.

            I am aware most Americans are mostly unaware of history which is why we keep repeating it. The last five years have been an excellent example. I have a sizeable library on World War II including the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It was packed with facts about Adolf Hitler and his rise to power. He was an extraordinarily charismatic man who had an uncanny ability to see wedges in populations and exploit them.

            His first objective was to make the German people feel they had been betrayed by the elitists. The German army would have won the war or at least gotten a good peace and not the vindictive, nation destroying treaty they signed. Hitler wasn’t the original leader of the small group until he decided the other leaders weren’t needed. His first try was to storm the Reichstag (Capital Building). The band was arrested and jailed where he wrote his treatise, Mein Kampf.

            After he was released he took a more public role and built up a large following of loyal people who felt the government and the elites were against them. As the Brown Shirts organization grew he split off the Jewish population as an object of hate. When his Brown Shirts became a problem he formed the Black Shirts who became the vaunted S.S. The S.S. killed of the Brown Shirt leadership. He won his first election but didn’t have total control of German government until the suspicious fire in the Reichstag, allowing him to take full power and martial law.    

By then, his propaganda expert, Joseph Goebbels, practicing the “Big Lie”, had convinced millions to join the Nazi party. Many of Hitler’s ideas and recruiting methods are used today by some extremists groups here and abroad.