Current studies in Anti-Semitism point unvaryingly to this point in time. Was Hitler more powerful than the Catholic Church, (who did little to dethrone the little emperor in Berlin)?. The anti-Semitism of the German people before Hitler is debatable. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen of Harvard University published a book questioning Adolf Hitler’s sole culpability in the Holocaust crimes, alleging, in sum that Hitler had not “acted alone”.
By dividing the faction of Germany’s political left by intimidating its whole, Hitler held Germany and most of Europe in its grip. The underpinning of the emotional feelings Adolf Hitler had personally for Jews may have been nothing more than a convenient shibboleth mined in propinquity to political need. Hitler was revolted by the Novembrist capitulation and the loss of so much of Germany via Versailles treaties. Mein Kampf laid the groundwork for the recapture of so much German imperialist might and signal military identity.
Hitler’s solidifying power tempted many with its hints of absolutism long missing from the former Imperial Germany. The Krystallnacht and other events, including the Polish ghetto, did not happen overnight. The German people looked on and approved. Adolf Hitler was certainly architect of a Final Solution that sought to extinguish and not resettle the Jewish people, unless Austria and Germanic cultural habits precluded resettlement with extermination.
Hitler’s path from a World War I surviving serviceman to Weimar-opposing National Socialist happened quickly. Assigned to study the burgeoning political movement, Adolf Hitler adroitly moved to the center of it instead. Hitler’s popularity at polemical speaking evolved movement support. Then Hitler acted opportunistically to ratchet up the steps of power, trading one position for another until he was the figurehead of an outwardly progressive but inwardly Nazi philosophy.
By this time the National Socialist Worker’s Party had grown and reorganized, each time with Hitler moving to its head. Called the NSDAP, various leaders and party plays with adjunct groups occurred over time. Adolf Hitler was jealous of his position and avoided several political traps for the jaws of fate. The boy who thought he might one day be a priest instead governed acolytes whose hateful words targeted Jews as responsible for the downfall of German life. By 1921 he had wrested control of the group.