Should the Germans who voted for Hitler have realised that they were voting for war and mass murder? What clues did Hitler give of his intentions before he was elected? Explain your answer.
Through Hitler's vehement anti-Semitic propaganda, his continually reinforced views for Lebensraum, and his revelations of his beliefs in his book Mein Kampf, the German people had the fundamental evidence of what Hitler's true ideologies for Germany were and the consequences of what would happen if he were to eventually come to power.
Hitler's worldview or Weltanschauung was created from his four main beliefs; the German race and particularly the Aryans were a superior race; his belief in the "heroic" leader figure; his hatred for parliamentary democracy, and his hatred of the Jewish people or anti-Semitism. Hitler was unique in the fact that he was able to mobilize a mass movement based on such ideas as. Hitler believed the loss of the First World War and the subsequent restrictions that were enforced upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles was the most tragic point in the country's history. Consequently Hitler believed that in order for Germany to break free of these restrictions and to become a supreme power in Europe, it would involve not just a revision of the treaty of Versailles, but a complete destruction of it. This destruction would be unavoidable if he were to create a Germany that would be the dominant military power in Europe. In 1924 Hitler had established a fully formed worldview with its foundations being the "racial struggle against Judaism and its political manifestation Marxism." Hitler's worldview involved aggression against other nations that would inevitably turn into violence and hostility if he were to be elected into power and be able to make his ideologies a reality.
It was in cosmopolitan Vienna where Hitler's beliefs commenced to take form and "he began to indulge in grandiose dreams of a greater Germany".