Hitler's abuse of power during World War II was the reason millions of people died and lived horrid lives. His main asset to his short period of success during the war was his "power of influence" (PSU, 2012). His abuse of power can be easily seen by how he would persuade people who trusted him to go to the concentration camps where they would be put to work as slaves, or just savagely slaughtered. He took a political path for his upbringing to power, which gave him an easy position to abuse power with. His major downfall in the war was his abuse of power and it led to him losing the war. In other words, Hitler used every asset he could to abuse his position of power, which in the long run was his downfall and the reason he lost the war.
To begin, Hitler's power of influence was the main reason he had as much success as he did. His speeches lead many people to trusting him and following him. He influenced and manipulated millions of people over several years to follow what he believed in and what he was doing. The fact that he was a very well-educated man made it very easy for him to manipulate people because he sounded so trustworthy and he sounded like he cared about his people. "Persecution of Jews dates back to medieval times. It was not the creation of Germany in the 1930's and 1940's, although the Nazis took anti-Semitism to the extremes" (Lerner et al. 2006). "He knew that in order to rid Germany of the Jews, he'd need to continue to build on this idea" (PSU, 2012). He built on this idea with the use of coercive power. Coercive power is controlling others through fear of certain outcomes. He plastered the fear of Jews being a huge Threat to their society and country. This power can be used appropriately or inappropriately. If he had used it to tell the truth to make people fear the outcome of something it would have been appropriate but in his case he used it very inappropriately and brainwashed people to believe that Jews would have a very negative impact on Germany and that Germany should rid themselves of all Jews.
