The "happy time", many Germans called it. With Adolf Hitler they were partners in one of histories greatest success stories. From humiliating defeat in World War 1 they had risen to become masters of Europe. They considered themselves to be the super race. Later many would say that the people were tricked or compelled by terror; others would insist that Hitler answered the deepest German desires. How did it happen that an ancient and cultured people, steeped in Christianity, cultivating the arts and sciences, and preeminent in modern technology collapsed into savage barbarism in the mid twentieth century? To seek the answers we must look back to the turbulent years between 1920 and 1934.
At the end of WWI the Allies proposed the treaty of Versailles to Germany. The treaty was the complex product of such Allied considerations as human and material losses; mutual war debts; minority and nationalist lobbying; and public opinion in Allied countries, and legitimate national security concerns of the "once bitten, twice shy" variety. Skillfully the German generals forced the leaders of Germanys new Weimar republic to carry the brunt of defeat. Helpless symbols of national dishonor it is they who will be accused of betraying Germany to her enemies. For one man, 29, unknown and without prospects defeat would bring opportunity. This man was Adolf Hitler. The myth of German betrayal would be a major weapon in the struggle for power that he would call Mein Kampf. .
Already impoverished by war, Germany would then pay the cost of losing it. Her army reduced to a token force, Germany became a nation of scavengers while former enemies stripped her of territory, merchant fleet, raw materials and food. The infant republic was at the mercy of other enemies. Germany became an armed camp swept by clashing extremists, by conspiracy and political murder. In Bavaria, Berlin, and the Ruhr rightists and leftist attempted to seize control by revolt.
