Psychological and Ideological Background

The file contains several reports rearding the psycholohical and ideological background which affected the rise of the National-Socialist Party. The author dries to explain the general situation in Germany after the first World War and what made the people fall for the Nazis. As the author argues a three-fold series of vital shocks had certainly deranged the mental stability of the German people, the first one is caused by the abrupt realisation that the war of 1916/18 had been irretrievable lost and that the old Empire with all its symbols had vanished withour warning; the second shock is caused by the profound disillusionment of President Wilson's seeming breach of faith and the implicit trust which had been put on him, his creed formulae and pledges; and lastly caused by the vicious and ruthless expropriation in the course of the great inflation. Thrice tricked and deceived, a great majority of people just vegetated in a void of unreality, they sensed a lack of protection, a feeling of shame. The National Socialist creed under Hitler's leadership seemed to let the people find 'solace in their woes, justification for all their hatreds, scapegoats for all their misfortune and a millenniol vision of their hopes. Years of semi-civil-war and years of desolate unemployment were additional factors which made people yearn for a new interpretation of law and order, Nazi dictatorship was the fateful answer.