Hitler+To+The+People

=//"How many look up to him [Hitler] with touching faith as their helper, their savior, their deliverer from unbearable distress."// Louis Solmitz, Hamburg schoolteacher, 1932 =



Support While the American people faced these three crises; the Great Depression, the communist threat, and the war on terrorism at three separate times, the German people during the Hitler regime were faced with the same three problems. What the German population needed was a strong leader that they knew they could rely on to get the job done. Knowing this, it begins to make sense that the Germans would gravitate toward their government officials to pull them out of the crisis, just like the Americans did. It seemed only right that the citizens of Germany should follow Hitler when he claimed to know how to lead them out of their current situation. Nobody wanted to be the ones to oppose the government. In the minds of most of the Germans, Germany was not the aggressing nation, but the nation that had to defend themselves from ongoing oppression. This is what they had been told by Hitler and all of their other leaders. German soldiers, of course, were also expected to do their duty and follow the orders of their commander in chief. It is not right to blame the individual soldier for his actions considering it was not up to him to make any decisions. They were completely uneducated regarding the current situation in political Germany and how Hitler was not helping the nation, but hurting it. This goes for most of the German population as well. However, the soldier in particular thought that they could kill Polish soldiers with a clear conscience because, again, it was not up to the individual soldier to decide on the justice of the war. Each soldier had faith that his superior officer and political leader were morally justified. All of this contributes to reasons why the German population had such faith in Hitler.

Opposition Though most of the German’s were completely unaware of Hitler’s wrath on the world and the Jews, there were some who had witnessed his destruction and terror and immediately fled the country or prepared to endure his worst. Some soldiers who had seen what Hitler’s orders had done refused to fight for him any longer and were prepared to do what they could to justify the bad they had already done.

(The Future of Freedom Daily Foundation)

