As a result of this increasing opposition that won over the sentiments of most Germans, uprisings and protests constantly impaired the governments institutions in the 1920s. (33) The most significant of these uprisings was of course the Putsch in Munich led by Hitler in 1923. The National Socialist Party of Germany gained in popularity slowly during the 1920s, finally becoming a viable political entity in after the Great Depression reached Germany after 1929. After the economic collapse spiraled Germany into poverty in the early 1930s, many Germans accepted Hitlers belief that the Allies would not end their seeming persecution of Germany by the appeal of reason, but by force. (34) Although the economic collapse was inevitable in light of the increasingly interconnected world market, it was exaggerated by the hatred of the harsh reparations, the War Guilt Clause, and the humiliation the Germans suffered from French occupation in the west.Adolf Hitler manipulated the German intolerance with the Versailles Treaty to push Germany into several confrontations that eventually resulted in World War II. Hitler maintained that the second world war was caused by the Treatys iniquities, (35) concerning the harsh conditions of the document. Chambers et al state that in German eyes, the Treaty was an intolerable Dictate, and that the German parliament had been forced to accept it. (36) Hitler capitalized heavily on this German sentiment. In his speech to Reichstag on September 1, 1939, on the eve of World War II and almost exactly twenty years after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler declared the treaty void:For us Germans the dictated Treaty of Versailles is not law. It will not do to blackmail a person at the point of a pistol with the threat of starvation for millions of people into signing a document and afterwards proclaim that this document with its forced signature was a solemn law. (37)With the above justification, Hit...
