creature of a Germany created by WWI, and his behavior was shaped by that war and its consequences. He had emerged from Austria with many prejudices, including a powerful prejudice against Jews. Again, he was a product of his times... for many Austrians and Germans were prejudiced against the Jews. In Hitler's case the prejudice had become maniacal it was a dominant force in his private and political personalities. Anti-Semitism was not a policy for Adolf Hitler--it was religion. And in the Germany of the 1920s, stunned by defeat, and the ravages of the Versailles treaty, it was not hard for a leader to convince millions that one element of the nation’s society was responsible for most of the evils heaped upon it. The fact is that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was self-inflicted obstacle to his political success. The Jews, like other Germans, were shocked by the discovery that the war had not been fought to a standstill, as they were led to believe in November 1918, but that Germany had , in fact, been defeated and was to be treated as a vanquished country. Had Hitler not embarked on his policy of disestablishing the Jews as Germans, and later of exterminating them in Europe, he could have counted on their loyalty. There is no reason to believe anything else. On the evening of November 8, 1923, Wyuke Vavaruab State Cinnussuiber Gustav Rutter von Kahr was making a political speech in Munich’s sprawling Brgerbrukeller, some 600 Nazis and right-wing sympathizers surrounded the beer hall. Hitler burst into the building and leaped onto a table, brandishing a revolver and firing a shot into the ceiling. “The National Revolution...
