After the war, Hitler remained in the German Army, where he was employed as a VMan; his job was to visit political organizations and assess them. He also worked in the education department of the army to lecture soldiers on the dangers of communism, socialism and pacifism. Senior officers were impressed with Hitler's skills as a speaker, and he discovered his greatest talent: public oratory. In September 1919, he visited a meeting of the German Workers' Party, an extreme, antiSemitic, anti communist, right-wing nationalist party lead by Karl Drexler, with 40 members. Hitler informed the army it posed no threat to Germany. Hitler later joined the party and became the propaganda officer (Bullock, 1962, p. 112).

Hitler joined the party in 1920, and helped rename it the National Socialist German Worker's Party, or N.S.D.A.P. in German; the familiar contraction of this was "Nazi." Former soldiers who had been in the Free Corps joined the Nazi Party and their "skills" were used to break up meetings of let-wing parties, particularly the Communists. The use of violence became a way of life for the Nazis. During the next two years he became a fixture in radical politics in Bavaria, during the period of hyperinflation in Germany f

In the 1930 elections the Nazi vote jumped dramatically from 810,000 to 6,409,000 - 18.3 percent of the total vote - and they received 107 seats in the Reichstag. In February 1931, Hitler obtained German citizenship and ran for President of Germany. receiving 13,418,011 votes in the runoff elections of 10 April 1931 as against 19,359,650 votes for the victorious von Hindenburg, this was four times the vote for the communist candidate, Ernst Thaelmann. In the Reichstag elections of July 1932, the Nazis emerged as the largest political party in Germany, obtaining nearly 14,000,000 - 37.3 per cent - and 230 seats. Hitler was helped to power by a camarilla of conservative politicians led by Franz von Papen, who persuaded the reluctant von Hindenburg to nominate "the Bohemian corporal" as Reich Chancellor on January 30, 1933 (Dolan, 1981, p. 185).

The other major contribution by Hitler was to provide a reason for the western powers to support the creation of the State of Israel as a result of the Holocaust. Coupled with the politics of the Cold War, the result is the problems now faced in making peace in the Middle East.

During the period from 1934-38, Hitler enjoyed a dazzling string of domestic and international successes, outwitting rival political leaders abroad just as he had defeated his opposition at home. In 1935, he announced the abandonment of the Versailles Treaty and built up the army by conscripting five times its permitted number. He persuaded Great Britain to allow an increase in Navy to 35 percent of the Royal Navy with equality in submarines; in March 1936 he occupied the demilitarized Rhineland in the act he felt was the most dangerous of his career to date. In all these, the victorious World War I Allies, led by Britain and France, did nothing in response (Toland, 1992, p. 287).

Hitler was essentially an opportunist in the pursuit of power. He had very