Nevertheless, Hitler was also perceptive enough to accept full credit for the economic turnaround and the German people readily considered Hitler to be the source. The political success of Hitler in the years leading up to the beginning of the Second World War was unprecedented. He acquired territory after territory through the appeasement efforts of the leaders from the other European nations. Germany entered the 1930's a defeated and demoralized nation suffering from the effects of a major economic depression and within a few short years was transformed into a nation enjoying full employment, welcoming family and friends from the Sudetenland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and a renewed sense of national pride. For a people who had suffered through two decades of uncertainty and economic depravity, Hitler took upon a mythological image (Ascher).

One of the other areas that contributed heavily to the popularity of Hitler was his ability to restore social order within Germany. During the years of the Weimar Republic there had developed a sense among the German people that crime, decadence, and violence had grown out of control. The perception was the Weimar Republic had not assigned enough importance so such issues and Hitler promised that he would restore order in Germany. On the local and national level Hitler paid particular attention to law and order matters and through several widely publicized events such as the purging of the SA and Kristallnacht, Hitler and the Nazi Party were able to successfully create the image that he had cleaned up matters in Germany (Wachsmann).

There had to be a segment of German society that found the activities of Hitler to be bothersome but there was little or no open opposition. Whether this was the result of fear from repercussions or from fear of disrupting what appeared...

Even his highly controversial treatment of the Jewish people was virtually ignored by the German people (Klemperer). Again, the German people felt so grateful for everything that Hitler had done for them that they were willing to overlook his treatment of a people who were not particularly popular within Germany anyway. It was obviously a small price to pay for continued prosperity and prestige among the world community.
For the ordinary citizen living in Germany in 1939, it would have been extremely difficult to rock the boat by opposing Hitler's policies. The economy was better than most every other nation in Europe, Germany was again a respected nation on the world stage, and order had been restored. It would have taken a highly enlightened and courageous individual to take issue with Hitler. In the end, few did.

Works Cited

Abel, Theodore. "The Pattern of a Successful Political Movement." American Sociological Review (1937): 347-352.

Ascher, Abraham. "Was Hitler a Riddle?" The Journal of the Historical Society (2009): 1-21.

Klemperer, Victor. I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1933-1941. New York: Modern Library, 1999.

Myerson, Roger B. "Political Economics and the Weimar Disaster." Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (2004): 187-209.

Rothfels, Hans. The German Opposition to Hitler. Chicago: Kirk Press, 2007.

Wachsmann, Nikolaus. Hitler's Prisions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.

Winkler, Heinrich August. "German Society, Hitler and the Illusion of Restoration 1930-33." Journal of Contemporary History (1976): 1-16.

German Opinion of Adolph Hitler in…