Hitler's rise to power

I wrote my paper on different perspectives on Hitler's rise to power. I used four sources from Kershaw, Fritzsche, Bessel and another historian Karl Bracher. I found it really interesting that the arguments argued that he emerged out of the chaos from the Weimar Republic (as the 1st two authors did) or as a result of gaining popular support (as is the case with the latter 2). There were then two interpretations which either saw Hitler as an opportunist (Fritsche, Bessel) or intentionally manipulated the populations or government (Kershaw, Bracher) to gain support. As my paper came together, I quickly (or not so quickly) found that Hitler had both intentionally manipulated the people and systems because conditions offered him the opportunity to do so. For example, Kershaw argues that the Hitler myth created a perception of Hitler essentially as the image of all that is good. But the people gave him the opportunity to emerge as the man that they wanted to pull them out of their troubles forged through the Weimar Republic. Had the people not needed the man, the myth would have been pointless.

Another example is that Bessel argues that Hitler emerged because the discontent of the people presented the opportunity to unite them in a non-traditional political system. But Hitler intentionally manipulated the Weimar system and united the people under a new nationalism. In short, the differing perspectives I found played together really nicely and made it apparent that no story can be told from a narrow point of view.