To what extent was the emergence of the NSDAP in Germany, 1923-1945, a result of international factors?

The German National Socialist Party, later to be dubbed the 'Nazis' by Americans in the 1930s, found its roots in the decaying Weimar Republic. At its head, Adolf Hitler, would proclaim throughout his career that he was the 'Second Messiah', with a duty to eradicate the un-German from his world. Tracing the origin of him and his party can lead historians down a multitude of rabbit holes, though one method of explaining their emergence would be to look at international pressures to Germany following the First World War, 1918, and the Treaty of Versailles, 1919. French and British, and partly American, sanctions on Germany, combined with an inherit German "Stab in the Back" belief that their leaders had abandoned potential victory on the Western Front, led to an inhospitable country in which the citizens were largely destitute, with a hatred for its leaders. The division of Germany into separate states, too, like Czechoslovakia, left many Germans isolated as guests in their own countries. Germany bore the brunt of the blame for the First World War, and while that is not entirely un-justified, in doing so the Entente nations seemingly set the foreground for right-wing politics within their own experiment of a country.An argument could be made that the NSDAP was a purely German issue. Tensions in sate politics such as Freikorps who had marched back from the front, clashing with Communists in city centres who saw the weakened state as a chance to leap to power, was an occurrence only seen by Germany. Furthermore, the Weimar incompetence in causing hyperinflation in 1923 only saw the extension of a period of poverty and unemployment that NSDAP would use as kindling in their manifestos. However, one could also argue that things like poverty were in fact a symptom of the reparations caused by 1919, and that in 1929 the so-called Great Depression would do more damage than hyperinflation ever did, or that the political instability in the cities was also an effect of heavy and sudden measures imposed by Entente treaties following the First World War. While it would be convenient for politicians to believe that this couldn't happen elsewhere, the truth is that while the Nazi Party was very much a product of an unfortunate time in history, part of that reason should be shared by international politics.

Answered by Oliver S. History tutor

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