Much like Italy, Germany was in a tight spot following World War I. As the National World War II Museum says, they’d been “humiliated” by 1919’s Treaty of Versailles, which left Germany accepting responsibility for the entire war, paying back $33 billion in war reparations, and giving up colonies overseas. By the time the Great Depression flowed out from the United States in 1929, Germany was in shambles and folks needed a literal wheelbarrow of cash to buy a single loaf of bread. The country’s economic problems were exacerbated by its Weimar Republic (1919 to 1933), a forced and unstable democratic republic that allowed Hitler to rise to power.
Hitler was a World War I veteran who’d joined the National Socialist German Worker’s (Nazi) Party following the war’s end. Much like Mussolini, Hitler rose through the ranks of his very fascist party via legitimate means, propelled by the power of rhetoric and the defamation of marginal groups like Jews. The Nazis also promised a restoration of German power, stabilization of the German economy, a restoration of German jobs, and so forth. By 1923, per the National World War II Museum, the Nazis also had their own private army of 15,000 troops, similar to Mussolini’s Blackshirts.
The Nazis gained the majority in German parliament in 1932 and Hitler became chancellor in 1933. Just like in Italy, an emergency situation hit when a communist supporter started a fire in parliament’s Reichstag building. The German president declared a state of emergency, civil liberties were suspended, and Hitler gained absolute power.
