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His start was less than auspicious. He joined a tiny Bavarian outfit that called itself the German Workers Party. He began making speeches, denouncing Bolsheviks, capitalists, the Jews, the French. Germany had lost the war only because it had been betrayed at home by a "stab in the back." By 1923, as the new Weimar Republic was sinking into deep economic troubles, Hitler staged an absurd "beer-hall putsch" and led a march through Munich. He was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison (he served nine months). "You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times over," he declared at his trial, "but the goddess of the eternal court of history acquits us."
Larger forces were aggravating the conflicts that Hitler would eventually exploit. In 1923 the Germans stalled on their reparations payments and the French seized the industrial Ruhr to compel payment. The German mark, declining ever since the war, began plunging: 7,000 to the dollar in January, 160,000 in July, 1 million in August. A kind of madness swept the country. People carried suitcases of money to a store to buy a sausage. And the mark kept falling, to an all-time low of 4.2 trillion that November. Everything was for sale, all savings were destroyed, and nothing seemed to have any value any longer. No less than military defeat and social upheaval, the hyperinflation undermined all the traditional securities of German society.
Recovery did come eventually, with lots of American and British loans, but the Wall Street Crash of 1929 started a worldwide depression to which the shaky German economy was especially vulnerable. Unemployment soared. The feeble Social Democratic coalition government collapsed. And Adolf Hitler, whose Nazi Party held an insignificant twelve seats in the Reichstag, suddenly became a voice that attracted attention. He was one of the first 20th century figures to master radio as an important political medium. His message: Down with the system. Vote for a leader who will bring us back to greatness.
The economic crisis provided Hitler not only with a strong message but also with manpower. He recruited the unemployed as his Storm Troopers, put them in brown shirts and boots and sent them out to do battle. "Hate exploded suddenly, without warning, out of nowhere, at street corners, in restaurants, cinemas, dance halls," wrote Christopher Isherwood in The Berlin Stories, which eventually became Cabaret. "Knives were whipped out, blows were dealt with spiked rings, beer-mugs, chair-legs or leaded clubs." In September 1930 the Nazis won 6.5 million votes, and their 107 Reichstag seats made them the second strongest party.
Split between Nazis and Communists as well as several traditional parties, the Reichstag became ungovernable. That gave crucial political power to a man who was supposed to be a figurehead, President Paul von Hindenburg, commander of Germany's armies during the war. Hindenburg was 83, vain, righteous and inclined to long naps. Since the Reichstag could not agree on a policy, he appointed some of his favorites as Chancellors, letting them rule by presidential decree.