Chilling images that reveal how and why the Nazis came to power.
Adolf Hitler salutes leaders of the Legion Condor, German Luftwaffe troops who fought alongside Spanish Nationalist troops in the Spanish Civil war, during a rally held in their honor upon their return.Germany. June 6, 1939.
Hugo Jaeger/Timepix/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Adolf Hitler salutes during the 1938 Annual Reich Party Congress.Nuremburg, Germany, September 1938.
Hugo Jaeger/Timepix/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Adolf Hitler, accompanied by other Nazi party officials, walks down a staircase at the 1938 Annual Reich Party Congress.Nuremburg, Germany, September 1938.
Hugo Jaeger/Timepix/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images A young woman in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia places swastika flags around a portrait of Adolf Hitler in anticipation of the arrival of German troops.September 30, 1938.
Becke/FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images A match seller crouches on the ground during the economic crisis in the Weimar Republic.Punitive postwar measures imposed upon Germany by the Allies helped push the country into an economic collapse that would lay the groundwork for the rise of Hitler.
Germany. 1928.
Roger Viollet/Getty Images German World War I amputee begs for money on the street.Many German veterans were forgotten after their war, their lives in shambles, allowing a man like Hitler, a man promising change and revitalization, to take power.
1923.
Bundesarchiv Men and boys wait in line at a postwar German soup kitchen in a market hall in Berlin.Homelessness reached alarming heights amid the postwar economic collapse.
1920.
FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Kids march in a German Communist Party demonstration in Berlin.As poverty rose in postwar Germany, many turned to communism as a possible solution.
May 1, 1925.
Bundesarchiv Hungry children gather around a soldier ladling hot food at an outdoor soup kitchen.Germany. 1918.
© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images People eat at a crowded dormitory of a lodging house for the homeless in Berlin.1920.
FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images A crowd of 40,000 people watch the burning of "un-German" books by authors not considered to conform to Nazi ideology at the Opernplatz in Berlin. The burning was organized by the German Student Association and the crowd was addressed by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.May 10, 1933.
Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Hitler and his Sturmabteilung paramilitary group lead a massive rally of supporters.The Sturmabteilung, today often called the "Brownshirts," would serve as hired thugs for the Nazi Party, keeping their rallies safe and disrupting the rallies of other parties.
Nuremberg, Germany. Circa 1928.
Wikimedia Commons Adolf Hitler observes a Nazi parade.Germany. 1930.
Roger Viollet/Getty Images Adolf Hitler returns the salutes of a crowd of children who surround him at a rally.Germany. Circa 1930s.
Heinrich Hoffmann/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Nazis place a sign on the window of a Jewish-owned store encouraging Germans to not shop there.As conditions, economically speaking in particular, grew dire in postwar Germany, many people (especially the Nazis) began to use Jews as a scapegoat.
Berlin. April 1933.
Wikimedia Commons Adolf Hitler and Nazi Party representatives pose together for a photograph while planning their election campaign.Munich. December 1930.
Bundesarchiv Adolf Hitler salutes his supporters as he drives down the streets of Berlin, celebrating his intention to run in the German presidential election.February 1932.
Bundesarchiv Hitler's paramilitary "Brownshirts" sit down with a farmer and his wife and try to persuade them to vote Nazi.Mecklenburger, Germany. June 21, 1932.
Bundesarchiv A man steps out of a polling station, having cast his vote in the election that would officially bring the Nazis to power. Behind him, a man holds up a poster with Hitler's face.Berlin. March 13, 1932.
Bundesarchiv Party members at Nazi headquarters court voters by passing out balloons with tiny swastikas.Berlin. 1932.
Bundesarchiv Newly-appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler, at the window of the chancellery, waves at his supporters.Berlin. January 30, 1933.
Bundesarchiv Nazi supporters march in celebration after hearing that Hitler has been appointed Chancellor of Germany.Berlin. January 30, 1933.
Bundesarchiv 25,000 people stand in the arena before Adolf Hitler and his associates during the Nazi Party Congress.Nuremberg, Germany. 1934.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images Adolf Hitler poses with young followers at a Hitler Youth gathering in 1935.Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images Adolf Hitler and Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach (to Hitler's left) arrive at the stadium in Nuremberg for a Hitler Youth rally in 1934.Heinrich Hoffmann/ullstein bild via Getty Images Adolf Hitler sits with a large group of Hitler Youth members at the Nazi Party national headquarters in Munich.Circa 1935.
Heinrich Hoffmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Adolf Hitler shakes hands with Hitler Youth member Harald Quandt, stepson of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.Berlin. 1936.
AFP/Getty Images A little girl attaches a bunch of flowers to a flag with a swastika on it held by a member of a local branch of the Nazi Party.Germany. 1935.
FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images 15,000 people perform synchronized gymnastics at the Nuremberg Rally.Germany. 1938.
Imagno/Getty Images A large model of the German eagle, carrying a laurel wreath and swastika, passes by Hitler after he opened a Nazi art exhibition in Munich.July 12, 1938.
Keystone/Getty Images Crowds gather on the streets of Berlin as Germany hosts the XI Olympic Games in August of 1936. Getty Images Hitler signs the Munich Agreement, permitting Germany' annexation of Czechoslovakia.September 30, 1938.
Bundesarchiv Hitler poses with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (left) and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (right) following the Munich Agreement.September 29, 1938.
Bundesarchiv A massive crowd attends Hitler Youth Day during one of the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies.Date unspecified.
© CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images The massive crowd of supporters that came out to see the Nazi Party leaders speak, seen from above.Berlin. April 4, 1932.
Bundesarchiv Adolf Hitler ascends the steps at Buckeberg hill near the town of Hamelin, flanked by banner-carrying storm troopers who display the Nazi swastika during a festival there.October 1934.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
How Hitler Happened: 36 Photos That Explain The Nazis’ Rise View GalleryThere's perhaps no more well-trodden scholarly ground than that which seeks to explain the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party in Germany following the devastation of World War I. It's the ultimate cautionary tale, and generations of historians and journalists have treated it accordingly, exploring it from every conceivable angle in exhaustive detail.
That's why looking back on original reporting from the era is a balm, of sorts, but also deeply unsettling in its unconcerned take on Hitler's rise. Four American reporters, for example, won the Pulitzer Prize in the 1930s for their work covering the rapid ascent of the Nazis, and it's invaluable as a barometer of the often nonchalant U.S. attitude toward Hitler and his followers at the time.
Edgar A. Mowrer was one of those reporters. Writing a German election preview story in the Chicago Daily News on July 30, 1932, Mowrer reported, without condemnation or comment from any opposing party, that Hitler wanted an "empire based on his own mystical knowledge of the superiority of the Germans and the Aryan race." Mowrer noted sagely that "Hitler is not an intellectual genius, but he has a formidable instinct for politics."
(The casual tone is shocking, but common for American newspapers at the time. Twelve days before Germany invaded Poland in 1939, The New York Times published a now-infamous puff piece about the Fuhrer's fondness for gooseberry pie, his love of orphans, and his exquisite taste in interior design. Needless to say, it did not earn a Pulitzer, or any other prize.)
While Mowrer's lack of alarm seems odd to modern readers, his tone was suitable for the work at hand, knowing what he and the rest of the world knew about Hitler at the time. It wasn't Mowrer's duty to forecast the situation, and he didn't try.
On the other hand, Dr. Emil Lengyel, a professor of social sciences at New York University and an authority on matters related to central Europe, like many academics of his day, did make a few predictions about Hitler and the Nazis before they showed their true colors — and they're chilling to read today due to just how wrong they are.
In 1932, three months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Lengyel told Every Week Magazine that the future Fuhrer was a "first class agitator" but lacked vision, among other eerily inaccurate prognostications:
"That he may have, or suddenly develop as he progresses, certain hidden powers is not beyond the realm of possibility. But I doubt it. He is, perhaps, the best speaker of Germany and he has a certain animal vitality that carries people off their feet, but he does not seem to have the power to think things out to their logical conclusion or to lay wise long-range plans of national scope."
The gallery above is a visual record of the rise of the Nazi Party, a rise unforeseen by even Lengyel and his ilk and chronicled in brave reporting by Mowrer and his peers.
These chilling images date from the post-World War I days when Germany was punished by the Allies that helped cause the economic collapse and homelessness of the Weimar Republic and the Great Depression, finally leading to Hitler's ascendancy in his horrific, full-color glory in the pages of TIME, on the verge of World War II, before the true horror of his "long-range plans" were finally exposed.
Still curious? Read about the drug that fueled the Nazis' rise and fall. Want to learn more? Explore the election of 1932 and how Hitler convinced Germany to vote for Fascism.
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