The lasting effect of the First World War was hard on many countries as it was harmful to both sides of the war. Countries like France, Russia, Serbia, Greece, and especially Germany. With the conditions after the Great War, Germany was put into stressful, economic struggle. Adolf Hitler, apart of the millions of German troops who were demobilized, still wished to help Germany despite his Austrian citizenship. Adolf moved to Munich where he would ask to perform political work for the new government. He was assigned to the job of Verbindungsmann (Intelligence Agent) for one of the Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance unit) of the Reichswehr (the Weimar Republic Army).

Adolf was ordered to search out political opponents that might threaten the new peace of the republic, such as the Communists, and to help influence others to join the army. He would work as a Verbindungsmann from May to June of 1919. Adolf ended his work with the government whenever he was assigned to infiltrate the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP) or in English, the German Workers’ Party. DAP was a political party that started on January 5, 1919, headquartered in Munich, Germany. At a meeting on September 12, 1919, the Party Chairman of DAP, Anton Draxler, was impressed of Adolf’s oratorical, the art of speaking, skills. He was given the political party’s pamphlet, My Political Awakening, which contained many ideals that Adolf is familiar to such as anti-Semitic, anti-capitalist, anti-Marxists (Communists), and nationalist ideas. Adolf applied for the party and was accepted within a week.

Adolf gifted a membership with him being member 555. He was only the 55th member as the party member started at 500 to appear if there are more members in DAP. Adolf was rather fond of the party as they had similar ideas to him. He met a member of DAP and of the occult Thule Society, Dietrich Eckart, who became his mentor as they exchanged their ideas about the Munich people. Adolf, due to his persuasive speeches at the meetings and constant corporation, rose through the ranks of the political party until he eventually was the public speaker for the entirety of the party. Adolf changed the name of the political party, dissolving the German Workers’ Party on February 24, 1920, to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party; NSDAP), which also was nicknamed the Nazi Party. He additionally changed the party’s banner to a swastika, originally a religious symbol common in Asian culture, on a white circle with a red background.

Adolf officially discharged from the army on March 31, 1920, and started working for the NSDAP full-time. By February of the next year, Adolf, having already proved to be effective at crowd manipulation, managing to rally a crowd of 6,000 participants for a meeting. The meeting was publicized by having two truckloads of supporters riding around Munich, waving swastika flags and passing out pamphlets. However, Adolf was gaining high notoriety for his speeches, speaking against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the treaty that ended the First World War, political opponents, Marxists, and the Jewish populace.

Problems had began to appear within the party. While on a fundraising trip to Berlin in June 1921, Hitler and Eckart were to return to Munich on July 11 to find out a mutiny has happened. Some of the executive committee tried merging with the Deutschsozialistische Partei (DSP) or in English, the German Socialists’ Party. Due to this problem, Hitler resigned from being the public speaker of the party. He said that if the party wanted him to return, he was to replace the party chairman, Drexler, and the political party would have to stay in Munich. The committee had no leverage in the situation as it would risk leading to the end of the party if Adolf was not the public speaker. The committee followed through with Adolf’s terms, and he rejoined the party on July 26 as member 3,680. Because of Adolf’s commands being met and him rejoining the party, some members of NSDAP were still in opposition.

However, this opposition was put down quickly. Members such as Hermann Esser, a journalist and a person who threatened the role of leadership, was expelled. In response, Esser had over 3,000 pamphlets made to say Adolf is a traitor to the party. Adolf would go on to speak at several public houses while defending himself from Esser’s threats in the following days after. On July 29, a special congress for the political party was held where Adolf officially became the party chairman, opposed to Drexler, with a vote count of 533 to 1. Adolf would begin to have regular speeches in beer halls that attracted crowds of people. He tended to use themes of the current politics that included scapegoats.

In the way Adolf performed his speeches, it was considered that he had a way of using personal magnetism and crowd psychology to influence his audiences. It was recalled by Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic, Algis Budrys, that whenever during Adolf’s 1936 parade, some audience members had strangely writhed, rolled on the ground, and experienced fecal incontinence, the lack of control of defecation. A former Hitler Youth member, Alfons Heck, had recalled a similar occurrence as “We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil! From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul”.

Some of the early followers of the NSDAP included such historical figures as Hermann Göring, a former air force pilot ace of the First World War, Rudolf Hess, infantryman of the First World War, and Ernst Röhm, a military captain as well in the First World War. Röhm would become the head of the Nazis’ paramilitary, the Sturmabteilung (SA), or Stormtroopers. The SA were meant to protect the meetings of the political party, but also harass any political opponents.

At the current height of the Nazi party, Adolf would be influenced by a conspiratorial group of White Russians (the opposing side to the communists during the Russian Revolution and Civil War) and a few National Socialists, the Aufbau Vereinigung, or the Reconstruction Organization. The group had supplemented the idea of a Jewish conspiracy of finance being linked to the Bolshevism, the belief and practice of Bolsheviks (a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party). Further on, a 25-point programme of the NSDAP was laid out on February 24, 1920. The programme did not represent an ideology, but coined in common ideas of Germany’s state including the völkisch movement, the distrust of capitalist and socialist ideas, opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, and mainly an anti-Semitic stance. The programme was used as propaganda for attracting types of people to the party.

Soon to be events in Germany would give Adolf enough inspiration to lead a movement, but it will result in a failure. Eventually though, he will convince the masses of the German populace to ascend him to Chancellorship.