On the evening of January 30, 1933, hundreds of storm troopers paraded by torchlight through Berlin to mark the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany. The “jubilation,” recalled a supporter named Günter Loshe, “was spontaneous.” At long last, “a man was trying to clean up the stables.” The old, establishment politicians had failed. People said: “He is going to push reforms through and quickly.” Germany, humiliated at the end of the First World War and in the grips of the Great Depression, would revive. “There was a wish,” continued Loshe, “to place power in the hands of a man who says: ‘We will do it. That’s how it’s done.’”
So began the darkest chapter in human history. German democracy was dismantled in a matter of weeks. Dachau, the first concentration camp, opened its gates in March of 1933. A boycott of Jewish shops and businesses followed on April 1. Jews, social democrats, and other “undesirables” were thrown out of the civil service and the courts. The Nuremberg race laws, restricting German citizenship to those of “pure German blood,” were created in September of 1935. And on November 5, 1937, Hitler informed his paladins of his plan to wage a war for “living space” in Eastern Europe and crush “two hate-inspired antagonists,” Britain and France.
