Hitler's Rise to Power: The Nazi Movement in Bavaria 1923-33 by British author Geoffrey Pridham (
ResearchGate profile), a lecturer in European Politics at the University of Bristol, is his vintage political history
cum analysis, examined from a grassroots level, drawing upon archival material to illustrate and explain the various surrounding factors which helped enable Exactly What It Says In The Title, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press.
This was originally published in 1973 by Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Ltd.
Currently free @
Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere else Amazon sells worldwide, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)
Description
Bavaria has become known as the birthplace of the Nazi Party, a mass movement without precedence in German history.
In January 1919 a new political party, intended to be nationalist yet appeal to the masses, was established in Munich.
Soon after Adolf Hitler became a member, and the stage was set for its transformation into the NSDAP.
Despite Hitler’s skill as an orator and his understanding of propaganda, in its early days the movement resembled a rabble rather than a cohesive unit.
This came to a head with the unsuccessful Putsch of 1923: Hitler was imprisoned, and the party itself entered a period of prohibition.
A reformation was necessary, and on his return Hitler strived to ensure that no cause was given to shut them down, employing constitutional means to yield legality.
Charting the decade between Hitler’s failed coup d’état and his appointment as Chancellor, Geoffrey Pridham’s case study is focused at grassroots level.
Employing archive material to formidable effect, he addresses how Bavaria’s political landscape shifted and the violence that accompanied it, how religion affected the situation and what compelled people to support Hitler.
Hitler’s Rise to Power is a narrative of a disorganised movement, with financial issues and a ban on its most prolific speaker holding public meeting, and how this movement became the infamous Nazi party.