Ben Wilson

You know, we're supposed to be the guys.

We're supposed to be the ones really in charge of Germany.

You know, after World War I, they're forced to disarm in many ways.

Their military is taken down to its bare bones.

And so he's restoring their prestige.

and this is very good for hitler because the military is one of the few genuine independent centers of power that could still potentially move against him so by getting their support hitler is basically making sure that he's never going to be overthrown or see any serious non-electoral competition for power now in terms of the anti-semitism question

Hitler really stops talking about it in the early days of his chancellorship because it's not very popular, frankly.

You know, anti-Semitism is at the core of Hitler's ideology and it helps to get some of their early support.

But they had really grown beyond that.

And the mainstream of German public opinion was still not anti-Jewish, was still not anti-Semitic.

And so, yeah, he doesn't have a lot to say about it.

Instead, he's mostly railing against the Marxists, the communists, the far left.

That's the target of his ire.

And he doesn't issue any orders for public persecution of Jews.

Having said that.

you know the the core party members the people who are really committed nazis they know what hitler's all about they've been along on this ride for a decade and so they take matters into their own hands often and so there is definitely a rise in anti-jewish crimes but it's mostly just kind of hooligans and street violence and there's not like a big movement of jews to try and emigrate from germany many of them just kind of think yeah you know he probably said this to gain popularity

Most people are still naive that something really dark could happen to the non-German population within Germany.

Okay, but the far left is repressed really strongly.

And the center left actually immediately is targeted because that is the heart of opposition to national socialist rule.

And so what Hitler wants to do is get an enabling act.