Released as a result of a general amnesty in December 1924, he rebuilt his party without interference from those whose government he had tried to overthrow. When the Great Depression struck in 1929, his explanation of it as a Jewish-Communist plot was accepted by many Germans. Promising a strong Germany, jobs, and national glory, he attracted millions of voters. Nazi representation in the Reichstag (parliament) rose from 12 seats in 1928 to 107 in 1930.

During the following two years the party kept expanding, benefiting from growing unemployment, fear of Communism, Hitler's self-certainty, and the diffidence of his political rivals. Nevertheless, when Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933, he was expected to be an easily controlled tool of big business.

Germany's Dictator

Once in power, however, Hitler quickly established himself as a dictator. Thousands of anti-Nazis were hauled off to concentration camps and all signs of dissent suppressed. An Enabling Act passed by a subservient legislature allowed him to Nazify the bureaucracy and the judiciary, replace all labour unions with one Nazi-controlled German Labour Front, and ban all political parties except his own. The economy, the media, and all cultural activities were brought under Nazi authority by making an individual's livelihood dependent on his or her political loyalty.

Hitler relied on his secret police, the Gestapo, and on jails and camps to intimidate his opponents, but most Germans supported him enthusiastically. His armament drive wiped out unemployment, an ambitious recreational programme attracted workers and employees, and his foreign policy successes impressed the nation. He thus managed to mould the German people into the pliable tool he needed to establish German rule over Europe and other parts of the world. Discrediting the churches with charges of corruption and immorality, he imposed his own brutal moral code. He derided the concept of human equality and claimed racial superiority for the Germans. As the master race, they were told, they had the right to dominate all nations they subjected. The increasingly ruthless persecution of the Jews was to inure the Germans to this task.

Setting out on his empire-building mission, Hitler launched Germany's open rearmament in 1935 (in defiance of the World War I peace treaty), sent troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, and annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland in 1938. In March 1939 he brought the remainder of Czechoslovakia under German control. He also came to the aid of Francisco Franco's rebels in Spain's civil war (1936-1939).