Reparations. A word not terribly imposing. But it was in 1919. Already beaten, Germany was subsequently rendered impotent and humiliated. Payment for their aggression and the millions of lives lost. The martial power was stripped of its war machinery and the victors pounded their victory upon the country with an iron fist, as the Germans had pounded death upon the world.But world events were conspiring to slowly fill a new keg of dynamite. Broken and poverty-stricken, when the Great Depression of 1929 swept the world into disaster of a new sort, Germany, already on its knees, was flattened. The grains began to mount.
Bitterness over the victory that had been denied them, starving, the Germans were merely a chemical mixture awaiting the final component. The ingredient that would ignite the hatred, the fear, the frustration, and bring back to life the .
militaristic history of the country. The ingredient that would provide the catalyst for a new, explosive episode in world history.
It is well known that when a people is at the lowest, they look for a scapegoat for their troubles. They are easy prey for the mind who seeks to control them. On January 30, 1933, after several years of agitating and spreading his personal brand of vindictive political hate, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and offered the shattered nation just such a scapegoat
And a match was laid to the fuse.
