The Psychology of Hitlerism as a Response of the lower Middle Classes to Continuing Insecurity *

Since a political order which fails to coincide with an era of international prestige and domestic prosperity is endangered by the accumulating animosities of the community, it need occasion little surprise that a mass movement of protest swept aside some of the conventionalities of orderly government in Germany. Smarting under the humiliation of defeat, burdened by the discriminatory aftermath of Versailles, racked by the slow tortures of economic adversity, ruled in the name of political patterns devoid of sanctifying tradition, the German mentality has been ripening for an upsurge of the masses.