ABSTRACT
HITLERISM proper arose immediately after the War in a nucleus of old soldiers, desperate opponents of the new Republic. In his youth Hitler was a boy of pretensions who had been forced to undertake many sorts of jobs in order to earn a living. Wherever he had met the doctrines of the class-struggle or the class-organisations of the proletariat, the Trade Unions, he had been repelled in his innermost heart. He had learnt to feel an equal repugnance for Jewish bankers and newspaper owners, by whom in his view the world is controlled, and severely censured the Crowned Heads of Europe for tolerating this alien dominance. He was, even before the War, intent on reform, on strengthening the arm of national control and breaking the power of Jews and Marxists. An Austrian born, he believed from the first in the necessity of joining all German-speaking peoples in one powerful nation.
