Hitler and the Second Reich

I found Hitler’s account of why the German Second Reich was ultimately a failure extremely interesting and telling to how he used rhetoric and unproven facts to support his political bias. Hitler was unable to accept that the war had played a major part in its downfall, that the government had mislead the citizens with a large propaganda campaign. Instead, Hitler preyed upon the strong sense of Nationalism associated with Bismarck and the glory days of the Second Reich to things like education and espionage on the part of the Marxists and Jews working together against “common-good” of Germans. He goes onto also blame the “lying Marxist press” for their “poisoning” of the Reich. He rants for a while detailing an extreme amount of flaws, but interestingly also blames the Reichstag and the government’s inefficiency in cracking down on these insurrections protests by the liberals. Hitler, on the other hand, realized the value and power of extreme force, and would do so with his shock-trooper military to instill that sense of awe and fear that had once been associated with the Second Reich.
Perhaps most personal and important to Hitler was his embarrassment by the collapse of the Second Reich, and the cultural setback Germany experienced in the economic depression that followed. Gone were modern cities with “monuments that dominate” the skyline. This sense of personal and National pride was clearly a major talking point for Hitler in Mein Keimpf, as well as his Nazi platform with his establishment of the Third Reich. So he was able to capitalize on this German dominance platform that had been culturally relevant since Medieval Times. That strong, unique cultural belief may be an extremely important aspect of how Hitler could rise to power in an industrialized, Western nation.