Hitler's steps to taking power were extremely similar to those of Mussolini. He had first created the brownshirts, his own paramilitary force. Hitler then introduces the nazi political party and only has 12 seats to begin with in 1928. By 1932 he had 230 seats of 647 which made it the largest party. during this swing of seats the world is suffering from the great depression. People were looking for jobs and money and only the far sides of the spectrum could provide this for them. So Hitler was gaining supporters, but not all just on his campaign. The brownshirts were sending out major threats to people who didn't support the nazi party. They also rigged elections by beating people up at the door of the polling station and creating riots on the route to the poll. After somehow falling in seats at the next election Hitler is named Chancellor by the President. He then immediately bans all other political parties. Now another paramilitary force was created to be even more loyal to the nazi party and they were called the Shutzstaffle. These men killed people inside the nazi party that could've challenged Hitler. The stars then aligned perfectly as the President dies of natural causes and Hitler runs winning 99% of votes in the election. He now had complete power of the government and Germany ready to take over the world.
In the first years of the Weimar Republic, after the first world war, they had experienced two significant challenges. The first was the Spartakist uprising of 1919. This was a German communist party formed from the Spartakist league. They had tried to take over Berlin in january of 1919 but were easily stopped by the Freikorps. The leaders of the Spartakist uprise were then brutally murdered publicly to prevent it from happening again. The second challenge the Weimar Republic faced was the Kapp Putsch which was the Freikorps marching upon Berlin. This was not challenged by any other force because the Freikorps was Germany's only military force. This was stopped by the people of Berlin going on a general strike. The Freikorps realized they were not welcomed and left the Weimar Republic alone.
Mussolini had a very strategic approach to taking over the Italian government and eventually controlling the Italian people. He first won seats in the Chamber of Deputies, then passed a law automatically giving him 2/3 of the seats in the chamber. With the power he eliminates all other parties creating a totalitarian dictatorship and takes away freedom of speech, freedom of press and freedom of assembly. "Life Is Beautiful" is about a man who moves to work with his uncle as a waiter and starts a family with a beautiful women. His son and him own and operate their own bookstore when the wife goes to her job. One day when coming back home from work she discovers that her husband and son have been taken to a concentration camp. The wife sacrifices her own life to follow her family to this camp. She would rather work in a concentration camp with the love of her life then live a good life alone. Upon arrival they separate workers by men, women, with elders and children together. They immediately kill all of the elders and children at the camp with gas showers. I find it extremely interesting why the Germans would even bother with collecting the elders and children to come work at this camp if they are to kill them right away. The father uses the camp as just a big game for a grand prize of a brand new tank to protect his son from the horrors of the camp. He hid his son at the camp just long enough to let him leave the camp at the end of the war and reunite with his mother. Unfortunately the father had sacrificed himself to protect his son and in the end his family.
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