The germans had never voted for him. He was dropped into office by a coalition of powerful people who thought they could use him. He had received and they wanted to use him because he had received more votes than anyone else but never a majority of the votes. And this is an important point to make because when we try to explain why germany became the place where the holocaust was perpetrated, where the actors came from, the events that succeed 1933 are much more important than the events that precede it. The long tradition of antisemitism, the echoing of antisemitic arguments did not matter politically until the minority of the people who believed in it acquired political power. Power magnifies the ideas of those who hold it. And when people who hold beliefs that are regarded by the general society as knot as not quite acceptable become enormously powerful, their beliefs become steadily more acceptable. A famous historian of nazi germany, William Sheridan allen, once said more people became antisemites in germany because they became National Socialists than became National Socialists because they were antisemites. This is another way of formulating what i just said. Power magnifies the ideas of those who hold it. And if those who hold it appear to be successful in realms that are important to some segments of population, those segments of the population will come to think that those other ideas they hold might be more persuasive than they thought at first glance. If the economy flourishes in the 1930s, as it appeared to many germans to do, then perhaps the nazis were not so bad after all. Can and perhaps what they say about the jews is not so errant as we thought. Add this to a society that was thoroughly capable of creating an echo chamber, an ideological world in which only its ideas were presented to the mix and in which one to the public and in one could not challenge those ideas without fear of punishment, and you create a situation of that transforms a nation in 1933 from one in which 55 of the germans had never voted for hitler to one in 1938 and 39 is ready to do to the jews everything that hitler wants it to do. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Youre watching booktv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. Next on the communicators, an interview with shirley bloomfield, ceo of the Rural Broadband association. Then live at 8 30 a. M. Eastern, a preview of the president s upcoming overseas trip. Live at 11a. , the president and 31 a. M. The president and Vice President attend the fraternal order of Police Annual ceremony honoring officers who died in the line of duty. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and