The Führer
Adolf Hitler, a nondescript Austrian volunteer in the Imperial German Army in 1918, with the rank of corporal, rose to the position of Chancellor of Weimar Germany in the space of 15 years. In the interim, he built up a national party from nothing (the National Socialist German Workers Party -- NSDAP or Nazi party). Roughly six years later he was on Time magazine's cover as "Man of the Year" for 1938 -- a grudging acknowledgment of Hitler's importance.
Hitler first rose to prominence in 1923 as one of the leaders of the Beerhall Putsch -- an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic. It failed and led to his imprisonment. During his two year term, Hitler found time to write the book that would later become infamous: Mein Kampf. It was not a literary masterpiece by any measure (Hitler was not much of a writer but he was a natural orator). The market for Mein Kampf was members of the NSDAP and their friends. This was a politically charged tract which could not be taken seriously as anything more than propoganda (even though a lot of people used it afterwards as proof of Hitler's intentions for just about everything). The rants in it were intended to appeal to a very specific group and did so. German nationalists and anti-Semites of the period could find many comments to approve of within its covers. Paranoia and hatred evident throughout the work were part of its appeal.
After his release, Hitler determined to change tactics from seeking revolution in the streets to seeking revolution through the electoral process. He led his party to the height of success in 1933 when the Nazis received almost one third of all the votes cast, making the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag (the German parliament). Having reached this level without cooperation with other parties, Hitler initiated an intricate series of political negotiations with other conservative and nationalist parties which led to his approval as the Chancellor of Germany by the venerable president of the republic, the former Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Field Marshal von Hindenburg. Within months of getting the nod for the Chancellorship, Hitler eliminated all the remaining political opposition and established himself as German dictator through the Enabling Act of 1933. Essentially, he created the first bona fide tyranny formed from a democracy in over 2,000 years.
The opinions Hitler espoused publicly reflected the anti-Semitic and nationalist circles in which he thrived. Jews, as an ethnic group, were singled out as an internal enemy of the "German nation" with international affiliations and conspiritorial objectives. Communism was linked to "international Jewry" and likewise identified as a threat. German adherence to the Treaty of Versailles, of course, was targeted as the primary diplomatic issue of the day. Economic recovery was tied to military expansion resulting from abrogating the "Versailles Diktat".
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