Cheesehawk, I do believe I remember from history class in school that the ballot for the annexation of Austria read something like this:
Are you for the annexation of Austria and our Fuehrer A.H.?
They connected support for Mr. Hilter (love Monty Python) and the annexation and I do not think those votes were cast with any measure of secrecy either, so of course the Nazis got the votes and could officially call the result the will of the german people, since nobody dared to vote "no".
Now Germans generally are good, hardworking, straightforward people who have a great sense for right and wrong. This coming to power of a bunch of genocidal maniacs can happen anywhere in the world given the right set of cicumstances.
The Nazis were the scum of the earth, but they were not stupid, ruthless and just plain evil, but not stupid. They managed to exploit the situation in Germany to it's fullest and I suspect with financial backing of....well, who would have backed those bastards? Somebody did for sure.
To fully explain how they came to power would need another extremely lenghty thread.
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