*Includes pictures *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading It is often claimed that Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany through democratic means, and while that is a stretch, it is true that he managed to become an absolute dictator as Chancellor of Germany in the 1930s through a mixture of politics and intimidation. Ironically, he had set such a course only because of the failure of an outright coup attempt known as the Beer Hall Putsch about a decade earlier. At the close of World War I, Hitler was an impoverished young artist who scrapped by through selling souvenir paintings, but within a few years, his powerful oratory brought him to the forefront of the Nazi party in Munich and helped make the party much more popular. A smattering of followers in the hundreds quickly became a party of thousands, with paramilitary forces like the SA backing them, and at the head of it all was a man whose fiery orations denounced Jews, communists and other “traitors” for bringing upon the German nation the Treaty of Versailles, which had led to hyperinflation and a wrecked economy. During the first few years of the decade, the government in Munich had actually supported the fledgling Nazi party as a counterweight against the communists, which had attempted a coup years earlier, but it would nearly come back to haunt the authorities on November 8, 1923, when Hitler and his forces attempted to start a revolution and take over the city. Backed by men like Rudolf Hess, Hermann Goering, and Ernst Röhm, Hitler and the Nazis came perilously close to succeeding, and they may have been undone only because of the SA’s refusal to initiate violence against German police and Army members.