In this chapter I want to suggest how Nazi repression and persecution as practiced between 1933 and 1939 escalated during the war into wholesale human rights abuses, mass murder, and genocide. On January 30, 1933, when Hitler was appointed chancellor, the massive killing and the disastrous war could not have been foreseen either by the German people or perhaps even by the most radical Nazis. Hitler and most others in the Nazi Party were certainly antisemitic and broadly racist, but what they wanted to do about it and other aspects of their still vaguely defined agenda was not settled. Hitler was determined to become an authoritarian ruler, even a dictator, but at the same time he also wanted to be popular, and so was bound to avoid issues likely to upset the nation as a whole. He insisted time and again that popularity was crucial in that it provided the foundation for all political authority, including his own. This point of view helps us understand why the Nazis proceeded initially with much caution on all fronts.

Unlike Stalin and many other twentieth-century dictators, Hitler wanted to establish a consensus on which he could build. Although some members of the Nazi Party, particularly the Storm Troopers, were prepared to bring about a real revolution in 1933, Hitler favored moving forward not against society but with its backing.