Many in Germany were never particularly taken with the post-World War I system of democracy known as the Weimar Republic. Furthermore, the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed massive war reparations obligations on the infant state, provided fodder to all manner of radical groups claiming that the Weimar Republic was nothing less than a treasonous regime installed by the war victors.
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Adolf Hitler's Nazi party was one of those groups. The party got its start in 1919 in Munich and, once Hitler joined, grew quickly to provide a political home for Bavaria's myriad disillusioned nationalists. In addition to virulent anti-Semitism, Hitler's message -- proclaimed at dozens of meetings in beer halls in the early 1920s -- included a withering critique of the Treaty of Versailles and, by extension, of the Weimar Republic
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