The charismatic movement

After the defeat of Germany in 1918, Adolf Hitler suffered his emotional collapse, then recovered and continued to search for his place in the world. He had little success at first, and he stayed afloat by working as a government informer. This took him into the political underground, a world of fringe parties with extreme ideas, of street fighting and pamphleteering, of strange groups such as the Thule Society, a quasi-occult, anti-Semitic, semipolitical crank group that included several senior Nazis, and of conspiracy theories, state secrets, betrayals, assassinations and bomb plots. As a double Iron Cross holder he had great prestige in this milieu. His exceptional intelligence gave him leverage, and his artistic temperament gave him unusual insight. He cut quite a different figure from the confused, lost youth he had been, and he was psychologically distinct from the angry ex-soldiers and mainstream aspiring politicos he now mixed with. Soon he began to rise, joining the fledgling Nazi party and then becoming its spokesman. His discovery of his talent for public speaking was the breakthrough that gave him confidence and established him as a leader, while also cementing his self-concept as a visionary.