Prior to World War I, Hitler had been a homeless tramp eking out a meager living as an artist in Vienna, Austria, a multi-ethnic city which included Slavs and Jews among its population; his experience there, as well as the racial propaganda Hitler read voraciously - among them the classic forgery ''Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' - fed into his pro-Germanic racist beliefs.
National Socialism did not come into its own until after Germany’s Germany's defeat in World War I. What gave it impetus was the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, in which Germany was forced to assume guilt and responsibility for causing the war and the death and destruction which resulted. The Allies’ insistence on the drafting of the Treaty without German participation, the heavy reparations, the despair and disillusionment felt by many Germans after the war, and those diplomats Hitler felt had agreed to cease the war (the “November criminals”) were all used in Hitler’s Hitler's propaganda to persuade as many Germans as possible to support the Nazi cause. The hyper-inflation of 1923 which wiped out middle-class savings and made the German mark worthless added to the National Socialist cause.
Hitler went into detail as to what National Socialism would be when he wrote his political testament while in prison in 1924. In ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' he outlined his racial policies and theories, his theories regarding German expansion, and his understandings of mass psychology and propaganda; in the latter he understood that a weak-minded people would be led by someone who can speak at their level, regarding "truth" less important than "success":
==After World War II==
National Socialism as a political force in Germany ended with that country’s country's defeat in 1945. Despite a “de-nazification” program by the victorious Allies, adherents to Nazism attempted to create new political groups as early as 1948 in West Germany, but were ineffective at reviving the movement; many were later banned, as with the symbolism that was part of it, such as the swastika.
Today, the only political party considered to have many elements of Nazism is the Baath Party of Syria and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The [[National Democratic Party of Germany]] (NPD) has also many times been accused of neo-Nazism and has survived repeated attempts at banning; party president Udo Voigt has made repeated anti-semitic/anti-immigrant statements, including attacks against America. Small neo-Nazi hate groups operate in several European countries and the United States.