Bettie’s Reviews > Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives > Status Update

START HERE IN APRIL: now I can have my holiday, birthday and Easter without worrying about this group read!

The Nazis attracted a large part of the church- going
population in the Protestant parts of the country; much less in the Catholic
areas (including Bavaria) until after Hitler came to power and signed the
Concordat with the Vatican in the summer of 1933.

Hitler: 1930-1933 (aged 41 -43 years)


I


The equivalent phase in Hitler’s career to Stalin's rise to power (1924-
9), which we have just traced, was September 1930 to 30 January 1933. 1930 Hitler in Munich

In April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek turned on his Communist allies in
Shanghai and massacred a large number of them.

Lenin ’s Successor
Stalin: 1924-1929 (aged 44—50 years)


I


During the period 1924—9 Stalin was as intent as Hitler on securing
power and, like Hitler, saw the party as the means of achieving it.

On 3-4 August 1929, Hitler staged the most impressive Party Con-
gress yet, at Nuremberg, with thirty special trains bringing 200,000
members and sympathizers from all over Germany,

Like Stalin, Hitler was scornful of intellectuals, yet at the same time eager to establish his own intellectual authority. Stalin sought to do this
in the Foundations of Leninism (published in the year Hitler was writing Mein Kampf)

[bookcover:Mein Kampf|54270] versus [bookcover:The Foundations of Leninism|6329598]

The Creation of the Nazi Party


Hitler: 1924-1930 (aged 35 —-41 years)


I


Exactly a month after Stalin’s ‘oath’ speech in the Bolshoi Theatre, on 26
February 1924, the trial for treason of Hitler and the other members of
the unsuccessful Putsch opened in Munich.

21 January 1924,

[..] the three most impor-
tant positions after Lenin’s were held by Jews — Trotsky, Zinoviev and
Kamenev — and a fourth by a Georgian.