By the time Hitler wrote those words in 1924, he had been in politics for a relatively short time, but during those postwar years he took steps that proved to be especially important. First, discharged from the Pasewalk hospital but not yet demobilized from the Army, he traveled through a crisis-ridden Germany--250,000 Germans starved to death in 1918--and arrived in Munich. That city was a center of violent postwar unrest that produced, among other things, a short-lived, left-wing political takeover, which was crushed on May 1, 1919. To accomplish that task, regular army formations had to be augmented by so-called Freikorps (Free Corps) units. These right-wing paramilitary groups consisted largely of World War I veterans who blamed Germany's defeat on the Jews and the Social Democrats, the largest--and considerably Jewish--political party in the Weimar Republic, which had been proclaimed on November 9, 1918. Although still in the regular Army, Hitler played no major part in suppressing this revolutionary attempt, but his awareness that it included Jewish leadership reinforced his linking of antisemitism with anticommunism.

More decisive in Hitler's political development was the fact that in May 1919 he got a position in the Army's information department, whose Munich unit was under the command of Captain Karl Mayr. Mayr's tasks included inculcating German troops with the proper nationalist and anticommunist attitudes. Hitler was one of the men he selected for training as an instructor in this project. Soon given the opportunity to lecture German troops, Hitler found his element: He proved to be a brilliant and persuasive speaker. Significantly, Hitler's talks to German soldiers in the spring and summer of 1919 were the first occasions in which Hitler spoke publicly against the Jews.