Apart from Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg, Gauss, Freud, Mann, Heidegger, Frankfurt School, Weimar Culture, BauHaus design, BASF, Bayer, the Audi merger, the founding of the “people’s car” and Volkswagen, Germany didn’t really have much going for it.
While there was economic turmoil, there is no denying that Germany was a “center” of culture, knowledge, and production/economics during that period of time. It is not like Hitler rose to power in a society that dissimilar that didn’t have the means or know-how to stop it. He just showed up at an opportunistic time, when Germans weren’t feeling like they were there usual “greatness” and he appealed to the German shadow.