Daniel's Story

Through her characters, Carol Matas explains the basic historical context of Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust. Uncle Peter says, “[Hitler’s] party, the National Socialist party—they are called Nazis—has lots of seats in Parliament” (9). Though the Nazis called themselves socialists, they weren’t socialists: They had no coherent ideology. Hitler, a frustrated painter and soldier in World War I, gained control of the Nazi party. In The Rise of the Third Reich (2005), the contemporary historian Richard J. Evans says Hitler achieved success “by telling his audiences what they wanted to hear” (Evans 171). As Uncle Peter says in Daniel’s Story, “[The Germans] think [Hitler] can solve all their problems of unemployment and that he can stop the fighting” (9).

The humiliating World War I defeat and the Great Depression made Germany a turbulent place, and the Germans voted for the Nazis in fair elections, and their popularity lifted Hitler to the position of chancellor.

Uncle Peter tells Daniel, “Hitler changed the constitution so that he now rules us” (9). After a 1933 fire burned down the Reichstag (the building for the German parliament), Hitler accused Germany’s enemies of starting the fire, and he replaced democracy with totalitarianism.