Nick

Looking at photos of Hitler i find it hard to believe anyone could have taken him seriously. Why did the Germans have so much admiration for a scrawny little man with a ridiculous moustache?

crossroadclarence

I suspect it was for what he said and did, and not because of his looks.

Sargon of Akkad

Because he had a massive amount of charisma and personal magnetism. A picture does not fully express the force of his personality.

tjadams

Yes Sargon, I agree. As crooked, messed up and diabolical as he was, I've read accounts of American reporters covering some of his rallies and came away writing of Hitler's charm, magnetism and persuasive ability.

Linschoten

I think I have quoted this here before, but it is worth repeating, by Otto Strasser:
"Adolf Hiter enters a hall. He sniffs the air. For a minute he gropes, feels his way, senses the atmosphere. Suddenly he bursts forth. His words go like an arrow to their target, he touches each private wound on the raw, liberating the mass unconscious, expressing its innermost aspirations, telling it what it most wants to hear."

Namier quoting Alan Bullock: "In his speeches he stressed and repeated such words as 'smash', 'force', 'ruthless' or 'hatred'; and his shortcomings as an orator 'mattered little beside the extraordinary impression of force, the immediacy of passion, the intensity of hatred, fury and menace conveyed by the sound of the voice alone without regard for waht he said'. 'With an almost inexhaustible fund of resentment in his own nature to draw from', he made the appeal to nationalist sentiment an essential aprt of his stock-in-trade, and offered the Germans 'a series of objects on which to lavish the blame for their misfortunes'. 'Lashing himself to a pitch of near-hysteria, he would scream and spit out his resentment', evoking a hysterical response in his audience."

crossroadclarence

Ever wonder why you have never heard a complete Hitler speech dubbed in English? Well, there ya go.

Stuyvesant

Compare it to a movie.

Nobody will take a movie with a bald villain with a white cat on his lap serious. Everybody knows its a cliché, you'll only spot it in parodies like Austin Powers. And yet, there was a time when it had an effect on people, they would be impressed by it.

I think its the same with Hitler. In his days, it was quite something to listen to.

gaius valerius

He looks pretty normal. Yes he is no adonis in physical appearance but then again, so is the majority of the populace. Scrawny little man sounds like an impression coloured in hindsight, not a neutral assessment of his appearance. Churchill was ugly as hell to.

Spartacuss

I imagine the German industrialists and bankers at the time thought the same as the op's premise. "Oh yeah...we got this guy."

Rosi

Churchill used to remind me of that fat guy from the duo of Laurel & Hardy, donno which one it was. Hardy, probably.