When the war ended, Hitler was in the hospital recovering from achemical weapon attack. He found out that the war ended while hewas in the hospital and he says in his autobiography that he wasfurious. He had believed all the Propaganda that Germany wasinvincible and winning the war, so it was a shock when Germanysurrendered in November 1918.Germany surrendered in large part because of a revolution thathad broken out, and the Kaiser (emperor) had fled and was livingwith relatives in the Netherlands. A republic, the Weimar Republic,was formed- but it wasn't strong. Communists, who were inspired bythe Bolsheviks in Russia, tried to overthrow the republic- theyfailed because German war veterans joined right-wing oriented"Freikorps" ("free corps") militias and fought to stop them. Afterthese events, the Weimar government was understandably nervousabout powerful extremist political parties.The German army, the Reichswehr ("national defense"), had asubsection dedicated to spying on political parties to watch foranother revolt. Hitler, who stayed in the army after getting out ofthe hospital, was assigned to this section, and was ordered to spyon a far right-wing party called the "German Workers Party", whichwas based in Munich (where Hitler had lived for a time in hisyouth). Hitler attended the party's meetings at a **** hall (a kindof large Bavarian pub), and after a couple months, he joined theparty when it became clear that he actually believed in the samethings that they did.He quickly became the leader of the party. Then he reformed theGerman Workers Party into the "National Socialist German WorkersParty", nicknamed "Nazi" for short (although Nazis hated thatnickname). From there, the rest is history...