Hitler was very successful, but you have to realize that he wouldn't have been if some of the ideology wasn't already in place because of cultural traditions and ideas that had been around for centuries and in some cases, still have an effect.
Hitler used the Volkish ideology (check it out on wikipedia) of the germanic peoples back then to whip up support and inspire a miserable people and warped it to his purposes in much the same way as Muslim clerics warp Islamic religious doctrine today.
You have to remember that Germany was in economic misery. People were wallpapering their outhouses with marks (german money) because it was worth so little. Folks were hungry and goods were scarce and Hitler took advantage of that and gave them something to believe in that sounded like the heroic stories of old.