Well, it's kind of a long story. There was a war, and that war sort of bankrupted the country of Germany. The government that took over after that war was called the Weimar Republic. None of the people in Germany had enough money or food, so they didn't like their government. And then a crazy guy came along and told them all of their problems were because this one group of people who believed in a slightly different version of god than they did secretly controlled everything and wanted to destroy the world. Even though those people didn't control everything, and weren't any better off than anyone else was. Classic scapegoating situation, really. So that guy took over, and the Weimar government got kicked out. It was really... all downhill from there. The book explains it better.
So your planet didn't have any kind of government at all? How did that work? Tribalism?