2. hitler's rise to power

• hitler and the nazi party

  With World War One over, Hitler returned to Munich and set on a path that eventually led him to become the leader of the Nazi party.

  • 1919 – Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party (DAP), a right-wing group led by Anton Drexler.
  • 1920 – Hitler became the Party’s leading public speaker and propagandist.
  • 1920 – The group changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) – or Nazis for short.
  • 1921 – Hitler was elected Party Chairman and leader of the Nazis.
• why germans felt they had been "stabbed in the back" by politicians

  • Many Germans hated the government for signing the armistice in November 1918 - and called them the 'November Criminals'.
  • Many people were led to believe that Jews in the army and government had encouraged the surrender.
  • The German government also signed the Treaty of Versailles, which blamed and punished Germany for starting the war. As many German families had lost their men during the war, this was especially hard to bear.
• key points of nazi's 25 point plan

  • A strong Germany - the Treaty of Versailles should be abolished and all German-speaking people united in one country.
  • Führer - the idea that there should be a single leader with complete power rather than a democracy.
  • Social Darwinism - the idea that the Aryan race was superior and Jews were 'subhuman'.
  • Autarky - the idea that Germany should be economically self-sufficient.
  • That Germany was in danger - from communists and Jews, who had to be destroyed.
  • Lebensraum - the need for 'living space' for the German nation to expand
• appeal of the nazis - socialists

  • farmers should be given their land
  • pensions should improve
  • public industries such as electricity and water should be owned by the state
• appeal of the nazis - Nationalist

  • all German-speaking people should be united in one country
  • the Treaty of Versailles should be abolished
  • there should be special laws for foreigners
• appeal of the nazis - racists

  • Jews should not be German citizens.
  • Immigration should be stopped
• appeal of the nazis - fascists

  • focused on creating a strong central government
  • government control of the newspapers
• membership and growth of nazi party

  end of 1920: 2000 members

  munich putsch 1923: 20,000 members
• The role and impact of the SA

  1921: Hitler assembled a large group of unemployed young men and former soldiers, known as the SA, as the Nazi Party’s private army:

  • nickname ‘Brownshirts’ (uniforms)
  • role: protect party meetings, march in Nazi rallies and intimidate political opponents (breaking up meetings).
  • Many SA men were former soldiers, some upset with post ww1 treatment (‘November Criminals’)
  • After the failure of the Munich Putsch, the SA was reorganised.
  • started to be used to intimidate voters into voting for the Nazis.
  • Nazis weren't only ones with a paramilitary group (communists)
• SA membership

  By 1932 the SA had 400,000 members. This number swelled to an estimated two million by the time Hitler came to power in 1933, largely due to unemployed men joining up during the Great Depression.
• munich putsch

  In November 1923

  Hitler tried to take advantage of the hyperinflation crisis facing the Weimar government by trying to launch a revolution in Munich (Munich Putsch). It seemed like the perfect opportunity to take power, but poor planning and misjudgement resulted in failure and the subsequent imprisonment of Adolf Hitler.
• why Hitler attempted the Munich Putsch

  • By 1923, the Nazi party had 55,000 members and was stronger than ever
  • Weimar Republic was in crisis due to hyperinflation.
  • In September 1923, the Weimar government had called off the general strike, and German nationalists were furious with the government.
  • Hitler thought he would be helped by important nationalist politicians in Bavaria.
  • Hitler had a huge army of SA members, he knew he would lose control of them if he did not give them something to do.
  • Hitler hoped to copy Mussolini who had come to power in Italy in 1922 by marching on Rome.
• munich putsch 1!

  During hyperinflation crisis of 1923, Hitler saw an opportunity.

  People had many different ideas about how Germany was being run. The individual states had different identities that affected how politics was run in that area.

  In Bavaria, (capital – Munich) the majority of the population were Catholic things were quite traditional.

  >many within that state intensely disliked the new Weimar government and saw them as weak.

  Hitler thought he would take advantage of this and plotted with two nationalist politicians - Kahr and Lossow - to take over Munich in a revolution.
• munich putsch 2!

  Hitler collected the SA and told them to be ready to rebel.

  4 October 1923, Kahr and Lossow called off the rebellion

  >This was an impossible situation for Hitler, who had 3,000 troops ready to fight.

  night of 8 November 1923

  Hitler and 600 SA members burst into a meeting that Kahr and Lossow were holding at the local Beer Hall.

  Waving a gun at them, Hitler forced them to agree to rebel - and then let them go home.

  The SA took over the army headquarters and the offices of the local newspaper.
• munich putsch 3!

  9 November 1923

  Hitler and the SA went into Munich on what they thought would be a triumphal march to take power.

  However, Kahr had called in police and army reinforcements.

  There was a short scuffle in which the police killed 16 members of the SA.

  Hitler fled, but was arrested two days later.
• short term consequences of munich putsch

  • The Nazi party was banned, and Hitler was prevented from speaking in public until 1927.
  • Hitler was tried for high treason (betraying his country) and sentenced to five years in prison.
• long term successes of munich putsch

  • He was sentenced in April and out of prison by December. in the comfortable Landsberg Prison, he wrote 'Mein Kampf' . Millions of Germans read it, and Hitler's ideas became very well-known.
  • The fact that the judge had been so lenient with the sentence and that Hitler had served so little time suggests that some people in authority had sympathy with Hitler and what he had tried to do.
  • Hitler realised that he would never come to power by revolution and that he would have to use democratic means, he reorganised the party to take part in elections.
• the period up to 1929 is known as the Nazi Party’s ‘lean years’ because two apparently contradictory things were happening to it:

  • it was growing in size – its membership increased from 27,000 in 1925 to 130,000 in 1929
  • but it struggled to win seats in the Reichstag:
• The decision to pursue power through democratic methods meant the party needed a national structure to attract members, develop polices and campaign. Hitler put this in place during 1925 and 1926.

  
• propoganda - mein kampf

  While in jail Hitler wrote a book called Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which was an autobiography, laying out his political beliefs and ambitions. Many of the ideas directly informed Nazi policy after 1933 under the Third Reich, including:

  • The belief that the Jews were an inferior race to the German Aryans, and also represented a threat
  • The need to destroy the parliamentary system of government, replace it with a single, strong dictator.
  • Germany’s requirement for Lebensraum to house its growing population, required Germany to expand to the East (Poland and Russia)
• bamberg conference

  14 February 1926

  Hitler called a special Nazi Party conference at Bamberg in southern Germany in response to tension between the northern and southern sections of the party. During his time in jail disagreements had grown between the two sections:

  • the northern section, led by a man named Gregor Strasser, was keen to emphasise the socialist elements of the 25-Point Programme to attract support from the workers
  • the southern section more interested in the nationalist and racist policies in order to attract support from the middle classes and farmers
• bamberg conference

  The results of the conference were:

  • Hitler insisted that policies which could be painted as communist (such as taking land from rich noblemen) would not be pursued.
  • However, the conference did reaffirm the 25-Point Programme, with its socialist ideas, as the party’s policy platform.
  • In addition, Hitler established the Fuhrerprinzip, or ‘Leader Principle’, the idea that the party’s leader was in absolute control and all members must follow his directions. No dissent from this was expected or tolerated.
• reasons for limited support of the nazis 1924 - 1928

  • Gustav Stresemann’s economic policies had helped Germany a lot. the introduction of a new currency and the Dawes Plan helped to turn Weimar’s economy around and Germans began to feel more prosperous.
  • As a result, Germany was also more politically stable. Germans voted for moderate parties who supported the Republic, rather than more extreme parties like the Nazis who wanted to abolish it.
• reasons for limited support of the nazis 1924 - 1928

  • At a time of stability, scaremongering and playing on people’s fears was less likely to work.
  • Hitler was jailed and then banned from speaking in public until 1927 after the Munich Putsch. This prevented the party from campaigning effectively.
  • The Nazi Party was under constant pressure from the Weimar authorities following the Munich Putsch. Several times it was banned nationally or in certain parts of Germany.
• impact of the great depression on germany

  October 1929

  Wall Street Crash on the US stock exchange brought about a global economic depression.

  In Europe, Germany was worst affected because American banks called in all of their foreign loans at very short notice

  >These loans, agreed under the Dawes Plan in 1924, had been the basis for Germany’s economic recovery from the disaster of hyperinflation.

  The loans funded German industry and helped to pay reparations. Without these loans German industry collapsed and a depression began:
• impact of the great depression on germany

  The most obvious consequence of this collapse was a huge rise in unemployment.

  winter of 1929-30 the unemployment rose from 1.4 million to over 2 million.

  by January 1933 (hitler is now chancellor) , 1 in 3 Germans were unemployed, 6.1 million.

  Industrial production had also more than halved over the same period.
• The impact of unemployment

  • The rise in unemployment significantly raised government expenditure on unemployment insurance and other benefits.
  • Germans began to lose faith in democracy and looked to extreme parties on both the Left (the communists) and the Right (the Nazis) for quick and simple solutions.
• growth in nazi support 1929-1932 - political failure part 1

  In March 1930

  the German Chancellor, Hermann Müller, resigned when his government could not agree on how to tackle the rise in government spending caused by the rise in unemployment.

  He was replaced by Heinrich Brüning.

  His policies were shit in dealing with the unemployment crisis and further undermined Germans’ faith in democracy
• growth in nazi support 1924-1928 - political failure part 2

  • July 1930: Brüning cut government expenditure, wages and unemployment pay. This added to the spiral of decline and unemployment continued to rise, as well as making those who had lost their jobs even poorer.
  • However, Brüning could not get the Reichstag to agree to his actions, so President Hindenburg used Article 48 of the Weimar constitution
  • This undermined democracy and weakened the power of the Reichstag – arguably opening the way for Hitler’s later dictatorship.
• growth in nazi support 1924-1928 - rise in extremism

  During the economic depression between 1930 and 1933, many people were affected and poverty hit Germany hard.

  Extreme political parties offering simple solutions to their problems appeared at both ends of the political spectrum.

  Between 1930 and 1933, support for the extreme right-wing Nazis and the extreme left-wing communists soared
• growth in nazi support 1924-1928 - rise in extremism

  1932: parties committed to the destruction of the Weimar Republic held 319 seats out of a total of 608 in the Reichstag, with many workers turning to communism.

  The communists had their own version of the SA, the Communist Red Fighting League, which broke up opposition party meetings.

  They confronted the police in street battles, and clashed with the Nazis’ SA as well.

  However, ultimately, the party that did better out of all this unrest were the Nazis.
• reasons for growth in support of the nazis

  1928: Nazis had 12 seats in the Reichstag

  July 1932: had 230 seats and were the largest party.
• reasons for growth in support of the nazis - appeal to wealthy businessmen

  wealthy businessmen were frightened communists would take their wealth away and did not want to see any more increase in support for them.

  >they began to give money to Hitler and the Nazis, hoping they would gain more seats – not the communists
• reasons for growth in support of the nazis - appeal to middle class

  the middle class were generally quite traditional and were not convinced by the Weimar democracy.

  Hitler promised them a strong government and won their votes.
• reasons for growth in support of the nazis - appeal to nationalists

  nationalists blamed the legacy of the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for causing the depression

  > so lent their support to the Nazis who had promised to make Germany strong again.
• reasons for growth in support of the nazis - appeal to the rural

  The Nazis appealed to people in the countryside - especially middle class shopkeepers and craftsmen, farmers and agricultural labourers
• reasons for growth is support of the nazis - propoganda

  propaganda was controlled by Goebbels and had 3 main themes:

  • The Führer cult. Hitler was always portrayed as Germany’s saviour – the man who would rescue the country from the grip of depression.
  • Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community). This was the idea that the Nazis would create one German community that would make religion or social class less relevant to people.
  • Scapegoating the Jews (and others) for Germany’s ills. Jews were often portrayed as sub-human, or as a threat to both the racial purity and economic future of the country.
• reasons for growth in support of the nazis - the SA

  The SA played a part in the Nazis’ increasing popularity by:

  • intimidating the Nazis’ political opponents – especially the communists – by turning up at their meetings and attacking them
  • providing opportunities for young, unemployed men to become involved in the party
  • protecting Hitler and other key Nazis when they organised meetings and made speeches
• how hitler became chancellor 1932 - 1933

  context

  Chancellors in this period were normally weak because:

  • proportional representation made it hard for political parties to gain a majority of seats meaning ---> Chancellor found it difficult to control the Reichstag.
  • By 1932 President Hindenburg had to use Article 48 to pass almost every law.
• how hitler became chancellor 1932 - 1933

  1932

  April – Presidential election.

  Hitler (36.8%) came second to Hindenburg (53%)

  May – Brüning resigned as Chancellor.

  Hindenburg appointed Franz Von Papen as his replacement.

  July – Reichstag elections.

  Nazis became the largest party with 230 seats. Hitler demanded to be made Chancellor but Papen remained.

  November – Reichstag elections called by Von Papen to try to win a majority in parliament.