CHAPTER-3: NAZISM AND THE RISE OF HITLER

Formation of the Weimar Republic.

i. The defeat of Imperial Germany and the abdication of the emperor gave an opportunity to

recast German polity.

ii. A National Assembly met at Weimar and established a democratic constitution with a

federal structure.

iii. Deputies were now elected to the German Parliament or Reichstag, on the basis of

equal and universal votes cast by all adults including women.

Terms of the treaty of Versailles.

i. Germany lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population, 13 per cent of its territories,

75 per cent of its iron and 26 per cent of its coal to France, Poland, Denmark and

Lithuania.

ii. The Allied Powers demilitarised Germany to weaken its power.

iii. The War Guilt Clause held Germany responsible for the war and damages the Allied

countries suffered. Germany was forced to pay compensation amounting to £6 billion.

iv. The Allied armies also occupied the resource-rich Rhineland for much of the 1920s.

November Criminals:

i. The republic carried the burden of war guilt and national humiliation and was financially

crippled by being forced to pay compensation.

ii. Those who supported the Weimar Republic, mainly Socialists, Catholics and Democrats,

became easy targets of attack in the conservative nationalist circles.

iii. They were mockingly called the November criminals.

The First World War and its impact on European society and polity:

i. Soldiers came to be placed above civilians.

ii. Politicians and publicists laid great stress on the need for men to be aggressive, strong

and masculine.

iii. The media glorified trench life.

sphere,

v. while popular support grew for conservative dictatorships that had recently come into

being. Democracy was indeed a young and fragile idea, which could not survive the

instabilities of interwar Europe.

The problems faced by the Weimar Republic. (Briefly explain each point ii-v)

i. The republic carried the burden of war guilt and national humiliation and was financially

crippled by being forced to pay compensation.

ii. The Spartacist uprising

iii. The economic crisis of 1923 in Germany

iv. The impact of economic crisis in Germany

v. The inherent defects of the Weimar Republic.

The Spartacist uprising:

i. The birth of the Weimar Republic coincided with the revolutionary uprising of the Spartacist

League on the pattern of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

ii. The political atmosphere in Berlin was charged with demands for Soviet-style governance.

iii. The Weimar Republic crushed the uprising with help of a war veterans organisation called

Free Corps.

The economic crisis of 1923 in Germany:

i. Germany had fought the war largely on loans and had to pay war reparations in gold. This

depleted gold reserves at a time resources were scarce.

ii. In 1923 Germany refused to pay, and the French occupied its leading industrial area, Ruhr,

to claim their coal.

iii. Germany retaliated with passive resistance and printed paper currency recklessly. With too

much printed money in circulation, the value of the German mark fell. As the value of the

mark collapsed, prices of goods soared.

high.

v. Eventually, the Americans intervened and bailed Germany out of the crisis by introducing the

Dawes Plan, which reworked the terms of reparation to ease the financial burden on

Germans.

The impact of economic crisis in Germany:

i. German investments and industrial recovery were totally dependent on short-term loans,

largely from the USA. This support was withdrawn when the Wall Street Exchange crashed in

1929.

ii. By 1932, industrial production was reduced to 40 per cent of the 1929 level. Workers lost

their jobs or were paid reduced wages. The number of unemployed touched an

unprecedented 6 million. As jobs disappeared, the youth took to criminal activities and total

despair became commonplace.

iii. The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people. The middle classes,

especially salaried employees and pensioners, saw their savings diminish when the currency

lost its value. Small businessmen, the self-employed and retailers suffered as their

businesses got ruined. These sections of society were filled with the fear of

proletarianisation, an anxiety of being reduced to the ranks of the working class, or worse

still, the unemployed.

iv. The large mass of peasantry was affected by a sharp fall in agricultural prices.

The inherent defects of the Weimar Republic:

i. The Weimar constitution had some inherent defects, which made it unstable and vulnerable

to dictatorship. One was proportional representation. This made achieving a majority by

any one party a near impossible task, leading to a rule by coalitions.

ii. Another defect was Article 48, which gave the President the powers to impose emergency,

suspend civil rights and rule by decree.

iii. Within its short life, the Weimar Republic saw twenty different cabinets lasting on an average
239 days, and a liberal use of Article 48.

Nazism became popular in Germany by 1930.

i. In 1919, he joined a small group called the German Worker’s Party. He took over the

organisation and renamed it the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. This party

came to be known as the Nazi Party.

ii. It was during the Great Depression that Nazism became a mass movement. After 1929,

banks collapsed, businesses shut down, and workers lost their jobs. In such a situation Nazi

propaganda stirred hopes of a better future. In 1928, the Nazi Party got no more than 2. 6 per

cent votes in the Reichstag. By 1932, it had become the largest party with 37 per cent votes.

iii. Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and his words moved people. He promised to

build a strong nation, undo the injustice of the Versailles Treaty and restore the dignity of the

German people, promised employment and a secure future for the youth. He promised to

weed out all foreign influences.

iv. Hitler devised a new style of politics. He understood the significance of rituals and

spectacle in mass mobilisation. Nazis held massive rallies and public meetings to

demonstrate the support for Hitler and instil a sense of unity among the people. The Red

banners with the Swastika, the Nazi salute, and the ritualised rounds of applause after

the speeches were all part of this spectacle of power.

v. Nazi propaganda skilfully projected Hitler as a messiah, a saviour, as someone who had

arrived to deliver people from their distress.

The steps taken by Hitler to destroy democracy:

i. On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg offered the Chancellorship, the highest position

in the cabinet of ministers, to Hitler. Having acquired power, Hitler set out to dismantle the

structures of democratic rule.

ii. A mysterious fire that broke out in the German Parliament building in February facilitated his

move. The Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 indefinitely suspended civic rights like freedom of

speech, press and assembly that had been guaranteed by the Weimar constitution.

iii. Then he turned on his archenemies, the Communists, most of whom were hurriedly packed off to
the newly established concentration camps.

iv. On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act established dictatorship in

Germany.

a. It gave Hitler all powers to side line Parliament and rule by decree.

b. All political parties and trade unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its

affiliates.

c. The state established complete control over the economy, media, army and judiciary.

2. Special surveillance and security forces were created to control and order society in ways that

the Nazis wanted. Apart from the already existing regular police in green uniform and the SA or

the Storm Troopers, these included

a. the Gestapo (secret state police),

b. the SS (the protection squads),

c. criminal police and the Security Service (SD).

It was the extra-constitutional powers of these newly organised forces that gave the Nazi state its

reputation as the most dreaded criminal state.

Hitler’s Foreign Policy:

i. In foreign policy also Hitler acquired quick successes.

d. He pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933,

e. reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936,

f. and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan, One people, One empire,

and One leader.

ii. He then went on to wrest German speaking Sudentenland from Czechoslovakia, and gobbled up

the entire country.

iii. In all of this he had the unspoken support of England, which had considered the Versailles verdict

too harsh. Resources were to be accumulated through expansion of territory.

iv. In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This started a war with France and England

“The triple alliance”:

Hitler’s claim to international power.

“Historic blunder”

i. Hitler attacked The Soviet Union in order to achieve his long-term aim of conquering

Eastern Europe. He wanted to ensure food supplies and living space for Germans. He

attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941.

ii. In this historic blunder Hitler exposed the German western front to British aerial bombing

and the eastern front to the powerful Soviet armies.

iii. The Soviet Red Army inflicted a crushing and humiliating defeat on Germany at

Stalingrad. After this the Soviet Red Army hounded out the retreating German soldiers

until they reached the heart of Berlin.

The US entered the second world war:

i. The USA had resisted involvement in the war. It was unwilling to once again face all the

economic problems that the First World War had caused. But it could not stay out of the

war for long.

ii. Japan was expanding its power in the east. It had occupied French Indo-China and was

planning attacks on US naval bases in the Pacific.

iii. When Japan extended its support to Hitler and bombed the US base at Pearl Harbor, the

US entered the Second World War. The war ended in May 1945 with Hitler’s defeat and

the US dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.

“The Nazi world view”

i. According to this there was no equality between people, but only a racial hierarchy. In this

view blond, blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews were located at the

lowest rung. They came to be regarded as an anti-race, the arch-enemies of the Aryans. All

other coloured people were placed in between depending upon their external features.

ii. Hitler’s racism borrowed from thinkers like Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Darwin was

a natural scientist who tried to explain the creation of plants and animals through the concept
of evolution and natural selection. Darwin never advocated human intervention in what he

thought was a purely natural process of selection.

iii. However, his ideas were used by racist thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over

conquered peoples.

Hitler’s geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or living space.

i. He believed that new territories had to be acquired for settlement.

g. This would enhance the area of the mother country,

h. While enabling the settlers on new lands to retain an intimate link with the place of their

origin.

i. It would also enhance the material resources and power of the German nation.

ii. Hitler intended to extend German boundaries by moving eastwards, to concentrate all Germans

geographically in one place.

iii. Poland became the laboratory for this experimentation.

Undesirable Communities:

i. Nazis wanted only a society of pure and healthy Nordic Aryans. They alone were considered

desirable.

ii. This meant that even those Germans who were seen as impure or abnormal had no right to

exist. Under the Euthanasia Programme.

iii. Many Gypsies and blacks living in Nazi Germany were considered as racial inferiors who

threatened the biological purity of the superior Aryan race. They were widely persecuted.

iv. Even Russians and Poles were considered subhuman, and hence undeserving of any humanity.

When Germany occupied Poland and parts of Russia, captured civilians were forced to work as

slave labour.

v. Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. They were often persecuted through

periodic organised violence, and expulsion from the land.

Jews -worst sufferers in Nazi Germany

in the traditional Christian hostility towards Jews. They had been stereotyped as killers of

Christ and usurers.

ii. a) Until medieval times Jews were barred from owning land. They survived mainly through

trade and moneylending.

b) They lived in separately marked areas called ghettos.

c) They were often persecuted through periodic organised violence, and expulsion from the

land.

iii. From 1933 to 1938 the Nazis terrorised, pauperised and segregated the Jews, compelling

them to leave the country. The next phase, 1939-1945, aimed at concentrating them in

certain areas and eventually killing them in gas chambers in Poland.

Poland become the laboratory for experimentation

i. Occupied Poland was divided up. Much of north-western Poland was annexed to Germany.

Poles were forced to leave their homes and properties behind to be occupied by ethnic

Germans brought in from occupied Europe.

ii. Poles were then collected in the other part called the General Government, the destination of

all undesirables of the empire.

iii. Members of the Polish intelligentsia were murdered in large numbers in order to keep the

entire people intellectually and spiritually servile.

iv. Polish children who looked like Aryans were forcibly snatched from their mothers and

examined by race experts. If they passed the race tests they were raised in German families

and if not, they were deposited in orphanages where most perished.

v. With some of the largest ghettos and gas chambers, the General Government also served as

the killing fields for the Jews.

Views of Hitler regarding children in Nazi society.

i. Hitler felt that a strong Nazi society could be established only by teaching children Nazi

ideology.
ii. All schools were cleansed and purified. This meant that teachers who were Jews or seen as

politically unreliable were dismissed.

iii. Children were first segregated: Germans and Jews could not sit together or play together.

Subsequently, undesirable children ñ Jews, the physically handicapped, Gypsies ñ were

thrown out of schools. And finally in the 1940s, they were taken to the gas chambers.

iv. Then came a prolonged period of ideological training. School textbooks were rewritten. Racial

science was introduced to justify Nazi ideas of race. Stereotypes about Jews were

popularised even through maths classes.

v. Children were taught to be loyal and submissive, hate Jews, and worship Hitler.

vi. Even the function of sports was to nurture a spirit of violence and aggression among

children. Hitler believed that boxing could make children iron hearted, strong and masculine.

Policy towards the youth under Hitler.

i. Youth organisations were made responsible for educating German youth in the spirit of

National Socialism.

ii. Ten-year-olds had to enter Jungvolk. At 14, all boys had to join the Nazi youth organisation

“Hitler Youth” where they learnt to worship war, glorify aggression and violence, condemn

democracy, and hate Jews, communists, Gypsies and all those categorised as undesirable.

iii. After a period of rigorous ideological and physical training they joined the Labour Service,

usually at the age of 18.

iv. Then they had to serve in the armed forces and enter one of the Nazi organisations.

The Nazi cult of motherhood:

i. Children in Nazi Germany were repeatedly told that women were radically different from men.

The fight for equal rights for men and women was wrong.

ii. While boys were taught to be aggressive, masculine and steel hearted, girls were told that

they had to become good mothers and rear pure-blooded Aryan children. Girls had to

maintain the purity of the race, distance themselves from Jews, look after the home, and

teach their children Nazi values.

iii. In Nazi state the mother was the most important citizen. But all mothers were not treated

equally. Women who bore racially undesirable children were punished and those who
produced racially desirable children were awarded. They were given favoured treatment in

hospitals and were also entitled to concessions in shops and on theatre tickets and railway

fares.

iv. To encourage women to produce many children, Honour Crosses were awarded. A bronze

cross was given for four children, silver for six and gold for eight or more.

v. All Aryan women who deviated from the prescribed code of conduct were publicly

condemned, and severely punished.

The “art of propaganda” in Nazi Germany:

The Nazi regime used language and media with care, and often to great effect. The terms they

coined to describe their various practices are not only deceptive. They are chilling. Nazis never

used the words kill or murder in their official communications.

a. Mass killings were termed special treatment,

b. final solution (for the Jews),

c. euthanasia (for the disabled), selection and disinfections.

d. Evacuation meant deporting people to gas chambers.

e. gas chambers were labelled disinfection-area

i. Media was carefully used to win support for the regime and popularise its worldview. Nazi

ideas were spread through visual images, films, radio, posters, catchy slogans and leaflets. In

posters, groups identified as the enemies of Germans were stereotyped, mocked, abused

and described as evil.

j. Socialists and liberals were represented as weak and degenerate. They were attacked as

malicious foreign agents.

k. Propaganda films were made to create hatred for Jews. The most infamous film was The

Eternal Jew.

l. Orthodox Jews were stereotyped and marked. They were shown with flowing beards

wearing kaftans, whereas in reality it was difficult to distinguish German Jews by their

outward appearance because they were a highly assimilated community. They were

referred to as vermin, rats and pests. Their movements were compared to those of
rodents.

m. The Nazis made equal efforts to appeal to all the different sections of the population.

They sought to win their support by suggesting that Nazis alone could solve all their

problems.

Reaction of common people:

i. Many saw the world through Nazi eyes, and spoke their mind in Nazi language. They felt

hatred and anger surge inside them when they saw someone who looked like a Jew. They

marked the houses of Jews and reported suspicious neighbours. They genuinely believed

Nazism would bring prosperity and improve general well-being.

ii. But not every German was a Nazi. Many organised active resistance to Nazism, braving

police repression and death.

iii. The large majority of Germans, however, were passive onlookers and apathetic witnesses.

They were too scared to act, to differ, to protest. They preferred to look away. Pastor

Niemoeller, a resistance fighter, observed an absence of protest, an uncanny silence,

amongst ordinary Germans in the face of brutal and organised crimes committed against

people in the Nazi empire.

What Jews felt in Nazi Germany?

i. Charlotte Beradt secretly recorded people’s dreams in her diary and later published them in a

highly disconcerting book called the Third Reich of Dreams.

ii. She describes how Jews themselves began believing in the Nazi stereotypes about them.

The stereotypical images publicised in the Nazi press haunted the Jews. They troubled them

even in their dreams.

iii. Jews died many deaths even before they reached the gas chamber.

“Holocaust”:

i. The atrocities and sufferings the Jews had endured during the Nazi killing operations is also

called the Holocaust.

ii. This indomitable spirit to bear witness and to preserve the documents can be seen in many

ghetto and camp inhabitants who wrote diaries, kept notebooks, and created archives.

iii. On the other hand when the war seemed lost, the Nazi leadership distributed petrol to its
functionaries to destroy all incriminating evidence available in offices.

iv. Yet the history and the memory of the Holocaust live on in memoirs, fiction, documentaries,

poetry, memorials and museums in many parts of the world today.

Peculiar features of Nazi thinking:

i. The Nazi world view

ii. The geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or living space.

iii. Establishment of the Racial State

iv. Role of School

v. Controlling the Youth

vi. Controlling the Mothers

vii. The Art of Propaganda