HITLER RISE TO POWER

This crisis in the economy, polity and society formed the background to Hitler’s rise to power. Born
in 1889 in Austria, Hitler spent his youth in poverty. When the First World War broke out, he
enrolled for the army, acted as a messenger in the front, became a corporal, and earned medals for
bravery. The German defeat horrified him and the Versailles Treaty made him furious. In 1919, he
joined a small group called the German Workers’ Party. He subsequently took over the organisation
and renamed it the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. This party came to be known as the
Nazi Party. In 1923, Hitler planned to seize control of Bavaria, march to Berlin and capture power. He
failed, was arrested, tried for treason, and later released. The Nazis could not effectively mobilise
popular support till the early 1930s. It was during the Great Depression that Nazism became a mass
movement. As we have seen, after 1929, banks collapsed and businesses shut down, workers lost
their jobs and the middle classes were threatened with destitution. 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 – the German parliament. By 1932, it had become the largest party with 37
per cent votes. 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. He promised employment for those looking for work, and a secure future for the
youth. He promised to weed out all foreign influences and resist all foreign ‘conspiracies’ against
Germany. 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. Nazi propaganda skilfully projected Hitler as a messiah, a saviour, as someone
who had arrived to deliver people from their distress. It is an image that captured the imagination of
a people whose sense of dignity and pride had been shattered, and who were living in a time of
acute economic and political crises.

The Destruction of Democracy

On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg offered the Chancellorship, the highest position in the
cabinet of ministers, to Hitler. By now the Nazis had managed to rally the conservatives to their
cause. Having acquired power, Hitler set out to dismantle the structures of democratic rule. 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. Then he turned on his
archenemies, the Communists, most of whom were hurriedly packed off to the newly established
concentration camps. The repression of the Communists was severe. Out of the surviving 6,808
arrest files of Duesseldorf, a small city of half a million population, 1,440 were those of Communists
alone. They were, however, only one among the 52 types of victims persecuted by the Nazis across
the country. On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act established
dictatorship in Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree. All
political parties and trade unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its affiliates. The state
established complete control over the economy, media, army and judiciary. 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 the Gestapo (secret state police), the SS (the protection squads), 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. People could now be detained
in Gestapo torture chambers, rounded up and sent to concentration camps, deported at will or
arrested without any legal procedures. The police forces acquired powers to rule with impunity.

Reconstruction

Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic recovery to the economist Hjalmar Schacht who aimed
at full production and full employment through a state-funded work-creation programme. This
project produced the famous German superhighways and the people’s car, the Volkswagen. In
foreign policy also Hitler acquired quick successes. He pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933,
reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan,
One people, One empire, and One leader. He then went on to wrest Germanspeaking Sudentenland
from Czechoslovakia, and gobbled up the entire country. In all of this he had the unspoken support
of England, which had considered the Versailles verdict too harsh. These quick successes at home
and abroad seemed to reverse the destiny of the country. Hitler did not stop here. Schacht had
advised Hitler against investing hugely in rearmament as the state still ran on deficit financing.
Cautious people, however, had no place in Nazi Germany. Schacht had to leave. Hitler chose war as
the way out of the approaching economic crisis. Resources were to be accumulated through
expansion of territory. In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This started a war with France
and England. In September 1940, a Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy and Japan,
strengthening Hitler’s claim to international power. Puppet regimes, supportive of Nazi Germany,
were installed in a large part of Europe. By the end of 1940, Hitler was at the pinnacle of his power.
Hitler now moved 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. In this
historic blunder Hitler exposed the German western front to British aerial bombing and the eastern
front to the powerful Soviet armies. 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, establishing Soviet hegemony over the entire Eastern
Europe for half a century thereafter. Meanwhile, 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. 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. 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. From this brief account of what happened in the Second World War, we now
return to Helmuth and his father’s story, a story of Nazi criminality during the war.

New words

1. Concentration camp – A camp where people were isolated and detained without due process of
law. Typically, it was surrounded by electrified barbed wire fence

2. Propaganda – Specific type of message directly aimed at influencing the opinion of people
(through the use of posters, films, speeches, etc.)