, 3.09a Weimar Republic

3.03b Germany, 1918-1945

More notes on the rise of Hitler

• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer ([Jamie Rubin summar(https://jamierubin.net/2022/04/16/notes-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-by-william-l-shirer/))

Key Questions

• What did the Nazi Party stand for in the 1920s?
• Why did the Nazis have little to no success before 1930?
• Why was Hitler able to become Chancellor by 1933?
• How did Hitler consolidate his power in 1933-1934?

Extra

• Background story on why/how Anton Drexler Adolf Hitler into the NSDAP and how Hitler eventually outsted its leaders
• Why the Nazis had the term “Socialist” in their party name despite clearly not being socialists
• Hitler’s artworks and his artistic journey
• History of Landsberg Prison, from when Hitler was held there in 1924, its functions in WWII and to the present day
• How militaries from various countries (including Singapore) have their own military pledges and oaths, and their significance in nation-building

Key Events

• The Night of Long Knives (Britannica Encyclopedia)
• The Night of Broken Glass ([US Holocaust Memorial Museu(https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-night-of-broken-glass))

👤 Hitler’s background

• it was common for him to made fun of
  • see: Charlie Chaplin’s The Dictator
• born: 20 April 1889, Austria
• Hitler’s father was an illegitimate child
  • Hitler bore his mother’s name for a long time, ashamed to be born out of wedlock, but eventually changed his name to Hitler
• lived on the streets between 1904 and 1914
  • during this period, Jews were in high-ranking and high-paying jobs → evoked jealousy whenever you heard about Jews
  • thus he developed his hatred of foreigners and Jews
• earned an Iron Cross for being a messenger in 1914
• unable to accept the 1919 Treaty of Versailles in 1919
• despised Weimar democracy and wanted to return to the glory days of the Kaiser
• joined NSDAP in 1919
• despised the moral decline in culture under the Weimar government as an artist

The NSDAP

• 1919 Jan: German Workers’ Party is founded by 👤 Anton Drexier
• 1919 Sept: 👤 Hitler invited by Anton to join the party
• 1920 Feb: Hitler presents the 25 Point Programme
  • which includes the hatred of the Treaty of Versailles and Jews

  • Twenty-Five Point Programme Highlights

    📕 TB page 252, Factfile

• Renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party to the Nazi party
• 1921: Hitler replaces Drexler as chairman of the party
  • comparing Hitler’s two NSDAP membership cards:
    • he was originally the 555th member of the party
      • except the numbers rolled from 501 onwards to inflate party numbers
    • later, he would become the 7th executive member of the party
  • his tactics were simple: to stir nationalist passions in his audience
    • also by scapegoating away Germany’s problems, including the Allies, ToV, ‘November Criminals’, Communists and of course Jews

Hitler’s SA (Sturmabteilung) Stormtroopers

Inf

The SA Helped Hitler storm Munich during the Munich Putsch.

Purposes:

• to provide protection for 👤 Hitler and the Nazi Party
• disrupt other parties’ gatherings
  • ✨ democracy ✨
• intimidate political opponents
  • *cough* it’s more like threaten

👤 Ernest Rohm: SA Commander

• besties and allies with 👤 Hitler
  • often provided Hitler with military help as needed
• disposed of during the 1934 Night of Long Knives

Effectiveness of Munich Putsch

todo

effective	ineffective

• enlightened Hitler to gain power through legal and constitutional means

Hitler’s trial

• the trial gave Hitler his best possible opportunity to publicly announce his political views
• Hitler cleverly used his defence to attack the Weimar Republic, accusing it of stabbing the nation in the back

Hitler’s prison term

• sentenced to 5 years, but only served 8-9 months
  • was sentenced to a high-class prison where he even had time to think about writing Mein Kampf
  • Hitler would see this as a great moral and propaganda victory to his cause

Aftermath

• Rebuilt the Nazi Party through youth organisations and recruitment drives
• May 1924 Elections: won 32 seats (6.5%)
• Hitler was encouraged, eventually setting up Hitler Youth

Key points from the Nazis’ 25 Point Programme

Textbook

📕 TB page 252

• abolition of the Treaty of Versailles
• union of Austria (Anschluss) and Germany
• only ‘true’ Germans to be allowed to live in Germany (no Jews)
• large industries and businesses to be nationalised (not private, owned by the government)
• generous old-age pension
  • gave the Nazis the image of caring/support
• strong central government

Goals

• make this generation grateful to the Nazis
• send the message that working for the government gets you rewarded
  • except you couldn’t quit your job because you would lose the pension…

Nazi party change of strategy

• Nazis were still trying to appeal to German workers, but the workers preferred the Socialists over the communists
• 1928 elections: only won 12 seats, a quarter of Communist votes
• Nazis began to target peasant farmers, middle-class shopkeepers and small businesspeople in country towns
• 35% of population were rural + not prosperous
• Nazis would
  • promise aspect of agriculture to be improved
  • praise peasants as racially pure Germany
  • contrast clean and simple life of peasants with that of corrupt, immoral, crime-ridden cities (which they blamed the Jews for)
• They targeted the poor and middle class because it was easier to stir sentiments
  • they were willing to risk everything they had for Hitler’s revolution, because they didn’t even have much to begin with

1929-1943 Great Depression

• 1929: stock market crashed, sent USA into disastrous depression
• American bankers and businessmen lost huge amounts of money
• Americans pressured German banks to repay the money the had borrowed
• Germany badly affected → economy collapsed
  • businesses went bakrupt
  • workers were laid off
  • unemployment rocketed
  • treaty of versailles war reparations

What if?

• what if 👤 Gustav Stressemann was still in charge?
• would the nazis still have come to power?

Ideology and Rise of the Nazi Party

• 25 points attractive to those vulnerable to depression
  • unemployed
  • elderly
  • middle-classes
• hitler blamed “november criminals^[November Criminals: Weimar officials who Hitler claimed intentionally lost the wa” and jews

elections	seats won	remarks
1928	12 seats (2.6^)	9th largest party
1930	107 seats (18%)	2nd largest party
July 1932

How Hitler became Chancellor

Inf

The Rise of Nazis stops here; at this point they’re already at the top, with Hitler as Chancellor.

📹 30th January 1933: Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic: HistoryPod

• Hitler tried to run against Hindenburg for President, but lost by 13 million votes
• 1932 July: Hitler demanded to be Chancellor. Hindenburg was suspicious of Hitler and refused. Hindenburg^[Paul von Hindenburg was the President of Germany from 1925 until he died in 1934] allowed the current Chancellor Franz Von Papen to carry on. Von Papen didn’t have the support in the Reichstag.
• 1932: Constant elections. No party could secure a majority in the Reichstag to get anything done. Democracy was beginning to fall through in the Weimar Republic.
• 1932 Nov/Dec: Hitler was refused the post again. Hindenburg chose Kurt Von Schleicher, who couldn’t cope.
  • Hitler was first offered Vice-Chancellor but ultimately turned down the post
  • Weimar system wasn’t working
  • Hindenburg needed a Chancellor who could actually gain support in the Reichstag
• 1933 Jan: Hindenburg and Von Papen met secretly with industrialists, army leaders, politicians. Hitler was going to be Chancellor, and Von Papen the Vice-Chancellor. Hindenburg and Von Papen were confident that they could control Hitler, while Hitler got the support in the Reichstag and would be able to control the communists. (Ref: TB Source 14, page 261)
  • Hitler was a desperate choice to prevent revolution and garner support in the Reichstag for the current Weimar government
• 1933 Jan 30: Hitler appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg

Hitler’s consolidation of power

1. Reichstag Fire

Inf

Hitler was already chancellor by then.

• 1933 Feb 27: Reichstag building burns down. Hitler blamed the Communists and declared the fire the beginnings of a communist uprising
  • Hindenburg granted Hitler emergency powers to deal with it
  • Nazis used the powers to arrest Communists, break up meetings and frighten voters
  • Fearful that communist leadership would tax them to feed the poor, well-off white-collar workers like teachers, lawyers and engineers begin to turn to Hitler
• 1933 March: Hitler calls for another election to try and get a Nazi majority in the Reichstag

2. Night of Long Knives

• Hitler passes the Enabling Act, allowing him to pass laws via decree without the approval of the Reichstag
• aka Rohm Purge
• Hitler + inner circle were concerned that Rohm would use them to gain power for himself
  • SA was perceived as a badly disciplined force as compared to the army and SS (led by Himmler)
    • SS was seen as the ‘elite’, well-disciplined force
  • SA was absorbed by the army and the SS
• Inner circle made up evidence that Rohm was a traitor who received millions of marks from the French govt to overthrow Hitler
• Hitler invites all SA commanders to a holiday town.
  • 6:30am → Hitler leads the team to arrest Rohm
• Hitler and the Cabinet were having a tea party while the massacre was ongoing
  • some were shot on the spot; others had a 2-minute trial (that wasn’t really a trial) before also being subjected to the firing squad
  • pre-emptive measure to eliminate political opponents who could unseat the Nazi regime
• 1934 August 2: Death of Hindenburg / Army Oath
  • Hindenburg passes away
  • entire army swears an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler

Trials

• Judge Dredd
• Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs

3. Constitutional Changes

• Hitler changes the oath from (paraphrased) “I am German and will serve my country” to “I love and will serve Hitler and the Nazi Party with all my heart.”
  • Hitler rephrases it to use his personal name instead of just using the country name / rank (e.g. President/Leader/Dictator/Germany/Weimar)
    • unusual, and brings him one step closer to dictator
  • Singapore just uses the country, military and constitution instead of personal names
• Hitler uses Article 48 to effectively declare himself dictator

4. night of the long glass

• jew massacre
• shops were broken, jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps and beaten in the streets
  • germans agreed with Hitler’s rhetoric, but they were shocked to see people they knew actually suffering on the streets and began to reconsider

Impact of 1914-1918 World War I on Germany (1918)

Economic Impact

Germany was bankrupt at this point

• National income was one-third of what it was in 1913
• Acute food shortages
  • by 1918 Germany was producing only 50% of the milk and 60% of the butter and meat it’d produced before the war
  • fuel was short → people were cold → ==nearly 300,000== people died from starvation and hypothermia in 1918
• war left 600,000 widows and 2 million children without fathers
  • by 1925 the state was spending one-third of its budget in war pensions
• industrial production was two-thirds what it was in 1913

Social Impact

• huge gaps between the living standards of the rich and poor
• German workers were bitter at the restrictions placed on their earnings during the war, while factory workers made fortunes because of it
• one and a half million demobilised soldiers returned to society, many disillusioned
• many were angry about losing the war
  • wave of unrest in cities like Berlin
  • law and order broke down in a country where people were used to discipline

Political Impact

• War stresses led to a revolution in October-November 1918
  • fighting between right-wing and left-wing groups
• many ex-soldiers and civilians despised the new democratic leaders, believing that the heroic leader Field Marshal Hindenburg was betrayed by weak politicians

Sources

Sources 1 & 2, 📕 TB page 252-253

Inf

In politics, audiences don’t listen to your facts. They care about the way you make them feel, to get pumped about the politician – which is why politicians might make inflammatory statements in rallies.

• 👤 Hitler had a personality attractive to crowds
• could influence a popular assembly
  • Hitler’s mannerisms and presentation helped
• blamed Jews for evils and abuses

Other references

• MOVIE: Hitler: The Rise of Evil
  • depicts the 1923 Munich Putsch and 👤 Hitler’s consequent trial