Hitler and rise of Nazism

Chapter-2
Nazism and the Rise of Hitler
The Allied Powers -The UK, France, the then USSR and USA

Axis Powers- Germany, Italy and Japan.

Central powers- Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey (Ottoman Empire)

Genocidal war

1. Killing of a selected racial group by the other. Under the shadow of the Second
World War, Germany had waged a genocidal war against Jews.
2. The number of people killed included 6 million Jews, 200,000 Gypsies, 1 million
Polish civilians,
70,000 Germans who were considered mentally and physically
disabled, besides innumerable political opponents.
3. Nazis devised an unprecedented means of killing people, that is, by gassing them
in various killing centers.

What was international Military Tribunal?

1. After the Second World War the allied powers formed an international military
court (Tribunal) at Nuremberg to punish Nazi war criminals.
2. The Nuremberg Tribunal sentenced only eleven leading Nazis to death. Many
others were imprisoned for life.

Germany in the World War I

1. Germany, a powerful empire fought the First World War (1914-

1918) alongside the Austrian empire and Turkey and against the Allies (England,
France and Russia.)
2. All joined the war enthusiastically hoping to gain from a quick victory.
3. Germany made initial gains by occupying France and Belgium.
4. But USA’s entry changed the course of the war.
5. However the Allies won the War by defeating Germany and the Central Powers
in November 1918.

Birth of the Weimar Republic and its failure

1. The defeat of Imperial Germany and the abdication of the emperor gave an
opportunity to parliamentary parties to recast German polity. A National Assembly
met at Weimar and established a democratic constitution with a federal structure.
2. The Weimar constitution had some inherent defects, which made it unstable
and vulnerable to dictatorship. One defect was proportional representation. This
made achieving a majority by any one party a near impossible task, which led to a
rule by coalitions.
3. Another defect
was Article 48, which gave the President the powers to impose emergency,
suspend civil rights and rule by decree.
4. Within its short life, the Weimar Republic saw twenty different
cabinets (governments)lasting on an average 239 days, and a liberal use of Article
48. People lost confidence in the democratic parliamentary system, which seemed
to offer no solutions except Hitler..

Versailles treaty- (A Pease treaty signed between allied powers and Germany)

1. Germany lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population and 13 per cent of its
territories.
2. 75 per cent of its iron mines and 26 per cent of its coal mines were given to
France, Poland, Denmark and Lithuania.
3. The Allied Powers demilitarised Germany to (not to possess more than one lakh
soldiers) weaken its power.
4. Germany was made responsible for the I World War and damages the Allied
countries suffered. Germany was forced to pay compensation amounting to £6
billion.
5. The Allied armies also occupied the resource-rich Rhineland for much of the
1920s.

November criminals

Many Germans held the new Weimar Republic responsible for not only the defeat
in the war but the disgrace at Versailles. Those who supported the Weimar
Republic, mainly Socialists, Catholics and Democrats became easy targets of
attack in the conservative nationalist circles. They were mockingly called as
the November criminals.

The Effects of the World War I in Germany

a. Psychological Effect (social effect)

1. The First World War left a deep imprint on European society. Soldiers were
placed above civilians.
2. Politicians and media laid great stress on the need for men to be aggressive, strong
and masculine.
3. Aggressive war propaganda and national honour led to popular support for
conservative dictatorships
b. Political Radicalism( Political effect)

1. The birth of the Weimar Republic coincided with the revolutionary uprising of
theSpartacist League on the pattern of the Revolution in Russia.
2. The political atmosphere in Berlin was charged with demands for Soviet-style
government. But the uprising was suppressed
with the help of a war veterans organisation called Free Corps.

c. Economic crisis (Hyperinflation)

1. Germany had fought the war largely on loans and had to pay war reparations in
gold. Thisdepleted gold reserves.
2. In 1923 Germany refused to pay so the French occupied its leading industrial area,
Ruhr.
3. Germany printed paper currency recklessly. With too much printed money in
circulation, the value of the German mark fell. In April the US dollar was equal to
24,000 marks, in August 4,621,000 marks and in December 98,860,000 marks.
4. This crisis came to be known as hyperinflation, a situation when prices rise
phenomenally high.

d. Economic Depression and its impact on Germany

1. The years between 1924 and 1928 USA gave short-term loans to Germany. This
support was withdrawn when the Wall Street Exchange crashed in 1929 in the
USA.
2. Fearing a fall in prices, people made frantic efforts to sell their shares. On one
single day, 24 October, 13 million shares were sold. This was the start of the Great
Economic Depression in the USA.
3. The German economy was the worst hit by the economic crisis. By 1932,
industrial production was reduced to 40 per cent, Workers lost their jobs, and
number of unemployed touched an unprecedented 6 million.
4. Germans hung placards around their necks saying, Willing to do any work.
5. Unemployed youths took to criminal activities and total despair
became common place. The
middle classes, especially salaried employees and pensioners, saw
their savings diminish when the currency lost its value.

e. Proletarianisation ( Fear of becoming poor)

1. The rich, small business men, middle class and self-employed persons developed
a fear that at any time they would become poor and come to street in poverty.
2. This group began to support Hitler and his ideas.

Hitler’s Promises

1. Hitler promised to build Germany in to a strong nation.

2. Hitler promised to undo the injustice of the Versailles Treaty and restore the
dignity of the German people.
3. He promised employment for those looking for work.
4. He promised to secure future of the youth.
5. He promised to weed out all foreign influences and resist all foreign conspiracies
against Germany.

Hitler’s Destruction of Democracy

1. On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg offered the Chancellorship to

Hitler. Having acquired power, Hitler set out to dismantle the
structures of democratic rule.
2. A mysterious fire that broke out in the German Parliament building and
the Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 was passed which
indefinitely suspended civic
rights like freedom of speech, press and assembly.
3. Then he turned on his arch- enemies, the Communists, most of whom were
hurriedly packed off to the newly established concentration camps. The
repression of the Communists was severe. The socialists, democrats and Catholics
also were arrested and killed.
4. On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act
established dictatorship in Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to
control over the economy, media, army and judiciary.
5. 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 the Gestapo (secret state police), the SS
(the protection squads), criminal police and the Security Service (SD). The
police forces arrested, tortured and killed the undesirables.

Reconstruction of German Economy by Hitler

1. Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic recovery to the economist

Hjalmar Schacht who provided employment through a state-funded work-creation
programme. This project produced the famous German superhighways and the
people’s car, the Volkswagen.
2. In foreign policy also Hitler acquired quick successes. He reoccupied the
Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the
slogan, One people, One empire, and One leader.
3. He then went on to wrest German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia,
and gobbled up the
entire country. In all of this he had the unspoken support of England and
France.
4. These quick successes at home and abroad seemed to reverse the destiny
of the country. Hitler invested
hugely in rearmament as the state still ran on deficit financing.
5. Hitler chose war as the way out of the approaching economic crisis which led to II
World War.

Germany in the World War II

1. 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.
2. Hitler moved to achieve his long-term aim of conquering Eastern Europe. He
wanted to ensure food supplies and living space for Germans.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. The war ended in May 1945 with Hitler’s defeat and the US dropping of the atom
bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

The Nazi Cult of Motherhood

1 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
2 In Nazi Germany 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 concessions in shops , theatre tickets and
railway fares.
3 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.
4 All Aryan women who deviated from the prescribed code of conduct were
publicly condemned, and severely punished. Those who maintained
contact with Jews, Poles and Russians were paraded through the town with
shaved heads and blackened faces.
 How did the common people react to Nazism?

1. Many people 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.
2. They marked the houses of Jews and reported suspicious neighbours. They
believed that Nazism would bring prosperity and improve general well-being.
3. But not every German was a Nazi. Many organised active resistance to Nazism,
braving police repression and death. The large majority of Germans, however,
were passive onlookers and apathetic witnesses. They were too scared to act, to
differ, to protest.

What did Jews feel in Nazi Germany?

1. Charlotte Beradt secretly recorded jew’s dreams in her diary and later published
them in a highly disconcerting book called the Third Reich of Dreams.
2. She describes how Jews themselves began believing in the Nazi stereotypes about
them. They dreamt of their hooked noses, black hair and eyes, Jewish
looks and body movements.
3. The stereotypical images publicised in the Nazi press them even
in their dreams. Jews died many deaths even before they reached the gas
chamber.