Nazism in Germany

3.1 The Weimar Republic and Its Crises

The Weimar Republic (1919–33):

Named after Weimar (the city where the constitution was drafted), this was Germany's first experiment with parliamentary democracy. It was born in defeat, associated with national humiliation, and undermined by multiple overlapping crises.

The "Stab in the Back" Myth (Dolchstoßlegende):

Right-wing nationalists claimed the German army was "undefeated in the field" but betrayed by Jewish socialists and pacifists who had sued for peace. This was a vicious lie — but enormously effective propaganda that poisoned German political culture from the start.

Economic Crises:

• Hyperinflation (1923): Post-war reparations combined with the French occupation of the Ruhr triggered hyperinflation. By November 1923, $1 = 4.2 trillion marks; wheelbarrows of cash to buy bread; savings wiped out; middle class devastated
• Brief Stabilisation (1924–29): Dawes Plan (1924) restructured reparations; US loans stabilised economy — the "Golden Twenties" in Berlin
• Great Depression (1929–33): Wall Street Crash (October 1929) → US loans withdrawn from Germany → bank collapses → unemployment rose to 6 million by January 1932 (30% of workforce)

3.2 Hitler's Rise to Power

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945):

• Born in Braunau am Inn, Austria; failed art school applicant in Vienna; fought in WWI as a corporal and was decorated
• The war was Hitler's formative experience — it gave his life purpose and direction
• In 1919, joined the tiny German Workers' Party (DAP); became its leader and renamed it NSDAP in 1920

Munich Beer Hall Putsch (8–9 November 1923):

Inspired by Mussolini's successful March on Rome, Hitler attempted to seize power in Bavaria at the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall with 600 SA stormtroopers. The next day's march was stopped by police gunfire — 16 Nazis and 4 police officers were killed. Hitler fled but was captured and tried for treason.

Sentenced to 5 years, served 9 months in Landsberg Prison, where he dictated Mein Kampf (My Struggle, 1925) to Rudolf Hess. The book outlined his complete ideology: German racial superiority, virulent anti-Semitism, Lebensraum in the East, and the claim that Jews were the source of all evil.

Electoral Rise (1928–33):

• 1928 election: NSDAP won only 2.6% — a fringe party
• Great Depression hit → unemployment soared → NSDAP offered scapegoats (Jews, communists, the Weimar "November criminals")
• 1930 election: NSDAP won 18.3% — second largest party
• July 1932 election: NSDAP won 37.4% — largest party in the Reichstag
• November 1932: NSDAP fell back to 33.1% — Hitler was losing momentum
• 30 January 1933: Conservatives around President Hindenburg, believing they could "control" Hitler, appointed him Chancellor; he had never won an outright majority

3.3 Nazi Consolidation of Power (1933–34)

Reichstag Fire (27 February 1933):

The Reichstag building was set on fire. A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was arrested at the scene. Hitler used this to declare a communist emergency — the Reichstag Fire Decree (28 February 1933) suspended freedom of speech, press, assembly, and habeas corpus, permanently as it turned out.

Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz, 23 March 1933):

Parliament — with Communist members arrested and SPD members intimidated — passed the Enabling Act giving the Cabinet (i.e., Hitler) power to make laws without parliamentary approval for 4 years. The vote was 444 to 84. Only the SPD (Social Democrats) voted against. This single act ended the Weimar Republic.

Gleichschaltung (Coordination) — Dismantling Civil Society:

• Trade unions banned (May 1933) — replaced by German Labour Front (DAF)
• All other parties banned (June–July 1933) — NSDAP became the only legal party
• Civil servants purged — Jews and "unreliables" dismissed
• Press brought under Joseph Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda

Night of the Long Knives (30 June – 2 July 1934):

Hitler had the SA leadership — including Ernst Röhm, commander of 3 million Stormtroopers — and other perceived opponents murdered. Approximately 200 were killed. The purpose was to appease the conservative Army establishment, which feared the SA as a rival. The SS (Schutzstaffel) under Heinrich Himmler carried out the killings.

Death of Hindenburg (2 August 1934):

Hitler merged the offices of President and Chancellor into the single office of Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). The Army swore personal loyalty to Hitler — not to Germany or the constitution. He was now absolute dictator.

3.4 Nazi Ideology

Key Ideological Components:

1. Racial Theory

• Aryan master race: Germans (and Nordic peoples) were the highest racial group; their mission was to dominate Europe and eventually the world
• Racial hierarchy: Aryans at the top; below them various European peoples; at the bottom "subhumans" (Untermenschen) — Jews, Roma, Slavs, Black people, disabled people
• Hitler argued in Mein Kampf that history was a "struggle of the races" — the Aryan race must dominate or be destroyed

2. Anti-Semitism

• Jews were portrayed as racial parasites, conspirators controlling world finance, journalism, and communism simultaneously
• Nuremberg Laws (September 1935): (a) Reich Citizenship Law — Jews deprived of German citizenship; (b) Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour — marriages and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews criminalised
• Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938): Pogrom orchestrated by Goebbels — 7,500 Jewish businesses smashed, 1,400 synagogues burned, 91 Jews killed, 30,000 arrested and sent to concentration camps; insurance companies (not Jews) were made to pay for the damage

3. Lebensraum ("Living Space")

• Germany needed territory for its expanding "Aryan" population — to be taken from the "inferior" Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe and Russia
• This geopolitical doctrine justified the invasion of Poland (1939), the Soviet Union (1941), and the systematic murder of Slavic populations

4. Führerprinzip ("Leader Principle")

• Absolute, unquestioning obedience to Hitler as the embodiment of the German nation's will
• No dissent, no individual rights, no constitutional checks — the Führer's word was law

5. Anti-communism

• Marxism was the enemy — portrayed as a Jewish conspiracy to destroy national unity
• The Soviet Union was both the racial enemy (Slavic "subhumans") and the ideological enemy (communism)

3.5 Nazi State — Instruments of Control

SS (Schutzstaffel): Elite paramilitary organisation under Heinrich Himmler. It evolved into a massive security apparatus running the concentration camp system and later the extermination camps.

Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei): Secret state police under Himmler and Heydrich. It used terror, informants, and torture to suppress all dissent across Germany.

Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels: Controlled all media — press, radio, film, and art. The Nuremberg rallies (Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, 1935) were propaganda spectacles on a massive scale. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were used as a showpiece for the Nazi state.

Hitler Youth and League of German Girls: Children were indoctrinated from age 10. The culture was militarised, saturated with racial ideology, and glorified war as the highest expression of manhood.

3.6 The Holocaust

The "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (Endlösung):

The systematic murder of all European Jews was coordinated — according to the mainstream historical view — at the Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942) in Berlin, where SS and government officials planned the logistics of genocide across occupied Europe.

Phases of the Holocaust:

1. Discrimination and exclusion (1933–38): Nuremberg Laws, economic boycotts, forced emigration encouraged
2. Violence and deportation (1938–41): Kristallnacht; invasion of Poland (1939) → 3.5 million Polish Jews concentrated in ghettos (Warsaw Ghetto); mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) in USSR from 1941
3. Systematic extermination (1941–45): Six extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) in occupied Poland — Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno; gas chambers using Zyklon B (at Auschwitz) or carbon monoxide; industrial-scale murder operated with bureaucratic efficiency

Scale of the Holocaust:

• ~6 million Jews murdered — two-thirds of pre-war European Jewish population of ~9 million
• Auschwitz alone killed approximately 1.1 million (90% Jews, also Roma, Soviet POWs, Polish civilians)
• ~5–6 million others: 3 million Soviet POWs, 1.8–2 million Polish civilians, 200,000–500,000 Roma, 250,000 disabled persons, tens of thousands of homosexuals and political prisoners

Legacy of the Holocaust:

• Nuremberg Trials (1945–46): First international war crimes tribunal; senior Nazi leaders tried for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against peace; 12 sentenced to death
• UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948): Directly responding to the Holocaust; coined the term "genocide" (Raphael Lemkin, 1944)
• State of Israel established (May 1948): International support for a Jewish homeland driven partly by Holocaust recognition
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 1948): Another direct response to Nazi atrocities

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