Since the time-frame i am talking about here does not fall within what most people associate WWII with (1939-1945) i decided to stick this thread under this - Military History - topic. Germany went through major changes at the end of World War I. The Kaiser Reich was overthrown and the Weimar Republic was formed. I find it rather amasing how this happened, as all of Germany rose up as one though it was completely unorganised (the most 'organised unorganised revolution'). Its understandable though. The Kaiser Reich had original preached that they were with the people (the Volk) but in 1918-1919, the Kaiser Reich was at a completely different level as the Volk were scrounging the ground for Turnips. The Weimar Republic didnt fare much better and eventually the Third Reich under Chancellor Hitle rose from the turmoil that had assailed Germany. At the height of inflation, $1 = 4 Billion Marks. So, to strike up a discussion here, i was wondering what other peoples thoughts were on the Rise of Hitler? Would you contribute his rise to one particular event or several? And, to really stir it up, do you think Hitlers rise to Power with the NSDAP was inevitable?
Personally I would contribute this to several factors and Hitler´s own image and output definitely not the weakest link. 1. Fear of communism lead the money men in Germany accept Hitler at all levels- financing his deeds whic was ratehr important. 2. NSDAP was a new party so it could not be blamed for anything that had been earlier agreed with the Allied etc. And Hitler used this fact to blame the "Backstabbers of Versailles" etc. 3. The inflation was due to the huge sums required to be payed and Germany started printing money which lead to the inflation.This caused huge powerty and always a good situation to go for a dictatorship. 4. There were several men just like Hitler so he was not the only possibility- just the luckiest and toughiest. 5. Hitler promised also an ego boost later on and that must have been something the people expected instead of the Weimar republic that was considered " kneeling in front of the Allied ". Just some points. My main point is that the "cruel treatment of Germany at Versailles" led to the situation where someone like Hitler could get the power. And later in the 1930´s the "bad conscience" led to Anschluss etc giving Hitler more and more power and this actually was like putting fuel into the fire. So very many things went wrong early on and definitely later when things might have been saved by politics.
I think part of his popularity was the fact that he was perhaps the best public speaker in Germany at the time too. He targeted all sorts of people with his speeches and rallied them to his cause. The Germans, especially during the 1920's, 'wanted a leader' and Hitler managed to fill that void. It also helped that the NSDAP eliminated their political enemies, especially after they came to power. They teamed up with the Socialists for a while to get rid of the Communists. The SA was also made up of unemployed men. Hitler promised them goods etc for joining the SA which is why it became so big (along with the SS) and began to terrorize the public enemies of the NSDAP.
Hiltler was an excellent speech giver and he usually had a parade and band to go with it. He knew what the people wanted to hear and he knew jobs and a scape goat for the loss of WWI were two of the items. I like to watch him speak and I don't even understand German. I would rather listen to him than George W. Anouther factor was the government made up of tired old men who wanted to keep the prewar social aristogratic order and the people were fed up with this. Such as the Prussian style of doing things.
As well there were many communists in Germany and I do believe they were as aggressive as the SA ( I suppose everybody involved in the German politics at the period had to be ). And we´ve seen from the figures in voting later on there were millions of them in Germany. Was it just due to financial help by Krupp, Schacht et al that Hitler managed to win? What if Germany had turned "red"? Or was it impossible??
I dont think Germany would have turned 'Red'. After WWI everyone wanted to get rid of the Kaiser. This led to a mass revolt that was very unorganised (aka it wasnt planned) that saw the military etc revolt against the Kaiser. Obviously this left a vacuum of power to be filled. Several political parties tried to fill this void, the most aggresive of these were the Communists. At the time, they were a very small party and really had no backing so ultimately failed. The Wiemar Republic was eventually formed but faced too many problems to become strong or really even supported by the majority of people. Communism wouldnt have happened even around the time the Nazis took power. They were a threat - especially being ant-nazi so to speak - but i dont think in the sense that they could take power. The majority of people feared communism based on all the bloodshed that had occured in Russia. Communism did appeal to a small group of people, but Nazism seemed even better. There were those that supported the NSDAP solely because they were purging the communists (hell, the Socialists even teamed up with the NSDAP). The communists were definately not nearly as powerful as the SA. The SA and its leader (Rohm i believe) were extremely powerful and numerous. Rohm even had his own ideas of taking power as the SA would be able to equal the post-war army of germany at the time. Hitler knew this and used his homesexuality as part of his reason to purge Rohm and other SA leaders before dismantling it and putting the SS in charge. The SA was extremely violent and unruly.
Very simple He knew how to unleash the passion of man. The people wanted a second war, so Hitler promised them one.
But of course, the Hitlerites that liquidated so many of them on 30/06/34 were pussycats, they only called it the knight of the long knives because Heydrich cut his finger on his swiss army knife? I can't accept that the German people 'wanted' a second war at that point either, isn't this putting the cart before the horse somewhat? The first war was as devastating to German families as to any other involved nation's. Not many wanted a war, they could remember the carnage as well as anyone else; obviously Versailles led to a fairly deep seated resentment and a nationalistic outlook for many Germans but what the people really seem to have wanted was 'change'. Hitler and his boys worked exceptionally hard to convince them that the best kind of change involved a new conflict. Cheers, Adam
That's correct. IC, you should read Ian Kershaw's 2nd vol of his Hitler biography, it does say a bit on the general mood of the population before the war, during the Sudenten crisis, etc. There was no general wish to enter another war.
Agreed. It wasnt about a second war. It was more along the lines that Hitler provided a powerful, stable form of government and brought about several major changes. He stirred up national pride by regaining the Rhine-land, created more jobs for the unemployed (all be it in the SA, SS, and the military in general, but also in factories etc) and gave the germans something to be proud of again.
The situation in Germany was ripe for someone to come in, win over the people and use that popularity to rise. Same recipe was used by many of the Caesars in Rome. Give the people what they want and you can do anything. This was the case wth Hitler. Started out denouncing the Versailles treaty, The Weimer government and the communist threat. Then, the ball got rolling.
Its not that simple. The Weimar Republic denounced the Versailles treaty too. They all believed in the 'stabbed-in-the-back' theory. The Inflation in Germany didn't rise astronomically during the Weimar period for no reason - they hated the idea of having to pay these other countries for what happened during WWI. Allowing the inflation to rise meant that they didn't have to pay nearly as much as the treaty said. They pretty much stopped paying it all together by 1930. The NSDAP only marginally got voted into power. They had to use force and coercion to get enough seats in the Reichstag. They didn't win the vote by much, and the Wiemar Cabinet had no other option then to name Hitler as Chancellor in 1933. They had undermined the power of the Weimar Republic years before. All through the 20's the people did want a leader. When Hitler was named Chancellor, that need was definitely filled. But they would have approved of anyone who was powerful and stable and didn't appear to be going away anytime soon.
If you listen to Hitler's speeches, it is impossible to not realize what he really meant. Maybe the general population didn't want a second war, but the general voter did.
I think that in the late 20's and early 30's, starting another war was the last thing they wanted to do. Part of one of Hitlers speeches i had to read for today was about Womens role in Nazi Society and how they need to be good mothers. Nothing about a war in that speech. Also having read Benz's Concise History of the Third Reich there is no mention of Hitler wanting to start a war. Yes, perhaps in late 1930's that is what he was starting to gear towards for numerous reasons, but it was not part of his campaign to get into power.
In some speech in 1932 Hitler said something like this: " War!? Who wants war? Wars never solve anything.I am a man of peace and shall stay that way!"
I think Hitlers main selling point was the idea of the Volk - a unification of all the German people. The Idea of the Volk had been used by the Kaiser to help spark popularity for World War I, but it quickly became apparent that he deviated away from that, especially when the common-German was scrounging for turnips to eat. The Nazi's werent very popular with the farmers though. I read an article for Wednesday about a Gestapo report on them. They were discontent with not being able to export their goods like they used to due to the Versailles treaty (they had given a port to the Polish that used to be a large exporter of German Produce) and though they were producing enough food to be self-sufficient, they really werent making much money out of it.
Some interesting sites on the number of employed etc In early 1938 (before the union with Austria), the statistically unemployed in Germany numbered only 507,000 or 2.8%, a figure that Roosevelt's New Deal did not equal until February 1943, a good 14 months after the United States had formally entered the war. http://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/5/1/Jordan77-83.html "The Nazi secret was not armament production; it was freedom from the then orthodox principles of economics. Government spending provided all the happy effects of mild inflation; while political dictatorship, with its destruction of trade unions and rigorous exchange control, prevented such unfortunate consequences as a rise in wages, or in prices." However Hitler's economic policies were systematically wrecking the German economy and were rapidly painting him into a corner where his only choices were war or a loss of power. Hitler's solution for both the rearmament and unemployment problems was the same: massive deficit spending. In fact, by Kershaw's account, the Nazi government guaranteed some 35 billion ReichMarks to the German armed forces alone over an eight-year period, along with massive road building, subsidies to the auto industry, lots more bureaucrats to enforce all the new controls and regulations, and bribes to women to get married and stop working. On the other hand, the reduction [in unemployment], however artificially it may have been achieved, has had a tremendous propaganda value for the Government, and there is the fixed belief of most Germans today that Hitler has achieved wonders in providing employment." Hitler paid for his economic "miracle" partly by depleting his nation's gold reserves, which he used to import critical raw materials for the manufacture of weapons. When he took office, the Reichbank had reserves totaling 937 million ReichMarks; four years later, that figure was down to only 72 million ReichMarks. Wages, then, remained at the 1932 level--substantially lower than the last pre-Depression year of 1928 in the much-maligned Weimar Republic. Food prices, on the other hand, had risen officially by 8 per cent since 1933. Overall living costs were higher by 5.4 per cent. Well into Hitler's "miracle," Kershaw notes, "poor living-standards, falling real wages, and steep price increases in some necessities...[were] the dismal reality behind the `fine facade of the Third Reich.'" Hitler himself apparently never had a clue that the economic policies he had followed for the first three years of his regime were responsible for his production problems. Hitler wrote, "We are overpopulated and cannot feed ourselves from our own resources. The solution ultimately lies in extending the living space of our people, that is, in extending the sources of its raw materials and foodstuffs." That is, the problem is not my fault and the answer is war, not economic reform. http://www.reason.com/news/show/31084.html
