Nazism and the Rise of Hitler

• Birth of the Weimar Republic

  • Fall of Imperial Germany & Abdication of the Emperor
  • National Assembly meets at Weimar to form a democratic constitution
  • Weimar Constitution
    • Federal structure
    • Deputies elected to the German Parliament (Reichstag)
  • Burden of Guilt & Humiliation
    • Treaty of Versailles (1919)
    • Loss of overseas colonies, 1/10th population, 13% territories
    • Demilitarisation & War Guilt Clause (forced to pay £6 billion in reparations)
  • The Years of Depression
    • Economic crisis & hyperinflation
    • Dependence on US Loans (Wall Street Exchange crash in 1929)
    • Proletarianisation & fear of communism
  • Hitler's Rise to Power
    • Born in Austria (1889), joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP)
    • Powerful orator; promised strong nation & reversal of Versailles
    • Appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg in Jan 1933
    • Fire Decree (1933) suspends civic rights; Enabling Act (1933) establishes dictatorship

• Hitler’s Worldview

  • Racist Ideology
    • Hierarchy of racial purity (not equality)
    • Nordic German Aryans at the top; Jews at the bottom (Undesirables)
  • Lebensraum (Living Space)
    • Geopolitical concept for territorial expansion in East Europe
    • Acquisition of material resources for the German race
  • Establishment of the Racial State
    • Purifying Germany through elimination of the "impure"
    • Compulsory schooling, youth organizations (Hitler Youth)

• The Nazi Worldview & Youth

  • Destruction of Democracy
    • Suspension of freedom of speech, press, and assembly
    • Concentration Camps for political opponents (especially Communists)
  • Security Forces & Total Control
    • Gestapo (Secret State Police), SS, Criminal Police, and SD
    • Absolute impunity for police actions ("extra-constitutional powers")
  • Economic Reconstruction
    • Economist Hjalmar Schacht assigned full production & full employment
    • Superhighways (Autobahn) and people's car (Volkswagen)
    • Aggressive foreign policy: reoccupation of the Rhineland (1936), annexation of Austria & Czechoslovakia (1938)
  • The Nazi Cult of Motherhood
    • Women told they are radically different from men
    • Cultivation of pure Aryan children; Honour Crosses awarded for bearing more children

• Ordinary People and the Holocaust

  • The Nazi Perception of the Holocaust
    • Mass killings termed Special Treatment and Final Solution (for Jews)
    • Euthanasia Programme against disabled Germans
  • Escalation of Persecution
    • Nuremberg Laws of Citizenship (1935)
    • Boycott of Jewish businesses, segregation, and deportation to ghettos
  • Knowledge of the Holocaust
    • Silence of the general population
    • Role of informants, fear of the Gestapo
    • Diaries (Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank) and survivor accounts revealing the horrors