CLASS 9 NAZISM AND THE RISE OF HITLER (HISTORY-3)

NAZISM IN EUROPE & RISE OF HITLER

Introduction

•      Many of you will know something about the Nazis and Hitler. You probably know Hitler’s determination to Make Germany into a mighty power and his ambition of conquering all of Europe. You may have heard that he killed Jews. But Nazism was not one or two isolated acts. It was a system, a structure of ideas about the world and politics. Let us try and understand what Nazism was all about. In May 1945, Germany surrendered to the Allies. Anticipating what was coming, Hitler, his propaganda minister Goebbels and his entire family committed suicide in his Berlin bunker in April. At the end of the war, an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (site of Allied Trials) was set up to prosecute Nazi war criminals for Crimes against Peace, for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. Germany’s conduct during the war, especially those actions which came to be called Crimes Against Humanity, raised serious moral and ethical questions and invited worldwide condemnation.

Under the shadow of the Second World War, Germany had waged a genocidal war(killing on a large scale), which resulted in the mass murder of selected groups of innocent civilians of Europe. 6 million Jews, 200000 Gypsies, 1 million Polish civilians, 70000 Germans who considered mentally and physically disabled, besides innumerable political opponents were killed. The Nuremberg Tribunal sentenced only eleven leading Nazis to death. Many others were imprisoned for life. The retribution(revenge) did come, yet the punishment of the Nazis was far short of the brutality and extent of their crimes. The Allies did not want to be as harsh on defeated Germany as they had been after the First World War. Everyone came to feel that the rise of Nazi Germany could be partly traced back to the German experience at the end of the First World War. What was this Experience?

FWW & Birth of Weimar Republic

•      First World War and its outcomes. Two Groups of First World war. Allies - England, France, Russia (withdrew in 1917) later on joined by U.S.A; Central Powers - Germany, Austria-Hungry and Italy. It ended with the defeat of Central powers. Establishment of Weimar Republic

•      After the defeat of Imperial Germany, A National Assembly met at Weimer and established a democratic constitution with a federal structure. Deputies were now elected to the German Parliament or Reichstag, on the basis of equal and universal votes cast by all adults including women.

Peace Treaty of Versailles

•      This republic, however, was not received well by its own people, largely because of the terms it was forced to accept after Germany’s defeat at the end of FWW. The Peace Treaty of Versaillies with Allies was a harsh and humiliating peace.

•      Germany lost its overseas colonies,

•      One-tenth of its population,

•      13% of its territories,

•      75% of its iron and 26% of its coal to France, Poland, Denmark and Lithuania

•      Germany forced to pay 6 Billion Pounds as war compensation

•      Allied armies occupied resource-rich Rhineland.

•      The Allied powers demilitarized Germany to weaken its power.

The Effects of the War

•      The Effects of the War Had a devastating impact – both psychologically and financially. From a continent of creditors, Europe turned into one of debtors. The infant Weimar Republic was being made to pay for the sins of the old empire. It carried the burden of war guilt and national humiliation and was financially crippled by being forced to pay compensation.

•      Those who supported the Weimar Republic, mainly Socialists, Catholics and Democrats were mockingly called the ‘November Criminals’.

•      FWW left a deep imprint on European society and polity.

•      Soldiers were placed above civilians.

•      Politicians and Publicists believed that they should be aggressive, strong and masculine.

•      Media glorified the soldiers and their trench life. But in reality soldiers lived miserable lives in these trenches, trapped with rats feeding on corpses. They faced poisonous gas and enemy shelling and witnessed their ranks reduce rapidly.

•      Aggressive war propaganda and national honour occupied centre stage, while Popular support grew for conservative dictatorships.

Political Radicalism

•      The birth of the Weimer Republic coincided with the revolutionary uprising of the Spartacist League on the pattern of Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

•      The political atmosphere in Berlin was charged with demands for Soviet-style governance. Those opposed to this - such as the Socialists, Democrats and Catholics - met in Weimar to give shape to the democratic republic. The Weimar Republic crushed the uprising with the help of a war veteran’s organization called Free Corps. The anguished Spartacists later founded the Communist Party of Germany. Communists and Socialists henceforth became irreconcilable (clashing) enemies and could not make common cause against Hitler.

Economic Crisis

•      Germany had fought the war largely on loans and had to pay reparations in Gold. In 1923 Germany refused to pay, and the French occupied its leading industrial area, Ruhr, to claim their coal. Germany retaliated with passive resistance and printed paper currency recklessly (carelessly). With too much printed money in circulation, the value of the German mark fell down. As the value of the mark collapsed, prices of goods soared. This crisis came to be known as hyperinflation, a situation when prices rise phenomenally high.

The Years of Depression

•      After the FWW, several countries of Europe were hit by economic depression. Demand for goods fell sharply. Thus farmers, traders and industrialists were hit due to a steep fall in demand. Factories shutdown, exports fell, investors withdrew their money from markets, farmers were badly hit.

•      German investments and industrial recovery were totally dependent on short term loans, largely from the USA. On one single day, 24 October, 1929, 13 million shares were sold in Wall Street Exchange (the world’s biggest stock exchange in NY). This was the start of the Great Economic Depression. The German economy was the worst hit by the economic crisis. Workers lost their jobs or were paid reduced wages.

Impact on Germany

•      By 1932, Industrial production reduced to 40% of the 1929 level.

•      6 million people became unemployed.

•      Unemployed youth took to criminal activities.

•      On the streets of Germany, men with placards around their necks saying, “Willing to do any work”.

•      Unemployed youths desperately queued up at the local employment exchange.

•      The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people.

•      The currency lost its value.

•      Every sections of society were filled with the fear of proletarianisation, an anxiety of being reduced to the ranks of the working class, or worse still, the unemployed.

•      The large mass of peasantry was affected by a sharp fall in agricultural prices and women unable to fill their children’s stomachs, were filled with a sense of deep despair.

•      People lost confidence in the Weimer Republic. Due to proportional representation, it was impossible to get a majority for one single party.

•      Moreover, Article 48 gave the President the powers to impose emergency, suspend civil rights and rule by decree (declaration). People lost confidence in the democratic parliamentary system, which seemed to offer no solutions.

Hitler’s Rise to Power

•      Born in Austria in 1889, Hitler spent his youth in poverty. During the FWW, he enrolled in the German army, acted as a messenger at the front, became a corporal(bodily) and earned medals for bravery. He was awarded the IRON CROSS-the highest military honour in Germany. In 1919, he joined a small group called the German Workers’ Party; subsequently took control of this party, renamed it as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. This party came to be known as the Nazi Party.

•      In 1923, Hitler planned to seize control of Bavaria (a state in Germany), march to Berlin and capture power. He failed, was arrested and tried for treason(disloyalty), and later released. The Nazis could not effectively mobilize popular support till the early 1930s. It was during the Great Depression that Nazism became a mass movement. In 1928, the Nazi Party got no more than 2.6 percent votes in the Reichstag - the German parliament. By 1932, the Nazi Party had become the largest party with 37 percent votes. Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and his words moved people.

Promises Made by Hitler

•      He promised them a strong nation, undo the injustice of the Versailles Treaty, restore the dignity of German people.

•      He promised employment for those looking for work, and a secure future for the youth.

•      He promised to weed out all foreign influences and resist all foreign ‘conspiracies’ against Germany.

•      The Red banners with the Swastika, the Nazi salute and the ritualized rounds of applause after the speeches were all part of this spectacle of power.

•      Nazi propaganda skillfully projected Hitler as a messiah, a savior, as someone who had arrived to deliver people from their distress.(agony)

•      It was an image that captured the imagination of the people whose sense of dignity and pride had been shattered,(crushed) and who were living in a time of acute economic and political crises.

The Destruction of Democracy

The Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 indefinitely suspended civic rights like freedom of speech, press and assembly that had been guaranteed by the Weimer constitution. The Communists were hurriedly packed off to the newly established concentration camps. On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed, which established dictatorship in Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree. All political parties and trade union were banned except for the Nazi Party and its affiliates. Destruction of Democracy On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg offered the chancellorship, the highest position in the cabinet of ministers, to Hitler. A mysterious (puzzling) fire that broke out in the German Parliament building in February facilitated his move to dismantle(take away)the structures of democratic rule.

Hitler’s Rise to Power – Enabling Act

After the 1933 election, Hitler proposed the Enabling Act, which would essentially give him a dictatorship – and it passed.

·        Banned all political parties

·        Germany was declared a one party state

·        Jews were not allowed to be in civil service professions.

·        Local and state governments were staffed by Nazi members.

Special Surveillance and Security Forces

•      Special surveillance (observation) and security forces like, Gestapo(secret state police), the SS(the protection squads), criminal police and the Security Service(SD) were created to control and order society in ways that the Nazis wanted.

•      The police forces acquired powers to rule with impunity.(exemption from punishment/loss)

Reconstruction

•      Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic recovery to the economist Hjalmar Schacht who aimed at full production and full employment through a state- funded work- creation programme.

This project produced the famous German superhighways and the people’s car, the Volkswagen.

Success in Foreign Policy

•      In foreign policy also Hitler acquired quick successes. He pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933, reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan, One people, One empire, and One leader. He then went on to west German-speaking Sudentenland from Czechoslovakia, and then took over the entire country.

War as a way out of Economic crisis

•      Hitler chose war as the way out of the approaching economic crisis. 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. By the end of 1940, Hitler was at the pinnacle(height) of his power.

•      Hitler wanted to ensure food supplies and living space for Germans. 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 (bring down) a crushing and humiliating defeat on Germany at Stalingrad. After this the Soviet Red Army hounded out the retreating German soldiers until they reached the heart of Berlin.

•      In the beginning, the US remained neutral in the SWR. Japan was expanding its power in the east. It has 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 Harbour, the US entered the Second World War. 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 Worldview

•      The crimes committed  by the Nazis were the result of a system of belief and a set of practices. Nazi ideology was synonymous(equal) with Hitler’s worldview.

•      According to this, there was no equality between people, but only a racial hierarchy. In this view, blond(light colour hair), blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans(lived in North European countries) were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung(stair).

•      The Jews were regarded as the arch-enemies of the Aryans. All other coloured people were placed in between depending upon their external features. Hitler’s regime is considered as the most barbaric regime in world history.

Ideas behind Hitler’s Racism

•      His racism was borrowed from the ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Darwin tried to explain the creation of plants and animals through the concept of evolution and natural selection.

•      Herbert Spencer added the idea of ‘Survival of the Fittest’. According to this idea, only those species survived on Earth that could adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions.

•      These ideas were used by the racist thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over conquered people.

Geopolitical Concept

•      The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would survive and weak ones would perish. The Aryan race was the finest. It had to retain its purity, become stronger and dominate the world. Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebenstraum, or living space.

•      He believed that new territories had to be acquired for settlement. He thought that acquisition of new territories would increase the area of the mother country, while enabling the settlers in new lands to retain an intimate link with their place of origin. Hitler intended to extend German boundaries by moving Eastwards, to concentrate all Germans geographically in one place. Poland became the laboratory of this experimentation.

Establishment of Racial State

Nazis wanted only a society of pure and healthy Nordic Aryans. They alone were considered as ‘desirable’, while other communities were classified as ‘undesirable’. Even those Germans who were seen as impure or abnormal had no right to exist. They were physically eliminated. Jews, Gypsies and Blacks living in Nazi Germany were considered as racial inferiors who threatened the biological purity of the ‘superior Aryan’ race.

•      They were widely persecuted(organised punishment). Even Russians and Poles were considered subhuman and thus, undeserving of any humanity. Germany occupied Poland and parts of Russia, the captured civilians being forced to work as slave labour. A large number of these people were killed in gas chambers by the use of poisonous gas.

•      In Nazi Germany, Jews were the worst sufferers. Jews had been stereotyped as killers of Christ and usurers(moneylenders charging extra interest). Jews lived in separately marked areas called ghettos.

•      From 1933 to 1938, the Nazis terrorist pauperised(reduced to absolute poverty)and segregated the Jews.

The Racial Utopia

•      Under the shadow of war, the Nazis proceeded to realize their murderous, racial ideal. Genocide and war became the two sides of the same coin. Occupied Poland was divided up and much of the north-western Poland was annexed to Germany. Poles were forced to leave their homes and properties which were then occupied by Germans. Poles were herded like cattle in the other parts of Poland called the General government, the destination of ‘undesirables’ of the empire.

Polish children who look like Aryans were forcibly snatched from their mothers and examined by ‘race experts’. If they passed the race tests, they were raised in German families and if not, they were deposited in orphanages where most people perished. The General government with large ghettos and gas chambers worked as the killing fields for the Jews.

About Nazi Party

•      This party was also known as Hitler ’s army.

•      They hate Jews for many reasons such as          (loosen the first world war because of them, they  are the reasons for great depression.)etc.

•      This party was active between 1920 – until losing of world war 2.

Hitler and the Jews

•      Hitler sent his troops, to go and bring all the Jews in German. He sent them to various camps. The Jews were tortured and killed by the cruel Nazis. There were certain camps were the Jews were kept. They are,

•      i)Concentration camps,

•      ii)Extermination camps, and

•      iii)Gas Chambers

Nazi Concentration Camps

The Nazi concentration camp was a camp were the Jews were staying. The Jews were given works to do and they would get a small amount of labour.

Holocaust

The Holocaust is a racial extermination (killing) in which approximately 11 million people, and six million Jews were killed by the German military

Youth in Germany

•      Hitler was fanatically interested in the youth of the country. He felt that a strong Nazi society could be established only by teaching children Nazi ideology. All schools under Nazism were ‘cleansed’ and ‘purified’. Teachers who were Jews or seen as ‘politically unreliable’ were dismissed. Children were first segregated : Germans and Jews could not sit together or play together, Subsequently, ‘undesirable children’ were thrown out of schools.

Good German’ children were subjected to a process of Nazi Schooling, a prolonged period of ideological training. School textbooks were rewritten. Racial science was introduced to justify Nazi ideas of race. Stereotypes (categorise) about Jews were popularized even through math classes. Children were taught to be loyal and submissive(obedient), hate Jews, and worship Hitler. Even the function of sports was to nurture a spirit of violence and aggression among children.

•      Youth organizations were made responsible for educating German youth in the ‘the spirit of National socialism’. Ten-year-olds had to enter Jungvolk. At 14, all boys had to join the Nazi youth organization-Hitler Youth. After a period of rigorous ideological and physical training they joined the Labour service, usually at the age of 18. Then they had to serve in the armed forces and enter one of the Nazi organizations. The Youth League of the Nazis was founded in 1922. Four years later it was renamed Hitler Youth. All other youth organizations were systematically dissolved and finally banned.

The Nazi cult of motherhood

•      Children in Nazi Germany were repeatedly told that women were radically different from men. The fight for equal rights for men and women was wrong and it would destroy society. 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. They had to be the bearers of the Aryan culture and race.

•      Women who bore (not interested) racially undesirable children were punished and those who produced racially desirable children were awarded. 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. All ‘Aryan’ women who deviated from the prescribed code of conduct were publicly condemned and severely punished, were paraded through the town with shaved heads, blackened faces and placards hanging around their necks announcing ‘I have sullied(dishonoured) the honour of the nation’. Many received jail sentences and lost civic honour as well as their husbands and families for this ‘criminal offence’.

The Art of Propaganda

•      The Nazi regime used language and media with care, and often to great effect. The terms they coined to describe their various practices are not only deceptive(misleading). They are chilling(terrifying). Mass killing were termed special treatment, final solution (for the Jews), euthanasia (for the disabled), selection and disinfections. Gas chambers were labeled ‘disinfection-area’.

•      Media was carefully used to win support for the regime and popularize its worldview. The most infamous (well known) film was The Eternal Jew. Orthodox Jews were stereotyped and marked. They were referred to as vermin, rats and pests. Their movements were to those of rodents(small mammals). Nazism worked on the minds of the people, tapped their emotions, and turned their hatred and anger at those marked as ‘undesirable’.

•      While the Germans were preoccupied with their own plight as a defeated nation emerging out of the rubble(ruins), the Jew wanted the world to remember the atrocities and sufferings they had endured during the Nazi killing operations – also called the Holocaust. At its height, a ghetto inhabitant had said to another that he wanted to outlive the war just for half an hour. Presumably he meant that he wanted to be able to tell the world about what had happened in Nazi Germany. On the other hand when the war seemed lost, the Nazi leadership distributed petrol(gas) to its functionaries to destroy all incriminating evidence available in offices.

The History and the memory of the Holocaust live on in memoirs (journal/diary), fiction, documentaries, poetry, memorials and museums in many parts of the world today. These are a tribute to those who resisted it, an embarrassing reminder to those who collaborated, and a warning to those who watched in silence.

Youth in Nazi Germancy

•      Adolf Hitler was fanatically interested in the youth of the country.

•      At 14, all boys had to join the Nazi youth organization ( Hitler youth) where they learnt to worship war, glorify aggression & violence, condemn democracy, & hate Jews, communists, gypsies & all those categorized as undesirable.

Death of Hitler

•      It was in a situation where Germany will win in the  2^nd  world war, but unfortunately Japan dropping bomb on pearl harbour & USA  entering into the war,  gave a full stop  to Hitler & his plans.

•      Refusing the loss, Hitler & his wife suicides with a pistol on 30^th April 1945.