“Adolf Hitler’s rise to power began in Germany in September 1919 when Hitler joined the political party known as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. The name was changed in 1920 to the ‘National Socialist German Workers’ Party,’ commonly known as the Nazi Party.”
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 committed suicide in his Berlin bunker in April.
At the end of the war, an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg 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 shahich resulted in the mass murder of selected groups of the Second World War, Germany had waged a genocidal war, innocent civilians of Europe.
6 million Jews, 20,0000 Gypsies, 1 million Polish civilians, 70,000 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 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.
Birth of the 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 and Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungry and Italy.
The war 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:
The Peace Treaty at Versailles with the Allies was a harsh and humiliating peace; Germany lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population, 13% of its territories, 75% of its iron and 26% of its coal.
The Allied powers demilitarised Germany and forced Germany to pay 6 billion pounds as war compensation.
Allied armies occupied resource-rich Rhineland.
The effects of the war:
The war had a devastating impact – both psychologically and financially. From a continent of creditors, Europe turned into one of debtors.
November criminals:
The infant Weimar Republic was being made to pay for the sins of the old empire.
The republic 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’.
Soldiers given more importance:
The war left a deep imprint on European society and polity.
Soldiers came to be placed above civilians.
Politicians and publicists laid great stress on the need for men to be aggressive, strong and masculine.
Media glorified 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.
Popular support grew for conservative dictatorships.
Political radicalism & economic crisis:
The birth of the Weimar Republic coincided with the revolutionary uprising of the Spartacist League on the pattern of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
Soviets of workers and sailors were established in many cities.
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 veterans organisation called Free Corps.
The anguished Spartacists later founded the Communist Party of Germany.
Communists and Socialists henceforth became irreconcilable enemies and could not make common cause against Hitler.
Situation of hyperinflation:
Germany had fought the war largely on loans and had to pay war 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.
With too much printed money in circulation, the value of the German mark fell.
In April the US $ was equal to 24000 marks, by December, the figure had run into trillions.
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 Americans intervened and bailed Germany out by introducing the Dawes Plan, which reworked the terms of reparation to ease the financial burden on Germans.
The years of depression:
German investments and industrial recovery were totally dependent on short term loans, largely from the USA.
This support was withdrawn when the Wall Street Exchange crashed in 1929.
On one single day, 24 October, 13 million shares were sold.
This was the start of the Great Economic Depression.
The national income of the USA fell by half.
The effects of this recession in the US economy were felt worldwide.
The German economy was the worst hit by the economic crisis.
Workers lost their jobs or were paid reduced wages, Industrial production reduced to 40% of the 1929 level.
6 million people became unemployed.
As jobs disappeared, the youth took to criminal activities and total despair became a common place.
The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people.
The currency lost its value. 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 stomach, were filled with a sense of deep despair.
Politically too the Weimer Republic was fragile.
The Weimer constitution had some inherent defects, which made it unstable and vulnerable to dictatorship.
Proportional representation and Article 48 gave the President the powers to impose emergency, suspend civil rights and rule by decree were its major shortcomings.
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 First World War, he enrolled in the German army, acted as a messenger at the front, became a corporal and earned medals for bravery.
The German defeat horrified him and the Versailles Treaty made him furious.
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, march to Berlin and capture power.
He failed, was arrested and tried for treason, 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 as a Messiah, a Saviour:
Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and his words moved people.
He promised them a strong nation, employment, secure future for the youth and to restore the dignity of the 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.
Nazis held massive rallies and public meetings to demonstrate the support for Hitler and instil a sense of unity among the people.
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.
It is an image that captured the imagination of a people whose sense of dignity and pride had been shattered, and who were living in a time of acute economic and political crises.
Destruction of democracy:
On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg offered the Chancellorship, the highest position in the cabinet of ministers, to Hitler.
Fire Decree, 1933:
A mysterious fire that broke out in the German Parliament building in February facilitated his move to dismantle the structures of democratic rule.
The Fire Decree of 28th 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.
Enabling Act:
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 unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its affiliates.
The state established complete control over the economy, media, army and judiciary.
Forces that made Nazi state, the most dreaded criminal state:
Special surveillance 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.
People could now be detained in Gestapo torture chambers, rounded up, sent to concentration camps, deported at will or arrested without any legal procedure.
The police forces acquired powers to rule with impunity.
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.
He also had advised Hilter against investing hugely in rearmament, as the state still ran on deficit financing.
Hitler’s 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 wrest German speaking Sudentenland from Czechoslovakia,and gobbled up the entire country.
Second World War – Hitler’s rise and fall:
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 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 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.
America’s entry and dropping of atom bombs:
So far, the USA has resisted involvement in the war.
But it could not stay out of the war for long.
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 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 in Japan.
The Nazi world view:
Nazi ideology was synonymous with Hitler’s worldview.
According to this there was no equality between people, but only a racial hierarchy.
Blond, blue eyed, Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews (regarded as anti-race, the arch enemies of the Aryans) were located at the lowest rung.
Hitler’s racism borrowed from thinkers like Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, Darwin explained the creation of plants and animals through the concept of evolution and natural selection.
Herbert Spencer later added the idea of survival of the fittest.
The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would survive and the weak ones would perish.
The Aryan race was the finest. It had to retain its purity, become stronger and dominate the world.
Geopolitical concept of lebensraum:
The other aspect of Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or living space.
He believed that new territories had to be acquired for settlement.
This would enhance the area of the mother country, while enabling the settlers on new lands to retain an intimate link with the place of their origin.
It would also enhance the material resources and power of the German nation.
Hitler intended to extend German boundaries by moving eastwards, to concentrate all Germans geographically in one place. Poland became the laboratory for this experimentation.
Establishment of the racial state:
Nazis quickly began to implement their dream of creating an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically eliminating all those who were seen as ‘undesirable’ in the extended empire.
Nazis wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy Nordic Aryans’.
They alone were considered ‘desirable’. All others were classed as ‘undesirable’.
Even those Germans who were seen as impure or abnormal had no right to exist.
Jews, Gypsies and blacks living in Nazi Germany were considered as racial ‘inferiors’ who threatened the biological purity of the ‘superior Aryan’ race.
Russians and Poles all were considered subhuman, and hence undeserving of any humanity, Jews were barred from owning lands and lived in separately marked areas called ghettos.
Why Nazis hated Jews?
Nazi hatred of Jews had a precursor in the traditional Christian hostility towards Jews.
They had been stereotyped as ‘Killers of Christ’ and usurers (moneylenders charging excessive interest; often used as a term of abuse).
Hitler’s hatred of Jews was based on pseudoscientific theories of race, which held that conversion was no solution to the Jewish problem’.
It could be solved only through their total elimination.
The racial utopia:
Genocide and war became two sides of the same coin. Occupied Poland was divided up.
Poles were forced to leave their homes and properties behind to be occupied by ethnic Germans brought in from occupied Europe.
Poles were herded like cattle in the other part called the General Government, the destination of all ‘undesirables’ of the empire.
Polish children who looked like Aryans were forcibly snatched 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 perished.
With some of the largest ghettos and gas chambers, the General Government also served as the killing fields for the Jews.
Youth in Nazi 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 about Jews were popularized even through maths classes.
Children were taught to be loyal and submissive, hate Jews, and worship Hitler.
Even the function of sports was to nurture a spirit of violence and aggression among children.
Hitler believed that boxing could make children iron hearted, strong and masculine.
Youth Organisations:
Youth organizations were made responsible for educating German youth.
Ten-year-old 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, the promoter of Aryan race:
Women who bore 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 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, they are chilling.
Mass killing were termed special treatment, final solution (for the Jews), euthanasia (for the disabled), selection and disinfections, ‘evacuation’ meant deporting people to gas chambers.
Gas chambers were labeled ‘disinfection-area’.
Media was carefully used to win support for the regime and popularise its worldview.
The most infamous film was ‘The Eternal Jew’.
Orthodox Jews were stereotyped and marked. They were referred to as vermin, rats and pests.
Their movement was compared to those of rodents.
Nazism worked on the minds of the people, tapped their emotions, and turned their hatred and anger at those marked as ‘undesirable’.
Ordinary people and the crimes against humanity:
Many common people saw the world through Nazi eyes, and spoke their mind in Nazi language.
They felt hatred and anger surged inside them when they saw someone who looked like a Jew.
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.
They preferred to look away.
What Jews felt in Nazi Germany is a different story altogether.
They began believing in the Nazi stereotypes about them.
Jews died many deaths even before they reached the gas chamber.
Knowledge about the Holocaust:
The Jews 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, 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 to its functionaries to destroy all incriminating evidence available in offices.
Yet the history and the memory of the Holocaust lives on in memoirs, fiction, documentaries, poetry, memorials and museums in many parts of the world today.
