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Hitler and the Rise of National Socialism
Adolf Hitler was born in the Austrian border town of Braunau am Inn in
1889. When he was seventeen, he was refused admission to the Vienna Art
Academy, having been found insufficiently talented. He remained in Vienna,
however, where he led a bohemian existence, acquiring an ideology based
on belief in a German master race that was threatened by an international
Jewish conspiracy responsible for many of the world's problems. Hitler
remained in Vienna until 1913, when he moved to Munich. After serving
with bravery in the German army during World War I, he joined the right-wing
Bavarian German Workers' Party in 1919. The following year, the party
changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (National-Sozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei--NSDAP). Its members were known as Nazis, a term
derived from the German pronunciation of "National." In 1921 Hitler assumed
leadership of the NSDAP.
As leader of the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the
assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized
soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, Ernst
Roehm, to form the Storm Troops (Sturmabteilung--SA), Hitler's private
army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right
in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had
signed the Treaty of Versailles. The postwar economic slump won the party
a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and
small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Ludendorff
supported the former corporal in the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923
in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch
failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he
served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote Mein
Kampf (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political
aims.
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution"
as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to
that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national
mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second,
the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to
assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang
up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg
party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded
100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the
Reichstag elections in May.
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following
year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against
the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred
Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding
oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought
the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of
the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability
and access to wealthy contributors.
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the Wall Street
stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come
to power. The Great Depression hit Germany hard because the German economy's
well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these
loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5
percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at
its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression
were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich
Bruening, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May
1932. Bruening's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that
the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments.
In this at least, Bruening succeeded. United States president Herbert
Hoover declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the
Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that
Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.
Nazi propaganda poster
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and
the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels
launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few
simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program.
The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed
people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who
had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World
War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals.
If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might
agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the
Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda
attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists,
internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic
crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride
and the promise of restored order.
Three elections--in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932--were
held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor
in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated
somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held
a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held
sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the
parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP,
respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost
doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's
success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis
increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930.
They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the
NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with
its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other
right-wing parties.
Chancellor Bruening was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for
his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President
Hindenburg. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had
been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major
step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval
of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of
a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative
establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian
regime.
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Bruening insufficiently pliable
and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor.
After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party,
Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives
by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused
this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative
campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen.
Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support
within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet,
this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought
they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of
government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with
a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness
and his genius at knowing how--and when--to seize power. Within two months,
Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.
- The Weimar Republic,
1918-1933
- Problems
of Parliamentary Politics
- The Stresemann Era
- Hitler and the
Rise of National Socialism
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