Germany and the Great Depression of 1929.

Soon after the depression of 1929 struck highly industrialized Germany, six million people were unemployed. The depression brought about the rise of the hard left and right parties at the expense of the center. This economic and social roller coaster ride made many Germans believe that the Versailles treaty caused all the vicissitudes that confronted them and this view played into the hands of the Nazis. Both the Nazis and the communists gained seats in the Reichstag in the elections of 1930 and 1932.

The Ascendancy of the National Socialists. The Nazi, or National Socialist party was formally known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party, which originated in 1920.

A. Adolph Hitler. Adolph Hitler was born in Austria in 1889. Orphaned at an early age, he drifted to Vienna where he developed a deep hatred for Jews, whom he blamed for his failure to gain either a higher education or recognition as an artist.

1. He moved to Bavaria two years before the beginning of World War I. There he joined the German army.

2. Discharged from the army, he returned to Bavaria where he became one of the first members of what eventually became the Nazi party.

3. "Nazi" is a combination of the first syllable of the German word, national, and the second syllable of the German word for socialist, sozialistische.

B. The Beer-Hall Putsch. As mentioned above, the Nazis tried a coup detat in Munich in 1923, which was immediately crushed. Hitler received a lenient and light prison term.

1. While in comfortable prison surroundings, which included use of a secretary, Hitler composed Mien Kemp (My Battle or Struggle), which together with Got fried Feeders Program of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (1920), and Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century , became the ideological bases of the Nazi party.

The Nazi Theories. The Nazis' theories were centered on outrageous race theories and distortions of history. Nazi ideology was so ridiculous on the surface that most did not believe it could catch on with the public until it was too late to do anything about it.

One of the basic elements of Nazi ideology was the belief in the German master race (herrenvolk). Germans were believed to be the master race that had accomplished every major greatness in world history. Nazi ideology believed that it was the destiny of the master race to rule the world; non-Germans (untermenschen) were fit only to be slaves of the herrenvolk. They would be subjugated, destroyed or displaced to make "living space" (lebensraum) for the master race.

Another important ideological tenet of the Nazis claimed that Germany was surrounded by hostile states (Russia, Poland, France, etc.) controlled by Untermenchen trying to destroy Germany and the herrenvolk.

The Nazis also had a perverted concept of popular sovereignty and the general will which emphasized the leader principle (the Führer princip). The Leader (der Führer) governed the German people by a mystical connection to its general will. Every German was supposed to be absolutely loyal to the Nazi party and its Leader.

Virulent anti-Semitism was the most well-known and diabolical element of Nazism. Up until Nazism Jews were probably better off in Germany than in any other country in the world except the United States. The Jews provided the Nazis with a scapegoat; everything wrong with the world was the fault of the Jews. Germans who resented Jewish competition in business and professional life supported the Nazis' bid for power.

Hitler shifted the Nazi ideology around to meet temporary political expedients. When Germany and Japan were allied during World War II, for example, Hitler described the Japanese as "honorary Aryans."

The Nazi Program. In the early 1930's, the Nazis developed a political based upon:

a. Anti-Communism; b. Anti-Semitism; c. Revision of the Versailles Treaty;

d. Renegotiation of war reparations payments; e. The recovery of Germany's lands and colonies.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 768