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A Fooled Nation The Role Of German Morale In Hitler’s Rise To Power |
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With a lock of hair falling over his forehead and
a square little mustache on his often somber face, Adolf Hitler seemed a
comical figure when he first entered into politics. He was a public speaker who
ranted and raved until his voice was hoarse and sweat dripped from his brow.
With the help of fanatic disciples and gullible masses, Hitler profoundly
changed Germany and the political face of Europe. An evil genius, he unleashed
the most terrible war in history and unprecedented genocide in which more than
six million Jews died. In addition, he killed five million Poles, Slavs,
Gypsies, Russians and believed political enemies.
Hitler is called mad but were the men around him also mad? They were
cultivated, educated, learned men. Germany wasn’t a backward country, preyed on
by ignorance, but one of the most advanced nations in the world; renown for
great scientific and cultural achievements. His program was one for evil and
destruction and yet the majority of the people in Germany accepted it. How did
Hitler come to power? The people of Germany were weakened in the aftermath of
World War I and therefore were willing to listen to his ideas. Those ideas have
lived on, unfortunately. Many around the world still find inspiration in his
words. Also have lived on, the memories. Time has not dimmed these terms: storm
troops, gas chambers, death camps, and holocaust. A new generation asks, why?
On the morning of September 15 1930, early editions of newspapers across
Germany brought the first reports that Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German
Workers Party (NSDAP) had scored a stunning electoral triumph. Only two years
earlier, the party had languished in obscurity. The appeal of the Nationalist
Socialists was so small that most commentators, those who recognized them at
all, saw them as
a minor and declining party. Yet, when the polls closed on the evening of
September 14 1930, the NSDAP had become the second largest party in the Weimar
Republic (Hamilton 4-6).
The NSDAP was founded as “Deutschearbei Partei”, (DAP) or the German Workers
Party in
Munich, during January 1919 (71). It was one of a number of parties clustered
along the outskirts of
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German politics in the immediate post-war period. Initially, it was hardly more
than a debate society. It had less than thirty members, only three of which were
active political speakers (Kertz 29). The organization would probably have
remained this way had it not been for the extraordinary leadership and
propagandistic talents of Adolf Hitler who joined the party in 1919 (Benz 93).
Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in 1889. He stood out in no way as a boy and
didn’t finish High School. He moved to Vienna in 1907 and applied to the Vienna
Academy of Art, twice, but was rejected. The heads of the department felt he
was not talented enough (92). They had no idea how this decision would affect
history. When World War I broke out, Hitler enthusiastically enlisted in the
German army. His life was going nowhere and the war provided him with something
to fill the void. He was looking for an adventure. In the war he proved a
dedicated and brave soldier. He was temporarily blinded by poisonous gas and
was shot in the leg. He “learned a lot about violence and its uses” (93). But
Hitler was never promoted to a leadership position. His supervisors claimed
that he had no leadership qualities. They were quite wrong.
At the end of the war Hitler was disillusioned and angry as Germany had lost.
Like many other disillusioned soldiers, he became very nationalistic and
anti-Semitic. Suddenly he was sure that the purpose of his life was to lead
Germany. Adolf the artist was the dead and Hitler the politician was soon to
emerge. It was his remarkable energy and magnetism as a public speaker that
first “shot the party into the local Munich limelight and later catapulted the
movement into national recognition” (Phillippe 94).
From it’s beginning, the DAP was distinguished from other German parties. Like
the others, it was extremely nationalistic, anti-Semitic, anti-Marxist and
anti-Weimar Republic. But the DAP was determined to win the support of the
working class for its cause. The party emphasized its commitment to “ennobling
the German worker” (Benz 120) and claimed the Jews were controlling Germany and
taking over. In reality, there were only about six hundred thousand Jews living
in Germany and they represented less than one percent of the population
(120-123).
This racist view of Jews was an old grudge dating back thousands of years. This
feeling had always been renewed and highlighted during difficult times. The
Jews were forever a minority and since the beginning of Christianity, had been
outsiders. Christian leaders in ancient Rome condemned forever the Jews for
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having killed one of their own, Jesus. Jews were different; they had different
foods, dressed differently, they celebrated different holidays and their
ordinary speech was different. Because of this and because they refused to
accept Jesus as the son of God they were a natural target. At this time,
Germany settled into this old and comfortable routine learning to hate those it
had always disliked (Chaikin).
From the very moment of his early entry into the tiny NSDAP, Hitler was
determined to transform the party into a prominent political organization. He
had great plans, most of which came true. His tireless activity (he was
unemployed) and his surprising success as public speaker soon made him
indispensable (Benz 82). By the end of the year, Hitler had become both
propaganda chief and a member of the executive committee. At the same time the
party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP);
or Nazis for short.
Hitler, ordinary as he seemed, turned out to be a mesmerizing speaker. During
1920, his reputation as a fiery and effective speaker continued to attract
increasingly large audiences to his carefully orchestrated and powerful public
appearances. His voice, his features, his words, the passion he displayed put a
spell on his audiences. He was like a magician. But it wasn’t just magic; the
meetings were always held in the late afternoons after his audiences had left
work (Hamilton 310). They were more susceptible to what he had to say. The mood
in Germany was grim and his public was depressed. Hitler took advantage of all
their weaknesses. Doctors, lawyers, teachers and other members of the upper
class, as well as workers began to join the Nazi party.
Hitler dressed up his creed with symbols of power. He put his early Nazi
followers into brown-shirted uniforms and called them storm troops or SA. The
name inspired fear. So did the way they looked and the sound of their boots.
Hitler also created a Nazi flag: a red banner with a black swastika on a white
circle. He did not invent the swastika and before he adopted it, the swastika
was a positive, spiritual symbol that meant life and was used by many cultures
(Beers 65).
Hitler’s followers left the meeting halls after he spoke shouting “Heil Hitler!
Heil Hitler!” (Kertz 17). Fired by his words, they went out into the streets
singing angrily, “When Jewish blood flows from our
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knives, things will be better!” (18) Not only did they sing, they looked for
Jews to beat up. With bully bravado, between 10 and 15 of them would gang up on
just one person. Hitler’s followers were everywhere. Out of fear or out of
sentiment, the public hesitated to interfere.
Did the German government try to stop the brutality? It did, but by the time,
the police got there, the aggressors had dispersed. In addition, the Weimar
Republic, the German government was not very powerful. From it’s foundation
during the coalition of 1918, two days before the end of World War II, until
it’s demise with Nazi assumption of power in 1933, the Weimar Republic was
burdened by a series of overlapping, political, social, and economic problems
(Hamilton 79-83). It arose from the turmoil of war in Germany and was viewed as
responsible for German loss of the war. A lot of hostility towards it was also
due to the Versailles Treaty.
Germany had agreed with the Allies to stop the fighting, believing that
President Woodrow Wilson’s idealistic “Fourteen Points” would be the basis for
a negotiated peace treaty. They found that the treaty was not negotiable and
the German delegation was advised to agree or be taken over. The Allies,
against President Wilson’s wishes, were determined to get their revenge on
Germany. Under the terms of the treaty, Germany was charged with sole
responsibility for the war, stripped of it’s colonial empire and a huge chunk
of its land, and forced to pay heavy reparations (Beers 317). The treaty seriously
disrupted German political and economic life and was considered horribly unfair
by Germans and non-Germans alike. In essence, the end to World War I was the
beginning of World War II.
By early 1923, Hitler was in firm command of the Nazi party. As he was
responsible for the growth of the group, he could and did set himself up as its
leader. Hitler was ready to test the political waters. He wasn’t willing to
wait any longer and ruled out participation in electoral politics as the road
to power. He was convinced that the Republic could be toppled by revolution. At
the time, the Republic seemed vulnerable (Kertz 52).
The Weimar Republic was determined to avoid the postwar recession and mass
unemployment among the millions of demobilized veterans. It also had to pay
pensions to millions of injured veterans, widows, sons and other surviving
dependents of the war dead. It also, of course had to pay billions of dollars
in war reparations. The result of all these economic demands was high inflation
and the result of the
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inflation was a dramatic deterioration of the Reichmark’s (RM) value. In
January 1922, a dollar was worth 8.20 RM. By December, it was worth 7,589.27
RM. In January 1923, it was worth 17,952 RM. By August the exchange rate
reached an astronomical 109,996.15 RM to the dollar. (Kertz 52)
Economic life in Germany acquired an almost surrealistic quality. Imagine that
in August you buy a ticket for a streetcar in Berlin for 100,000 RM. One month
later the same ticket costs 4,500,000 RM and by November, it’s 150 million RM.
In January you buy a kilo of potatoes for 20 RM. In October, the same kilo
costs 90 billion. Bread was more than five times that, eventually at 467
billion (53). The price
of one kilo of beef at 4 trillion simply defies imagination. Life was madness
not to mention how it affected
the cost of living. As prices went up, salaries went up but not quite as
quickly as prices.
Meanwhile, the Allies refused to accept payment for the war offered in devalued
German currency. They sent French and Belgian troops to occupy the Rurh. A
broad political and economic crisis soon developed in Germany. There “was
rampant inflation, high unemployment, uprisings in the Rhineland, a communist
coup in Hamburg, and mobilization of rightist forces in Bavaria” (Hamilton
79-80). The Republic had the world on its shoulders.
This atmosphere of political and economic crisis inspired Hitler to enlist the
NSDAP in a conspirational alliance with a number of other German political
parties and right-wing groups in 1923. They planned to overthrow first the
Bavarian government and eventually the Third Reich. When at last the
accordingly named Beer Hall Putsch went into action it was a fiasco. It was not
very organized nor supported by the army. The conspiracy was immediately
crushed, Hitler was arrested and the NSDAP was banned throughout the Reich. The
humiliation of the Beer Hall Putsch taught Hitler patience. If he wanted to
gain power, he would have to do it the hard way: by getting elected (Hamilton
79-81).
Although he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in prison,
Hitler was released within a year. During his short stay, he was given private
quarters and allowed to receive visits often. While in prison he wrote Mein
Kampf (My Struggle), the bible of the Nazi party. In Mein Kampf, Hitler set
forth his racial views. He said that Germans were the master Aryan race and
deserved to rule the world (Beers 314). Actually, the Aryans were one of the
first settlers of India and had nothing to do with Germany (315). He also said
that the Jews were evil. The evil was in their genes and could never be
eliminated.
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While Hitler was in jail, the NSDAP participated in their first Reichstag
election. Although the failure of the Putsch had sent the already shaky
movement into disarray, some order was restored in the first few months of the
following year (Hamilton 86-87). Shortly after the failed rebellion, Hitler had
entrusted the leadership of the group to Alfred Rosemberg, a man with “little
organizational experience and less personal authority over the group;
qualifications which may have highly recommended him to Hitler” (87). The
future Der Fuhrer didn’t want the Nazis to be entirely without leadership but
he also didn’t want to be upstaged.
With it’s leader arrested and it’s organization banned throughout Germany, the
NSDAP floundered. Before the Putsch, Hitler had given very little thought to
any type of plan B should the plot miscarry. As a result, the party wavered on
the brink of disintegration. But the election of 1924, nicknamed the “inflation
election” because it was during a time when Germany was in a chaotic state due
to hyperinflation, was a successful one. They brought in 6.5 percent of the
vote (Phillippe 310).
Starting in 1925, with the institution of the Dawes Plan, a desperate and
successful attempt to rebuilt Germany and create a variety of jobs and
stimulate the economy, Germany entered a period of relative prosperity and
political stability. Just as economic turmoil and political unrest
characterized the early postwar period, the years from 1924 to 1929 would be
remembered as the Golden Twenties (Hamilton 123-124). It was the calm before
the storm.
For the National Socialists, the next four years were filled with failed tactic
after failed tactic to regain a foothold in German politics. After his release
from the Landsberg prison, Hitler was determined to reestablish his control
over the National Socialist movement (Phillippe 88). He was also still
determined to climb to power the legal way. In practical terms this meant he
needed to recruit more supporters for his Nazi party and needed to get them to
vote for him. But nothing worked. When the Reichstag that was elected four
years earlier was dissolved, new elections were set for May 20, 1928. The NSDAP
brought in
2.6 percent of the vote (Phillippe 102-105). It seemed that the organization
was done with. Until Black
Tuesday.
Half a world away from Germany was the US; the distance didn’t stop the Great
Depression in America from devastating the German economy just when it was
getting back on its feet. In late 1929,
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industrial production began a steady slide. As production fell, unemployment
rose. By January 1930, over three million Germans were unemployed (Beers 172).
Once again the state of Germany was disrupted and there was misery.
Meanwhile, the NSDAP was better organized and better financed than at any other
time in their brief history. Hitler had used the years spent in obscurity to
firmly establish his leadership and came to be seen almost like a god to his
fanatic followers. The Nazi machine began to take up steam and they began an
extensive propagandistic campaign.
They promised debt relief to desperate farmers, new jobs for the unemployed and
the perfect
answer to very problem plaguing Germany. But it was more than that. Hitler and
his Nazis provided hope. Hitler with his words wove a comforting picture of a
united, prosperous Germany, which was exactly what they needed to hear
(Hamilton 200-205). The Nazis renewed success in recruiting members during the
Great Depression was tangible evidence of desperation leading to seeing the
NSDAP party in a favorable light.
Hitler promised to save Germany from the long chain of disasters. They had lost
World War I and been forced to accept the brutal Versailles Treaty and then had
to deal with inflation. The Depression proved a new set of problems as well as
the end of prosperity.. Screaming, his voice charged with emotion, Hitler spoke
of acquiring territory and winning glory for Germany. He told them they were
not to blame for losing World War I, they had lost it because of their enemies,
the Jews. Again and again he made the same points. Germans were a master race
fit to rule the world. Nazis were a force of good in the world, Jews were a
force of evil (Kertz 88-90).
Hitler was a visibly organized force unlike the failed Weimar Republic. In it’s
many “centers for good” (Chaikin 132), the Nazi headquarters, financed by
wealthy NSDAP members, Germans found dedicated Nazis “to talk to and drink
with” (132) and bemoan Germany’s state of affairs. In the organized
marching troops, there was some semblance of order to the chaos. The Nazis and
the Jews became the answer; the one to embrace and the other to hate. This common
hate proved the common link between the Nazis who were of varying parts of the
country and status.
Soon, there appeared an upward curve in the Nazis’ electoral fortunes. They
became incredibly
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popular and had a major breakthrough in the elections of September 1930
(Hamilton 22). Their status as a major political party was instituted. As the
depression deepened, the Nazi’s membership began to swell. By 1932, the NSDAP
had a membership of 1.5 million (Hamilton 123). The most important election for
the Nazis and for the whole world took place in 1937 after a very illustrious
campaign. In its most dramatic stroke, Hitler took to the skies in a highly
publicized tour appearing in 21 cities in six days. Their campaign was a great
success. At this election, the Nazis took 37.3 percent of the votes. (Hamilton
23) They had finally won.
The result put Hitler in a commanding position but President Hindenburg refused
to name him Chancellor. This was a very unpopular decision. The Nazis were not
yet the most numerous group in Germany but they were certainly the most active
and rather most menacing. They desperately wanted Hitler to be chancellor. In
January of 1933, President Hindenburg finally asked Hitler to become Chancellor
(Phillippe 117). Because the Nazis did not have a majority of seats in the
Reichstag, Hitler had to form a coalition government. In 1933 after the death
of President Hindenburg, the German cabinets combined the offices president and
chancellor to make Hitler, Der Furher. He had achieved his goal. He was supreme
leader and unlimited master of all Germany. Now he had the power to make war on
the Jews. He wanted to make Germany Judenrein, free of Jews. He was going to
scare them out.
As soon as Hitler took power, he put his beliefs into practice. He abolished
freedom of speech and assembly, banned all parties except for the Nazi party
and had his political enemies murdered; including
seventy-seven Nazis whose loyalty he questioned. Herman Goering, Hitler’s
second-in-command, ran the Gestapo, the dreaded secret police (Benz 98). They
arrested, tortured and killed any one who opposed Hitler. Joeseph Goebbels was
in charge of propaganda and utilized all media to spread hatred of the Jews.
The black-shirted SS wore on their uniforms the death emblem, a skull and
crossed bones to signify that they were as obedient as corpses. Their duties
were to conduct door-to-door searches looking for Hitler’s
opponents (107-108). The list was a long one: Jews, communists, Gypsies, Poles,
Russians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, socialists, unfriendly writers, homosexuals
(Benz 107) …. It was possible to be arrested for anything or nothing at all.
Even his precious Germans weren’t always satisfactory. German cripples, the
deformed and
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mentally ill, orphans, and the homeless marred his image of the master race.
Hitler wanted to make all Germans perfect physical specimens. All of them tall
and strong with blue eyes and blond hair though he himself was short, with
brown eyes and hair. The Nazis controlled every aspect of German life. They
organized Germany’s schoolchildren into “Hitler Youth Groups”. They wore
swastika bands and were taught to hate Jews. They were also encouraged to spy
on their parents and other adults and to report anyone who said anything
against Hitler or his party (Hamilton 112-114).
And what of the German Jews? They were caught in a terrifying, situation. No
one had ever expected Hitler to become Chancellor; and certainly didn’t expect
him to become Der Furher. His raving speeches and messages of hatred were to be
ignored in a civilized world. Right? The Jews had suffered from the war and the
inflation and the Depression just like everyone else. Now their home was a
strange, hostile, dangerous place no matter where in Germany they lived and
eventually no matter where in Europe you lived.
The SS “beat Jews in the streets, raided synagogues, trod on sacred Jewish
objects, and burned holy books, laughing and joking as they did so” (Benz 127).
They mocked, humiliated and murdered Jews. Goebbels fed the flames of hatred.
All over Germany, the press reported false acts of Jewish treachery. Stories
about Jews drinking the blood of Christian children (Benz 127-128). The lies
rang like truth when they appeared in bold, black ink on the pages of respected
newspapers.
Movie houses, cafes, concert halls and other public places began to put up
signs reading, “Jews
not wanted.” Signs at swimming pools read, “No Jews and no Dogs.” As if there
was no difference. In cabarets, German entertainers put on mock weddings
between a German and a pig that was wearing a sign that said, “I’m a Jew!”
Hatred and suspicion were everywhere. Germans began to shun their former
neighbors and friends. German mobs felt free to loot Jewish stores and homes.
German children felt free to
bully their Jewish classmates. April 1, 1933 there was a national boycott of
Jewish stores. Armed, glaring,
uniformed Nazis stood guard outside every Jewish store and allowed no one to
enter. (Benz 127-130)
On March 12, 1938 German troops marched into Austria. They were met not with
resistance, but with flowers. Here too, Hitler launched a campaign against the
Jews. Soon, Austria hated the Jews too.
Jewish stores were, again, boycotted. ( Phillippe 230- 231) The SS made Jewish
men get down on all fours
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and eat grass, then climb trees and twitter like birds. They made Jewish women
run until they fainted.
Now Hitler wanted Austria to be Judenrein too. But they were so annoying he
wanted them out of all Europe. Let the Americans deal with them. Then one day,
he decided he wanted them off the face of the Earth. He would make the whole
world free of Jews. He needed an excuse to do so and was given one by a very
enraged Herschel Grynszpan.
The seventeen-year old was living in Paris when he received word from his
Jewish family that, being Polish they had been expelled from Germany and sent
back to Poland. But Poland no longer recognized them as citizens and they were
wandering around, stateless with invalid passports in the “no man’s land”
between Poland and Germany. On November 7, 1938, or Kristallnacht, “Night of
Broken glass” the angry boy went to the German embassy in Paris and shot the
first official he saw. The boy was arrested and the official died two days
later (Benz 230-231). This act triggered off events the dimensions of which
Herschel could not even have begun to understand or even guess at. It led to
the Final Solution, the systematic murder of millions of Jews all over Europe:
the Holocaust.
Hitler committed horrible crimes against the Jews and many others in the
concentration camps, and ghettoes but he was never punished. In anticipation of
his downfall Hitler killed himself in 1945. Because he did it himself he had
the last laugh. His book, Mein Kampf is banned in Germany and considered a
dirty word. Most Germans want to forget any of it ever happened. But perhaps
they shouldn’t. The holocaust was plain, undeniable truth of the horror of
humanity. It has been immortalized in pictures,
in visual and verbal accounts of those who experienced it and the horrified
minds and hearts of the world. If we always remember it and learn to understand
it, then we can prevent it from ever happening again; if we answer the
question, how did Hitler come to power?
Perhaps it is the weakness of democracies that anyone can take control. Hitler
came to power the legitimate way, through participating in elections. True he
broke or bent a few rules and cheated and lied but probably no more than any
other politician. It is common belief that had Hitler come along at another
less desperate time for Germany, history would have played itself out very
differently. Germany was weak.
The people were miserable and Germans were scared after being hit with wave
after wave after wave of
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calamity.
The Nazis provided the answer for impoverished farmers, ruined shopkeepers and
small-business owners, workers disillusioned with the socialists and communist
parties, and a host of frustrated and embittered young people of all classes,
brought up in the postwar years and without hope of personal economic security.
Hitler did a lot of good for Germany, fulfilling most if not all his promises.
He provided employment and stabilized the economy. Hitler told Germans they
were the master race and promised them the world. He also provided them with a
scapegoat; someone to pinpoint their anger at: the Jew. If someone had to
suffer and pay the price for Germany’s prosperity then let it be the Jew. Such
was their mentality. History books should not portray the Germans as evil;
their eager acceptance of Hitler’s ideas and policies is the product of human
weakness and imperfection.
But Hitler was evil. Perhaps the most evil of men. An amoral man he viewed his
fellow human beings as mere bricks in the political structure he wanted to
erect. Hitler has hurt and permanently scarred the world with his destructive
message, a message that still lives. But we must never forget the Holocaust or
Hitler. Both event and figure have something to show about humanity that is ugly
but always there; always ready to strike out. If it is forgotten, it might
happen again.
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Works Cited
Beers, Solomon. Hitler’s Rise to Power. Idaho: The Hunter Company, 1987.
Benz, William. An Analysis of Hitler’s Rise to Power. New York: Lorne Inc.,
1969
Chaikin, Miriam. A Nightmare in History: The Holocaust 1933-1945. New York:
Clarion Books, 1987.
Hamilton, Daniel. The Nazi Voter. New York: White Stag Publishing, 1982
Kertz, Nadia. The Holocaust 1933-1945. Boulder Colorado: Seden Publishing, 1972
Phillippe, Lee. Those on the left. San Diego: Perham, 1975.