Between 1924 and 1928 Germany experienced a period of relative adjustment. The issuance of a new currency, the deflation policy, the Dawes plan, in 1925 the Ruhr region had returned to Germany, and in 1926 it had been admitted to the League of Nations. The basic problem remained the question of war reparations. In 1930, the Young plan came into effect, which deferred payment but provided for high interest rates. Weimar Germanyit represented a case of incomplete democratization to a political system based on an advanced constitution and a liberal parliament, opposed by bureaucracy and an army hostile to republican principles. Furthermore, there was an intrinsic element of institutional weakness, that is, a prerogative of the president of the state to be able to suspend certain freedoms and civil rights. The art. 48 provided that in an emergency the president could appoint a government without the necessary parliamentary majority.
In this context, the NSDAP (The German National Socialist Workers’ Party) entered the scene, reconstituted by Hitler after his release following his incarceration for the Munich Putsch. In 1925, the SS, protection squads and bodyguards ofAdolf Hitler employed by him, placed under the control of Heinrich Himmler, and had the task of the party’s investigative service. These departments went to support the SA (assault teams). The Nazi party acted through three instruments: participation in the vote, violent action against opponents and mass demonstrations, orchestrated by the head of propaganda Joseph Goebbels.
Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf – My Battle , argued that in order to get the country out of the stalemate, one had to liquidate the democratic system, inefficient and corrupt, and undertake an offensive against the enemies of Germany, the Jews, the socialists and foreign powers. In the second half of 1920 the NSDAP grew to the electoral level: nationalism,anti – communism , anti – Semitism and anti – liberalism gathered support from both the popular classes and the bourgeoisie. Hitler secured the support of big business and high finance, which hoped for an authoritarian regime that was able to guarantee their interests.
ECONOMIC CRISIS AND THE RISE OF NAZISM
The collapse of the Wall Street stock market had serious repercussions in Germany, which successive governments (Muller and Bruning) could not cope with. Instead of disengaging from the gold standard and devaluing the currency, they cut state spending by relying on private companies. At the same time, however, US loans and the inflow of foreign capital dwindled. A profound economic crisis was triggered : the continuous waves of layoffs and bank failures were followed by falling prices. In this dramatic panorama, the desperate unemployed listened more and more to extremist parties, such as the Nazi one.. Other conservative parties were also in favor of the authoritarian turn, among them the German National People’s Party headed by Von Hindenburg and believed they could tame Hitler and eliminate the left. The SPD did not see the need to form a united front against Hitler and the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) would never make an agreement with the social democrats, indeed a victory by the Nazis would accelerate a confrontation with the bourgeoisie and create conditions for the revolution.
Hitler and Nazism: history, ideology and meaning
HITLER’S GERMANY: TAKING POWER
Chancellor Bruning did not count on an ordinary parliamentary coalition and held up with the support of presidential by-laws. In 1930 he called early elections in an attempt to gain a majority in his policy of financial rigor. The polls, however, had rewarded the radical parties, especially the Nazi one which had gone from 12 to 17 seats. The failure of successive governments paved the way for Hitler who on January 30, 1933 was appointed by Hindenburg to preside over the government. Hitler moved immediately: on February 1st the parliament was dissolved, on the 27th the seat of parliament was set on fire by the Nazis themselves, while the Communists who were accused were outlawed. On March 23, the full power law was passed and Hitler was authorized to enact the laws without parliamentary approval. From this moment a nazifiscation began:
- regional governments were dissolved and management passed to the Reich;
- political parties were suppressed and the Nazi was proclaimed a single party;
- the unions were dissolved;
- the SS were included in the police force;
- the first concentration campswere set up ;
- books by authors against Nazism were set on fire in dozens of public fires;
- an anti-Semitic campaign began with a boycott of Jewish-owned shops.
Between 30 June and 1 July 1934, during the night of the long knives, a large part of the SA group (paramilitary group of the Nazi Party) was arrested and murdered. The same fate befell various exponents of the nationalist right and some army officers who no longer needed them.
THE TOTAL STRUCTURE OF THE THIRD REICH
At the top of the state Hitler held the role of Fuhrer (supreme head of Germany) who gathered in his hands the power of the President of the Republic and the Chancellor. German society was indoctrinated according to Nazi principles, aimed at absorbing every aspect of private life. Individuals existed only as part of a community of people, that is a group of people united by the common belonging to an original ethnic group (the Aryan). Consequently, single individuals could be sacrificed in the name of collective interest (this ideological conception was the cornerstone of the Nazi totalitarian regime). Children aged 10 and over were included in the Hitler Youth, ideologically indoctrinated and trained in the use of weapons, the workers were gathered in the Labor Front and the intellectuals were disciplined. Fundamental was the use of the Gestapo (control and espionage of citizens), the communists were reduced to clandestine groups and socialist and democratic were exiled. The Nazi regimethanks to the militarization of German industrial production, it guaranteed the working class work for most of those who were left without it. In 1933 Hitler entered into a concordat with the Holy See and an agreement with the Protestant churches that in exchange for silence the various confessions could exercise their magisterium. Those who refused (Jehovah’s Witnesses) were persecuted. In ’33 Germany left the League of Nations and in ’35 compulsory conscription was reintroduced. Hitler initiated an aggressive and expansionist policy, justifying it with the national slogan of the need to search for a “living space”.
ANTI-SEMITISM
1940: Image of a concentration camp in Poland – Source: Getty-Images
The community of people conceived by Hitler was a nation of blood that had to fight to preserve its purity and assert itself over other ethnic groups, at the root of this idea there was the concept of race : the superior races were destined to fight and triumph over the inferior , the Aryans were the superior race and at the bottom were the Jews . In Hitler’s Germany, there were no more than 500,000 Germans of Jewish origin, integrated with professions including doctors and lawyers, intellectuals and artists. The ‘ anti-Semitism became a state policy based on the boycott of firms and discrimination that took legal form with the laws Nuremberg (September ’35) through which it was denied:
- equal rights for Jews who were reduced to subjects;
- freedom of work;
- of economic initiative;
- of teaching.
The process of marginalization was accompanied by violence which reached its peak on the night of the crystals (8 November ’38), the Nazi authorities fueled a pogrom (popular uprising) during which they destroyed shop windows of Jewish traders and synagogues, houses and were set on fire. About 30,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps.
THE LAGERS
The concentration camps created in 1933 (the first in Dachau) were places of detention without legal jurisdiction. So-called “anti-social” were deported: gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, common criminals and Jews. The prisoners were subjected to all sorts of harassment, many of them perished in violence and hardship and all their dignity was canceled, called sub-humans, the totalitarian ideology classified them as useless, superfluous and harmful.
WATCH THE VIDEO ON THE DICTATORS OF HISTORY: SIX CURIOSITIES
Questions answers
- What is the Aryan race?
The term Aryan race until the mid-20th century indicated a racial grouping to describe people of European and West Asian descent.
- What is the meaning of National Socialism?
National Socialism was an ideology developed by Hitler that transformed into a totalitarian political system with the takeover of the National Socialist Party.
