Chapter 17 The West Between the Wars 1919-1939
A New Era in the Soviet Union
Lenin's New Economic Policy
Soviet animated propaganda 1924 (Lenin's Kino Pravda), 4:54
The Rise of Stalin
Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin
Section 3 Hitler and Nazi Germany
Adolf Hitler, a failed student and artist, built up a small racist, anti-Semitic political party in Germany after World War I. Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch failed. In prison, he wrote Mein Kampf—an account of his movement and his views. As democracy broke down, right-wing elites looked to Hitler for leadership. In 1933 Hitler became chancellor. Amid constant chaos and conflict, Hitler used terror and repression to gain totalitarian control. Meanwhile, a massive rearmament program put Germans back to work. Mass demonstrations and spectacles rallied Germans around Hitler's policies. All major institutions were brought under Nazi control. Women's primary role was to bear Aryan children. Hitler's Nuremberg Laws established official persecution of Jews. A more violent anti-Semitic phase began in 1938 with a destructive rampage against Jews and the deportation of thousands to concentration camps. Increasingly drastic steps barred Jews from attending school, earning a living, or engaging in Nazi society.
Nazis:
Cf.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/nazisact.shtml
Information on Nazi Germany, Hitler
Click on "Germany Image Gallery" for the slideshow.
Cf. http://www.worldwar2database.com/cgi-bin/slideviewer.cgi?list=preludegermany.slides
Read a detailed account of the life of Hitler
Cf. http://library.thinkquest.org/19092/hitler.html
Test yourself on how Hitler came to power
Cf. http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/lessons/riseofhitler/index.htm
Nazi propaganda posters: Election, Sower of peace, 'One People, One Nation, One Leader,' Saving for a Volkswagen, Jews, Anti-Bolshevism.
Cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nazi_propaganda_gallery.shtml
Hitler and His Views Cf. http://www.pearsonsuccessnet.com/snpapp/iText/products/0-13-133374-7/audio.html?fname=audio/audio_WH07Y03252.mov
Note Taking
Reading and Listening Skills: Identify Main Ideas
As you read and listen to this section of material, summarize the section’s main ideas in a flowchart like the one below.
Hitler depicted with a member of a Nazi youth organization
In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party brought hope to Germans suffering from the Great Depression. On the dark side of Hitler’s promises was a message of hate, aimed particularly at Jews. A German Jewish woman recalls an attack on her family during Kristallnacht, a night in early November 1938 when Nazi mobs attacked Jewish homes and businesses.
“They broke our windowpanes, and the house became very cold. . . . We were standing there, outside in the cold, still in our night clothes, with only a coat thrown over. . . . Then they made everyone lie face down on the ground . . . ‘Now, they will shoot us,’ we thought. We were very afraid.”
In 1923, as you may have read, Hitler made a failed attempt to seize power in Munich. He was arrested and found guilty of treason. While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”). It would later become the basic book of Nazi goals and ideology.
Mein Kampf reflected Hitler’s obsessions—extreme nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism. Germans, he said, belonged to a superior “master race” of Aryans, or light-skinned Europeans, whose greatest enemies were the Jews. Hitler’s ideas were rooted in a long tradition of anti-Semitism. In the Middle Ages, Christians persecuted Jews because of their different beliefs. The rise of nationalism in the 1800s caused people to identify Jews as ethnic outsiders. Hitler viewed Jews not as members of a religion but as a separate race. (He defined a Jew as anyone with one Jewish grandparent.) Echoing a familiar right-wing theme, he blamed Germany’s defeat in World War I on a conspiracy of Marxists, Jews, corrupt politicians, and business leaders.
In his recipe for revival, Hitler urged Germans everywhere to unite into one great nation. Germany must expand, he said, to gain Lebensraum (lay buns rowm), or living space, for its people. Slavs and other inferior races must bow to Aryan needs. To achieve its greatness, Germany needed a strong leader, or Führer (fyoo rur). Hitler was determined to become that leader.
Reading Check
Summarizing
What main ideas does Hitler express in his book Mein Kampf?
Rise of Nazism
Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in 1889. When he was 18, he went to Vienna, then the capital of the multinational Hapsburg empire. German Austrians made up just one of many ethnic groups in Vienna. Yet they felt superior to Jews, Serbs, Poles, and other groups. While living in Vienna, Hitler developed the fanatical anti-Semitism, or prejudice against Jewish people, that would later play a major role in his rise to power.
Hitler went to Germany and fought in the German army during World War I. In 1919, he joined a small group of right-wing extremists. Like many ex-soldiers, he despised the Weimar government, which he saw as weak. Within a year, he was the unquestioned leader of the National Socialist German Workers, or Nazi, party. Like Mussolini, Hitler organized his supporters into fighting squads. Nazi “storm troopers” fought in the streets against their political enemies.
As a boy, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) became obsessed with Germany’s 1871 victory in the Franco–Prussian War. “The great historic struggle would become my greatest spiritual experience,” he later wrote. “I became more and more enthusiastic about everything . . . connected with war.”
In school, young Hitler was known as a ringleader. One of his teachers recalled, “He demanded of his fellow pupils their unqualified obedience.” He failed to finish high school and was later crushed when he was rejected by art school.
A man uses German marks to paper his wall because it costs less than buying wallpaper. At the height of the inflation, it would have taken 84,000 fifty-million mark notes like the one below, to equal a single American dollar. Why would inflation hit middle class people with modest savings hard?
After Hitler came to power, he used his elite guard of storm troopers to terrorize his opponents. But when he felt his power threatened, Hitler had leaders of the storm troopers murdered during the “Night of the Long Knives” on June 30, 1934.
Reading Check
Explaining
What factors helped the Nazi Party to gain power in Germany?
Victory of Nazism
As World War I drew to a close, Germany tottered on the brink of chaos. Under the threat of a socialist revolution, the kaiser abdicated. Moderate leaders signed the armistice and later, under protest, the Versailles treaty.
In 1919, German leaders drafted a constitution in the city of Weimar (vy mahr). It created a democratic government known as the Weimar Republic. The constitution set up a parliamentary system led by a chancellor, or prime minister. It gave women the vote and included a bill of rights.
The republic faced severe problems from the start. Politically, it was weak because Germany, like France, had many small parties. The chancellor had to form coalitions that easily fell apart.
The government, led by moderate democratic socialists, came under constant fire from both the left and right. Communists demanded radical changes like those Lenin had brought to Russia. Conservatives—including the old Junker nobility, military officers, and wealthy bourgeoisie—attacked the government as too liberal and weak. They longed for another strong leader like Bismarck. Germans of all classes blamed the Weimar Republic for the hated Versailles treaty. Bitter, they looked for scapegoats. Many blamed German Jews for economic and political problems.
Economic disaster fed unrest. In 1923, when Germany fell behind in reparations payments, France occupied the coal-rich Ruhr Valley (roor). Germans workers in the Ruhr protested using passive resistance and refused to work. To support the workers, the government continued to pay them, and printed huge quantities of paper money to do so. Inflation soon spiraled out of control spreading, misery and despair. The German mark became almost worthless. An item that cost 100 marks in July 1922 cost 944,000 marks by August 1923. Salaries rose by billions of marks, but they still could not keep up with skyrocketing prices. Many middle-class families saw their savings wiped out.
Vocabulary Builder
passive—(pas iv) adj. not active, nonviolent
With help from the Western powers, the government did bring inflation under control. In 1924, the United States gained British and French approval for a plan to reduce German reparations payments. Under the Dawes Plan, France withdrew its forces from the Ruhr, and American loans helped the German economy recover. Germany began to prosper. Then, the Great Depression hit, reviving memories of the miseries of 1923. Germans turned to an energetic leader, Adolf Hitler, who promised to solve the economic crisis and restore Germany’s former greatness.
After less than a year, Hitler was released from prison. He soon renewed his table-thumping speeches. The Great Depression played into Hitler’s hands. As unemployment rose, Nazi membership grew to almost a million. Hitler’s program appealed to veterans, workers, the lower middle classes, small-town Germans, and business people alike. He promised to end reparations, create jobs, and defy the Versailles treaty by rearming Germany.
With the government paralyzed by divisions, both Nazis and Communists won more seats in the Reichstag, or lower house of the legislature. Fearing the growth of communist political power, conservative politicians turned to Hitler. Although they despised him, they believed they could control him. Thus, with conservative support, Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933 through legal means under the Weimar constitution.
Within a year, Hitler was dictator of Germany. He and his supporters suspended civil rights, destroyed the socialists and Communists, and disbanded other political parties. Germany became a one-party state. Like Stalin in Russia, Hitler purged his own party, brutally executing Nazis he felt were disloyal. Nazis learned that Hitler demanded unquestioning obedience.
For assistance in understanding this section, refer to the graphic,
Why did Hitler become Chancellor?
Reading Check
Examining
Why was the Enabling Act important to Hitler's success in controlling Germany?
The Nazi State
The State and Terror
Once in power, Hitler and the Nazis moved to build a new Germany. Like Mussolini, Hitler appealed to nationalism by recalling past glories. Germany’s First Reich, or empire, was the medieval Holy Roman Empire. The Second Reich was the empire forged by Bismarck in 1871. Under Hitler’s new Third Reich, he boasted, the German master race would dominate Europe for a thousand years.
To achieve his goals, Hitler organized an efficient but brutal totalitarian rule. Nazis controlled all areas of German life—from government to religion to education. Elite, black-uniformed system of troops, called the SS, enforced the Führer’s will. His secret police, the Gestapo (guh stah poh), rooted out opposition. The masses, relieved by belief in the Nazis’ promises, cheered Hitler’s accomplishments in ending unemployment and reviving German power. Those who worried about Hitler’s terror apparatus quickly became its victims or were cowed into silence in fear for their own safety.
Economic Policies
To combat the Great Depression, Hitler launched large public works programs (as did Britain and the United States). Tens of thousands of people were put to work building highways and housing or replanting forests. Hitler also began a crash program to rearm Germany and schemed to unite Germany and Austria. Both measures were a strong repudiation, or rejection, of the hated Versailles treaty.
Spectacles and Organizations
To build for the future, the Nazis indoctrinated young people with their ideology. In passionate speeches, the Führer spewed his message of racism. He urged young Germans to destroy their so-called enemies without mercy. On hikes and in camps, the “Hitler Youth” pledged absolute loyalty to Germany and undertook physical fitness programs to prepare for war. School courses and textbooks were rewritten to reflect Nazi racial views.
The Nazis also sought to purge, or purify, German culture. They denounced modern art, saying that it was corrupted by Jewish influences. They condemned jazz because of its African roots. Instead, the Nazis glorified old German myths such as those re-created in the operas of Richard Wagner (vahg nur).
Hitler despised Christianity as “weak” and “flabby.” He sought to replace religion with his racial creed. To control the churches, the Nazis combined all Protestant sects into a single state church. They closed Catholic schools and muzzled the Catholic clergy. Although many clergy either supported the new regime or remained silent, some courageously spoke out against Hitler.
Women and Nazism
Like Fascists in Italy, Nazis sought to limit women’s roles. Women were dismissed from upper-level jobs and turned away from universities. To raise the birthrate, Nazis offered “pure-blooded Aryan” women rewards for having more children. Still, Hitler’s goal to keep women in the home and out of the workforce applied mainly to the privileged. As German industry expanded, women factory workers were needed.
To understand this material, refer to the Women in Nazi Germany diagram.
Anti-Semitic Policies
In his fanatical anti-Semitism, Hitler set out to drive Jews from Germany. In 1935, the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived Jews of German citizenship and placed severe restrictions on them. They were prohibited from marrying non-Jews, attending or teaching at German schools or universities, holding government jobs, practicing law or medicine, or publishing books. Nazis beat and robbed Jews and roused mobs to do the same. Many German Jews fled, seeking refuge in other countries.
On November 7, 1938, a young Jew whose parents had been mistreated in Germany shot and wounded a German diplomat in Paris. Hitler used the incident as an excuse to stage an attack on all Jews. Kristallnacht (krih stahl nahkt), or the “Night of Broken Glass,” took place on November 9 and 10. Nazi-led mobs attacked Jewish communities all over Germany, Austria, and the annexed portions of Czechoslovakia. Before long, Hitler and his henchmen were making even more sinister plans for what they called the “Final Solution”—the extermination of all Jews.
To understand this material, refer to the
Jews in Nazi Germany diagram.
Reading Check
Summarizing
What steps did Hitler take to establish a Nazi totalitarian state in Germany?
Ch. 17 References
The Great Depression
Photo Essay on the Great Depression
Cf. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/tools/browser12.html
Diaries of people who lived during the Depression
Cf. http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/our_america/great_depression/
People and events of the Dust Bowl
Cf. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/dustbowl/
Original photographs from the times
Cf. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fatop1.html
Cf. Click on links to view original documents from Mussolini's life and times.
Cf. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g3/
Weimar:
Cf.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/weimaract.shtml
Nazis:
Cf.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/nazisact.shtml
Click on "Germany Image Gallery" for the slideshow.
Cf. http://www.worldwar2database.com/cgi-bin/slideviewer.cgi?list=preludegermany.slides
Read a detailed account of the life of Hitler
Cf. http://library.thinkquest.org/19092/hitler.html
Test yourself on how Hitler came to power
Cf. http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/lessons/riseofhitler/index.htm
Nazi propaganda posters: Election, Sower of peace, 'One People, One Nation, One Leader,' Saving for a Volkswagen, Jews, Anti-Bolshevism.
Cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nazi_propaganda_gallery.shtml
Soviet Russia
Stalin and Industrialization of the USSR
See original documents and learn more about Stalin's methods.
Cf. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g4/
View Soviet posters
Cf. http://www.internationalposter.com/country-primers/soviet-posters.aspx
Review Stalin's takeover of power from the BBC:
Cf. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/russia/stalinsact.shtml
Find out more about jazz
Cf. http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/class/whatsjazz/wij_start.asp
