German Chancellor Angela Merkel Visits Stanford
German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with students, faculty, and staff; she then toured Stanford's Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab and dedicated the new building that houses the facility.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that she remains committed to the war in Afghanistan but recognizes many people in her country doubt whether the military mission is necessary or right. (April 15)
Die luft der freiheit weht.
The air of freedom is blowing.
Chapter 17 The West Between the Wars 1919-1939
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
Rise of Nazism
Victory of Nazism
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.
Triumph of the Will - Hitler Youth Rally 2
Fr Joseph Ratzinger, a priest amidst the Nazis
When Joseph Ratzinger was a child, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Munich visited his parish. Young Joseph was so impressed that he set out to become either an artist or a Cardinal when he grew up.
Those first impressions led to playing with the idea of becoming priest.
Monsignor Georg Ratzinger
Popes brother
"We had a small house altar, which our uncle had made for us. We also had paraments, albs that is, and tunicals. The seamstress who sowed the dresses for my mother and my sister, sewed these paraments, practically tunicals for us. It was great fun. And we paid attention to how it is done in church, to be able to re-enact it as accurately as possible."
The age of fun and games was over and soon the time came for big decisions. In 1939, at the age of only 12, Joseph Ratzinger entered the Freising seminary.
There he lived through the most difficult years of World War II. One of the consequences of the war was the interruption of the school year.
In 1943, 16-year-old Joseph was called up to duty, like all his fellow classmates and friends, and assigned tasks in Munichs anti-aircraft defense.
One night, an SS official woke everyone up in the barracks where the soldiers were sleeping. Playing on their fear and fatigue, the official tried to convince them to enroll as volunteers in the SS. Joseph said no because he wanted to become a priest. The official humiliated and made fun of him.
Monsignor Thomas Frauenlob
Former dean, Minor Seminary, Traunstein, Germany
"He always said that his calling to become priest came very early. But it was in this confrontation with National Socialism, this huge lie which took hold, that he moved to becoming a priest."
When we returned to Freising after the war in January 1946, his seminary was in ruins. Thats why the first task for future priests was to rebuild it.
Monsignor Georg Ratzinger
Popes brother
"Rebuild is saying too much. It was very seriously damaged, run-down and dirty. But there my brother and I helped rebuild it."
They studied hard in the seminary in Freising and later at the University of Munich until June 29, 1951, when Cardinal Faulhaber, the same man that so impressed Ratzinger as a child, ordained him a priest in the cathedral of Freising.
It was an unforgettable moment that Joseph Ratzinger remembers as the most important day of his life.
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
Hitler Youth Anthem: Es zittern die morschen Knochen
This is the official song of the youth wing of the NSDAP, the Hitler Youth.
Email to gmsmith@shanahan.org
Monday: p. 549
Reading Check
Summarizing
What main ideas does Hitler express in his book Mein Kampf?
p. 549, Picturing History
How do you think Hitler viewed the average person?
Finish the sentences:
Last week, what I liked least about the class was . . .
Last week, what I liked most about the class was . . .
