Describe how Hitler rose to power during the early 1930's. What steps did he take to consolidate his position during 1933-1934?

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Abigail Morrish 10AST 25/01/02

Describe how Hitler rose to power during the early 1930’s. What steps did he take to consolidate his position during 1933-1934?

Hitler was  famous and considered a  heroic figure during 1930 right through to the 1940’s. This tells of how Hitler got to this particular stage in his life, and how he kept it.

It wasn’t until 1928 that Hitler realised that Armed revolutions didn’t gain him immediate or total control ( after the failure of the Munich Putsch), and he decided that to get to the position he wanted to reach he would have to do it legally, and so he decided to stand him and his party in the Reichstag elections. But he wasn’t the only party which was determined to win, the communists began a great propaganda campaign as well. They copied some of the Nazis ideas such as parading in front of their leader (Ernest Thalmann) and also fought raging street battles with the Nazi’s in Berlin. But when the first results came in, it showed that both the communists and the Nazi’s got a low number of seats (Nazi’s getting 12 and the communists getting 54) and it showed that violence hadn’t benefited either of them. The social democratic party won despite the fact they had been branded the ‘November Criminals’.

Then in October 1929, all the business men and other countries who had lent Germany money all wanted it back. This of course was an effect of the wall street crash. This brought Germany crashing down and the German economy lay in ruins. Companies went bankrupt all over Germany, which resulted in exceedingly high unemployment figures ( up to 6,100,000 in January 1933). While Germany was in ruin and disarray, the Nazi’s took this depression as a blessing, as many people blamed the government for the collapse, and turned to politicians that were promising a brighter future. The Nazi’s were of course one of those parties, and this showed dramatically in the 1930 Reichstag elections, when even Hitler himself was shocked at receiving a huge 107 seats.

Before the elections and economic collapse, Hitler had a great many supporters some a lot more important to him than others. Hitler had six main groups that would guarantee him success. His most important was most likely the judges and the news papers. This was part of the reason Hitler enjoyed such a lenient sentence after the Munich Putsch, a generous six months, which was spent in luxurious conditions. The judges supported him, because they themselves were right wing and many of Hitler’s ideas and plans agreed with their ideals for Germany. He also had the support of the newspaper barons, this guaranteed him constant press coverage, they supported him because they were nationalists, and his ideas also mixed in with their views. He also won over the unemployed, farmers, Business chiefs and workers. By promising jobs for the unemployed, better conditions and money for the farmers, to the business chiefs, to smash the Trade union strikes, and to the workers to destroy communism. He managed to please almost everyone, and that’s what made him so clever.

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After the good news for the Nazi’s in the 1930 Reichstag elections, Hitler set about improving his position. He may have got 107 seats but the Social Democrats still had 143 seats, and Hitler needed total control. Hitler’s whole campaign was made up of Propaganda. This was a good way of winning votes as it got messages across to mass amounts of people. Hitler put a man called Joseph Goebbels in charge of that particular part of his master plan. Goebbels set about to this task starting with records and films about Hitler’s speeches, posters and flags all over the ...

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