Hitler promised that he would abolish the Treaty of Versailles – he wanted to unite all German speaking peoples, reuniting East and West Prussia (split by the Polish Corridor), taking back the land the Treaty had taken from Germany and forming Anschluss with Austria. He also wanted to rearm and to stop paying reparations, which would help to solve Germany’s major economic problems and hyperinflation.
To make Germany a great power in Europe, as it had been before WW1, Hitler wanted to expand into the east, to create ‘lebensraum’ or living room for German people. Hitler believed in national pride and Nationalism, and it was this which made him want to defeat the Versailles Treaty. By expanding eastwards, Hitler also hoped to defeat Communism. Although he had many socialist aims, such as allowing workers to share in company profits, and abolishing income unearned by work, he hated communism, and wanted to eradicate it.
Another of Hitler and the Nazis’ aims was to defeat the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was a democratic system of government. It consisted most importantly of a president, elected by the German public (men and women) every 7 years, and the Reichstag, the main legislative body. Members of the Reichstag were elected by proportional representation, and were taken from different political parties in the different electoral regions. However, the Weimar Republic was not very successful. Many of the German public did not want a democracy, but a strong central figure, such as the Kaiser had been, to help rebuild a strong Germany. Also, the Weimar Republic was seen as to blame for the Treaty of Versailles, and German people felt betrayed by them – a popular image was that the German army in particular had been ‘stabbed in the back’ when the Treaty of Versailles had been signed. The German people had been so angered and incensed by the Treaty that they called the members of the Weimar Republic who had signed it the ‘November Criminals’. Hitler used this dislike of the Weimar Republic to promote himself and the Nazi party. He wanted a strong central government, or dictatorship, such as were taking control all over mainland Europe. Encouraged by the recent success of Mussolini in taking over the government in Italy, the economic problems in Germany, and the weakness of the Weimar government, he attempted to overthrow the republic in November 1923, in the Munich Putsch. On the 8th November, his private army (the SA – Sturm Abteilung or Storm troopers) surrounded a hall in which the leader of the Bavarian government, Gustav von Kahr, was addressing a meeting. Hitler announced that he was taking over the government, and when Kahr could not be persuaded to support him, he was locked in a room. However, Kahr managed to escape. Hitler tried again the next day, this time marching with 3000 supporters on Munich, but he was met by armed policemen, called out by Kahr. The march was broken up, and Hitler was later arrested and put on trial for treason. At his trial, Hitler was allowed to make a long speech defending himself. This transformed him into a champion of the right wing, and gained the Nazis many more supporters. He was only imprisoned for 9 months, in which he wrote Mein Kampf, and this too gained him supporters and made him and the Nazis the obvious leaders of the right wing opponents of the Weimar Republic.
Hitler also believed in a pure German ‘master race’ – the Aryan race. His Aryan race was tall, blond, and blue eyed, and the Jews were the complete opposite of this – small and dark. Hitler was strongly Anti-Semitic, regarding Jews as the lowest of all races, and using them as scapegoats for all of Germany’s problems. He wanted to remove all Jews from positions of leadership in Germany, and to stop them from living in the German nation, as they were not of true German blood. This is shown by one of his 25 points, which translates as ‘Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood, whatever be their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.’ Eventually, Hitler wanted to eradicate the whole of the Jewish race completely. To preserve the purity of the German race, Hitler also wanted to prevent all immigration.
These were the main aims of Hitler and the Nazi party, although they did have other intentions, such as educating gifted children at the state’s expense, and sharing out land for the benefit of everyone. Their ideas were supported by a large majority of the German public, and eventually when they came into power in 1933, they managed to achieve most, if not all, of these aims.