The strength of the right wing started to shine through in 1920 when Germany was told that they were not allowed to keep their Freikorps under the treaty of Versailles. This meant that they must no longer be in service. As some of the Freikorps did no like this decision, they stormed upon Berlin and announced that Dr Kapp would be their leader. Dr Kapp was an extreme nationalist. As all the politicians fled, he was able to run the country. At the time people did not want him to run the country, and he realised he could not run the country without their help. He stepped down on the 18 March 1920 and the government returned. Another way that the right wing was so strong is that they had force on their side. As the Freikorps were right wing, they were able to fight the communists and also stop them from making any campaigns.
Between 1920-33 the violence of the streets continued to increase between the Nazi party and the Communists. Hitler set an organisation called the S.A. (storm troopers). These were the people, who would fight on the streets, wreck other parties' campaigns and intimidate people to vote Nazi. In 1923 after the economic crisis of Hyperinflation, Hitler thought that this was his moment of glory. He thought that the Nazi party had gained enough support to take over Munich. Hitler had a backing of 55'000 members. The army secretly backed the Nazi party so that they could fight against the communists. On the 8 November when Hitler started his march on the streets, This was called the Beerhall putsch as it had started in a beer hall and progressed onto the streets. The Army was told to go out and fight them, but they refused. The police were then called out and the march ended up in a gunfight. Field Marshall Paul Von Hindenburg was elected as President. He was a hero during world war one.
In July 1932 Hindenburg's son appointed Von Papen chancellor, but in September the Reichstag reject him Hindenburg dissolves government. In October Hitler was offered the role of vice chancellor but he refused, as he wanted to be chancellor, and did not want to be second best. In January 1933 Von Papen approaches Hitler to give him a deal. He would make him chancellor but he would also be in a minority so that he could not make any bad decisions.
The Nazi vote increased dramatically from when the party started to 1933. Here is a table showing their voters.
As you can see from the table the Nazi party's voters grew. In the 1930 election the party grew by 95 seats. At the beginning of the Nazi party, their votes went up and down. From 1930 till 1933 the Nazi party's vote stayed strong and grew. This is because many people moved toward extremist parties, and many were on Hitler's side. From the table you can also see that the Nazi party vote went down by 34 seats. Many people say that this is because when he was offered the role of vice chancellor he turned it down. This made people think that he was not in politics to good for Germany, but he was in there for himself and he would do the things he wants.
It is said that a lot of people voted for the Nazi party as Hitler excited them. Gregor Strasser said that the people who voted Nazi did not always vote for the things that Hitler promised, what he believed in or even the S.A., people felt exited by him.
The threat of communism played a big part in the success of Hitler. Hitler had a great skill of being able to change and persuade people to do thing. Hitler was able to use the threat of communism to gain financing for his party. He knew that rich conservative did not want Germany to be run by communists, as they would have to give up their wealth to the people of Germany. Hitler said that he would protect them from communists, if they backed and funded his party, which they did. The same as the Nazi party set up the S.A., the KPD set up the red front. These two paramilitary groups battle on the streets killing each other. The KPD were a very strong party and they almost always had high votes.
There was a decline in middle class votes, and some of the voters voted Nazi.
As Hitler was able to persuade people to help him, in exchange for safety against communism, Hugenburg, a rich conservative who owned his own chain of theatres gave Hitler publicity through trailers and news articles in he theatres. This was a big step for Hitler as most people did not have T.V. and also many people did not have radio. Hitler also had many posters put up around every town persuading people to vote Nazi and telling them how bad communism is.
The Weimar Republic was a system where there were multiple parties in government. There was a president who had special rights. The Weimar republic was going well until 1923 when there were big economic problems. Because there were many parties in government at one time (there were 5 parties in government at one time) they found it hard to agree with each other. For example; The Nazi party would not agree with the KPD, the Centre Party would not agree with the socialist party etc. This meant that if any law wanted to be passed they would all have to agree, of the chancellor would take it to the President so that he could pass it as an emergency law. This is what started to happen in Germany 1929. After the hyperinflation in 1923, there were only 6 years were Germany was problem free. In 1924 Gustav Stresemann was voted as foreign minister and he made Germany Great again. He set up the Dawes plan, which was a plan to persuade the allies to lower the amount of reparation that they would have to pay. Germany also agreed that they would pay back as much money as they could a year to the allies. He improved foreign relations and also improved Germany's status within Europe. He signed the Locarno treaties, which said that Germany would not attack Belgium or France and also they said they would settle any disputes with the east peacefully. In 1929 the government then signed the young plan. This cut the reparations that they had to pay dramatically.
Many countries trusted Germany again and they were allowed into the League of Nations. Foreign countries were lending Germany money so that they could get back on their feet after their hyperinflation crisis. America gave Germany a lot of money so that they would be able to trade with them again. Germany was a big trader with other countries before the war and they wanted to restore that. 25'000 million gold marks were lent to Germany to help the government and businesses.
The parties that were in the Reichstag were not in there long enough for them to help Germany in any serious way. If a law could not be passed, the person who wanted to pass it would go to the president and ask him to pass it by decree, Ebert was one person that used to do this a lot. In 1932 the situation was so bad that Hindenburg dissolved the government and ran the country by himself.
Unemployment rose dramatically from 1921 to 1932. Here is a table showing the percentage of the population unemployed.
As you can see from this table, the unemployment rates from 1921 to 1932 went up and down. Economic crises were a cause of a lot of unemployment. In 1923 Unemployment went up because of Hyperinflation. Hyperinflation was when Germany told the French that they could not pay back any of the reparations and as a result the French invaded the Ruhr and made the Germans work to pay back the money. The workers went on strike and this meant that the government had to pay them unemployment benefits so that they could live. As the government was running out of money, they printed some more. The more money they printed, the less the money was worth, so they needed to print more money to make up for the loss of value of the Mark. The value of the mark went down everywhere in Germany and people were getting their wages in the morning and spending it before it was worth nothing. Money was worth more in paper than it was in cash.
The German government was finding it hard to pay off the reparations as they were having their own problems in Germany. The hyperinflation lasted for a few months but by the time it finished in November 1923 everything had become worthless. Here is a table showing the price of everyday items during hyperinflation.
Hyperinflation made a lot of people unemployed. But not everyone lost out in hyperinflation. Farmers who live in debt had their debts cleared when they paid their earnings to the bank. At the time of hyperinflation, the unemployment rose to 38% of the total population but this is not shown in the table (unemployment table above).
In 1929 The Wall street crash happened. As Germany had borrowed so much money from American banks and companies, they wanted it back. Before the crash, Germany had been taking out loans to pay back other loans, but the more loans that they took out, the more money they would have to pay back. The wall street crash happened when everybody in the U.S. started to sell all of his or her shares. As Germany could not pay back the money they had borrowed, they went into a depression. This made millions of people homeless. At the time of the Depression Hitler was holding a lot a rallies all over Germany. The unemployed went to these rallies and as a result the voted Nazi. As Hitler did not promises anything specific every class voted for him.
The 3rd biggest bank in Germany, Danat bank, collapsed as a result from the depression. As it was the 3rd biggest bank, a lot of people had their lives savings in there. Everybody all around Germany started to take their money out of their banks as they though that this was going to happen to them. At this time more and more people started to look towards extreme parties such as communism and Nazi.
The government wanted to solve the problem of depression and they set out to do so. As Hindenburg was right wing, he changed something's in the Reichstag that were communist. Bruning was against all of the violence in Germany but when General Schleicher told Hindenburg that Bruning was communist he was made to resign. When Von Papen came to be Chancellor in July 1932 he was a close friend of Hindenburg's son. When Von Papen rights his budget to he resolve the depression, parliament rejects it so he goes to Hindenburg. Hindenburg passes the budget through decree, and then he dissolves the Reichstag.
I think that the biggest factor in Hitler becoming Chancellor of Germany is the fact that people feared communism. He gained a lot of support through people, mainly rich conservatives being afraid of communism. I believe that if communism hadn't have come from Russia at the end of the war, Hitler would never have become chancellor. As Hitler played with the rich, if there had been no communism Hitler would have had no funding and very little support. Also if there had not been any communism, the S.A. either would not have been set up, or they would have no one to fight, which means that they could not bully people into voting Nazi. Also if there had not been such a bad economic crisis Hitler may have not become chancellor of Germany. These are the two main factors. People might think that it was because of his skill of public speech and how he could intimidate people, but this is not the case. The main people that he intimidated were the rich.
If there had not been any economic problems there would probably not been any problems in the Reichstag and everybody would vote for the same party all the time. The only reason that people started to vote right wing and Nazi was that Hitler had told them that the current Government was not very good and that they needed a change. I doubt that if Hitler had not have been given the chance to become chancellor, by Von Papen, he would have still been chancellor as unemployment was rising and his votes kept on increasing. Hitler's votes went down a little when he became chancellor. Hitler did not get to power on his own, he used other peoples success such and Scheidemann's and Hugenburgs Money and Theatre chain.
