How Hitler Came to Power After the Great Depression.

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How Hitler Came to Power After the Great Depression

There is no simple single answer as to why Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. If I wanted to be glib I could say that he became Chancellor because he was invited to do so by President Hindenburg, but in reality it was a combination of factors including the Nazi’s skilful use of propaganda along with Hitler’s undeniable speaking and leadership skills, and his manipulation of the German political system as well as the vanity of other politicians, which propelled Hitler and the Nazis into power. Perhaps most important was that Hitler was able to capitalise on the shallow roots of democracy in Germany, the lingering resentment of the war and the Treaty of Versailles and most critically of all the despair felt by millions of Germans as a result of the depression caused by the Wall Street crash. The depression was the catalyst that allowed all these other elements to combine in the unique environment of Germany in the early 1930’s. It is possible to argue that without the Wall Street crash and the consequent depression, Hitler might only have been a footnote in history.

In one sense the first reason why Hitler came to power in 1933 was because he had failed to seize power in the Munich putsch of 1923. At his trial he gained enormous publicity, which made him better known in Germany, but more importantly he learnt many lessons from this failure and he spent his time in jail writing ‘Mein Kampf’, which outlined his main ideas. The failure of the putsch made him realise that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to seize power, and that a more realistic route to power was to stand in elections and destroy the system from within. Even though he despised democracy, Hitler was smart enough to realise that it could be turned against itself to achieve his own aim of establishing the Fuhrer principle. He also realised that a populist movement on its own was never going to be enough, he needed friends in high places. In particular he realised that in the future he would need the support (or at least no opposition) of the military who could block his path for power, and industrialists. Just like modern politicians Hitler and the Nazis needed money to fund their political campaigns and friendly media outlets to air their views. With this in mind, Hitler actively courted big business and one of the pivotal points in his rise to power was when in 1928 he won the support of the industrialist and media tycoon Alfred Hugenburg.

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By 1928 Hitler had outlined his ideas in Mein Kampf, had decided that the route to power lay via elections rather than armed uprisings, had begun to make links with industrialists such as Hugenburg, and had already started to use propaganda. Despite all this, in the Reichstag elections of that year, the National Socialist Party won only twelve seats. Hitler was still regarded as a joke, a ‘beer hall bore’. Something was clearly missing. What was missing was any great desire on the part of the German people for radical change. Before the Depression most people were happy with the ...

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