Anti-Marxism had been a staple of right-wing German political discourse since the days of Bismarck. The Nazi party were merely the inheritors of this tradition. The German ruling class, and the conservative middle classes, along with sections of the rural population had for a long time worried about the possibility of the socialist revolution in Germany. The revolutionary upheaval of 1918, in which Workers’ Soviets like those seen in Russia had spontaneously sprung up, only heightened the fear. The SPD President Ebert had allayed these fears in the earlier days of the Republic when he joined with the Army in putting down the Sparatacist revolt. Far from introducing radical socialist policies, the successive SPD governments in the Weimar republic had contented themselves with conciliation and a fidelity to “parliamentary democracy” – even if that required coalition with right-wing forces. As the crisis in the republic deepened between 1929-32, the SPD became increasingly marginalized. The right blamed them for Germany losing the war (patently ridiculous) and the shame of Versailles (more plausible), and those to the left attacked them for failing to fulfil the workers’ revolution. Their vote in the Reichstag fell from a high 37.9% in 1919 to 20.4% in the November 1932 elections. Working class voters began to shift to a new force on the left – The KPD (Communist). As the crisis caused by the depression got worse, and the street battles between Communists and Nazis intensified, it seemed to some that the choice for Germany was simple – Communism or Nazi rule. The Nazis promised to break “Jewish Marxism” both in Germany and, ultimately, in the Soviet Union itself. It is doubtful that the “fear of socialism” was the main reason most “ordinary folk” supported Hitler. His anti-socialism did however appeal to German industrialists, nationalists and army leaders. Speaking to the prestigious Industrieklub in Dusseldorf in 1932, Hitler promised to “destroy Marxism in Germany down to its last root”. The Nationalist right didn’t all agree with or particularly like Hitler – aristocratic veterans like President Hindenburg looked down on his “uneducated mob”. But when push came to shove, they knew that only Hitler could rouse the masses to the nationalist cause against Communism. For his own part, Hitler was disdainful of the pompous elites. His movement was young, dynamic and radical; he was suspicious of conservative elites.
Hitler and the Nazi party were most effective when they were explaining what they were “against”. “Bolshevism”, “Jewry and Liberalism” were continued targets, but for Hitler in particular, the Treaty of Versailles was a passionate hatred – a hatred that he shared with the German people. Hitler had heard about the revolution, and the surrender, while recovering in army hospital from an injury he had got on the front line. He was devastated at the news. To explain the defeat he formulated the “stab in the back” theory, which stated that the German army hadn’t been defeated but had been betrayed by Jews, Communists and Pacifists in the German government. When the same people signed the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler, once again along with most Germans, was outraged. One of the main reasons the German public had originally wanted a republic was because they hoped it would secure a good settlement with the Allies – how could they punish us for the crimes of an Empire that we have dismantled? The Treaty of Versailles was not the outcome they had hoped for. As discussed previously, it contained clauses that many Germans deemed intolerable. Support for the government, and by extension the whole system of Weimar democracy, was undermined. In the first election after the Treaty had been signed, parties who supported the Republic lost votes and the parties who opposed it gained votes. The goal of almost all democratic German politicians, most effectively Stresemann, was to ameliorate Versailles. For authoritarian nationalist elements, such as the DNVP and later the Nazis, Versailles and reparation payments were untenable and only its repudiation and the destruction of the republic which fostered it would do. The Treaty itself was harsh – but no more so than the Brest-Litovsk treaty which the Imperial government had offered Soviet Russia. Also, there is no doubt that the German politicians who signed the treaty would have had reservations but what exactly where their options? Signing the treaty or face an occupation of Germany by the allies? Still, this message did not get through to most Germans. The Nazis would obtain support from the patriotic protestant middle class for their opposition to Versailles, as well as Veterans and soldiers – many of who lost their jobs because of restrictions on the size of the German army. When they signed the Locarno pact and the Young Plan, perhaps the Allies were admitting that in its original form, the Treaty was too harsh for the nascent republic. If Versailles was to blame for the rise of the Nazi party, then the Allies, and the French in particular, most certainly “paid” for their earlier severity.
The years between 1923 and 1929 are usually described as the ‘Golden Era’ of the republic. Gustav Stresemann solved the Ruhr crisis, curbed the hyperinflation with the introduction of the Rentenmark and as foreign secretary oversaw Germany’s entry into the League of Nations. He also signed an agreement with the Americans that he hoped would boost the German economy. The Dawes Plan meant American loans and investment into Germany. By 1928, German living standards were the same as pre-war levels and the SPD and the other republican parties had gained back some support. The nationalist right was losing support but the Nazi’s were gaining more influence within it. This period of stability was to be cruelly and absolutely shattered with the onset of the Great Depression. As a result of the Dawes Plan, Germany was heavily indebted to the United States. When the American economy went down the chute, these loans were called in, causing a sudden retraction in German industrial output. The predictable result was spiralling unemployment, which reached 6 million in 1932. Millions of Germans fell into abject poverty. The government unemployment insurance fund was put under enormous strain. The Chancellor, Bruning, introduced a series of austere measures, such as a cut in unemployment benefit in an attempt to save the economy– causing even the SPD to leave the coalition government. Weimar democracy had entered its chaotic denouement. The population turned to the “extremes” in the form of the KPD and The Nazis. In July 1932, the Nazis received their biggest slice of the vote (in a fair election), getting 37 percent – making them the single biggest party. Hitler’s tactic of pursuing parliamentary means hoping for a crisis from which he could profit was effective. The Communists got a massive 16% of the vote, but, in reality, they were more concerned with bashing the SPD than “confronting” fascism. At this time they were following a quite suicidal policy from Moscow that branded the SPD “social fascists”, who were just as bad as the Nazis. The Socialists, Trade Unionists and Communists who would perish in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany were the real victims of this great historical madness. Its ironic that future Communist parties would join with groups much more right wing than the SPD in the name of “popular fronts” against Fascism. Many historians have argued that the great depression is central to the Nazi rise to power. It’s only in times of great crisis that the politics of fear and hate can prosper.
It would be quite easy to explain the Nazi rise to power as a result of a collection of “objective historical circumstances”. However, any sensible analysis of the Nazis’ growth has to include an acceptance that their propaganda appealed to masses of people and that Hitler was a charismatic leader. It wasn’t just that Hitler was “interesting” or “appealing”. His intensity and certainty about the glory of the German people held in thrall a nation that had lurched from one disaster to another. He was, in short, just what the German people (thought) they wanted. There are plenty of accounts of sceptics meeting and hearing Hitler and describing their conversion to Nazism because of it, for some, it bordered on a religious experience. He explained their problems and the solutions to those problems in a language they could understand. The Nazi party ideology rejected obscure notions of “class” in favour the less obscure notion of “race” and “blood”. All Germans are superior to all non-Germans – to a defeated nation; it was music to the ears. The anti-Semitism was nothing new. It had been around since time immemorial. But Hitler’s anti-Semitism wasn’t just blind religious hatred, he offered an explanation of real material problems in Germany – it was “the Jew”. The Jewish bankers, doctors, politicians and teachers had infected the German nation, and Nazism was the cure. In the Industrial heartlands of Prussia, the Nazis attempted to imbue their propaganda with some nebulous anti-capitalism. Large-scale capitalism was a “Jewish conspiracy” (as of course was “world socialism”). This found some favour among non-unionised skilled workers, but never a great deal. Nazism could never fool the German working class, and right up until the last days of Weimar democracy, they stood steadfast in their support for the genuine socialism of the SPD and the KPD. Most Nazi support came from the middle classes who had been ravaged by the economic collapse in 1924. They also won some support from farmers and people in the rural areas. Hitler, like any arch demagogue, could fit his rhetoric to the audience. In Berlin he would talk of his disdain for “exploitative capitalism”, when talking to his industrialist backers his “anti-Communism” would come to the fore. In reality, Hitler had no social or economic plans. His only real goal was complete personal authority. Any propaganda issued was a means to this end.
To conclude, “fear of socialism” did produce some support for the Nazi movement, particularly in the “elites” of German society. Most Nazi support however, came from their ability to capitalize on the weaknesses of Weimar democracy, such as its association with the Treaty of Versailles. The Great Depression gave the Nazis the opportunity to offer themselves as the solution to the terrible unemployment and poverty it caused. The cult of the individual around Hitler, coupled with Nazi nationalism and anti-Semitism made them appealing to sections of the German population who had grown weary of the Republic and desired a new “strong man” to lead Germany. What is clear is that the collapse of Weimar democracy and its replacement with a Nazi totalitarian state was a disaster for all Europe, no more so than Germany itself.