How Successful Was The Nazi Party in Germany 1919-1929?

Hitler became head of the DAP and renamed Nazi’s for short. They had a 25 point program, which seemed attractive to many right-wing Germans. It included many popular ideas such as the revision of the Treaty Of Versailles, a union of all German speakers, a totalitarian state, profit sharing in industry, cuts in interest, and other points that excluded non-Germans (especially Jews) in order to benefit Germans. This 25 point program not only appealed to right-wing fascists but the socialist points (i.e., large department stores to be leased to smaller traders) which it included were to appeal to the working class Germans, and to increase support for the Nazi party.

The Nazi party was backed financially by ex-army friends and from rich anti-communist conservatives who feared a communist take-over. This allowed the Nazi party to grow quickly and buy a party newspaper. Hitler was a good public speaker, he was able to win over support from a crowd quickly, and this also allowed support for the Nazi’s to grow quickly. The Nazi party also had its own “private” army called the SA, who gave the party a tough image, and allowed the party to fight the communists in street fighting as well as protecting Hitler himself.

Hitler became convinced that the only way he would be able to gain power would be by using violence; the SA participated a lot to this theory as they created a lot of this violence. Hitler believed he needed to first seize control of Munich, which was the capital of Bavaria where the Nazi party was based. In 1923 Hitler saw an opportunity to seize power of Munich, at this time there was economic chaos in the city as well as strikes in the mines. But his attack depended on the support of the military, otherwise without this support he would be incapable of taking over the city successfully. On the 8th of November, the Nazi party put their plan into action. They trapped two senior officials of the police and army in a building and attempted to persuade them of his plan, they eventually did agree to his plan, but when they left the building they alerted the police. The police rioted with members of the Nazi party the next morning leaving 16 Nazi Germans dead, and Hitler was arrested for treason for 5 years.

While in prison, Hitler changed his attitude, he realised that violence would not be the way to power in German but instead he should try to approach it by a democratic route. When Hitler was released 5 years later, he re-grouped the Nazi party and ran for election in May 1924. They performed badly at elections steadily getting worse and by May 1928 only having 12 seats. Even though Hitler tried many new tactics, like creating leagues for women, teachers, students and law officers, and that even though party membership grew, Hitler wasn’t pulling in voters. This was because his ideas were becoming outdated and the policies he once had were no longer useful as Germany was becoming more economically stable, therefore voters saw no need to vote for the Nazi party.