Realising the German man’s fondness for uniforms, the SA, who in Mein Kamf Hitler referred to as “…an instrument for the conduct and reinforcement of the movement’s struggle for its philosophy of life”, adopted a brown-shirted outfit, with boots, swastika armband, badges and cap. Nazi uniforms along with the swastika symbol would become important tools in providing recognition, thus increasing the public awareness of the party. By 1930 the SA were a 100,000 men strong. Under command of Captain Ernst Röhm the SA steadily won street battles for Hitler but soon he favoured the SS as he felt the SA were becoming too socialist and too independent for his liking. The SS, Staff Guard or Schutzstaffel served as Hitler’s personal bodyguard. They also adopted a uniform but this SS's was black. In January 1929, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler to command the SS.
Despite all this effort, the Nazis now ran into a big obstacle that limited the Party’s success. This was the improvement of Germany’s economy and unemployment levels dropping. The big German industrialists were now debt free, factory output was increasing and investment capital came pouring in from the United States.
Inflation ended due to the work of Stresemann and people now had confidence in the currency so the economy was under control. The Dawes plan in 1924 meant that Germany would pay a much lower figure for reparations, which would vary according to the country’s prosperity each year. Amid all this, Adolf Hitler knew it was going to be slow for his party, which had counted so many unhappy, disgruntled men among its early members. But Hitler also had a sense that these good times would not last. The German Republic was living on borrowed money and borrowed time. The underlying political and racial tensions Hitler was so keen to exploit were still there, only dormant. And when the good times were over, the people would once again look to the extremists and therefore to Hitler. For the time being, he just had to wait.
In 1925 Joseph Goebbles first came to Hitler’s attention and experienced a quick rise in Nazi hierarchy. Goebbles, a brilliant but somewhat neurotic would-be writer, displayed huge talents for speech making, organization, and propaganda. He was a rarity among the Nazis, a highly educated man, with a PhD in literature. Goebbles was sent by Hitler in October 1926 to Berlin to be its Gauleiter. He skilfully used good and even bad publicity to get the party noticed. He organized meetings, gave speeches, published a newspaper, plastered posters all over neighbourhoods and even provoked confrontation with Marxists. The party membership grew because of Goebbles’ work.
On May 20th 1928 national elections were held in Germany. The Nazis had a poor showing with only twelve out of thirty six Nazis who had stood for one of the 489 seats were elected. For the average German, the Nazis at this time had little appeal. Things seemed to be just fine without them. The economy was going strong, inflation under control, and people working again.
In another part of the world, however, Wall Street in New York, events were happening that would bring an end to this quiet time for Adolf Hitler and would ultimately help put the Nazis in power in Germany. On October 29 1929, the Wall Street stock market crashed with disastrous worldwide effects. First in America, then the rest of the world. Unemployment soon soared and poverty and starvation became real possibilities for everyone. People panicked and governments seemed powerless against the worldwide economic collapse and so fear ruled. Governments stood on the brink as the Great Depression began. Adolf Hitler knew his time had finally come.
By the mid-1930’s, amid the economic pressures of the Great Depression, the German democratic government was beginning to unravel. The crisis of the Great Depression bought disunity to the political parties in the Reichstag. Instead of forging alliance to enact desperately needed legislation, they broke up into squabbling uncompromising groups. In March of 1930, Heinrich Brüning, a member of the Catholic Centre Party, became chancellor. Despite the overwhelming need for a financial program to help the German people suffering from the depression, Chancellor Brüning encountered stubborn opposition to his plans. To break the bitter stalemate, he went to President Hindenburg and asked the old gentleman to invoke Article 48 of the German constitution, which gave emergency powers to the president to rule by decree. This provoked a huge outcry from the opposition, demanding a withdrawal of the decree. As a measure of last resort, Brüning asked Hindenburg in July 1930 to dissolve the Reichstag according to parliamentary rules and call for new elections. The elections were set for September 14th and the Nazis sprang into action. Their time for campaigning had arrived. The people of Germany were tired of the political haggling in Berlin. They were tired of misery and tired of suffering. These were desperate times and in these times people often look towards extremist parties. This meant they were willing to listen to anyone, even Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis waged a modern whirlwind campaign in 1930 unlike anything else seen in Germany. Hitler travelled the country delivering dozens of major speeches and rallies, attending meetings, shaking hands, signing autographs, posing for pictures and even kissing babies. Joseph Goebbles brilliantly organized thousands of meetings, torchlight parades, and plastered posters everywhere and printed millions of special edition Nazi newspapers. With Germany in the grip of the Great Depression with a population suffering from poverty, misery, and uncertainty, amid increasing political instability was in great need of a solution. Frau Mundt said, “...he (Adolf Hitler) was on the side of the unemployed. My mother wept for joy. My parents prayed dear God give this man all the votes so that we could get out of need. There was no one else who promised what he did.” This showed that to many, Hitler was a messiah figure.
Hitler offered something to everyone; work to the unemployed, prosperity to failed business people, profits to industry, expansion to the army, social harmony and an end to class distinctions to idealistic young students, and restoration of German glory to those in despair. He promised to bring order amid chaos, a feeling of unity to all and the chance to belong. He would make Germany strong again, end payment of war reparations to the Allies, tear up the treaty of Versailles, stamp out corruption, keep down Marxism and deal harshly to the Jews. Hitler cleverly appealed to all classes of the Germans. The name of the Nazi party itself was deliberately all-inclusive - the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. All of the Nazis, from Hitler down to the leader of the smallest city block, worked tirelessly and relentlessly to pound their message into the mind of Germans.
On Election Day, September 14th 1930, the Nazis received 6,371,000 votes, over eighteen percent of the total. They won 107 seats in the German Reichstag and so from becoming one of the smallest parties they had become the second biggest party in Germany, almost overnight. This propelled Hitler to national and international prestige and aroused the curiosity of the world press. The skilled manipulator of the masses had replaced the Beer Hall revolutionary. The Nazis, however, had no intention of cooperating with the democratic government, knowing it was to their advantage to let things get worse in Germany, thus increasing the appeal of Hitler to an ever more miserable people. However, as the historian T. Childers said, “If the party’s support was a mile wide, it was an inch deep…” This meant that Hitler had great support, but only in certain groups. These were mainly the middle class or mittelstand who feared a communist revolution would destroy their wealth and social standing. Also the working class outside the big cities voted for the Nazis in large numbers, as they did not belong to a trade union, which usually voted socialist.
In October 1931, the President of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, was presented to Hitler for the first time. Hitler was a bit unnerved by the old gentleman and rambled on at great lengths to try and impress him. Hindenburg was not impressed and later said that Hitler might be suited for Postmaster, but never for a high position such as Chancellor of Germany. In the spring of 1932 Hindenburg’s seven-year term of office as president came to an end at the age of 85 with a declining health he wished to retire, leaving Hitler looming in the background. However, Hindenburg was persuaded by the Chancellor and others to stand for re-election. Hitler decided to oppose him and run for the presidency himself. “Freedom and Bread” was the slogan used by Hitler with great effect in his camping. Joseph Goebbles again waged a furious propaganda campaign on behalf of Hitler, outdoing the previous election effort of 1930. In the presidential election held on March 13 1932, Hitler got over eleven million votes or thirty percent of the total. Hindenburg, however, got forty nine percent of the votes. After the election result, Brüning’s position was weak and the Minister of Defence, Kurt von Schleicher was determined that Brüning should go. Schleicher also underestimated Hitler and had ideas or running Germany himself. This was a mistake that would prove fatal. In May 1932 von Schleicher persuaded Hindenburg to force Brüning to resign. Franz von Papen was the new Chancellor.
Papen invoked Article 48 and proclaimed martial law in Berlin and also took over the government of the German state of Prussia by naming himself Reich Commissioner. Germany had taken a big step closer to authoritarian rule. Hitler now decided that von Papen was in the way of his rise to power and had to go.
Within almost a month of the presidential election, there was another election on 31st July 1932. Hitler and his men organized a massive campaign of rallies and speeches and he now spoke to adoring audiences of up to 100,000. All their efforts had paid off when the results announced that the Nazis had become the biggest party in the Reichstag. 230 Nazi deputies were elected and their 13.74 million votes was more than thirty seven percent of the total cast. The Social Democrats came second with eight million votes. These results meant that von Papen had no hope of finding enough support to stay as Chancellor. He persuaded Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and on September 12th the Reichstag under the new chairmanship of Hermann Göring gave a vote of no confidence to Papen and his government. However, the dissolution of the Reichstag meant yet another election. Everyone was tired of elections now and Goebbles was having trouble keeping up the level of Nazi campaign as in previous elections.
As expected the November 1932 election result was a disappointment for Hitler, although he remained the largest party, he lost 34 seats and two million votes. Chancellor von Papen still had no hope of finding enough deputies so offered to resign. As the largest party member, Hitler was offered the chance to form a new government but refused unless he was given very wide powers. Hindenburg again offered the Chancellorship to von Papen but von Schleicher persuaded Hindenburg not to reappoint von Papen as Chancellor. And so von Schleicher was offered the chance to form a new government and he reluctantly accepted in December 1932 but his attempts to gain support were hopeless. This gave the possibility of Hitler taking the path to Chancellorship.
Von Papen widened this path when they met secretly in Cologne early in 1933. Von Papen was determined to overthrow von Schleicher and so suggested that the Nazis and the Nationalists form a joint government. Hitler would be Chancellor but the Nationalists would have the majority in the government. Hitler agreed but on the condition that the Social Democrats, the Communists and the Jews should be removed from important positions in Germany. Von Schleicher’s position was becoming increasingly hard and he succeeded in upsetting everyone and on 28th of January 1933, he was forced to resign. Hitler was the only possibility for Chancellor. It was soon agreed that Hitler would be Chancellor, von Papen Vice-Chancellor and the National Party leader the minister of economic affairs. Finally on 30th of January 1933 Hitler was sworn into power by Hindenburg. At the age of forty-three, within nine years of being released from jail, Hitler took charge of the government.
The organisation and hard work of Goebbles, the persuasive oratory skills of Hitler and luck all had a decisive factor in bringing the Nazis into power in 1933. However, I feel it was the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression that followed meant that the people of Germany wanted to turn to an extremist party in order to change the state of Germany. Hitler and the Nazis had not been in charge yet and so had not done anything wrong. Also as Hitler tried, and usually successfully appealed to all of the people making great promises he was turned to as a messiah to save Germany. A mixture of hard work and good timing led the Nazis into power in 1933.
