to do it the legal and democratic way, but then once in power destroy the system. Hitler set
about to the task of rebuilding the Nazi party so that it would be able to take power through
democratic ways. He had seen the Communist party use youth organizations and recruitment
drives, so soon the Nazis were doing the same. In May 1924, they took part in the Reichstag
elections and won 32, encouraging Hitler. He created a network of local Nazi parties which in turn set up the Hitler Youth, the Nazi Students’ League and similar organizations for their local
area. By 1927, the Nazis were still trying to win the German workers’ support, but the result of
the 1928 election showed them that they would have to look elsewhere for more support. They
gained only 12 seats in this election and only a quarter of the Communist vote. This seems to
show that the fortunes of the Nazis were closely linked with the economic situation: the more
unstable the economy was, the more seats in the Reichstag the Nazis would win. 1928 was a
year where things were getting better for Germany, so the Nazis won few seats.
Their anti-semitic policies had gained them more support, but they hadn’t won over the
workers, who more radical political views and were more likely to support the Communists.
And most of the workers supported the Social Democrat party, as they had done in every
election since 1919. Despite the Nazis’ arguments that the workers were being exploited, urban
industrial workers actually believed that they were doing rather well in Weimar Germany, up
until 1929.
Other groups in society weren’t as successful as the industrial workers. The Nazis discovered
they gained more support from groups like peasant farmers, middle-class shopkeepers and
small business people in country towns. Germany still had a large rural population who lived
and worked on the land, about 35 per cent of the entire population, and they were not sharing
in Weimar Germany’s prosperity. The Nazis saw this and highlighted the importance of the
peasants in their plans for Germany. They promised to help agriculture if they came to power
and praised the peasants as racially pure Germans. Nazi propaganda also contrasted the ‘clean
and simple’ life of the peasants with that of the allegedly corrupt, immoral cities full of crime
(which was blamed on the Jews). And the fact that the Nazis despised Weimar culture also
gained them some support with some of the conservative people in towns, who saw Weimar’s
art, literature and film achievements as immoral.
In 1925, Hitler enlarged the SA. About 55 per cent of the SA were people who had been
unemployed, and many of them were ex-servicemen from the war. He equally set up a new
group called the SS which was similar to the SA but was made up of men who were fanatically
loyal to Hitler personally. By 1928, membership in the party had risen to over 100,000 people.
Hitler appointed Joseph Goebbels to take charge of Nazi propaganda. This was a good choice as
Goebbels was very efficient at spreading the Nazi message. He and Hitler believed that the best
way to reach what they called ‘the masses’ was by appealing to their feelings and emotions
rather than using rational arguments. Goebbels produced posters, leaflets, films and radio
broadcasts. He organized rallies and set up ‘photo opportunities’.
But despite these shifting policies and priorities, the Nazi party made no big breakthrough in
the 1928 elections, they won even fewer seats than in 1924, only twelve. They remained a
fringe minority party who had the support of less than three per cent of the population. They
were the smallest party with fewer seats than the Communists. The prosperity of the years
under Stresemann’s government and his success in foreign policy made Germans uninterested
in the Nazis’ extreme politics.
But in 1929, the American stock market crashed and sent the USA into a disastrous economic
depression, and soon after, countries around the world were following it. Germany was
particularly badly affected. American bankers and businessman lost enormous amounts of
money in the crash and to pay off their debts they asked German banks to pay off the money
they had borrowed. The result was an economic collapse in Germany: businesses went
bankrupt, many workers were laid off and unemployment rose drastically.
Suddenly the Nazis’ Twenty Five Points became very attractive to those who were the most
vulnerable to the Depression: the unemployed, the elderly and the middle classes. Hitler
offered them scapegoats for Germany’s troubles: the Allies, the ‘November Criminals’ and the
Jews. None of these messages were new and they had not won support for the Nazis in the
Stresemann years but they were what people wanted: someone to blame for their misery. In
the 1930 election, the Nazis won 107, and then won 230 in the 1932 elections. They had not yet
won an overall majority but they were the biggest single party.
When the Nazis were well established in power in the 1930s, Goebbels created his own version
of the event of 1929-33 that brought Hitler to power. In this version, it had been Hitler’s destiny
to become the ‘Fuhrer’ of Germany and the German people finally came to recognize this.
After the 1932 elections, Hitler demanded the post of Chancellor from President Hindenburg.
But he was suspicious of Hitler and refused. He allowed the current Chancellor Franz von Papen
(an old friend of Hindenburg) to carry on as Chancellor. He then used his emergency powers to
pass the measures von Papen had hoped would solve the unemployment issue.
However, von Papen was soon in trouble. He had practically no support at all in the Reichstag
and so called yet another election in November 1932. The Nazis again came out as the largest
party, although their share of the vote fell.
Hitler saw the election as a complete disaster for the Nazis. He had lost more than two million
votes and also 38 seats in the Reichstag. The Nazis were starting to run out of funds, and Hitler
is said to have threatened suicide.
Hindenburg again refused to appoint Hitler as Chancellor, and instead in December he chose
Kurt von Schleicher, one of his own advisers and a rival of von Papen, who remained as an
adviser to Hindenburg. But within a month, Schleicher too was forced to resign, and by this
time it was clear that the Weimar system of government was not functioning properly. In a
way, Hindenburg had already overthrown the principles of democracy by running Germany
with emergency powers. If he was to rescue the democratic system, he would need a
Chancellor who actually had support in the Reichstag.
Through January 1933, Hindenburg and von Papen held secret meetings with industrialists,
army leaders and politicians and on the 30th of January, much to everyone’s surprise, they
offered Hitler the Chancellery. They thought that with only a few Nazis in the Cabinet and von
Papen as Vice Chancellor that they could limit Hitler’s influence and resist his extremist
demands. The idea was that the policies would be made by the Cabinet, which was filled with
conservatives like von Papen. Hitler would be there to get support in the Reichstag for those
policies and to control the Communists. In the end, Hitler only became Chancellor through
some backstage conspiracy by some German aristocrats. Both Hindenburg and von Papen were
convinced of their ability to control Hitler. However, they were both very mistaken.
2. Quite the contrary to what one might think, few people thought Hitler would hold onto
power for long. And even fewer thought he would be supreme dictator of Germany by the
summer of 1934.
Once he was Chancellor of Germany, Hitler took steps to complete a full Nazi takeover of
Germany. He called for another election in March 1933 to try and get an overall majority for the
Nazis in the Reichstag. German cities once again witnessed speeches, rallies, processions and
street fighting: Hitler was using the same tactics as in the previous election, but this time, he
had the resources of the state media and control of the streets. Even so, success was in the
balance. Then, on the 27th of February, the Reichstag building burnt down. Hitler was able to
use this as an opportunity to spread the fear of communism and so blamed the communists. He
declared that the fire was the beginning of a communist uprising and so demanded emergency
powers to deal with the situation. These were given to him by President Hindenburg on the
28th. The Nazis then used these powers to arrest Communists, break up meetings and scare
voters.
But the election went as planned, and the Nazis won their biggest ever share of the votes, and
with the support of the smaller Nationalist Party, Hitler had an overall majority in the Reichstag.
He used the SA and SS to intimidate the Reichstag into passing the Enabling Act, allowing him to
make laws without having to consult the Reichstag. Only the SPD voted against him, and many
of its members were imprisoned or exiled afterwards. Following the election, the Communist
party was banned. The Catholic Centre Party was wise and cooperated with the Nazis instead of
choosing to be treated like the Communists. In return, they kept control of Catholic schools.
The Enabling Act effectively made Hitler a dictator. For the next four years, if he wanted a law,
he could pass it. But even then Hitler was not secure. He had seen how the Civil Service, the
judiciary, the army and other important groups had undermined the Weimar government, and
he was not yet strong enough to remove his opponents. So he put in action a clever policy that
mixed force, concessions and compromise.
Hitler acted quickly: within a year any opponents (or potential opponents) of the Nazis had
either left Germany or been placed in special concentration camps run by the SS. More political
parties were banned. But Hitler was still not entirely secure: the leading officers of the army
were not impressed by him, and they were particularly suspicious of Hitler’s SA and its leader,
Ernest Rohm. The SA was already a badly disciplined force, and even more infuriating for the
officers of the army, Rohm was talking of turning the SA into a second German army. Hitler
himself was suspicious of Rohm, he feared that Rohm’s control over the 4 million men of the SA
made him a potentially dangerous rival.
Hitler was forced to choose between the army and the SA. He chose the army and acted
ruthlessly against the SA. On the weekend of the 29th-30th of June 1934, squads of SS troops
broke into the homes of Rohm and other leading figures of the SA and arrested them. Rohm
was accused by Hitler of plotting to overthrow and murder hi. Over that weekend, Rohm and
maybe as many as 400 others were executed. These included the former Chancellor, von
Schleicher, a fierce critic of Hitler and others who really had no connection with Rohm. Even
though these killings took place throughout the weekend, this particular purge became known
as the Night of the Long Knives.
Hindenburg thanked Hitler for his ‘determined action which has nipped treason in the bud’. The
army also said it was contented with the events of the weekend. But the SA was not disbanded:
it remained as a Nazi paramilitary organization, but was very much subordinate to the SS and it
never regained the influence of its former years. A lot of its members were absorbed by the
army and the SS.
Soon after the famous Night of the Long Knives, Hindenburg died, and Hitler took over as the
Supreme Leader of Germany (Fuhrer). On the 2nd of August, the entire army swore an oath of
personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler as Fuhrer of Germany. The army agreed to stay out of politics
and to serve Hitler. In return, Hitler spent vast sums of money on rearmament, brought back
conscription and made plans to turn Germany into a great military power again.
3. The Nazis were popular with many groups in society and for many reasons:
They were popular with what Hitler had called ‘the masses’, the working classes, because their
arrival in power in January 1933 caused a great wave of enthusiasm and anticipation after the
weak and indecisive Weimar government. They seemed to offer a promise of action and a great
new Germany. They took great care to foster this enthusiasm through military parades,
torchlight processions, firework displays, and their famous huge rallies held every year in
Nuremberg.
Probably the most important reason for their popularity with the masses was because they
were successful in eliminating unemployment. When they came to power, unemployment
stood at over six million, and by as early as July 1935, it had dropped to under two million, and
by 1939, it had disappeared altogether. This was achieved through several ways: there were
public work schemes that provided thousands of new jobs. A large party bureaucracy was set
up so that the Nazi party was expanding so rapidly, providing thousands of extra office and
administrative posts. There were the purges of Jews and anti-Nazis from the civil service and
many other jobs connected with law, teaching, journalism, radio, the theatre and music that
left a large number of vacancies. Conscription was brought back in 1935 and rearmament had
been going on since 1934, gradually speeding up. Through this, Hitler provided what the
unemployed had been demanding in their 1932 marches work and bread (Arbeit und Brot).
Care had been taken to keep the support of the workers once it had been gained. This was
important because the banning of the trade unions still annoyed a lot of them. The Nazis
created the Strength through Joy Organization which provided benefits like subsidized holidays
in Germany and abroad, cruises, skiing holidays, cheap theatre and concert tickets and
convalescent homes. There were also benefits like holidays with pay and the control of rent.
The Nazis were also popular with the wealthy industrialists and businessmen, who were
delighted with them despite the government’s interference with their industries. This was
partly because they now felt safe from a communist revolution, and they were also pleased by
the elimination of trade unions which had constantly pestered them with their demands for
shorter working hours and increased wages. But they were also allowed to buy back at low
prices the shares which they had sold to the state in the crisis of 1929-32, and there was a
promise of good profits from the public works programme, rearmament and the orders which
the government placed with them.
Farmers gradually warmed towards that Nazis after having not been impressed at first, when it
became clear that they were in a specially favored position in the state because of the Nazi
aims of self-sufficiency in food production. Prices of agricultural produce were fixed so that
they were assured of a reasonable profit. This was very popular with the farmers, who could
plan ahead, without being afraid of whether or not they would lose money. Farms were also
declared to be hereditary estates, and on the death of the owner, had to be passed on to his
next of kin. This meant that a farmer could not be forced to sell or mortgage his farm to pay off
his debts, and this was welcomed by a lot of farmers who were very heavily in debt because of
the financial crisis.
The Nazis also gained the support of the Reichswehr, which was vitally important if they were
to feel secure in power. The Reichswehr was the one organization that could have been able to
remove Hitler and the Nazis from power, and yet by the summer of 1934, they had won it over.
The officer class was friendly towards Hitler because of his declared aim of ignoring the
restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles by rearming and expanding the army to its full strength.
There had also been a steady infiltration of Nazi supporters into the lower ranks of the army,
and this was beginning to work through to the lower officer classes. The army leaders were also
greatly impressed by Hitler’s handling of the SA in the Night of the Long Knives. This relieved
the Reichswehr of the SA and it impressed them so much that when President Hindenburg died
less than a month later, the Reichswehr agreed that Hitler should become president as well as
chancellor.
The Nazis’ anti-semitic policy was popular with many Germans to begin with. There were little
over half a million Jews in Germany, and Hitler had decided to use them as scapegoats for
everything: the humiliation at Versailles, the depression, unemployment, and communism. He
also claimed that there was a world Jewish plot to take over. A lot of Germans were in such a
desperate situation that they were prepared to believe the propaganda about the Jews.
Lastly, the Nazis’ foreign policy was extremely successful, and more and more Germans began
to think of Hitler as infallible.
