While in prison, Hitler realized that he could not take over Germany by an armed coup. After Hitler returned from prison he found his party in disarray and this may have lengthened Hitler’s ascendancy to power. There was a lot of internal friction in the Nazi party. Even after restructuring the party, it had still had a lot of faults and divided opinions. Although the party was quite successful in gaining membership, it fared poorly in the elections in May 1928, where it only gained 2.6 % of the vote and only 12 seats in the Reichstag.
The Weimar Republic faced a huge struggle. In the same year of the Great Depression, Stresemann had died. He was the only democratic leader in Germany. The Great Depression caused the USA to stop giving its loans and instead appealing to get them back. So, Germany was the worst affected. Nearly 6.1 million people were unemployed in 1933. There was hyperinflation and there came a point where the money wasn’t worth anything any longer. Nearly everyone bore the brunt of the Depression. The working class people got paid the same wages, if they were employed that is, and the middle class people also could not keep up their standard of living with the paltry social security benefits.
The Weimar Republic, held talks with the Allies and managed to reduce the payments to only a quarter of what the Allies initially demanded in 1921. Muller’s government headed Germany in 1929. They were the government that agreed to the Dawes and the Young Plans. Hugenburg was a right wing politician who felt that Germany was being betrayed by the war-guilt lie. Hugenburg, with a huge support from all the right wing parties including the Nazis passed the Law against the enslavement of the German People. Although it lost eventually as it couldn’t get enough votes, it generated nationalism and the people’s point of view switched to the right wing, as they agreed with them about the war-guilt lie and the reparations they had to pay. Muller’s government, although collapsed due to internal divisions.
During his tenure, Bruning couldn’t manage to subdue the Nazis. He had forced Hindenburg to run in another election, which he barely won against the Nazis. Because Hindenburg was forced to run in the election when he was eighty-six, he got Bruning removed.
In his place came von Papen. He lacked expertise and was intended to be a puppet for Schleicher. The Nazis supported von Papen on two conditions:
- That the Reichstag would be dissolved and fresh elections would be called.
- The SA and SS would be able to be free, as previously, they were labelled anti-social elements.
However, when on the Election Day, there was widespread violence in the major cities, von Papen took matters into his own hands and by declaring a state of emergency, became Dictator of Prussia. This made him popular on the right wing, but not enough, as the Nazis later won the Reichstag elections because it was the largest supported party in the Reichstag.
Hitler became Chancellor because the left and the centre were too divided among each other. This made the Nazi party the strongest party in the multi-party democracy. The masses were oppressed by the Weimar Republic and fell for the right wing’s statements about the war-guilt lie. They were ready to push the blame at the Jews and to preserve their national culture from the immigrants. They even agreed to overlook Hitler’s putsch, in which he was sentenced to jail. The masses believed him to be their saviour, as his troops’ respectability and maintenance of order brought newfound hope into their hearts.
