The trial gave Hitler an opportunity to salvage something from the disaster and he was allowed to give an effective political speech, which won him many, admires, he was sentenced to 3 years but only served 6 months. He used this time to dictate his book Mein Kampf, the book outlined Hitler’s political ideas, which centred mainly on the superiority of the Aryan race and the existence of the Jewish conspiracy that cost Germany the war.
The failure of the Putsch was a defining moment in Hitler’s career. He realised power could not be achieved through force alone and instead he sought power through legal means. He would take part in the parliamentary process he despised and then destroy it once in power.
Between 1924 and the beginning of 1929 Germany recovered from some of its earlier problems and experienced happier times. During the same period Hitler tried to reinforce his Party yet these were not good years for the Nazis.
Hitler was determined to try to build up a party, which would be strong enough to be elected to power in the foreseeable future. Despite these efforts, the Nazis did very badly in three Reichstag elections during this period.
At the beginning of 1929 Hitler was the leader of the seventh largest party in the Reichstag, with little chance of coming to power. Four years later, in January 1933, he was summoned by President Hiddenburg and made Chancellor.
In 1929 Germany was badly affected by a worldwide depression, which sparked off by The Wall Street Crash in The United States. Unemployment soared and the economical aspect of the country decreased rapidly and led to a social misery. Many people felt that the Republic Party was not achieving any goals to end the economic depression and therefore opted to support another group, the Nazis.
Hitler was ready for an economic crisis and did all he could to attract new supporters. He campaigned all over Germany in the 1930 and 1932 elections. He attracted huge crows with his attacks on the Republic’s economic record and foreign policy and he later became Chancellor in 1933.
As Hitler became Chancellor he passed a law known as the enabling act which allowed him to make laws without the consent of the Reichstag or President Hiddenburg. The Nazis now became the one-party state.
Hitler now became almost untouchable and shrugged away the rival parties from existence, he confiscated funds from the Communists, the Social Democrats and even the Trade Union. Members were arrested and Hitler appointed Nazi governors as the local state Parliaments; the Nazi Party was the only legal Party.
At 3a.m. on 30th June 1934 Hitler’s rivals were removed with the help of secret organisations such as the secret police and the SS. The SS targeted the SA leaders, which had helped Hitler in the past but he thought they were of no use and had them all executed. This day was known famously as the night of the long knifes. Hitler then told the public that the reason for all these murders was that he had saved Germany from revolution and the public believed him.
At the beginning of August 1934 President Hiddenburg died and Hitler declared that the offices of President and Chancellor should be combined with himself in the position. He thus became Head of State, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, as well as Chancellor and Chief of the Nazi Party. He took the title Führer and 38 million Germans, nearly 90% of those who voted said they were in favour of his regime.
The Nazis maintained power and control for the next decade due to persecution and terror, propaganda and censorship, Economics, Women, Youth and education and finally work and leisure.
Hitler felt that the education taught to the youth and the generations to come should portray how important and successful his party, the Nazis, were.
The teachings for the German children were very different from that of the past; Hitler took great trouble to make sure that young people were loyal to him. In schools, textbooks were rewritten to paint a good picture of the Nazis.
However both sexes were taught differently to one another as girls were prepared for mother hood and home craft whilst boys should be steered towards an acceptance of war. But both sexes had to learn the Nazi way and were taught anti Jewish views and anti Jewish propaganda in race studies.
Hitler also thought that it was important to allow the youth to attend groups that supported his movements, and therefore without hesitation he made these groups compulsory. Outside the classroom the youth of Germany were organised into several monuments targeting both boys and girls from ages 6 to 18. These groups were known as the Hitler Youth Movement, there were 5 in total.
Every year, Hitler Youth Members had to go to training camps where they learned how to read maps, did sports and gymnastics and were taught Nazi ideas. Camp training was taken very seriously and all there scores were recorded for analysis from the events. Those with the best marks were sent to special schools where they were trained to be the leaders of the future.
By 1939 some eight million young Germans belonged to the Hitler Youth Movement.
Mothers and teachers of these students opted for change but the Nazi movement was too strong despite all their concerns about education and the well being of their students or children.
Adolf Hitler despised women employment despite women having gradually been given more opportunities for careers. The Nazis frowned upon the idea of women at work as they saw the role of women as a mother and a housewife, which were evident in the Nazi teaching to the youth. Therefore masses of pressure were put on women doctors and lawyers to give up their jobs.
Had it been possible, Hitler would have favoured the vast majority of women being forced to stay at home. The Führer and his party made his supporters force women from their jobs. The Nazi regime was too strong.
As soon as he came to power, Hitler turned his attention to reducing unemployment and making the fullest possible use of the workforce. This was done by reducing people’s right to choose the type of job they wanted. Millions were organised into the National Labour Service and put to work building motorways and buildings. All the Nazis leaders regarded the trade unions as a major threat to discipline and obedience. In 1933 free trade unions were banned. This meant an end to the rights taken for granted by workers in free countries: collective bargaining with employers over pay and conditions and, as a last resort, the right to go on a strike. The citizens of Germany were under the Nazi regime.
New organisations were established, The German Labour Front and Beauty Of Labour both under Nazi control. They both had control over all the workers in every occupation. The unions even extended work hours and the pay only increased a little, however the Nazis did offer much better working conditions.
Despite these unions another Nazi union was established, Strength Through Joy. This union offered much enjoyable rewards as it offered leisure time with the occupation. A wide range of different activities were publicised in posters to help show that the Nazi regime was rewarding. Concerts, popular entertainments, operas, theatre, films, exhibitions, a variety of sports and much more activities were offered to the employees. The most loyal and productive workers could even qualify for a cruise on a Strength Through Joy Liner.
Hitler used rewards and employed the unemployed and gave improved pay and working conditions to his people. This helped his regime for another decade and proved popular with the Germans.
There were more radios per head of population in Germany than in any other country in Europe. This was due to Hitler and his regime as he had changed a weak Germany from starvation and unemployment to an economical success.
His changes in his own trade unions helped the economy to boom as the unemployment levels decreased rapidly and the German people received their essentials, food and water.
Hitler used modern facilities to his advantage as he publicised his regime through television, radios and even cinema. The economical aspect of the country improved and this was one of the many reasons why Hitler maintained control in Germany.
Hitler assigned Joseph Goebbels to lead the propaganda organization; Goebbels job was too make the Germans believe in Nazi ideas and to be loyal to Hitler and the Party. He used every possible way of controlling the German minds; his main arrangement was to use the newspapers to print stories in favour of the government any newspapers that were anti Nazi closed down.
All of Germanys radio stations were under Goebbels control, so he used the radio to hammer the Nazi message home. He encouraged people to listen to the radio by producing cheap radio sets, which the working class citizens could afford in a weeks wages. Goebbels also had loud speakers built into pillars in the streets and ordered cafés to turn the volume of the radios higher for important messages.
However, Goebbels most impressive technique to publicise propaganda was the mass rally. The most famous of the rallies was held in August each year at Nuremberg, which lasted a week. Arenas housed 400, 000 people as they enjoyed army parades, gymnastics, massed choirs, brass band and even speeches. Every event was staged to perfection. The Nazi propaganda was the most impressive in the whole of Europe and helped the Nazis stay in power as they offered spectacular events for the Germans.
Goebbels was a brilliant organiser of propaganda, but he could not trust propaganda alone to win people over, he thought using censorship was a good idea. Every kind of entertainment and information was banned. Music was banned if there was any protest to the Nazis and jazz was banned as it had its origins from black people in the USA. Films were also banned for all sorts of reasons including a drunken sailor as it portrayed the German navy as sloppy.
Goebbels even encouraged students to censor books written by Jews or communists by burning them, students in Berlin destroyed 20, 000 books in a bonfire outside the University of Berlin.
Hitler Goebbels and the Nazis were increasing their power, the control of the arts; media, press and the universities all belonged to the regime and with these they publicised propaganda and censored any anti Nazi information. The Germans thought the Nazis were pure and had no faults in their campaign.
The Jews were the most persecuted people in History in the middle ages and Hitler repeated this in his regime. The Jews had been deprived of all their rights. Jewish citizens of Germany had been striped of their citizenship, land shops, occupations, they were even banned from libraries, parks and swimming pools. The ‘Aryan’ race was the only dominate race in the eyes of the Nazis and all other races were dirt compared to the Nazis.
On the 9th of November there occurred a series of violent incidents known as Kristallnacht. Over 7, 000 Jewish shops were smashed throughout Germany and many synagogues were burnt down. Up to 40, 000 Jews were sent to concentration camps for either labour or execution all for a Jew shooting a Nazi official. After the beginning of 1938 the situation deteriorated rapidly as the Nazis felt mare confident and less concerned about what the rest of European views.
Over the next 7 years the Nazis exterminated about 6 million Jews in camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor, the decision was taken by Hitler and forced terror upon the Jews.
One of the most important ways of maintaining power and control was to set up a security system, which could make sure that Nazi ideas and policies were enforced and wipe out any opposition. The two organisations responsible for these tasks were the SS and the Gestapo.
The SS consisted of the main sections. One was responsible for security. Another was the Waffen SS, who were the most committed and dependable units within the armed forces. The third were the death head units during the Second World War these manned the concentration camps and were responsible for carrying out the extermination of the Jews.
The main purpose of the Gestapo was to make sure that any opposition was dealt with the most ruthless measures. Many Germans feared the SS and the Gestapo because they knew that they were liable to arrest and questioned under torture, if they challenged Hitler’s authority.
The Nazis used terror and aggressive behaviour to control any anti-Nazi campaigns. This is one of the many reasons to why Hitler’s scheme was successful.
Overall, it can be said that Hitler and the Nazi’s regime was successful between 1933-1941. They took control in many ways, through persecution and terror, the strong and effective propaganda and censorship strategies, improving the economy of the country, changing youth and education plans, introducing better working conditions and modernising leisure time. It was through these measures the Nazi’s took and maintained control until 1941.
