Nazis

Nazis In 1918, when Germany announced its surrender on the Western Front, a young corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler was in hospital recovering from temporary blindness caused by exposure to gas on the battlefield. Upon hearing the news of the surrender, Hitler was devastated. "I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blanket and pillow. Since the day I had stood on my mother’s grave I had not wept. . . . But now I could not help it." Hitler was not alone. The central fact for them remained that, while they were experiencing economic hardship, the German army had not collapsed, and Germany had not been overrun. Defeat in the war had been unthinkable. But that defeat was to be only the first step in a long series of events that would see Germany slide into the pit of massive, debilitating inflation, political gridlock, enforced demilitarization, massive international debt, and loss of control of areas within its own borders. Germany was not overrun by the war, but it was made prostrate by the vindictive peace that would be thrust upon it, quite literally at gunpoint. In the end, Germany would find itself without recourse to international assistance, as the League of Nations, set up to address just such problems, had been gutted from the beginning by the unwillingness of its first proposer – the United States – to join, or even to take part in collective security at all. With no recourse to outside help, the Germans began seeking ways to solve their problems alone, and Hitler had compelling ideas that promised modern, efficient solutions to difficult modern problems. Hitler had been born in Austria, son of a minor civil servant who died before young Adolf became an adult. According to the law in Austria in the early 20th century, Adolf was thus given a government pension - a basic death benefit from the government on which he could live. He was an aspiring artist, and several times applied to the Vienna Arts Academy. Apparently he was not accepted, as he was not deemed to have enough talent to be able to benefit from the Academy’s program. He thus had the means by which to pay his rent, no job, and no school to occupy his time. He turned to politics, and began following the career of Vienna mayor Karl Lueger, whose politics were often centered on a tendency to blame other races, expecially Europe’s Jews, for social and economic ills in Vienna and Austria as a whole. Hitler learned much from Lueger, about how to maneuver as a politician, and about what race was, and how it might be used effectively as a political tool. Hitler eventually moved from Vienna to Munich, Germany, in order to avoid being drafted into the Austrian military. However, in 1914 he was again drafted, this time by the German army. This time, Hitler seemed genuinely excited to go, writing home to his mother to say that he thought the First World War would be the opportunity Germany needed to take its rightful place at the top of the hierarchy of nations. Hitler served with some distinction on the Western Front in the Great War, and was awarded the the Iron Cross First Class in 1918 for his bravery and service to the German Empire. He, along with many other Germans, and most German soldiers, was completely aghast at the surrender in 1918. He was determined to avenge the injustice, and immediately began to look for causes, and for those responsible – as did many Germans following the surrender. Often their choice for the blame landed on the very people who had ended the war after the Kaiser fled to England and exile in 1918 – the Socialists who had been the majority in the Reichstag during the moment of crisis and had been required to form a provisional government and react to the crisis at short notice following the Kaiser’s abdication. These legislators, all of whom had been in search of a way to end the war, but without a defeat for Germany, were not the ones who had conducted the war, nor were they responsible for the decision by the German army to end the fighting. They were, however, the only legitimate power at the time, and were thus not only forced to make critical decisions without having been a party to wartime leadership, but were also forced, nearly at gunpoint, by the allies – who had surrounded and cordoned off Germany from the world, to sign the provisions of the treaty of Versailles, which settled all responsibility for the war upon Germany, and made the Germans responsible for paying for most of the damage done during the war. In addition, these men made the unfortunate choice of basing their new republic, called the Weimar Republic, on France’s 3rd republic. This meant a multiparty political system which almost guaranteed political gridlock was to be laid upon a state which had, until now, been largely ruled by a single will – that of the German emperor, or Kaiser. The Reichstag had always had limited powers, and even those had been gotten around. Now, a government that could not make clear decisions on even the easiest problem had to govern a nation of people who were used to certainly and bold decisions made by a sovereign who could cut through debate and rule by decree. The German people thus quickly lost faith, and interest, in their republican government – even without considering the disastrous way that government had managed the war reparations and the German economy. The gridlock in government also allowed for an eclectic and critical cultural life in Germany. Following the defeat in the Great War, plays, literature, art, even music was often anti-nationalist, and rarely conservative or nostalgic for Germany’s former imperial glory. To nationalists who looked back at Germany’s past, especially the creation of the German empire in 1871, as the crowning moment – the proof in the pudding, so to speak, of German greatness, this kind of criticism of their deeply held, and admittedly racial, beliefs was galling. (It was common at this time in Europe, due to the influence of Darwin, among others, to think of nations as primarily racial in make-up, and thus as having genetic dispositions to greatness, or genetic flaws – these dispositions were generalized over the entire population.) Many Germans were convinced that a secret conspiracy of Jews was controlling German society, and attempting to stamp out the German nation from inside. Combined with these problems, the German economy seemed to be falling into a bottomless pit in the early 1920’s. By December of 1923, the mark, which had stood at about 4 to the U.S. dollar in 1913, stood at 1 trillion to the U.S. dollar at official exchange rates. The hyper-inflation experienced by Germans in the 5 years immediately after the war had gutted the savings of millions of common German people, making it impossible for them to realize financial dreams such as purchasing homes, retiring with savings, starting businesses, or even buying food for the evening dinner table. This led to growing feelings of betrayal and a loss of hope for the future. Again the Weimar government was blamed for much of this, as it was known that to pay war debt, they had simply printed more marks, thus by default creating the spiral of devaluation. Nationalists, and German purists, such as Hitler were determined to destroy this regime which had, in their eyes, betrayed the German people by agreeing to a vindictive peace that was thrust upon them by the enemy. In 1919 Hitler joined the German Workers’ Party (at the time a group of 6 individuals who met to discuss policy, but had no platform or party system) and began working specifically toward this goal. By 1921, Adolf Hitler had become the leader of the discussion group that called itself the German Workers’ Party, and had single-handedly written a platform for the party. Hitler was a charismatic and inspirational speaker who had already begun to attract new members to the party. He began to form what he called the S.A. - a paramilitary force that was used to guard party meetings, and to provide a kind of public show of unity that inspired people with no hope or sense of unity with anything in their own lives. These men wore brown shirts, with military-looking accessories and riding boots. They were not an official band in any way, simply thugs who had joined the party because they were inspired by Hitler’s ideas. They also intimidated Jews and others that the party had decided were undesirable – the causes of the woes of Germany. In 1923, Hitler attempted to create a sort of self-sustaining rebellion in Bavaria that he hoped would bring him and his party, now known as the National Socialists, to power there. The attempt began in a beer hall, and Hitler had the support of Erich Ludendorff, one of two Chiefs of the General Staff of the German army during World War I. Hitler was unsuccessful in his November 8, 1923 "Beer Hall Putsch," and was arrested and sent to prison for his attempt. There, in prison, Hitler enjoyed the moral support of the guards, who liked his ideas, and provided him with easy access to reading and writing material, food, cigars, brandy and the like. During this time, Hitler wrote the book that outlined his ideas in detail, and was to make him famous – //Mein Kampf//. Hitlers goals were relatively clear, although he liked to keep his options open when it came to the question of how to achieve those goals – Hitler was very much an improviser who liked to adjust his actions to the situation of the moment. His goals included a kind of nationalism seen before in the Balkan states prior to WWI – to expand the German nation until its borders included all members of the German race. He was also after //Lebensraum// – living space. Hitler believed that the soul of German culture was agrarian, and so every German ought to have enough land to farm and be self-sufficient. This meant, of course, that Germany would have to expand until it had enough good farmland to accommodate all Germans. The broadest stretch of land was not in the West, but in the East, including Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia itself. These territories were a part of Hitler’s ambitions from the very beginning. Hitler also wanted to solve Germany’s financial problems once and for all. Believing that he knew the cause, he thought a solution would not be difficult to find. The cause of Germany’s financial woes, according to Hitler, was an international conspiracy intent on keeping Germany poor and minimally armed at best, and interested in partitioning Germany for its land and resources at worst. At the very heart of this problem were the WWI allies who had defeated Germany, and then set impossible reparations payments upon her. Co-conspirators included a group of people who were inside Germany, indeed even claimed to be German, but who were, according to Hitler, aiding this international conspiracy by facilitating the flow of money out of the country. These people were the Jews. Famous for their role in finance throughout European history, the Jews of 20th century Germany were remarkably un-connected to international banking and industrial concerns. Only a minority of them were high level executives in these parts of the economy. For Hitler, though, that was enough to prove that they, the bankers who moved the money, were Jewish, and that the Jews wanted to destroy Germany by helping the world to literally bleed Germany white. It was due to the pressure of Jewish bankers, who set interest rates and made collection calls that the German government (composed of German people who would never willingly cause other ethnic Germans pain, according to Hitler’s belief system) had then to meet. In order to meet those payments, the government printed money, and increased taxes on business to the point where German business (which would never willingly pay German workers unfair wages) had to minimize wages in order to meet tax payments. The Jews, then, were at the center of the economic problems – not just at the national level, but at the personal level, too, because, according to Hitler, their actions caused the deflation and kept wages low. The fact that there was no evidence to support this theory at all was no barrier to Hitler’s argument. By the time Hitler was released from jail in 1924, the German government had stabilized the economy, and a recovery had begun. But Hitler was aware that it was too late – the hyperinflation of 1923 had shaken German confidence in the Weimar republic to the foundations. He began extolling his ideology immediately, and it immediately began to draw large crowds. Hitler provided the German people with the confidence and security they had lost after the end of the First World War. He told them that they were a pure and ideal race, which he called Aryan, and that they were victims of other races who wanted their land and were jealous of their pedigree. He told them that the economic failure of Germany – which recurred during the Great Depression of the 1930’s, was not their fault, but a part of a conspiracy against them facilitated by Jews. He gave them a common enemy to hold guilty for their common problems. Hitler was completely honest about his methods and strategies. The Nazis, he and other members of the party said, would use the republic to destroy the republic. He explained that the Germans needed to expand, and in //Mein Kampt// ranked the people who already lived on the lands he wanted for Germany. The slavic people of Russia, the Poles, and other east European peoples he saw as inferior. They would have to be relocated, and would become labor for the Third Reich (third German Empire). Jews would have to be gotten rid of altogether (although the "final solution" did not take shape until 1939). Those people such as Norwegians, Hitler thought, were Germans who had forgotten their roots. They would be re-educated, and then allowed to stay and take their place in the Reich. Hitler was also against the power of big business, and planned to nationalize the larger businesses. He hoped to make Germany a nation of middle class farmers and business people, and his social designs often harked back to an idealized (but non-existent) German past in which the pure race had maintained its pure values and lived in an egalitarian society of small and medium farmers and craftspeople. He intended to take over labor and trade unions, and nationalize them. In 1932, the Nazi party was able to control the Reichstag. With this security, Hitler was able to have himself appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic in 1933, and to have the Reichstag pass the Enabling Act. This law made it possible for Hitler to rule by decree, with no interference from the Reichstag. He also had President Hindenburg issue a decree suspending all civil liberties in Germany. He stacked the government and courts with Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. He claimed to have all the answers to the economic problems that were once again facing Germany, leaving 6 million people out of work. Hitler also used propaganda to give the impression that his regime was supported by a vast majority of Germans (in fact, it wasn’t). Posters and publicized Nazi rallies made it look like the Nazi party was the only possible political answer to Germany’s ills. Nazi threats to repudiate all of Germany’s debt created a flight of international investment capital from Germany’s economy, which further strengthened the appeal of the radical nationalist position of the Nazi party. Key to Hitler’s economic program was his rearmament of Germany, which he began unilaterally in 1933, expressly in violation of the agreements of the Treaty of Versailles. To countries like the United States, who were getting worried about their investments in Germany, the re-armament program looked reasonable enough, and its results were sufficient, both within Germany and internationally, to convince people that this was Germany’s way out of depression. As Hitler thus began preparing for a war he was already planning, the economy boomed, and Germany’s unemployment rates dropped to the point where there was a labor shortage. Germans were asked not to worry about international relations, or domestic problems – the Nazis (Hitler) would do that thinking for them. Instead, they were to labor, be loyal, and take home paychecks to support their families, and pay taxes to help the Reich continue rebuilding itself. This was appealing to people who had been through the economic ringer due to international problems, and had felt the sting of personal inability to affect their own futures. It was a relief to many to be able to concentrate on their own personal problems, and not have to deal with larger issues or other people’s problems – this created a very individualised, atomized society in which the only associations people belonged to were the nation, Nazi support groups, or their own families. There were no organizations which could or would stand between government and people, thus giving Hitler control over individual Germans in an unprecedented way. But the German people had given up their liberty - to a charlatan, to be sure - but given it willingly in exchange for security and rescue from the Great Depression.