Adolf Hitler & the Rise of Nazism

• Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 in the small town of Braunau.

• His first passion was art & he went to Vienna at age 18 to study.

• He was turned down by the art school; he blamed his rejection on Jews who sat on the art school board.

• It was here he developed the fanatical anti-Semitism that would play a major role in his rise to power.

• He left Vienna for Germany where he fought in the Kaiser’s army during World War I.

• He was recognized for bravery while in the army having undertaken a number of dangerous missions.

• After the war he had no prospects & felt the German government had betrayed the war veterans.

• In 1919 he joined a small group of right-wing extremists who called themselves the National Socialist German Workers or Nazi party.

• By 1920, he was one of the leaders of the Nazi party; he organized his supporters into fighting squads who regularly battled against communists & others they saw as enemies.

The Beer Hall Putsch

•The Beer Hall Putsch was a failed coup d'état which occurred in the evening of Thursday, November 8 to the early afternoon of Friday, November 9, 1923

• Adolf Hitler, General Erich Ludendorff, and other leaders unsuccessfully tried to gain power.

•Beer halls are popular meeting places in Germany.

• A putsch is the German equivalent of a coup d'état, or the revolt of a small number of people.

• The group was trying to overthrow the Weimar government.

• Hitler was going to use the city of Munich as his base of operations against the Weimar gov’t.

• Hitler & his associates (600 of them) surrounded the beer hall, burst in & demanded that the leaders of the Nazi party support his “march” on Berlin.

• When they did not agree, the putsch unraveled & Hitler was forced to flee.

• Three days after the putsch, Hitler was arrested & charged with treason.

• He was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but only served about 8 months.

• Though a failure, it did give the Nazi party national attention & served to further weaken the already unstable Weimar government.

Mein Kampf• While in prison in Munich, Hitler wrote

down his beliefs in his book Mein Kampf or My Struggle.

• He was jailed on charges of trying to overthrow the Weimar Republic.

• Nazi party ideology & goals are set down in this book.– Extreme nationalism– Racism– Anti-Semitism– Anti-Communism

• Hitler believed that Germany had not lost World War I but had been betrayed by Marxists (communists,) Jews, corrupt politicians, & business leaders.

• He also stated that Germans belonged to a superior “master race” called the Aryans (light-skinned Europeans.)

• Jews were not members of this superior race & should be forced to leave Germany.

• Hitler urged all Germans to unite into one nation.

• To have all Germans in one nation, Germany needed living space or Lebensraum.

• Hitler sees everything in terms of race & space.

• Non-Aryans should bow to the demands of Germans & German needs.

• To achieve this Lebensraum, Germany needed a strong leader, a Fuhrer.

• Who was that strong leader??? Hitler

The Road to Power

• After prison, Hitler returned to power in the Nazi Party & began giving speeches in beer halls & other places in Munich.

• His rhetoric appealed to veterans & members of the lower-middle-class who were suffering from economic problems brought on by the Versailles Peace Treaty & the Great Depression.

• By 1930, there were almost a million members in the Nazi Party; membership rose & included business people & workers too.

• Hitler planned to quit paying war reparations, create jobs, & rearm Germany.

• He became Chancellor in 1933; more mainstream parties had to deal with him & the Nazi because they were powerful

• They didn’t particularly like Hitler but he was the lesser of two evils.

• Hitler did become leader through LEGAL means (KIM.)

• By 1934, Hitler & the Nazis were firmly in control of the German government.

• Germany became a 1 party state.

• Hitler’s dream was to build a new German empire called the Third Reich (empire.)

• The First Reich was the medieval Holy Roman Empire; the Second Reich was created by Bismark in 1871.

• According to the Hitler, this Third Reich would dominate Europe for 1,000 years.

The Third Reich

• Inside the Third Reich, Hitler used a system of terror, repression & totalitarian rule.

• He disbanded political parties, purged the Nazi party of his “enemies,” & suspended civil rights.

• The Schutzstaffel, or SS, was the protection service that did the dirty work of the Gestapo or secret police.

• The SS soldiers were called the “black shirts” because their uniforms were black.

• The Stormabteilung, or SA would become the elite soldier known as the storm troopers.

• These troops were called the “brown shirts” because they wore uniforms with brown shirts.

• Eventually, the SA would lose power & were disbanded.

• The Nazi party also had sections for the children of party members.– Hitler Jugend: “Hitler Youth” was for school age

kids to learn about the Nazi party & become model German/Nazi citizens.

• Wermacht was the German army• Luftwaffe = German air force

• As Hitler made Germany more prosperous (economically) more people followed him & Nazi ideology.

• The Nazi party became mainstream.• The standard of living rose in Germany

but the people lost their civil liberties as the Nazi government passed laws restricting their freedom.– Women were fired from their jobs.– Universities decreased their enrollments

until women weren’t allowed to attend.

• Privileged women were encouraged to stay home & have children (especially if they were “pure-blooded Aryan stock.”)

• Women were allowed to work in factories & low-level secretarial positions; positions of power were for men.

• People didn’t mind since they were making money & the restrictions didn’t really apply to them

• Very important to remember, people will be more willing to give up their civil liberties for economic security, especially after a period of bad economic conditions.

The Nuremburg Laws

• The most restrictive laws were reserved for Jews & other undesirables.

• The Nuremburg Laws were passed in 1935 & stripped Jews of their civil liberties inside the Third Reich.

– All Jews were to wear a yellow Star of David– Jews could not attend schools with non-

Jewish people.– NO Jews could practice law or medicine– Jews could not marry non-Jews– Jews were forbidden to use public

transportation, own cars, walk in public parks or on sidewalks

– All Jews were to be inside at dark.– All Jews must register with their local police

officials.– All Jewish stores were to display a yellow

Star of David; Jews were to use these stores only.

Kristallnacht

• November 9 & 10, 1938• “Night of Broken Glass”• Prompted by the murder of a minor

Nazi official by a Jewish man in Paris.• Hitler used the opportunity as a way

to incite violence toward the Jews.• Mobs attacked Jewish communities

all over Germany & Austria.

• The mobs smashed windows, looted shops, burned synagogues & beat up any Jews unlucky enough to be out.

• To Hitler& the Nazis this proved that the Jewish people could not be trusted & should be forced from the country.

Concentration Camps

• The Jews were rounded up & shipped to camps in eastern Germany & Poland.

• They were told that they would be relocated to other places outside of the 3rd Reich.

• The Jews didn’t rebel because they knew it was useless but they trusted the Nazi government would relocate them on the newly taken land.

• The first concentration camp was Dachau which opened in 1933.

• This camp was a labor camp where Jews were used as slave labor.

• After 1939, the concentration camps were housing not just Jews, but POWs & other undesirables.

• The purpose of the concentration camps was industrialized murder of the Jews & other undesirables.

• Most camps had a different purpose; not all were killing camps even though the death rates were high.

• The most infamous of these camps were– Auschwitz-Birkenau– Bergen-Belsen– Buchenwald– Sobibor– Treblinka– Dauchau

Major Nazi Leaders

• Adolf Hitler: Fuhrer• Joseph Goebbels: Minister of

Propaganda & Hitler’s immediate successor.

• Rudolf Hess: Fuhrer’s personal secretary until he left the 3rd Reich.

• Heinrich Himmler: Reich Leader of the SS; organized the Jewish genocide.

• Hermann Goering: commander of the Luftwaffe & head of the Gestapo.

• Martin Bormann: deputy secretary & Hitler’s personal secretary; took over after Hess was captured in Scotland.

• Albert Speer: Architect; Ministry of War, Weapons, & Munitions.