Nazi Germany: The historical context

Preliminary points

• German history not ‘pre-Nazi’• German history not ‘peculiar’• Fascism and anti-Semitism European

phenomena• Nazism not a ‘breakdown in the works’• Is Nazism a ‘past that will not pass away’?[die Vergangenheit, die nicht vergeht]

Key dates in modern German History

• 1648: Peace of Westphalia ends 30 years war• 1789: French Revolution• 1806: Battle of Jena – defeat of Prussia.• Dissolution of Holy Roman Empire• 1815 defeat of Napoleon• 1848 Nationalist revolutions (failed?)• 1871 Establishment of German Empire

Blackbourn and Eley, The Peculiarities of German History

German Empire 1871

Revolution

• 1917: Reichstag Peace resolution• Russian Revolution• Fatherland Party• January 1918 Mass strikes• November 1918: Defeat and revolution• Sailors’ soldiers and workers ‘councils’• Stab in the back myth• Räterepublik or parliamentary democracy?

Occupation of Berlin newspaper quarter- Lindenstraße

Counter-revolution

• Post-war crisis, 1918-1923• Crushing of Spartakus uprisising by Freikorps• Murder of Rosa Luxenburg, Karl Liebknecht• Suppression of Munich Räterepublik• Kapp putsch, March 1919• Hitler Putsch, November 1923• Partial justice: Emil Julius Gumbel, Four years

of political murder (1922)

George Grosz: Hunger, Hilfe der Kunstler

Edmonde Guy with AEG Vampyr

Social Democratic Party (SPD) 1919

Independent Social Democrats (USPD) 1920

Communists (KPD) 1919

Liberals (DDP) 1929

Catholics (Zentrum) 1932

Conservatives (DVP) 1920

Nationalists (DNVP) 1919

Nazis (NSDAP) 1929

Reichstag elections 1920

Reichstag Election July 1932

Nazi vote / Catholic population

Politics

• Fewer political parties than the Empire• Proportional representation not problematic• Clause 48 used well by Friedrich Ebert• Democracy comes to an end in 1930• Nazis peaked in July 1932: Hitler not elected• Who were the Nazis? • Was there a ‘national revolution’ in 1933?