Early Nazi party

Adolf Hitler

• Born and raised in Austria

• Rejected from an art school in Vienna by a Jewish professor

• Left Vienna and moved to Germany

• Fought as a soldier in world war one

• He felt "stabbed in the back“ by the German government

Development of the DAP

• 1919 - Hiller joined the German workers party (DAP), A right wing group led by Anton Drexler

• 1920 - Hitler becomes the party's leading public speaker and propagandist

• 1920 - Group changes name to nationalist socialist German workers party (NSDAP) - or Nazis for short

• 1921 - Hitler elected party chairman and leader of the Nazis

25-point programme

• A strong Germany

  • Abolition of treaty of Versailles

• Führer

  • A single leader with complete power

• Social Darwinism

  • Aryan race was superior and Jews were subhuman

• Autarky

  • Germany should be economically self-sufficient

• Germany was in danger

  • From communists and Jews

• Lebensraum

  • Living space

Appeal of Nazis

• Socialist

  • Farmers should be given their land

  • Pensions should improve

• Nationalist

  • Treaty of Versailles should be abolished

  • Special laws for foreigners

• Racist

  • Jews shouldn’t be German citizens

  • Immigration should be stopped

• Fascist

  • Focused on creating a strong central government

  • Government control of newspapers

Membership and growth

• Hitler was the parties 55th member

• By the end of 1920 the party had 2000 members

• By the time of the Munich putsch in November 1923 there were 20,000 members

The SA

• 1921 - Hitler assembled a group of unemployed men and former soldiers to act as the Nazis private army

• They were nicknamed the brownshirts after their uniform

• Role was to protect party meetings, March in rallies and intimidate opponents

• Group was reorganised after the Munich putsch

• Began to intimidate voters into voting for the Nazis

• 1932 - 400,000 members

• 1933 - 2 million members