Dictatorship

person

explanation

Adolf Hitler

charismatic and well-liked leader

Joseph Goebbels

leader of propaganda

Ernst Rohm

leader of the SA

Heinrich Himmler

creates the SS

Hermann Goring

second in power, created the Gestapo

Germany before and early Nazis

impacts of WW1 on Germany

  • anger/bitterness

  • economy impacted (national income 1/3 of what it was before)

  • families destroyed

  • fall in farming and production

  • political instability

  • standard of living dropped

the treaty of Versailles

  • other countries thought Germany was to blame for the war so they had to:

  • pay significant reparations for the damages (132 billion marks)

  • Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine to France, parts of Prussia to Poland, and all overseas colonies.

  • limited the size of the German army to 100,000 troops and banned the possession of heavy weapons and tanks.

  • placed full blame for the war on Germany

  • excluded from the League of Nations

evidence of political instability

  • Freikorps tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic (Kapp Putsch)

  • Spartacist Uprising

hyperinflation

  • reparations led to inflation

  • failure to pay - French invade the Ruhr

  • gov. prints more money to try to fix the problem

  • hyperinflation

event

explanation of how this helped Nazis

court and jail

gained popularity for his political ideas in court and wrote his book ‘Mein Kampf’ in jail and he gained more fame

Great Depression (early 1930s)

people faced with unemployment and poverty started turning to more extreme parties, e.g. Nazis

promised to abolish the treaty of Versailles

people were very resentful of the treaty and it caused many problems

promised food and work

many people were unemployed or couldn’t afford food

lebensraum

many Germans had been forced to leave the country by the treaty - Lebensraum was the idea to bring all Germans together to live

promised to be a strong central government

at the time the Weimar Republic were seen as weak so people were looking for this

destroy communism

Russia had a communist revolution in 1917 and Germany wanted to avoid this

Aryans are supreme

losing the war was blamed on the Jews by the Nazis so people were antisemitic

were the Nazis strong at this point?

  • SA was 400,000 strong

  • SS was 50,000 strong

  • their ideas were very popular

  • they were well-led and organised

Establishing Dictatorship

at this point there were still a lot of restrictions to Hitler’s power:

  • the Communists had a lot of support

  • Germany was still a democracy

  • the people of Germany could potentially rise up against the Nazis

the Reichstag fire

  • 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire and a young Communist (van der Lubbe) was found inside

  • many believed he was working as part of a wider Communist plot even though he claimed he was working alone

  • Hitler persuaded to pass the Reichstag fire Decree

  • as a result 4000 communists were arrested, the Communist meetings were banned

the Enabling Act

  • March 1933, the Reichstag members met and Hitler introduced the Enabling Act (officially not called this) but it gave Hitler the power to create any law he wished WITHOUT the support of the Reichstag

  • surrounded by SA, almost everyone voted to approve the law

the coalition

  • the Nazis still didn’t have a 2/3rds majority in 1933 (they had 288/647)

  • they formed a coalition with the Nationalists which gave them 50 more seats and they now had majority

fear

  • the SA and SS had been patrolling the streets and intimidating people into voting for the Nazis

  • April 1933 any non-Aryan or non-Nazi civil servant was fired

  • antisemitism started with the boycott

  • the SA continued to terrorise Jewish people and political opponents (arrested 100,000 people in 6 months)

removal of trade unions

  • they feared a trade union strike

  • leaders were arrested or appeased

  • once all were arrested, the German Labour Front was created to replace trade unions

removal of other political parties

  • 10 May, Nazis announced the social democrats had been using funds corruptly → they arrested 3000 people and banned the party

  • other political parties dissolved

Establishing Total Power

at this point Hitler was a dictator however

  • the justice systems and local governments needed to be brought into line

  • Hindenburg

  • the SA were growing in power

the peoples court

  • created the People’s Court for ‘political offences’

  • only Nazi judges were chosen

local gov

  • the act for the reconstruction of the state took power from local gov and gave it to central gov

  • Germany split into 42 Gaue, each run by a Nazi Gauleiter

the threat from the SA

  • the SA becoming harder to control

  • Rohm started talking about overtaking the German army

  • Hitler tasked the SS with making it look like Rohm and the SA were planning an uprising

the night of the long knives

  • June 1934 - Hitler and Goebbels arrested SA leaders and sent them to prison (many killed)

  • Rohm was killed

  • Goring arranged the arrest of all the non-Nazis still in the government (von Papen)

  • 85 murdered

Hindenburg

  • previously Hitler was made Chancellor because he prevented anything from being done in the country

  • when his health began to deteriorate, the Act concerning the head of State was passed

  • this merged chancellor and president into one role: Fuhrer