NAZISM AND THE RISE OF HITLER

PRESENTED BY:

DEV MALIK

ADOLF HITLER• Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was the

founder and leader of the Nazi Party and the most influential voice in the organization, implementation and execution of the Holocaust, the systematic extermination and ethnic cleansing of six million European Jews and millions of other non-aryans.

• Hitler was the Head of State, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and guiding spirit, or fuhrer, of Germany's Third Reich from 1933 to 1945

EARLY YEARS• Born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on

April 20, 1889.• Hitler was the son of a fifty-two-year-

old Austrian customs official, Alois Schickelgruber Hitler, and his third wife, a young peasant girl, Klara Poelzl, both from the backwoods of lower Austria. The young Hitler was a resentful, discontented child. Moody, lazy, of unstable temperament, he was deeply hostile towards his strict, authoritarian father and strongly attached to his indulgent, hard-working mother, whose death from cancer in December 1908 was a shattering blow to the adolescent Hitler.

• After spending four years in the Realschule in Linz, he left school at the age of sixteen with dreams of becoming a painter. In October 1907, the provincial, middle-class boy left home for Vienna, where he was to remain until 1913 leading a bohemian, vagabond existence. Embittered at his rejection by the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts, he was to spend "five years of misery and woe" in Vienna as he later recalled, adopting a view of life which changed very little in the ensuing years, shaped as it was by a pathological hatred of Jews and Marxists, liberalism and the cosmopolitan Habsburg monarchy.

• Existing from hand to mouth on occasional odd jobs and the hawking of sketches in low taverns, the young Hitler compensated for the frustrations of a lonely bachelor's life in miserable male hostels by political harangues in cheap cafes to anyone who would listen and indulging in grandiose dreams of a Greater Germany

WHAT IS NAZISM?• Nazism, commonly known as National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), refers primarily to the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler; and the policies adopted by the government of Nazi Germany\

• The Nazis were one of several historical groups that used the term National Socialism to describe themselves, and in the 1920s they became the largest such group. Nazism is generally considered by scholars to be a form of fascism, and while it incorporated elements from both political wings, it formed most of its temporary alliances on the political right

• . Among the key elements of Nazism were anti-parliamentarism, ethnic nationalism, racism, collectivism, eugenics, antisemitism, opposition to economic liberalism and political liberalism, anti-communism, and totalitarianism.

• Nazism was not a monolithic movement, but rather a (mainly German) combination of various ideologies and groups, sparked by anger at the Treaty of Versailles and what was considered to have been a Jewish/Communist conspiracy

GERMAN OCCUPIED EUROPE

RISE TO POWER (1928-1933)• In 1928 Hitler’s Nazi Party were a small, insignificant

party. They enjoyed little success in elections and were viewed as little more than thugs by the political elite. By 1933 however Hitler was the chancellor of Germany. The Nazi’s had risen from obscurity to power, total power.

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE RISE

• Stresemann’s death• The Wall Street Crash• Economic instability• Failure of the Weimar Government to cope with

problems• Weakness of the constitution• Force used against opponents• Wide ranging populist policies • Visible strength at a time of weakness

RISE TO POWER• Wall Street Crash• End of US Aid• Economic Collapse• Rising Unemployment• High inflation• Pressure on government• Disillusionment with government• Interest in extreme ideas• Opportunity for Nazi’s• Apparent weakness of Weimar• Show of strength by Hitler• Rise in votes for Nazi’s

Factors• Inability of Weimar to

cope with economic crisis • Hitler’s manipulation of

situation • Public desire for order

and strength• Politicians naivety in

dealing with Hitler• Fear of communismLead to• Rise of National

Socialism• Instability of Weimar

government

But the Nazi’s never had a majority!

• The Nazi Party never had an absolute majority in the Weimar government

• They did become the largest single party though

• Proportional representation allows non majority parliaments in the form of coalitions

How were the Nazi’s able to achieve this so quickly?

1. The economic situation was very bad

2. Hitler was a great public speaker

3. The SA and SS disrupted he work of political opponents

4. The Nazi’s were funded by industrialists such as Alfred Hugenberg

5. The other political parties wouldn’t work together

6. Chancellor’s in the period 1928-33 weren’t widely supported within the Reichstag

7. Goebbel’s propaganda was effective

8. People were fed up of ineffective coalition governments and the current situation

9. The Nazi’s targeted certain groups of the electorate

10. People didn’t want a return to the hyperinflation of 1923-24

How did Hitler consolidate power?• The Reichstag Fire• Creates a climate that

Hitler can manipulate for his on ends

• The Enabling Act• Hitler uses Article 48 to

create a State of Emergency. The act effectively ends democracy in Germany.

• The Night of the Long Knives

• Opposition from within the party is removed: violently. The SA is ‘purged’.

• Hitler used his position, and the frailties and subsequent death of Hindendburg, to engineer a Nazi take over of government. He makes use of Article 48 to legitimise the end of democracy before radically altering the structure of government. Soon opposition is banned and Germany has a one party state. Pressure groups, such as Trade unions, are also banned. This Nazi ‘Revolution’ is secured as a result of the removal of all possible threats to nazi rule: the SA, the army and political parties are all ‘dealt with’ by the end of 1934.

Lebensraum• Lebensraum (German for "habitat" or literally "living space")

was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany. In Hitler's book Mein Kampf, he detailed his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum ("living space", i.e. land and raw materials), and that it should be found in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic peoples. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German upper class.

The Nazis And The Jews

• The nazis hated the jews because of the following main reasons.They were-

• Christ Killlers• Defeat of Germany in

World War II• Inferior race• Great depression of 1929

hated

The Nazi Symbol

The Jewish Symbol

1.Christ Killers• Right from the so-called crucifixion

of Jesus .Jews were blamed by the Gospel for this incident. According to analysts, right after this incident throughout, Europe prosecution of Jews started, Extreme instances of Jewish persecution include the First Crusade of 1096, the expulsion from England in 1290, the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the expulsion from Portugal in 1497 and Holocaust was the climax of this centuries old hatred, which was created by Christian church.

2.Defeat of Germany in World War II

• After the signing of Treaty of Versailles at the end of WW1, state of war between Germany and its allied forces was formally ended, as far as Germans are concerned, they totally rejected this treaty as it was considered bad for the Germany.

• After the World War 1, majority of Germans were of the view that, they came close to winning the war with the Spring Offensive earlier in 1918, but they failed because of strikes in the arms industry at a critical moment of the offensive, leaving soldiers with an inadequate supply of materiel and this strike was blamed on the Jews.

3.Inferior race

• According to historians, it is widely believed that Hitler deemed Germans as to be a superior race as compared to other races i.e. Aryans,Jews,Gypsies etc and he thought that this was one of important reasons of Holocaust and prosecution of other races.

4.Great depression of 1929• Great Depression of 1929, started

just after the stock market crash on October 29, 1929 on black Tuesday, Germany was worst hit by this economic downturn, almost every city was affected and 6 million people got unemployed.

• During and after the slump, Jews were doing great financially, that made the role of Jews suspicious in the eyes of Germans and negative propaganda by Hitler provided the impetus to this notion and they started thinking that, Jews are responsible for this Downturn and they are getting full benefit from the recession.

Concentration Camps• Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps (in German Konzentrationslager, or

KZ) throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime. The term was borrowed from the British concentration camps of the Second Anglo-Boer War.

• The number of camps quadrupled between 1939 and 1942 to 300+, as slave-laborers from across Europe, Jews, political prisoners, criminals,gypsies, the mentally ill and others were incarcerated, generally without judicial process. Holocaust scholars draw a distinction between concentration camps and extermination camps, which were established by the Nazis for the industrial-scale mass murder of the predominantly Jewish ghetto and concentration camp populations

.

World War II• World War II, or the Second World War,

was a global conflict that was underway by 1939 and ended in 1945. It involved most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million military personnel mobilised. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant events involving the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it is the deadliest conflict in human history, resulting in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities.

Reasons• The rearmament of Germany was a

cause for war because it broke the Treaty of Versailles (28th June, 1919)

• The remilitarization of the Rhineland (7th march, 1936) was a cause of war because it broke the Treaty of Versailles .

• Chamberlain’s appeasement policy (after may 1937 – March 1939) was a cause of war because it broke the Treaty of VersaillesThe Anschluss of Germany with Austria (13th march, 1938) was a cause of war because it broke the Treaty of Versailles and Treaty of St. Germain (10th September, 1919)

• The Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland after the Munich conference (29th September 1938) was a cause of war, because it broke the Treaty of St. Germain.

•The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, cause war because it defied the Munich agreement and ended Britain’s appeasement policy.•The Nazi invasion of Poland (1st September 1939) caused war because Britain had guaranteed Poland’s borders

The Axis Powers

Death of Hitler• Adolf Hitler committed suicide by gunshot on

Monday, 30 April 1945 in his Führerbunker in Berlin. His wife Eva, committed suicide with him by ingesting cyanide.That afternoon, in accordance with Hitler's prior instructions, their remains were carried up the stairs through the bunker's emergency exit, doused in petrol and set alight in the Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker. The Soviet archives record that their burnt remains were recovered and interred in successive locations until 1970 when they were again exhumed, cremated and the ashes scattered.

Front page of the U.S. Armed Forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, 2 May 1945.