Section 3: Hitler and Nazi Germany

• Objectives

• Characterize the totalitarian state in Germany established by Hitler and the Nazi Party

• Explain why many Germans accepted the Nazi dictatorship while other Germans suffered greatly under Hitler’s rule

I. Hitler and His Views

• Adolf Hitler born in Austria, 4-20-1889

• Racism / Anti-Semitism

• *1919, joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi

• SA, Storm Troops or the Brownshirts

• Staged an uprising against the government, “Beer Hall Putsch”

Adolf Hitler

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I. Hitler and His Views

• Failed, sentenced to prison

• *Mein Kampf, “My Struggle”

• Nationalism, Anti-Semitism & Anti-Communism, Linked together with Social Darwinism

• Search for “living space”

II. Rise of Nazism

• Hitler will attain power by legal means

• By 1931, Hitler & the Nazi party dominated the Reichstag – the German parliament

• Hitler promised to create a new Germany

• Appealed to national pride, honor & militarism

Reichstag

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III. Victory of Nazism

• With help from the Right-wing elites, Hitler becomes chancellor & creates a new government

• In 1933, with his “legal seizure” of power came the Enabling Act which gave him the power to ignore the constitution for 4 years

• Hitler became a dictator appointed by the parliamentary body itself

III. Victory of Nazism• Civil Service purged of Jews & democratic

elements

• Large prison camps called *concentration camps where set up for those who opposed the regime

• Trade unions were dissolved

• All political parties except the Nazis were abolished

Dachau concentration camp

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III. Victory of Nazism• By late 1933, Hitler had established a

totalitarian state

• Public officials & soldiers took a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler as their Fuhrer, or “Leader”

Adolf Hitler, 1936

IV. The Nazi State, 1933 - 1939

• Totalitarian state

• Aryan, ancient Greeks & Romans

• Term misused by Hitler, (people speaking Indo-European languages)

• The Third Reich

• Economic policies, mass spectacles, organizations & terror

• Policies towards women & Jews

Racial Purity

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A. The State of Terror

• *Schutzstaffeln, “Guard Squadrons” or SS

• *Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS

Heinrich Himmler

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A. The State of Terror

• Two principles of the SS

• 1. Terror used repression & murder

• Secret police, criminal police, concentration camps, & later execution squads & death camps

• 2. ideology

B. Economic Policies

• Public works projects & grants to private construction firms

• Massive rearmament program

• Unemployment dropped from 6 million in 1932 to 500,000 in 1937

• Many Germans accept Hitler & the Nazis

C. Spectacles and Organization• Mass demonstrations and spectalces• Nuremberg party rallies• Evoke mass enthusiasm & excitement• Churches, schools & universities were

brought under the control of the Nazi totalitarian state

• Organizations & leagues of civil servants, women, farmers, doctors, teachers and lawyers

• Youth organizations taught Nazi ideals

Nazi Germany

In setting up a totalitarian state, the Nazis recognized the importance of winning young people over to their ideas. The Hitler Youth, an organization for young people between the ages of 10 and 18, was formed in 1926 for that purpose.

D. Women and Nazism

• Crucial role as bearers of children• Based on the Aryan race• Men – warriors & political leaders• Women – wives & mothers• Limited employment, social work & nursing• “Get a hold of pots & pans & broom &

you’ll sooner find a groom”

E. Anti-Semitic Policies

• Sept. 1935, *Nuremberg laws excluded Jews from German citizenship & forbade marriages between Jews & German citizens

• In 1941, Jews required to wear the yellow star of David & carry identification cards

• *Kristallnacht, “night of shattered glass”

• Destructive rampage against Jews synagogues & Jewish businesses

• A teacher explains racial definitions according to the Nuremberg Laws

• A Hitler Youth instructor teaching the definitions of race laid down by the Nuremberg Laws, September 1939.

http://timewitnesses.org/images/kristallnacht.gif

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E. Anti-Semitic Policies

• 30,000 Jewish males were rounded up & sent to concentration camps

• Further steps, Jews barred from public transportation, all public buildings including schools & hospitals

• Prohibited from owning, managing or working in any retail store

• Encourage to “emigrate from Germany”

.63 DM200,999,999,999.37 DM They were

probably fearful, growing poorer, and losing the ability to buy basic necessities.

Section 4: Cultural and Intellectual Trends

• Objectives• Relate how radios and movies were

popular forms of entertainment that were used to spread political messages

• Summarize the new artistic and intellectual trends that reflected the despair created by World War I and the Great Depression

I. Mass Culture: Radio and Movies

• Marconi’s discovery of wireless radio waves

• First Movie, Birth of a Nation

• *Joseph Goebbels , the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany

• *The Triumph of the Will , Nazi propaganda documentary of the Nuremberg Rally

Joseph Goebbels

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Q. Why was the radio an important propaganda tool for the Nazis?

- Radio offered great opportunities to reach the masses, & Hitler’s fiery

speeches were just as effective over the radio as in person.

I. Mass Culture: Radio and Movies

II. Mass Leisure• Kraft durch Freude, “Strength through Joy”

• It provided a new way to control the people - through leisure.

“Strength through Joy” program

III. Artistic and Literary Trends

• Sense of despair

• Horrors of WWI

• Questioning Western values

• Humans beings were violent animals who were incapable of creating a sane & rational world

• The Great Depression

• Violent Fascist Movement

*Photomontage, a picture made of a combination of

photographs

A. Art: Nightmares and New Visions

http://www.courses.rochester.edu/seiberling/AAH128/IMAGES/IMG021.JPG

*Surrealism, a artistic movement that sought a

reality beyond the material world & found it in the world

of the unconscious

A. Art: Nightmares and New Visions

*Salvador Dali, Spanish surrealist

artist, painted everyday objects

but separated them from their normal

contexts

A. Art: Nightmares and New Visions

http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/341.jpg

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, 1931

List the qualities that the Nazis wanted German art to

glorify. Why do you think Hitler was concerned with

issues such as the content & style of art? Supposed to

glorify the strong, the healthy & the heroic

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*James Joyce, Irish writer who published Ulysses in 1922, tells the story of one day in the life of

ordinary people in Dublin by following the flow of their inner

thoughts

B. Literature: The search for Unconscious

Hermann Hesse, German writer, Siddhartha &

Steppenwolf, reflect the influence of both Freud’s

psychology & Asian religions

B. Literature: The search for Unconscious

Q. Why were artists & writers after World War I attracted to Freud’s theory

of the unconscious? - A fascination with Freud’s theory of the unconscious content of the mind began before the war, but it seemed even more appropriate in light of the nightmare

landscapes of the World War I battlefields

B. Literature: The search for Unconscious

IV. The Heroic Age of Physics• German physicist Werner Heisenberg*

• Studied atoms and subatomic particles

• *Uncertainty principle, all physical laws are based on uncertainty

• Randomness challenges Newtonian physics

• Fits in well with the uncertainties of the interwar years

Uncertainty principle, the idea put forth by Heisenberg in 1927 that the behavior of subatomic

particles is uncertain, suggesting that all of the physical laws governing the universe are

based in uncertainty

Q. How did Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle challenge

the Newtonian world view? - Newton’s physics had been based on certainty & natural

laws, while Heisenberg’s theory emphasizes randomness

IV. The Heroic Age of Physics

Chapter Summary