Nazism and The Rise of Hitler Class 9 Notes – History

Social Science Chapter 3 History Notes Nazism and the Rise of Hitler for CBSE Class 9 .

Birth of the Weimar Republic

1. Germany, a powerful empire in the early years of the twentieth century, fought the First World War (1914-1918) alongside the Austrian empire against the Allies (England, France, Russia and USA).

2.   The defeat of Imperial Germany and the fleeing of the emperor (Kaiser William II) to Holland gave an opportunity to parliamentary parties to recast German polity. A National Assembly met at Weimar and established a democratic constitution with a federal structure. Deputies were now elected to the German Parliament or Reichstag, on the basis of equal and universal votes cast by all adults including women.

3.  This republic, however, was not received well by its own people largely because of the terms it was forced to accept after Germany’s defeat at the end of the First   World War. The peace treaty at Versailles (a suburb of Paris) with the Allies was harsh and humiliating. The main terms or clauses of this treaty were as follows :

                (i)    Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. It had been occupied by Germany after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871.

                (ii)   The Saar coal mines of Germany were given to France for 15 years. They were given as compensation for the destruction of its coal mines during the war.

                (iii)  The Rhine valley region was demilitarized. All existing fortifications were to be destroyed.

                (iv)  Germany was forced to pay compensation amounting to £ 6 billion.

                (v)   Germany was totally disarmed. The German army was reduced to just 1,00,000 soldiers. It was not allowed to have any airforce and submarines. Its naval strength was also significantly reduced.

                (vi)  It was deprived of its merchant shipping. It was also compelled to supply coal to France, Belgium and Italy for 15 years.

                (vii) It was forced to give up parts of its pre-war territory to Denmark, Poland, Belgium and Czechoslovakia.

                (viii) Germany lost all its overseas colonies which were taken over by the victorious nations. Togo and Cameroon were divided and shared between Britain and France. The German colonies in east Africa were occupied by Britain, Belgium and Portugal. S.W. Africa was placed under South Africa. Japan occupied the  German colonies in the Pacific and its ‘sphere of influence’ on the Chinese mainland.

The Effects of the War

1. The war had a devastating impact on the entire continent both psychologically and financially.

2. The infant Weimar Republic was made to pay for the sins of the old empire. The republic carried the burden of war guilt and national humiliation and was financially crippled by being forced to pay compensation.
3. The First World War left a deep imprint on the European society and polity. Soldiers came to be placed above civilians. Politicians and publicists laid great stress on the need for men to be aggressive, strong and masculine. The media glorified trench life. The truth, however, was that soldiers lived miserable lives in these trenches, trapped with rats feeding on corpses. They faced poisonous gas and enemy shelling, and witnessed their ranks reduce rapidly.

Economic Crises in Germany

1. Germany had fought the war largely on loans and had to pay war reparations in gold. This depleted gold reserves at a time when resources were scarce. In 1923 Germany refused to pay, and the French occupied its leading industrial area, Ruhr, to claim their coal.

2. Germany retaliated with passive resistance and printed paper currency recklessly. With too much printed money in circulation, the value of the German Mark fell. In April 1924 the US dollar was equal to 24,000 marks, in July 353,000 marks, in August 4,621,000 marks and at 98,860,000 marks by December, the figure had run into trillions. As the value of the mark collapsed, prices of goods soared. The image of Germans carrying cartloads of currency notes to buy a loaf of bread was widely publicised evoking worldwide sympathy. This crisis came to be known as hyperinflation, a situation when prices rise phenomenally high.

3. Eventually, the Americans intervened and bailed Germany out of the crisis by introducing the Dawe’s Plan, which reworked the terms of reparation to ease the financial burden on Germans.

The Year of Depression

1. The years between 1924 and 1928 saw some stability in the German economy.

2. German investments and industrial recovery were totally dependent on short-term loans, largely from the USA. This support was withdrawn when the Wall Street Exchange crashed in 1929.

3. Fearing fall in prices, people made frantic efforts to sell their shares. On one single day, 24 October 1929, 13 million shares were sold. This was the start of the Great Economic Depression.

4. Over the next three years, between 1929 and 1932, the national income of the USA fell by a half. Factories shut down, exports fell, farmers were badly hit and speculators withdrew their money from the market.

5. The German economy was the worst hit by the economic crisis. By 1932, industrial production was reduced to 40 per cent of the 1929 level.

6. Workers lost their jobs or were paid reduced wages. The number of unemployed touched an unprecedented 6 million.

7. Unemployed youths played cards or simply sat at street corners, or desperately queued up at the local employment exchange. As jobs disappeared, the youth took to criminal activities and total despair became common place.

8. The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people. The middle classes, especially salaried employees and pensioners saw their savings diminish when the currency lost its value.

9. Small businessmen, the self-employed and retailers suffered as their business got ruined.

10. Only organised workers could manage to keep their heads above water, but unemployment weakened their bargaining power.

11. Big business was in crisis. The large mass of peasantry was affected by a sharp fall in agricultural prices.

12. Politically too the Weimar Republic was fragile. The Weimar constitution had some inherent defects, which made it unstable and vulnerable to dictatorship. The crisis could not be managed. People lost confidence in the democratic parliamentary system, which seemed to offer no solutions.

Adolf Hitler

Early Life

                He was born on April 20, 1889, in a very humble family of an Austrian village. His father was an ordinary employee in the Octroi department. On account of poverty, Hitler could not get systematic and high education. His father wished that his son should go for any government job, but Hitler was fond of arts from the very beginning. He, therefore, went to Vienna at the age of 18 to learn painting and architecture. There, he also learnt to hate the Jews. He studied the Jewish literature and their daily life and was convinced that Jews were the moral enemies of individualism, nationalism and racialism. He thought that Jews had entered into a conspiracy with Marxism with a view to end  the supremacy of the German race.

Career

                When the First World War broke out, he enrolled for the army, acted as a messenger in the front, became a corporal, and earned medals for bravery. The German defeat horrified him and the Versailles Treaty made him furious. In 1919, he joined a small group called the German Workers’ Party. He subsequently took over the organisation and renamed it the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. This party came to be known as the Nazi Party.

Rise of Hitler

                In 1923, Hitler planned to seize control of Bavaria, march to Berlin and capture power. He failed, was arrested, tried for treason, and later released. The Nazis could not effectively mobilise popular support till the early 1930s. It was during the Great Depression that Nazism became a mass movement. After 1929, banks collapsed and businesses shut down, workers lost their jobs and the middle classes were threatened with destitution. In such a situation Nazi propaganda stirred hopes of a better future. In 1928, the Nazi Party got no more than 2.6 per cent votes in the Reichstag– the German Parliament. By 1932, it had become the largest party with 37 per cent votes.

End of Democracy in Germany

(i)      On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg offered the Chancellorship, the highest position in the cabinet of ministers, to Hitler. Having acquired power, Hitler set out to dismantle the structures of democratic rule.   After becoming Chancellor, he advised the President Hindenburg that the total control of administration should be transferred to him without the consent of the Parliament. But Hindenburg refused to act according to the advice of Hitler. He knew very well that the acceptance of Hitler’s demand meant the establishment of dictatorship and one party rule in the country. But Hitler was very eager to hold his sway over administration. He, therefore, dismissed the Parliament and ordered fresh elections which were to be held on March 5, 1933. With a view to securing absolute majority, he adopted unfair and foul means in elections.

(ii)      A few days before the election, the incident of the burning of the Reichstag occurred on February 28, 1933. The charge of this incident was laid upon the heads of the Communists. Hitler propagated among people that the communists wanted to revolt and the incident of the Reichstag was an alarm of danger for that revolt. As a result of this propaganda against the communists, Hitler won the sympathy of the whole nation. It seemed as if the whole nation was in his favour. He, therefore, adopted some harsh measures to crush the power and influence of his opponents.

(iii)      The Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 indefinitely suspended civic rights like freedom of speech, press and assembly that had been guaranteed by the Weimar constitution. Then he turned on his archenemies, the Communists, most of whom were hurriedly packed off to the newly established concentration camps.

(iv)     On 3 March 1933, the in famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act established ditatorship in Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree. All political parties and trade unions were banned except the Nazi Party and its affiliates. The state established complete control over the economy, media, army and judiciary.

(v)       Special surveillance and security forces were created to control and order society in ways that the Nazis wanted. Apart from the already existing regular police in green uniform and the SA or the Storm Troopers, these included the Gestapo (secret state police), the SS (the protection squads), criminal police and the Security Service (SD). It was the extra-constitutional powers of these newly organised forces that gave the Nazi state its reputation as the most dreaded criminal state. People could now be detained in Gestapo torture chambers, rounded up and sent to concentration camps, deported at will or arrested without any legal procedures. The police forces acquired powers to rule with impunity.

Reconstruction

                Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic recovery to the economist Hjalmar Schacht  who aimed at full production and full employment through a state-funded work-creation programme. This project produced the famous German superhighways and the people’s car, the Volkswagen.

Foreign Policy

                In foreign policy also Hitler acquired quick successes. He pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933, reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan, One people, One empire, and One leader. He then went on to wrest German-speaking Sudentenland from Czechoslovakia, and gobbled up the entire country. In all of this he had the unspoken support of England, which had considered the Versailles verdict too harsh. These quick successes at home and abroad seemed to reverse the destiny of the country.

                Hitler chose war as the way out of the approaching economic crisis. Resources were to be accumulated through expansion of territory. In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This started a war with France and England. In September 1940, a Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy and Japan, strengthening Hitler’s claim to international power. Puppet regimes, supportive of Nazi Germany, were installed in a large part of Europe. By the end of 1940, Hitler was at the pinnacle of his power.

Nazi Ideology

1. Nazism was the German version of Fascism. The term ‘Nazi’ or ‘Nazism’ is derived from the name of the political party founded by Hitler in 1921. It was the National Socialist German Workers Party, or the Nazi party in short. Nazi ideology was explained in ‘Mein Kampf’ (My Struggle) written by Hitler while in prison in 1923.

2. Nazi ideology was synonymous with Hitler’s worldview. According to this there was no equality between people, but only a racial hierarchy. In this view blond, blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung. They came to be regarded as an anti-race, the arch-enemies of the Aryans. All other coloured people were placed in between depending upon their external features.

3. Hitler’s racism borrowed from thinkers like Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Darwin was a natural scientist who tried to explain the creation of plants and animals through the process of evolution and natural selection. Herbert Spencer later added the idea of  survival of the fittest.  According to this idea, only those species survived on earth that could adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions.   We should bear in mind that Darwin never advocated human intervention in what he thought was a purely natural process of selection. However, his ideas were used by racist thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over conquered peoples. The Nazi argument was simple : the strongest race would survive and the weak ones would perish. The Aryan race was the finest. It had to retain its purity, become stronger and dominate the world.

4. The other aspect of Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or living space. He believed that new territories were to be acquired for settlement. This would enhance the area of mother country, while enabling the settlers on new lands to retain an intimate link with the place of their origin. It would also enhance material resources and power of the German nation.

5. Hitler intended to extend German boundaries by moving eastwards, to concentrate all Germans geographically in one place. Poland became the laboratory for this experimentation.

Establishment of the Racial State

1. Once in power the Nazis quickly began to implement their dream of creating an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically eliminating all those who were seen as ‘undesirable’ in the extended empire.

2. Nazis wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy Nordic Aryans’. They alone were considered’ desirable’. Only they were seen as worthy of prospering and multiplying against all others who were classed as ‘undesirable’. This meant that even those Germans who were seen as impure or abnormal had no right to exist.

3. Jews were not the only community classified as ‘undesirable’. There were others. Many Gypsies and blacks living in Nazi Germany were considered racial ‘inferiors’ who threatened the biological purity of the ‘superior Aryan’ race. They were widely persecuted.

4. Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. Nazi hatred of Jews had a precursor in the traditional Christian hostility towards Jews. They had been stereotyped as killers of Christ and usurpers.

5. Jews were barred from owning land. They survived mainly through trade and moneylending. They lived in separately marked areas called ghettos. They were often persecuted through periodic organised violence, and expulsion from the land.

6. From 1933 to 1938 the Nazis terrorised, pauperised and segregated the Jews, compelling them to leave the country. The next phase, 1939-1945, aimed at concentrating them in certain areas and eventually killing them in gas chambers in Poland.

7. Poles were forced to leave their homes and properties behind to be occupied by ethnic Germans brought in from occupied Europe. Poles were then herded like cattle in the other part called the General government, the destination of all ’undesirables’ of the empire.

8. Members of the polish intelligentsia were murdered in large numbers in order to keep the entire people intellectually and spiritually servile.

9. Polish children who looked like Aryans were forcibly snatched from their mothers and examined by ‘race experts’. If they passed the race tests they were raised in German families and if not, they were deposited in orphanages where most perished. With some of the largest ghettos and gas chambers, the general government also served as the killing fields for the Jews.

Steps to Death

         Stage 1 : Exclusion 1933-1939 :

         (You have no right to live among us as citizens.)

          The Nuremberg Laws of citizenship of September 1935:

1. Only Persons of German or related blood would henceforth be German citizens enjoying the protection of the German empire.
2. Marriages between Jews and Germans were forbidden.
3. Extramarital relations between Jews and Germans became a crime.
4. Jews were forbidden to fly the national flag.

          Other legal measures included :

• Boycott of Jewish businesses
• Expulsion from government services
• Forced selling and confiscation of their properties.

                Besides, Jewish properties were vandalised and looted, houses attacked, synagogues burnt and men arrested in a pogrom in November 1938, remembered as ‘the night of broken glass’.

           Stage 2 : Ghettoisation 1940-1944 :

           (You have no right to live among us)

           From September 1941, all Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David on their breasts. This identity mark was stamped on their passport, all legal documents and houses. They were kept in Jewish houses in Germany, and in ghettos like Lodz and Warsaw in the east. These became sites of extreme misery and poverty. Jews had to surrender all their wealth before they entered a ghetto. Soon the ghettos were brimming with hunger, starvation and disease due to deprivation and poor hygiene.

          Stage 3 : Annihilation 1941 onwards :

           (You have no right to live)

         Jews from Jewish houses, concentration camps and ghettos from different parts of Europe were brought to death factories by goods trains. In Poland and elsewhere in the east, most notably Belzek, Auschwitz, (Largest, 1 lakh prisoner capacity) Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno and Majdanek, they were charred in gas chambers. Mass killings took place within minutes with scientific precision. Hitler and Nazis killed around 6 million Jews, 2 lakh Gypsies, 1 million Polish civilians & 70 thousand Germans.      

Nazi cult of Motherhood

            Children in Nazi Germany were repeatedly told that women were radically different from men. The fight for equal rights for men and women that had become part of democratic struggles everywhere was wrong and it would destroy society. While boys were taught to be aggressive, masculine and steel hearted, girls were told that they had to become good mothers and rear pure blooded Aryan children. Girls had to maintain the purity of the race, distance themselves from Jews, look after the home, and teach their children Nazi values. They had to be the bearers of the Aryan culture and race.

            Women who bore racially undesirable children were punished and those who produced racially desirable children were awarded. They were given favoured treatment in hospitals and were also entitled to concessions in shops and on theatre tickets and railway fares. To encourage women to produce many children, Honour Crosses were awarded. A bronze cross was given for four children, silver for six and gold for eight or more.

Youth in nazi germany

1. Hitler was fanatically interested in the youth of the country. He felt that a strong Nazi society could be established only by teaching children Nazi ideology. This required a control over the child both inside and outside school.

2. Children were first segregated; Germans and Jews could not sit together or play together. Subsequently, ‘undesirable children – Jews, the physically handicapped, Gypsies – were thrown out of schools. And finally in the 1940s, they were taken to the gas chambers.

3. Good German children were subjected to a process of Nazi schooling, a prolonged period of ideological training. School textbooks were rewritten. Racial science was introduced to justify Nazi ideas of race. Stereotypes about Jews were popularised even through maths classes. Children were taught to be loyal and submissive, hate Jews, and worship Hitler. Even the function of sports was to nurture a spirit of violence and aggression among children. Hitler believed that boxing could make children iron hearted, strong and masculine

4. Youth organisations were made responsible for educating German youth in the ‘the spirit of National Socialism’. Ten-year-olds had to enter Jungvolk. At 14, all boys had to join the Nazi youth organisation – Hitler Youth – where they learnt to worship war, glorify aggression and violence, condemn democracy, and hate Jews, communists, Gypsies and all those categorised as ‘undesirable’. After a period of rigorous ideological and physical training they joined the Labour Service, usually at the age of 18. Then they had to serve in the armed forces and enter one of the Nazi organisations.

5. The Youth League of the Nazis was founded in 1922. Four years later it was renamed Hitler Youth. To unify the youth movement under Nazi control, all other youth organisations were systematically dissolved and finally banned.

The Art of Propaganda

        The Nazi regime used language and media with care, and often to great effect. The terms they coined to describe their various practices are not only deceptive, but also chilling. Nazis never used the words ‘kill’ or ‘murder’ in their official communications. Mass killings were termed special treatment, final solution (for the Jews), euthanasia (for the disabled), selection and disinfections. ‘Evacuation’ meant deporting people to gas chambers.

        Gas chambers  were called ‘disinfection-areas’, they looked like bathrooms equipped with fake showerheads.

        Media was carefully used to win support for the regime and popularise its worldview. Nazi ideas were spread through visual images, films, radio, posters, catchy slogans and leaflets. In posters, groups identified as the ‘enemies’ of Germans were stereotyped, mocked, abused and described as evil. Socialists and liberals were represented as weak and degenerate. They were attacked as malicious foreign agents. Propaganda films were made to create hatred for Jews. The most infamous film was “The Eternal Jew.”

       The Nazis made equal efforts to appeal to all the different sections of the population. They sought to win their support by suggesting that Nazis alone could solve all their problems.

Knowledge about the Holocaust

          Information about Nazi practices had trickled out of Germany during the last years of the regime. But it was only after the war ended and Germany was defeated that the world came to realise the horrors of what had happened. While the Germans were preoccupied with their own plight as a defeated nation emerging out of the rubble, the Jews wanted the world to remember the atrocities and sufferings they had endured during the Nazi killing operations – also called the Holocaust. 

Add to your Knowledge

1. After the surrender of Germany (May 1945), the Allies set up an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to prosecute Nazi War Criminals. However Nuremberg Tribunal did not punish enough Nazis. Only 11 leading Nazis were given the death sentence and some were sentenced for life.
2. Hitler, his entire family, his propaganda minister Goebbles all committed suicide at the same time, in Hitler’s bunker in April 1945 at Berlin.
3. When in prison in Munich, Hitler wrote a long autographical book “Mein Kampf”. He poured his hatred of democracy, Marxism and Jews in this book.
4. Allied powers were initially led by the UK and France. In 1941 they were joined by the USSR and USA. They fought against Axis powers, namely Germany, Italy and Japan.
5. During World War II, USA dropped the deadliest weapon atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Japan still did not surrender. Another atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Both the Japanese cities had been totally destroyed with lakhs of deaths.
6. The Second World War was the most dreadful and destructive war in history. In terms of death of human lives it has no parallel in history. It took  a toll of over 50 million people of which 22 million were soldiers and 28 million civilians. About 12 million people died  in the concentration camps or due to tortures carried out by fascist powers.

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