Hitler 1933-45

Rise to Power

• International Situation + Threat of Communism and USSR

• Economic Condition: Great depression. Unemployment, starvation, people were
willing to turn radical, needed someone to blame, Hitler was the savior JEWS to
blame
• Social Unrest: Germans tired of government, angry at ToV
• Weimar Republic: Failed to be legit, signed ToV, impossible to gain majority,
Made democracy look weak
• S. Williams: “Simply not enough Germans who believed in democracy and
individual freedom to save the Weimar Republic”
• Weakness of Weimar Republic constitution: people wanted to return to a
dictatorship
• Bitterness of ToV and WWI to which Hitler’s viciousness and expansionism
appealed
• Propaganda: Hitler persuaded German masses, appealed to all classes, poster:
“Hitler-our last hope”, Howarth: “Hitler’s polices were racist clap-trap… but
Hitler showed a sure sense of how to appeal to the lowest instincts of frightened
masses”
• Charisma of Hiter: Great speaker, Driven, Ludecke: “He was holding the masses
and me with them, under an hypotonic spell by the sheer force of his beliefs. His
words were like a whip.
• Purges: Early Storm trooper attacks on parties and jews who opposed Hitler.
Opponents kept quiet because they were scared of being murdered
• HINDENBURG: Hindenburg (President of Germany) and Papen (chancellor)
UNDER EMEREGNCY DECREE supported Hitler and gave Hitler Vice-
Chancellor if he promised to support them, he wanted and was given the spot of
Chancellor.
Germany UNDER EMEREGNCY DECREE with Passage of ENABALING ACT
• Good finical support from Communism fearing upper class. Financial leaders
helped get party back up. They were promised to be paid back
• John Wheeler Benet: “Without economic aid, the Nazi party would have
floundered on the edge of bankruptcy”
• Munich Beer Hall Putsch + March to Berlin made Hitler seem like a hero upon
his arrest

Hitler Policies/Ideologies/Aims

• Aims: Destroy ToV, strengthen Germany, Rid of Inferiors and Communism

• Nuremberg laws 1935 stripped Jews of their rights and citizenship
• Trade and Labor Union abolished
 • Economic improvements caused citizens to look the other way
• Economic Goal: Reduce unemployment
• Economic: Pay Freeze (1933, Wages were decided by Labour front) National
Labour front (All propaganda), abolished Free Trade Unions and Independent
Workers unions
• Compared Rats and Jews, anti-Semitic
• Propaganda always portrayed Jews as everything that was wrong in German
society
• Banned marriage between Germans and Jews
• Kristallnacht: Furthered hate of Jews
• Burned synagogues
• Hitler’s Youth + Education reform
• Aims: to grow master race, make Germany a superpower, eliminate Jews, rid of
communism
• 1936: Four Year Plan
• Independent from foreign trade
• Social Policies: Believed Sick and weak were bad for society, 1933 ordered
“Sterilization” of 4000 Gypsies, disabled, and unemployed. The “genetically
inferior”
• Ordered murder of Long time Hospital patients and German hospitals
• “Ethnic Cleansing”
• Rearmament(Banned by ToV): Bring Germany back up to the top, great deal of
arms production, Universal Military Service (1935)
• Built larger airforce, navy, tanks, all paraded and shown off
• Lebensraum
• Death/Concentration Camps
• Individuals didn’t matter, Dedicated to serve Furher and Fatherland
• Industrialization and creation of new highways

• Burning of the Reich Feb 1933 before elections and blamed it on communists

Hitler presented himself as a kind man

Swastika everywhere + Red Flag
“Freeing them from defeat”
Night of Long Knives 1934
Kristallnacht 1938
Created Cult of Personality and colt following

Totalitarianism for Hitler is pretty obvious….