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... soul one. They brought in 6. 5 percent of the vote. Starting in 1925, with the institution of the Dawes Plan, Germany entered a period of relative prosperity and political stability. Just as economic turmoil and political unrest characterized the early postwar period, the years from 1924 to 1929 would be remembered as the Golden Twenties. It was the calm before the storm.
For the National Socialists, the next four years were filled with failed tactic after failed tactic to regain a foothold in German politics. After his release from the Landsberg prison, Hitler was determined to reestablish his control over the National Socialist movement. He was also still determined to climb to power the legal way. In practical terms this meant he needed to recruit more supporters for his Nazi party and needed to get them to vote for him. But nothing worked. When the Reichstag that was elected four years earlier was dissolved, new elections were set for May 20, 1928.
The NSDAP brought in 2. 6 percent of the vote. It seemed that the organization was done with. Until Black Tuesday. Half a world away from Germany was the US. But the distance didnt stop the Great Depression in America from devastating the German economy just when it was getting back on its feet.
In late 1929, industrial production began a steady slide. As production fell, unemployment rose. By January 1930, over three million Germans were unemployed. Once again the state of Germany was disrupted and there was misery. Meanwhile, the NSDAP was better organized and better financed than at any other time in their brief history. Hitler had used the years spent in obscurity to firmly establish his leadership and came to be seen almost like a god to his fanatic followers.
The Nazi machine began to take up steam and they began an extensive propagandists campaign. They promised debt relief to desperate farmers, new jobs for the unemployed and the perfect answer to very problem plaguing Germany. But it was more than that. Hitler and his Nazis provided hope.
Hitler with his words wove a comforting picture of a united, prosperous Germany, which was exactly what they needed to hear. He told them he would save them from the long chain of disasters. They had lost World War I and been forced to accept the brutal Versailles Treaty and then had to deal with inflation. Now this, the Depression. Screaming, his voice charged with emotion, he spoke of acquiring territory and winning glory for Germany.
He told them they were not to blame for losing World War I, they had lost it because of their enemies, the Jews. Again and again he made the same points. Germans were a master race fit to rule the world. Nazis were a force of good in the world, Jews were a force of evil. Soon, there appeared an upward curve in the Nazis electoral fortunes. They became incredibly popular and had a major breakthrough in the elections of September 1930.
Their status as a major political party was instituted. As the depression deepened, the Nazis membership began to swell. By 1932, the NSDAP had a membership of 1. 5 million. The most important election for the Nazis and for the whole world took place in 1937 after a very illustrious campaign.
In its most dramatic stroke, Hitler took to the skies in a highly publicized tour appearing in 21 cities in six days. Their campaign was a great success. At this election, the Nazis took 37. 3 percent of the votes. They had finally won.
The result put Hitler in a commanding position. But refused to name him Chancellor. This was a very unpopular decision. The Nazis were not yet the most numerous group in Germany but they were certainly the most active and rather most menacing. They desperately wanted Hitler to be chancellor. In January of 1933, President Hindenburg finally asked Hitler to become Chancellor.
Because the Nazis did not have a majority of seats in the Reichstag, Hitler had to form a coalition government. In 1933 after the death of President Hindenburg, the German cabinets combined the offices president and chancellor to make Hitler, Der Further. He had achieved his goal. He was supreme leader and unlimited master of all Germany. Now he had the power to make war on the Jews.
He wanted to make Germany Judenrein, free of Jews. He was going to scare them out. As soon as Hitler took power he put his beliefs into practice. He abolished freedom of speech and assembly, banned all parties except for the Nazi party and had his political enemies murdered; including seventy-seven Nazis whose loyalty he questioned.
Herman Goering, Hitlers second-in-command, ran the Gestapo, the dreaded secret police. They arrested, tortured and killed any one who opposed Hitler. Joseph Goebbels was in charge of propaganda and utilized all media to spread hatred of the Jews. The black-shirted SS wore on their uniforms the death emblem, a skull and crossed bones to signify that they were as obedient as corpses. Their duties were to conduct door-to-door searches looking for Hitlers opponents. The list was a long one: Jews, communists, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, Jehovahs Witnesses, socialists, unfriendly writers, homosexuals.
You could be arrested for anything or nothing at all. Even his precious Germans werent always satisfactory. German cripples, the deformed and mentally ill, orphans, and the homeless marred his image of the master race. Hitler wanted to make all Germans perfect physical specimens. All of them tall and strong with blue eyes and blond hair though he himself was short, with brown eyes and hair.
The Nazis controlled every aspect of German life. They organized Germany's schoolchildren into Hitler Youth Groups. They wore swastika bands and were taught to hate Jews. They were also encouraged to spy on their parents and other adults and to report anyone who said anything against Hitler or his party. And what of the German Jews? They were caught in a terrifying, situation.
No one had ever expected Hitler to become Chancellor; and certainly didnt expect him to become Der Further. HIs raving speeches and messages of hatred were to be ignored in a civilized world. Right? The Jews had suffered from the war and the inflation and the Depression just like everyone else. Now their home was a strange, hostile, dangerous place no matter where in Germany they lived and eventually no matter where in Europe you lived. The SS beat Jews in the streets, raided synagogues, trod on sacred Jewish objects, and burned holy books, laughing and joking as they did so.
They mocked, humiliated and murdered Jews. Goebbels fed the flames of hatred. All over Germany, the press reported false acts of Jewish treachery. Stories about Jews drinking the blood of Christian children. The lies rang like truth when they appeared in bold, black ink on the pages of respected newspapers.
Movie houses, cafes, concert halls and other public places began to put up signs reading, Jews not wanted. Signs at swimming pools read, No Jews and no Dogs. As if there was no difference. In cabarets, German entertainers put on mock weddings between a German and a pig that was wearing a sign that said, Im a Jew! Hatred and suspicion were everywhere.
Germans began to shun their former neighbors and friends. German mobs felt free to loot Jewish stores and homes. German children felt free to bully their Jewish classmates. April 1, 1933 there was a national boycott of Jewish stores. Armed, glaring, uniformed Nazis stood guard outside every Jewish store and allowed no one to enter.
On March 12, 1938 German troops marched into Austria. They were met not with resistance, but with flowers. Here too, Hitler launched a campaign against the Jews. Soon, Austria hated the Jews too.
Jewish stores were, again, boycotted. The SS made Jewish men get down on all fours and eat grass, then climb trees and twitter like birds. They made Jewish women run until they fainted. Now Hitler wanted Austria to be Judenrein too. But they were so annoying he wanted them out of all Europe.
Let the Americans deal with them. Then one day, he decided he wanted them off the face of the Earth. He would make the whole world free of Jews. He needed an excuse to do so and was given one by a very enraged Herschel Grynszpan.
The seventeen-year old was living in Paris when he received word from his Jewish family that, being Polish they had been expelled from Germany and sent back to Poland. But Poland no longer recognized them as citizens and they were wandering around, stateless with invalid passports in the no mans land between Poland and Germany. On November 7, 1938, or Kristallnacht, Night of Broken glass the angry boy went to the German embassy in Paris and shot the first official he saw. The boy was arrested and the official died two days later. This act triggered off events the dimensions of which Herschel could not have begun to understand or even guess at. It led to the Final Solution, the systematic murder of millions of Jews all over Europe.
The Holocaust. Hitler committed horrible crimes against the Jews and many others in the concentration camps, and ghettos but he was never punished. In anticipation of his downfall Hitler killed himself in 1945. Because he did it himself he had the last laugh.
His book, Mein Kampf is banned in Germany and considered a dirty word. Most Germans want to forget any of it ever happened. But perhaps they shouldnt. The holocaust was plain, undeniable truth of the horror of humanity. It has been immortalized in pictures, in visual and verbal accounts of those who experienced it and the horrified minds and hearts of the world. If we always remember it and learn to understand it, then we can prevent it from ever happening again; if we answer the question, how did Hitler come to power?
Perhaps it is the weakness of democracies that anyone can take control. Hitler came to power the legitimate way, through participating in elections. True he broke or bent a few rules and cheated and lied but probably no more than any other politician. It is common belief that had Hitler come along at another less desperate time for Germany, history would have played itself out very differently.
Germany was weak. The people were miserable and Germans were scared after being hit with wave after wave after wave of calamity. The Nazis provided the answer for impoverished farmers, ruined shopkeepers and small-business owners, workers disillusioned with the socialists and communist parties, and a host of frustrated and embittered young people of all classes, brought up in the postwar years and without hope of personal economic security. Hitler did a lot of good for Germany, fulfilling most if not all his promises. He provided employment and stabilized the economy. Hitler told Germans they were the master race and promised them the world.
He also provided them with a scapegoat; someone to pinpoint their anger at: the Jew. If someone had to suffer and pay the price for Germany's prosperity then let it be the Jew. Such was their mentality. History books should not portray the Germans as evil; their eager acceptance of Hitlers ideas and policies is the product o human weakness and imperfection. But Hitler was evil. Perhaps the most evil of men.
An amoral man he viewed his fellow human beings as mere bricks in the political structure he wanted to erect. Hitler has hurt and permanently scarred the world with his destructive message, a message that still lives. But he too deserves understanding. He was born to a submissive, quiet mother and a cold, fearful father. When he was eighteen, his mother whom he was moderately close to, died. He failed at his lifes ambition, to become an artist and saw the country he loved torn apart in a million directions; saw the people he loved starve.
Maybe he did believe in every crazy thing he said. Who knows? But we must never forget the Holocaust or Hitler. Both event and figure have something to show about humanity that is ugly but always there. Always ready to strike out. If we forget, it might happen again.
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