Lec 22 THE FASCIST ALTERNATIVES II: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST AND NAZI REGIME AND THE

GREAT DEPRESSION
The Weimar Germany
■ The Weimar Republic came into existence during the final stages of World War I, during the German
Revolution of 1918–19.
■ Germany’s new government—known as the Weimar Republic (VY-mahr) for the city in which its
constitution was drafted—rested on a coalition of socialists, Catholic centrists, and liberal democrats, a
necessary compromise since no single party won a majority of the votes in the January 1919 election.
The Weimar constitution was based on the values of parliamentary liberalism and set up an open,
pluralistic framework for German democracy. Through a series of compromises, the constitution
established universal suffrage (for both women and men) and a bill of rights that guaranteed not only
civil liberties but also a range of social entitlements.
■ From its beginnings and throughout its 14 years of existence, the Weimar Republic experienced
numerous problems, most notably hyperinflation and unemployment.
■ In 1919, one loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by 1923, the same loaf of bread cost 100 billion marks.
■ With its currency and economy in ruin, Germany failed to pay its heavy war reparations, which were
resented by Germans to begin with.
■ Many people in Germany blamed the Weimar Republic rather than their wartime leaders for the
country’s defeat and for the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles, a belief that came to be known
as the “stab-in-the-back myth,” which was heavily propagated during the rise of the Nazi party.
■ The passage of the Enabling Act of 1933 is widely considered to mark the end of the Weimar Republic
and the beginning of the Nazi era.
■ Stab-in-the-back myth: The notion, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that
the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians
on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution
of 1918–19. Advocates denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on
November 11, 1918, as the “November Criminals.” When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they made
the legend an integral part of their official history of the 1920s, portraying the Weimar Republic as the
work of the “November Criminals” who seized power while betraying the nation.
■ Enabling Act of 1933: A 1933 Weimar Constitution amendment that gave the German Cabinet – in
effect, Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.
■ Hyperinflation: This occurs when a country experiences very high and usually accelerating rates of
inflation, rapidly eroding the real value of the local currency and causing the population to minimize
their holdings of local money by switching to relatively stable foreign currencies. Under such
conditions, the general price level within an economy increases rapidly as the official currency loses
real value.
Hitler and the National Socialists
■ Hitler was born in 1889 in Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, and raised near Linz.
■ He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War
I.
■ He joined the German Workers’ Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919 and became
leader of the Nazi Party in 1921.
■ In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power, called the Beer Hall Putsch.
■ The failed coup resulted in Hitler’s imprisonment, during which he dictated the first volume of his
autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”).
■ After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and
promoting Pan-Germanism, anti-semitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi
propaganda.
■ Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as part of a Jewish conspiracy.
■ National Socialist German Workers Party: A political party in Germany that was active between 1920
and 1945 and practiced the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist,
racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in
post-World War I Germany. The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into
vö lkisch nationalism.
■ Beer Hall Putsch: A failed coup attempt by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler — along with Erich
Ludendorff and others — to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, during November 8-9, 1923. About two
thousand men marched to the center of Munich where they confronted the police, which resulted in the
death of 16 Nazis and four policemen.
 ■ Mein Kampf: A 1925 autobiographical book by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work outlines
Hitler’s political ideology and future plans for Germany. In it, Hitler used the main thesis of “the Jewish
peril,” which posits a Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership. The narrative describes the process
by which he became increasingly anti-Semitic and militaristic, especially during his years in Vienna. He
speaks of not having met a Jew until he arrived in Vienna, and that at first his attitude was liberal and
tolerant. When he first encountered the anti-Semitic press, he says, he dismissed it as unworthy of
serious consideration. Later he accepted the same anti-Semitic views, which became crucial in his
program of national reconstruction of Germany.
The Nazi Party
■ The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was founded in 1920 by Anton
Drexler, an avid German nationalist.
■ It evolved out of Drexler’s earlier party, the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP),
started in 1919.
■ Drexler followed the typical views of militant nationalists of the day, such as opposing the Treaty of
Versailles, having anti-Semitic, anti-monarchist and anti-Marxist views, and believing in the superiority
of Germans, whom nationalists claimed to be part of the Aryan “master race.”
■ Adolf Hitler joined the DAP in 1919 and quickly became their main orator and spokesperson.
■ Around that time, the party only had around 60 members.
■ During 1921 and 1922, the Nazi Party grew significantly, partly through Hitler’s oratorical skills, partly
through the SA’s (party militia) appeal to unemployed young men, and partly because there was a
backlash against socialist and liberal politics in Bavaria as Germany’s economic problems deepened and
the weakness of the Weimar regime became apparent.
■ In 1923, Hitler and other Nazi Party members attempted a coup, which landed Hitler in prison for one
year.
■ Upon his release, Hitler continued to expand the Nazi base and by 1929, the party had 130,000
members.
■ Despite its growth in popularity, the Nazi Party might never have come to power if not for the Great
Depression and its effects on Germany.
■ Nuremberg Rally: The annual rally of the Nazi Party in Germany, held from 1923 to 1938. They were
large Nazi propaganda events, especially after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.
■ Eugenics: A set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of the human
population.
■ Hitler Youth: The youth organization of the Nazi Party in Germany, which originated in 1922. From
1933 until 1945, it was the sole official youth organization in Germany and was partially a paramilitary
organization.
■ Aryan: A racial grouping term used in the period of the late 19th century to the mid-20th century to
describe multiple peoples. It has been variously used to describe all Indo-Europeans in general
(spanning from India to Europe), the original Aryan people specifically in Persia, and most
controversially through Nazi misinterpretation, the Nordic or Germanic peoples. The term derives from
the Aryan people from Persia, who spoke a language similar to those found in Europe.
Nazi Germany
■ Hitler’s rise to power occurred throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. He first gained prominence in
the right-wing German Workers’ Party, which in 1920 changed its name to the National Socialist
German Workers’ Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party.
■ In the early 1930s, the Nazi Party gained more seats in the German Reichstag (parliament), and by 1933
it was the largest elected party, which led to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933.
■ Following fresh elections won by his coalition, the Reichstag passed the Reichstag Fire Decree, which
suspended key civil liberties of German citizens, and Enabling Act, which gave the Hitler’s Cabinet the
power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.
■ With the passing of these two laws, Hitler’s power in government became nearly absolute and he soon
used this power to eliminate all political opposition through both legal and violent means.
■ On August 2, 1934, President Hindenburg died. Based on a law passed by the Reichstag the previous
day, Hitler became head of state as well as head of government, and was formally named as Führer und
Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor), thereby eliminating the last legal avenue by which he could be
removed from office.
■ Over the next few years, Hitler continued to consolidate his power, taking care to give his dictatorship
the appearance of legality, by eliminating many military officials and taking personal command of the
armed forces.
 ■ Reichstag Fire Decree: This decree was issued by German President Paul von Hindenburg on the
advice of Chancellor Adolf Hitler in direct response to the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933. The
decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. With Nazis in powerful positions in
the German government, the decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone
considered an opponent of the Nazis and to suppress publications not considered “friendly” to the Nazi
cause. The decree is considered by historians to be one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-
party Nazi state in Germany.
■ Night of the Long Knives: A purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when
the Nazi regime carried out a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate Hitler’s
absolute hold on power in Germany. Many of those killed were leaders of the SA (Sturmabteilung), the
Nazis’ own paramilitary Brown-shirts organization; the best-known victim was Ernst Rö hm, the SA’s
leader and one of Hitler’s longtime supporters and allies.
■ Enabling Act: A 1933 Weimar Constitution amendment that gave the German Cabinet – in effect,
Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag. It passed in
both the Reichstag and Reichsrat on March 24, 1933, and was signed by President Paul von Hindenburg
later that day.
■ Hitler’s plans for national recovery called for full-scale rearmament and economic self-sufficiency. With
policies similar to those of other Western nations, the Nazis made massive public investments, set strict
market controls to stop inflation and stabilize the currency, and sealed Germany off from the world
economy.
■ The regime launched state-financed construction projects—highways, public housing, reforestation.
Late in the decade, as the Nazis rebuilt the entire German military complex, unemployment dropped
from over six million to under two hundred thousand. The German economy looked better than any
other in Europe. Hitler claimed this as his “economic miracle.” Such improvements were significant,
especially in the eyes of Germans who had lived through the continual turmoil of war, inflation, political
instability, and economic crisis.
■ Like Mussolini, Hitler moved to abolish class conflict by stripping working-class institutions of their
power. He outlawed trade unions and strikes, froze wages, and organized workers and employers into a
National Labor Front.
■ At the same time, the Nazis increased workers’ welfare benefits, generally in line with the other
Western nations. Class distinctions were somewhat blurred by the regime’s attempts to infuse a new
national “spirit” into the entire society.
■ Popular organizations cut across class lines, especially among the youth. The Hitler Youth, a club
modeled on the Boy Scouts, was highly successful at teaching children the values of Hitler’s Reich; the
National Labor Service drafted students for a term to work on state-sponsored building and
reclamation projects. Government policy encouraged women to withdraw from the labor force, both to
ease unemployment and to conform to Nazi notions of a woman’s proper role.
Nazi Racism and Anti-Semitism
■ One of the central tenets of the Nazi regime was a pseudo-scientific racial hierarchy placing the Nordic
or Aryan races at the top and Slavs, Romani, and especially Jews at the bottom.
■ Antisemitism in the Nazi regime was manifested in propaganda that scapegoated all of Germany’s
problems on the Jews, various discriminating laws, and finally mass-scale violence and murder
culminating in the Holocaust, or in Nazi terms, the “Final Solution.”
■ In April 1933, Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses and passed the Law for the
Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which forced all non-Aryan civil servants to retire from the
legal profession and civil service.
■ On September 15, 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, which included the Law for the Protection
of German Blood and German Honor. This forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between
Jews and Germans. The Reich Citizenship Law declared that only those of German or related blood were
eligible to be Reich citizens.
■ In November 1938, persecution of the Jews became violent when Nazi paramilitary damaged or
destroyed synagogues and Jewish property throughout Germany during what became known
as Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass.”
■ Up until the outbreak of World War II, when the racist policies of the Nazis turned into outright
genocide, the persecution of Jews and other “subhumans” continued under mostly legal means.
■ Nuremberg Laws: Anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced on September 15, 1935, by the
Reichstag at a special meeting convened at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The
two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, which forbade
marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German
 females under 45 in Jewish households, and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those
of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state
subjects without citizenship rights.
■ Kristallnacht: A pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany on November 9-10, 1938, carried out
by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians. German authorities looked on without intervening. The
name comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-
owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed.
■ stab-in-the-back legend: The notion, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that
the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians
on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution
of 1918-19. Advocates denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on
November 11, 1918, as the “November Criminals.”
■ “master race”: A pseudo-scientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the Nordic or Aryan races,
thought to predominate among Germans and other northern European peoples, were deemed the
highest in an assumed racial hierarchy.
■ Kristallnacht: Damage caused during Kristallnacht. On November 9-10, 1938, a pogrom against Jews
was carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany. (Juda
pictures with broken glass shops)
The Great Depression in the Democracies
■ The Great Depression was a global economic depression, the worst by far in the 20 th century.
■ It began in October 1929 after a decade of massive spending and increased production throughout
much of the world after the end of World War I. The American stock market crashed on October 29,
which became known as ” Black Tuesday.”
■ The market lost over $30 billion in two days.
■ When stocks plummeted on Black Tuesday, the world noticed immediately, creating a ripple effect on
the global economy.
■ The gold standard was the primary transmission mechanism of the Great Depression, driving down the
currency of even nations with no banking crisis.
■ The sooner nations got off the gold standard, the sooner they recovered from the depression.
■ In many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War
II.
■ gold standard: A monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed
quantity of gold.
■ Black Tuesday: The most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when
taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects. The crash, which followed the
London Stock Exchange’s crash of September, signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression
that affected all Western industrialized countries.(followed black M,T?)
■ speculation: The purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will
become more valuable at a future date. In finance, it is the practice of engaging in risky financial
transactions to profit from short-term fluctuations in the market value of a trade-able financial
instrument rather than from its underlying financial attributes such as capital gains, dividends, or
interest.
■ A large crowd gathered at New York’s American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great
Depression.