Jo Manta

IB History

Paper 2 Study Guide: Germany under Adolf Hitler

Rise To power- Conditions in which they Emerged

1. Social Divisions

● The Freikorps
○ The Freikorps were a paramilitary anti-communist group.
○ Helped defeat the Spartacus Rising, they also despised the Weimar Republic
and later were involved in assassinations of key members of the government.
○ They led the Kapp Putch
■ Freikorps refused to disband and about 12,000 men marched to Berlin,
and proclaimed their leader Dr. Wolfgang Kapp as Chancellor. The army
took no action, as it refused to fire on other troops. As a result, the
government was forced to flee to Dresden.
■ Kapp was arrested and died in prison awaiting trial. The Freikorps were
gradually disbanded.

2. Economic Factors

● The Rhur Crisis

○ Germany originally had made an attempt to pay the reparations demanded of
them by the conditions of the Versailles Treaty.
○ In August 1921 the government requested that the payments be suspended until
its economy had made a recovery.
■ France refused and in January 1923, together with Belgium, occupied the
Ruhr, which was a key industrial production area for Germany.
○ German government encouraged the workers to passively resist the occupation
○ The economy was disrupted, and the German government rapidly printed money
to meet the needs of the workers who had gone on strike or refused to work.
■ The result was hyperinflation.
● The Stock Market Crash and The Great Depression
○ 1929
○ Gustav Streseman
■ Foreign Minister for six years
○ The government found it hard to borrow money as some potential German
investors had lost their savings in the crisis of 1923.
○ The lack of demand for German goods meant that industries had laid off workers,
and unemployment had risen.
3. Use of Force

● SS and SA
○ Established initially to protect Nazi speakers
○ Happy to resort to violence and intimidation whenever they felt the party was
being threatened
○ The SA and the SS had continued their pattern of using persuasion, coercion and
force in order to achieve the aim of increasing the power of Hitler and the Nazi
Party.
● The Reichstag Fire
○ 1933
○ There has been some debate about whether or not the Nazis knew about the
plan to burn down the Reichstag, or were involved.

4. Persuation

● Hitler’s Speeches
○ He could promote the Nazi agenda by sympathising with the audience and
appealing to their needs.
○ He would gain sympathy by criticising the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
○ During the Depression, he explained how the Nazis could solve Germany’s
economic problems.

5. Propaganda

● Posters, Newspapers, Photographs

○ Color red
○ Anti-semitic cartoons
○ Portreyed Hitlers as a strong leader, Patriotic German.
● Mein Kampf
○ Was also used as a form of propaganda
○ Written by 1924 when Hitler was imprisoned
● Rallies and Meetings
○ Hitler’s loud voice
○ Disseminating the ideology of the party
○ SA would make sure they were not disrupted

6. Ideology

● Ideology was not already established

● Hitler was fascist
○ Emphasis on tradition, conservatism, discipline
○ Followed Mussolini
● National Socialist German Workers Party
 ○ nationalistic ideas and demands, anti-semitic and anti-immigration policies, and
socialist expressions.
● Führerprinzip
● Anti-communism

Consolidation and Maintenance of Power

1. Use of Legal Methods

● Gleichschaltung
○ ‘Bringing into line’
○ Forcible Co-ordination
○ Eliminated the risk of the Reichstag controlling his power.
● Law against Founding of new Parties
○ The German Socialist and Communist parties had already been banned
■ By force
○ Very little opposition

2. Use of Force

● Police Organization
○ SS
■ Was originally an elite bodyguard organisation. It grew to become the
main terror instrument of the Third Reich.
○ Gestapo
■ Was originally the secret police of Prussia but eventually became the
secret police for the Third Reich.
■ By 1936 the Gestapo had become the most powerful and feared of the
organisations.
■ Officers could be ruthless and violent.
● Against Trade Unions
○ Police units occupied all trades unions headquarters, and union officials and
leaders were arrested.
○ The German Labour Force was set up instead.
■ Provided social security
■ Security of employment
■ Relatively high wages
■ Intense working times
■ Strikes were banned
■ Accidents in factories increased
● ‘Night of the long Knives’
○ 1934
○ Röhm had become a threat to the stability of the Nazi party.
○ Hitler and the SS killed him.
 ■ Rohm had helped Hitler form the SA
○ On the night of June 30th 1934, Hitler used one branch of his paramilitary, the
SS, to eliminate the other, the SA. There is some disagreement about the
number of individuals killed on the 'Night of the Long Knives' but many historians
agree the number was about 400 people.
○ Röhm was also known to be homosexual, which did not align with the image of
the Nazis that Hitler wanted to portray.
○ Röhm had also publicly challenged Hitler on some of his methods of establishing
his rule.
○ Another factor was that President Hindenburg was old and in failing health. This
meant that there was the possibility of a power struggle.
● Concentration Camps
○ were set up to incarcerate individuals deemed to be a threat to the regime.
○ filled with millions of Jews, as well as other people whom the Nazis considered to
be ‘undesirables’
○ The camps also provided forced labour, which was used for the benefit of the
German economy.
○ They were for political prisoners, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Romas
(Gypsies) and some Jews,

3. Use of Propaganda

● Film, Press, Radio

○ ‘Triumph of the Will’, Leni Riefenstahl German filmmaker.
○ all newspapers had to be approved by them.
○ Jewish and liberal journalists were fired and editors had to take a Nazi citizenship
test to prove that they were ‘Aryan’ and not married to ‘non-Aryans’.
○ Goebbles ensured that all German households were able to afford a radio by
subsidising and distributing millions of them to German citizens.
● Posters and Pictures
○ personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann
○ He was careful to be dressed in non-military clothes when taking pictures with
young children in order to present himself as relaxed and affable. However, when
he was appearing at large public gatherings or with the army, he was very careful
to portray a message of strength, and usually appeared in his military uniform.
○ posters influence the public
● Meetings Rallies, Festivals
○ The most famous of the rallies were held at Nuremberg
○ announced new Nazi policies or programmes.
● Berlin Olympics
○ 1936
○ Hitler used the Olympics to promote Germany and the Third Reich. He wanted to
present Germany in a positive light.
○ temporarily removed anti-Jewish signs from public view.
Aims and Results of Policies

1. Economic Policies

● Hjalmar Schacht’s ‘economic miracle’

○ law to reduce unemployment.
○ government subsidies and loans encouraged industrial growth.
○ The Reich Labour Service (RAD) compelled unemployed people to work on
public works projects and conservation programmes that imposed manual labour
even when machinery was available.
● Four Year Plan
○ 1936-40
○ Hermann Göring
○ factories were set up to produce materials for rubber, fuel and fats.

2. Social Policies

● Classes
○ Volksgemeinschaft
■ goal to breakdown the class antagonisms
○ solving the ‘problem’ of industrial conflict, diverting potential dissent through
economic growth,
○ The fundamental economic causes of social inequality were to be left untouched.
● Education
○ Boys and girls received different curricula and teachers were forced to be
members of the Nazi Teachers’ Association
○ German lessons emphasised national and folk traditions
○ subjects were designed to reinforce Nazi ideology.
○ Maths textbooks included equations requiring the children to calculate how much
it cost Germany to keep mentally ill people alive.
○ For boys, boxing became compulsory.
● Curches in Germany
○ There were individual Christians who opposed the Nazis and tried to organise
resistance to their rule, but they were very much in the minority.
○ Both the Catholic and Protestant leaderships generally welcomed the Nazis
rejection of Weimar values.
○ Rather than promoting an alternative to Christianity, the Nazis, like many
authoritarian regimes, followed a policy of co-optation.
■ Hitler signed a Concordat (agreement) with the Catholic Church in July
1933
○ The Vatican recognised the Nazi regime and in return, the Nazi state was to
respect the autonomy of the Catholic Church.
3. Policies on Women

● Restricting Women
○ The basis of control over the lives of women came from laws which restricted
their liberty or encouraged certain behaviour.
○ The first target of Nazi legislation were women in the professions
■ teachers lost their jobs and female civil servants were sacked.
○ 10 percent of university places were given to women.
○ decline in female employment
○ women were largely excluded from the judicial system
○ Family planning clinics were closed, contraception was almost impossible to find
and abortion was made illegal in 1933
■ Only the genetically pure were allowed to procreate
○ Many women were compulsorily sterilised or had their pregnancies terminated on
racial grounds.
○ Marriage was made harder
○ Divorce was made easier is the woman was childless
● Rewarding Women
○ The ‘Law for the Reduction of Unemployment’ of June 1933 encouraged women
to leave work on marriage
○ marriages were loan assisted.
○ Rewards to women who have large families included the Cross of Honour of the
German Mother (1938) which awarded a bronze medal for having four children,
silver for six and gold for eight or more.
○ unmarried women were encouraged with a good racial profile to become
pregnant, with SS men as the fathers.
● Women in Wartime
○ When Germany attained full employment in 1938, some women were allowed
back into the factories.
○ The number of working women rose from 11.6 million to 14.6 million by the
outbreak of war.
○ Female doctors were allowed to practise once again because shortages were
endangering public health.

4. Policies on Minorities

● Persecution of ‘asocials’
○ (‘Gypsies’), the mentally ill, homosexuals, alcoholics and drug addicts, vagrants
and beggars, pacifists, conscription resistors and prostitutes.
○ Sterilization programme
■ ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring’
○ Euthanasia Programme 1933
■ ‘Mercy killing’
■ Elimination fo defectives
 ■ Once people saw the selectives never returned they started to panic and
cause resistance.
■ Religious protests
● Many clergy died
● Persecution of Jews
○ Almost made up 1% of German population
○ Anti-semminism was common around europe
○ Cumulative Radicalization, ‘Final Solution’
■ Europe to be ‘cleansed’ of its Jews, by working until they drop dead of
exhaustion and hunger.
○ The origins of Hitler’s particularly virulent hatred of Jews is debated by
historians,
○ Jews were the classic scapegoat minority at the heart of conspiracy theories that
sought to blame the Jews as the cause of recent German misfortune.
■ For the Nazis, the Jews, in secret alliance with the Marxists, were
responsible for the ‘stab in the back’ of 1918 and brought about the
hyperinflation crisis of 1923.
○ The proportion of Jews in professional jobs was higher than the national average
at that time
■ Jealousy for Nazis
■ Goebbels portrayed Jews as foreign and a threat.
● Anti-semmitic propaganda
■ Jews were barred from position in the civil service and the professions.
○ Mixed marriage between Jews and Germans was banned.
○ Jews were deprived of German citizenship.
○ Kristallnacht:
■ Expulsion of Polish Jews was the most violent action yet.
■ A jewish man assassinated a Germnan diplomat.
● 9 November 1938, over 100 Jews were killed, and many were
sent to concentration camps.
○ Holocaust:
■ Special concentration camps were established for mass extermination.
■ 6 million Jews murdered in camps.
● Persecution of minorities during WWII
○ Racial inferiors, asocial degenerates.
○ Gypsies- killed in the Nazi extermination campaign.
○ Homosexuals- police hunts and prosecutions under laws against homosexual
practices.
○ Jehovah’s Witnesses- those who refused to sign alliance to the regine were
murdered
○ Black Germans- ‘Rhineland Bastards’ or mixed race, were sterilized.