The Great Depression Helped Facilitate Hitler’s Rise to Power

The Allied powers – led by the USA and Britain - defeated Germany in 1918 and marked the

end of the first World War. In 1919 both sides signed the Treaty of Versailles in which

Germany was held responsible for starting the war and “harsh penalties in terms of loss of

territory, payment of massive reparations, and demilitarization”1 were imposed on Germans.

Of all the humiliating parts of the treaty, it was the financial restitution that devastated

Germany and its people. The allies demanded “132 billion gold marks, or about $269 billion

today”2. Every political section and opposition leader in Germany saw this as an opportunity

to rise to power. Hitler’s Nazi party was among these. When the effects of the Great

Depression of 1929 finally reached Germany, the economic repercussions on the German

population gave Hitler the last push that he needed to capture the imagination of Germans

and take over power.

The financial restitution imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles made it almost

impossible for the German economy to recover – especially between 1920 to 1923. Economic

experts such as John Maynard Keynes had already forecast consequences of the “critical

failures of the peace” attained at Versailles3. Each of the over 70 political parties in the

country tried to take advantage of the populations misery to gain political traction and take

over power. These included the German Worker’s Party – later renamed the Nazi Party by

Hitler4 – which Hitler brought to the national limelight because of his speech-making

abilities. However, the party struggled to attract followers outside the disenfranchised

veterans – former German soldiers in WWI who felt the Pride of a once strong nation taken

away by harsh conditions for peace. This was mostly because in 1924 the United States had

1
The National WWII Museum, How did Hitler happen? (The National Museum of New Orleans, N.D)
2
Erin Blakemore, Germany's World War I Debt Was So Crushing It Took 92 Years to Pay Off (History.com,
2019), 1.
3
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of Peace (Transaction Publishers, London, 1919), 54
4
Blakemore, 1
initiated the Dawes Plan through which “foreign banks would loan the German government

$200 million to help encourage economic stabilization”5. These loans helped Germany to

meet its reparation repayments and the economy experienced relative prosperity until 1929

when wall street crashed and the great depression began.

Because the country’s economic stability and prosperity depended heavily on foreign debt

and capital, the effects of the great depression affected Germany almost immediately.

According to Alessandro Roselli (2021), there was capital flight from the German economy,

demand for exports dried up, and millions lost their jobs6. The lower middle-class was

impoverished and the middle and conservative classes were disillusioned. As the political

class continued to fight each other, the German economy had not only grown weak but was

almost at a halt. The population was yearning for a strong leader to lead the country out of

this misery. Hitler’s Nazi party – which had struggled to attract followers from many

different sections of society was now a party of choice for many Germans.

Although Hitler’s rise to power was a culmination of many different issues, the great

depression pushed the dwindling German democracy and the Weimer Republic off its final

precipice. As wall street crashed, many foreign loans to Germany were recalled. Businesses

could not afford to operate and were forced to shut down leading to millions of losing their

jobs. Farmers were unable to sell produce as international markets crumbled. By 1932, “over

6 million people were unemployed”7. The Weimer republic was unable to cushion the people

from the devastating effects of the great depression as millions fell into abject poverty –

5
Ernest patterson, The Dawes Plan in Operation (SAGE Publications. Inc), 1.
6
Alessandro Roselli, Hyperinflation, Depression, and the Rise of Adolf Hitler (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014), 134.
7
Alessandro Roselli, 302
especially the lower middle class and the middle class that Hitler’s party had struggled to

attract.

The devastation and destitution caused by the great depression confirmed to the people what

they always thought of the post-Versailles’ political leaders of the Weimer Republic; “as a

system ridden by division and party – political squabbling”8. The people blamed the

government of the day of over-reliance on foreign capital and loans to sustain the economy.

They were perceived as weak and unable to come together for the sake of country. All small

right- and left-wing parties tried to ride on this anti-government wave. Yet it was the Nazi

party that was able to win the hearts of the people because of two things; the party’s

organizational framework which allowed it to take advantage of the depression crisis

effectively9, and Hitler’s ability to make speeches. “What makes the ‘Nazi Party’ different

from the other 69 groups is that they don’t have a Hitler, whose speaker talent and tactics are

quite effective”10. With his speaking prowess he set out to woo every section of society,

businessmen, workers, the rich, and the poor.

As everyone went through a hard economic time during the depression Hitler fronted himself

as the only one who could save Germany. Kershaw notes that “five years earlier, the Nazi

party had been a fringe irritant in German politics”11. But not anymore. Hitler portrayed the

Weimer Republic as the enemy who had caused the crisis and whose attempts at forming

coalition governments held no real solution to the ongoing problems. The ground was quickly

shifting against the status quo and toward Hitler and the Nazi party. As a testament to this

major shift in the country’s political scene, in the 1932 elections the Nazi party “receives 37.3

8
Ian Kershaw, Hitler (Routledge), 12.
9
Kershaw, 46
10
Roselli, 307
11
Kershaw, 38
percent of the vote, wins 230 seats, and becomes the largest party in the Reichstag”12. This

was a jump from only 2.6 percent (12 seats) four years earlier. As leader of the largest party,

Hitler turned down the position of vice Chancellor and demanded that the president appoints

him Chancellor of Germany.

Beyond the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles and blaming the supposedly weak

and disunited political leaders of the Weimer Republic, Hitler gave the German population a

scapegoat for their economic problems (that climaxed with the great depression). He blamed

the Jews for Germany’s problems. In January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor and in August

1934 after the death of President Paul Hindenburg, he also assumed the role of president and

became the Führer. It was time to start eliminating the scapegoat of all Germany’s problems.

Within months of rising to power “the crucial steps into the full-fledged ‘Final Solution’ – the

attempted systematic murder of all Jews of Europe – now followed, one after the other”13.

The great depression had offered Hitler the crisis he needed to convince large portions of the

population to buy into the ideology of the Nazi party. To effectively accomplish this,

however, he needed a scape-goat. His long-held hatred for Jews was easily within reach.

Thus, when he rose to power, he not only had to eliminate Jews to satisfy his hatred, he also

had to satisfy the emotions of his political base whose hatred for Jews he had planted and

fanned for years before ascend to power.

The great depression was not the only reason for Hitler’s rise to power. His popularity was a

culmination of many different factors and reasons mostly beginning from the post-WWI

restitution conditions. However, the depression offered Hitler the opportunity to appeal to an

12
Kershaw, 210
13
Kershaw, 156
increasingly impoverished, disenfranchised, and destitute population. In 1930, the rise of

Hitler was evident, as the depression crisis led to the Nazi party getting over eighteen percent

of the vote, winning 107 seats in parliament. With such numbers, the Nazi could hinder any

new plans by the sitting government to reverse the economic impacts of the great

depression14. The goal by Hitler was to make people as destitute as possible in order for his

anti-government and anti-Jew messages to resonate with the people.

Accordingly, without the great depression Hitler would not have had a political and socio-

economic crisis to ride on to power. The Dawes Plan (1924) as well as the Young Plan (1928)

probably would have kept Germany on a stable and prosperous trajectory well into the 1930s

had the depression not happened. Consequently, the Nazi party would have remained a

“fringe irritant in German politics”15 with barely 3 percent of the population on its side.

Whereas it is true that there was more to Hitler’s rise than the depression – e.g., the Treaty of

Versailles, over-reliance on foreign capital, communism vs. capitalism, and other factors –

none of them caused the sort of economic and political crisis necessary to push people to

want to vote for a strongman. Moreover, the forecasts of economists such Keynes and others

concerning the time bomb of restitutions was beginning to come true and strong economies

such as the United States, France, and Britain were already endorsing plans to create long

lasting solutions for Germany. As such, without the Great Depression of 1929, Hitler and the

Nazi party might never have ascended to power.

Bibliography

1. Kershaw, Ian. 2014. Hitler. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

http://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1710569.

3. Wilson, A. N. 2012. Hitler. London: HarperPress.

14
AN Wilson, Hitler (New York; Basic Books, 2012), 147.
15
Kershaw, 38
4. Keynes, John Maynard. 1919. The Economic Consequences of the Peace. La Vergne:

Neeland Media LLC.

5. Patterson, Ernest Minor. 1925 The Dawes Plan in Operation. The Annals of the

American Academy of Political and Social Science 120: 1–6.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1015627.

6. Blakemore, Erin. 2019. Germany's World War I Debt Was So Crushing It Took 92 Years

to Pay Off. History.com. https://www.history.com/news/germany-world-war-i-debt-

treaty-versailles.

7. The National WWII Museum. 2017. How Did Hitler Happen? The National WWII

Museum | New Orleans. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/how-did-

hitler-happen.

8. Roselli, Alessandro. 2021. Hyperinflation, Depression, and the Rise of Adolf

Hitler. Economic Affairs 41, no. 2; 300-08. doi:10.1111/ecaf.12466.