Download 5. Germany in the 1930s

Germany in the 1930s
Treaty of Versailles: (REMEMBER?!! HUH?? HUH???!!!) 
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Germany stripped of territory and colonies
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Nation is disarmed
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War reparations
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Accept shame as responsible for causing WWI
Effects:
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Runaway inflation
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Value of German mark plummets ($ = ZERO)
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By 1923 economy near collapse, though U.S. loans helped.
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The new boundaries created tensions in Europe as ethnic minorities separated from their countries.
(Large German minorities now lived in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria).
The Market Crash and Depression of the 30's hit Germany harder than most.
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Industrial production fell by about 40%, exports and imports were cut in half, unemployment swelled from 1.4 to
5.6 million people.
In 1932 the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NAZI) under Adolf Hitler won the national election
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1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.
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He won power because:
o Commitment to revise the Versailles Treaty
o Regain German honour
o Gain Lebensraum (living space) for the German people
FIRST MOVES: Begin the process of re-arming the nation
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Demanding unification of Austria with Germany (called the “Anschluss” - remember Herr Zeller in The Sound
of Music - Austria was forcefully annexed in 1938); taking the Saar Valley on the French border, which had been
given to France by Versailles) in 1935; moving the army into the oil and coal rich Rhineland, (which was made a
demilitarized zone by Versailles).
 Germany's economic recovery was greatly affected by the arms program (Negatives!).
o Army, air force and navy competed for resources (oil, iron, copper, labour, rubber etc.), often setting
ridiculous goals (E.g: Luftwaffe's plan for 19,000 front line reserve aircraft by 1942 would require 85% of
the existing world production of oil!!).
Problem: Much of the material Germany needed had to be imported, and the treasury had been drained by the war
reparations payments.
Solutions:
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Strict controls on labour costs and private consumption
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Convince private industries to reinvest profits into state approved manufacturing
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(In other words, Germany was being placed on a war footing early.),
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Acquisition of Austria (5 divisions, iron and oil fields, $200 million in gold), the Sudetenland (coal);
Czechoslovakia (gold & currency, arms industry, weaponry, and defenses).
Question: What would the Western powers do?
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Great Britain = Favoured a policy of appeasement (giving in to Germany) (, i.e., let Germany have its "living
space," to avoid war.)
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At a famous meeting with Hitler in Munich made a deal that he proclaimed would bring "peace in our time."
Canada's Prime Minister King wrote to congratulate him. Soon after signing this Munich Pact, Hitler signed a
non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union. By March of 1939 invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia and in
September invaded Poland.
Great Statesman Gone Bad?
It might be tempting to think that Hitler was a "great leader" for his success in restoring Germany, and that if he had just
stopped at Poland, he might have been remembered as a great man instead of an evil man.
Anyone who thinks this either has not read Mein Kampf (which makes the Chapters Bookstore decision a few years ago to
pull that book off the shelf an unfortunate mistake), or happens to be a race-socialist just like Hitler himself (i.e. the greatest
nations are the most racially pure nations). Hitler wrote: Germany must either be a world power or there will be no
Germany. After the Munich Pact, he argued that for Germany to accept peace and stability as a permanent part of
international life was to accept the very spirit of defeatism.
HITLER’S FULL PROGRAM:
1) Gain control of Germany, and begin race cleansing process
2) Destroy the Versailles settlement and establish Germany as the dominant European Power
3) Destroy the Soviet Union, the breeding ground of the Jewish disease, and by colonization, create a solid
economic/strategic power base for a continental empire
4) Acquire a large colonial empire in Africa, and a large navy, to be one of the four super-powers.
5) In the long term, Hitler envisioned a decisive struggle with the U.S. for world domination. (P. Johnson,
Modern Times, pp. 342-343).
Could he have been stopped earlier? Perhaps. In 1940, Goebbels gave a secret briefing to select German
journalists, in which he said:
We wanted to come to power legally, but we did not want to use power legally. . . They could have suppressed us. They
could have arrested a couple of us in 1925 and that would have been that, the end. No, they let us through the danger zone.
That's exactly how it was in foreign policy too . . . . In 1933 a French premier ought to have said (and if I had been the French
premier I would have said it): 'The new Reich Chancellor is the man who wrote Mein Kampf, which says this and that. This
man cannot be tolerated in our vicinity. Either he disappears or we march!' But they didn't do it. They left us alone and let us
slip through the risky zone, and we were able to sail around all dangerous reefs. And when we were done, and well armed,
better than they, then they started the war!