Download National Revision for Germany

National 5 History Revision Germany 1918-39
Why was Weimar Germany weak?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Germany only created in 1871.
ruled by a Kaiser (emperor) -but lost Kaiser in 1918
Germans were used to being told what to do- not used to democracy
lost a disastrous war- Heavy casualties, hunger and hardship.
Treaty of Versailles extremely harsh- caused more problems and HUMILIATION
Germans very divided
 right-wing parties represented the rich and conservative Germans.
 left-wing parties represented the workers.
 some left-wing parties wanted a revolution (violent change of government)
7. A working class party (the Social Democratic Party: SDP) took over –leader = Ebert- unpopular with right
wing parties.
8. Democratic republic was set up (= a state without a king or emperor)- many Germans wanted the king back.
9. Some Germans tried to attack the new Weimar Republic (the Spartacists [left-wing], the Kapp Putsch and
Beer Hall Putsch [right-wing]).
10. Great economic problems (the Hyperinflation of 1923, the Wall Street Crash and the Depression from
1929).
11. Ebert signed the Versailles Treaty- Germans hated this.
12. the new constitution had flaws which made it hard to run the country.
13. Many political murders in the early years, e.g. Walter Rathenau.
How did the Spartacist Revolution, 1919 weaken Weimar Germany?






left-wing = Communists
aim was to overthrow the moderate left-wing government of the SDP and create a government like the
Communists of Russia.
took place in Berlin and southern Germany.
government was so weak that it had to use former soldiers organised into loose groups called Freikorps
(Freecorps).
Members of the right-wing Freikorps did not like the Spartacists and crushed them brutally.
Spartacists leaders (Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered).
Why did the Weimar Constitution weaken the government?
= coalition governments (governments which were made up of two or three parties working together).
= weak governments. Single party governments tend to be stronger and more able to cope in a crisis.
= Article 48 gave the President (Hindenburg after Ebert in April 1925) the power to rule by emergency decree if
the Reichstag proved unable to govern. This power was to be used in the 1930s.
= too many Political parties who couldn’t agree
 KPD
radical left-wing communists
 MSPD
moderate left-wing Majority Social Democratic Party
 Centre Party
 DNVP
right-wing German National Party
 NSDAP extreme right-wing National Socialist German Workers Party
(NAZIS)
Document1
Why did the Treaty of Versailles weaken Germany?







Diktat = Germans were not allowed to negotiate the terms of the treaty.
the politicians of the Weimar Republic had to sign though they had not been responsible for the war and
for defeat.
Right-wingers (who had been responsible for the defeat) never forgave the Republic's politicians for this
humiliation.
War Guilt clause= Germans blamed for war (Germans believed that they had fought to defend their
homeland against attack from the east and west)
Land lost = (the Polish Corridor, the demilitarised Rhineland, all the colonies);
Army gone = 100,000 soldiers, 6 battleships, no planes subs tanks
Reparations = £6.6 billion
Why did Hyperinflation weaken Germany?







Germany's economy was in a mess after the war.
Germany had lost old customers and its empire. No market: no cheap raw materials.
Germany was always slow to pay the latest instalment of its reparations bill.
1923 - French invaded the Ruhr: the industrial heart of Germany to enforce payments.
German government ordered the people there not to cooperate (the policy of Passive Resistance) and had
to pay them "strike pay".
Printed money to pay them = inflation.
1919 loaf of bread – 1 mark, 1922 = 22 million marks
Who suffered from Hyperinflation 1922-3?








poor = out of work and couldn't afford the food prices;
old = their savings and pensions were now worthless;
middle classes = their savings were worthless and many were made unemployed when businesses closed
very rich and big landowners = could repay large loans in worthless currency so did well
Many came to support the Nazis because they blamed the Weimar government for this disaster.
Gustav Stresemann (the new Chancellor) stopped the policy of Passive Resistance
restored confidence in the currency by creating a temporary one (the Rentenmark) based upon the value
of land in Germany. Later a new Mark was introduced.
right-wingers blamed Stresemann and the Weimar government for what they saw as giving in to the
French.
How did the Nazi party rise to power?







2.
1. Hitler a great leader
Austrian.
good war service.
devastated by Germany's defeat and blamed Jews, Communists and the left-wing government of Weimar
for causing it.
wouldn't accept that the German armed forces had been beaten. Believed that they had been "stabbed in
the back" by the above.
joined a small revolutionary group in Munich, the German Workers Party.
discovered a skill at public speaking and rose to be its leader by 1921.
renamed it the National German Workers Socialist Party (NSDAP).
Nazi ideas appealed to many
- anti-Semitic (anti Jewish)
- anti communist
- anti-Versailles
- anti-Weimar
Document1
- very nationalistic, strongly German.
-won over many of the middle classes by standing as the party against Communism. (Communists had
succeeded in taking power in Russia & took wealth from middle classes. Germans didn't want the same to happen in
Germany).
3. Attempted putsch changed their methods
a. Nazis based in southern Germany, in and around Munich.
b. 1923 Hitler led a failed attempt to win power in Munich - the Beer Hall Putsch
c. Hitler was imprisoned: wrote "Mein Kampf" (= My Struggle). Book contains all his ideas.
d. 1924 - 29: the Nazis did little because life in Germany got better and groups like the
extremist Nazis only gathered support when times were bad.
e. But Hitler changed plan- aimed to get power by democratic votes.



4. Depression made people vote Nazi
Wall Street Crash, 1929 led to an economic crisis in Germany
millions unemployed.
This was good news for the Communists and Nazis both of whom began to attract more supporters.
5.
Nazi organisation helped
 2 parts to the party: the Nazi Party itself and the SA.
 = Sturm Abteilung = Storm Troops. Also called the Brownshirts.
 SA attacked the meetings of other parties, fought against Communist supporters, intimidated people into
supporting the Nazi Party, assaulted Jews, etc..
 Hitler won over thousands at endless meetings;

Many young people who gave the impression of energy;
 newspaper (Volkischer Beobachter = the Peoples' Observer) to spread their message;
 uniforms, discipline and music were attractive;
 Nuremburg Rallies: these huge rallies involving thousand of Nazi supporters, helped to win support
Did the Weimar Republic recover 1923-9?
YES:






NO:



Solved Reparations = Dawes Plan: set limits to the Reparations payments in 1924 and arranged for large
loans which helped to boost confidence in the German economy;
& Young Plan:1929, reduced Reparations payments considerably.
Stresemann good leader, encouraged confidence
Made international friends = cooperating with France and the UK
Joined League of Nations 1926
Guaranteed no war with France on western frontiers (the Locarno Pact, 1925)
right-wing thought that Stresemann was caving in to Germany's former enemies.
Locarno didn’t guarantee border on East (Polish corridor)
Loan triangle – meant that economic recovery was based on US loans = weak
Why did the Wall Street Crash help the Nazis?
1.
Wall Street crash in 1929 = worldwide recession. CREDIT CRUNCH!!
- businesses lose confidence;
- factories are shut down
- unemployed;
Document1
- so people stop buying
- factories have to stop making =
2.



3.




- the recession gets worse and leads to a Depression.
Germany = very bad recession
it looked as though democracy had failed to protect the German people;
extreme parties on the left and right began to increase their support;
the Nazi Party, especially, gained more and more Deputies in the Reichstag.
The economic crisis led to a political crisis in Germany
Reichstag was paralysed = couldn't agree on how to deal with the recession and unemployment;
President Hindenburg used the power he had under Article 48 to promote and support a President
(Bruning) who ruled without the Reichstag's consent;
Bruning was replaced by Franz von Papen who was replaced by General Schleicher.
in February 1933 von Papen persuaded Hindenburg to drop Schleicher and promote the head of the single
largest party in the Reichstag. This was Hitler.
How did the Nazis control Germany?
1.
Took over total power
 Hitler was Chancellor but he only had a couple of other Nazis in the cabinet and he could be
outvoted by the others;
 called a General Election for March, 1933.
 27th February the Reichstag building was burnt down. Blamed communists and used this as an
excuse to arrest them all (Emergency Decree)- so less opposition
 Nazis won the election easily. The election was a fraud.
 After the election the Nazis introduced the Enabling Act. It was passed because Hitler had got
rid of those most likely to vote against it. Gave Hitler total power = dictator
2.
Removed opposition
 Banned opposition groups or leaders sacked and replaced with loyal Nazis, e.g. Trades Unions, the Civil
Service, large industries, newspapers, judges, the army.
 (= Gleichschaltung or Co-ordination)
 the leaders of the SA (which was now so large that it threatened Hitler's plans) were killed in 1934 (= the
Night of the Long Knives. Captain Ernst Roehm = the leader).
 the killing was done by Hitler's own personal bodyguard the SS (the Schutzstaffel). (black shirts)
3.
Totalitarian state = Police state
 life was controlled by the Enabling Act.
 No one who opposed them was allowed to for long. They were warned, sacked from their jobs, beaten up,
arrested, imprisoned or killed.
 the SA and the SS were used to everyone quiet.
 the SS was led by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Hess.
 the Gestapo (= the secret police) was used to spy on anyone suspected of being anti-Hitler or anti-Nazi.
 Courts filled with Nazi judges
4.
Controlled by giving a good life
 got millions back to work and food into their stomachs (he did this largely by a programme of road building
- the autobahns - and by re-armament);
 scrapped many of the terms of Versailles (which Germans loved);
 marched back into the demilitarised Rhineland -1936 (which Germans loved)
 united Germany and Austria (the Anschluss, March 1938) (which Germans loved);
 swallowed Czechoslovakia (which Germans loved).
Document1
5.
Controlling the young
Aim to Brainwash the Nazis of the future by…
 indoctrination (= controlling the minds of the young);
 non-stop propaganda (Germans were bombarded by an endless stream of Nazi ideas (through the
media);
 an education system which altered subjects to push Nazis ideas (e.g. History which taught that the
Germans had been stabbed in the back by Jews and Communists in the First World War. Biology
which taught that Jews and Slavs were inferior beings = untermenschen = sub-human);
 the Nazi youth organisations like the
- Hitler Youth. By 1936 the Hitler Youth Law made membership compulsory. The young boys
had to do lots of PE to make them fit and lots of military style tasks to train them to be
future soldiers.
- the Jungmadelbund. The Young Maidens League in which young women were taught the
skills they would need to be mothers.
6.
Blaming Jews
 Hitler did not invent anti-Semitism. Attacks, called Pogroms, had been made on Jews since
the Middle Ages and many countries were very anti-semitic, e.g. Poland, Russia.
 at first life was simply made more difficult for Jews: later, during the war, an attempt was
made to wipe out the Jewish race (= the Holocaust or the Final Solution).
 Before the war the Nazis made life unpleasant for Jews by:
 forcing them to wear a yellow star on their sleeves;
 humiliating them in the street;
 boycotting their businesses;
 attacking their synagogues (Kristallnacht = Crystal Night in Nov. 1938);
 passing a set of laws in 1935, the Nuremburg Laws, which placed many restrictions
on Jews, e.g. they couldn't marry non-Jews (called Aryans) or practice as doctors
or lawyers for non-Jews,etc..
7.
How did people resist the Nazis?
o very difficult and dangerous. People who did resist included:
o certain Christians (Pastor Martin Niemoller, Dietrich Bonhoffer).
o some Communists (in the Red Orchestra group) and Social Democrats.
o Passive resistance, eg jokes
o some German aristocrats (the Kreisau Circle, the Beck-Georderler group,
Claus von Stauffenberg);
o little real resistance till Hitler took Germany into the war and defeat began
to loom.
o the July Plot, 1944, (von Stauffenberg) came closest to killing Hitler.
o Youth eg White Rose group, Edelweiss Pirates, Swing kids
Document1