Download WWII

The Rise of Hitler
Hitler’s Rise

 Great speaker
 Created popular NAZI party
 SA (sturmabteilung)– brownshirts

Beer Hall Putsch

 11/08/1923 - Hitler & co surround gov’t officials in a
beer hall in Munich
 Goal - turn gov’t over to military
 Force them to swear loyalty to him
 Unsuccessful
 Hitler sent to prison for high treason

Rise
 Freed from prison - Nazi party grew
 2nd largest political
party in DE

 President - Paul von Hindenburg reluctantly
appointed Hitler Chancellor
 Reichstag Fire - blamed on communists
(probably was Hitler)
 Enabling Act - right to enact laws w/o Reichstag
(4 yrs)
 Article 48 - gov’t right to curtail constitutional
rights in emergencies
 Hitler became a dictator through “legal” means
Terror

 Schutzstaffeln “Guard Squadrons” “SS”
 Important in keeping order
 Orig Hitler’s bodyguards
 Under Heinrich Himmler – controlled secret & regular
police
 Terror – repression & murder, secret & criminal
police, concentration camps, execution squads, death
camps
Why was Hitler
popular?
Seemed to solve
financial woes
•
• Public works projects
• Rearmament program
• Unemployment dropped from 6 mill in 1932 to
500,000 in 1937
• Mass demonstrations
• Nazi youth
• “Get ahold of pots and pans and broom and you’ll
sooner find a groom!”
The Beginning…

 By 1933 – 50 concentration camps
 25,000 Socialists, Communists, & Jews imprisoned
 1933 - Boycott of Jewish businesses
 Detrimental to economy
“paper violence”

 anti-Semitic laws
 04/07/33 – Restoration of the Professional Civil
Service
 No Jewish gov’t employee
 04/21/33 – ritual prep of meat forbidden
 04/25/33 – quotas for GER schools/uni
 No Jewish dr.’s, pharmacists, lawyers, athletes
Aryan ancestry
Result

 Had to prove
 Priests, pastors, clerks
Defined Jewish
 3 Jewish grandparents
 2 Jewish grandparents + belonged to Jewish
community
 married to a Jew
 offspring of a Jew
37,000 GER Jews emigrated
 Cost of flights high
 Some hoped it would pass
Kristallnacht

 11/09/38 - Night of broken glass
 Massive, coordinated attack on Jews
 Response to GER embassy staff murder in Paris
 SA, SS, Hitler Youth beat & murdered
 Broke into & destroyed homes
 Brutalized women & children
 Burned down synagogues
 US recalled its ambassador
Kristallnacht

7500 business destroyed
1,668 synagogues ransacked, 267 burned
91 Jews killed
25,000 Jewish men  concentration camps
Forced to clean up damage bc of Kristalnacht
Banned from public transportation &
buildings / retail stores
Nuremberg Laws - 1935

 Legal acts of discrimination
 Announced at Party Rally in Nuremberg
 Law for the Protection of German Blood and German
Honor
 Prohibited marriages and xtra marital relations
between Jews and GERs
 The Reich Citizenship Law
 Stripped Jews of citizenship
Treaty of Versailles
Revisited
 Rhineland (strip
of land in DE bordering on FR,
BE, NL) demilitarized
 No DE troops to be stationed there
 Aim - increase FR security by making it
impossible for DE to invade FR by surprise
 Restrict DE army to 100,000 men, navy to 36
ships
Treaty of Versailles
Revisited

 Locarno Treaty reasserted demilitarization
 Voluntarily signed
 FR concerned about safety - especially with Hitler in
charge
 DE began to re-arm
Occupation of the
Rhineland

 Early 1936 Hitler decided to reoccupy the Rhineland
 Franco-Soviet pact of 1935
 Renewed alliance
 Defense strategy?
•
Gamble
DE re-armament
not ready for a well-armed
nation like FR
• FR - verge of elections - politicians unwilling to
take unpopular actions
• FR look to GB
• GB felt Treaty was unfair
– Simply re-claiming what was theirs
– Plus GB didn’t want another war
• League of Nations - condemned but no
economic/military sanctions
Results

 Hitler moved from the occupation of the Rhineland
in 1936 to
 Annexation of Austria and
 Seizure of Sudetenland in 1938 and
 Takeover of Czechoslovakia and
 Poland in 1939
Austria &
Czechoslovakia Fall

Hitler wanted AT and CZ in 3rd Reich
AT created after WWI
 Majority of pop was German
03/12/38 - DE marched into AT unopposed
03/13 - DE announced Anschluss or union w/
AT
US & world did nothing
Austria &
Czechoslovakia Fall

 CZ - 3 mill Germans (Sudetenland)
 More space & natural resources
 Hitler accused Czechs of abusing Sudeten Germans
 FR & GB promised to protect CZ
 War seemed inevitable
Munich Agreement

 Hitler invited Edouard Daladier & Neville
Chamberlain to Munich
 Fuhrer declared annexation of Sudetenland was his
last
 Eager to avoid war - they believed him
 09/30/38 - Munich Agreement
 Turned Sudetenland over w/o a single shot

The Munich conference. From left: Chamberlain,
Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, Ciano.
Winston Churchill

 Chamberlain’s satisfaction not shared w/ Churchill
 Appeasement - giving up principles to pacify an
aggressor
 “Britain and France had to choose between war and
dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.”
DE Offensive

 Churchill right
 03/15/39 - Hitler invaded rest of CZ
 Then he wanted Poland
 “mistreatment of Germans”
 Stalin’s surprise
 Nonaggression pact w/ Hitler
 Committed to never attacking each other
 Secret pact - divide Poland
 2 front war eliminated
Blitzkrieg

 “Lightning war”
 09/01/39 - Luftwaffe (air force) dropped bombs over
PL
 Same time - DE tanks
 09/03 - GB & FR declare war on DE
 Blitzkrieg successful - 3 wks
 USSR attacked PL from east
 PL gone, and WWII began
