Download Adolf Hitler & the Rise of Nazism

Adolf Hitler & the Rise of Nazism
• Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 in the small
town of Braunau.
• His first passion was art & he went to Vienna at age
18 to study.
• He was turned down by the art school; he blamed
his rejection on Jews who sat on the art school
board.
• It was here he developed the fanatical antiSemitism that would play a major role in his rise to
power.
• He left Vienna for Germany where he fought in the
Kaiser’s army during World War I.
• He was recognized for bravery while in the army
having undertaken a number of dangerous
missions.
• After the war he had no prospects & felt the
German government had betrayed the war
veterans.
• In 1919 he joined a small group of right-wing
extremists who called themselves the National
Socialist German Workers or Nazi party.
• By 1920, he was one of the leaders of the Nazi
party; he organized his supporters into fighting
squads who regularly battled against communists &
others they saw as enemies.
The Beer Hall Putsch
•The Beer Hall Putsch was a failed coup d'état which
occurred in the evening of Thursday, November 8 to
the early afternoon of Friday, November 9, 1923
• Adolf Hitler, General Erich Ludendorff, and other
leaders unsuccessfully tried to gain power.
•Beer halls are popular meeting places in Germany.
• A putsch is the German equivalent of a coup d'état,
or the revolt of a small number of people.
• The group was trying to overthrow the Weimar
government.
• Hitler was going to use the city of Munich as his
base of operations against the Weimar gov’t.
• Hitler & his associates (600 of them) surrounded
the beer hall, burst in & demanded that the leaders
of the Nazi party support his “march” on Berlin.
• When they did not agree, the putsch unraveled &
Hitler was forced to flee.
• Three days after the putsch, Hitler was arrested &
charged with treason.
• He was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but only
served about 8 months.
• Though a failure, it did give the Nazi party national
attention & served to further weaken the already
unstable Weimar government.
Mein Kampf
• While in prison in Munich, Hitler wrote down his
beliefs in his book Mein Kampf or My Struggle.
• He was jailed on charges of trying to overthrow
the Weimar Republic.
• Nazi party ideology & goals are set down in this
book.
– Extreme nationalism
– Racism
– Anti-Semitism
– Anti-Communism
• Hitler believed that Germany had not lost World
War I but had been betrayed by Marxists
(communists,) Jews, corrupt politicians, & business
leaders.
• He also stated that Germans belonged to a superior
“master race” called the Aryans (light-skinned
Europeans.)
• Jews were not members of this superior race &
should be forced to leave Germany.
• Hitler urged all Germans to unite into one nation.
• To have all Germans in one nation, Germany
needed living space or Lebensraum.
• Hitler sees everything in terms of race & space.
• Non-Aryans should bow to the demands of
Germans & German needs.
• To achieve this Lebensraum, Germany needed a
strong leader, a Fuhrer.
• Who was that strong leader??? Hitler
The Road to Power
• After prison, Hitler returned to power in the Nazi
Party & began giving speeches in beer halls & other
places in Munich.
• His rhetoric appealed to veterans & members of the
lower-middle-class who were suffering from
economic problems brought on by the Versailles
Peace Treaty & the Great Depression.
• By 1930, there were almost a million members in
the Nazi Party; membership rose & included
business people & workers too.
• Hitler planned to quit paying war reparations,
create jobs, & rearm Germany.
• He became Chancellor in 1933; more mainstream
parties had to deal with him & the Nazi because
they were powerful
• They didn’t particularly like Hitler but he was the
lesser of two evils.
• Hitler did become leader through LEGAL means
(KIM.)
• By 1934, Hitler & the Nazis were firmly in control
of the German government.
• Germany became a 1 party state.
• Hitler’s dream was to build a new German empire
called the Third Reich (empire.)
• The First Reich was the medieval Holy Roman
Empire; the Second Reich was created by Bismark
in 1871.
• According to the Hitler, this Third Reich would
dominate Europe for 1,000 years.
The Third Reich
• Inside the Third Reich, Hitler used a system of
terror, repression & totalitarian rule.
• He disbanded political parties, purged the Nazi
party of his “enemies,” & suspended civil rights.
• The Schutzstaffel, or SS, was the protection service
that did the dirty work of the Gestapo or secret
police.
• The SS soldiers were called the “black shirts”
because their uniforms were black.
• The Stormabteilung, or SA would become the elite
soldier known as the storm troopers.
• These troops were called the “brown shirts”
because they wore uniforms with brown shirts.
• Eventually, the SA would lose power & were
disbanded.
• The Nazi party also had sections for the children of
party members.
– Hitler Jugend: “Hitler Youth” was for school age kids to
learn about the Nazi party & become model
German/Nazi citizens.
• Wermacht was the German army
• Luftwaffe = German air force
• As Hitler made Germany more prosperous
(economically) more people followed him &
Nazi ideology.
• The Nazi party became mainstream.
• The standard of living rose in Germany but
the people lost their civil liberties as the Nazi
government passed laws restricting their
freedom.
– Women were fired from their jobs.
– Universities decreased their enrollments until
women weren’t allowed to attend.
• Privileged women were encouraged to stay home &
have children (especially if they were “pureblooded Aryan stock.”)
• Women were allowed to work in factories & lowlevel secretarial positions; positions of power were
for men.
• People didn’t mind since they were making money
& the restrictions didn’t really apply to them
• Very important to remember, people will be more
willing to give up their civil liberties for economic
security, especially after a period of bad economic
conditions.
The Nuremburg Laws
• The most restrictive laws were reserved for Jews &
other undesirables.
• The Nuremburg Laws were passed in 1935 &
stripped Jews of their civil liberties inside the Third
Reich.
– All Jews were to wear a yellow Star of David
– Jews could not attend schools with non-Jewish
people.
– NO Jews could practice law or medicine
– Jews could not marry non-Jews
– Jews were forbidden to use public transportation,
own cars, walk in public parks or on sidewalks
– All Jews were to be inside at dark.
– All Jews must register with their local police
officials.
– All Jewish stores were to display a yellow Star of
David; Jews were to use these stores only.
Kristallnacht
• November 9 & 10, 1938
• “Night of Broken Glass”
• Prompted by the murder of a minor Nazi
official by a Jewish man in Paris.
• Hitler used the opportunity as a way to incite
violence toward the Jews.
• Mobs attacked Jewish communities all over
Germany & Austria.
• The mobs smashed windows, looted shops,
burned synagogues & beat up any Jews
unlucky enough to be out.
• To Hitler& the Nazis this proved that the
Jewish people could not be trusted & should
be forced from the country.
Concentration Camps
• The Jews were rounded up & shipped to
camps in eastern Germany & Poland.
• They were told that they would be relocated
to other places outside of the 3rd Reich.
• The Jews didn’t rebel because they knew it
was useless but they trusted the Nazi
government would relocate them on the
newly taken land.
• The first concentration camp was Dachau
which opened in 1933.
• This camp was a labor camp where Jews
were used as slave labor.
• After 1939, the concentration camps were
housing not just Jews, but POWs & other
undesirables.
• The purpose of the concentration camps was
industrialized murder of the Jews & other
undesirables.
• Most camps had a different purpose; not all
were killing camps even though the death
rates were high.
• The most infamous of these camps were
– Auschwitz-Birkenau
– Bergen-Belsen
– Buchenwald
– Sobibor
– Treblinka
– Dauchau
Major Nazi Leaders
• Adolf Hitler: Fuhrer
• Joseph Goebbels: Minister of Propaganda &
Hitler’s immediate successor.
• Rudolf Hess: Fuhrer’s personal secretary until
he left the 3rd Reich.
• Heinrich Himmler: Reich Leader of the SS;
organized the Jewish genocide.
• Hermann Goering: commander of the
Luftwaffe & head of the Gestapo.
• Martin Bormann: deputy secretary & Hitler’s
personal secretary; took over after Hess was
captured in Scotland.
• Albert Speer: Architect; Ministry of War,
Weapons, & Munitions.