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The story of the Nazi rise to power begins with the end of World War I. The Allies--France, Great Britain, the United States, and Russia--were the victors of this uprecendentedly pervasive war with the Central Powers, who were led by Germany. After the Allies had forced the Central Powers to their knees, they forced the vanquished Central Powers to sign the Treaty of Versailles (named after the French city in which the Allies met to draft the treaty). This document forced Germany to admit responsibility for starting the war. This one-sided document contained 700 directives, not a single one of which Germany was allowed to change. The German restitution (repayment for harm done during the war) consisted of huge amounts of money. Germany was forced to give up fertile land which comprised almost ten percent of its total holdings, and was prohibited from ever again organizing a large army. After World War I, Germany was subjugated and powerless.
The citizens of the Weimar Republic, the new German government, felt betrayed. They were repressed by the victors, and their pride was injured. Most Germans lost money and property in the war, and then were forced to pay high taxes to repay the Allies. The Weimar republic was unstable and unable to keep out of debt.
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria. His father Alois was a strict and abusive customs official. He was more emotionally attached to his mother, Klara. Both, however, died before Hitler reached the age of twenty. Hitler quit high school at the age of fifteen in hopes of becoming an artist. After being rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, Hitler lived off his orphan's pension and the money he made selling painted postcards at street corners. It was in Vienna that Hitler developed his antisemitic character. He wrote in his autobiography, Mein Kampf:
"Once, as I was strolling through the Inner City, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought.... Is this a German? I bought the first anti-Semitic pamphlets of my life.... Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity."
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kamf, p. 85
Hitler later wrote, "I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-Semite." He read antisemitic newpapers and journals, among them a newsletter called "Ostara," which mixed antisemitism, psuedoscience about the Aryan master race, and mysticism about the meaning of the swastika. His readings introduced the ideas of a strong German "fuhrer" (leader) for the Aryan volk, the German people. In Vienna, he also watched the mayor, Karl Lueger, win votes by using antisemitism. Lueger, like most antisemites before him, based his hatred of Jews on the Jewish religion. The antisemitism that Hitler propagated was based upon the false conception of a Jewish race. The difference is important: a Jew could convert and be free from religious antisemitism, but anyone who had once been a Jew, or anyone who was related to a Jew, could not escape Hitler's hatred of the "Jewish race."
Hitler moved to Munich in May 1913. He began to lecture on antisemitism in taverns and beer halls, among like-minded antisemites. When Germany entered World War I on August 1, 1914, Hitler joined the army. He was twice injured on the front lines, and twice awarded an Iron Cross. He decided to enter politics while hospitalized near the end of the war. Thus began the Nazi party.
Hitler took his first job as an "education officer" for the District Army Command. He researched the many political groups in the Munich area. It was this job which led him to a meeting of the Germans Workers' Party. The small group spent much of its time complaining about life in Germany after the war. Hitler assumed leadership of this group and renamed it the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party.
Hitler made his first public speech in November 1920. He proved to be a surprisingly captivating speaker. His audiences became enthralled in his speeches, which he started by speaking low and slowly, and finished with a furiously high-pitched storm of words. He always spoke of Germany's defeat in the war, and blamed the Jews for "stabbing Germany in the back." The Jews made an easy scapegoat, they were seen as different, and resented for their differences. Hitler's allegations were, of course, ridiculous, but the German masses were quick to put faith in an easy solution to their problems. Hitler concluded one speech with the words, "We will carry on the struggle until the last Jew is removed from the German Reich."
Hitler organized and strengthened the Nazi Party. He outfitted them in armbands and created banners with a red background that symbolized blood, a white circle standing for nationalism, and a swastika--a twisted cross--that stood for the Aryan struggle. He began training members as "storm troopers," forming a private army known as the SA, or Sturmabteilung.
The "Beer Hall Putsch" occured on November 8, 1923, when Hitler and his storm troops surrounded a meeting of government officials and threatened to kill them if they did not swear loyalty to his "revolution." Hitler was arrested soon after, and was brought to trial. Crowds cheered him during the trial, and the jury sentenced him to the minimum possible penalty, five years in prison with parole after six months. During the trail, Hitler said:
"The man who is born to be a dictator is not compelled. He wills it. He is not driven forward, but impels himself. There is nothing immodest about this....The man who feels called to govern a people has no right to say, "If you want or summon me, I will cooperate." No! It is his duty to step forward.
The army we have trained is growing from day to day, from hour to hour."
During Hitler's nine months of improsonment, he dictated a book, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") while Rudolf Hess, a member of the Nazi party, wrote. Hess would later become one of Hitler's chief deputies. The book instantly became the handbook of the Nazi party. It contained tracts on antisemitism, the "Jewish plot," racism, the Aryan nation, and "lebensraum"--the purported need of land for German "living space."
Meanwhile, the SA was growing too large to be controlled easily. Now under the leadership of Hitler's friend, Ernst Rohm, it was becoming a problem for Hitler. In 1925 he formed a smaller army, the Schutzstaffel or SS. Under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS grew from the initial 280 men to 250,000 in 1934. It remained, throughout this time, more organized, and more dangerous, than the SA.
Hitler set up departments of agriculture, justice, labor, and foreign affairs, to name a few, inside the Nazi party. He was creating a state within a state. Hitler would soon replace the German government with his own men.
In October 1929, the American Stock Market crashed. Germany had borrowed huge amounts of money from U.S. banks to repay the Versailles reparations. Suddenly, all the banks sought repayment. German taxes skyrocketed, and many Germans were forced to sell their homes and personal belongings. The German people were in a state of anger and despair.
Hitler took this opportunity to grab as much political power as possible. He crossed and recrossed the country, speaking up to three times a day. He blamed the current economic situation on the Communists and Jewish traitors. He spoke before thousands of Germans, eager to follow his words.
The Nazis quickly gained power in the German congress, the Reichstag. Hitler's promises to restructure the army pleased the military, and his promise of a stable government pleased business leaders. All these endeavours would create new jobs, pleasing the German public. Smaller antisemitic groups joined the Nazis, and by the 1930s, SA membership had swelled to 500,000. On January 30, 1933, German President Paul von Hindenberg chose Hitler as the new chancellor of Germany. Even as he promised to protect the German constitution and its laws, Hitler was planning to overthrow the German republic.
To sway results of the March, 1933 elections, the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag, and blamed a dutch fanatic. Hitler swore to arrest "everyone responsible." He had drawn up a list of four thousand enemies, all of whom were imprisoned for the fire. They were Communists, and some journalists, doctors, and attorneys. Hitler then convinced Hindenburg to sign a decree "for the protection of the people and the state." This degree cancelled individual and civil rights, and placed all power in the hands of Hitler and the Nazi party. Hitler and his party now had the legal power to squelch political dissent, to control the media, and to search and seize without warning or cause. Under military force, the German Reichstag was forced to pass another act which gave Hitler sole rights to decide new laws and alter the constitution.
These words, written by the national German poet Heinrich Heine a century before the Holocaust, were eerily fortelling of the events that would occur during the Holocaust. On May 10, 1933, SA and SS soldiers oversaw the burning of "un-German books." Josef Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, proclaimed, "the spirit of the German people can again express itself. These flames not only illuminate the final end of an old era, they also light up the new."
The power of the SA was growing uncontrollably. Hitler feared that Rohm might be a challenge to his supremacy. After intense planning by Hitler and SS leaders, a great purge was exacted upon the SA and enemies to the Nazi party. The Night of the Long Knives lasted about two days, during which time nearly 200 people were executed without trial, including Ernst Rohm, the leader of the SA. Two days later, Hitler absolved himself of all guilt by passing a simple law: "The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonable activities are legally considered to have been taken in emergency defense of the state."
When President Hindenburg died shortly after, Hitler became the absolute dictator of Germany.