Nazism and the Rise of Hitler PDF

Class 9th HISTORY CHAPTER-3 NAZISM AND THE RISE OF HITLER Introduction ❖ In May 1945, Germany surrendered to the Allies. ❖ Hitler, his propaganda minis...

Class 9th HISTORY CHAPTER-3 NAZISM AND THE RISE OF HITLER Introduction ❖ In May 1945, Germany surrendered to the Allies. ❖ Hitler, his propaganda minister Goebbels and his entire family committed suicide collectively in his Berlin bunker in April. ❖ An International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was set up to prosecute Nazi war criminals for Crimes against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. ❖ Germany had waged a genocidal war, The number of people killed included 6 million Jews, 200,000 Gypsies, 1 million Polish civilians, and 70,000 Germans who were considered mentally and physically disabled. Birth of the Weimar Republic ❖ Germany fought the First World War (1914-1918) along with the Austrian Empire and against the Allies (England, France and Russia). ❖ Germany initially made gains by occupying France and Belgium. However, the Allies won defeating Germany and the Central Powers in 1918. ❖ A National Assembly met at Weimer and established a democratic constitution with a federal structure. ❖ The republic, however, was not received well by its own people. ❖ The Treaty of Versailles was signed from which Germany lost all its overseas colonies and its resources, putting them in humiliation. ❖ The blame of the First World War was put on Germany as they were forced to pay 6 billion Euros for damages & loss of life in the war. Effects of World War I ❖ World War I led to extensive destruction and loss of human lives as well as depreciated losses in various fields like social, political, financial, etc. ❖ The supporters of the Weimer Republic were criticized and became easy targets of attack in the conservative nationalist circles. ❖ They were mockingly called the “November criminals”. ❖ Democracy was a young and fragile idea which could not survive the instabilities of interwar Europe. Political Radicalism and Economic Crises ❖ The historical coincidence of Weimar’s birth with the revolution of the Spartacist League against the pattern of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. ❖ Free Corps, a war veteran organization, helped crush the Spartacist League uprising while the Catholics, Socialists & Democrats met in Weimar for a democratic republic. ❖ The Spartacists founded the Communist Party of Germany. ❖ The political instability in Germany paved the way for Hitler. ❖ As Germany refused to pay the war reparations, France occupied its leading industrial area, Ruhr. ❖ Germany retaliated with printing paper currency recklessly. The value of the mark collapsed. Prices of goods soared. There was hyperinflation. The Years of Depression ❖ 1924-1928 saw some stability, yet it was built on sand. In 1924, with the introduction of the Dawes Plan by the Americans. ❖ Germany was totally dependent on short-term loans, largely from the USA. This support was withdrawn with the crash in 1929 of the Wall Street Exchange. ❖ The middle class and working population were filled with the fear of proletarianization (impoverishment of the working class). ❖ The Weimer Republic had some inherent defects : 1. Proportional Representation 2. Article 48 – which gave the President the powers to impose emergency, suspend civil rights and rule by decree. Hitler’s Rise to Power ❖ Adolf Hitler was born in the year 1889 and raised in Austria. ❖ He enrolled in the army during World War I acted as a messenger and soon was promoted to Corporal. ❖ In 1919, he joined a small communist party named the German Workers Party. ❖ He soon took hold over the party and renamed it as National Socialist German Workers; later called as Nazi Party. ❖ Bavaria was the first target of Hitler and planned to seize it. He launched an attack in 1923 but failed. ❖ Nazism became a mass movement only during the Great Depression. ❖ Hitler was a powerful and effective speaker. He promised the people a strong nation. ❖ Hitler tried his hands at elections, but in 1928 his party only won 2.6 % of the votes, though it soon became the largest party in 1932 by winning 37% of votes in Reichstag, Germany. ❖ He promised to remove all foreign influences and resist all foreign ‘conspiracies’ against Germany. ❖ Hitler started following a new style of politics, and his followers held big rallies and public meetings to demonstrate support. ❖ The Red banners with the Swastika, the Nazi salute, and the ritualised rounds of applause after the speeches were all part of this spectacle of power. The Destruction of Democracy ❖ President Hindenburg offered the Chancellorship, on 30 January 1933, to Hitler. ❖ The Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 suspended civic rights like freedom of speech, press and assembly that had been guaranteed by the Weimar Constitution. ❖ On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed, which established a dictatorship in Germany. ❖ It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree. ❖ All political parties were banned, and the state took control over the economy, media, army and judiciary. ❖ Apart from the already existing regular police in a green uniform and the SA or the Storm Troopers, these included the Gestapo (secret state police), the SS (the protection squads), criminal police and the Security Service (SD). Reconstruction ❖ Economist Hjalmar Schacht was given the responsibility of economic recovery. ❖ Who aimed at full production and full employment through a state-funded work-creation programme. ❖ This project produced the famous German superhighways and the people’s car, the Volkswagen. ❖ Hitler ruled out the League of Nations in 1933, reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan, One people, One empire and One leader. ❖ He then took Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler had the unspoken support of England. ❖ In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland and declared war on France & England. ❖ In 1940, Germany sealed the tripartite pact with Italy and Japan. ❖ He wanted to ensure food supplies and living space for Germans. He attacked the Soviet Union in 1941. ❖ This historic blunder Hitler exposed the German western front to British aerial bombing and the eastern front to the powerful Soviet armies. ❖ The Soviet Red Army inflicted a crushing and humiliating defeat on Germany at Stalingrad. ❖ The USA resisted involvement in the war. But when Japan extended its support to Hitler and bombarded Pearl Harbour, the USA entered the war. ❖ The war ended in 1945 with Hitler’s defeat and the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The Nazi Worldview ❖ According to Nazi ideology, there was no equality between people, but only racial hierarchy. ❖ Blond, blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung. ❖ The racism of Hitler was borrowed from thinkers like Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. ❖ The Aryan race was the finest who retained its purity, became stronger and dominated the world. ❖ The other aspect of Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or living space. ❖ Hitler intended to extend German boundaries by moving eastwards to concentrate all Germans geographically in one place. Establishment of the Racial State ❖ Nazis wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy Nordic Aryans’. They alone were considered ‘desirable’. ❖ Under the Euthanasia Programme, Helmuth’s father had condemned to death many Germans who were considered mentally or physically unfit. ❖ Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. They had been stereotyped as killers of Christ and Usurers. ❖ Hitler believed in pseudo-scientific theories of race which said that conversion was no solution to the Jewish problem. It had to be solved through their total elimination. ❖ From 1933-1938 – the Nazis terrorized, pauperized and segregated the Jews, compelling them to leave the country. ❖ The next phase, 1939-1945, aimed at concentrating them in certain areas and then killing them in gas chambers in Poland. The Racial Utopia ❖ Genocide and war became two sides of the same coin. Poland was divided, and much of north-western Poland was annexed to Germany. ❖ Poles were forced to leave their homes and properties behind to be occupied by the ethnic Germans. ❖ Polish children who looked like Aryans were forcibly snatched from their mothers and examined by ‘race experts’. Youth in Nazi Germany ❖ Hitler felt that a strong Nazi society could be established by teaching Nazi ideology to children. ❖ All schools were given German teachers. Children were divided into two groups- desirable and undesirable. ❖ Children were taught to be loyal and submissive, hate Jews and worship Hitler. ❖ Youth organisations were responsible for educating German youth in ‘the spirit of National Socialism’. ❖ Textbooks were rewritten, the function of sports in schools was to nurture the spirit of violence and aggression. ❖ Ten-year-olds had to enter Jungvolk. At 14, all boys joined ‘Hitler Youth’, they joined the Labour Service at 18. ❖ The Youth League of the Nazis was founded in 1922. Four years later it was renamed Hitler Youth. To unify the youth movement under Nazi control The Nazi Cult of Motherhood ❖ Boys were taught to be aggressive, masculine and steel-hearted and girls were told to become good mothers and rear pure-blooded Aryan children. ❖ Girls had to maintain the purity of the race, distance themselves from Jews, look after their homes and teach their children Nazi values. ❖ Honours Crosses were awarded to those who encouraged women to produce more children. Bronze cross for four children, silver for six and gold for eight or more. The Art of Propaganda ❖ Nazis never used the words ‘kill’ or ‘murder’ in their official communications. ❖ Mass killings were termed special treatment, final solution (for the Jews), Euthanasia (for the disabled), selection and disinfection. ‘Evacuation’ meant deporting people to gas chambers. ❖ Gas chambers were labelled as ‘‘disinfection areas’, and looked like bathrooms equipped with fake showerheads. ❖ They used films, pictures, radio, posters, etc. to spread hatred for Jews. ❖ The most infamous film was The Eternal Jew. Orthodox Jews were stereotyped and marked were referred to as vermin, rats and pests. ❖ The Nazis made equal efforts to appeal to all the different sections of the population. They sought to win their support by suggesting that Nazis alone could solve all their problems. Ordinary People and the Crimes Against Humanity ❖ People saw the world through Nazi eyes and spoke the Nazi language. ❖ They felt hatred and anger against Jews and genuinely believed Nazism would bring prosperity and improve general well-being. ❖ Pastor Niemoeller protested an uncanny silence amongst ordinary Germans against brutal and organised crimes committed in the Nazi empire. ❖ Charlotte Beradt’s book called ‘The Third Reich of Dreams’ describes how Jews themselves began believing in the Nazi stereotypes about them. Knowledge about the Holocaust ❖ The Jews wanted the world to remember the atrocities and sufferings they had endured during the Nazi killing operations – also called the Holocaust. ❖ When they lost the war, the Nazi leadership distributed petrol to its functionaries to destroy all incriminating evidence available in offices.