Kitabı oku: «Nazi Germany: History in an Hour»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

About History in an Hour

Introduction

The German Revolution: The End of the Second Reich

The Treaty of Versailles: ‘An armistice for twenty years’

DAP: Member 555

The Nazi Manifesto: A Thousand Years

Munich Putsch: ‘The national revolution has begun.’

Mein Kampf: ‘Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.’

The Ruhr: An Economic Downturn

The Great Depression: The Crash

Nazi Elections: ‘He can lick stamps with my head on them.’

Enabling Act: ‘Fanatics, hooligans and eccentrics have got the upper hand.’

The First Anti-Jew Laws: ‘Non-citizens’.

Night of the Long Knives: ‘The Führer’s soldierly decision and exemplary courage.’

The Führer: 99 per cent approval

Nazi Germany and the Economy: ‘Guns will make us strong; butter will make us fat.’

State Control: Guilty Before Innocent

The Family: ‘I detest women who dabble in politics.’

Propaganda: ‘Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.’

The Olympics

Kristallnacht: The Night of Broken Glass

Foreign Policy: ‘Germany will of its own accord never break the peace.’

The Rhineland: ‘We have no territorial claims to make in Europe.’

The Spanish Civil War: ‘Germany’s destiny for good or bad.’

Anschluss: ‘I can strongly recommend the Gestapo to one and all.’

The Sudetenland: ‘The last major problem to be solved.’

Czechoslovakia: ‘That senile old rascal.’

Poland – Guaranteed

Germany’s War 1939: ‘This country is at war with Germany.’

Germany’s War: 1940 to 1941

Germany’s War: 1942 to 1945

Appendix 1: Key Players

Appendix 2: Timeline of Nazi Germany

Copyright

Got Another Hour?

About the Publisher

About History in an Hour

History in an Hour is a series of ebooks to help the reader learn the basic facts of a given subject area. Everything you need to know is presented in a straightforward narrative and in chronological order. No embedded links to divert your attention, nor a daunting book of 600 pages with a 35-page introduction. Just straight in, to the point, sixty minutes, done. Then, having absorbed the basics, you may feel inspired to explore further.

Give yourself sixty minutes and see what you can learn . . .

To find out more visit http://historyinanhour.com or follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/historyinanhour

Introduction

‘And so it had all come to this. Did all this happen only so that a gang of wretched criminals could lay hands on the Fatherland? Hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for this deed.’ The words are those of Adolf Hitler; the deed – Germany’s surrender in the First World War; and the wretched criminals – the politicians who had meekly accepted the surrender and the defeat of Germany.

Germany had suffered during the war – not only on the battlefield but also at home. Starvation and fuel shortages, further aggravated by the ‘Spanish flu’ epidemic of 1918 that killed millions throughout Europe, had led to widespread discontent. Inflation and economic stagnation caused embitterment, and the increasing number of casualties as Germany had to fight a war on two fronts, had left the nation disillusioned.

The German Revolution: The End of the Second Reich

In October 1918, sailors at the port of Kiel disobeyed orders to fight the British fleet. It was, as they saw it, a pointless and suicidal mission. The revolt soon spread throughout Germany. The province of Bavaria went so far as to establish a socialist republic along Soviet lines. The Kaiser, William II, the unhinged grandson of Queen Victoria, abdicated on 9 November 1918, two days before the armistice, and the chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, appointed a left-wing coalition government and handed over the chancellorship to Friedrich Ebert.

With the abdication of the Kaiser and the collapse of Imperial Germany (the Second Reich – or empire), Ebert proclaimed Germany a republic, formed a provisional government (a temporary arrangement until elections could be held) and, on 11 November 1918, signed the armistice that brought the Great War to an end.

But the social unrest continued. In January 1919 the German Communist Party, the Spartacists, staged an uprising in Berlin. Rosa Luxemburg, leader of the movement, had opposed the uprising, arguing that the time was not yet right for communism. But she was unable to contain the fury of the left and Chancellor Ebert turned to the right-wing Freikorps, or Free Corps, for assistance. After three days of intense street fighting the Freikorps, a band of demobilized, nationalistic soldiers, had, with intense violence, crushed the rebellion. Luxemburg was arrested and killed while in police custody.

The Weimar Republic: A Republic Is Born

The first German democratic election took place the same month, January 1919, attracting an 83 per cent turnout and resulting in the formation of a National Constituent Assembly. The situation in Berlin was still volatile so on 6 February the Assembly met for the first time in the town of Weimar and there drew up a new constitution. Six months later the constitution was ratified and the Weimar Republic was born. However, disturbances continued, especially in Berlin and Bavaria, and Ebert again had to call in the Freikorps to keep order. In March 1919 the Freikorps went to work and the Socialist Republic in Bavaria was brought to a bloody end.

The Treaty of Versailles: ‘An armistice for twenty years’

On 28 June 1919, Germany reluctantly signed the Paris Peace Settlement in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles – exactly five years on from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the spark that had ignited the First World War. Germany had not been permitted to take part in the talks and was too weak, politically and militarily, to resist the dictated terms set by the representatives of thirty-two nations, led by the Allied powers – the US, Britain, France and Italy.

The terms were harsh and not for negotiation. Germany lost 13 per cent of her territory, which meant 12 per cent of Germans now lived in a foreign country, and Germany’s colonial possessions were redistributed among the other colonial powers. The German Rhineland, on the border with France, was to be demilitarized (stripped of an armed presence) and placed under Allied control until 1935. The small but industrially important Saar region was to be governed by Britain and France for fifteen years, and its coal exported to France in recompense for the French coal mines destroyed by Germany during the war. After fifteen years a plebiscite (or referendum) of the Saar population would decide its future.

Most of West Prussia was given to Poland. The German city of Danzig (modern-day Gdansk) was made a ‘free’ city so that Poland could have use of a port not situated in Germany. To give Poland access to Danzig, they were given a strip of land, the ‘Polish Corridor’, through Prussia, thereby cutting East Prussia off from the rest of Germany.

Militarily, Germany’s army was to be limited to a token 100,000 men, and its navy to 15,000, plus a ban on conscription. She was not permitted to have an air force, nor tanks, and was prohibited from producing or importing weaponry.

The payment of reparations was for ‘compensation for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allied powers and their property’. It was to include raw material, such as the coal from the Saar and Ruhr regions. Two years later, in 1921, the cost of reparations was announced – £6.6 billion, which German economists calculated would take until 1988 to pay. The figure shocked and angered Germans who conveniently forgot that Germany had demanded an even greater sum from a defeated France following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.

But it was the humiliating clause that forced Germany into accepting responsibility for the war and for the damage to the civilian populations of the Allies that rankled most with the public at home.

The treaty satisfied no one. Germany was outraged. Britain thought it too harsh, believing an economically weak Germany would be detrimental to all Europe; the US, also considering it harsh, refused to ratify the treaty or to join the newly formed League of Nations; and the French felt it not harsh enough. It was they, the French argued, who had suffered most during the war. The French public were so dissatisfied with their president, Clemenceau, that they voted him out six months later, replacing him with Ferdinand Foch who, with sharp intuition, said, ‘This is not peace, this is an armistice for twenty years.’

The Weimar government, although democratically elected, was deemed responsible for Germany’s humiliation, and criticized by all sides for its weakness in standing up to the Allies. In March 1920 the Freikorps, led by Wolfgang Kapp, tried to seize power in Berlin but the coup, unable to gain the army’s support, failed.

DAP: Member 555

The Kapp Putsch, as it became known, may have failed but it illustrated the feeling of anger among the extreme right in Germany. Among the many small political parties was the German Workers’ Party or, to use its German abbreviation, DAP, set up in 1919 by 35-year-old Munich locksmith, Anton Drexler. The DAP, a far-right party that aimed at appealing to the workers, consisted of only about fifty members but, to give the impression of greater numbers, began their membership cards at number five hundred.

It was to a meeting of this party that in September 1919 Adolf Hitler, at this stage being groomed by the army as a political instructor, was sent to observe and speak. The beer hall meeting consisted of only about twenty attendees but Hitler’s speech so impressed Drexler that he was invited to join the party. With membership number 555, although he later claimed in Mein Kampf that he was the seventh member, he signed his name as ‘Hittler’.

NSDAP: Nationalism and Socialism under One Roof

Hitler’s oratory and leadership skills were evident and he soon took over from Drexler as the DAP’s leader. On 24 February 1920, still maintaining its peculiar mix of right extremism and socialist ideals, the party lengthened its name to the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party, or NSDAP. Now boasting 3,000 members, the Nazi Party was born. Two months later Hitler resigned from the army to concentrate full time on expanding his party.

Corporal Hitler

Born in 1889 in Austria, Hitler spent much of his youth in Vienna, living in cheap accommodation, frequenting coffee houses and trying to sell his paintings. Art was his passion and his failure to secure a place at art school plunged him into depression. Resentment of the Jew was rife in the city and Hitler absorbed this anti-Semitism and, like many of his contemporaries, believed the Jew to be set apart from ‘the rest of humanity’.

At the outbreak of the First World War Hitler was in Munich and, having managed to avoid conscription into the Austrian army, signed up to a Bavarian regiment within the German army. He served as a messenger and did so with distinction throughout the war. Having no aspirations for promotion, he finished the war as a corporal having twice been awarded the Iron Cross and twice wounded – the second time in October 1918 when he was temporarily blinded by mustard gas.

Adolf Hitler (right) during the First World War

It was during his recuperation that the armistice was signed, leaving Hitler and many other Germans embittered. Germany had won the war in the east, and following the ‘Spring Offensive’ of 1918, looked well placed to win it in the west. But a strike of German munitions workers towards the end of the war, believed to have been organized by Jews, disrupted the supply of arms and the front-line soldier suffered as a consequence. The government had accepted defeat and it was they, not the soldier, who had lost Germany the war. The signing seven months later of the Treaty of Versailles confirmed this sense of betrayal, the feeling that the German people had been ‘stabbed in the back’.

As the new leader of the fledging Nazi Party, Hitler met Hermann Göring and Rudolph Hess, two men who would serve him well over the next twenty years, and Ernst Röhm (pictured with Hitler), a tough ex-soldier and former member of the Freikorps, who went on to form the Nazi Storm Troopers (or SA).

Hitler and Röhm, 1933

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1982-159-21A / Unknown / CC-BY-SA