HI 224 Raffael Scheck Colby College

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HI 224Raffael ScheckColby College

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Establishing a Dictatorship
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The Hitler Cabinet Success of Papens Taming
Strategy?

• Only three Nazis and ten conservative allies
• BUT Nazis have important posts (chancellor,
  interior, Goering as minister without portfolio,
  soon Prussian interior minister)
• Papen as vice-chancellor
• Hugenberg (DNVP-leader) as coalition partner
• Hindenburg still President

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Terror

• Goerings measures as Prussian Interior Minister
• Fires 22 of 32 police presidents
• Hires SA as auxiliary police
• Result massive wave of terror particularly
  against communists (25,000 arbitrary arrests)
• Reichstag fire
• Concentration camps

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Legal Measures

• Reichstag Fire Decree (23 February 1933)
• New Elections (5 March 1933)
• Enabling Act (23 March 1933) opposed only by SPD
  (Otto Wels)
• Dissolution of all other parties until July 1933
• Gleichschaltung (Synchronization)
• Konkordat with Papacy
• Dismissal of all Jews in the civil service

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Election Results March 1933
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Why did the Hitler Dictatorship Win Much Public
Acceptance?

• Massive reduction of unemployment and rapid
  economic recovery
• Semblance of order, stability, and peace once the
  wave of terror subsides (July 1933)
• Many non-Nazis collaborated in hopes of having a
  mitigating influence on Hitler
• There is no alternative

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Building up German Hegemony in Central Europe

• 1933-39

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Final Steps Toward a Legal Dictatorship

• Elimination of the SA leadership, 30 June 1934
  (night of long knives)
• Hitler appoints himself Führer of the German
  People after Hindenburgs death (2 August 1934)
• Plebiscites

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Unemployment 1932-39
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Military Spending 1932-39
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Hitlers Foreign Policy Goals

• The REAL goal Lebensraum in Eastern Europe huge
  and crude genetic engineering project (upgrading
  the Aryan race)

• The PERCEIVED goal revision of the wrongs of
  Versailles

Do NOT write liebensraum! The professor
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Hitlers Foreign Policy 1933-39

• Defiance of Versailles, but with limited risk
• Mixed messages declaration of peaceful
  intentions mixed with threats and bullying
• Search for allies
• Massive rearmament
• Decisive step break of Munich Agreement through
  the invasion of Czechoslovakia, March 1939

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Main Events of German Foreign Policy 1933-39
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Reasons for Hitlers Success?

• Remorse about Versailles among the victors
• Longer economic crisis and slower economic
  recovery in France and Britain
• Disillusionment with war among the victors
• British concern about Italy and Japan

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The International Reaction

• Containment (1933-35) efforts to build anti-
  German alliances (Stresa Front with Italy, April
  1935 pact between France and the Soviet Union)
• Appeasement (1935-38) concessions to Hitler
  hoping that he would voluntarily recognize a just
  revision of Versailles
• Confrontation (1939) recognition that Hitler
  cannot be appeased. Rapid rearmament and
  guarantee treaties for Poland and Rumania

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Blitz Victories

• 1939-1941

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The Start of the World War II

• Hitlers desire for war
• The Hitler-Stalin Pact (August 1939)
• The German Attack on Poland (1 September 1939)
• British and French declarations of war (3
  September 1939)

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Blitzkrieg

• Rapid Victories
• Poland (Sept. 1939)
• Denmark and Norway (April-May 1940)
• France and Benelux countries (May-June 1940)
• Yugoslavia and Greece (April-May 1941)
• What was Blitzkrieg?
• Rapid move of concentrated motorized forces
• Air attacks to support these moves
• Breakthrough at strategically crucial points
• Element of surprise
• Economic benefits

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Total War

• 1941-1945

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Why did Hitler Attack the Soviet Union?

• Hope to bring Britain to the peace table
• Conflicts with the Soviet Union (Finland
  Rumania)
• Ideological motivation (Lebensraum)
• Expectation of quick victory

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Why did the Attack on the Soviet Union Fail?

• Depth of territory
• Determined resistance
• Underestimation of Soviet industrialization
• German treatment of civilian population

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The German Defeat

• No compromise peace
• Decisive vast numerical inferiority and
  massively overextended fronts
• Defeat in the Soviet Union
• War with the United States
• Defeat of the submarines, March-May 1943
• Defeat in North Africa, May 1943
• Allied landings in France, June 1944
• Bombing campaign against Germany

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The Nazi State, Industry, and Society
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The State

• Hitler a strong dictator - Working toward the
  Führer (Kershaw). Charismatic rule with a
  radicalizing dynamic
• Primary instrument of Hitlers power the SS
  under Heinrich Himmler
• Corruption at the lower levels of the party and
  state administration (Gauleiter)
• Crucial Hitler was always much more popular than
  the party and Nazi ideology. He was often liked
  for things he did not condone and dissociated
  from unpopular measures (if only the Führer
  knew). HITLER MYTH

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Industry

• Promotion of cars. The Volkswagen - Germanys
  answer to Ford
• Heavy focus on rearmament. Hence financial
  shortages and weak consumer sector

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Society

• The claim of Volksgemeinschaft (peoples
  community) practicing social solidarity
• The realities of Volksgemeinschaft
• Discontent among the peasants
• The workers working hard for little money
• Women pushed out of the labor market, and then
  begged to come back
• Boys and girls focus on athletics
• The churches (Lutherans official church and
  Confessing Church Konkordat with the Pope)
• Priorities war preparation and racial policy

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The Dark Sides of the Volksgemeinschaft

• Not everybody is equal
• Discrimination against Jews
• 2000 anti-Jewish laws 1933-1945
• April boycott 1933
• Dismissal from public service jobs and industry
  (1933)
• Nürnberg Laws (1935)
• Discrimination against Sinti and Roma

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Upgrading the Germans

• Forced sterilization and abortion
• Euthanasia, 1939-45 protest by Bishop von Galen

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Slave Labor

• Seven million forced laborers in Nazi Germany in
  1944
• 1.5 million French POWs
• Voluntary laborers from France
• Italian Military Internees after 1943 (ca.
  600,000)
• Concentration camp inmates (altogether 2.5-3.5
  million) with high mortality (around half a
  million)
• Separation of foreigners from Germans

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Racial Murder
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The Three Phases on the Road to Mass Murder

• 1. Restriction and Segregation 1933-38 (Nürnberg
  Laws, 1935)
• 2. Expulsion and exclusion 1938-41 (Night of
  Broken Glass, 1938)
• 3. Extermination 1939/41-45 (Euthanasia program
  genocide)

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Questions

• Why did this happen?
• Who was responsible?
• Discussion?

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The End of the War
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The Allied Bombing Campaign against Germany

• British aim to de-house the working class and
  inspire uprisings area bombardment of large
  cities by night
• American aim to hit industrial plant and
  infrastructure precision bombing by day
• Ultimately terror bombing by both air forces
• Hamburg firestorm, July 1943
• Destruction of all German and Austrian cities.
  Example Dresden, February 1945

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Bombing of Germany
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Bombing by Month 1944-45
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Yearly Average by Month1945 January through
April
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The German Reaction

• Indifference of Hitler and the other Nazi leaders
• Priority on revenge weapons
• Delayed development of ME 262
• Crumbling of Hitler Myth, but also new field for
  NSDAP support activity and propaganda

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The End Inferno

• Hitler incapable of averting defeat and
  fanatically unwilling to surrender
• Soviet atrocities
• Giant refugee movement from east to west
• Wilhelm Gustloff disaster
• Attacks on civilians by low-flying fighter planes
• Local resistance to national suicide
• German POWs

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The German Resistance
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The German Resistance

• Conditions, Definitions, Motivations
• Communist resistance
• Workers
• Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen
• Christian resistance
• Bonhoeffer
• Niemöller
• The White Rose
• The bomb plot
• Stauffenberg
• Ulrich von Hassell

• My fathers cousin August Nitschke