What the letters and diaries reveal is the qualified, not always easy, but nonetheless unmistakable desire to be part of the National Socialist movement. We see people as actors, not as victims; we see them deliberating, rather than being seduced. This collection offers extraordinary insights into why Germans became Nazis, and how a Nazi mother in Germany came to disagree with her beloved anti-Nazi daughter in Holland.
In the end, the letters indicate just how self-absorbed Germans were by their sense of having been victimized, which means that the question of World War I remains relevant to World War II, even if the Nazi leaders themselves wanted something far more than a victory in a rerun of World War I. Can we ever fully explain the Nazi phenomenon? And what should we learn from it? What makes the problem of explaining the Nazis so vexing is the inadequacy of interpretations that rely on factors such as downward mobility, national humiliation or economic privation.
The same goes for those factors the Nazis and their supporters cited, such as the solidarity of the national community, the centrality of race, and the requirement to revise universal moral practices in order to insure the survival of Germany.
Scholars constantly shuttle back and forth between explanations that work from the outside in and those that work from the inside out; they analyze political, social, and economic variables, but they also listen to how the Nazis made sense of themselves.
In this way, there is no final resolution. What we can learn is the following: we need to be careful how we interpret human behavior. If it is extreme, is it because people are seduced or brainwashed? Or is it more complicated? Are people naturally decent, except in difficult situations? We wonder why we were not more astonished in the s, as the Nazis came to power.
President Hindenburg was a right-wing conservative politician and therefore disliked having the left-wing SPD in power. This set a precedent of governing by presidential decree and moved the Republic away from parliamentary democracy. Extremism became more popular as people desperately sought a solution.
Von Papen agreed with the conservative elite that Germany needed an authoritarian leader to stabilise the country. He called for another election in November , hoping to strengthen the frontier against communism and socialism.
The Communist Party gained votes, winning eleven more seats in the Reichstag. Once again, no one party had a majority. The election was a failure. He refused, and von Schleicher became chancellor. However, without a majority of his own in the Reichstag, von Schleicher faced the same problems as von Papen.
Hindenburg refused to grant von Schleicher permission to rule by decree. The conservative elite were the old ruling class and new business class in Weimar Germany.
They believed that a return to authoritarian rule was the only stable future for Germany which would protect their power and money. Between Article 48 was used a total of 16 times. In alone this rose to 42 uses, in comparison to only 35 Reichstag laws being passed in the same year. In , Article 48 was used 58 times. The conservative elite and the Nazi Party had a common enemy — the political left. Once in power, Hitler could destroy the political left. Destroying the political left would help to remove the majority of political opponents to the ring-wing conservative elite.
Once Hitler had removed the left-wing socialist opposition and destroyed the Weimar Republic, the conservative elite thought they would be able to replace Hitler, and appoint a leader of their choice. A group of important industrialists, including Hjalmar Schacht and Gustav Krupp, also wrote outlining their support of Hitler to President Hindenburg. Once elected, the conservative elite soon realised that they had miscalculated Hitler and his intentions.
Despite the party restructure, the reorganisation of the SA and the initial development of their propaganda under Goebbels, the Nazi Party gained very little in the elections. They won just 2. The following year however, the Wall Street Crash and the resulting economic and political instability swung the conservative elite and electorate in their favour.
Goebbels carefully tailored propaganda slowly became considerably more attractive. In , the Nazis attracted eight times more votes than in They managed to secure The continuing failure of the government to stabilise the situation only increased the Nazis popularity. In February , Hitler ran against Hindenburg to become president. To emphasise this point, Hitler flew from venue to venue via aeroplane. Hitler lost the election, with Despite losing, people now viewed Hitler as a credible politician.
Following another Reichstag election in July , the Nazis became the largest party with seats and Hitler was not immediately appointed chancellor after the success of the July elections, despite being leader of the largest party in the Reichstag. It took the economic and political instability with two more chancellors failing to stabilise the situation to worsen, and the support of the conservative elite , to convince Hindenburg to appoint Hitler.
Hitler was sworn in as the chancellor of Germany on the 30 January The Nazis were now in power. Image shows a copy of the Editorship Law. On 3 October , shortly after its defeat, France introduced its first antisemitic law under occupation - the Statut de Juifs. Section: How did the Nazis rise to power? What was the Holocaust?
Life before the Holocaust Antisemitism How did the Nazis rise to power? People of both right and moderate-left wing politics joined because they agreed with at least one of their policies:. Propaganda is information spread to promote a political cause and to persuade people of a certain point of view.
Hitler put Josef Goebbels in charge of Nazi propaganda. Methods of campaigning that the Nazis used in the s included. The Nazis used simple slogans to introduce their ideas and to make them appeal to the ordinary people of Germany.
At the same time Goebbels prevented those who opposed Nazi policies from expressing their views. This helped ensure only Nazi messages got across to the public.
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