Hitler’s Rise to Power

  • Hitler was born in Austria in 1889. He earned many medals for bravery in the First World War.
  • The German defeat horrified him. The Treaty of Versailles made him furious.
  • He joined the German Workers Party and renamed it National Socialist German Workers’ Party. This later came to be known as the Nazi Party.
  • Nazism became a mass movement only during the Great Depression. The Nazi propaganda stirred hopes of a better future.
  •  Hitler was a powerful and effective speaker. He promised the people a strong nation where all would get employment.

The Destruction of Democracy: 

  • Hitler achieved the highest position in the cabinet of ministries on 30 January 1933. Hitler then set out to dismantle the structures of democratic rule.
  • The Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 suspended civic rights like freedom of speech, press, and assembly.
  • The Communists were hurriedly packed off to newly established concentration camps.
  • All political parties were banned. Special surveillance and security forces were created to control the people and rule with impunity.

Reconstruction: 

  • Economist Hjalmar Schacht was given the responsibility of economic recovery. This was to be done through a state-created economic programme.
  • Hitler pulled out of 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, One leader.
  • He then took Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler had the unspoken support of England.
  • He did not stop here. He chose war as a way out of the Economic Crisis.
  • Resources were to be accumulated through the expansion of territory. In September 1940′ Germany invaded Poland. This started a war with France and England.
  • 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 World Wide

According to Nazi ideology, there was no equality between people, but only racial hierarchy.

  • The Nazis quickly began to implement their dream of creating an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically eliminating all those who were considered undesirable.
  • They wanted a society of pure and healthy Nordic Aryans. Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, Russian, Poles, even certain Germans, and abnormals were considered undesirable.
  • The other aspect of Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or living space. Jews were the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany.
  • Hitler believed in pseudoscientific theories of a 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. Occupied Poland was divided. Poles were forced to leave their homes and properties behind to be occupied by the ethnic Germans brought in from occupied Europe.