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Nazi's Rise to Power - Coggle Diagram
Nazi's Rise to Power
Economic Factors:
- Wall street crash of 1929
- severe dependence on American loans from 1924 onwards
- loans were recalled, Germany sunk into a deep depression
- investment in business was reduced
- wages fell by 39% from 1929 to 1932
- full time employment fell from 20 million in 1929, to 11 million in 1933
- 10,000 businesses closed every year
- the amount of people in poverty increased sharply
- economic failure and decline in living standards with the Weimar democracy
- it left people feeling disillusioned with the Weimar Republic's democracy and looking for change
- Nazi party wins 40% of the electorate in the Reichstag
- meteoric rise in the support for the Nazi party
Political Factors:
- June 1928 Hermann Muller created the 'Grand Coalition' to rule Germany
- It contained the SPD, DDP, DVP and the Centre Party (parties from the left and right)
- Muller had a secure majority of 301 seats out of a total of 491
- The parties could not agree on key policies and Muller struggled to get support for legislation
- Government struggled to balance its budget
- the amount of people claiming unemployment benefits was increasing
- Muller asked Hindenburg for the use of Article 48 to try and restore stability
- Heinrich Bruning was Muller's successor
- He did not have a majority of seats in the Reichstag, he was well-respected by Hindenburg
- Bruning increasingly relied upon, and was granted, use of Article 48
- this set a precedent of governing by presidential decree and moved the Republic away from parliamentary democracy
- Economic crisis worsened in 1931, Extremism became more popular as people desperately sought a solution
- After a disagreement over provisions for the unemployed in 1932, Hindenburg demanded Bruning's resignation
- Von Papen and Von Schleicher
- Von Papen agreed with the conservative elite that Germany needed and authoritarian leader to stabilise the country
- Called another election in November 1932, to strengthen the frontier against communism and socialism
- Left-wing and socialist SPD lost votes, so did the right-wing Nazi party
- Communist party gained votes, winning 11 more seats in the Reichstag
- No one had a majority, the election was a failure
- Following von Papen's failure, Hitler was offered chancellorship, without the right to rule by presidential decree
- Von Schleicher became chancellor, without a majority of his own in the Reichstag he faced the same problems as von Papen
- Hindenburg refused to grant von Schleicher permission to rule by decree and only lasted a month
Reconstruction:
- Hitler wanted to reunify the party, and set out a plan for the next few years
- some small differences remained but Hitler was largely successful in reuniting the socialist and nationalist sides of the party
- new framework which divided Germany into regions called Gaue
- Each Gaue had its own leader and the divided into subsections called Kreise
- Each Kreise had its own leader called a Kreisleiter
- Each Kreise was then divided into even smaller sections with its own leader and so on
- Each section was responsible to the section above them, with Hitler at the very top of the party with ultimate authority
- new groups established for different professions
- from children, to doctors, to lawyers
- these aimed to infiltrate already existing social structures, and help the party gain more members and supporters
- Nazi's focused on increasing their membership through advertising the party legitimately
- They tailored to a broad range of people and their problems
- Propaganda aimed to exploit people's fear of uncertainty and instability
- Messages varied from "Bread and Work", aimed at the working class and the fear of unemployment, to a "mother and child" poster portraying the Nazi ideals regarding women
- Jews and communists also featured heavily in the Nazi propaganda as enemies of the German people
- Goebbels used a combination of modern media, such as films and radio, and traditional campaigning tools such as posters and newspapers to reach as many people as possible
- Goebbels began to build an image of Hitler as a strong, stable leader that Germany needed to become a great power again
- This image of Hitler became known as "The Hitler Myth"
- anti-Semitism sparked through Hitler's beliefs
Foreign Affairs
The Dawes Plan:
- sets reparations at $25 billion
- the plan implemented was abandoned at the onset of the great depression
- U.S. creditors call in their debt making the German situation worse
- this had been the basis for Germany's economic recovery from the hyperinflation crisis
- the loans funded German industry and helped to pay reparations, without these German industry collapsed