The twentieth-century world, Year 10: the Depression and how Hitler took power (Germany 1890–1945 option)

6

提示Around one worker in three.

为什么Unemployment brought hunger and fear, and governments seemed helpless. Voters who had backed the moderate parties in the 1920s began to listen to parties that promised drastic change.

They recalled the loans Germany relied on

提示Remember what the Dawes Plan had provided.

为什么German businesses lost their credit and their export markets together. Factories closed, and unemployment rose to about six million in 1932.

The Communists (KPD)

提示Its supporters looked to Soviet Russia.

为什么The Communist vote rose at every election from 1928 to November 1932. Fear of a communist revolution pushed many middle-class voters and business owners towards Hitler.

The SA (Sturmabteilung)

提示Led from 1931 by Ernst Röhm.

为什么Its marches made the Nazis look disciplined and strong, and its street fights with Communists added to the sense that the republic had lost control. By 1932 it had about 400,000 members.

By aeroplane

提示It was a new way to campaign, and it made headlines.

为什么The Nazis used new technology to look modern and unstoppable: sound recordings and films as well as flights. Their speakers also fitted the message to each audience, so that different groups each heard what mattered to them.

12; 107; 230

提示From a fringe party to the largest in the Reichstag in four years.

为什么In July 1932 they took about 37 per cent of the vote: the largest party, but well short of a majority. Hitler never won a majority in a free election.

It fell, from 230 seats to 196

提示Compare it with July of the same year.

为什么The Nazis were still the largest party, but they had lost about two million votes and were short of money. Some observers thought their rise was over.

Article 48

提示The emergency-powers clause.

为什么From 1930 no Chancellor could command a majority in the Reichstag, so laws were issued by presidential decree. Germans grew used to government without parliament before Hitler ever took office.

Franz von Papen

提示He had lost the chancellorship himself late in 1932.

为什么Papen wanted revenge on General von Schleicher, who had replaced him. He assured Hindenburg that Hitler could be kept under control in a government of conservatives.

30 January 1933

提示A winter date, after the two Reichstag elections of 1932.

为什么Only three members of the new cabinet were Nazis: Hitler, Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Göring. That is why Papen and Hindenburg believed they had him boxed in.

Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist

提示A young man from the Netherlands.

为什么The Nazis claimed the fire was the start of a communist uprising and used it to arrest thousands of Communists days before an election. Historians still disagree about whether van der Lubbe acted alone.

Suspend civil rights and imprison opponents without trial

提示Think of freedom of speech, of the press and of assembly.

为什么It was signed by President Hindenburg under Article 48 and was never withdrawn while the Nazis ruled. It became a legal basis for the police state.

To make laws without the Reichstag

提示Parliament voted itself out of a job.

为什么It passed by 444 votes to 94. The Communist deputies had been arrested or were in hiding, SA men stood in the chamber, and only the Social Democrats voted against.

May; July

提示Both fell between the Enabling Act in spring and the end of summer.

为什么Union offices were occupied on 2 May, the day after a May Day holiday laid on for workers. On 14 July a law declared the Nazi Party the only legal party in Germany.

The SA's, including its chief Ernst Röhm

提示The regular army saw this organisation as a rival.

为什么Röhm wanted the SA to absorb the army. Hitler needed the generals' support, so he had Röhm and other SA leaders shot, along with old opponents such as former Chancellor von Schleicher.

Merged it with his own and took the title Führer

提示He did not hold an election for a successor.

为什么From then on every soldier swore an oath of loyalty to Hitler by name, not to Germany or its constitution. No person or institution could now lawfully remove him.