... 3 Hitler overcomes his opposition 1 The rise and fall of the Weimar Republic 1918 1929 1933 1934 2 The rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis 1939 4 The Nazi dictatorship 1 The rise and fall of the Weimar Republic 1918-33 Introduction If, just for fun, we were to make a graph showing the fortunes of the Weimar Republic, it would probably look like this…. B A Phase A 1918-23: The WR suffers from a few major teething problems, and struggles to survive. C Phase B 1924-28: ‘The Golden Twenties’. Things are on the up for the WR, as it recovers from its earlier problems. But beneath the surface, there are still weaknesses. Phase C 1929-1933: With the Wall St. Crash and the Great Depression, the WR comes ‘crashing’ down! Of course, during each phase, the Nazis were experiencing their own political rollercoaster ride. Broadly speaking, whenever the WR was enjoying success, the Nazis were not, and vice versa. More about that later. What was the Weimar Republic and why was it set up? A lot of students struggle to get to grips with this, but it’s really very simple! The Weimar Republic is the name of a new government that was set up in 1918 to rule Germany. Before 1918, Germany had been a monarchy. The ruling monarch was the Kaiser - Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1918, there was a revolution in Germany, and the Kaiser abdicated. It was Germany’s defeat in WW1 which pushed the...
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...SECTION 1: THE SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF THE WEIMAR GOVERNMENT 1918-OCTOBER 1933 |9 November 1918 |Abdication of the Kaiser | |January 1919 |Spartacist Uprising | |February 1919 |First Weimar elections | |28 June 1919 |Treaty of Versailles signed | |July 1919 |Weimar Constitution announced | |March 1920 |Kapp Putsch signed | |January 1923 |Occupation of the Ruhr | |January-November 1923 |Hyperinflation | |8-9 November 1923 |Munich Putsch ...
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...Nazi Propaganda: Selling Social Policy How was Hitler able to use social policy and propaganda to manifest support for the National Socialist Party Hitler’s radical antisemitism? by James C HIST2** Professor: Judith S****** The name Adolf Hitler, will be forever synonymous with one of the most oppressive and destructive eras in human history. Often regarded as the worst anthropological disaster in history, World War 2 was responsible for the deaths of millions of soldiers and civilians alike who. This would mark “...the first [war] in which civilian populations became systematic, strategic targets.” (Merriman page1049) Driven by his intolerance or perhaps hatred, towards the Jewish people Hitler was able to turn a largely personal vendetta against Jews, into an issue of public policy, and ultimately one of the largest genocides ever documented[1]. How did one mans ideas, Hitler’s anti-semitism, evolve from the hurtful words of Mein Kampf to anti-Jewish laws in Nazi Germany and ultimately the biggest recorded savagery in the History of mankind? Although the blood of over 6million Jews stains his hands, Hitler was not alone in his actions; he required support. This essay examines various theories regarding the conception of Hitler’s antisemitic values and asks how Hitler was able to use social policy and propaganda to manifest support for his would be genocidal Nazi regime. Central to comprehending policy decisions made by Hitler, is an understanding of his...
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...The Author Guida Diehl was the founder and leader of the Newland Movement, which pre-dated the Nazi Party by at least six years. She came from a nationalist and anti-Semitic family, and only joined the Nazi Party in August 1930. Following the advice of Adolf Stocker, who hated Jews and supported the emancipation of unmarried women, she attended social-work school and later worked as a teacher of social work in Frankfurt. Diehl constantly preached a spiritualist, quasi-Christian, and nationalist message, that went against the postwar values of Americanism, materialism, and mammonism, which threatened to overpower Volk, God, and fatherland. Diehl wholly supported National Socialist goals, the Nazi’s anti-communism and anti-Semitism, and was particularly concerned with stemming the tide of moral ‘filth’ including the campaign to legalize abortion. Diehl was installed as ‘cultural advisor’ in the Nazi Party, but by 1936 had lost any appreciable political influence or organizational role. The Document in its Historical Context The title of the document undergoing analysis is, “A New Type of Woman”, and “Principles of the National Socialist Women’s Organizations” (the document), both from the book ‘Die deutsche Frau und der National Sozialismus (The German Woman and National Socialism), and published in 1932. “A New Type of Woman”, as written by Guida Diehl, outlines what characteristics a German woman should possess, and what type of woman she should aspire to become....
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...Delarue and Hans Rothfels argue that terror was the main component to sustain control, whilst David Crew and Dick Geary believe it was propaganda that made it possible. However, there are other factors that are supported, for instance, contextual condition was backed by Ralph Flenly and Hans Rothfels and the people’s consent, as A.J.P. Taylor proposes, was the imperative constituent. Most historians have the same problem evaluating as they have different definitions for people’s consent. “Silent opposition” is the term used for the people who passively opposed. Dick Geary proposed, “Consent can only be measured in situations in which individuals can choose between real alternatives.” and opposition till death was not a real alternative. Therefore, “silent opposition” does not count for people’s consent. This hugely undermines the role of people’s consent in maintaining the regime as the most people were not actively involved in Nazi action despite its “overwhelming success” [1]. In the first interpretation, Flenly emphasized that although the German people were well-educated, they were blindfolded from the truth of what was really going on. The Nazis did make the German people more literate, for example, scheme of the People’s libraries where every parish of over 500 inhabitants was to have its own library allowed people to have access to books and further education[2]. However, strict Nazi censorships control and brainwashing propaganda “produced a full rather than a wise man”...
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...How far do you agree that Hitler’s Regime was a ‘consensus dictatorship’? A consensus dictatorship is on that suggests Hitler’s regime was surrounded by a general agreement. This would mean that the majority of the German public were in cooperation with the Nazi regime and agreed with both the enforced and promoted concept of the regime. Hitler had mainly achieved this by trying to ‘ win over the hearts and minds of all non-Jewish Germans’ this would mean he would have the majority of the Germans citizens on his side. However, it is also suggested that many of the people had only consented due to fear which can be inferred from source 5 that it was the methods of the Nazi apparatus of terror that had led to the people conforming. Although source 6 suggests, even without terror which wasn’t completely enforced on ordinary Germans, the German public had ‘little difficulty in conforming’. As source 6 suggests ‘Nazi terror posed no real threat to most ordinary Germans’ so most people were easily persuaded by popular policies to consent to the Nazi regime. Source 6 agrees that the Nazi Regime was a consensus dictatorship as the public knew of the terror the minority groups faced but chose to ignore it due to their own self-interest and advantages of Hitler’s policies. Evidence from reports produced by the SOPADE and SPD who were in exile indicates that the people viewed Nazi policies positively. Unemployment had also reduced falling to 350, 000 by January 1939. This prosperity the...
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...deadlock resulting from high levels of defence. The stalemate developed from four major reasons: i. The Faults of the Schlieffen Plan ii. The Faults of Plan XVII iii. Problems with Communications and Tactics iv. Problems with the High Command • The Faults in • There was an incredible reliance on speed – quick defeat of the France and a slow response by Russia Schlieffen • Unexpectedly strong resistance by Belgian forces – sabotaged Plan railway lines • Strong resistance from French • Troops were diverted from the West to the Eastern front • The “hammer swing” was shortened, so they approached Paris from the East which was expected • The Treaty of London was disregarded as a scrap of paper • Germans weren’t adequately trained for modern warfare strategies • The Faults in • French underestimated number of soldiers available to Plan XVII Germany • French were preoccupied with revenge for Alsace-Lorraine • Insufficient forces were given to the French left wing • Too much attention was on offensive tactics • Officer training was poor • Belgian and British armies were small • Napoleonic Wave Assault (continuous assault) occurred in open countryside=decimation • Problems • Rail was quick, but too few tracks were available to be used with Tactics • Guerilla attacks frequently destroyed the rail infrastructure and • Muddy conditions...
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...'socialist realism' for artistic and literary expression" (235). Do you think that this is comparable to the Nazi book burnings? I think Stalin, like Mark mentioned, enforced only areas of education which benefited his plans for the government and its people. There was a big change in the way that classes of people were treated; Stalin cared much less about women than the previous leader and he aimed to increase profits through industry for the already wealthy elite and the military (Goff, 2008). During this time he promoted education which would reinforce the values of hard work and discipline, but did very little for the people who worked just as hard as others, the farmers. They were living in poverty. I think that the only difference between Stalin and Hitler here is that Stalin's goals were centered around earning more wealth and making people more productive, though at the expense of certain classes' qualities of life. Hitler sought to "extinguish" an entire race of people, based on superior beliefs of a duty to cleanse the world. Thanks for the interesting posts about Stalin and Hitler! Let's go a bit deeper into the comparison of Hitler's and Stalin's use of propaganda. In "Mein Kampf" Hitler wrote the following about propaganda: "The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must...
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...Sonn Eidem Eng 669 World Film: Germany Prof. Macanear Sept. 2014 German National Cinema: Nazi Propaganda Films German propaganda films were used by the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler in order to convey a message to the citizens of Germany. The messages would vary depending upon what Hitler and his party wanted to tell the people of Germany at that particular time. If it was pre-war propaganda it was Hitler on his rise to power. If it was wartime propaganda it was to keep Germany unite in their fight against the enemy and to keep them inspired with hope and promises of victory. "One of the most philosophically fascinating uses of cinema, is a vehicle for propaganda. Granted all mass media-books, television, music, newspaper, radio and nowadays the internet - can be used for propaganda, that is, as tools for getting a message broadly accepted in a target audience. But, it has been argued that film-as opposed to literature, the plastic arts, music and the other performing arts-has a unique power as a tool for propaganda" (Jason203). "The films of a nation reflect its mentality in a more direct way than other artistic films because films are never the product of an individual and the films address themselves and appeal to the anonymous multitude" (Kraucer, 5). This is why Hitler and the Nazi party decided to use film as a method for spreading their ideology. Film allowed them to reach the masses in a way that other mediums just couldn't do. Plus...
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...When thinking about nazi portrayal in films today there is an immediate connection to terror, violence, fear and world domination led by a ruthless inhuman leader and his vast army of followers as deceptively represented. We also now know that through incredibly well though and complex film aesthetics the Nazis manage to trick if not even hypnotize their nation into their leader's plans of hyper segregation, world domination and power generated by fear and intimidation. The german cineast Wim Wenders even stated that "never before and in no other country have images and language been abused so unscrupulously as here, never before and nowhere else have they been debased so deeply as vehicles to transmit lies". (Rentschler, 1996 pg 1). it is then clear to us that the national socialist cinema is today considered one, if not the biggest atrocity in cinemas history. But if such is so obvious today, how was it possible for such movies to appeal to such vast number of people ? The most obvious one would be the incredible shocking and emotionally charged portrayal of the families which lived in great poverty and led immensely degrading lives due to the economic and political situation at the time. After having been defeated in the World War 1, a socialist revolution took place which led to the creation of the Weimar republic. They were also forced to pay an incredible amount of money due to damages and saw parts of its territory being distributed away between other nations....
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...Research Essay: LENI RIEFENSTAHL a. Outline the life of the personality you have studied The German actor, filmmaker and Nazi associate, Leni Riefenstahl, has stirred one of the greatest controversies of modern times. Seen as either a Nazi propagandist or a pioneering artist of great ingenuity, the discussion regarding Riefenstahl is still a prevalent issue in today’s world. Born into a financially stable family on 22nd August 1902, Riefenstahl was reasonably sheltered from Germany’s economic and political unrest up until as well as after WWI. As a child, she was extremely passionate about dance and the theatre. Wanting to dance on stage, although acceptable to Leni’s mother, was seen as below their social status by her father. Throughout Leni’s adolescence, she caused a continuous rift between the family, as her enthusiasm for the arts never declined, leading to her secret enrolment in the Grimm-Reiter Dance School in Berlin in 1918, as well as agreeing to work as a secretary for her father’s company in order to gain his later approval for dance lessons in 1920. After being persuaded by Leni’s mother, he enrolled her in the Jutta Klamt School where Leni studied under the ballerina Eugenie Euardova. Riefenstahl’s career in dance began in October 1923 and was abruptly ended in June 1924. She performed her first solo performance at the age of 21 and received positive reviews. During her second recital she caught the interest of Max Reinhardt, a leading theatrical director...
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...Propaganda, Media, and the Making of a President August 27, 2010 COM/220 Propaganda, Media, and the Making of a President August 27, 2010 COM/220 Propaganda, Media, and the Making of a President Dr. Joseph Goebbels Dr. Joseph Goebbels The use of propaganda is as popular today for swaying public opinion as it was from 1933 to 1945 in war ravaged Germany. If Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels were alive today, he would be proud to see his propaganda machine being utilized by the U.S. Government to manipulate the masses and used by political parties to elect presidents. From mass print to the “tenth great power” the internet, the persons in control manipulate the masses and systematically destroy our freedoms to truthful information. World War II Propaganda Poster World War II Propaganda Poster In 1938 Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, filled the airwaves with propaganda that led to absolute control of the mass media to the Nazi Party and its Propaganda machine. It was about control, if you control what the masses hear and see, then you control the masses. Goebbels referred to the radio as the “Eighth Great Power”. Through mass exploitation of the media, and control of incoming and outgoing information, propaganda stands as the most effective form of control over swaying public opinion. “Propaganda has been practiced since earliest times, but modern mass media has made it much easier to appeal to wide domestic and foreign audiences” (Hutchinson...
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...It could be argued that from the very beginning, the Nazi regime utilised terror in order to keep control and order within Germany. However, it is equally arguable that the Nazi party only gained control in 1933, because they were the most popular party within the Reichstag with 43.9% of the votes, and so depended upon maintaining this popularity throughout their regime. Source 4, from Robert Gellately argues that the vast majority of ordinary German citizens had ‘no direct confrontation’ with agents of the terror, such as the Gestapo, and rumours of the terror were merely gossip spread by word of mouth and therefore this contributed to the Nazi regime maintaining a high level of popularity on which it could depend. On the other hand, source 5 by Richard Evans, completely contradicts this claim, and argues that the terror was experienced by everyone and was the means on which the Nazis depended to retain absolute control. To Evans, the Nazi regime was a ‘pervasive atmosphere of fear and terror’ by which control was maintained over the German population. However, due to the terrifying extent of cooperation with agents of the terror- post office workers, social services and even doctors and nurses all informed on those who did not fit in- it is arguable that perhaps there was a large amount of popularity for the regime as ordinary German citizens wanted to contribute. It is possible that the people were informing on each other for self-preservation from the terror, but it is equally...
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...fascist movements is controversial to say the least. The British, tainted with years of influence and covert action themselves, to this day, claim that the doings of Mr. Grobba had a fundamental part in uprooting the peace in Iraq during the war years and that he played an important role in destabilizing the Iraq government and leading anti British sentiment during the inter-war years during his stationing in Baghdad. Grobba himself who in his work, Männer und Mächte im Orient, claims that he did not commit any such actions contested this. He goes onto to argue that it was in-fact the British that were the main conspirators of any covert political actions that led to both the destabilization of Iraq which indirectly also led to the rise of National sentiments that had at their heart an anti British Agenda. To this day this question remains of Importance, as the question of German involvement and the seeding of propaganda for the Hitler Reich and for Nationalism would have had an implicit role in creating the Farhud massacre of 1941 of the Jewish population in Iraq. If there exists such a correlation the descendants of the Jewish victims would have the right to compensation and would officially be considered victims of the Jewish Holocaust. While the question of the Farhud is important, it has to be remembered that with the beginning of the war in all German children, women, and Men had been expelled. This means that the only way that the Farhud can be explained in terms of German...
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...How Successful were the Nazis in Creating a Volksgemeinschaft? To simply answer the question, the answer would be that they had very little success in creating their ‘National Community’. Between the years 1933-39 the Nazi party set upon an idea of creating their own race of racially pure Germans, an Aryan race. And to do this they had to remove all the people they had thought of as unfit and against what they saw as the Aryan race, and create a Volksgemeinschaft. Volksgemeinschaft was a people’s community, where everybody was equal in race. The Nazi party was prepared to go to extreme lengths to ensure that they got this racially pure race, killing unfit Germans was a solution. Hitler wanted a community joined only by blood and race, anyone else was not considered to be part of the Volksgemeinschaft program. Hitler wanted his Aryan race to spread throughout the world and for the Nazi party to become the most powerful. By the years 1936 and 1937 Hitler and the Nazi party were strong within Germany, the support of the Nazi party was immense and Hitler saw this as an opportunity to radicalise the Nazi party, take things further and more extreme. Hitler announced new rules for Jews, persecution of the Jews. Hitler first began increasing pressure on them to ‘voluntarily’ sell their business’ this was the beginning of the attack on the Jews. Hitler pressured Jews to sell their well earning business for well under the market value to Aryan race German. With less Jews in charge of...
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