...Why did so many people comply with the Nazi regime? On the night of the 8th November, 1923, an abortive putsch took place in Munich. Hitler and some of his followers burst into a meeting in the Burgerbrau Cellar, which was being addressed by the Bavarian Prime Minister Kehr, with the intention of obtaining from him a decision to march forthwith on Berlin. On the morning of the 9th November, however, no Bavarian support was forthcoming, and Hitler's demonstration was met by the armed forces of the Reichswehr and the Police. Only a few volleys were fired; and after a dozen of his followers had been killed, Hitler fled for his life, and the demonstration was over. The defendants Streicher, Frick and Hess all took part in the attempted rising. Hitler was later tried for high treason, and was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. The SA was outlawed. Hitler was released from prison in 1924 and in 1925 the Schutzstaffel, or SS, was created, nominally to act as his personal bodyguard, but in reality to terrorise political opponents. This was also the year of the publication of Mein Kampf, containing the political views and aims of Hitler, which came to be regarded as the authentic source of Nazi doctrine. Did their compliance emerge from pathological characteristics of the German people? In order to place the complete control of the machinery of Government in the hands of the Nazi leaders, a series of laws and decrees were passed which reduced the powers of regional and local governments...
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...Account for the Progressive Radicalization of the Nazi Regime. The power structure of the Nazi regime lacked a legitimate and stable democratic order, being ruled over by a charismatic figure, Hitler, who offered through his propaganda a new and better future for the people. In 1919 Hitler joined the German Workers Party, an extreme right wing national party that played on the Germans hatred of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1920 the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and Hyperinflation in 1923 with the Weimer Government ruined the middle class and furthered the dissatisfaction of the German people with the current Government. This presented the NSDAP an opportunity to present a policy that would benefit Germany. The regime offered opportunities to the population with security across the community and a direction of supremacy for their race. Policies of the Nazis did not include involving the broader population in the more brutal and violent parts of their rule, thus the people’s communities were forged through genocide. Hitler was obsessed with having a pure racial community in Germany and an extension of land for Germany eventuating in world domination and he pursued these objectives with ruthlessness and inhuman brutality. Progressive radicalization was inevitable due to the chaotic anti-Semitism beliefs and competitive nature of an elite ruler and a few devout followers. The propaganda campaigns are what paved the way to anti-Semitism...
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...With nearly eleven million people killed between 1934 and 1945, one might ask what could be responsible for that amount of devastation. The answer, however, is quite simple. One man is the leading cause of all those lives lost: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Regime. Germany was in an exceedingly unpleasant state after the loss of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles had forced them to take full blame for the war, and with it came an overwhelming amount of debt. The French wanted to dismember Germany to make it impossible for them to renew war with France. The loss of World War I was still sharp on many minds, and the economic depression was in full effect. The Weimar Republic was Germany’s new form of government that replaced the German Empire....
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...In 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power, it had two main aims – to reduce unemployment, and to make Germany as strong an economic and military power as possible, so that the humiliating and devastating defeat of the Great War could never happen again. In order to achieve their aims, there were plans devised that were to shape the future of Germany in the coming years. The main stages involved in economic recovery were as follows: the New Plan – 1933-1936 – under Hjalmar Schacht where the focus was on reducing unemployment and the balance of payment deficit – ensuring the government spending matched government income; the Four Year Plan – 1936-1940 – under Goering, that focused more on speedy rearmament as Hitler wanted to go to war and acquire Lebensraum, living space. The economic policies included everything from giving the Mittelstand their required state of lifestyle – which had worsened throughout the years leading to the rise of the Nazis as big business had ousted them from the market – jobs to unemployed people, stabilising the economy, controlling imports into the country, to preventing inflation of the currency and developing autarky – self-sufficiency in producing own goods and raw materials especially in times of war. With such deteriorating economic conditions, it is overwhelming, the amount of pressure that the Nazis put on themselves and the promises they made to the Germans, such that the achievement of these aims seems implausible; this sheds light on the...
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...How popular and efficient was the Nazi regime in 1933-1939? During the later years of the Weimar republic german society had started to struggle as the economy crashed in 1929 due to the wall crash. This led to the government struggling as they failed to deal with the depression as many different parties disagreed on policies. During that time the Nazi party was very small however rose to prominence in 1932 with 37% of the public vote largely due to the failed state of Germany and the fear of communism. It was viewed that the german people loved the Nazi and the Fuhrer however years after the regime ended historians started to question this view and this essay shall asses this. The Nazi regime often utilized propaganda as a form of manipulating there image and acknowledgment from the people. The nazi,s used leaflets, posters and radio to deploy there message and often strategecilly deployed messages to specific audiences such as talk of work and bread in working class areas and anti semetic messages to small shopkeepers and rallies were designed to create an emotional response from people. This was largely due to Joseph Goebbels who as well as using modern technologies to relay there message also helped create the hitler myth were he appeared as the saviour of Germany and its people wich contributed to the level of support. In 1933 Goebells promoted propaganda by briefing newspapers daily, content of newsreels was controlled and nazi messages were constantly played on the...
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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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...markets exist, simply taking forward positions in the complementary assets may suffice to capture much of the spillovers. Even after the innovation is announced, the innovator might still be able to build or buy complementary capacities at competitive prices if he innovation has iron clad legal protection (i.e. if the innovation is in a tight appropriability regime). However, if the innovation is not tightly protected and once "out" is easy to imitate, then securing control of complementary capacities is likely to be the key success factor, particularly if those capaci- ties are in fixed supply - so called "bottlenecks." Distribution and specialized manufacturing com- petences often become bottlenecks. As a practical matter, however, an innovator may not have the time to acquire or build the complementary assets that ideally it would like to control. This is particularly true when imitation is easy, so that timing becomes critical. Additionally, the innovator may simply not have the financial resources to proceed. The implications of timing and cash constraints are summarized in fig. 9. Accordingly, in weak appropriability regimes innovators need to rank complementary assets as to their importance. If the complementary assets are critical, ownership is warranted, although if the...
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...society. Revolutions are mainly caused because of social and economic inequalities between classes causing the oppressed masses to become disillusioned with extreme excesses of the ruling classes. They then come together and revolt against the existing ruler or regime, often in a bloody movement. This is certainly true when describing the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution, which not only brought about regime change through violent mass mobilization, but also overhauled the social, economic institutions of the time. So a revolution is essentially a struggle in which the holder of a power loses that power against their will. Aristotle’s view on revolutions was rather confined than its modern day interpretation. He suggested the doctrine of ‘stasis’ as a reason for revolution and decline of institutions, ‘stasis’ being an arrest of the political processes of a healthy polis leading to its political system breaking own and degenerating into violence and internal warfare. For him, the condition that led to all revolutions was the desire of the many for equality versus the desire of the minority for effective superiority. In an overview of Book V of ‘Politics’, it can be gathered that inequalities in a regime such as disagreements over justice, profiteering, fear, contempt, dissimilarity, arrogance of rulers and too much power all led to social conflict. He proposed that, in democracies, revolutions often occurred because of irresponsible behaviour of the popular rulers...
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...providing of democracy funds and following democratic outcomes in receiver countries. Authors assumes that U.S. promotion of democratization in different countries is useful: foreign assistance could be helpful and democratization could be heterogenic. Thus, the first hypothesis suggests that foreign NGO can stimulate democratic development. Although there isn’t proper analysis of specific mechanisms which allows international forces facilitate democratization within countries, authors argue that democracy can be promoted by international forces both indirectly and directly. Concerning the matter of causality, indirect promotion works through changing some of structural parameters, which could be prerequisites for resting or transforming regime while direct promotion is a support of specific agents who will contend with domestic autocrats. Also this work hypothesizes that “democratization need not be a purely internally driven phenomenon”. Authors employ a statistical technique known as “hierarchical longitudinal growth modeling,” also known as "individual growth curves," in order to assess the...
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... Democracies are on average richer than non-democracies, are less likely to go to war and have a better record of fighting corruption. More fundamentally, democracy lets people speak their minds and shape their own and their children’s futures. That so many people in so many different parts of the world are prepared to risk so much for this idea is testimony to its enduring appeal. Yet these days the exhilaration generated by events like those in Kiev is mixed with anxiety, for a troubling pattern has repeated itself in capital after capital. The people mass in the main square. Regime-sanctioned thugs try to fight back but lose their nerve in the face of popular intransigence and global news coverage. The world applauds the collapse of the regime and offers to help build a democracy. But turfing out an autocrat turns out to be much easier than setting up a viable democratic government. The new regime stumbles, the economy flounders and the country finds itself in a state at least as bad as it was before. This is what happened in much of the Arab spring, and also in Ukraine’s Orange revolution a decade ago. In 2004 Mr Yanukovych was ousted from office by vast street protests, only to be re-elected to the presidency (with the help of huge amounts of Russian money) in 2010, after the opposition politicians who replaced him turned out to...
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...Stability and Performance 3 THE BREAKDOWN OF DEMOCRATIC REGIMES: CRISIS, BREAKDOWN & REEQUILIBRATION Introduction Many existing literature on the collapse of the democracy concentrated on rises of nondemocratic political powers or the fundamental structural tension that lead to the breakdown of democratic institution. In this publication, author, Juan J. Linz is giving attention to dynamic of the political process of breakdown by referring to tragic consequences of democratic collapse in German, Spain and Chile. This attention has begun during the author childhood where he was concerned with the fate of Spanish democracy, the fate his as citizen. This concern later had shared with Alfred Stepan who writes a dissertation on the breakdown of democracy in Brazil. Both of them get support and attention from many people and agencies. The focus firstly gets attention at the Seventh World Congress of Sociology at Varna, Bulgaria in 1970. In year 1973, with the support from the Concilium of International and Area Studies of Yale University, and the Joint Committee on Latin America of Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, Linz and Stepan chaired the conference. With the contribution of their publication later on has influence other contributors to give attention to the related issues. In year 1978, Linz individually had published a book regarding The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown & Reequilibration. In this publication...
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...to its enduring appeal. Yet these days the exhilaration generated by events like those in Kiev is mixed with anxiety, for a troubling pattern has repeated itself in capital after capital. The people mass in the main square. Regime-sanctioned thugs try to fight back but lose their nerve in the face of popular intransigence and global news coverage. The world applauds the collapse of the regime and offers to help build a democracy. But turfing out an autocrat turns out to be much easier than setting up a viable democratic government. The new regime stumbles, the economy flounders and the country finds itself in a state at least as bad as it was before. This is what happened in much of the Arab spring, and also in Ukraine’s Orange revolution a decade ago. In 2004 Mr Yanukovych was ousted from office by vast street protests, only to be re-elected to the presidency (with the help of huge amounts of Russian money) in 2010, after the opposition politicians who replaced him turned out to be just as hopeless. Between 1980 and 2000 democracy experienced a few setbacks, but since 2000 there have been many Democracy is going through a difficult time. Where autocrats have been driven out of office, their opponents have mostly failed to create viable democratic regimes. Even in established democracies, flaws in the system have become worryingly visible and disillusion with politics is rife. Yet just a few years ago democracy looked as though it would dominate the world. In the second half...
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...Enlightenment philosophes want to reform the ancien regime? The philosophes believed that the ancient regime was unjust and inefficient at creating a fair society, and thought the application of rational analysis to all activities would help reform the system that created such an unequal distribution of wealth and power. Their particular ideas of reform focused around those at the top of the hierarchal structure, such as the church and the king, as well as abolishing the structures based upon superstition. One reason the philosophes wanted to reform the ancien regime was that they believe it gave the church undue power. As the clergy withheld the position of the first estate-being at the top of the hierarchal society only under the king- they thought that the group were wealthy, corrupt and intolerant. Despite only owning 15% of the land, they still took in a vast amount of money through obligatory tithes and rents, despite not having to pay any tax themselves. The only money they did have to give was Dons Gratuits, meaning payment to the crown that they set the figure for themselves. Corruption throughout the church was rife, with plurality and consequently absenteeism occurring throughout France and leading to Bishops earning two incomes, whilst a vast majority of the population lived a poor, peasantry life. The philosophes saw this unfair behanviour as a result of the churches highly regarded position within the ancien regime, and saw this as a necessary point of reform. This...
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...economy. During the Nazi Reich between 1933-1939, under Hitler as Fuhrer (supreme leader), the Nazi regime was able to successfully achieve aspects of totalitarianism by exerting tight control of the media and police; leading to control of certain aspects of German social, political, legal, economical and cultural life. However, there are significant features of the Nazi regime that simply fail to fit Friedrich's six, all encompassing concepts of totalitarianism. Central to the concept of totalitarianism is an official ideology encapsulating a monolithic party led by an omnipotent, almost God-like figurehead. Whilst Hitler, supported by the Fuhrer myth, certainly fits the totalitarian leader definition, the Nazi Party structure contradicts the characteristics of a coordinated central party. Within, power rested on individuals and not in party structure; leading to increasingly fragmented party policy and intensifying interpersonal frictions as individuals radicalised in attempts to please the Fuhrer. In this structure, accountable and rational decision making in the long term became impossible; leaders lost any sense of stability and improvised agencies and policies to enact the amorphous will of the leader. The most radical policy of all, the extermination of the Jews, arose as the outcome of this structure as the internally competitive dynamics generated more and more radical and ultimately self destructive policies. The "institutional anarchy" of the regime, in diametric opposition...
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...of resistance of the Nazi regime. In Sophocles Greek tragedy, Antigone, Antigone shows her resistance by defiling the ruling of the developing dictator of Thebes Creon. Although the two’s situations differed in many ways, their common actions in rebelling from dictatorship while surrounded by pressuring nationalists, in the end proved a positive outcome. Antigone and Peter both have many differences in their situations. Antigone is conflicted with the king of Thebes, Creon’s, decision to ban the burial of one of Antigone’s brothers, Polyneices....
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