Do Now

1
Do Now

• What does the quote, One mans patriot is
  another mans terrorist mean

2
The Rise of Hitler

3
The Treaty of Versailles

• Treaty of Versailles imposed terrible hardships
  on Germany.
• stripped Germany of its overseas colonies and its
  coal-rich Saar region.
• limited it to a small army and was forbidden to
  build large ships.
• forced Germany to pay Great Britain and France
  for the damage caused by the war.
• The German people were quite proud, but they were
  in no position to oppose the terms dictated by
  England and France.

4
The Treaty takes its toll

• Germany was forced to borrow vast sums of money
  from America in order to pay its war debt to
  England and France.
• Then, in 1929 when the depression hit, the
  Americans could no longer lend money to the
  Germans. Without the income from American loans,
  Germany was unable to pay its war reparations to
  England and France. The result was a severe
  depression in Germany.
• German money became close to worthless. The
  German people were angry with the Treaty of
  Versailles they felt the terms were unfair. Many
  Germans believed a strong leader could return
  their nation to greatness.

5
Enter Hitler

• Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Austria.
  (no, he wasnt a native born German)
• In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, and when World
  War One began volunteered in a Bavarian regiment,
  earning the rank of Corporal and awarded the Iron
  Cross for his service.

6
Hitler Rises

• The German Workers' Party, the forerunner of the
  Nazi Party, espoused a right-wing ideology, like
  many similar groups of demobilized soldiers.
• Adolf Hitler joined this small political party in
  1919 and rose to leadership through his emotional
  and captivating speeches.
• He encouraged national pride, militarism, and a
  commitment to the racially "pure" Germany. Hitler
  condemned the Jews, exploiting antisemitic
  feelings that had prevailed in Europe for
  centuries. He changed the name of the party to
  the National Socialist German Workers' Party,
  called for short, the Nazi Party (or NSDAP) . By
  the end of 1920, the Nazi Party had about 3,000
  members. A year later Hitler became its official
  leader, or Führer.

7
Anti-Semitism

• Hitler spoke in a charismatic style that
  impressed the German people. He blamed outsiders
  for causing problems in the nation.
• He argued that if pure Germans known as Aryans
  controlled the destiny of Germany, it would
  return to greatness. Hitler placed the blame for
  many of Germanys problems on one group the
  Jews.
• Anti-Semitism, religious prejudice against the
  Jews, had a long history in Germany. As far back
  as 1542 the great German Protestant leader Martin
  Luther had written a booklet called Against the
  Jews and Their Lies. Even earlier the Catholic
  Church had taught that the Jews had killed Christ
  and should therefore be hated. In addition, as
  the twentieth century dawned, many Germans
  identified themselves as members of the so-called
  "Aryan race," which they considered superior to
  any other breed of people in the world. Yet the
  Jews persisted in calling themselves the "chosen
  people," as they were known in the Bible. To
  some, this alone may have made the Germans and
  the Jews seem natural enemies in conflict over
  who was superior. In 1890 Hermann Ahlwardt, a
  member of the German parliament, wrote an

8
Beer Hall Putsch

• On November 8,1923, Hitler, with the help of SA
  troops and German World War I hero General Erich
  Ludendorff, launched a failed coup attempt in
  Bavaria at a meeting of Bavarian officials in a
  beer hall.
• The Nazi Party seemed doomed to fail and its
  leaders, including Hitler, were subsequently
  jailed and charged with high treason. However,
  Hitler used the courtroom at his public trial as
  a propaganda platform, ranting for hours against
  the Weimar government. By the end of the 24-day
  trial Hitler had actually gained support for his
  courage to act. The right-wing presiding judges
  sympathized with Hitler and sentenced him to only
  five years in prison, with eligibility for early
  parole. Hitler was released from prison after one
  year. Other Nazi leaders were given light
  sentences also.

9
His Struggle

• While in prison, Hitler wrote volume one of Mein
  Kampf (My Struggle) , which was published in
  1925. This work detailed Hitler's radical ideas
  of German nationalism, antisemitism, and
  anti-Bolshevism. Linked with Social Darwinism,
  the human struggle that said that might makes
  right, Hitler's book became the ideological base
  for the Nazi Party's racist beliefs and murderous
  practices.
• After Hitler was released from prison, he
  formally resurrected the Nazi Party. Hitler began
  rebuilding and reorganizing the Party, waiting
  for an opportune time to gain political power in
  Germany. The Conservative military hero Paul von
  Hindenburg was elected president in 1925, and
  Germany stabilized

10
Road to Supreme Chancellor

• The 1929 Depression hurt Germany deeply. Reich
  president Paul von Hindenburg's advisers
  persuaded him to invoke the constitution's
  emergency presidential powers. These powers
  allowed the president to restore law and order in
  a crisis. (good bye democracy)
• Hindenburg created a new government, made up of a
  chancellor and cabinet ministers, to rule by
  emergency decrees instead of by laws passed by
  the Reichstag.
• Heinrich Brüning was the first chancellor under
  the new presidential system. He was unable to
  unify the government, and in September 1930,
  there were new elections. The Nazi Party won an
  important victory, capturing 18.3 of the vote to
  make it the second largest party in the
  Reichstag.

11
1932

• In the early 1930s the Depression spread. By 1932
  over three million Germans were out of work. The
  moderate parties were weak and helpless, unable
  to agree on what to do. More and more the
  military leaders looked to Hitler for an answer.
  Above all, they admired his promise to rebuild
  German military power. More and more the leaders
  of industry and business looked to Hitler. They
  saw that new factories and industry would be
  needed to outfit and equip new military forces.
  More and more the members of the middle class
  listened to Hitler's promises of new jobs.
• Hitler campaigned without stopping, and the Nazi
  party flourished. His storm troopers, called the
  Brownshirts because of the uniform they wore,
  grew to an army of about half a million. By 1933
  most of the other small anti-Semitic and
  extreme-right parties had joined forces with the
  Nazis. And in this moment, when the government
  needed leadership, the aging president of the
  German republic, Paul von Hindenburg, was faced
  with the most difficult decision of his political
  life. He did not like Hitler. He very much wanted
  a moderate leader for the German republic. But
  there was no moderate leader with a real program
  for bringing Germany out of the Depression. And
  there was no moderate leader who could bring
  together enough of the votes in the Reichstag to
  rule the country. To Hindenburg, and his
  political colleagues, Hitler seemed the only
  possibility.

12
Chancellor Hitler

• On January 30, 1933, President von Hindenburg
  called on Hitler to form a new government and to
  become the chancellor of Germany. Hitler swore
  the oath of office, promising to protect the
  constitution of Germany and its laws, and to be
  just and fair to all Germans. But even as he
  spoke these words, he had already laid plans for
  a war on German democracy.

13
The Reichstag Fire

• New elections had been set for March of 1933, and
  Hitler wanted to make sure that the Nazis would
  win these elections decisively. In the second
  election of 1932 they had lost votes, losing some
  of their seats in the Reichstag. Hitler was
  determined to ensure that it would not happen
  again. Most historians agree that Hitler arranged
  for a fire in the Reichstag building and arranged
  to make it seem that the Communists had set the
  fire.
• Even before the fire was set, Hitler and his
  chief lieutenants drew up lists of enemies to be
  arrested and accused of the fire. On these lists
  were many leading members of the Reichstag,
  leading members of the Communist party inside
  Germany, and others who had spoken out from time
  to time against Hitler and against Nazism.
• Luck was with Hitler whether by plan or by
  accident, his storm troopers discovered a
  down-and-out Dutchman who happened to be a member
  of the Communist party. The Dutchman had been
  heard bragging that the only way to change the
  government in Germany would be to set fire to
  government buildings. It is now believed that it
  was actually the Brownshirts that set fire to the
  Reichstag building, using gasoline and other
  chemicals. In only a few minutes, the building
  was ablaze in the night. The Dutchman was
  immediately arrested later he was tried and
  executed.
• When Hitler, the new chancellor of Germany,
  arrived on the scene of the fire, he declared
  that the burning of the Reichstag was the work of
  the Communists. With the elections only a week
  away, he stepped up his campaign against
  "Marxists," the press, and organizations of the
  political left.

14
Hitler Takes Power

• Once in the saddle, Hitler moved with great speed
  to out-maneuver his rivals, virtually ousting the
  conservatives from any real participation in
  government by July 1933,
• abolishing the free trade unions
• eliminating the communists, Social Democrats
  and Jews from any role in political life
• sweept opponents into concentration camps.
• The Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933 had
  provided him with the perfect pretext to begin
  consolidating the foundations of a totalitarian
  one-party State, and special "enabling laws" were
  ramrodded through the Reichstag to legalize the
  regime's intimidatory tactics.

15
The Night of Long Knives

• The Night of the Long Knives, in June 1934, saw
  the wiping out of the SA's leadership and others
  who had angered Hitler in the recent past in Nazi
  Germany. After this date, the SS lead by Heinrich
  Himmler was to become far more powerful in Nazi
  Germany.
• For all the power the Enabling Act gave Hitler,
  he still felt threatened by some in the Nazi
  Party. He was also worried that the regular army
  had not given an oath of allegiance. Hitler knew
  that the army hierarchy held him in disdain as he
  was 'only ' a corporal in their eyes. The Night
  of the Long Knives not only removed the SA
  leaders but also got Hitler the army's oath that
  he so needed.
• By the summer of 1934, the SA's numbers had
  swollen to 2 million men. They were under the
  control of Ernst Röhm, a loyal follower of Hitler
  since the early days of the Nazi Party. The SA
  had given the Nazi's an iron fist with which to
  disrupt other political parties meetings before
  January 1933. The SA was also used to enforce law
  after Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933.
  To all intents, they were the enforcers of the
  Nazi Party and there is no evidence that Röhm was
  ever planning anything against Hitler. But in
  essence, they were the only people who could
  remove Hitler from power.
• Röhm had made enemies within the Nazi Party -
  Himmler, Goering and Goebbels were angered by the
  power he had gained and convinced Hitler that
  this was a threat to his position.
• Seventy seven men were executed on charges of
  treason though historians tend to think the
  figure is higher. The SA was brought to heel and
  placed under the command of the army. Hitler
  received an oath of allegiance from all those who
  served in the army. Röhm was shot. Others were
  bludgeoned to death.
• From that time on the SS became a feared force in
  Nazi Germany lead by Heinrich Himmler

16
Building an Army

• In 1935 he abandoned the Versailles Treaty and
  began to build up the army by conscripting five
  times its permitted number. He persuaded Great
  Britain to allow an increase in the naval
  building programme and in March 1936 he occupied
  the demilitarized Rhineland without meeting
  opposition. He began building up the Luftwaffe
  and supplied military aid to Francoist forces in
  Spain, which brought about the Spanish fascist
  victory in 1939.
• The German rearmament programme led to full
  employment and an unrestrained expansion of
  production, which reinforced by his foreign
  policy successes--the Rome-Berlin pact of 1936,
  the Anschluss with Austria and the "liberation"
  of the Sudeten Germans in 1938 brought Hitler
  to the zenith of his popularity. In February 1938
  he dismissed sixteen senior generals and took
  personal command of the armed forces, thus
  ensuring that he would be able to implement his
  aggressive designs.

17
The Munich Agreement

• In the summer of 1938, Hitler voiced active
  support of the highly publicized demands of the
  German population of the Sudetenland in the
  Republic of Czechoslovakia, for annexation of the
  region into Germany. Fearing the outbreak of war,
  European leaders met in a conference at Munich on
  September 29. Present were Eduard Daladier from
  France, Neville Chamberlain from England,
  Mussolini representing Italy, Hitler, and
  Ribbentrop. Representatives of Czechoslovakia and
  the Soviet Union were not invited. Wanting to
  avoid the possibility of a new European war,
  Chamberlain and Daladier submitted to Hitler's
  demands very quickly the conference was over the
  next day. The treaty ceded three areas of
  Czechoslovakia to other powers the Sudetenland
  was annexed into Germany, the Teschen district
  was given to Poland, and parts of Slovakia went
  to Hungary. (See map .)
• Chamberlain boasted after the conference that
  they had achieved "Peace in our time," but the
  Agreement quickly became a symbol of the western
  powers' appeasement of Hitler, which led to the
  outbreak of World War Two one year later.

18
Getting away with Murder

• Hitler was busy inflicting these terrors on the
  people of Germany
• -Concentration camps
• -The Nuremberg racial laws against the Jews
• -The persecution of the churches and political
  dissidents
• But all was ignored by many Germans in the
  euphoria of Hitler's territorial expansion and
  bloodless victories.

19
On to Poland and WW2

• The next designated target for Hitler's ambitions
  was Poland (her independence guaranteed by
  Britain and France) and, to avoid a two-front
  war, the Nazi dictator signed a pact of
  friendship and non-aggression with Soviet Russia.
  On 1 September 1939 German armies invaded Poland
  and henceforth his main energies were devoted to
  the conduct of a war he had unleashed to dominate
  Europe and secure Germany's "living space."