Consequences Of WW1 In Germany History Essay

World War I left Germany in rubbles. Over the course of the war, German casualties approximated 1,800,000 (ThreeWorldWars.com) and its financial loss near 24 billion Euros (Wikipedia.org). German military was limited to 100,000 men, its navy to 6 ships and its air force was banned altogether (HistoryOnTheNet.com). The German pride was dealt a heavy blow. Germany needed someone to boost its self-confidence, and, in these circumstances, Adolf Hitler

Historian Ian Kershaw rightly indicates that “Hitler’s personality should not be overrated as a factor in his power” (Hitler 16). The Nazi ideology was bigger than the “Fuhrer”. The components of the Nazi ideology embody the lost pride of the German Volk.

Any analysis of the Nazi ideology must begin by looking at the Treaty of Versailles, for the National Socialist Party was founded on the German hatred of the Treaty of Versailles.

WW1 & treaty of Versailles.

Nationalism, Labensraum. Group>Individual.

Irrationalism. Emotion>logic. Hitler could channel his hatred of Versailles into powerful speeches.

Totalitarianism. Hitler youth. Propaganda. Women. Education. Kinder, kirche and kitchen (Children, church and kitchen) Nazis controlled National Reich Church, where bibles were replaced with Meinkempf. Turned women into baby machines (Aryan)

Elitism. Fuhrer Principle.

Reactionarism. Nazi votes depended on people’s hatred of the existing government. Nazis could only thrive at a time of turmoil.

Racism (anti-semitism). Social Darwinism. Camps. Racial purity -> euthanasia. Definition of a race warped. Night of Broken Glass. Poles of Power. Nuremburg Laws.

Militarism. War economy. Blitzkrieg. Breadth>Depth. Militarisation of labour through national labour front.

Anti-Marxism. Anti-Capitalism.

Economic? Hyper-inflation. War economy. Lowering unemployment. National labour front. Deficit financing.

Nazis as the true people’s party; not a class or a religious party.

Guns or butter?

Irony: Hitler comes to power at a time of Nazi downfall.

http://www.threeworldwars.com/overview.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations

http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW1/versailles.htm

Lukács, Georg. The Destruction of Reason. Translated by Peter Palmer. London: The Merlin Press, 1980. Pp. 751-752

When Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30th 1933, know-one could have predicted how rapid his rise to dictatorship would have been. Within months, Hitler had gone from being Chancellor to achieving a one party state. Although his ideology for Germany was mostly far-fetched and virtually impossible to accomplish he was very consistent on most of his objectives, such as the development of an Aryan race, anti-Semitism and the concept of Lebensraum to name but a few. I plan to outline these aims and evaluate each one to establish how logical they are and if any contradictions are apparent.

One aspect of Nazi ideology, which cannot be denied as being consistent, is that of the need for racial purity. The concept of making Germany a country with only an Aryan race featured heavily in Hitlerë­© book, Mein Kampf. In it, he stated the need for the young to be educated on the importance of racial purity to ensure the preservation of the German race. He believed that blood and race bore stronger ties than those of class, occupation and religion and that the physically and mentally unhealthy must not be allowed to bare children and 멵ontaminate¿½ the German race. These beliefs stuck with Hitler throughout his life and this is proved by the actions taken by him and his followers during his dictatorship. By 1939 when war broke out, Hitler had begun his racial purifying of Germany through a policy of mass gassings, over work or medical experiments. Many Poles, Jews and Czechs were killed. In 1941, Hitler appointed Alfred Rosenberg as Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories. In this position and under the authority of Hitler, Rosenberg promoted the Germanisation of Eastern peoples under inhumane conditions such as supervised camp labor, the rounding up of workers to be sent to Germany, where they would eventually die and the extermination of Jews. Another close ally of Hitler was Himmler. He introduced a Lebensborn program of the selective breeding of children from Aryan and racially pure parents from countries such as Poland, Norway, France, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia for adoption by German families. In 1935, Hitlerë­© racialism was legalized in the Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship. It stated that citizenship was to be granted to 멲ll subjects of German or kindred blood¿½ but not to any Jews or Gypsies.

Another policy, which Hitler concentrated on profoundly and some say was the basis of all his plans during his dictatorship, was Anti-Semitism. Nazis believed that all Jews were parasites and that they corrupted nations and in turn were responsible for all the evils that had plagued Germany since its 1917 defeat. Hitler thought that all Jews were in on a plan to corrupt the Aryan race and that they had to be stopped. Whether these reasons were actually the belief of the Nazis or merely a justification for the annexation of them remains to be seen but what ever the case the Pogrom was introduced to stamp them out. A policy of organized destruction and massacre, the pogrom was used from 1938 and consisted of persecution and violence towards all Jews, it reached its peak in 1942 when any Jew found was automatically sent to death camps in the east.

The concept of Lebensraum was addressed heavily in Hitlerë­© Mein Kampf where he referred to Germany as being a 몆eople without space¿½. This meant that he believed Germany did not occupy enough land to support its population. The obvious solution to this problem was birth control but Hitler was quick to reject this idea, as he believed that it would weaken the German race. Instead he decided that the best solution was to acquire territory in neighboring countries. However, any movement to seize colonies would arouse the hostility of Britain, so he decided to seize land from Russia and Eastern Europe. This move would ultimately cause a war between Russia and Germany but this is exactly what Hitler wanted. Although this may sound totally ludicrous and some may say portrays Hitler as a madman, his way of thinking was actually very coherent and methodical. There would be no better way to establish the superiority of Germany and the Aryan race, to fight back against communism and Marxism and to knock back the Jewish conspiracy than to win a war.

Between 1933 and 1937, Hitler was securing his dictatorship within Germany against all opposition and parties. The SA had played a major part in achieving Hitler power but now this power was threatened, as they wanted another revolution. A second revolution would disrupt the regime while Hitler was still establishing his power, but Rohm, the leader of the SAë­©, was an even bigger problem as he posed a considerable threat on Hitlerë­© power, increasing the need for the SAë­© to be kept as a minor party. The ë©žight of the Long Knives¿½ was what Hitler needed for the SAë­© to deteriorate and lose their significance and to eventually be replaced by the SS.

Although Hitler drew many of the elites away from the weak Weimar parties in favor of National Socialism, all the socialist ideas, which he had proposed, were never in actual fact carried out. The elites believed that they could suppress Hitler and become the effective rulers of Germany. This was never to be. Hitler knew how important the support of the elites was and resorted to making promises he could not keep. In this aspect Hitler was very inconsistent in his dictatorship. A considerable inconsistency that Hitler made was written in Mein Kampf. He suggested that Britain could be an ally of Germany since she helped them negotiate the removal of France from the Ruhr. This is a big contradiction as only a matter of years later Germany and Britain were opponents in WWII.

In conclusion I would say that Nazi ideology was mostly coherent and consistent. Despite not carrying out any socialist ideas, renaming his party the NSDAP and the theory that Britain could be an ally of Germanys, the main aspects of Nazi ideology were consistent even if some of them were slightly far fetched. Take the idea of an Aryan race occupying Germany. On Heinz-sight this idea would never have happened but the Nazië­© never deterred from this vision. The Lebensraum concept was an idea that some would say was inhumane, as in effect Hitler was starting a war but the idea of establishing Germany and the Aryan race in the world and fighting back against communism, Marxism and the Jews was all very coherent as it was like shooting two birds with one stone. Although during the 1920ë­© Anti-Semitism did not feature heavily with the Nazië­©, the basic principle of the annihilation of all Jews was still there. It has also been noted that there is a similarity between the views recorded by Hitler in the 1920ë­© when he was failing as a politician and the events that occurred more than ten years later. In addition to this consistency, the widespread rejection of Hitlerë­© Weltanschauung never resulted in him losing sight of his central beliefs, making Nazi ideology throughout the years generally consistent and coherent.

All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Germany will either be a world power or will not be at all.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

The art of leadership. . . consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention. . . . The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

A man does not die for something which he himself does not believe in.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Sooner will a camel pass through a needle’s eye than a great man be ‘discovered’ by an election.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggle, and only in eternal peace does it perish.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Nature . . . puts living creatures on this globe and watches the free play of forces. She then confers the master’s right on her favourite child, the strongest in courage and industry . . . The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

All the human culture, all the results of art, science and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This very fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word “man.” He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times, forever kindling anew that fire of knowledge which illuminated the night of silent mysteries and thus caused man to climb the path to mastery over the other beings of the earth . . . It was he who laid the foundations and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Blood mixture and the result drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons . . . Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

From millions of men . . . one man must step forward who with apodictic force will form granite principles from the wavering idea-world of the broad masses and take up the struggle for their sole correctness, until from the shifting waves of a fre thought-world there will arise a brazen cliff of solid unity in faith and will.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

The spark of a genius exists in the brain of the truly creative man from the hour of his birth. True genius is always inborn and never cultivated, let alone learned.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Armies for the preservation of peace do not exist; they exist only for the triumphant exertion of war.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Their sword will become our plow, and from the tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

What we have to fight for is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfil the mission assigned to it by the creator.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

For there is one thing we must never forget… the majority can never replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it? If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light – a kike!

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons, and the word ‘council’ must be restored to its original meaning. Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is man’s right to have the earth to till with his own hands, the most sacred sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth….

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism.

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf