Question

1. Describe the problems faced by the Weimar Republic.
2. Discuss why Nazism became popular in Germany by 1930.
3. What are the peculiar features of Nazi thinking?
4. Explain why Nazi propaganda was effective in creating a hatred for Jews.
5. Explain what role women had in Nazi society. Return to Chapter 1 on the
French Revolution. Write a paragraph comparing and contrasting the role of
women in the two periods.
6. In what ways did the Nazi state seek to establish total control over its people?​

Answer 1

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• 1} A National Assembly met at Weimar and established a democratic constitution with a federal structure. Deputies were now elected to the German Parliament or Reichstag, based on equal and universal votes cast by all adults including women.However, it was not received well by its own people largely because of the terms it was forced to accept after Germany’s defeat at the end of the First World War. The peace treaty at Versailles with the Allies was a harsh and humiliating peace. Germany lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population, 13 percent of its territories, 75 per cent of its iron and 26 per cent of its coal to France, Poland, Denmark and Lithuania. The Allied Powers demilitarised Germany to weaken its power. The War Guilt Clause held Germany responsible for the war and damages the Allied countries suffered. Germany was forced to pay compensation amounting to £6 billion. The Allied armies also occupied the resource-rich Rhineland for much of the 1920s. Many Germans held the new Weimar Republic responsible for not only the defeat in the war but the disgrace at Versailles.
• 2} It was during the Great Depression that Nazism became a mass movement. After 1929, banks collapsed and businesses shut down, workers lost their jobs and the middle classes were threatened with destitution. 
• In such a situation Nazi propaganda stirred hopes of a better future. In 1928, the Nazi Party got no more than 2. 6 per cent votes in the Reichstag – the German parliament. 
• By 1932, it had become the largest party with 37 per cent votes.
• Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and his words moved people. He promised to build a strong nation, undo the injustice of the Versailles Treaty and restore the dignity of the German people. He promised employment for those looking for work, and a secure future for the youth. He promised to weed out all foreign influences and resist all foreign ‘conspiracies’ against Germany.
• Hitler devised a new style of politics. He understood the significance of rituals and spectacle in mass mobilisation. 
• Nazis held massive rallies and public meetings to demonstrate the support for Nazi propaganda skilfully projected Hitler as a messiah, a saviour, as someone who had arrived to deliver people from their distress. It is an image that captured the imagination of a people whose sense of dignity and pride had been shattered, and who were living in a time of acute economic and political crises Hitler and instil a sense of unity among the people. .
• 3} Nazi ideology or Nazi thinking was synonymous with Hitler’s worldview. According to this there was no equality between people, but only a racial hierarchy. In this view blond, blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung. 
• They came to be regarded as an anti-race, the arch-enemies of the Aryans.  All other coloured people were placed in between depending upon their external features. 
• Hitler’s racism borrowed from thinkers like Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.  Darwin was a natural scientist who tried to explain the creation of plants and animals through the concept of evolution and natural selection. 
• Herbert Spencer later added the idea of survival of the fittest. According to this idea, only those species survived on earth that could adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions. 
• We should bear in mind that Darwin never advocated human intervention in what he thought was a purely natural process of selection. 
• However, his ideas were used by racist thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over conquered peoples.  The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would survive and the weak ones would perish.  The Aryan race was the finest. It had to retain its purity, become stronger and dominate the world.
• The other aspect of Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum, or living space.  He believed that new territories had to be acquired for settlement. This would enhance the area of the mother country while enabling the settlers on new lands to retain an intimate link with the place of their origin. 
• It would also enhance the material resources and power of the German nation. Hitler intended to extend German boundaries by moving eastwards, to concentrate all Germans geographically in one place. Poland became the laboratory for this experimentation.

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