HIST 2117: Modern GermanySpring 2014

Lecture Sixteen: From Weimar to Hitler

The Emergence of the NSDAP and Adolf Hitler

• The “German Workers Party” and the Crisis of 1919

• Adolf Hitler – His Early Life and Temperament• Hitler Takes Over the NSDAP• Nature of the Early Nazi Party• The Sturmabteilung (SA)

The Fringe Years

• The Beer Hall Putsch and Banning of Party• Mein Kampf• Building the Party Infrastructure – Julius

Streicher, Gregor and Otto Strasser, Josef Goebbels

• Revolution or Electoral Politics?

Hitler’s Opportunity

• Stock Market Crash and Depression• Nazi Politics• Party Growth– 1928 108,00 members– 1929 178,000 members– 1932 450,000 members

• Elections of 1932/33 and Right Wing Plans• January, 1933 – Hitler takes Control

The Nazi Coup

• Reichstag Fire• Enabling Act• Night of the Long Knives and Emergence of SS• Death of Hindenburg – Hitler becomes Fuhrer• Gleichschaltung – “Co-ordination”• Where was the Resistance?

Germany Under Nazi Rule

• Centrality of Anti-Semitism – Racial Ideas• Nuremberg Laws 1935• Propaganda and Nazi Symbolism• Attacks on Degenerate Art • The Gestapo and Concentration Camps• Eugenics and Euthanasia• “Working Towards the Fuhrer”• Kristallnacht 1938