NAZISM AND THE RISE OF HITLER

1. List the various factors responsible for the rise of Hitler.

Factors responsible for the rise of Hitler were:

 Germany faced defeat in the First World War. The war severely affected its economy and
prestige. Weimar Republic never enjoyed the support of the people, who regarded them
as traitors as they signed the Treaty of Versailles.
 Germany had to face a great economic crisis after the First World War. Many soldiers
were no longer in service, so they became unemployed.
 As industries closed down, number of unemployed people increased. Many young people
took to criminal activities in wake of unemployment.
 German currency lost its value, the savings of the working class and the pensioners
reduced.
 The Germans had no faith in democracy. It was against their culture and tradition. They
at once gave their support to a strong man like Hitler who could transfer their dreams into
reality. He promised to make Germany a powerful nation and restore the prestige of
Germans.

2. Explain how Nazi propaganda was effective in creating a hatred for Jews.

 The Nazis used language and media with care and often to great effects.
 They used deceptive practices. Nazis never used the “work or murder”. Mass killings
were termed “special treatment”, “Euthanasia”, “selection” and “disinfection”.
 Media was carefully used to gain support and popularize it worldwide. The ideas were
spread through images, films, radio, posters, groups identified as enemies were
stereotyped, mocked, abused.
 Socialists and liberals were represented as weak and degenerate. Propaganda films were
made to create hatred. They were shown with flowing beards, wearing kaftans whereas
in reality it was difficult to distinguish German Jews by their appearance.
 They were referred as vermin, rats as pests. Their movements were compared to those of
rodents. Nazism worked on the minds of the people trapped their emotions and turned
hatred and anger at those marked as undesirable.

3. Discuss how Nazism became popular in Germany by 1930?

 It was during the great depression that Nazism became a mass movement.
 Banks collapsed, businesses shut down, workers lost their jobs.
 In such a situation Nazi propaganda stirred hopes of a better future.
 Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and hid words move people he promised to
build a strong nation undo the justice if Versailles treaty and restore dignity.
 He provisioned employment for those looking for work and a secure future for the youth.
He promised to use all foreign influences.
4. Verify how the world come to know about the ‘Nazi holocaust’.
 The Jews wanted the world to remember the atrocities and sufferings they had endured
during the Nazi killing operations – also called the Holocaust.

 The indomitable spirit to bear witness and to preserve the documents can be seen in many
ghetto and camp inhabitants who wrote diaries, kept notebooks, and created archives.

 The history and the memory of the Holocaust live on in memoirs, fiction, documentaries,
poetry, memorials and museums in many parts of the world today.

 On the other hand when the war seemed lost, the Nazi leadership distributed petrol to its
functionaries to destroy all incriminating evidence available in offices.

 These are a tribute to those who resisted it, an embarrassing reminder to those who
collaborated, and a warning to those who watched in silence.

5. ‘Not every German was a Nazi’. Explain by giving examples.

OR
Discuss how the common people in Germany reacted to Nazism.

 Many organised active resistance to Nazism, braving police repression and death.
 The large majority of Germans were passive onlookers and apathetic witnesses.
 They were too scared to act, to differ, to protest. They preferred to look away.
 Pastor Niemoeller, a resistance fighter, observed an absence of protest, an uncanny
silence, amongst ordinary Germans in the face of brutal and organised crimes committed
against people in the Nazi empire.

6. Explain the Nazi cult of motherhood.

OR
In Nazi Germany all mothers were not treated equally. Verify.
OR
Analyse the role of women in Nazi Society.

 Girls had to maintain the purity of the race, distance themselves from Jews, look after the
home, and teach their children Nazi values. They had to be the bearers of the Aryan
culture and race.
 Women who bore racially undesirable children were punished and those who produced
racially desirable children were awarded. They were given favoured treatment in
hospitals and were also entitled to concessions in shops and on theatre tickets and railway
fares.
 To encourage women to produce many children, Honour Crosses were awarded. A
bronze cross was given for four children, silver for six and gold for eight or more.
 All ‘Aryan’ women who deviated from the prescribed code of conduct were publicly
condemned, and severely punished. (Those who maintained contact with Jews, Poles and
Russians were paraded through the town with shaved heads, blackened faces and placards
hanging around their necks announcing ‘I have sullied the honour of the nation’.)
  Many received jail sentences and lost civic honour as well as their husbands and families
for this criminal offence.

7. Explain the steps taken by the Nazis to teach the Nazi ideology to the German children.
OR

Discuss how the schools in Germany were ‘cleansed’ and ‘purified’ under Nazi rule.

 Hitler felt that a strong Nazi society could be established only by teaching children Nazi
ideology. This required a control over the child both inside and outside school.
 All schools were cleansed and purified. Teachers who were Jews or seen as ‘politically
unreliable’ were dismissed. Germans and Jews could not sit together or play together
 School textbooks were rewritten. Racial science was introduced to justify Nazi ideas of
race. Stereotypes about Jews were popularised even through maths classes.
 Children were taught to be loyal and submissive, hate Jews, and worship Hitler.
 Even the function of sports was to nurture a spirit of violence and aggression among
children. Hitler believed that boxing could make children iron hearted, strong and
masculine.

8. Youth organisations were made responsible for educating German youth in the ‘the spirit of
National Socialism’. Explain.

 Youth organisations were made responsible for educating German youth and ten-year-olds had to
enter Jungvolk.
 At 14, all boys had to join the Nazi youth organisation – Hitler Youth – where they learnt to
worship war, glorify aggression and violence, condemn democracy, and hate Jews, communists,
Gypsies and all those categorised as ‘undesirable’.
 After a period of rigorous ideological and physical training they joined the Labour Service,
usually at the age of 18.
 Then they had to serve in the armed forces and enter one of the Nazi organisations.
 To unify the youth movement under Nazi control, all other youth organisations were
systematically dissolved and finally banned.

9. Verify the racial policy of the Nazis.

 The Nazis created an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by physically

eliminating all those who were seen as ‘undesirable’ in the extended empire.
 There was no equality between people, but only a racial hierarchy. Blond, blue-eyed,
Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung.
 Nazis wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy Nordic Aryans’. They alone were
considered ‘desirable’. Even those Germans who were seen as impure or abnormal had
no right to exist.
 Jews were not the only community classified as ‘undesirable’. Many Gypsies and blacks
living in Nazi Germany were considered as racial ‘inferiors’. They were widely
persecuted.
  Russians and Poles were considered subhuman, and hence undeserving of any humanity.
When Germany occupied Poland and parts of Russia, captured civilians were forced to
work as slave labour. Many of them died simply through hard work and starvation.

10. Discuss the main features of Hitler’s geopolitical concept of ‘Lebensraum’.

Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical concept of Lebensraum or living space:

 He believed that new territories had to be acquired for settlement.

 To enhance the area of the mother country and to enable 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.

11. Explain how destruction of democracy took place phase by phase under Hitler in Nazi
Germany.
 On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg offered the Chancellorship, the highest
position in the cabinet of ministers, to Hitler. Having acquired power, Hitler set out to
dismantle the structures of democratic rule.
 The Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 indefinitely suspended civic rights like freedom of
speech, press and assembly that had been guaranteed by the Weimar constitution.
 On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed which established dictatorship in
Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree.
 All political parties and trade unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its
affiliates. The state established complete control over the economy, media, army and
judiciary.
 Special surveillance and security forces were created to control and order society in ways
that the Nazis wanted.

12. ‘The economic crisis in Germany after the Great Depression in 1932 created deep anxieties
and fears in people’. Support the statement with five examples.

 The middle classes, especially salaried employees and pensioners, saw their savings
diminish when the currency lost its value.
 Small businessmen, the self-employed and retailers suffered as their businesses got
ruined.
 These sections of society were filled with the fear of proletarianisation, an anxiety of
being reduced to the ranks of the working class, or worse still, the unemployed.
 Only organised workers could manage to keep their heads above water, but
unemployment weakened their bargaining power.
 Big business was in crisis. The large mass of peasantry was affected by a sharp fall in
agricultural prices and women, unable to fill their children’s stomachs, were filled with a
sense of deep despair.
13. ‘Politically too the Weimar Republic was fragile’. Evaluate.

 The Weimar constitution had some inherent defects, which made it unstable and
vulnerable to dictatorship.
 One was proportional representation. This made achieving a majority by any one party a
near impossible task, leading to a rule by coalitions.
 Another defect was Article 48, which gave the President the powers to impose
emergency, suspend civil rights and rule by decree.
 Within its short life, the Weimar Republic saw twenty different cabinets lasting on an
average 239 days, and a liberal use of Article 48. Yet the crisis could not be managed.
 People lost confidence in the democratic parliamentary system, which seemed to offer no
solutions.

14. Analyse the impact of economic depression on Germany.

 The German economy was the worst hit by the economic crisis. By 1932, industrial
production was reduced to 40 per cent of the 1929 level.
 Workers lost their jobs or were paid reduced wages. The number of unemployed touched
an unprecedented 6 million.
 On the streets of Germany one could see men with placards around their necks saying,
‘Willing to do any work’.
 Unemployed youths played cards or simply sat at street corners, or desperately queued up
at the local employment exchange.
 As jobs disappeared, the youth took to criminal activities and total despair became
commonplace.

15. Why did Germany suffer from “Hyper Inflation” in 1923? Who bailed her out from this
situation?

 Germany had fought the war largely on loans and had to pay war reparations in gold.
This depleted gold reserves at a time resources were scarce.
 In 1923 Germany refused to pay, and the French occupied its leading industrial area,
Ruhr, to claim their coal.
 Germany retaliated with passive resistance and printed paper currency recklessly.
 With too much printed money in circulation, the value of the German mark fell. As the
value of the mark collapsed, prices of goods soared.
 The image of Germans carrying cartloads of currency notes to buy a loaf of bread was
widely publicised evoking worldwide sympathy. This crisis came to be known as
hyperinflation, a situation when prices rise phenomenally high.
 Eventually, the Americans intervened and bailed Germany out of the crisis by
introducing the Dawes Plan, which reworked the terms of reparation to ease the financial
burden on Germans.
16. Nazi ideology was synonymous with Hitler’s worldview. Expalin the statement.

 According to Hitler, 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.
 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.
 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.
17. ‘The peace treaty at Versailles was extremely unpopular among Germans.’ Give any five
arguments.

Treaty at Versailles with the Allies was a harsh and humiliating peace.

 Germany lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population, 13 per cent 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.

18. Explain how Hitler reconstruct Germany.

 Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic recovery to the economist Hjalmar Schacht
who aimed at full production and full employment through a state-funded work-creation
programme. This project produced the famous German superhighways and the people’s
car, the Volkswagen.
 In foreign policy also Hitler acquired quick successes. He pulled out of the League of
Nations in 1933, reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936.
 Hitler chose war as the way out of the approaching economic crisis.
 Resources were to be accumulated through expansion of territory. In September 1939,
Germany invaded Poland. This started a war with France and England.
 In September 1940, a Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy and Japan,
strengthening Hitler’s claim to international power. By the end of 1940, Hitler was at the
pinnacle of his power.