Nazi Germany In An Hour
Rupert Colley
Smashwords edition
Copyright 2010 Rupert Colley
Cover design: Katie Daniels
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Nazi Germany In An Hour
Introduction
"And so it had all come to this. Did all this happen only so that a gang of wretched criminals could lay hands on the fatherland? Hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for this deed." The words are those of Adolf Hitler; the deed – Germany’s surrender in the First World War, and the wretched criminals - the politicians who had meekly accepted the surrender and the defeat of Germany.
Germany had suffered during the war - not only on the battlefield but domestically. Starvation and fuel shortages, further aggravated by the 'Spanish flu' epidemic of 1918 that killed millions throughout Europe, had led to widespread discontent. Inflation and economic stagnation caused embitterment, and the increasing number of frontline casualties as Germany had to fight a war on two fronts, had left the nation disillusioned.
The German Revolution - The End of the Second Reich
In October 1918 sailors at the port of Kiel disobeyed orders to fight the British fleet. It was, they saw it, a pointless and suicidal mission. The revolt soon spread throughout Germany. The province of Bavaria went so far as to establish a socialist republic along Soviet lines. The Kaiser, William II, the unhinged grandson of Queen Victoria, abdicated on November 9, 1918, two days before the armistice, and the Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, appointed a coalition left-wing government and handed over the chancellorship to Friedrich Ebert.
With the abdication of the Kaiser and the collapse of Imperial Germany (the Second Reich - or empire), Ebert proclaimed Germany a republic, formed a provisional government (a temporary arrangement until elections could be held) and, on November 11, 1918, signed the armistice that brought the Great War to an end.
But the social unrest continued. In January 1919 the German Communist Party, the Spartacists, staged an uprising in Berlin. Rosa Luxemburg, leader of the movement, had opposed the uprising, arguing that the time was not yet right for communism. But she was unable to contain the fury of the left and Chancellor Ebert turned to the right-wing Freikorps, or Free Corp, for assistance. After three days of intense street fighting the Freikorps, a band of demobilized, nationalistic soldiers, had, with intense violence, crushed the rebellion. Luxemburg was arrested and killed whilst in police custody.
The Weimar Republic - A republic is born.
The first German democratic election took place the same month, January 1919, attracting an 83% turnout and resulting in the formation of a National Constituent Assembly. The situation in Berlin was still volatile so on February 6 the Assembly met for the first time in the town of Weimar and there drew up a new constitution. Five months later the constitution was ratified and the Weimar Republic was born. However disturbances continued, especially in Berlin and Bavaria, and Ebert again had to call in the Freikorps to keep order. In March 1919 the Freikorps went to work and the Socialist Republic in Bavaria was brought to a bloody end.
The Treaty of Versailles: "An armistice for twenty years."
On June 28, 1919, Germany reluctantly signed the Paris peace settlement in the Hall of Mirrors at the palace of Versailles - exactly five years on from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the spark that had ignited the First World War. Germany had not been permitted to take part in the talks and was too weak, politically and militarily, to resist the dictated terms set by the representatives of thirty-two nations, led by the Allied powers - the USA, Britain, France and Italy.
The terms were harsh and not for negotiation. Germany lost 13% of her territory, which meant 12% of Germans now lived in a foreign country, and Germany's colonial possessions were redistributed amongst the other colonial powers. The German Rhineland, on the border with France, was to be demilitarized (stripped of an armed presence) and placed under Allied control until 1935. The small but industrially important Saar region was to be governed by Britain and France for fifteen years, and its coal exported to France in recompense for the French coal mines destroyed by Germany during the war. After fifteen years a plebiscite (or referendum) of the Saar population would decide its future.
Most of West Prussia was given to Poland. The German city of Danzig (modern-day Gdansk) was made a 'free' city so that Poland could have use of a port not situated in Germany. To give Poland access to Danzig, they were given a strip of land, the 'Polish Corridor', through Prussia, thereby cutting East Prussia off from the rest of Germany.
Militarily, Germany's army was to be limited to a token 100,000 men, and its navy to 15,000, plus a ban on conscription. She was not permitted to have an airforce, nor tanks, and prohibited from producing or importing weaponry.
The payment of reparations was for "compensation for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allied powers and their property". It was to include raw material, such as the coal from the Saar and Ruhr regions. Two years later, in 1921, the cost of reparations was announced - £6.6 billion, which German economists calculated would take until 1988 to pay. The figure shocked and angered Germans who conveniently forgot that Germany had demanded an even greater sum from a defeated France following the Franco-Prussian war of 1871.
But it was the humiliating clause that forced Germany into accepting responsibility for the war and responsibility for the damage to the civilian populations of the Allies that rankled most with the public at home.
The Treaty satisfied no one. Germany was outraged. Britain thought it too harsh, believing an economically weak Germany would be detrimental to all Europe; the USA also considered it harsh and refused to ratify the treaty or to join the newly formed League of Nations; and the French felt it not harsh enough. It was they, the French argued, who had suffered most during the war. The French public were so dissatisfied with their president, Clemenceau, that they voted him out six months later, replacing him with Ferdinand Foch who, with sharp intuition, said, "This is not peace, this is an armistice for twenty years."
The Weimar Government although democratically elected was deemed responsible for Germany's humiliation, and criticised by all sides for its weakness in standing up to the Allies. In March 1920 the Freikorps, led by Wolfgang Kapp, tried to seize power in Berlin but the coup, unable to gain support from the army, failed.
DAP: Member 555
The Kapp Putsch may have failed but it illustrated the feeling of anger amongst the extreme right. Among the many small political parties was the German Workers' Party or, to use its German abbreviation, DAP, set up in 1919 by 35-year-old Munich locksmith, Anton Drexler. DAP, a far-right party that aimed at appealing to the workers, consisted of only about fifty members but to give the impression of greater numbers began their membership cards at number 500.
It was to a meeting of this party that in September 1919 Adolf Hitler, at this stage being groomed by the army as a political instructor, was sent to observe and speak. The beerhall meeting consisted of only about twenty attendees but Hitler's speech so impressed Drexler that he was invited to join the party. With membership number 555, although he later claimed in Mein Kampf that he was the seventh member, he signed his name as 'Hittler'.
NSDAP: Nationalism and socialism under one roof
Hitler's oratory and leadership skills were evident and he soon took over from Drexler as DAP's leader. On February 24, 1920, still maintaining its peculiar mix of right extremism and socialist ideals, the party lengthened its name to the Nationalist Socialist German Workers' Party, or NSDAP. Now boasting 3,000 members, the Nazi party was born. Two months later Hitler resigned from the army to concentrate full-time on expanding his party.
Adolf Hitler - the Corporal
Born in 1889 in Austria, Hitler spent much of his youth in Vienna, living in cheap accommodation, frequenting coffee houses and trying to sell his paintings. Art was his passion and his failure to secure a place at art school plunged him into depression. Resentment of the Jew was rife in the city and Hitler absorbed this anti-Semitism and, like many of his contemporaries, believed the Jew to be set apart from "the rest of humanity."
At the outbreak of the First World War Hitler was in Munich and having managed to avoid conscription into the Austrian army, signed-up, as desired, to a Bavarian regiment within the German army. He served as a messenger and did so with distinction throughout the war. Having no aspirations for promotion, he finished the war as a corporal having twice been awarded the Iron Cross and twice wounded - the second time in October 1918 when he was temporarily blinded by mustard gas.
It was during his recuperation that the Armistice was signed that left Hitler and many other Germans embittered. Germany had won the war in the East, and following the 'Spring Offensive' of 1918, looked well placed to win it in the west. But a strike of German munitions workers towards the end of the war, believed to have been organised by Jews, disrupted the supply of arms and the frontline soldier suffered as a consequence. The government had accepted defeat and it was they, not the soldier, that had lost Germany the war. The signing seven months later of the Treaty of Versailles confirmed this sense of betrayal, the feeling that the German people had been "stabbed in the back".
As the new leader of the fledging Nazi party, Hitler met Hermann Goring and Rudolph Hess; two men who would serve him well over the twenty years, and Ernst Rohm, a tough ex-soldier and former member of the Freikorps, who went on to form the Nazi Storm Troopers (or SA).