Essay on Hitler’s rise to power. Germany was in an exceedingly unpleasant state after the WWL. The Treaty of Versailles, to take full blame for the war, had forced it. This meant that Germany would have to pay reparations for all of the other countries.
Reparations were even harder to pay since Germany was in the midst of one of the worst stagflation epidemics in history. Not to mention a brand new government, one that had nothing to do with the signing of this treaty, had taken over power. All of the people of this once superpower of a country was in a state of perplexity because they had lost a war at had been fought entirely on enemy soil. Germany was searching for an answer to its insurmountable problems, and found that answer in a Nazi named Adolf Hider.
Hitler was born in Austria, into a troubled house. He had aspirations of becoming an artist, but those subsided when he was rejected from the college of art he planned on attending. He had started listening to a man named Lueger who was at that time the mayor of Vienna. Lueger was a Nazi, with strong anti-Semitic views, which seemed to be a logical answer for Hider and his problems. It was around this time that Hitler was drafted by the army. Instead of going to fight for his country, he chose to flee to Germany. Which is a bewildering thought seeing as how he voluntarily joined the German army when he got there. After the war, Hider joined up with a right wing campaign whose job was to spy on other government groups. Upon spying on one of the parties, the N.S.D.A.P. or Nazi party, he found that he had a lot in common with their views. He decided this was his calling so he ended up joining that particular party. While in this party, he found out about his abilities to draw a crowd and make them believe what you are saying. It was at this time he started his famous speeches that could captivate and somewhat hypnotised whoever happened to listen in. He started speaking in beer halls, and gaining a lot of attention. He would speak on many topics, giving his ideals as the basis for what Germany should be. He wanted to make Germany the great dynasty it had once been. The party was growing at an astounding rate, mostly attributed to Hitter’s use of the ‘gift of gab’ in the taverns. Hider started organising groups known as the S.A., or storm troopers to cause havoc for opposing parties, mainly the communists. He had modeled this militia after Mussolini’s Fasci.
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In November of 1923, Hider ordered the SA to arrest the mayor of Munich, and the leader of the garrison, in an attempt to start a coup of Germany’s Weimar Republic. When the SA does get to Munich, they are halted, and opened fire on by the garrison. A lot of them were either killed, or sent to prison, as was Hider’s case. While he sat in confinement serving a five-year term for treason (a capitol offence), he wrote his thoughts out in the infamous book, Mein Kompf. Upon his release from lockup, he came to find the Nazi party was not as powerful as it had been before his incarceration. It is then that Hitler realised that it would be impossible to overthrow the government in violence. Instead of seizing power through bloodshed, Hider was going to rise to power politically, once he found a way to get in. This way was lit when the great depression hit the United States. When the depression came about, Germany stopped receiving funds. That in turn sent Germany’s economy on a downward spiral. Throughout all of this chaos, Hitler unlocked the path. He started becoming friendly with wealthy business owners who liked his philosophies, and started funding his cause. He started heavy campaign tactics to win support for the Nazi Party. This was made evident when in 1929 they had only had 12 representative is Reichstag, but in 1931, just two years later, they had 107, approximately one quarter of Germany’s Parliament were Nazis.
With his Nazi underlings in place in the Reichstag, it seemed only perfect to Hider that the presidential elections were coming up. So he focused all of his attention on campaigning for the 1932 elections. Hitler’s political stands on current issues involving Germany were extremely vigorous. He had started pointing the ‘Stab in the back’ theory at the Jews, he promised to get revenge on Great Britain and France, and he wanted to make Germany the great nation it once had been. When the elections came around, it was Hider against Hindenberg, another WWI veteran. Hindenberg was counting on the support from business owners and from the respect he had earned in the war. With that support he came out of the elections as president. Even though he was defeated, Hider was not deterred in the least in his quest for conquest on the German government. He opened a new course of action, which focused on the parliament. Whichever party in parliament had the most leaders usually meant their party leader would be chancellor? So the N.S.D.A.P. focused on getting the majority of parliament to be its own members. With intense campaigning, their plight was successful. The Nazi party in the Reichstag went from its former 107 party members, to 230, which was over half of the seats.
Although they did hold the majority, they did not get the chancellor of their choice. Instead, Von Papen had been appointed in the place Hider was hoping for. With the amount of Nazi influence over the government, it was possible for the new-fangled chancellor to get anything approved by die governing body. Von Papen tried to lower the amount of control the Nazis possessed by calling for now elections of the parliament. This tactic failed when the final count after the elections showed the Nazis with 250 members. Hindenberg decided to appoint a new chancellor, Von Scheicher, who immediately called for re- elections. However, these elections were a success for the new chancellor, and Nazi affiliates within the Reichstag dropped to 196. Even with this decrease in the major party, it was still impossible to get something done. This situation compelled Von Scheicher to go to Hindenberg and request that Hitler should take over as chancellor in hopes that this will progress towards a cure for the countries many severe problems. Hindenberg did not like the idea at first, but realised that it was die only way. Hindenberg placed conservatives in other posts, in hopes of keeping Hider’s power at a minimal but substantial state. So in January of 1933, Hitler took what is quite possibly the decisive factor in his assumption of power, because it put him, for the first time, in a position of political power.
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With his strong inhibitions, and poise to maintain goals he was after, this was the gateway to his dictatorship. After Hitler’s reception of Chancellor of Germany, the Reichstag building somehow burnt down, with the only Person around being a mentally deficient ‘communist’. Hitler used this scenario to make the commies out to be a flaw of society, and was granted the right to suspend all of communists civil rights, and send them to prison camps. Hider planned to kill all of the old S.A. leaders, and form the S.S. These were his own personal bodyguards, but now the army was pleased with his actions and took a personal oath to Hider, not Germany. Now that everything was coming together for his supreme rule over Germany, there still remained some obstacles. These were dealt with in each of their respected ways. The chancellor prior to Hitler, Von Scheicher, was assassinated along with the leader of the garrison in Munich. This left only one obstruction in Hitler’s path, President Hindenberg. Since he was nearing his own demise, Hider decided to just wait it out. Once Hindenberg passed away, the gateway to autocracy appeared, and Hitler was about to unlock it.