Hitler's Rise to Power in History Essay Example

After WWI, Europe broke apart into more individual states, and following the United States' steps, democracy was the default type of government that the new countries adopted. Constitutions were drafted and political parties were formed. However, many countries didn’t follow through to carry out their promises. Executives still had the majority of power, some people sought to exploit their government, not everyone was represented, and political parties acted hostile towards each other. This led governments to be unstable and led the people to want a strong leader to control the chaos. Nowhere was this issue more apparent than in Weimar Germany where a crippling democracy and frightful policies like Carl Schmitt, a right-wing legal theorist, instilled his version of the ‘state of expectation’, which authorized the leader to disobey the rule of law as long it was in the best interest of the public, were put in place. Although Germany attempted to have a democracy after a humiliating defeat in WWI, the rise of Hitler’s Fascist party, along with a failing democracy, appealed to the vulnerable German public through propaganda, government lead organizations, and newfound national unity through the Nazi party, which ultimately paved the way for Hilter’s dictatorship and WWII.

Hitler’s rise to power was slow and legal; he knew that he had to become the leader through the political system and not a rebellion. In Adolf Hitler’s late teen years, he was exposed to extreme Austro-German nationalists that generated his strong beliefs that the Aryan race and people of Germany were superior to the rest of the world. Furthermore, his antisemitic views were a result of his upbringing around poor eastern European Jews. Hitler’s beliefs became favored among the far-right wing party. In 1919 Hitler joined the German Workers Party and slowly gained more popularity through his propaganda and political character. Throughout the 1920s he claimed that Germans were the master race and needed a Lebensraum (living space) and promoted the need for a Führer (leader-dictator). To gain the people’s support he vowed to fight communism, which greatly appealed to the working class. While Germany was struggling with The Great Depression of 1929 with increased bankruptcies, soaring unemployment, and an overall worried German population, Hitler promised a national rebirth. During WWI, the total war took a toll on everyone in Germany; from food and material shortages during and after the war to finding out that they shockingly lost after all the propaganda they were being fed to the number of people injured, killed, and mentally drained, the German public was looking for a drastic change. Plus, after the war ended, Germany was left with huge reparations that they simply couldn’t fulfill. The German public was tired and annoyed with the lives they had been living and they felt that Hitler was the silver bullet to their problems. Consequently, in 1930 and the couple of years that followed, Hitler’s party grew dramatically; and in January of 1933, he was appointed chancellor of Germany.

Shortly after becoming chancellor, he worked to solidify his role as the absolute leader of Germany and started to carry out his vision. He convinced President Paul von Hindenburg to sign an emergency act that abolished freedom of speech and assembly and took away most personal liberties. A month later, Hitler then pushed the enabling act, which gave him dictatorial power for four years. At this point, he was the Führer and no one could fight back. The fractured Nazi state, which lacked unity, was very beneficial to Hitler because it encouraged competition among political officials to fulfill his goals. He began carrying out his master operation by building concentration camps, eliminating any enemies, and creating a private personal guard, the SS which eventually replaced the SA, to ensure that no one got in the way. Universities, publishers, writers, and school lessons fell into the hands of the Nazi party; and anything that went against the party was blacklisted. Eventually, more antisemitic laws went into effect and the people of Germany were brainwashed into believing that racial hygiene was justified and necessary. After the horrific events of the 1938 Kristallnacht in which Jewish-owned shops, homes, synagogues, and Jews were killed/destroyed, many Germans turned a blind eye and the ones who opposed the regime were punished. 

Public support from the German population was crucial to Hitler’s plan, so to increase their interest and enthusiasm from them, he created new opportunities for the people. Hitler, true to his word, conducted a huge economic recovery. Large public work programs like the construction of superhighways, offices, large sports stadiums, and public housing created jobs and ingrained a sense of national pride and unity.  Unemployment fell so low that there was a shortage of workers, the standard of living for the average German increased, and business profits rose steeply. While women were at first tasked with producing more Aryans, they were later called to join the workforce and enrolled in Nazi mass organizations, which allowed them to experience a sense of freedom and community. The Hitler Youth, the League of German Woman, the German Labor Front, and Mass rallies hosted by the Nazis kept German citizens’ support for the nation up. In an excerpt from Defying Hitler a memoir by Sebastian Haffner, 1939, he states. “In those childhood days, I was a war fan just as one is a soccer fan…. What counted was the fascination of the game of war.” This demonstrates how a child growing up in the age of the Nazi regime viewed war in a totally different manner than the rest of the world. Instead of seeing it as death, destruction, and the worst side of humanity, he sees it as a game to be won, an opponent that needs to be knocked down. In another excerpt, he later goes on to express, “They [the Nazis] have made Germans everywhere into comrades, and accustomed them to this narcotic from their earliest age: in the Hitler youth, the SA, the Reichswehr (army), in thousands of camps and clubs…” This indicates the power that the Nazi party held over the German public, starting in their childhood. Moreover, the excerpt gives some insight into why the Nazi party could appeal to the German people. 

Ultimately, the appeal of fascism in Germany was a result of a failing post-WWI democracy that left the already miserable citizens of Germany in a more vulnerable state, and the rise of a right-wing party with a strong leader, who appealed to the people. Furthermore, the propaganda along with the Nazi lead organizations, increased unity, loyalty to the regime, and support from the Germans, young and old. All of this paved the way for Hitler to carry out his unimaginable plan. Today, Germany has a federal parliamentary republic. The country has put into place many safeguards in their government to prevent another leader to rise to absolute power. As well, while WWII and the holocaust were horrific, Germany has taken steps to atone for their past and instilled Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which loosely translates to ‘coping with the past’. In other words, it’s the admission of guilt and learning and understanding the past to move forward with a more educated public and to prevent this type of atrocity from ever happening again.