Hitler’s Rise to Power
A different but ultimately no less violent system emerged when Adolf Hitler and his followers put an end to democracy in Germany. Since the early 1920s, Hitler had harangued the German masses to destroy the Weimar Republic and drummed at a message of anti-Semitism and the rebirth of the German “race.” When the Great Depression struck Germany in 1929, his Nazi Party began to outstrip its rivals in elections, thanks in part to financial support from big business. Film and press tycoon Alfred Hugenberg helped, constantly slamming the Weimar government as responsible for the disastrous economy and for the loss of German pride after World War I. Nazi supporters took to the streets, attacking young Communist groups who agitated just as loudly on behalf of the new Soviet experiment. Hugenberg’s newspapers always reported such incidents as the work of Communist thugs who had assaulted blameless Nazis, thus building sympathy for the Nazis among the middle classes.
Parliamentary government practically ground to a halt during the depression, adding to unrest and the sense of disorder. The Reichstag, or German assembly, failed to approve emergency plans to improve the economy, first because its members disagreed over policies and second because Nazi and Communist deputies disrupted its sessions. Its failure to act discredited democracy among the German people. To make parliamentary government look incapable of providing basic law and order, Hitler’s followers rampaged unchecked through the streets and attacked Jews, Communists, and Social Democrats. Many thought it was time to replace democratic government with a bold new leader who would take on these enemies military-style, without concern for constitutions, laws, or individual rights. It was time for war at home.
Every age group and class of people supported Hitler, though like Stalin, he especially attracted young people. In 1930, 70 percent of Nazi Party members were under forty and many thought of war as exciting, like the games they played as children during World War I. They believed that a better world was possible under Hitler’s command. The largest number of supporters came from the industrial working class, but many white-collar workers and members of the lower middle class also joined the party in percentages out of proportion with their numbers in the population. The inflation that had wiped out savings left them especially bitter and open to Hitler’s rhetoric. In the deepening economic crisis, the Nazi Party, which had received little more than 2 percent of the vote in 1928, won almost 20 percent in the Reichstag elections of 1930 and more than twice that in 1932. (See “Contrasting Views: Nazism and Hitler: For and Against.”)
Hitler used modern propaganda techniques to build up his following. Nazi Party members passed out thousands of recordings of Hitler’s speeches, and teenagers painted their fingernails with swastikas. Nazi rallies were carefully planned displays in which Hitler captivated the crowds, who saw him as their strong, vastly superior Führer (“leader”). In actuality, Hitler regarded the masses with contempt, and in Mein Kampf he discussed how to deal with them:
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on those in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand.
Hitler’s media techniques were so successful that they continue to influence political campaigns today, particularly in the use of simple messages often filled with hate or threats.
In the 1932 elections, both Nazis and Communists did very well, making the leader of one of these two parties the logical choice as chancellor. Influential conservative politicians loathed the Communists for their opposition to private property and favored Hitler as someone they could easily control. When Hitler was invited to become chancellor in January 1933, he accepted.