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The Great Depression lead to political instability and uncertainty. 

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The Great Depression lead to political instability and uncertainty. 

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After WWI, Germany had began borrowing loans from the United States to repay the allies. Since Germany relied heavily on the US for financial support, this made the stock market crash heavily affect Germany. With the economic crash happening, all classes of wealth in Germany were affected negatively. The working class had problems of unemployment and all of the other classes had problems too. Political lands of Germany became greatly divided among the many social classes which previously weren’t necessarily divided. These people voted for Communism and many more voted for Nazism in hopes for restoring economic stability in the region.

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The great depression, a huge economic slump caused by a crash in the American stock market, had a global effect on a large number of countries, especially those who manufactured food and raw materials. L Germany was in a particularly bad place financially after world war one and had been borrowing a large amount of capitol from the US to repay their allies and when the stock market crashed they were unable to continue doing so and were required to begin repaying their debts. Unfortunately Germany's government had come to rely on these loans from the US and therefore had to change what money was being invested in which caused the German government a lot of tension. There was also the dramatic occurrence known as a banking crisis where several important banks including the National Bank had to close their doors and state that Germany's entire financial system needed to be reconstructed from scratch with assistance by the government. These occurrences not only created horrible results for Germany's economy, they had an overall affect on the German people in many different social groups. The worldwide economic crisis, which followed upon four terrible years of war and the hyperinflation of the sass, had a profound effect on Germany's social fabric. "4 It is possible to see within Germany's class system that the depression had a somewhat negative effect on all levels of class.

The great depression not only affected Germany's working class, with high unemployment rates resulting from it; it also caused problems for the upper class, middle class, landowners and farmers. This lead to a large amount of political uncertainty and can even be suggested was one of the reasons for the rise of the unionism party. During the war the working class made up the largest percentage of Germany's population at around 70 percent. 5 Unfortunately this couldn't last and in 1929 Germany's unemployment rate had increased by an average of 35 percent from the previous year. Germany had the highest unemployment rate of all the affected countries, even higher than the US. 7 It was suggested to overcome the crisis that workers should work an extra two hours per day for the next ten years with no extra pay, this created a large amount of tension between the government and the workers. While citizens had hoped their standards of living would improve at the end of the war, inflation meant this wasn't going to happen. Standards of living became much worse due to the mass unemployment.

Most families had to rely on government payments and food rations to support themselves. It is no wonder that the German working class citizens were unhappy with the government when "persistent severe depression and accompanying mass unemployment can cause great social distress, lead to public disorder and an escalating discontent with the established order. "9 For those who could keep their Jobs, there were still large preferences in wages both between the level of skills workers had, and of course the difference between men and women.

A skilled worker for example would earn thirty six percent more than an unskilled worker in the same company, a miner with qualifications would earn forty six percent more than his assistant. Toothiest wages unfortunately were still not enough for people to provide for their families. Women earned around half of what a man in the same role would have earned. This meant that they were less likely to be unemployed as they could be expected to perform the same Jobs as men at a far lower cost.

However some families were lucky enough to take in a dual income with both parents being employed, this caused a lost of anger with the unemployed who were unable to provide for their families at all. Horsefly Carter wrote in 1932 that the registered unemployment rate was over six million people, and around forty percent of these held trade union memberships. 11 Trade unions were very important in helping keep the working class moral high and ensuring that fair shares of gross domestic product went into wages, and while successful in doing so, they were often blamed for putting stress on the economy.

After the war, the working class were divided politically, with two thirds of the followers of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPS) moving their support to the communists. "The working class was now split in two. One half supported the republic and a pragmatic policy of social reform; the other struggled to replace it by a Soviet-style dictatorship. "12 It's no wonder that the Nazi's political campaign had a focus on putting Germans back in work and won over a large amount of loyalty from the working class.

After the war, it was believed that the structure society had not changed too much for he bourgeois,13 who only made up a very small part of Germany's population, under one fifth of it. 14 Generally the middle class included a diverse mix of artisans, shopkeepers, small businesses and service industry workers. It also included what is known as white-collar workers for example craftsmen, technicians, clerks and schoolteachers. Of all theses different groups, people who relied on their craft suffered most. 5 We can blame the transformation of commerce and industrial concentration that lead to many craftsman's workshops and small stores closing, 16 or becoming repair shops. 7 Many middle class families had already lost their savings during the time of inflation and had their self sufficient economy threatened. 18 By looking at the Reichstag elections in September 1930 we can see that a large portion of the voting population sided with the Nazi party at eighteen point two percent of the vote, opposed to the previous year where they only held two point six percent of the vote.

The middle class voters felt that their social and economic existences were threatened and that Hitter's parties offered more for their interests. 19 The middle class population however did not act as a whole politically, with Catholics continuing to support the center party and many people believing that the Nazis' policies were uncertain. Hitter's tactic against department stores had many small business owners' votes. 20 Even the upper classes of German society were affected somewhat by the depression.

Politically, the agricultural aspect of German society had a very dominant role in certain areas during the depression. For example, the owners of land in the "rye belt, in the east of the Reich"34 who were heavily influenced by Prussian Junkers,35 believed that any "far-reaching economic measures"36 that would work against them, would have become a threat to republican regime, which lead these land owners to believe that any attempt to solve the economic crisis was a "question of the survival of democracy'. 37 A group known as the National Christian Farmers and Rural

Population Party (CCNY) went their own way, away from nationalist and conservative parties to assist land owners in their struggles by organizing large rallies for farmers, stopping the government from seizing farms that had gone bankrupt and even Joined forces with an extremist organization consul to begin a campaign of terrorism. 38 Unfortunately for landowners, these and any other rural protest campaigns did not have the stamina to continue which lead to a large amount of rural areas filled politically by Nazi parties, winning voters over with campaigns aimed specifically at the agricultural class. The depression proved to be an indication for the communists that capitalism had flaws, and they used this to gain support and eventually destroy social democracy. Instead of trying to overcome these flaws to improved democracy, a majority of Germany fell to Hitter's promises that he would fix all conflicts between classes and create a harmonious society. 40 The great depression in Germany had a strong effect on not only the world's political scene but on the different power relationships within society, on the different behaviors of individuals and on government policies.

In Germany the political situation was influenced by two things, the rapid growth of the right wing anti-democratic forces and the decline of the democratic parliamentary system. This was made possible when millions of impoverished people gave up on democracy and moved to follow the Nazi's. 41 The great depression had an effect on multiple social groups in Germany, not even the very wealthy or aristocracy came out unscathed. The working class suffered the most with unemployment rates soaring in some cases families living in extreme poverty.

While they thought the standards of living would rise after the war, Germany as highly affected by the economic crisis. The working class were then divided over their votes as many previous believers in democracy changed their votes towards communism as their campaign promises seemed more effective in getting them a better life and saving Germany's economy. From the middle class, it was the people who relied on trade and craft who suffered the most financially, with many going bankrupt and being forced to close or become repair shops.

As many of the middle class had lost their savings prior to the depression during the years of Germany's hyperinflation, they too had their self sufficiency and economy threatened. While they were still as politically divided as the working class, this threat of no future led many to change their votes to support the Nazi's. Even the aristocracy didn't go through the depression unscathed. Most lost all their power, politically and economically and were forced to give up land and important properties for public use, with little compensation.

Even young people were affected with very negative outcomes for school leavers, due to the level of unemployment, even apprenticeships were scarcely available. Even those who had graduated from higher education struggled to find themselves Jobs, which lead university students to doubt the current politicians and lead most of them toward Hitter's revolutionary policies. Even the agricultural classes were affected by the depression with the price and demand for things like rye dropping by large amounts.

Many farmers couldn't adjust to these conditions, this often resulted in them having to sell their land and become peasants. While these farmers had support politically to begin with, most found themselves siding with the communist parties when this support ran out. Overall, the great depression had negative effects on all of Germany's social classes and created a large amount of unemployment and poverty. It also caused a large amount of political uncertainty in many classes who previously had iron clad political opinions and votes.

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Germany and the Great Depression - Almedauniversity

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The great depression, a huge economic slump caused by a crash in the American stock market, had a global effect on a large number of countries, especially those who manufactured food and raw materials. L Germany was in a particularly bad place financially after world war one and had been borrowing a large amount of...

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Hitler's speaking skills brings him to lead the Nazis.

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Hitler's speaking skills brings him to lead the Nazis.

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In a nation broken from war, Hitler seems like the next needed savior. Germany is desperate for change and votes the Nazi party into power with 33% support. Later Hitler is brought to the leading position of the Nazi party because of his powerful speaking skills. He promised that Germany would be reborn. He told the population that he could give them a better life. This all seemed exceptional to the lower middle class, the leading population.

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Hitler Comes to Power In the early 1930s, the mood in Germany was grim. The worldwide economic depression had hit the country especially hard, and millions of people were out of work. Still fresh in the minds of many was Germany's humiliating defeat fifteen years earlier during World War I, and Germans lacked confidence in their weak government, known as the Weimar Republic. These conditions provided the chance for the rise of a new leader, Adolf Hitler, and his party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi party for short.

Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. He promised the disenchanted a better life and a new and glorious Germany. The Nazis appealed especially to the unemployed, young people, and members of the lower middle class (small store owners, office employees, craftsmen, and farmers).

The party's rise to power was rapid. Before the economic depression struck, the Nazis were practically unknown, winning only 3 percent of the vote to the Reichstag (German parliament) in elections in 1924. In the 1932 elections, the Nazis won 33 percent of the votes, more than any other party. In January 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor, the head of the German government, and many Germans believed that they had found a savior for their nation.

Key Dates

June 28, 1919
Treaty of Versailles ends World War I
In the Treaty of Versailles, which followed German defeat in World War I, the victorious powers (the United States, Great Britain, France, and other allied states) impose severe terms on Germany. Germany, under threat of invasion, is forced to sign the treaty. Among other provisions, Germany accepts responsibility for the war and agrees to make huge payments (known as reparations), limit its military to 100,000 troops, and transfer territory to its neighbors. The terms of the treaty lead to widespread political discontent in Germany. Adolf Hitler gains support by promising to overturn them.

October 24, 1929
Stock market crash in New York
The plummet in the value of stocks that is associated with the New York stock market crash brings a rash of business bankruptcies. Widespread unemployment occurs in the United States. The "Great Depression," as it is called, sparks a worldwide economic crisis. In Germany, six million are unemployed by June 1932. Economic distress contributes to a meteoric rise in the support for the Nazi party. As a result, the Nazi party wins the votes of almost 40 percent of the electorate in the Reichstag (German parliament) elections of July 1932. The Nazi party becomes at this point the largest party in the German parliament.

November 6, 1932
Nazis lose support in parliamentary elections
In the Reichstag (German parliament) elections of November 1932, the Nazis lose almost two million votes from the previous elections of July. They win only 33 percent of the vote. It seems clear that the Nazis will not gain a majority in democratic elections, and Adolf Hitler agrees to a coalition with conservatives. After months of negotiations, the president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, will appoint Hitler chancellor of Germany in a government seemingly dominated by conservatives on January 30, 1933.

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Hitler Comes to Power In the early 1930s, the mood in Germany was grim. The worldwide economic depression had hit the country especially hard, and millions of people were out of work. Still fresh in the minds of many was Germany's humiliating defeat fifteen years earlier during World War I, and Germans lacked confidence in their weak government, known as the Weimar Republic.

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The effects of the Great Depression lead to the rise of Nazism

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The effects of the Great Depression lead to the rise of Nazism

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Prior to the Great Depression, the Nazi party was small, they only had 2.6% of the vote and it was declining. During the Great Depression the mood was grim, millions of people were unemployed. Hitler and the Nazi party placed the economic depression on the rise of Communism and the Jews. With this anger towards certain groups, Hitler was able to tap into that and propel the Nazi party to great heights.The Nazi party ended up winning 33% of the vote eventually. Due to the growth of the Nazi party, the Bruening Government turned to Article 48 to issue presidential degrees. After some time, Hitler became chancellor and ended up taking the government over with Nazism.

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When Papen was unable to obtain a parliamentary majority to govern, his opponents among President Hindenburg's advisers forced him to resign. His successor, General Kurt von Schleicher, dissolved the Reichstag again. In the ensuing elections in November 1932, the Nazis lost ground, winning 33.1 percent of the vote.

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The NSDAP's growth from the use of nationalism.

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The NSDAP's growth from the use of nationalism.

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In 1930, Germany’s current economic state was on the brink of collapsing. Especially with Hindenburg relying on Article 48 to make laws. In fear that the nation may resort to communism or a dictatorship, the promising NSDAP (Nazi party)  gained support. The poor, rich, and middle class started funding and supporting the NSDAP, bringing them to hold 230 out of 608 seats (38%). In 1933, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor as an attempt to get the NSDAP party on his side. From there Hitler planned to use Article 48 to get to a position of total power.

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The Great Depression lead to political instability which allowed Hitler and the Nazi Party to rise in power.

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The Great Depression lead to political instability which allowed Hitler and the Nazi Party to rise in power.

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Hitler joined the German Workers Party and worked as a propaganda person. Hitler tried to start a national revolution in Bavaria, it didn’t work. While his prison sentence was 5 years, he got let out after 9 months. Also, Hitler’s main enemies were the Jews and Marxism. After the Depression, there was political instability and much Nazi propaganda which got Hitler a 36% vote. He then later became chancellor of Germany.

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Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany's defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May-June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers' Party in Munich (September 1919). In 1920 he was put in charge of the party's propaganda and left the army to devote himself to improving his position within the party, which in that year was renamed the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ( Nazi). Conditions were ripe for the development of such a party. Resentment at the loss of the war and the severity of the peace terms added to the economic woes and brought widespread discontent. This was especially sharp in Bavaria, due to its traditional separatism and the region's popular dislike of the republican government in Berlin. In March 1920 a coup d'état by a few army officers attempted in vain to establish a right-wing government.

Munich was a gathering place for dissatisfied former servicemen and members of the Freikorps, which had been organized in 1918-19 from units of the German army that were unwilling to return to civilian life, and for political plotters against the republic. Many of these joined the Nazi Party. Foremost among them was Ernst Röhm, a staff member of the district army command, who had joined the German Workers' Party before Hitler and who was of great help in furthering Hitler's rise within the party. It was he who recruited the "strong arm" squads used by Hitler to protect party meetings, to attack socialists and communists, and to exploit violence for the impression of strength it gave. In 1921 these squads were formally organized under Röhm into a private party army, the SA (Sturmabteilung). Röhm was also able to secure protection from the Bavarian government, which depended on the local army command for the maintenance of order and which tacitly accepted some of his terrorist tactics.

Conditions were favourable for the growth of the small party, and Hitler was sufficiently astute to take full advantage of them. When he joined the party, he found it ineffective, committed to a program of nationalist and socialist ideas but uncertain of its aims and divided in its leadership. He accepted its program but regarded it as a means to an end. His propaganda and his personal ambition caused friction with the other leaders of the party. Hitler countered their attempts to curb him by threatening resignation, and because the future of the party depended on his power to organize publicity and to acquire funds, his opponents relented. In July 1921 he became their leader with almost unlimited powers. From the first he set out to create a mass movement, whose mystique and power would be sufficient to bind its members in loyalty to him. He engaged in unrelenting propaganda through the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter ("Popular Observer," acquired in 1920), and through meetings whose audiences soon grew from a handful to thousands. With his charismatic personality and dynamic leadership, he attracted a devoted cadre of Nazi leaders, men whose names today live in infamy-Johann Dietrich Eckart (who acted as a mentor for Hitler), Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Julius Streicher.

The climax of this rapid growth of the Nazi Party in Bavaria came in an attempt to seize power in the Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch of November 1923, when Hitler and General Erich Ludendorff tried to take advantage of the prevailing confusion and opposition to the Weimar Republic to force the leaders of the Bavarian government and the local army commander to proclaim a national revolution. In the melee that resulted, the police and the army fired at the advancing marchers, killing a few of them. Hitler was injured, and four policemen were killed. Placed on trial for treason, he characteristically took advantage of the immense publicity afforded to him. He also drew a vital lesson from the Putsch-that the movement must achieve power by legal means. He was sentenced to prison for five years but served only nine months, and those in relative comfort at Landsberg castle. Hitler used the time to dictate the first volume of , his political autobiography as well as a compendium of his multitudinous ideas.

Hitler's ideas included inequality among races, nations, and individuals as part of an unchangeable natural order that exalted the " Aryan race" as the creative element of mankind. According to Hitler, the natural unit of mankind was the Volk ("the people"), of which the German people was the greatest. Moreover, he believed that the state existed to serve the Volk-a mission that to him the Weimar German Republic betrayed. All morality and truth were judged by this criterion: whether it was in accordance with the interest and preservation of the Volk. Parliamentary democratic government stood doubly condemned. It assumed the equality of individuals that for Hitler did not exist and supposed that what was in the interests of the Volk could be decided by parliamentary procedures. Instead, Hitler argued that the unity of the Volk would find its incarnation in the Führer, endowed with perfect authority. Below the Führer the party was drawn from the Volk and was in turn its safeguard.

The greatest enemy of Nazism was not, in Hitler's view, liberal democracy in Germany, which was already on the verge of collapse. It was the rival Weltanschauung, Marxism (which for him embraced social democracy as well as communism), with its insistence on internationalism and economic conflict. Beyond Marxism he believed the greatest enemy of all to be the Jew, who was for Hitler the incarnation of evil. There is debate among historians as to when anti-Semitism became Hitler's deepest and strongest conviction. As early as 1919 he wrote, "Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition. Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether." In Mein Kampf, he described the Jew as the "destroyer of culture," "a parasite within the nation," and "a menace."

During Hitler's absence in prison, the Nazi Party languished as the result of internal dissension. After his release, Hitler faced difficulties that had not existed before 1923. Economic stability had been achieved by a currency reform and the Dawes Plan had scaled back Germany's World War I reparations. The republic seemed to have become more respectable. Hitler was forbidden to make speeches, first in Bavaria, then in many other German states (these prohibitions remained in force until 1927-28). Nevertheless, the party grew slowly in numbers, and in 1926 Hitler successfully established his position within it against Gregor Strasser, whose followers were primarily in northern Germany.

The advent of the Depression in 1929, however, led to a new period of political instability. In 1930 Hitler made an alliance with the Nationalist Alfred Hugenberg in a campaign against the Young Plan, a second renegotiation of Germany's war reparation payments. With the help of Hugenberg's newspapers, Hitler was able for the first time to reach a nationwide audience. The alliance also enabled him to seek support from many of the magnates of business and industry who controlled political funds and were anxious to use them to establish a strong right-wing, antisocialist government. The subsidies Hitler received from the industrialists placed his party on a secure financial footing and enabled him to make effective his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed, based on the proclamation of his faith that Germany would awaken from its sufferings to reassert its natural greatness. Hitler's dealings with Hugenberg and the industrialists exemplify his skill in using those who sought to use him. But his most important achievement was the establishment of a truly national party (with its voters and followers drawn from different classes and religious groups), unique in Germany at the time.

Unremitting propaganda, set against the failure of the government to improve conditions during the Depression, produced a steadily mounting electoral strength for the Nazis. The party became the second largest in the country, rising from 2.6 percent of the vote in the national election of 1928 to more than 18 percent in September 1930. In 1932 Hitler opposed Hindenburg in the presidential election, capturing 36.8 percent of the votes on the second ballot. Finding himself in a strong position by virtue of his unprecedented mass following, he entered into a series of intrigues with conservatives such as Franz von Papen, Otto Meissner, and President Hindenburg's son, Oskar. The fear of communism and the rejection of the Social Democrats bound them together. In spite of a decline in the Nazi Party's votes in November 1932, Hitler insisted that the chancellorship was the only office he would accept. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg offered him the chancellorship of Germany. His cabinet included few Nazis at that point.

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Adolf Hitler - Nazi Leader, WW2, Germany

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Adolf Hitler - Adolf Hitler - Nazi Leader, WW2, Germany: Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany's defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May-June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers' Party in Munich (September 1919).