The results of WWI left Germany in a bad situation. Problems came up one after the other, setting Germany up for the rise of Hitler. Some of these conditions were the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, inflation, and unemployment. These events happened in a series and created chaos.
The war is over, but Germany had a difficult decision to make in signing the Treaty of Versailles. It was either sign the treaty and pay the humungous debt that came from the war guilt clause, or don't sign it and be invaded by the four countries against Germany at that time. The people of Germany didn't feel like it was Germany's sole responsibility to pay off the debt of the war, so there was already disagreements with the government right after the war. Hitler would use the signing of the treaty against the Weimar government. He believed in the idea of putting "Germany first", so he would definitely not agreed with the terms of the treaty: he has too much pride.
Now that Germany was stuck with this treaty and the extreme debt, they had to pay it off. Meanwhile, the people are still recovering from the war, trying to put their lives back together. However, since some land was taken away, and in the process they lost good farmland and industry, it was more difficult to meet ends meet, much less to come up with 33 billion dollars! To try and pay off the debt quickly and get the country back into shape, the Weimar government decided to print more money. This created a hyper inflation, and now money was not worth very much. Hitler's party was still not very known, but he did begin to speak at these points in time: to try and rally people into joining. Hitler started a putsch at a Right wing meeting, and even committed murder. These months in jail brought attention to him. Who was this guy?
America had begun to help Germany through the Dawes Plan and Young Plan. These allowed for Germany to pay the debt off over a long period of time and they also helped with Germany's industry. Now that Germany was getting back on its feet, there was no need for despair in the Weimar government. However, then the Great Depression arrived. Once America stopped feeding Germany, they suffered. With the Great Depression came unemployment and other negative effects. The progress that they were making was all for naught, and the people were in desperate need of something, someone, a new thing to look forward to. Hitler was there, with the same ideas for Germany and was still against all that he said he was. But now that the people wanted a different approach to the government to have some sort of change, he became more desirable. Before the Great Depression, only 2.6% of the vote belonged to the Nazis. After the Great Depression, that percentage rose to 25.8%. The people thought nothing could be worse than what they were going through at that time, and decided to give the Nazi party a chance.
Hitler attained the Chancellor position through democratic means, and earned everything legally. He was the picture of strength and hope that the people wanted to see. He didn't make any false promises, what you see is what you get. No one had a reason to be against him. This gave the party power: now that they had the people behind them, they could take over and do things their way. No one suspected that Hitler would be that much of a threat, and more members of the Nazi gained power. The fact that Hitler did everything legally was one of the methods used by Hitler to gain power in Germany. No one could charge him, because he had not done anything to deserve it. Other methods were propaganda and concentration camps.
Hitler from the beginning was against the Treaty of Versailles. He had a lot of pride in Germany, and did not like seeing it grovel at the feet of the "Big Four" who made Germany sign it. With this propaganda, people agreed and wanted to put the country back together. Also, there were many campaigns on being the perfect country and such: this created an illusion of organization and strength to the people. This is what they need!
When one has competitors, one must fight it out the best they can and hope they win, right? This is not what Hitler did. He transported his political opponents to concentration camps. This mostly consisted of communists and socialists. He made sure that he was the only choice for the people. The leaders had already fallen into place, so it only made sense to everyone that Hitler take over. They believed him, he had done everything legally, he was something different from what they had. Anything could be better than what they had, right?
The war guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles, inflation, and the Great Depression - unemployment - were the conditions that allowed Hitler to fall gracefully into place as the dictator of Germany. Things can't get worse. Then Hitler maintained his rise to power by legal means (innocent intentions), propaganda, and concentration camps.
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I think you cover many important points in Hitler's rise to power. However, you could have included more analysis/explanation to back up your information. For example, why weren't Hitler and the Nazis more effective when they first came onto the scene?
ReplyDeleteAlso, be sure to include analysis of different interpretations, such as the of effects of different plans agreed to by Germany. For example, would you say that the Dawes Plan was partially responsible for Germany's economic crash?
I like that you mentioned how Hitler legally took power, which is a key factor.
Overall the paper is good, and I would give it an 11. Just a general reminder: make sure you are very explicit and leave nothing up to the reader to fill in. Also try to include different interpretations, which would boost you to the next markband.
In your post you provided many relevant points in which you described how they led to Hitler's rise but some seemed to be extremely narrative. Other parts of your post you do include some explanation which was really good and informative, but the rest seemed to be stating the facts. Although you didnt include a clear thesis, or atleast i couldnt pick one out right away, you did prove you understand the subject. Overall i would give you a 10.
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