Making Sense of National Socialism in an Unstable Society
Post WWI Germany was a country in crisis. Floundering in a system of incompetent leadership, economic disaster, and social unrest, the German public was desperate for change. The Weimar era was composed of bumbling progressivism and uncomfortable changes that provoked only suspicion and distaste among the people it attempted to serve. What the Germans really wanted was not to blindly follow alien models to an unknown and unpromising future, but to recapture the brilliant prosperity of an age gone by, but still very fresh in their memories. By catering to the country’s needs and, above all, to its emotions, the Nazi Party offered the Germans a strength they could have faith in again. Attracted to the strong leaders and broad applicability of National Socialism, more and more Germans turned away from the ineffective democracy of the Weimar Republic in the hopes that the Nazi Party’s strength and vision would lead their shattered country back to glory.
After the chaos of the Communist and Socialist uprisings of 1918-1919, the German constitution was reformed, and the country found itself under democratic rule for the first time. Proportional representation allowed for more small parties in parliament and broader representation of public interest, and Cabinet`s new responsibility to parliament called for greater government accountability. However, the new democratic system had difficulty functioning in the unstable country it was trying to rule.
Political parties under Germany’s pre-World War I authoritarian regime were unfamiliar with the responsibilities of democratic government and the art of political compromise that came with it. The German public, lacking in political education, was unaccustomed to making the political decisions democracy now expected of them.[1] Scepticism and unease hovered over the Weimar as both politicians and civilians alike tried to make the best of the democracy for which they were ill-prepared.
The newly formed Weimar Republic in 1919 was a country of crisis. Germany had been defeated in WWI, resulting in national humiliation. With its pride in tatters and its economy in ruin, Germany found itself facing yet another trial with the Treaty of Versailles. With WWI at an end, the world powers drafted a treaty in which Germany carried the sole responsibility for instigating the war. Germany had not been involved in the drafting of the Treaty, and most of the country held deep resentment for the harsh provisions that included the loss of economically valuable territories and near-complete military disarmament. Arguably, the harshest of these was the controversial Article 231, which forced Germany to pay immense reparations to the war’s victorious countries. [2] These demands threatened to cripple the already damaged and struggling German economy. The Treaty of Versailles had a severely negative effect on the Weimar’s attempts at stabilizing the country. In the eyes of the public, the Treaty was a “permanent economic, psychological, and political burden,”[3] and many blamed the Weimar Republic for their troubles for having accepted and signed the Treaty. Hitler himself saw the Republic as a primary cause of Germany’s misfortunes, and the problems produced by the Versailles Treaty are marked as dominant contributing factors to the later rise of the Nazi Party.[4]
The Treaty of Versailles demanded that Germany pay reparations of enormous value. The required sums were so great and the German economy so poor that the demands were almost impossible to meet. Consequently, the Weimar plummeted into a downward spiral of catastrophic inflation with the 1923 German mark weighing in at one trillionth of its value pre-war value.[5]
In January of 1923, French and Belgian forces took occupation of Ruhr, claiming that Germany was failing to meet their required reparation payments. The German economy almost collapsed entirely. German citizens were sickened by the policy of passive resistance and what they regarded as the Weimar’s weakness.
This distressing environment and its many issues with poverty, riots, and unemployment opened the doors for movements from both the extreme right and left, as each took advantage of the country’s weakened state to push for their own power. Left-wing support increased as leftists prepared for a communist revolution. The era also witnessed a rise in right-wing radicalism, exemplified by Hitler’s Munich beer hall putsch on November 8, 1923, which, though it failed, helped carry Hitler to political fame on a national level.[6] Chancellor Stresemann was forced to declare a state of emergency in order to keep the peace.
The disastrous inflation of the 1920s was taking its toll on the German middle classes. Having lost the prosperity accumulated during the war, inflation was jeopardizing middle class status and turning many toward radical political solutions. Victims of unemployment joined leftist working-class movements, while members still clinging to their middle-class status turned to the conservative right.[7] The people believed that the state had to be strong in order to keep Germans from “being slaves to the Allies and [to] restore the nation’s prosperity, national sovereignty, and integrity.”[8] Germans from both sides of the political spectrum blamed the social and economic decline on the Weimar’s democracy. Each seeking alternatives to the parliamentary republic, they were willing to sacrifice the democratic regime for the prosperity they had lost. The National Socialist party gained support off these sentiments by promising economic and national rejuvenation.[9]
Support of the Weimar Republic stemmed primarily from socialists, Catholics, and the minority middle class. The foundation of Weimar support was precarious, as the republic lost the support of sector after sector of German society.[10] Far left Germans felt threatened by the Weimar, which they viewed as a Middle Class capitalist state. Communists stirred unrest with their belief that the republican regime ought to be overthrown by revolution. Members of the political right associated the Weimar with defeat, shame, weakness, and betrayal of German values. To them, the Weimar Republic was not considered a legitimate government. To set the country back in order, rightists envisioned a return to aristocracy or to the strong authoritarian regimes to which they were accustomed. The old aristocracy was similarly embittered against the system, resenting their loss of privileges that came with the democratic regime. The middle class originally favoured the republic, which they saw as defending their markets from communist revolution. However, this support fell with the decline of the economy for which the middle and lower classes blamed the Weimar.
Along with the lack of support from the general public, the parliamentary government had an equally poor relationship with its military. The government didn’t trust the army to protect it, and their fears were probably justified; after the republic had signed the Versailles Treaty, the army had considered overthrowing the government for a military dictatorship.[11] The army solidly preferred authoritarianism to the democratic Weimar state.
One of the major flaws of the German republic was the ineffectiveness of the Weimar’s political party system. Proportional representation allowed many small parties to be elected to parliament. Ideally, the parties should have been developing broad, open platforms to attract large numbers of voters. However, they were instead very particular, exclusive organizations representing distinct sectors of society. Their programs had little appeal beyond those belonging to the specific group to which they catered. Instead of uniting the country’s people under one solid regime, the Weimar democracy only further strengthened pre-existing societal divisions.[12]
It was almost impossible for parties to obtain a majority in the Reichstag, but the conflicting interests among the parties also made most coalition governments unthinkable. The Reichstag was inefficient and allowed for only slow, limited progress as the parliamentary situation made significant legislation very difficult to pass. Parties were unaccustomed to compromise, conflicts of interest were abundant, and party loyalty was very strict. Tensions often rose so high that parties came to view each other not just as opponents in parliament, but as political enemies.[13]
Right-wing intellectuals played with all sorts of ideas as to the nature of Germany’s woes. While their theories tended to vary, they generally established an association with the Weimar and “cultural decadence.”[14] They called the situation of the Weimar Republic a cultural crisis, and embarked on a campaign to discredit it. They referred to democracy as an illusion. The government was not run by the people, they argued. Instead, the people were victims of manipulation by the political parties and special interest groups behind the Reichstag.
In place of the socially and culturally detrimental Weimar Republic, right-wing intellectuals promoted the concept of a conservative revolution in which the ineffective attempts at progressiveness were abandoned and traditional values and ideals could be politically implemented.[15] This system, which Mueller von den Bruck called a “Third Reich,” would be an alternative to both communism and capitalism. [16] This state would be authoritarian and ruled by an elite.
This revolution desired by conservatives was exactly what Adolf Hitler seemed prepared to deliver. The following excerpts from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s published work Mein Kampf demonstrates the kind of anti-democratic discourse that would have appealed to opponents of the Weimar’s passive policies and slow-moving, divided structure:
“The nationalization of the great masses can never take place by way of half measures...but by a ruthless and fanatically one-sided orientation...[T]he driving force of the most important changes in the world has been...a fanaticism dominating them and in hysteria which drove them forward.”[17]
When viewed in the context of Weimar Germany’s political frustration, it is not surprising that Germans were attracted to the presence and the politics of Adolf Hitler and his party of National Socialists. In a political atmosphere of stalemate and obstruction in the Reichstag, Hitler presented an admirable, authoritative figure who thrived on action and could lead Germany forward to a new age of prominence. Germany was through with democracy. “Rule will always be an affair of a minority,” writes Joseph Goebbels in his novel, Michael, “The people have only the choice to live under open dictatorship, or to die under the hypocritical democracy of cowards.”[18]
Hitler gained public support by doing what leaders of other political parties in the Weimar failed to do. By stretching his policies into a comprehensive movement, Hitler was able to appeal to a broad range of classes and interests. His political territory extended into all sectors of society and provided an alternative for any and all opponents of the democratic Weimar.
Nazis created many Gliederungen to “develop the movement into a microcosm of society” itself.[19] By creating organizations for youth and particular professions, and by linking themselves to existing associations, the Nazi Party introduced programs that alleviated the burdens of the people and gained influence with wider sections of the electorate. Inspired by the politician Karl Lueger, Hitler knew that a successful party had to gain mass appeal by finding a way to be simultaneously socialist and nationalistic.
Hitler’s party played upon the needs and emotions of classes who felt alienated from society as a whole. Nazi economic and social anti-Semitism—a defining party characteristic—appealed to the insecurity of workers and the lower middle-class, who were struggling hard against the capitalism that seemed to be benefiting the Weimar Jewish community.[20] He also fed the fires of German Nationalism, providing a group identity and sense of belonging to all individuals. No matter who they were or what had happened to them, “everyday Germans were part of a distinct [group], better than the others, destined to share in the historical greatness of a larger group.”[21]
Nazism was a modernization of the New Romantic movement promoting 19th century Volkish ideology, and it acquired its mass base after WWI.[22] Nazism ideology built itself around nostalgia for the glorious past life of pre-war crisis Germany. The Nazis took this elitist, nationalistic belief system and transformed it into a mass movement applicable to the German public. The anti-intellectualism of the ideology was suitable for mass consumption and propaganda, while the anti-Semitism appealed to the anti-capitalist fervour of the Weimar public.
The Weimar Republic was built in an era characterized by failure, disappointed hopes, and seemingly unattainable dreams. The philosophy and political idealism of the Weimar’s people grew “increasingly utopian and unrealistic” the more they struggled. [23] Socially, culturally, economically, and politically, the German people could not satisfy themselves with the post-war democratic modernity of the Weimar Republic. Hitler’s National Socialism succeeded in the way it combined old-fashioned Volkish German nationalism with modern mass movement techniques and enhanced the public’s already strong sense of 19th century nostalgia.[24] National Socialism emerged as a system promising action when the Reichstag stalled, authority where democracy was feeble, and cultural and economic rejuvenation where the old society was crumbling. Through the modernization of New Romantic Volkish ideology, Nazism refused to allow Germans to forget the greatness of their past, and convinced them that such greatness could be theirs again. If they could return to prominence and prosperity, Germany could erase the crisis of the Weimar years like a bad dream.
[1] Joseph W.Bendersky, A Concise History of Nazi Germany, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2007), 5.
[2] Ibid, 9.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid, 1.
[5] Ibid, 10.
[6] Paxton, Robert O, Europe in the Twentieth Century (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2005), 244.
[7] Mosse, George L, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964), 238.
[8] Bendersky, 10.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid, 5.
[11] Ibid, 8.
[12] Ibid, 6.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid, 12.
[15] Ibid, 13.
[16] Mosse, 280.
[17] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, in “How Hitler Viewed the Masses,” Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich (New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1966), 9.
[18] Joseph Goebbels, Michael, in “Michael: A German Fate,“ Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich (New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1966), 106.
[19] Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic (New York: Routledge, 2005), 106.
[20] Bendersky, 21.
[21] Ibid, 22.
[22] Mosse, 237.
[23] Ibid, 238.
[24] Ibid, 317.
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