The Coming of the Third Reich

The last discriminatory laws against minority religions were abolished by 1871, but Jews still endured social discrimination that made it difficult for them to gain careers in civil service, higher education, and the military. They formed 1% of the German population (23) and lived mainly in the major cities. Intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews increased. There were prominent Jews in finance, retail, journalism, science, universities, and the arts. Unlike Germany’s other ethnic minorities, the Jewish population was economically affluent and, rather than having their own political party, they were involved with the mainstream political parties.

The antisemitism promoted by fringe politicians like the Christian Social Party and Hermann Ahlwardt represented a turning point. In the past, antisemitism focused on Jews as non-Christians and sought to convert them to Christianity. In the 19th century, antisemites came to see the Jewish people as a separate and inferior race and advocated for their “total exclusion” (27).

Writers from diverse political backgrounds spread antisemitic ideas, with socialists blaming Jews for capitalism and nationalists claiming that Jews were eroding German culture. These writers were criticized by their colleagues and “the vast majority of respectable opinion in Germany […] remained opposed to racism of this kind” (29). Still, while fringe antisemitic politicians lost ground, antisemitic ideas and caricatures crept into Germany’s main political parties, with antisemitism appealing to far-right Catholics and “economically imperiled lower-middle-class groups” (30). At the dawn of the 20th century, antisemitism seemed more rampant in Russia and France. However, the antisemitic argument that Jews were disproportionately represented in influential professions like journalism became more mainstream in Germany, and there was “a new, rabble-rousing, demagogic style of politics that had freed itself form the customary restraints of political decorum” (31).

Prominent cultural figures like the composer Richard Wagner and the novelist Julius Langbehn supported racial antisemitism and used violent rhetoric about Jews. Wagner’s followers popularized the term “Aryan” to describe the German race, which was originally coined by the far-right French writer Arthur de Gobineau.

By the 1890s, antisemitic writers like Houston Steward Chamberlain adopted the concept of social Darwinism as a “struggle for survival” (34) between races, with Germans being the height of human evolution. Anthropologist Ludwig Woltmann suggested that Germany seek Lebensraum (living space) by expanding into countries inhabited by racially inferior Slavic peoples. Not all writers who promoted social Darwinism were antisemites: They did not have “a coherent or unified ideology” (36). However, some writers would inspire the Nazis by arguing for eugenics and policies to “reduce or eliminate the weak” (35), such as killing mentally ill people. By World War I, these ideas had entered the medical and political mainstream, with one socialist proposing that welfare reforms should include the sterilization of the mentally ill, alcoholics, and the chronically unemployed. While such ideas did not have much influence on government policies until the Nazis came to power, three assumptions from arguments for “racial hygiene” (37) became widespread: heredity had a major role in shaping human behavior, such as crime; governments had an obligation to “manage the population” (38); and people should be categorized based on their value toward improving the race.

Racial hygiene and antisemitism represented the “general secularization of thought in the late nineteenth century” (38), with intellectuals rebelling against Christian and middle-class values. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche embodied this trend, as he “argued for the individual to be freed from the conventional moral restrictions of the time” (39). Nietzsche was strongly against antisemitism, rejected Prussian militarism, and intended his concepts of the “superman” and “will to power” to only apply to the intellectual sphere. However, his ideas were “appropriated” (39) by social Darwinists and far-right nationalists.

Drawing on their misinterpretation of Nietzsche and the German colonizing experience in Africa, right-wing German writers argued “for the creation of a new society ruled by a band of brothers” (40). Such views were enacted by the formation of all-male youth organizations like the Germanic Order, who adopted old Nordic pagan symbols and an Indian symbol, the swastika. The members of such groups rejected the civil rights and democratic values promoted by liberalism, as well as the “sobriety and self-restraint” (40) of the middle class.

In Germany, the new kaiser, Wilhelm II, inherited the throne in 1888 and forced Bismarck to resign as Reich Chancellor. Carl Peters, a colonial official, rose to prominence during Wilhelm II’s reign. Undermined by Bismarck, who had little interest in colonization, Peters founded the Society for German Colonization in 1884 and established what would become the German colony of Tanganyika in East Africa. Peters also founded the Pan-German League, which promoted Germanizing ethnic minorities in Germany itself, and German expansion and colonization.

Members of nationalist organizations like the Pan-German League often believed that the leaders of Germany needed to pursue policies of expansion. Heinrich Class of the Pan-German League wrote a pamphlet, If I Were the Kaiser, that blamed Jews for “subverting German art, destroying German creativity, corrupting the German masses” (47) and declared that the Social Democrats and Jews should lose their civil rights. Nationalists also argued for aggressive Germanization and oppression of the Polish minority; the annexation of countries where a significant number of people spoke German, such as Switzerland and Austria; and building a colonial empire larger than Britain’s. Further, they expressed the idea that Germany was being undermined by outside enemy races like the Slavs and the Latins, and inside by the Jews. In this, the “tough, ruthless” (49) policies of Bismarck continued to be a model. These groups were also “a genuinely populist movement of political mobilization from below” (50).

Although Wilhelm II and the Reich Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann Hollweg had nationalist and antisemitic views, even they rejected the Pan-German League’s extremism. When the former general Konstantin von Gebsattel wrote a manifesto presenting the Pan-Germanic League’s ideas to Hollweg and Wilhelm II, the Kaiser thought of their proposals as “impractical and indeed dangerous to the stability of the monarchy” (51). However, increasing nationalist criticism of Hollweg led him to adopt a harsher foreign policy, contributing to Germany’s involvement in World War I.

When World War I began in 1914, many Germans expected a quick victory. By 1916, Germany was worn down by the demands of the war. Two generals, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, seized authority from civilian politicians, restricting civil liberties and taking control over the economy.

The collapse of the Russian monarchy and the rise of a Communist government, the Soviet Union, caused shockwaves in Germany. Germany’s middle and upper classes “were alarmed by the radical rhetoric of the Communists and saw their counterparts in Russia lose their property and disappear into the torture chambers and prison camps of the Cheka” (57). Moderate Social Democrats also feared that they would be persecuted if a Communist government ever came to power in Germany, as conservatives erroneously viewed Communists and Social Democrats as one in the same.

World War I was a pivotal moment on the path toward Nazism. Hindenburg and Ludendorff’s “silent dictatorship […] had put the precepts of ruthless, authoritarian rule […] and created an ominous precedent for the future” (59). Germany’s loss in World War I exposed Germany to political uncertainty, economic hardship, and the hatred of other countries. While Evans adds this does not mean World War I made the Nazis “inevitable,” the consequences of World War I did allow the Nazis to “have emerged as a serious political force” (59).

During World War I, with public support, the government expected Germany to expand its territory further and establish itself as the dominant power in Europe. When the war ended, Germans anticipated generous peace terms since enemy forces were never actually able to occupy German territory. Instead, Germany lost its navy and much of its “military equipment” (60) and continued to be subjected to an economic blockade. The conditions of peace “were almost universally felt in Germany as an unjustified national humiliation” (60). The German public also came to believe that they only lost World War I because of betrayals by domestic enemies.

Under the influence of US President Woodrow Wilson, World War I was recast as a war fought “to make the world safe for democracy” (61). In response, the German government adopted democratic reforms to try to receive better peace terms. However, this did not stop a rebellion from starting with sailors in the navy, which spread, forcing the Kaiser and the kings and dukes of Germany to abdicate.

Under the Treaty of Versailles that formally ended World War I, “Germany lost a tenth of its population and 13 per cent of its territory” (62). Germany was forced to return the province of Alsace-Lorraine to France, and many other territories to its neighbors. This increased support for Austrian unification with Germany among both the right wing and socialists. However, the Allies (mainly Britain, the United States, Russia, and Italy) prevented any German and Austrian union.

The Allies imposed trials for war crimes on Germany. While the German courts got away with only convicting seven out of 900 accused war criminals, the German public still became convinced that “the whole concept of war crimes, indeed the whole notion of laws of war, was a polemical invention of the victorious Allies based on mendacious propaganda about imaginary atrocities” (65). The Treaty of Versailles also imposed harsh financial reparations on Germany, limited the size of the German army, and forbade Germany from having an air force.

The German public reacted to the Treaty of Versailles with “outrage and disbelief” (66). After World War I, there was a wave of German nationalism, especially in regions that continued to be occupied by the Allies, like Saarland.

The experience of German soldiers during World War I became romanticized in popular culture, such as Ernst Jünger’s novel Storm of Steel. Valorizing the World War I experience was especially common among the middle class. Although some World War I veterans joined left-wing movements, others became hostile toward the participants in the revolts of 1918 or were disillusioned with postwar life and felt driven to align with right-wing nationalists. One right-wing veterans’ organization, the Steel Helmets, called for the cancellation of the Treaty of Versailles, the restoration of the German Empire’s flag, and renewed German expansion.

World War I also “legitimized violence” (72). Debates in the Reichstag became more heated, and street fights and murders between rival political factions became normal. Political parties formed their own paramilitary groups, such as the Social Democrats’ Free Corps, the Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold, and the Communist Party’s Red Front-Fighters’ League. Reacting to a Communist revolt in Berlin, the Free Corps attacked the Communist Party’s Red Army, a group of workers, and killed the Communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. This deepened the division in the Left between the Democratic Socialists and the Communists.

Violence was only used by a “tiny, extremist fringe” (76). Still, it demonstrated the “national trauma, political extremism, violence conflict and revolutionary upheaval” in which “Nazism was born” (76).