The Coming of the Third Reich

Hitler sabotaged efforts to merge the Nazi Party with other far-right parties to maintain control. Under Hitler’s leadership, the Nazis engaged in acts of violence and disruption against political enemies and bystanders they presumed were Jewish. They were given leeway by the Bavarian government, which sympathized with the far-right. From former Free Corps soldiers, the Nazi Party formed their own paramilitary wing, the Storm Division or the stormtroopers, which was led by the army veteran Ernst Röhm.

The Nazis were inspired by Fascist leader Benito Mussolini’s “March on Rome” (184), which resulted in Mussolini taking power as the Prime Minister of Italy. From Mussolini, they adopted the idea of a single, authoritarian Leader, Führer. Italian Fascism and other far-right movements across Europe had much in common with the Nazis: “militarism” (185); a belief that the only social role for women was as wives and mothers; an opposition to Communism, socialism, and liberalism; the replacement of democratic bodies with institutions run by those appointed by a leader; and “a cult of youth” that sought to give rise to “a new form of human being, tough, anti-intellectual, modern, secular and above all fanatically devoted to the cause of his own nation and race” (185).

Hitler seized on several political opportunities to raise his profile in the early 1920s, such as the unpopularity of the French and the use of non-white colonial troops in the occupation of the Rhineland. He received support from Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, who found Hitler supporters from the elite of Munich, and Julius Streicher, who “brought so many supporters into the Nazi Party that it virtually doubled in size overnight” (188).

The new conservative government that replaced the former far-right government in Bavaria by 1921 tolerated the Nazis, disliking their violent tactics but believing “their idealism only needed to be used in a more productive and healthy way” (189). When Röhm was put in charge of a coalition of far-right paramilitaries, the Working Community of Patriotic Fighting Leagues, a former fighter pilot named Hermann Göring rose to prominence.

When in 1923 the Weimar Republic adopted a policy of paying off war reparations while negotiating to have them reduced, it was seen as a “national betrayal” (192) by the far-right. The Bavarian government braced for nationalist revolts. Still, Hitler went ahead with plans for a violent coup or a putsch to try to take over the government of Bavaria and then, joining with other far-right paramilitaries, the Nazis would march on Berlin in an imitation of Mussolini’s March on Rome. Held on November 9, 1923 and starting at a Bavarian beer hall where several leading politicians were speaking, Hitler began his putsch by detaining the politicians. However, it failed, coming to an “ignominious end” (194).

Since Hitler could implicate several Bavarian politicians and army officials, he received a more lenient trial and sentence, even though four policemen were killed during the revolt (196). Although Hitler should have been deported to Austria or received the death penalty for treason, he was sentenced to five years in prison. His trial and sentencing made Hitler a prominent national figure. However, even those on the right condemned the verdict. During his jail term, Hitler wrote a book laying out his views, titled Mein Kampf, or My Struggle.

The book needed to be edited by Hitler’s supporters to make it “more literate and less incoherent” (196). It did not sell very well upon its publication. When Hitler rose to power in 1930, it became a bestseller. My Struggle argued that “racial conflict” was “the motor, the essence of history” (197), that the Jews were connected to Bolshevism and Marxism, and that Germany should expand into Soviet territory. Hitler would be released on parole in 1924.

In the meantime, the Nazi Party had broken up after it was outlawed and the far-right had been defeated in the elections of 1924. By 1925, one of Hitler’s sympathizers in the judiciary had the ban on the Nazis lifted. Hitler reformed the party, made the paramilitary wing subordinate to the party itself, and “worked steadily to undermine the continuing prestige of Ludendorff” (201), his main rival for the leadership of the Nazis.

Hitler was also faced with the fact that several branches of the Nazi Party in northern Germany operated independently. One man who joined one of these branches was Joseph Goebbels, a professor of literature who believed Western culture needed to be revived by the “removal of the Jews” (204). Hitler would bring Goebbels and the other Nazis in line by the 1926 party meeting, which required oaths of loyalty to Hitler.

Instead of appointing subordinates in leadership positions, Hitler had party members compete for them, a managing tactic he would later use in his government. Unable to appeal to urban workers, the Nazis focused on finding voters in rural north Germany who were badly impacted and politically radicalized by both hyperinflation and the efforts to resolve it. The Nazis won over this population by promising farmers they could join a state-supported “corporation” (211) that would bring down labor expenses. The Nazi Party thus grew, and by 1929, its members dominated its first town government of Coburg.

Hitler’s opposition to the Young Plan, a policy proposal to reduce but not abolish war reparations, gained him “a degree of respectability on the mainstream right” (212). The Nazis also began to use “Heil Hitler” as a greeting. Despite their belief that women had no place in politics, the Nazis also accepted female members and established a women’s organization, the German Women’s Order, which was replaced in 1931 with the National Socialist Women’s Organization. The Nazi Party also had a youth organization, which would become known as the Hitler Youth. Other groups for specific demographics that the Nazis established included groups for wounded veterans, trade unions, civil servants, and farmers.

To analyze why people supported the Nazi party, Evans examines diaries kept by members, as well as an essay competition held by the sociologist Theodore Abel, which invited Nazi Party members to write about why they joined the party. The “grass-roots Party activist” (217) generally had not read the works of far-right intellectuals like Spengler or Chamberlain. They tended to be familiar with antisemitic publications, like Theodor Fritsch’s Handbook on the Jewish Question, published in 1888. Most important for recruitment were Hitler’s and Goebbels’ speeches, parades, and posters. Among older Nazis, antisemitism was strongest, “testifying to the latent influence of antisemitic groups active before the war,” while younger Nazis were more drawn to the image of Hitler as leader and the “emphasis on Germanic culture” (218).

Evans argues that the Nazi Party depended on fanatical commitment from its members. While other parties depended on trade unions, businesses, or foreign support for their backing, the Nazis relied on its grassroots supporters. Many of these supporters “were won over to Nazism by Hitler’s demagogy” (224), which promised an end to the political divisions of the Weimar Republic and a return to German unity. Some, especially the Nazi Party’s middle-class recruits and possibly women, did not like Hitler’s speeches or the street violence Nazis engaged in. Instead, for them, “Nazism was more a patriotic ideal than a cult of the individual leader” (225).

Some members left the Nazi Party shortly after joining. However, by the 1930s, the Nazi Party’s membership was expanding beyond its original lower middle-class base. Younger industrial workers, who did not have membership in trade unions, were one source of support for the Nazi Party. More of the upper-class also started to join, once the Nazi Party “became more respectable” (226).

Heinrich Himmler, who became a leading Nazi while Hitler was imprisoned, was among the new generation of Nazi members. A “specialist in selective animal breeding” (228), Himmler believed in the inferiority of the Slavic race. He became the head of Hitler’s bodyguard, the Schutzstaffel, most famously known as the SS. Hitler supported the SS and made it independent under Himmler by 1930, finding the SS more personally loyal to him than the stormtroopers.

By the last years of the 1920s, the Nazi Party was firmly under Hitler’s control with a “rapidly growing cult of personality” (229) surrounding Hitler. He was able to distance himself from the violent actions of the brownshirts, which helped win the Nazi Party support from the middle and upper classes. Even so, “the Nazi Party was still very much on the fringes of politics” (230) as late as 1929. However, an opportunity to expand came with the Great Depression.