Table of Contents
Introduction
Nazism comes from the phrase National Socialist German Workers' Party. During the first and the second world war a lot of events were carried out that left a lot of impact in today’s history . One of the countries which was hardly hit by such events is Germany .In Germany one of the event that happened during this time was the formation of the Nazism party. This in particular was the practice as well as the ideology of the Nazi Germany and the Nazi party. It involved anti-Semitism as well as biological racism. This party or rather ideology did present itself by use of strategies, policicies and philosophies meaning that it was ultra-right from politics.
It is worth noting that this party as well as its ideology believed in the mightiness of one race as well as believing that Germany was meant for Aryan nation. It was also asserted by those who were associated with the Nazism that the race which posed greatest risk as far a Germany’s Aryan race was concerned were the Jews. They argued that Jews were overdependence race who attached themselves to the movements and ideologies so as to secure their preservation or to avoid being eliminated .
It is worth noting also that, the worst economic hard times popularly known as the Great Depression was a period which started prior to the second world war and extended to 1940s. It is considered as the event which had a lot of impact to the entire world economy. It is therefore used as a lesson in the 21 century to show how , in case measures are not taken, economy of the world can turn down. It was in attempt of saving Germany from the impacts of the worlds economics hard time, that Germany saw it necessary to have an economy which was managed as well as being neither communist nor capitalist. The capitalist and the communist were accused by Nazis that they were involved with the Jews interests as well as their influences. The support for nationalist which is a kind of socialism was declared mainly to provide German economic security, considerable wages, taking care of the welfare of the workers as well as protection of exploitation from capitalist(Turner, p. 77).
One of the greatest crimes done against humanity was done by the Nazis party .It was the worst crime recorded in history and involved millions of Jews being killed as well as other people who were not affiliate to the Aryans also losing their lives. What facilitated this action was a consolidation of the following aspects.
- Passive consent or active cooperation of a major portion of the population of the Germany .
- The fact that the Nazis had control over the machinery’s state.
- Anti-Semitism which was deeply rooted and also being common to all the European countries affiliated to Christianity.
It is important to note that this tragic event took place after the expanded economic as well as political crisis of the early 1920s.
Germany became a democracy after the defeat of the World War I. The new government that was formed by the liberal parties as well as the social democrats .A lot of inflation as a result of the war followed and this had an enormous impact on the economy of Germany. Also the inflation was characterized by the high number of unemployed people at that time as well as people fearing that the 19th century poverty would hit the country again. At all this time, the Jews were being blamed as the root cause of all these problems.
During this period Hitler was the chief leader of the Nazi party and it was gaining popularity since it was getting more votes than the other parties during the elections. This popularity was as a result of the promises which were being given to the citizens and such promises included the restoration of job opportunities, restoration of honor to the Germans as well as restoration of order in the political arena. When the Hitler’s party came to rule, democracy as well as all the human rights were suspended and thereafter Germany was ruled by use of dictatorship.
Discussion
Hitler, being a leader in Germany, he is believed to have joined the German Worker’s Party at an early age of 30 years. This was in 1919 and he was determined to do anything possible to ensure its success.
It is important for the writer to mention that the Worker’s party had a total of seven membersat the time who formed its committee. Hitler at the moment was one of them. Hitler had to come up with a brilliant idea which would see the members of his party increasing so as to form a larger party and eventually form a government which would be endorsed by the people. To do this he had to come up with means of ensuring that his party was popular and in this regard enjoy the largest portion of the votes during elections(Redles, p. 12). To achieve his objectives, he saw it necessary to ask the seven members committee, including him to look for more people to join the party. This was to be realized by ensuring that each member had to convince their friends to join the party. This saw only afew of more friends attending the public rallies that followed. They also tried to print invitation cards but all this effort was in vain.
An advertisement was also planned to be placed in a newspaper and Hitler had to assist in achieving this. Also, with his assistance a public meeting which was attended by a significantly high number of people was conducted .The committee members were worried that there would be no enough people to fill the place but as a result it was attended by more audience than expected. This meeting was held on 16th October, 1919.During the meeting, it was scheduled that Hitler would be the second speaker. This was his first time to appear in such meeting and also the audience were in doubt that he was in a position to hold such high profile positions. To their surprise , Hitler was in a position to address them and astound them with high emotions and at time he was being hysterical when making speech. This emerged to be an important move as far as his political career was concerned.
He was even quoted commenting on the manner in which he was pleased and satisfied to have addressed such a crowd for the very first time during his political career. The people who attended the public meeting were generous enough to donate some money which in return would be used to advance the popularity of Hitler’s party. The money got in use and this time round , the leaders, Hitler included saw it necessary to use it to buy more printing leaflets for advertising. Since Hitler identified himself as worth and also proved to be charismatic during the public meeting, he was made by the party of the German Workers’ to be the main figure during the meeting. It is during his meeting that he started paling against the Versailles Treaty as well as delivering lecture which were considered to be against Semitic. Jews started to be blamed as the ones causing problems in Germany .This eventually resulted to more people attending the public meetings as well as more and more people joining the party.
In 1920, Hitler moved an extra mile by taking the control of the party. He also decided to make young people to join the party. Those people were from the army which he was previously serving before joining the party. A colleague by the name Captain Ernst assisted him to recruit the young men to the party. Captain Ernst also played a very crucial part in the rise of Hitler to power.
In Munich, there were many estranged troops as well as ex-troops who were craving for exploration as well as a aversion for calm which was brought about by the Versailles Treaty and the consequential democratic republic. All of them ended up joining the party of German workers in large numbers making the party more popular as well as powerful. This was also regarded or rather considered as a very crucial part towards popularizing the German’s Workers Party. Again, this put Hitler in a better position as it was now becoming much easier for him to rise to power.
At this juncture, there were other several groups affiliated to other political parties which were interested in having more members in their political groups. Marxists in this case were more successful and as a result, a lot of anxiety started to grow among the German people fearing that the situation might turn to be worse like in Russia-Emerging of Communist rebellion in Germany. Hitler resolved to detest it by associating Jews with Marxism (Goodrick-Clarke, p. 42). Hitler was also aware of the manner in which a political group which does not support possible Communist rebellion may possibly take part on the Germans people anxiety of and ultimately gain support.
It was in February 1920 when Hitler became delighted due to the fact that he conducted a public meeting which was attended by many people than expected as well as a high number of Communists. This, according to Hitler was translated to be a success towards achievements of his stipulated goals and now he had no doubt that he was almost to achieve what he was after; power.
The shouting between the German Worker’s and the Communists is what preceded the speech of Hitler during that meeting. During his speech, he delineated what the German Worker’s party was after and these are commonly known as the 25 points of the Germans Workers Party. He also stated the platform of the political party and included reforms in education, rejecting of the Versailles Treaty, Union of all the German Reich, claim for more additional territories, rejecting Jews citizenship or rather Jews were not considered to be Germans ,rejection of religions which were considered to endanger German race and lastly to establish a strong government which would over see implementation of the required legislation. The crowd was also asked to approve all the twenty five points and as they did, Hitler counted the meeting as a major achievement in his political career.
He also saw it necessary to identify a symbol which would be associated with his movement and what he chose was the infamous swastika(Allen, p. 58). This symbol was not invented by Hitler but used to exist even when he attended Benedictine school. The name given to it was mainly because the monetary was beautified using the swastikas. This was an important symbol since upon being placed in the white circle bearing a red background, it eventually made the party more popular than it was before. According to Hitler, the red in the symbol was a representation of social idea while national idea was represented by the white color. Hitler identified the mission of the party as a struggle for victory as well as success in creative work. The idea of creative work was considered to be anti-Semitic ever and always.
After meeting some of his achievements and eventually realizing that he was on his way to power, he decided to change the name of his party from German Workers’ Party to National Socialists German Workers’ Party. The short form of the name of this party is Nazi. The party that was now strong was composed of people who were against Christianity, racist as well as being anti-Christian. As seen in the discussion above, the leaders of the Nazi party were very aware that if they used people to gain popularity, they would definitely rise to power and eventually achieve their egos.
During the upshot of the Great depression in the year 1929, the Nazi party had a very good chance of snatching power in Germany and eventually started to carry out genocide. This is because they had the right people in the office and this facilitated their rise to power. It is worth noting that although Hitler was so much involved with helping Germans rise to power, he was not a German himself. Hitler was an Australian. This was very ironical considering all the efforts that he put as well as sacrifice so as to see his party becoming the German government.
In 1933, Hitler’s party rose to power in January (Read, p. 142). Hitler now had all the power of Germany. He had now to organize how to head Germany while in the position where he worked over the line of his life. This is when the Nazi-led German started to experience Hitler’s government which was dominated by his dictatorship. The massacre of Jews eventually started upon Hitler assuming the office. It is during this period when Hitler was in office that the Jewish community were denied all their rights and also executed by Hitler’s government. This period spanned for more than 12 years and during this time Jews’ properties were destroyed, many were killed and others lost their citizenship. Among the other things which they were denied included using of public telephones, using transport systems as well as being denied the right to use public infrastructure including public amenities such as schools and hospitals. This means they were not being treated as Germans, they were being looked at by Germans as inferior human beings.
Conclusion
The rise of Nazism was mainly facilitated by the efforts of Hitler who was determined to do everything he could to ensure that he was in power. He played politics by promising people things which he could not deliver once in power. The workers were convinced to join and support his party upon hearing that Hitler’s party would ensure economic recovery and increase job opportunities. Although these were the positive promises, there were also negative promises such as those in favor of Germans and at the same time against Jews. Once in power, he became a dictator and facilitated exploitation of Jews. All these things were done using Nazi party.
