The National Socialist Revolution That Swept Through Germany in 1933, and It Examines the Choices Individual Germans Were Forced to Confront As a Result
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Chapter 5 The National The Scope and Sequence Socialist Individual Choosing to & Society Participate Revolution We & They Judgment, Memory & Legacy The Holocaust Hulton Archive / Stringer / Gey Images / Gey / Stringer Archive Hulton HaHB_chapter5_v1_PPS.indd 220 3/7/17 4:34 PM Overview On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Within days of Hitler’s appointment, the Nazis began to target their political opposition and those they considered enemies of the state, especially Communists and Jews. Within months, they had transformed Germany into a dictatorship. This chapter chronicles the National Socialist revolution that swept through Germany in 1933, and it examines the choices individual Germans were forced to confront as a result. HaHB_chapter5_v1_PPS.indd 221 3/7/17 4:34 PM Chapter 5 Introduction Hitler’s appointment as chancellor on January 30, 1933, thrilled some Ger- Essential mans and horrified others. Writing in 1939, journalist Sebastian Haffner said Questions that when he read the news that afternoon, his reaction was “icy horror”: • What made it possible for Certainly this had been a possibility for a long time. You had to reckon with it. the Nazis to transform Nevertheless it was so bizarre, so incredible, to read it now in black and white. Germany into a dicta- Hitler Reich Chancellor . for a moment I physically sensed the man’s odor of torship during their first blood and filth, the nauseating approach of a man-eating animal—its foul, sharp years in power? claws in my face. • What choices do individ- Then I shook the sensation off, tried to smile, started to consider, and found many uals have in the face of reasons for reassurance. That evening I discussed the prospects of the new gov- an emerging dictatorship? ernment with my father. We agreed that it had a good chance of doing a lot of What can they do to nur- damage, but not much chance of surviving very long . ture democracy and help it survive? . How could things turn out so completely different? Perhaps it was just because • What roles do institu- we were all so certain that they could not do so—and relied on that with far too tions—such as the media, much confidence. So we neglected to consider that it might, if worse came to 1 law enforcement, schools, worst, be necessary to prevent the disaster from happening . churches, and indus- Few people expected the Nazi leader to remain in office for long. After all, try—play in sustaining in the 14 years since the creation of the Weimar Republic, Germany had had democracy or enabling its 14 chancellors, most of whom served for less than a year. Only two were in destruction? office longer, and not a single chancellor had held his post for three consec- utive years. Therefore, many Germans, like Haffner and his father, set about the task of adjusting to life under a regime they thought would soon pass. The readings in this chapter, which focus on the Nazis’ first two years in Watch Facing History power, have been chosen to help answer the question Haffner asked several Scholar Reflections: VIDEO years later: How could things turn out so completely different? The Nazi Rise to Power The Nazis’ swift actions in early 1933 began to establish a new order in hstry.is/more German society, taking advantage of the weakness of the Weimar Republic to create a dictatorship. Individuals and institutions across the country were forced both to navigate the dangers the Nazis posed to dissenters and to weigh the incentives they offered to encourage acceptance of the new government. Each person had to figure out how to live in a society under National Socialism, and even whether that would be possible at all. How did they do it? Some were true believers in Nazism, some calculated that the benefits to them of Nazi government outweighed the parts they found unsettling, some who could do so left the country, some learned to stay quiet and retreat into “internal exile,” and some protested openly. All of these choices had consequences for the individuals who made them, for their neighbors, and for their nation. 1 Sebastian Haffner, “Street-Level Coercion,” in How Was It Possible? A Holocaust Reader, ed. Peter Hayes (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 118–19, excerpt from Defying Hitler: A Memoir, trans. Oliver Pretzel (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002), 106–08. 222 HOLOCAUST AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR HaHB_chapter5_v1_PPS.indd 222 2/28/17 7:58 PM This chapter deepens the investigation of democracy begun in Chapter 4 by examining how the Weimar Republic crumbled in Germany and how the Nazis created a dictatorship to replace it. By focusing on Germany during the Nazis’ first years in power, the readings in this chapter invite students to also think deeply about what it takes to sustain democracy in our own time. Teachers should select the readings and questions that seem most appropriate for their curricula and classrooms. CHAPTER 5: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION 223 HaHB_chapter5_v1_PPS.indd 223 2/28/17 7:58 PM Reading 1 The Night of Hitler’s Triumph On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. That Watch The Democrat evening, members of the Nazi Party carried fiery torches as they paraded and the Dictator VIDEO through the streets of Berlin. They were joined by thousands who had hstry.is/more gathered to cheer for Paul von Hindenburg, the president of Germany, and Hitler. The two men responded to the crowd from separate windows— Hitler at the chancellery and Hindenburg at a hotel next door. Nearby was Watch From the French embassy, where Ambassador André François-Poncet watched VIDEO Democracy to Dictatorship from a window, later writing: hstry.is/more The torches . formed a river of fire . over the very heart of the city. From these brown-shirted, booted men, as they marched in perfect discipline and alignment, their well-pitched voices bawling war-like songs, there rose an enthusiasm and dynamism that were extraordinary.1 Melita Maschmann, then a 15-year-old Nazi supporter, watched the parade that evening. As an adult, she recalled, “Some of the uncanny feeling of that night remains with me even today. The crashing treads of [booted] feet, the somber pomp of the red and black flags, the flickering light from the torches on the faces and the songs with melodies that were at once aggressive and sentimental.”2 Many Germans followed the parade by listening to the radio. Bernt Engelmann was struck by the voice of a new announcer: [His voice] was entirely different from the ones I was familiar with: no longer calm and objective, but full of fanatic fervor. Many years later, when the Third Reich was a thing of the past, I dug around in the archives of the Cologne broadcasting station and found the very text read by the announcer that evening of January 30. As I perused it, I felt that same amazement and disgust that had filled me as a twelve-year-old boy. There it was, in black and white, and the announcer had spoken the text as an overwhelmed eyewitness might describe the finish of the Monaco Grand Prix auto race. “And there, at his window, high above the cheering throngs and the sea of flaming torches stands Reich President von Hindenburg, the venerable field marshal. He stands erect, stirred to the depths by the moment. And next door in the Reich Chancellery, the Führer—yes, it is the Führer! There he stands with his ministers, 1 André François-Poncet, The Fateful Years: Memoirs of a French Ambassador in Berlin, 1931–1938, trans. Jacques LeClercq (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949), 48. 2 Melita Maschmann, Account Rendered: A Dossier on My Former Self, trans. Geoffrey Strachan (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1965), 9. 224 HOLOCAUST AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR HaHB_chapter5_v1_PPS.indd 224 2/28/17 7:58 PM Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-02985A Bild Bundesarchiv, On the night of January 30, 1933, SA men paraded with torches through Berlin to celebrate Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Adolf Hitler . the unknown soldier of the World War, the unyielding warrior, the standard bearer of freedom . !”3 Max von der Grün also heard the news over the radio. Two days later, he and his family listened as Hitler spoke to the nation on his first day in office. Hitler proclaimed his new government officially in power. He did not do so before the Reichstag, the elected Parliament, but over the radio. The meaning was clear enough. Were the people clearly aware of his contempt for the parliament? I doubt it. In any case, my family considered it quite proper that Hitler had ceased to address . the deputies of the Reichstag, and had turned directly to the people.4 Connection Questions 1. Many of the people quoted in this reading wrote many years later about the day Hitler took office. Why do you think these people, as well as many other Germans alive in 1933, never forgot the events of that day? What clues can you find in the way they express their memories that indicate how they felt about those events as they looked back on them? 2. In learning about the past, what might be the benefits and the drawbacks of using sources that were written many years after the events they describe? 3. How did the Nazi leadership communicate with ordinary Germans? What messages were the leaders trying to send? 4. What tools do today’s leaders use to communicate with citizens? 3 Bernt Engelmann, In Hitler’s Germany: Everyday Life in the Third Reich (New York: Schocken, 1988), 21–22.