Hitler's Rise To Power Essay

The folllowing sample essay on Hitler’s Rise To Power Essay discusses it in detail, offering basic facts and pros and cons associated with it. To read the essay’s introduction, body and conclusion, scroll down.

There were many reasons why Hitler was able to take power in 1933. The short term reasons were after 1929. The economic crisis and instability in Germany was a main reason why he was able to gain power. The weakness of the opposition made it easier for him to gain power also this opposition would not join and form a coalition government.

After the death of Stressemann and later Hindenburg, it was much easier for Hitler to obtain political power. Germany was unstable at the time and after the formation of the Weimar republic, the constitution became weak the constitution also had a number of key flaws in it too.

For instance allowing the chancellor to stop democratic voting and perspone it as long as he or she wanted and he or she could make a decision without putting it through the courts if he or she felt it was important enough.

Also it included proportional representation which meant that it was near to impossible to get a larger number of seats over everyone else put together thus you had to form a coalition government which resulted in weak leadership and government.

The Weimar republic was successful for some time but people always felt resentment towards the republic due to the Long-term implications of the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles.

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The reparations that Germany had to pay through the Treaty meant that it was in economic crisis. This helped to cause weakness in the democracy and although the Weimar Republic did have a period of recovery between 1924 and 1929 the death of Stresseman and the Wall Street Crash helped to bring it down again. The republic was weak because of all the reasons stated above.

Why Was Hitler Able To Gain Power In Germany

Crises in countries do happen as they did in Germany but the government has to be able to survive. If it can’t survive it leaves the way open for people like Hitler to work their way to power. The German people didn’t want communism, which was the other option so they turned to Nazism, as it was the only alternative to a moderate government which always lost votes in a depression or time of crisis. This is because when a country is prosperous they have no need for any extremism to change the country dramatically, and in times of crisis they need to because in general in order to get prosperity back an extreme change is needed.

The middle classes feared communism because since they had established themselves from the lower or working classes, they now had a small amount of money and power in the world. They believed that economic and social chaos would move their positions about radically. They thought that the Communists would bring about this and by would drag them back down the ladder. Albert Speer, after seeing Hitler for the first time in 1931 said, “Here it seemed to me was hope…. The perils of Communism could be checked, Hitler persuaded us, and instead of hopeless unemployment, Germany could move towards economic recovery. The Wall Street crash had introduced mass unemployment to Germany and it had also caused poverty. Hitler promised to the people that he would do everything to make Germany recover from this unemployment and to also gain Germany prosperity and economic stability. After hyperinflation had occurred shortly after the end of the First World War the German people wanted economic stability to be able to feel safe again and the Nazi party finally offered this several years later with a legitimate claim to doing it or so the masses believed.

The Weimar republic had alienated the middle classes through hyperinflation as they were not compensated after they lost everything. The government made the decision under the social democrats to print millions of bank notes, this was when Germany was in economic crisis and it was to try to try to solve the problem. However the notes became worthless and so more and more had to printed. The value of the mark on the stock exchange became almost worthless and savings that were once worth a good deal became worth hardly anything.

So the middle classes voted for the Nazis, this was to get rid of the Weimar republic and democracy as it didn’t seem to benefit them. Germany had a long militaristic, autocratic and authoritarian tradition. Hitler carried this on but the Weimar republic didn’t, thus the people felt a strong urge to vote for the Nazis as it was more like the Germany they remembered that was prosperous. The Germans failed to develop their democracy to enable it to succeed instead they carried on their strong state led by a powerful leader.

The natural even inevitable leader at this time was Hitler. He used the Brownshirts to parade in the streets and be on display; this was to show the militaristic side. Although still many people did not want a war at least it showed that Germany once again may be strong. He wore uniform when speaking to the people this showed that he was not above everyone but that he was a leader that really was going to act and not just think. He used a symbol, the swastika, to signify his party.

He based his party on and used propaganda to promote the authoritarian foundations that he intended for Germany, much of this propaganda was thought up by Josef Goebbels who became a key figure in the Nazis party later. The democracy of the Weimar Republic was built upon weak foundations among the defeat of the First World War so this allows Hitler to reinforce his authoritarian ideas especially since Hitler was against democracy. Hitler was very politically skilled; he used dualism in the Reichstag to play his opponents off against each other.

Despite the Nazis being revolutionary, they did eventually come to power using constitutional (they were elected they did not take power by force) methods. Hitler was not satisfied with the amount of power he was allowed because of the limitations of the constitution. He disliked the existence of other opposition parties. Thus he decided to use his political skills to eliminate the opponents that gathered in the Reichstag fire in February 1933. This provided apparent crisis for the Nazis at the time, however, it is now said that van der Lubbe, the Dutch communist really did commit the crime.

The Nazis just used this coincidence to their advantage. It apparently showed that there was ‘communist threat’ and the Nazi propaganda reflected this threat this ensured that the German people knew about this. This would allow Hitler to arrest the communist leaders with the support of the public. This gave the Government a legitimate reason to arrest the communists. They had to stop Germany falling into a communist anarchy and the only way to do it was to search them and their party headquarters and arrest them.

The Enabling Act was thought of as a good idea to almost anybody accept by the SPD. This enabling act gave full legislative power to Hitler, the Chancellor, for four years. Before these four years ended Hitler had decided to abolish the parties and people in a position to enforce the limits on his power. A law was formed called the ‘Law against the New formation of parties’ this stated that all parties except the Nazi party were illegal. Parties such as the Centre party dissolved themselves and allowed Hitler to take control, accepting the Nazi dictatorship.

Germany did have an alternative was these two untiting, however as the SPD and the KPD wouldn’t unite to fight the common enemy they could not help to overcome Hitler. If they had done this they could have outvoted Hitler in the Reichstag. At no time in his political career did Hitler and the Nazi party have an overall majority in the Reichstag they always had to form a coalition. The Nazis had 43. 9% of the votes in the 1933 elections this was very close to a majority. However they had been influenced as the Nazis party was literally forcing people to vote for them.

They joined with the Nationalist party to gain 51. 8% of the votes, this only just allowed them to have a majority. Most of the people who were voting didn’t vote for the Nazis Party in the elections despite Hitler having Chancellorship and having power he still didn’t manage to gain an overall majority in the Reichstag. Only did the people accept any of this because it was in a time of such crisis. The fact that the German people were so afraid of communism (the ‘anti-Communist hysteria’) meant that Hitler could exploit this to gain his power.

After passing the policy to ban the formation of new parties he managed to ‘persuade’ the existing parties to disband and threw the SPD and KPD into prison as enemies of the state. The most important reason for Hitler coming to power was the First World War. This is because it supplied many other reasons in one. The First World War created ideas that were foundations of Hitler’s ideas. Eventually this led to a dictatorship in Germany and another World War. The non co-operation of the opposition to unite and stop him meant that he was allowed to rise to power quite successfully and easily.

The eventual collapse of the Republic left the way open for Hitler. He came forward and took power successfully. As a strong leader was needed to get Germany back on its feet this was just what they needed to start with. The militaristic traditions in Germany was a long-term reason for Hitler being able to gain power as was the Treaty of Versailles and the First World war this was because they were ultimately the start of the problems Germany was facing. Allowing Hitler to gain control and then create a dictatorship.

The fear of Communism was quite Long-term but this feeling grew stronger through Hitler’s propaganda and his hatred of Communists. The Weimar republic was weak to start with and under all the stress it grew weaker progressively. Hitler used this to gain power, when it failed, he picked up the pieces afterwards and rebuilt Germany. Hitler’s ideas were reinforced when it failed; the people were more even more willing to turn to Nazism. They could now see how democracy had treated Germany; it did not treat anybody favourably. Germany was weak in many ways at this time and Hitler took advantage of this weakness to gain power for himself.