1933 The Fall of the Weimar Republic
Transcript
00:00The Weimar Republic came to bear for many the humiliation of World War I and the blame
00:29for all its accompanying hardships. In many ways, it never shook this association. Particularly
00:37from the clauses of the Versailles Treaty that reduced the once-proud German military
00:42to practically nothing and placed all blame for the war on Germany.
00:50Despite a few years of stability, the Weimar Republic faced issues such as hyperinflation
00:56and the Great Depression, which drove many Germans into the arms of radical and extremist
01:01political parties.
01:02The old, proud army of our people, which is no less than a traditionally established political
01:15leadership of the party, and then these two institutions will raise the German people
01:24The Nazi party kind of growing in the background, but actually not very popular during that
01:38period of the sort of early to mid 1920s. And the time that the Nazi party really comes
01:44to the fore is in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash with the impact of the World
01:49Depression on Germany too.
02:11The head of state, he's now dead and gone. It now means that one man can take on all
02:19the top roles for himself. That man, of course, is Adolf Hitler.
02:49From this political uncertainty rose a demagogue, an unexpected leader who promised to revive
03:05Germany to the powerful country it once was. Adolf Hitler converted democracy into a dictatorship,
03:15causing the fall of the Weimar Republic.
03:31The First World War was a catastrophe for Germany. Huge casualties affected morale,
03:37shortages and starvation plagued the home front. And on November 9th, 1918, after a
03:43series of mutinies by German sailors and soldiers, the Kaiser had abdicated and fled
03:50the country.
03:53The following day, a provisional government was announced, made up of members of the Socialist
03:58Democratic Party and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, shifting power
04:04from the military.
04:08With peace declared and the Kaiser gone, Germany needed to establish a new constitution that
04:13would move the country forward after accepting responsibility for World War I.
04:22Guy Walters is an acclaimed historian and author of several best-selling books, with
04:28a particular interest in the Second World War and elements of the German Third Reich.
04:34It's effectively gone from a monarchy, with Kaiser Wilhelm having almost absolute power,
04:41to a world in which the Allies are saying, listen, you need to have a more liberal form
04:47of government like we have in France, the United States, Great Britain, and what the
04:52Allies call for is for the Germans to adopt a form of liberal democracy. This is the start
04:58of what's known as the Weimar Republic. It is now a Germany without a monarch, it's
05:05a Germany with a president. It's seen as a new form of stable, grown-up governance
05:11for Germany. Unfortunately, as we'll see, it simply doesn't work.
05:18On February 6, 1919, the National Assembly met in the town of Weimar and formed the Weimar
05:25Coalition. They also elected SDP leader Friedrich Ebert as president of the Weimar Republic.
05:36The basic format of the government was based around a president, a chancellor, and a parliament,
05:42known as the Reichstag. The president was elected by a popular vote to a seven-year
05:49term and held real political power, controlling the military and having the ability to call
05:56for new Reichstag elections. New constitutional elements were added, such as Article 48, which
06:05allowed the president to assume emergency powers, suspend civil rights, and operate
06:11without the consent of the Reichstag for a limited period of time. The chancellor was
06:18responsible for appointing a cabinet and running the day-to-day operations of the government.
06:24Ideally, the chancellor was to come from the majority party in the Reichstag, or, if no
06:31majority existed, from a coalition. The Reichstag, in turn, was also elected by a popular vote,
06:40with its seats distributed proportionally. This meant when the Social Democratic Party
06:45won 21.7 percent of the popular vote in 1920, it was allocated roughly 21.7 percent of the
06:55459 seats available. This system ensured that Germans had a voice in government that they'd
07:03never had before, but it also allowed for a massive proliferation of parties that could
07:09make it difficult to gain a majority or form a governing coalition.
07:22The most important issue facing the government was the terms of the peace treaty. Throughout
07:28the war, the German propaganda machine had stressed to the German people that Germany
07:33was fighting a just war against the aggression of the Entente powers, Russia, France, and
07:39Great Britain. The transition to democracy had given hope to the German people that their
07:45country would be treated leniently, and that the final peace settlements after the war would be
07:50acceptable. On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, outlining peace terms
08:00between the victorious Allies and Germany. The treaty ordered Germany to reduce its military,
08:07take responsibility for World War I, relinquish some of its territory, and pay extortionate
08:14reparations to the Allies. It also prevented Germany from joining the League of Nations at
08:20that time. The First World War had an absolutely devastating effect on Germany. Well, the first
08:28simple reason is that she lost the war. If you lose wars, you never end up in a particularly
08:33happy place. But actually, the First World War was particularly punishing. Why? Because the Allies
08:40gathered together at the Palace of Versailles to sign what was known as the Treaty of Versailles.
08:46Now, in that treaty, they took away a lot from Germany. It wasn't just going, you lost too bad,
08:53it was actually saying, you've lost and some. What we're going to do is to take away your
08:58colonies, we're going to take away some of your coalfields, they're going to make you demilitarize,
09:04so we're going to strip your army and navy right down, you're not allowed an air force. All these
09:10massive punishments were inflicted on the Germans. And then to make it even worse, the Allies said,
09:16and you've got to pay for the war. This was known as reparations. And in today's money,
09:22it was worth about half a trillion dollars. And there was one big problem. Germany had no money.
09:30So you're basically asking a beggar if he can lend you or give you back half a trillion dollars. He
09:36doesn't have it. And Germany certainly didn't have it. Reactions from the German people were
09:43extremely negative. There were protests in the Reichstag and out on the streets. Along with
09:49the loss of land and overseas colonies, Germany had to deal with the humiliation of accepting
09:54responsibility for the war, which the German public didn't agree with. Dr. Lisa Pine is an
10:05associate professor in history, and a leading international expert on issues relating to the
10:10history of Nazi Germany. She has a strong interest in the mechanisms of this dictatorial regime,
10:17and its impact on German society. The Treaty of Versailles was very much seen by the Germans
10:25as a diktat, a dictated treaty. So this sense that the army perhaps wouldn't have lost the
10:32war had they had the chance to go on on the battlefield. One of the other effects of the
10:37First World War on Germany was it totally polarized political life. You had a lot of
10:43soldiers coming back from the front feeling that the war had been going well, and yet suddenly the
10:48government back home in Berlin had surrendered. Well, why had it done that? Why had the Kaiser
10:53let them down? And so you have what arises is something called the stab in the back myth. This
11:00idea that all those brave soldiers at the front didn't lose to the Allies, they actually lost to
11:06their leaders back home who supposedly stabbed them in the back. Now those soldiers come back
11:12and they form lots of very militaristic units, which are known as the Free Corps or the Freikorps.
11:19And it's from that kind of groundswell of very nationalist, very angry, very resentful opinion
11:26that you start seeing these little parties like the Nazi Party being formed. The Weimar government
11:35was then associated with failure in World War One, since it had signed the Treaty of Versailles,
11:41which had ended the war. Many nationalists believe the government had sold Germany out
11:47to its enemies, ending the war too soon and allowing the country to be controlled. Due to
11:54the public unhappiness with the Weimar Republic, many German citizens looked towards radical and
12:00extremist parties who were opposing the political situation in Germany. What you start to see in
12:08the early 1920s is this sort of development, almost like a kind of fungus on the ground, of
12:13all these small political parties from different parts of the political spectrum. You know, you've
12:18got Communist Party, you know, growing up on the left, you've got things like the Nazi Party growing
12:24up on the right, and you've got tons of these little parties, many of which have extremely
12:30vicious agendas. They didn't like the Kaiser, some of them like the Kaiser, some of them want
12:37democracy, some of them want communism or fascism. You know, there is a whole kind of maelstrom, a
12:42mixture of a very radical, very defined, very virulent type of politics emerging in Germany.
12:49It's a very poisonous cocktail indeed. One party in particular was beginning to surface, the Nazi
12:58Party. The National Socialist German Workers' Party had been established in 1919 and were
13:07promoting radical views. One theory that the Nazi Party had developed was the stab-in-the-back
13:15theory, which regarded the loss of World War I and who was to blame. What any extreme movement
13:22needs is a kind of legend or a kind of myth or a kind of enemy to kick against. And the Nazis and
13:29Hitler created plenty of enemies, some of which were actual enemies, like the Communists, you could
13:35say that they were genuine enemies of the Nazis because they're at different ends of the political
13:40spectrum. But also, what Hitler also whipped up and what he encouraged was this idea that the German
13:47soldier who had fought in the First World War had been stabbed in the back by his political masters
13:52in Berlin and that's why the war was lost and that's why Germany faced this shame of defeat.
13:59And so what Hitler's saying is, listen to those soldiers, those former soldiers, you know, I can
14:05actually reverse this. I can not only, you know, put a rifle or a spade in your hand and make you
14:12feel proud, but I can also get Germany back her pride and her wealth and her status in the world.
14:19At the end of the First World War, there was a lot of social and economic dislocation and upheaval
14:25in Germany and there was a sense, particularly by groups on the far right, and there were a lot of
14:32them, so the Nazi Party was just one of dozens actually, and there's a sense on the far right in
14:39particular, but in other groups in society too, that the army had been stabbed in the back. So this
14:43whole myth or legend arose called the Dolchstoss, the stab in the back, and there was this sense
14:49that the army had been stabbed in the back by this group, what the Nazis and the others on the far
14:54right called the November Criminals, who signed the Treaty of Versailles in the aftermath of the First World War.
15:01Although many different variations of this theory existed, the Nazi Party proclaimed that Germany
15:11was betrayed by those on the home front, which led to the loss of the war, rather than their
15:17defeat on the battlefield. Shifting the blame to what they referred to as the November Criminals,
15:25Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party bought into the myth that Jews and Communists had betrayed the
15:30country and brought a left-wing government to power that had wanted to throw in the towel.
15:37Providing the country with a scapegoat meant more and more individuals supported the Nazi Party.
15:43They had established the enemy and had a full plan of how they're going to remove them
15:48and make Germany great again.
15:53By blaming the Jews for the defeat, Hitler had created a stereotypical enemy,
15:59someone to point the blame at and encourage the party supporters to do the same.
16:04Getting rid of the Jews would solve all of Germany's problems, or so he claimed.
16:10With economic struggles and no positive way of life,
16:14the German people liked the policies that the Nazi Party was outlining and support continued to grow.
16:28Chapter 2 – The End of the Weimar Government
16:42One of the overlooked successes of the Weimar government was skillfully renegotiating
16:47and restructuring its debts, and bringing the economy back under control.
16:52Article 48 was used frequently by liberal chancellors to take immediate action to stabilize the economy.
17:00However, the high reparations payments and costs of war had devastating consequences.
17:07The cost of living in Germany rose 12 times between 1914 and 1922,
17:13compared to three in the United States.
17:16The German government faced the classic dilemma.
17:19Cut the government's spending in an attempt to balance the budget,
17:23or increase it in an attempt to jumpstart the economy.
17:29When the government sought to pay reparations simply by printing more money,
17:34the value of German currency rapidly declined, leading to hyperinflation.
17:40The early period of the Weimar Republic was beset with quite a lot of economic,
17:45social and political problems.
17:46So there's inflation, there's all sorts of economic difficulties,
17:51and they really rose to a peak in 1923 with the hyperinflation.
17:56So very common is the image of a German person in the street literally carrying a wheelbarrow
18:02full of money to pay for an everyday item, and then the German government
18:07full of money to pay for an everyday item like a loaf of bread.
18:11So just this sense of the devaluation of the currency and the hyperinflation brought about
18:15in this period. So there were lots and lots of different problems in those early years
18:20of the Weimar Republic.
18:23In January 1920, the exchange rate was 64.8 marks to one dollar.
18:30In November 1923, it was way over one billion marks to one dollar.
18:36This economic disaster had social consequences as well.
18:42Since Germany couldn't keep up with the repayments of the reparations,
18:46the French and Belgian armies invaded the Ruhr region of Germany, the main area of industrialism.
18:53The French aimed to extract the unpaid reparations,
18:57and therefore took control of key industries and natural resources.
19:02The Weimar government instructed the Ruhr workers to go on strike instead
19:06of helping the French. The occupation of the Ruhr worsened the economic crisis in Germany.
19:15One of the things that particularly sticks in the core of Hitler and other politicians like him
19:19is the fact that the French have seized the Ruhr, this important and absolutely vital industrial
19:26area. Now without the Ruhr, you know, it helps to cripple Germany's economy still further,
19:32and of course it benefits the French economy enormously. It's just yet another kick in the
19:37teeth for the Germans, who are thinking, you know, we've lost the Ruhr, we've lost the coalfields of
19:42the Tsar, we've had the Rhineland demilitarized, we've lost our colonies in China and Africa,
19:49and we're having to pay lots of war loans back, which we don't have any money to do so.
19:53You know, if you look at it, it seems to be a complete disaster. Of course, that's what it became.
19:59Many Germans who considered themselves middle class found themselves destitute.
20:05Heinrich Brüning, who became chancellor in 1930, chose the deeply unpopular option of an austerity
20:13program which cut spending, and those programs designed precisely to help those most in need.
20:19Prices ran out of control, and many people couldn't afford to live or survive. Poverty was
20:27at an all-time high. In autumn 1923, it cost more to print the money than the notes themselves were
20:36worth. During the hyperinflation crisis, workers were often paid twice per day,
20:43because the prices rose so fast their wages were virtually worthless by lunchtime.
20:49Unsurprisingly, the impact of hyperinflation dissolved a lot of support for the government,
20:55and people began looking towards uprisings and extremist parties
20:59to deliver the answers to their crisis.
21:03As the currency collapsed, so did the policy of passive resistance.
21:08The Nazi party continued to grow support within this time. Once again, Hitler expressed his
21:15anti-Semitism, declaring that since Jews ran the banks, they were responsible for the economic
21:21mess Germany found itself in. The German economy had completely crumbled, although this didn't
21:31result in the collapse of the Weimar Republic. However, it shook the faith of many Germans,
21:37who began looking towards radical parties to drag them out of the economic rubble.
21:42The confusion caused by hyperinflation led Adolf Hitler to believe he could take power in Munich
21:48in November 1923, leading the Beer Hall Putsch. However, the attempt failed.
21:57In 1923, Hitler thought that he was in a strong enough position with a lot of different kinds
22:03of patronage and support from military circles to stage a coup, so a putsch, a kind of takeover
22:09of power. And he decided to do this in the city of Munich, so that it became known as the Munich
22:15Beer Hall Putsch. However, it was a crisis and a fiasco, and the Nazi party actually fell apart
22:22afterwards, some of its members wounded, some of them becoming martyrs too. But essentially,
22:27Hitler was placed into jail at Landsberg, so he was imprisoned in Landsberg, and that was where he
22:33wrote Mein Kampf. Hitler believed that the government of Germany was so unpopular that
22:39many Germans would support him. He was even planning a march on Berlin after his success in
22:45Munich. Hitler was arrested and tried for high treason. He was found guilty and sentenced to
22:51five years in prison. This seemed like the end for Hitler and for the Nazi party.
22:59In April 1925, former war veteran Paul von Hindenburg was elected as president of the Weimar.
23:06Hindenburg was instinctively conservative and anti-socialist.
23:14It's hard to imagine a more kind of old-school aristocratic Prussian-stroke German figure
23:20than old Hindenburg. You know, he looks the model of the Nazi party, but he's actually
23:27he looks the model of this kind of bewhiskered president, and he regards Hitler as what Hitler
23:34was in the First World War, a little corporal. And that's what a lot of people from Hindenburg's
23:39Junker-class, as it was called, referred to Hitler as. So as Hitler starts climbing the
23:44ladders of power, as he gets nearer and nearer the top, and indeed when it comes to the stage
23:50in which Hitler is going to actually take the chancellorship, Hindenburg still thinks,
23:56this man's a little corporal. This man is someone we grandees can still control. But what they don't
24:03know is that they basically let the most dangerous animal into their zoo imaginable, and Hitler is
24:09just going to basically eat everyone alive, even Hindenburg. They have no defense once they've let
24:15Hitler in. From the very beginning of his presidency, Hindenburg used his presidential
24:21powers and therefore had a greater influence than Ebert ever had on the membership of coalition
24:26governments. He made it very clear that he did not wish for any constraints on his presidential power.
24:35A new foreign minister, Gustav Stresemann, brought new life to the Weimar Republic,
24:41bringing economic stabilization. After 1923 into 1924, things seemed to settle down a little bit.
24:50So the period from 1924 to 1928 of the Weimar years were very much a period of progress that
24:59the Weimar government had a chance to put into place a recovery of Germany. So in terms of both
25:06her position at home, but also how Germany was regarded in Europe, kind of as a European
25:11nation as well. So that sense of what Germany's international reputation was like changed as well
25:17during the course of the mid-1920s. So then it's a period of more stability,
25:22and we've got a situation in Germany where there's quite a lot of progressive life going on. So women
25:28have got the vote for the first time since 1919, and they can be elected to parliament. Lots of
25:34progressive, different kinds of policies in education, but also lots of progress in the arts
25:41and in cultural life, the Bauhaus movement in architecture as well. So those kinds of things
25:46we see quite a lot of progress in German society in the 1920s, and a lot of hope. But at the same
25:52time, and I think this is quite interesting, at the same time, we've got the Nazi party developing
25:58kind of in a sense almost in the background. So not at the forefront of anyone's attention during
26:02these years, because the popular attention's kind of enjoying the 1920s, the kind of swinging 1920s,
26:09you know, with the cabaret lifestyle and the women now taking jobs in the cities as typists
26:16and in office jobs and these kind of new glamorous jobs that hadn't been open to them before. And at
26:21the same time, we've kind of got this sort of conservative and right-wing backlash against
26:26that kind of progress that typified Weimar society. So it's kind of quite an interesting time.
26:32And then the Nazis, in a sense, they're sort of in the background in this way, but very, very busy
26:37building themselves, building up the party and building up its propaganda and its profile.
26:45Payments of reparations continued, and the Ruhr was no longer controlled by the French.
26:51A new currency, the Rentenmark, was established, which brought worth back to the currency.
26:59Industry began moving again, and unemployment decreased slightly.
27:03Stresemann borrowed money from the U.S. to help pay back war reparations,
27:08a scheme known as the Dawes Plan. He also managed to get Germany a place in the League of Nations.
27:17Morale in Germany was looking up. Resistance was decreasing, and more people were moving
27:22on with their lives peacefully. However, in 1929, the Wall Street crash in the U.S.
27:30came to affect the German economy once again, sparking the beginning of the Great Depression.
27:37The global economic turndown created by the Great Depression in America
27:42had devastating repercussions for the Weimar Republic. As the panic hit Wall Street,
27:48the U.S. government pressed its former allies, Britain and France, to repay their war debts.
27:54Not having the money, Britain and France pressed Germany for more reparations payments,
28:00causing an economic depression.
28:03If you ask someone with no money to pay you lots of money, they're really not going to be able to
28:08do it. And in order to do it, they're then going to have to borrow money off someone else to pay
28:13you back. Now, that's what Germany does. America offers Germany loans to pay back the war reparations
28:22to America, and to Britain, and to France. So what you have is this sort of circle of income
28:29going across the Atlantic to Germany, and then some of which ends up trickling back to France
28:33and Britain and the United States. Now, that might work fine if the world's economy is okay.
28:41But what happens in 1929? You have Black Thursday, you have the depression, the slump,
28:47the Wall Street index go crashing through the floor, you know, in almost a matter of hours.
28:54And you have one of the greatest depressions the world's economy has ever seen. Now, of course,
28:59what does that mean? The Americans are going to go, ah, well, we're no longer going to loan
29:03Germany any money. And actually, any money we've loaned, we want back. And the Germans are going,
29:09but if we don't have this money, we can't keep our industry going. And then Britain and France
29:15and other countries around the world are going, we need these markets to sell things to,
29:20that's collapsing, that's collapsing, everything's starting to collapse. Now, of course, that's going
29:26to have a devastating effect on even the most stable form of political system, as you have,
29:32say, in Britain or the United States. But even in those countries, you had a lot of political
29:37instability as a result of the depression, this worldwide slump. But in Germany, it's far,
29:43far worse. Because, of course, what you're mixing there is basically bankruptcy with political
29:50extremism. And that is a very poisonous brew indeed. And this is what gives rise to more and
29:57more votes going to extremist parties. Why? Because they're saying, Weimar has failed,
30:04and we can offer the solutions. We've got something definite that these old men simply don't have.
30:13A crucial factor in the rise of Nazism was the ability of the party to expand
30:18and provide a political home for those discontented with the state of the Weimar.
30:24Two months after Adolf Hitler was released from prison, the Nazi party was re-established
30:30and growing in numbers once again. The roots of Adolf Hitler's rise to power
30:36lie in the disaster of the economic crash in 1929 and the subsequent depression.
30:44The Wall Street crash and the rise in unemployment
30:47had the important effect of further dividing German politics.
30:52During the Weimar years, the Nazis very much in the background, but very much building their
30:57profile and their propaganda and their organization. But it's really after 1929,
31:03with the impact of the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression on Germany, that the Nazi party
31:09really came into its own and really, from that point, managed to attract very, very large numbers
31:15of voters and supporters. And the reason for this is that in that period, so with the height of the
31:22depression in Germany, a lot of economic distress, really despair, accompanied really too also by
31:29political chaos. So the succession of short governments, one after another, including a
31:34grand coalition government, unable really to deal with the economic crisis. Article 48, which was
31:41the presidential decree, was called into place and used quite a number of times in this period.
31:46So it's kind of a sense that the normal workings of governments just weren't working. And then the
31:52use of presidential decree, this kind of emergency use, being called into use more and more often,
31:57signifying these very difficult political and economic circumstances.
32:08On March 29, 1930, the finance expert Heinrich Brüning had been appointed the successor of
32:15Chancellor Müller by Paul von Hindenburg, after months of political lobbying by General Kurt von
32:22Schleicher on behalf of the military. The new government was expected to lead a political shift
32:29towards conservatism, based on the emergency powers granted to the President by the Constitution,
32:35since it had no majority support in the Reichstag. The economic turndown lasted until the second half
32:42of 1932, when there were the first indications of a rebound. By this time, though, the Weimar
32:49Republic had lost all credibility with the majority of Germans. The bulk of German capitalists
32:56and landowners originally gave support to the conservative experiment, not from any personal
33:02liking for Brüning, but believing the conservatives would best serve their interests.
33:09As, however, the mass of the working class and also of the middle classes
33:13turned against Brüning, more of the great capitalists and landowners declared themselves
33:18in favor of his opponents, in particular Adolf Hitler.
33:24After Hitler came out of prison, he picked up the pieces of his party that was in disarray and
33:30really forged his position once again as the leader of the party and indeed developing from
33:36that to be the leader of the nation. So this kind of whole cult of the Führer, cult of the leader,
33:42surrounding him from this point during the mid-1920s, that once he comes to power, that cult
33:47of the leader just expands to the whole nation. So certainly at this point in the mid-1920s,
33:54he's sort of rebuilding the party now, very much trying to make sure that it was very well
33:59organized. So he organized the party into the different regions, so the different Gau,
34:04each region with its own regional leader or Gauleiter. And then he also organized the party
34:09very cleverly, horizontally as well. This idea that there were Nazi organizations right across
34:15different sectors of the economy or of profession or occupation. So for example, there was the Nazi
34:23Teachers Association, the Nazi Jurists Association, the Nazi Doctors Association,
34:29as well as students associations, women's groups and youth groups as well. So there's this kind of
34:35build-up, this kind of groundswell of build-up of support for the party through the mid-1920s,
34:41that once the depression hits, that in that period from 1929 up until he comes to power in 1933,
34:49he's really able to manipulate that basis of support that's already been established.
34:57The Reichstag general elections on September 14, 1930, resulted in an enormous political shift.
35:0518.3% of the vote went to the Nazis, five times the percentage compared to 1928.
35:13This had devastating consequences for the Republic.
35:18The other thing that's really important is the extent of the economic despair.
35:22So we've got to remember that there's five million unemployed in Germany by the winter of 1930 to 31,
35:30and that goes up another million to six million by 1932. So that's a very, very huge unemployment
35:37statistic. And of course, Hitler's really putting himself forward as a leader who will get Germany
35:45out of these very, very dire economic circumstances, who will make Germany great again.
35:51There was no longer a majority in the Reichstag, even for a great coalition of moderate parties,
35:58and it encouraged the supporters of the Nazis to bring out their claim to power with increasing
36:03violence and terror. After 1930, the Republic slid more and more into a state of potential
36:11civil war. By late 1931, conservatism as a movement was dead, and the time was coming
36:19when Hindenburg would drop Brünnig and come to terms with Hitler. Hindenburg himself was no less
36:26a supporter of an anti-democratic counter-revolution represented by Hitler. On May 30, 1932,
36:35Brünnig resigned after no longer having Hindenburg's support. Five weeks earlier,
36:42Hindenburg had been re-elected as president with Brünnig's active support, running against Hitler.
36:49Hindenburg then appointed Franz von Papen as the new chancellor. Von Papen lifted the ban on the
36:56SA, imposed after the street riots, in an unsuccessful attempt to secure the backing
37:02of Hitler and the Nazi party. Von Papen was closely associated with the industrialist and
37:08land-owning classes, and pursued an extreme conservative policy along Hindenburg's lines.
37:16This government was to be expected to assure itself of the cooperation of Hitler.
37:21Since the Republicans and Socialists were not ready to take action, and the conservatives
37:25had shot their political bolt, Hitler and Hindenburg were certain to achieve power.
37:36Majorities and even coalitions in the Reichsstaat were difficult to form among an increasingly large
37:42number of extremist parties, left and right. Elections were held more and more frequently.
37:51Since most parties opposed the new government, von Papen had the Reichsstaat dissolved and
37:56called for new elections. The general elections on July 31st, 1932, showed majority gains for
38:05the Nazis, who won 37.2% of the vote, overtaking the Social Democrats as the largest party in the
38:13Reichsstaat. In the July 1932 elections, that was when the Nazi party reached the height of
38:22its electoral success. Actually by November 1932, they'd lost two million votes. So it was kind of,
38:28those last months were kind of a difficult moment for the party, but it kind of all sort of fell
38:32into place with the political maneuverings and the machinations, just in time really in a way,
38:37because I think maybe some of the popular support for the Nazi party was declining by the end of
38:421932. July 1932 resulted in the question as to now what part the immense Nazi party would play
38:53in the government of the country. The Nazi party owed its huge increase to an influx of workers,
39:00unemployed, despairing peasants, and middle class people. They wanted a renewed Germany
39:07and a new organization of German society. Therefore, Hitler refused ministry under
39:14von Papen and demanded the chancellorship for himself, but was rejected by Hindenburg on August
39:2113th, 1932. There was still no majority in the Reichsstaat for any government. As a result,
39:30the Reichsstaat was dissolved, and elections took place once more in the hope that a stable majority
39:37would result. A combination of political and economic dissatisfaction, some of it dating
39:50back to the founding of the republic, helped create the conditions for Hitler's rise to power.
39:57By drawing together the fringe nationalist parties into his Nazi party,
40:01Hitler was able to gain a sufficient number of seats in the Reichsstaat to make him a political
40:07player. I would strongly suggest that the vast overwhelming majority of people who voted for
40:15Adolf Hitler, who looked at Adolf Hitler in the late 1920s and early 1930s, suspected that the
40:22person they were electing would end up committing one of the worst genocides the world has ever
40:28seen. Yes, of course they knew he was anti-Semitic, but then a lot of people in Europe and America
40:37and elsewhere were anti-Semitic. It was a pretty standard prejudice. It's not acceptable, of course,
40:44but it was out there, and it was just almost part of life. You have something called
40:49drawing of anti-Semitism, in which people, even in the politest society, are anti-Semitic.
40:55The anti-Semitic nature of the Nazi party wasn't hidden, but I think there was never
41:01a sense that it would unleash the kinds of policies that came about during the 1930s,
41:08and indeed, of course, during the war with the eventual genocide or attempted genocide
41:13of European Jews. If Hitler was anti-Semitic, that wasn't necessarily a problem, and of course,
41:19just because someone's a racist doesn't necessarily mean they actually want to go around murdering
41:23people. So I think that Hitler, yes, was unpalatable in an enormous number of ways,
41:30but to your average voter in Germany before the Nazis came to power, he looked like someone who
41:37had some solutions. He looked like someone who had vigor, relative youth, strength, will,
41:43this important word will. Hitler refers to the triumph of the will often, and so you think,
41:49well, actually, Weimar's not doing much. You know, you've got all these sort of
41:53crusty old useless Democrats not doing very much. Why not make Germany great again?
42:00Eventually, conservatives, hoping to control him and capitalize on his popularity,
42:05brought him into the government. However, Hitler used the weakness written into the
42:10Weimar Constitution, like Article 48, to subvert it and assume dictatorial power.
42:17In 1932, the Nazi Party became the largest political party in parliament.
42:23It's a 1932 election, when the Nazis take 230 seats in the parliament, that actually makes
42:31everybody turn around and realize this isn't just a kind of rabble. This isn't just some kind of
42:40bloke who's good at making speeches and, you know, foam-flecked oratory. This is something
42:46more than that. This party has got an appeal right across the board. It's seen first as a bulwark,
42:53as a barrier against communism. Many Germans have seen what's happened in Russia becoming
42:59the Soviet Union, and they fear for that greatly. But another thing that Hitler also appeals to is
43:05not just kind of the man on the street, if you like. What he's also done is had a lot of very,
43:11very secret and important meetings with German industrialists. And he said to the captains of
43:17industry, you know, he said to various financiers, you know, I'm not a threat to you. You know, I am
43:24not someone who wants to sort of rip apart factories. You know, I want to work with you
43:29guys. You know, I need your industrial might. We all need your industrial might. And so what
43:34he's doing is he's appealing to both rich and poor. So you see a lot of the kind of Junker
43:39old-school class have quite a lot of respect for the Nazi party and happily vote for him.
43:46Franz von Papen stepped down and was succeeded by General von Schleicher as chancellor on December
43:533rd. Schleicher's bold and unsuccessful plan was to build a majority in the Reichsstaat
43:59by uniting the trade unionist left wings in the various parties,
44:04including that of the Nazis led by Gregor Strasser. This did not prove successful either.
44:12Adolf Hitler learned from von Papen that the general had no authority to abolish the
44:17Reichstag parliament, whereas any majority of seats did. The cabinet, under a previous
44:24interpretation of Article 48, ruled without a sitting Reichstag, which could vote only for
44:31its own dissolution. Hitler also learned that all past crippling Nazi depths were to be relieved by
44:38German big business. Outmaneuvered by von Papen and Hitler on plans for the new cabinet, and
44:45having lost Hindenburg's confidence, Schleicher asked for new elections. On January 28th,
44:53von Papen described Hitler to Paul von Hindenburg as only a minority part of an alternative von
44:59Papen-arranged government. On January 30th, 1933, Hindenburg accepted the new Papen-nationalist
45:09Hitler coalition, with the Nazis holding only three of eleven cabinet seats.
45:16So Hindenburg himself was not fond of Hitler. He sort of very much regarded him as this upstart,
45:22didn't particularly like or trust him. But I think what's important in this period in the early
45:271930s is that Hitler's got this entree to Berlin high society, to those people who have influence
45:36with the president. And they're, if not exactly bending his ear, they're kind of making Hitler's
45:43path to leadership a little bit easier in that way. So that by the time that January 1933 comes,
45:51and that Hindenburg offers Hitler the chancellorship, because not much earlier on he'd
45:57rejected the vice chancellorship, so Hitler wasn't having the second position, he wanted the top
46:02position. So by the time that January 1933 came, and Hindenburg offered him that position of
46:09chancellor, he'd sort of accepted that this was going to be the case because he wanted to use the
46:15popular support the Nazi party had. And again, I think the other thing about Hindenburg and some
46:20of the other sort of more conservative and the kind of military elites in German society,
46:26I think they thought that they would be able to keep Hitler in control somehow. So it was kind of
46:31almost wanting their cake and eating it, but of course they couldn't. So they kind of thought they
46:36could use Hitler's massive support and this great electoral wave, the kind of popular support of
46:42the German people for this party. So they kind of wanted to harness and use that, but at the same
46:47time to harness in the more violent side of the party, or the kind of ugliest sides of the party,
46:53and somehow to tame Hitler. This idea that they'd be able to assimilate him into what
46:58they wanted him to be, and to tame him out of the worst excesses of the party.
47:06Hindenburg, despite his misgivings about the Nazis' goals and about Hitler as a person,
47:12reluctantly agreed to von Papen's theory that with Nazi popular support on the wane,
47:18Hitler could now be controlled as Chancellor.
47:23After a brief struggle for power, Hitler was named Chancellor in January 1933.
47:29This would be the end of the Weimar Republic.
47:34When Hitler's appointed Chancellor in January 33, it's very tempting to suppose that's it,
47:40he's in power, he's totally in control. You've got to remember that for the first few years
47:46of the Nazis being in power, they never really felt as in power as we may today think them to be.
47:55Of course, by the time the war broke out, they had absolute control of Germany, and indeed
48:02other places too. But actually, you only have to look at the diaries of people like Goebbels,
48:07the propaganda minister, Albert Speer, who ended up becoming the armaments minister, and people
48:11like that, to realize they were very worried, and Hitler was very, very worried about public opinion.
48:18Because he was worried that if public opinion turned against him, he would lose power,
48:22like any conventional politician. So even though he had passed things like the Enabling Act,
48:27which had given him absolute power, and made him head of state, and had given him enormous
48:33powers to do what he liked, he still worried that the German people, if he put a foot wrong,
48:38would turn against him and boot him out.
48:43The Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, was blamed by Hitler's government on the communists,
48:51and Hitler used the emergency to obtain President von Hindenburg's assent
48:56to the Reichstag fire decree the following day.
48:59The Reichstag fire is still somewhat shrouded in mystery. Who burned it down? It doesn't really
49:08matter in the end, because what happens is that Nazis use the burning down of the Reichstag
49:14in order to say, there's a national emergency, we need more powers to deal with these sort of
49:21Reds and communists and all these very dangerous figures who are burning down the Reichstag and
49:26things like this. What will happen next? We need more powers. The Fuhrer, the leader, Adolf Hitler,
49:31he needs more powers too. And so what you have as a result is the Enabling Act, which ultimately
49:37gives the Nazi party and Hitler absolute power. But even then, they're still worried about what
49:43people think about them. This is not a government that actually wants to do everything in defiance
49:49of the people. It wants to do things for the majority of the people, but it wants to do it
49:53in a very Nazi way.
49:58The decree invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and suspended a number of
50:04constitutional protections of civil liberties, allowing the Nazi government to take swift and
50:10harsh action against political meetings, arresting, and in some cases, murdering members of the Communist Party.
50:17Within weeks, Hitler invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to squash many civil rights
50:24and suppress members of the Communist Party.
50:29In March 1933, Hitler introduced the Enabling Act to allow him to pass laws without the approval
50:36of Germany's parliament or president. This act would and did bring Hitler and the Nazi party
50:43unfettered dictatorial powers. This bill, which receives the necessary two-thirds majority with
50:49the aid of the center party, grants full legislative powers to the cabinet without requiring the
50:56assent of the Reichstag. It is the formal basis of Hitler's power for the remainder of the Third
51:03Reich. To make sure the Enabling Act was passed, Hitler forcibly prevented Communist Germany from
51:10voting. Once it became law, Hitler was free to legislate as he saw fit and establish his
51:18dictatorship without any checks and balances. Once Hitler has come to power, he consolidates his rule
51:26extremely quickly. And again, it's sort of very unexpected from the idea that they were going to
51:31be able to tame this politician. So it's a sort of sense of underestimation, both of Hitler and
51:38of the Nazi party as well, as something that was new and that had a widespread appeal. What Hitler
51:46did very quickly after he came to power was to consolidate his control. And he did this in a
51:51number of ways. First of all, by what they call coordination or the streamlining of society.
51:57So again, it was if anyone wanted to belong to a youth group, it had to be a Nazi youth group. So
52:03all of the others were destroyed or banned. Destruction of the trade unions as well,
52:07astonishingly quickly. And that was the strongest and biggest trade union movement in Europe.
52:13And that's replaced by the German labor front. So this kind of process of coordination,
52:19streamlining society, trying to get people on side. And then the other really important
52:24developments through 1934 was, first of all, that the army had to be able to control the
52:31was, first of all, that the army had to swear an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler himself.
52:37So it's not to the state anymore, but a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler himself.
52:43And then, of course, when President Hindenburg died in August 1934, it's kind of the last
52:48sort of element of restraint or possible control has now disappeared.
52:54Hindenburg's death is kind of the final nail in the coffin of any semblance of sort of the
53:02Weimar Republic or any hope of liberal democracy. He represents a kind of hangover from the Weimar
53:10period. He was still the head of state. He's now dead and gone.
53:17So after all of the things that have been put into place, like the Enabling Act and other
53:23policies in those first months, the Nazis came to power. So now after Hindenburg's death,
53:29Hitler's position is unchallenged. He's the Führer. He's chancellor and president,
53:35all rolled into one, as it were. So he is the ultimate power and the ultimate authority.
53:40It now means that one man can take on all the top roles for himself.
53:46That man, of course, is Adolf Hitler.
53:55The change in political tactics and organization in the mid-1920s allowed Adolf Hitler and the
54:02Nazi Party to take advantage of legislation and gain support of the German public.
54:10The collapse of democracy and the circumstances under which Hitler was made chancellor in 1933
54:19paved the way for a dictatorship in Germany,
54:22and the Nazi Party would consolidate their power, leading to a totalitarian state.
54:31If you want to be a dictator and your party wants to be the only party in charge,
54:35what are you going to do? Well, you've got to ban every other political party.
54:38So that's what Hitler does. What else represents a bigger threat to Nazism? Well, communism and
54:44also the trade union movement, which is obviously traditionally quite leftist.
54:49So what does Hitler do? He bans that as well. So, you know, that's basically got rid of two
54:54massive power blocks that can threaten him. Now, what he does is he replaces things like
54:59the sort of unions with his own kind of Nazi form of unionism. And you have all these kind
55:06of labor fronts and various of these sort of Nazi bodies and functionaries who run them,
55:12who are all obedient to Adolf Hitler rather than potentially rivals to him. Or they don't even
55:18represent any other form of political thinking. Everybody has got to feel and think in the same
55:25way. This is called coming together. This is called Gleichschaltung. And this is a really
55:30important part of the kind of Nazi dream, if you like. Everybody's marching in the same direction,
55:37doing the same thing together. This is not a place in which individualism is to be encouraged.
55:46With Adolf Hitler considered the savior that Germany needed, the support and political
55:52backing he obtained allowed him to take over an entire country. With his people unaware of
55:59the horrors that were about to unfold.