Account for the Appeal of the Nazi Party in Germany

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The topic of this research paper is the account for the appeal of the Nazi Party in Germany. The problem of Nazism has always been important for the whole mankind since the supporters of this ideology came to power in Germany in 1933. The terrible crimes Nazis committed while ruling Germany still have their consequences all around the world. The idea of Nazism is the idea of the superiority of one race over all other peoples on Earth and, needless to say, that it is unacceptable nowadays in the society which aims at building the world having human rights as its leading principle. But in 1920 – 1930s the ideology of National Socialist German Worker’s Party won lots of supporters, at first in Germany and later throughout the world (Brophy, 2005).

The political situation in the world was favorable for such a movement to become the leading one in many countries. The roots of the Nazi Party go to the early 1920s, to the period when the World War I has just been finished. The state of things in Germany was terrible, the country had to pay immense reparations to the Entente (Great Britain, France and Russia) which was the winner of the war. Germany was not allowed to have an army, fleet or arsenal of weapons. There was a huge inflation, unemployment which destroyed the country’s economy and industry and caused a great famine that took lots of human lives. All these conditions could not satisfy the needs of an average German and the ideologists of Nazism used the situation to their advantage. Adolf Hitler and his supporters promised to return the former power to Germany and almost the whole nation believed in their promises (Spielvogel, 2005).

This is how Nazis came to rule Germany with their plans of ruling the whole world. So, this essay will be aimed at understanding the basic reasons for supporting the Nazis by the vast majority of Germans in the early 1930s and the main techniques used by the Nazi Party to reach power. To do this in a proper way we shall include in this research paper the analysis of several scientific works dedicated to the problem of Nazism, as well as the analysis of some primary sources such as The Program of the Nazi Party, excerpts from some other documents of that epoch and from speeches of prominent Nazi officials. This will allow us to study the issue in more detail and give a precise picture of the phenomenon we are studying in this research paper – reasons and ways by means of which The National Socialist German Workers’ Party became the leading force in the political life of Germany in the 1930s.

It is necessary to mention that the issue of the origin and development of Nazism has always been a provoking topic for research and was studied by many scientists, including historians, sociologists, ecologists and psychologists. The historiography of this stage of the human society’s development is rather reach as from the moment of the Nazism defeat in 1945 lots of researchers were eager to find out the essence of this movement in the politics (Evans, 2003). Already in 1960s, as Nazism was defeated and all its leaders and ideologists were sentenced at Nurnberg Trials, the first works dedicated to study of such a phenomenon in the human history as Nazism were published. The research work was started much earlier but the authors managed to complete and publish it 15 – 20 years after the Nazi collapse.

Among the first scientists to take up the work on the problem of Nazism, not surprisingly, were German researchers like Martin Broszat, who published his work under the title “The Hitler State: The foundation and development of the internal structure of the Third Reich” in 1969. This is the paper reflecting the functionalist view of Nazism, in other words it examines the ideology as a complete system with its own structure, functions and hierarchy aimed at reaching particular goals of ruling the world and establishing the New World Order.

Other German researchers, for example Detlev and Peukert continued exploring the issue of Nazism and published their book called “Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life” some years later, in 1970s. This brilliant work touches upon the problem of the ideological basis of Nazism and provides evidence of the Nazi policy from real life of ordinary Germans. The issue of racism, hostility to Jews and their extermination which took place in the Third Reich are the main ideas expressed in this very work.

Not only German historians dealt with the problem of Nazism in their works. The famous British historian Ian Kershaw took his time to write one of the most complete and precise biographies of the “father” of Nazism Adolf Hitler ( real surname – Schicklgruber). This book reveals the personal reasons of Hitler to create the Nazi party, his ideals and, what is the most important, destroys the myth about Hitler as a superhuman and the prophet of the new era. Kershaw explains that Adolf Hitler was an ordinary person who had a talent of public speaking and persuading people. He did not need any superpower to persuade the Germans, he only used the conditions historically formed in Germany of that time. Hitler promised what the whole Germany wanted to hear and the nation followed him tired of hardship and hoping for a better living. The book speculates also on the distortion of original National Socialist ideas by Hitler and his supporters (Kershaw, 2000).

Among the latest works on the Nazism such ones deserve special attention as books by Robert Gellately (“The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945”) and Eric A. Johnson (“Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans”) published in the middle of the 1990s and presenting great interest for studying the organization of The Third Reich’s executive bodies, their activities and interaction with the population of Germany. Such organizations as Gestapo which performed the executive and punitive functions in the Nazi hierarchy were integral parts of that society. They not only did the dirtiest work but also executed various diversions directed at establishing racial hostility and strengthening the positions of the Nazi Party in Germany.

All the above mentioned works, together with lots of other researches dedicated to the problem of Nazism comprise a great scientific base giving us valuable data for the research we are conducting. Although, the authors wrote the works at different time and dealt with various aspects of the issue, the general direction of their thoughts stays the same – they condemn Nazism as anti-human ideology aimed at destruction with no constructive force. Irrespective of their national belonging, all the authors of the Nazism-concerned works keep to the point of view according to which all nations should unite not to allow anything like Nazism in future and call for the whole mankind to study the lessons of history and to repeat the mistakes of the past generations.

But for this or that reason, there was a period in the history when the ideas of Nazism attracted attention of masses of people and did not rise any negative reactions or disputes (Bischof, 1993). Why was it so? What made Nazism such an attraction for nations? What did the Nazi ideologists and propagandists do to persuade people, firstly to win their votes in Parliamentary election of 1933 and then to become the dominant ideology of the whole German nation? These are the questions answers to which are difficult to find but which will provide us with the deep understanding of the problem. This, in its turn will allow us not to make the same mistakes in future realizing the experience of the preceding generations. So, let us start the research of the reasons and ways of Nazism development with analyzing the data that we can take from the primary and secondary resources concerning the topic of this work.

The foundation of every political ideology is the program of this or that party, so let us take a look at the Nazi program, or as it was originally called, the Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. It is evidently the document promoting racial hostility, violence and war: “4. Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of creed, can be our countrymen Hence no Jew can be a countryman.” Needless to say, that the main point of the program is then restoration of the former power of Germany defeated in the World War I: “2. We demand that the German people have rights equal to those of other nations; and that the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain shall be abrogated.” In general the spirit of the program is reformative, Nazi promise to change the life of the German people, introduce new methods of ruling and provide people with substantial level of income: “15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.” Reformation of all spheres of industry and economy was also among Nazis’ program points: “16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.” (Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, 1920).

These are the main ideas of the Nazi party which wee followed by the majority of the German nation who did not want or could not listen attentively to what Hitler and his supporters said. Their public speeches are full of racial hatred and calls for war and extermination of races which were considered to be inferior: “And we say that the war will not end as the Jews imagine it will, namely with the uprooting of the Aryans, but the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews.” (Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, 131). Nazis did not stop at anything in order to make their ideals come true and with the purposes of making the German race the dominant one in the world: “In amending my directive of June 20 1944, I request that those people subject to special treatment be sent to a crematorium to be cremated if possible.” (Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals, 1166).

As can be clearly seen from the primary sources quoted above and from the scientific literature on the problem of Nazism appearing and establishment in Germany, the ideals of this political anti-human movement found their supporters all over Germany due to the historical reasons – Germany was defeated in the World War I and the people lived in terrible conditions, Nazis indicated those who were to blame for the hardships of the Germans, the Jews, and gave clear program of what needed to be done in order to reanimate the German economy and to improve the people’s living standards (Dowbiggin, 2001). The only problem was that the majority of Germans did not understand that they were only the means for Nazi party to reach the power, when Nazi became the rulers of Germany their ideals changed and the people were betrayed. This became possible due to the skillful propagandists serving the Nazis, Hitler himself was interested in the rhetoric and was considered to be a genius of public speaking and persuasion: “The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are.”(Hitler, 1943).

In the conclusion I would like to state that the above mentioned reasons and ways of Nazi party becoming the leading force in the German society are evident nowadays and we should keep them in mind for next generations not to make the same mistake as our predecessors did – not to allow the reanimation of Nazism.

Works Cited

Primary sources

Fray, William C., and Lisa A. Spar, 1997. The Avalon Project. Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. University of South Florida.

Hitler, Adolf.1943.Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. 1949-1953. Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off., , Vol XIII, p. 131.

Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals. 1949-1953. Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., Vol. IV, p. 1166.

Secondary sources

Bischof, Günter, 1993. “The Historical Roots of a Special Relationship: Austro-German Relations Between Hegemony and Equality”. In Unequal Partners, ed. Harald von Riekhoff and Hanspeter Neuhold. San Francisco: Westview Press.

Brophy et al., 2005. Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western.

Civilizations. Vol. 2, From the Age of Absolutism through Contemporary Times. 3rd Edition.

Dowbiggin, Ian. 2001 Review of “The Nazi War on Cancer” Canadian Journal of History.

Evans, Richard. 2003. The Coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin Books.

Jackson J Spielvogel, PhD. 2005. Western Civilization: Alternate Volume: Since 1300. London: Wadsworth.

Kershaw, Ian. 2000, 4th edition. The Nazi Dictatorship; Problems & Perspectives of Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Account for the Appeal of the Nazi Party in Germany

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