However when the Great Depression hit “Americans immediately calling in foreign loans”1. Therefore this meant that the banks of Germany had to give America their money back; taking the German peoples savings, and leaving them financially ruined as they had to collect all of their money from their debtors. This led Germany to a financial crisis. Furthermore, this source has also highlighted other points that have helped Hitler to rise to power, such as, “hyperinflation”1, “propaganda”1, “Hitler was a gifted speaker”1, and, “the Treaty of Versailles”1. Arguably, the Treaty of Versailles, was one of the main points that Charles Hawley made, as it stated that Germany had to pay “132 billion goldmarks”1 in reparations, for the war.
During 1929-1939 despite Germany’s rapid growth, the German economy wasn’t strong enough to take on the Great Depression. In many ways, the Great Depression was the key to Hitler, and his Nazi Party’s rise to power. The Great Depression was the key point in German history that
Because of this, Hitler’s goal was to cleanse Germany of any backstabbing Jews (Growing Fascism in Germany Notes, pg 1). Hitler became impatient while waiting for the Jews to die in the ghettos so he held a conference in Wannsee on January 20, 1942 to decide the next step for purifying Germany. Hitler, along with 15 other scholars, decided to deport all Jews to extermination camps and kill the majority of them in gas chambers. Hitler prohibited the Jews from fleeing the country so he was able to purge the entire population. One of the largest death camps in Germany, Auschwitz, was a result of the Wannsee Conference.
The Nazi used the Great Depression as the boost to gain support from the Germans. Due to America’s depression, Germany was put into a dire state as unemployment increased, thus resulted in the Nazi gaining votes during the 1933 election. The depression caused desperation within the people that made them feel that the Weimar Republic could not look after them or the country’s financial problems. Hitler made promises to get rid of the unemployment rate, thus gaining the support of the public. Although the Great Depression was a key factor to Hitler’s rise to power but there were other causes: the German’s were looking for a saviour and Hitler happened to be that person; Hitler also played on the German’s fear factor of Communism and Communist which led him to get votes from the middle to higher class citizens by the burning of the Reichstag.
From the very beginning, Hitler and the Nazi Party had very clear ideas and objectives. They had two main aims, and in order to expand and dominate the diplomatic stage in Europe, they had to achieve these aims. Firstly, Hitler followed a revisionist policy, which was to ignore and end the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty severely limited Germany’s power, with territory loss and the creation of the Polish Corridor. Their army was reduced to 100,000 men, their navy and air force were restricted, Anschluss with Austria was forbidden and they had to pay reparations of a total of 6.6 billion pounds.
Since the Germans had to pay for all of the casualties and damages inflicted upon other countries, they began creating an excessive amount of money. This lead to the inflation in Germany, and this put Germany in financial trouble where parents began giving this money for children to use as blocks as it was easier to make the children blocks with the money then paying more for a reduced amount of blocks. This is what the Germans called the Depression of 1929. “The depression of 1929 created poverty and unemployment, which made people angry with the Weimar government. People lost confidence in the democratic system and turned towards the extremist political parties such as the Communists and Nazis during the depression” (BBC 2014) The German people were alone, angry, seeking for answers and revenge of some sorts, seeing that the democratic system failed to satisfy them in any way, the German citizens turned to anyone who would take them in like the Communists and the Nazi party.
In order to compel the Allies to reduce Germany 's war reparations of the First World War, the German government vigorously cut in public spending. While in doing so, the consequences are a large number of unemployment and deflation. In the meantime, a large number of unemployment and deflation created conditions for the Nazis came to power. This is one of the most eminent financial crisis happened in the history of Germany in 1923. The disaster of hyperinflation was indirectly caused by the symbol of the end of the First World War, namely the Versailles Treaty.
Moreover, the German revolution caused endless chaos and tension in Germany, stealing away the soldiers’ focus on victory in WW1, therefore negatively affecting their performance & sparking their defeat in WW1. The figure above (Figure 2: German Revolution), shows one of the demonstrations in the German revolution. However, the German revolution stemmed many changes into the German authority, as the Kaiser was coerced to resign & Germany was announced a republic. (Figure 2: German Revolution) In conclusion, many different factors combined led to the German defeat in WW1, including the US entry into WW1, the naval factors, the authoritative factors, the blockades and the failure of the U-boat campaign as well as the Ludendorff offensive. Moreover, these factors are highly related, as the entry of the US was the main factor that gave rise to their defeat, and most of the other causes were an upshot of the US entry into
In response the U.S., which had remained neutral until that point, joined the Allies in opposition to Germany. This fact made the scale of war much larger than it was before, earning its name 'World War 1'. This was due to Germany's original tactics for prestige backfiring, allowing the balance of power to shift and letting rash and unnecessary decisions pass. Therefore Germany not only started the war, but it continued to fuel the war for the next four years while it
In order for them to be the best, they conquered other countries and expanded their territory. Their conquests provided them more space to reproduce. The larger the population is, the faster it will reproduce. If they didn’t invade other countries, their race might face extinction. To make more room for the Germans to live, they must get rid of other “races” too.