Humanities II (Honors) the Weimar Republic and the Rise of the Nazis

Humanities II (Honors) The Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis

I. The Weimar Republic (1918-1933):

A.  Troubled beginnings:

1.  The German republic:
Fall 1918: German revolution forms a German Republic, dominated by moderate socialists and supported by the labor unions, and forces Kaiser William II to abdicate. Friedrich Ebert becomes chancellor.
November 11, 1918: Armistice with the Allies, which was advocated by German generals, who knew that the War was lost.

2.  Threat from the left:
January 1919: German ______party (=Spartacists), going against their leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, tried to depose chancellor Ebert in Berlin. They also set up brief “______” republics in Munich, Baden, and Brunswick.
Ebert calls on the volunteer ______of ex-soldiers to crush the Communist revolutionaries, and ______Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

3.  Threat from the right:
The Kapp Putsch (=coup d’état): The Free Corps marched on Berlin, and declared the nationalist Wolfgang Kapp head of the German government. (They really wanted ______back.)
The Kapp Putsch was collapsed by a general ______by the labor unions, which supported ______.

B.  Difficulties of the Weimar Republic:

1.  Events:
February 1919: German National Assembly meets in ______, and draws up a ______.
After WWI, the German ______was in a shambles. The situation was made worse by the war ______Germany had to pay to the Allies.
The German government responded to this crisis by printing more ______, causing the German mark to fall by 1923 to around one ______of its value in 1919.
The massive ______caused Germany to ______on its war reparations.
January 1923: In response to Germany’s default, ______Premier Raymond Poincaré, orders France to occupy the Ruhr valley, the heart of German ______.
German ______engage in passive resistance to the French occupation, ______to work for the French. The German government was further impoverished by having to ______striking workers.
August 1923: Gustav Stresemann becomes German chancellor. He issued a new ______, and refused to print more money after it was first issued. This eased ______.
1924: The ______Plan reduced Germany’s reparations by basing them on what it could ______to pay, and France ______its troops from the Ruhr valley.
1924-1929: The German economy ______, supported by American investments.

2.  Basic weaknesses of the Weimar Republic:
The Weimar Republic had ______support, even during good economic times.
Germany never had a ______government until 1918. (The ______had controlled the military, ______policy, the chancellor, and ______.)
The ______class had no interest in ______, fearing the rule of an uninformed and easily manipulated “______”.
The ______class was nationalistic, anti-______, and blamed the Weimar Republic for Germany’s ______in WWI and the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles.
Germany’s many political ______could not govern on their own, and had to form unstable ______.

II.  Adolf Hitler (1889-1945):

A.  Hitler’s early years:
1889: Hitler was born in Graz, Austria, to a lower-middle class family.
Through 1908: He was a poor student who twice applied unsuccessfully to the Vienna Academy of ______.
1907-1913: In Vienna he became attracted to the Pan-______movement of Georg von Schonerer. He earned money by painting picture postcards in ______.
1913-1918: Hitler moved to ______, Germany, and later volunteered for the ______army in WWI.
During WWI, he was twice awarded the Iron Cross for ______.
He ______Germany’s losing the War and the humiliating Treaty of Versailles, and regarded the Weimar Republic as the “November ______”.
He came to believe that there was a Jewish-Bolshevik ______behind Germany’s defeat; this intensified his vehement anti-Semitism, anti-Marxism, and anti-______views.
1919: Hitler joined the German Workers’ Party, a right-wing ______group, and named it the Nazionalisozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German ______Party), or Nazis.
Hitler was an extremely successful ______who could play on the ______and desires of his audience.
November 1923: ______Hall Putsch: Hitler tries unsuccessfully to seize power in Munich. Ironically, this failed Putsch ______Hitler’s political career.
-He became a national ______during his trial and 9-month imprisonment.
-He learned that he would have to seize power through ______political means, not through a ______revolution.
-While in jail, he wrote Mein Kampf (=My ______), in which he voiced his extreme views and his hopes for German greatness. These included:
-______nationalism: true Germans are Aryans, a supposed ancient race that is superior to all others, especially ______, who are viewed as an inferior race bent on ______the world.
-Rejection of both ______and the Enlightenment, believing that the Aryans would triumph over all other races, defeating both ______and ______along the way.

B.  The Nazis seize power:
November 1929: The Great ______begins with the crash of the American stock market.
By 1933, ______Germans had lost their jobs.
Hitler ______this economic crisis, playing on people’s fears: German ______supported the Nazis because they believed they would support the ______industry, and fight Communism and organized ______. The major industrial financier of the Nazis was Fritz Thyssen, who controlled the New York-based Union Banking Corporation, which was a clearing house for a number of his enterprises and assets, including the Consolidated Silesian ______Corporation, which after mid-1940 used prison labor from the Auschwitz ______camp. (The ______Congress seized UBC on October 20, 1942, under authority of the Trading with the ______Act. Incidentally, Prescott Bush, President George W. Bush’s ______, was a managing director and stockholder of UBC, and eventually received $______for liquidating his stock. Source: Polish Newsweek: http://newsweek.redakcja.pl/archiwum/artykul.asp?Watek=7159&WatekStr=1&Artykul=4903 ) German ______supported the Nazis because they believed Hitler would end the ______crisis.
1930: The Nazis received ______out of 647 seats in the German parliament (Reichstag).
1932: The Nazis received ______seats in the Reichstag. Franz von Papen resigned after only 8 months as chancellor, and persuaded German President Paul von Hindenberg (r.1926-1934) to appoint ______as chancellor.
January 30, 1933: Hitler becomes chancellor.
February 1933: A Dutch communist (possibly prompted by the Nazis) sets ______to the Reichstag, the German Parliament building. Hitler suspends ______and arrests leftist (=Communist and Social Democratic) members of ______.
March 1933: Nazis received ______seats in the Reichstag. With the Communists and Social Democrats in ______, the Nazis gain a slight ______in parliament.

C.  The Nazis in power:

1.  Hitler as Führer:
The Nazis quickly transformed the government into a one-______state with Hitler as supreme ______.
Hitler called his regime the “Third Reich” (=Third ______).
First German Reich: begun by Charlemagne in ______, later became the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Dissolved by ______in 1806.
Second German Reich: begun in 1871 by Bismarck and William I (r. 1871-1888) at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. Ended in 1918 with the revolution in Germany that ousted William II (r. 1888-1918), and Germany’s defeat by the Allies in WWI.
Third (“Thousand-Year”) Reich: begun in 1933 by Hitler; ended in 1945 with Germany’s defeat in WWII.
Hitler assumes the role of Führer (= “______”), the absolute dictator who must be obeyed at all costs. He secures his popularity by staging huge Nazi ______, full of singing, ______, and military marches.

2.  The 3 most important Nazi officials were:

a.  Joseph Goebbels:
Minister of Public Enlightenment and ______, controlling the press, ______, theatre, and film. He invented the “Hitler ______”, which regarded Hitler as a ______leader with almost ______powers.

b.  Hermann Göring:
______in command of the Nazi hierarchy, and would have been Hitler’s ______.

1923: leader of the Sturmabteilung (S.A. = Storm Troopers = “Brown Shirts”), established in 1921 as the private ______of the Nazi Party.
1933: Became head of the Ministry of Aviation, and rebuilt Germany’s ______(Luftwaffe – until 1935 under the guise of “air sport clubs”).

c.  Heinrich Himmler:
Was the chief of ______for all of Germany.
From 1929 onwards, he led the S.S. (Schutzstaffeln, or “______corps” = “______shirts”), organized in 1925 as an elite branch of the Nazi ______to protect Nazi party officials.
Himmler was also responsible for establishing ______camps and exterminating Jews.
Himmler was also head of the Gestapo (the Geheime Staatspolizei, or ______state police), formed in 1933 and after 1936 a branch of the S.S.
Through the Gestapo, the Nazis controlled both Protestant and Catholic ______(by ______, banning clergymen from speaking, controlling theological seminaries, and arresting church critics of the Nazis).

3.  Major events under Nazi rule:
1933: Hitler begins building the famous German Autobahnen (federal ______), which employed many workers and strengthened German ______.
May 1933: Nazis seized control of the schools and ______, expelling Jewish and ______professors and burning ______considered a threat to Nazi ideology.
October 1933: Germany ______from the League of Nations over the issue of remilitarization.
June 29-30, 1934: Night of the Long ______: Bowing to the fears by the regular ______(Reichswehrmacht) that it would be absorbed into the Nazi Party’s S.A., Hitler has the S.S. execute its ______, including its ______-wing leader (1931-4), Captain Ernst Röhm.
January 1935: the Saar Valley votes to become reunited with Germany.
Hitler Youth: a Nazi version of the ______for boys from 10 to 18.
March 1935: Hitler declares that Germany is no longer ______by the Versailles treaty; Hitler reintroduces universal ______service, and begins to remilitarize Germany, including building a navy and ______. All of this was in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, but was also a huge boost to the German ______.
Fall 1935: Nuremberg Laws deprived ______of political rights: forbade ______intercourse between Jews and non-Jews; no German woman under 45 could be employed in a Jewish household.
March 1936: German troops occupy the demilitarized ______.
Late 1936: Rome-Berlin ______links Germany and Italy.
March 1938: the Anschluß: Germany annexes ______.
November 7, 1938: a deranged 17-year-old ______assassinates a German official in Paris.
November 9, 1938: The Nazis retaliate with the Kristallnacht (=The Night of Broken ______): ______synagogues and many Jewish businesses were burned down. ______Jews were placed in concentration camps.

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