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Elements of the Nazis’ Rise to Power & Origins of World War II Dr. Wilkins The intertwined aims for today’s class focus on explaining the origins of World War II and exploring how the Nazis came to power in Germany. Before we begin our consideration of why the war occurred, we need to more precisely define our terms. When we say "the Second World War," what do we mean? And when did the war begin? We will take as our starting point that the Second World War began on September 1, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland and the subsequent declarations of war against Germany by Britain and France. Some scholars have argued that the war began earlier, citing the conflict between Japan and China that dramatically escalated in 1937, but I agree with interpretations that, without the spur provided by Hitler's conquests in Europe, the Sino-Japanese conflict would have remained limited to those two nations. Japan would not have launched itself on its wider campaign to conquer the European colonial empires in Asia and, later, attack the United States, without German victories in the European war. Moreover, Japan's ambitions, while sweeping, focused on Asia, rather than global hegemony. 1 In contrast, Hitler did not seek to dominate only Eastern Europe, or even simply Europe as a whole. His ambitions were global, and he sought a truly world war that would enable him to dominate the entire world. He began that war in Europe in September 1939, and so we will center our discussion primarily on affairs in Europe.2 We can then ask, "why did Hitler seek the war that he launched in September 1939?" His central reason for invading Poland was that doing so represented the first step towards building an empire in Eastern Europe that would enable the acquisition for the German people of vast amounts of lebensraum, or living space. That space would be gained, Hitler believed, by the conquest of the independent countries in the region and the enslavement of, and in some cases genocide against, their inhabitants. To gain a deeper understanding of why Hitler sought that aim as well as how he came to be in a strong position to pursue it, we have to take a longer and broader view of historical causation, and consider questions such as: What intellectual and political environment shaped Hitler's worldview and the worldview of the members of the Nazi party who supported him beginning in the early 1920s? Furthermore, what

1 Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global history of World War II. Second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), xxiv, 2. 2 Ibid, 2.

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were some of the main ideas and experiences that shaped the views of millions of Germans who, in the 1930s, threw their support behind Hitler and the Nazis? What dynamics in the political, economic, and diplomatic affairs of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s placed Germany in a position where Hitler could reasonably expect that he could start, and win, a world war? Social Darwinism The starting point in answering those questions, in my view, and in that of Michael Bess, the author of one of our textbooks, Choices under Fire, is the development of the ideologies of Social Darwinism and scientific racism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3 Social Darwinism, of course, takes its name from Charles Darwin, but it has little to do with Darwin's sophisticated analysis of how and why successful organisms are able to best adapt themselves to their environments and outcompete other forms of life. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Social Darwinists bastardized Darwin's theories, taking them from the world of zoology and botany and misapplying them to analyzing human societies. They argued that life is essentially about unending, ruthless competition for limited resources between different races, and that only the strongest races will survive, with the weakest either being dominated or dying.4 Rather than seeing human inclinations towards brutal competition as something to be overcome, Social Darwinism celebrated such conflict because it would result in the "survival of the fittest," with the winners representing a better type of humanity and superior race. Opponents of Social Darwinist ideas argued that humans need not act like animals, and should instead build societies based on morality and justice.5 But millions of Europeans and white Americans in the early twentieth century nevertheless held considerable confidence in Social Darwinist ideas. They did so, in part, because those ideas flattered Europeans and white Americans by supposedly providing evidence that the dominant position Europeans and Americans enjoyed in the world reflected their racial superiority.6 When Hitler placed Social Darwinist ideas at the heart of so many of his speeches and policies, he succeeded in appealing to an audience of millions of Germans because they already found these ideas compelling long before Hitler rose to prominence. 'Scientific' racism

3 Michael Bess. Choices under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 7-8, 21, 23. Weinberg, 21. 4 Ibid., 23-24. 5 Ibid., 24- 25. 6 Ibid.

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Those Social Darwinist ideas were reinforced by so-called racial science which claimed to offer proof that Europeans were superior to other racial groups. In the Nazi world view, the Aryan race was at the top of humanity's racial hierarchy, followed by other northern European races, then some southern European (Mediterranean) races, then slavic peoples, with jews, gypsies, and non-white races at the lowest levels. Beyond simply racial questions, the Nazis marked other groups, such as the disabled and homosexuals, as deserving of death.7 On the question of anti-Semitism, the Nazis gained support for their views in part because they built upon already existing anti-Semitism in Germany. But it also bears noting that anti-Semitism was widespread in Europe as a whole, and that there was a significant amount of anti-Semitism in the United States.8 Combining Social Darwinism and 'scientific' racism, Nazis believed that the superior race had a duty to dominate inferior races, and in some cases kill inferior races and types to improve the overall racial character of the society. This racial ideology and its accompanying goals served as the foundation of Hitler's worldview. A statement from Nazi leader Rudolf Hess in a letter from 1927 helps make this point. According to Hess, in Hitler's opinion, world peace could be achieved only when "one power, the racially best one, has attained complete and uncontested supremacy."9 Hitler's (and his supporters') belief that the German people represented the best racial group, and had a duty to dominate or destroy all other inferior races, served as the very foundation of his decision to initiate the Second World War.

A 'racial map' of Europe used by Nazis

7 Bess, 28-29. Also see the brief article and bibliographic information provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Nazi Racial Science," at https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/nazi-racial-science. 8 See the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Antisemitism: the Longest Hatred." https://www.amazon.com/dp/0914153293/ref=rdr_ext_tmb. For an extensive analysis of the role of antisemitism and the eugenics movement in U.S. history, see Edwin Black's War against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (Washington, D.C.: Dialog Press, 2012). 9 Weinberg, 21-22.

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An image showing how the Nazis viewed racial types in Europe

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A Nazi image of the supposed origin of the "inferior, alien" Jewish race

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Pan-German nationalism A third important factor in explaining why Hitler was in a position to launch World War II is the idea of Pan-German nationalism. Hitler, and millions of other Germans, believed that all ethnic Germans should live in one country, under the same government. The presence of German minorities in the independent countries created in Eastern Europe after World War I, living under what Hitler and other Germans saw as oppressive foreign governments, and the separation of Austria from Germany, were seen as obstacles that had to be overcome so that all Germans could be united into one supremely strong fatherland.10

A map of the territory removed from German control by the treaty of Versailles

Fascism

10 See the first chapter of Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin Books, 2003)

for more analysis of the confluence of pan-German nationalism, Social Darwinism, and Racial Science.

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A fourth factor, the rise of fascism in Europe, beginning in Italy during World War I, also played a role in creating the conditions for the Nazis' rise to power. Fascist movements celebrated war as a healthy, beneficial, necessary activity that strengthened a people by making them battle hardened. Fascists glorified the military as the central institution in a society, they despised liberal democracy as a weak and disunited form of government, and they hated communism. 11 The Nazis certainly held those beliefs. 12 Given many Germans' traditional glorification of the military, it is unsurprising that many Germans found Hitler's celebration of martial prowess and praise for the redeeming benefits of warfare, and other elements of the fascist message, appealing.13 Anger over the Treaty of Versailles But without the next crucial factor, Hitler would likely have remained a marginal figure in German life. That factor is German fury at the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. As Gerhard Weinberg summarizes it in our reading for today, Germans believed that their country had been "most terribly crushed by the peace settlement, that all manner of horrendous things had been done to her, and that a wide variety of onerous burdens and restrictions imposed upon her by the peace had weakened her into the indefinite future."14 Those provisions included: -stringent limits on the size and capabilities of the German armed forces (the German army could not exceed 100,000 men; conscription was abolished; the German navy could have no submarines and only two dozen surface ships; Germany could not possess any military aircraft, and was therefore prohibited from having any air force). -the reduction in territorial size of Germany by 25,000 square miles, or roughly 13% of pre-war Germany's land, with most of that territory going to a newly independent Poland. These areas held more than 7 million Germans who now found themselves living under foreign governments whose authority over them they resented.15 -Germany ceded all of its colonies to other empires. -the denial of the right to station German military forces in the Rhineland, thus depriving Germany of full sovereignty over its territory.

11 Cambridge History of the Second World War: Volume 2, Politics and Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1, 29-30. 12 Ibid., 18. 13 Evans, 184-184. 14 Weinberg, 15. Also see 14 and 16 for a summary of the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. 15 See the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's summary of German territorial losses here https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/map/german-territorial-losses-treaty-of-versailles-1919

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-A war guilt clause in which Germans had to admit that they had started the Great War, and were therefore responsible for all the bloodshed caused in the war. Germans saw this clause as particularly unjust and humiliating. -Finally, Germany was required to pay compensation for the destruction caused to the allied countries, mainly France and Belgium, by Germany during the war. The Allies required that Germany pay roughly 50 billion gold marks ($12.5 billion US dollars at the time, or equivalent to $318 billion dollars in 2018 U.S. dollars). After Germany paid 9 billion gold marks between 1919 and 1921, the German reparations debt was reduced to 41 million golden marks.16 Germans, again, saw these reparation figures as oppressive, unjust, and guaranteed to cripple the German economy and inflict perpetual poverty on their country. German anger over the treaty of Versailles dramatically aided Hitler's rise.17 Although condemnation of the Versailles settlement was virtually universal in German politics in the 1920s, by the end of the decade, Hitler and the Nazis became the most strident voices calling to overturn the Versailles settlement and free Germany from the shackles that had been placed upon it.18 They promised to lead Germany in regaining its former strength by reclaiming its 'stolen' territories and uniting Germans in one nation, rejecting further reparations payments, and rebuilding the German military. Those actions would, they argued, enable Germany to claim its position at the pinnacle of world power. Many Germans shared those goals, and the Nazis succeeded in tapping into Germans' anger at the Versailles settlement as a means of building support for their party.19

An example of a Nazi propaganda poster promising to overturn the treaty of Versailles

16 For a useful summary of the scholarly debate concerning the reparations payments, see the literature review available at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations). For a more detailed discussion, see Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (London: Allen Lane, 1998). 17 Bess, 27, 60. 18 For evidence of the depth of German anger concerning the treaty of Versailles, see Cambridge History of World War II: Volume 2, p. 27. 19 Bess, 27.

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Another example, focusing on the limited military the treaty of Versailles allowed Germany to

have, contrasted to the military strength of Germany's rivals:

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Another German belief about the conclusion of World War I is significant. The indisputable historical truth is that French, British, and American armies defeated German armies on the battlefield. As a result of allied victories, Germany's army was on the verge of total collapse in November 1918. Rather than see their military completely disintegrate, which would have likely lead to an allied occupation of Germany, German leaders sought an armistice (effectively, a surrender to the French, British, and Americans). Nevertheless, after the war, many Germans chose to believe that German armies had not actually been defeated on the battlefield, but that instead their armies, who were capable of still winning the war (in their view), had been forced to surrender and 'sold out' by craven, selfish German leaders who sought personal gain in Germany's defeat. This was the origin of the "stab in the back" myth. The authors of that supposed betrayal, the traitors on the home front, were, according to the Nazis, mainly Jews. Because of the popularity of this myth, as Gerhard Weinberg writes, Germans had "no clear recognition of total military defeat" in the Great War.20 If only, the Nazis argued, the German home front had remained united, and the Jewish traitors had not been able to sell out Germany to its opponents, Germans would have won the war. This "stab in the back" myth was absurd, but it was a comforting illusion for many Germans to believe in because it gave them an easily understandable reason for why they had lost the war. It

20 Weinberg, 7.

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also served as a valuable foundation for the Nazis' ability to gain popular support in Germany, and heightened anti-Semitism in the country. The Great Depression & Germans' turn towards radical political movements The severe economic depression that devastated countries around the world, beginning in late 1929 and lasting for much of the 1930s, played a crucial role in enabling the Nazis' rise to power. The German economy had performed well in the second half of the 1920s, after the hyperinflation of the early Weimar years, and that relative economic prosperity made it difficult for radical, fringe movements such as the Nazis to gain support. As evidence, in 1928 the Nazis held less than 3% of the seats in the German Parliament.21 But this economic prosperity vanished seemingly overnight in 1930. By the end of the year, Bess writes, "major banks and industries had collapsed in bankruptcy, roughly half the German workforce was unemployed; breadlines snaked their way down city blocks."22 In times of economic turmoil, people are often more willing to support political movements that they may have previously viewed as too radical, especially when those movements claim that they, and they alone, have a plan for restoring prosperity and strength to their nation. 23 The Nazis promised that they would restore Germany's economic strength, and based in part on that promise, in mid-1932, the Nazis became the party holding the most seats in the German parliament (230 out of 608).24 Without the economic chaos of the Great Depression, the Nazis would never have been a position to take power. Germany's underlying economic strength Few historians would disagree with including the points listed above in a summary of World War II's long-term causes. But there is another long-term issue that we must consider in explaining why Germany in 1939 was in a position to launch a world war that Hitler believed that he could win: the issue of Germany's underlying economic strength, especially when compared to its European neighbors, between 1919 and 1939. Examining that issue is crucially important because of its implications for evaluating the ability Germany had to use its manufacturing strength to build and supply a massive military. Gerhard Weinberg's World at Arms provides excellent, crucially important analysis on this matter.

21 Bess, 61. For more detailed numbers, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_1928/ 22 Bess, 61. 23 Cambridge History of World War II, Vol. 2, 32. 24 Ibid.

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Weinberg challenges traditional interpretations that more-or-less accept interwar Germans' claims concerning the severe damage the treaty did to the German economy. He argues that we must de-mythologize traditional narratives concerning the various ways in Treaty of Versailles crushed Germany. As noted above, in 1919, the allied powers did, indeed, create various mechanisms designed to limit German power because they feared Germany's fundamental strength. But creating a mechanism is one thing; enforcing it is another. We must ask: to what extent were the terms of the treaty genuinely enforced? How effective were the provisions of the treaty in fundamentally weakening German economic power? In other words, how much damage did the treaty actually do to the German economy, and by extension, its potential military power? As we consider those questions, keep in mind that, prior to World War I, the German economy was among the top three in the world in GDP, and by most measures its manufacturing prowess was second only to the United States. The tremendous underlying strength of the German economy can be seen, as Weinberg notes, in the fact that Germany was such a powerful nation that in the Great War "it had taken most of the world to crush Germany and her allies and then only in a long, bitter, and costly struggle, with Allied defeat averted by the narrowest of margins..."25 To be sure, the economic strain imposed by fighting World War I, and then being forced to cede a tenth of its territory to neighboring countries, harmed the German economy, but even taking those facts into account, Weinberg explains, "Germany had been weakened less than her European enemies, and she had thus emerged relatively stronger potentially in 1919 than she had been in 1913."26 Other factors contributed to Germany's fundamental economic strength: even after World War I, the German population was the second largest in Europe. In addition, the level of education and skill among its workers and professionals was among the highest in the world. Weinberg's point is worth repeating: given that the Great War had weakened the victors', especially France's, economies more than Germany's, Germany's relative economic strength was potentially even greater after the war than it had been before. Building on that analysis, Weinberg focuses on specific terms of the treaty of Versailles and describes narratives emphasizing the damage done to Germany as "delusions." As he demonstrates, beyond the territorial cessions, few provisions of the treaty were fully enforced, and those that supposedly did the most damage to Germany (notably the reparations payments) were limited in their actual impact, in large part because "the reparations payments were reduced and eventually canceled."27

25 Weinberg, 8. 26 Ibid., 15. 27 Ibid.

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As Weinberg writes, in the 1920s, Germany "shook off the reparations payments by simple refusal to pay...[and] more than off-set what payments were made through borrowing abroad, followed by repudiation of most of those loans in the 1930s."28 In other words, Germany actually paid little in the way of reparations, and what it did pay, it paid with money it had borrowed from the United States, which it then refused to repay to the Americans. Weinberg perhaps overstates the case when he writes that "Germany did not pay reparations," but scholarship in the past several decades has shown that his argument is much closer to the truth than older narratives which hold that Germany's economy was devastated by the onerous terms of reparations payments.29 Of course, one might ask "what about hyperinflation in Weimar Germany, and images of Germans pushing wheelbarrows full of money to the market to buy a loaf of bread? Doesn't that provide evidence of just how thoroughly World War I, and the treaty of Versailles, wrecked the German economy?" Undoubtedly, hyperinflation from 1921 through 1924 harmed German prosperity, and millions of Germans suffered, but it was ultimately a temporary downturn, and once the German currency was stabilized in 1924, Germany's fundamental economic strength reasserted itself. To repeat: reparations payments did not permanently impoverish and weaken the German economy. Many people, inside and outside of Germany, believed they did, but Germany's actual, underlying economic strength and productive capability was far from "crushed" by reparations payments. Indeed, that reality was illustrated by the prosperity of the German economy in the second half of the 1920s. But on the general point of evaluating Germany's economic strength, even if one accepts Weinberg's analysis concerning the limited economic impact of the treaty of Versailles, what about the Great Depression? Didn't that wreck the German economy? As noted above, the Great Depression certainly created economic chaos and harmed the German economy. But the Depression itself did not destroy Germany's industrial base or fundamentally weaken its economy. The main problem Germans faced during the early years of the Depression was that factories closed and workers had few jobs because there had been a severe reduction in demand for their products and services. But once the Nazis took power, and gave the millions of unemployed Germans something to do, namely to build the world's most powerful military, the strength of the German economy reasserted itself quickly. In summary, I find convincing Weinberg's argument that, contrary to popular mythology, Germany's underlying economic strength, especially in comparison to its weakened neighbors, continued to be the strongest on the continent throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Only by recognizing this fundamental strength (and the limited economic

28 Ibid., 16. 29 Ibid.

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effect of the reparations) can we understand how the Nazis succeeded in quickly ramping up German economic productivity to tremendous levels and building a mighty war machine.30 If Germany had not had this underlying economic strength, and if the Treaty of Versailles (and especially reparations) had permanently impoverished the German economy, then Hitler could never have built the army he needed to launch his war for global conquest. Germany's underlying military strength I will deal with this issue more in my essay for our next class, but will state briefly here a straightforward and crucial point, made in 1927 in the final report of the Inter-Allied Commission of Control, the supervisory organization which the Allies had created to ensure that Germany was abiding by the military restrictions placed upon it by the Versailles settlement: "Germany has never disarmed, has never had the intention of disarming, and for seven years has done everything in her power to deceive and 'counter-control' the Commission appointed to control her disarmament."31 Undoubtedly, Germany's military was radically scaled down after the Great War. But German leaders still sought to maintain a strong, even if small, military during the 1920s. In a relationship whose full irony only became clear in 1941, the German army, even prior to the rise of the Nazis, gained considerably from its secret military partnership with the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1933. During those years, as historian Ian Johnson writes, "Germany rebuilt its shattered military at four secret bases hidden in Russia...However, the most important aspect of Soviet-German cooperation was its technological component. Together, the two states built a network of laboratories, workshops, and testing grounds in which they developed what became the major weapons systems of World War II. Without the technical results of this cooperation, Hitler would have been unable to launch his wars of conquest." Even prior to the Nazis' ascent to power, Germany had been working behind-the-scenes to repair, improve, and modernize its military. That latent military power proved to be crucial in shaping Hitler's plans. If the German military had truly been crushed by the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler would not have been able to so quickly and successfully build up the Nazi military machine that he sent into action in late 1939. Conclusion

30 Ibid. 31 As quoted in Ian Johnson's excellent article, "Sowing the Wind: The First Soviet-German Military Pact and the Origins of World War II," War on the Rocks, June 7, 2016. https://warontherocks.com/2016/06/sowing-the-wind-the-first-soviet-german-military-pact-and-the-origins-of-world-war-ii/

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There are several other long-term factors that bear mentioning, including the weaknesses of collective security and the League of Nations; anti-war sentiment and political exhaustion in Britain and France; the incoherence of French foreign policy during the 1930s; and the weakness of Germany's Eastern European neighbors. But we will look more in-depth at those issues, and the origins of the conflict in Asia between Japan and neighboring countries, in future class sessions.