The Night of Long Knives, one of most noteworthy events during Hitler’s rule, was a purge that occurred on the 30th June 1934. Hitler ordered the murders of conspicuous Conservative anti-Nazis such as Kurt Von Schleicher and Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Left wing Nazis such as Gregor Strasser and many members of the SA including its leader Ernst Rohm. It could be claimed that the murders were significant as they ended a possible takeover by the SA, deterred and intimidated Conservative critics while gaining their support, saw the rise of the SS, introduced terror and dictatorship into mainstream life and reassured the elites and the army.
It could be alleged that a significance of the Night of Long Knives was that it prevented a possible takeover by the SA. Ernst Rohm was not content with what he saw as a half revolution. ‘We will not tolerate the German Revolution going to sleep or being betrayed at the half-way stage.’ This article by Ernst Rohm, June 1933 is a strong indication of a possible further revolution by the SA. This point is also backed up by an Adolf Hitler speech where he says, ‘I will deal with the so-called second revolution.’ However it is possible that no such revolution was being prepared by Rohm. In a speech on the 13th July 1934 Hitler says, ‘Only a ruthless and bloody intervention might still perhaps stifle the spread of the revolt.’ Hitler’s assumptions in this speech to the Reichstag after the murders may have been manufactured to justify the assassinations.
A consequence of the Night of Long Knives may be that it was an introduction of terror and dictatorship into mainstream German life. The massacre seemed to further consolidate Hitler’s control of Germany. Hitler’s speech to the Reich Governors before ...
... middle of paper ...
... Hitler’s consolidation of power as Reich Fuhrer and enabled Hitler’s totalitarian control of Germany.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
J Hite and C Hinton, ‘Weimar and Nazi Germany 2000’
Manchester Guardian Report, 13th April 1933
Franz Von Papen’s Speech at Marburg University, 17th June 1934
Rohm’s Speech to foreign press April 18th 1934
Field von Weich’s account of Hitler’s Speech to the leaders of the SA and most of the senior Reichswehr generals 28th February 1934
Hitler’s Speech to the Reichstag 13th July 1934
Hitler’s Speech to the Reich Governors 6th July 1933
Rohm’s Newspaper Article, June 1933
Secondary Sources
A Bullock, ‘Hitler: A Study in Tyranny’, 1952
R J Evans, ‘The Third Reich in Power’, 2005
J Wheeler Bennett, ‘The Nemesis of Power. The German Army and Politics 1918-1945’, 1961
W Shirer, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’, 1959
Before he came to power, he just used World War II as his golden opportunity to turn his dream into a reality. Others, including Andreas Hillgruber, argue Hitler was the only reason genocide even happened. If Hitler had not been in control, the Holocaust would have ceased to exist. His key sources include the Nuremberg Trials, quoting him saying “this struggle will not end with the annihilation of Aryan mankind, but with the extermination of the Jewish people of Europe.” By using Hitler’s own words against him, Hillgruber makes it easy to prove Hitler’s malicious intent clearly and depict him as the mastermind behind the mass murder of the Jewish population.
Because of the state of Germany’s economy, Hitler portrayed himself as the saviour of Germany, the man that was going to restore the respect that their forefathers had earned & installed. However, under no uncertain terms was he going to do it alone, he pr...
Gottfried, Ted, and Stephen Alcorn. Nazi Germany: The Face of Tyranny. Brookfield, CT: Twenty-First Century, 2000. Print.
This investigation will address the research question, to what extent was Germany’s post-World War I economic depression a causal factor in Hitler’s rise to power from 1919 to 1934? With the Treaty of Versailles, the German government was required to pay 132 billion gold marks of war reparations, drastically worsened with the US Wall Street crash. This effectively crippled the German economy and created a desperate people. For this investigation, Hitler’s private life history and pre-military career will not be analyzed. His political rise will be examined from the perspective of economic and social factors. Several primary sources will be explored, including the Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Hitler’s 25-Point Program. In addition, tertiary sources covering Hitler’s non-personal life and rise to power will be studied.
Hitler blamed the Jews for the evils of the world. He believed a democracy would lead to communism. Therefore, in Hitler’s eyes, a dictatorship was the only way to save Germany from the threats of communism and Jewish treason. The Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was the instrument for the Nazis to convince the German people to put Hitler into power. Point one of the document states, “We demand the union of all Germans in a great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples.” 1 This point explicates the Nazi proposition that Germany will only contain German citizens and also, that these citizens would display his or her self-determination towards Germany to the fullest.
From the time Hitler and the Nazi’s took control of Germany in 1933 until the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, the aim of the regime under the calculating guidance of Hitler himself sought no less than global conquest. This ambitious objective can be further dissected into short term and long term goals that provide insight into Hitler’s character, thoughts and actions.
Synopsis – Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a work that may change our understanding of the Holocaust and of Germany during the Nazi period. Daniel Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researches have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. Drawing on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen presents new evidence to show that many beliefs about the killers are fallacies. They were not primarily SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. “They acted as they did because of a widespread, profound, unquestioned, and virulent anti-Semitism that led them to regard the Jews as a demonic enemy whose extermination was not only necessary but also just.”1 The author proposes to show that the phenomenon of German anti-Semitism was already deep-rooted and pervasive in German society before Hitler came to power, and that there was a widely shared view that the Jews ought to be eliminated in some way from German society. When Hitler chose mass extermination as the only final solution, he was easily able to enlist vast numbers of Germans to carry it out.
At what is known as The Beer Hall Putsch a man by the name Kahr was giving a speech in front of some 3,000 supporters of the Bavarian government. Hitler shot his pistol in the middle of Kahr's speech and shouted, "The national revolution has begun."
Hitler wasn’t always a dictator of Germany, in fact; he never wanted to be in the army in the first place. But in spite of what he wanted he started off as a young soldier, and often rebelled because of the mixed ...
Hitler started volunteering for the German army.’ This supports one way of how he rose up to power and did everything he did. In addition, “As leader of the Nazi party he orchestrated the holocaust, which resulted in the death of four million Jews.’’ (BCC programmes) This shows Hitler was the one who was blamed and planned everything out.
He had a group of leaders, the SS, who were Nazis that willingly took any task given, including the mass murder of millions of Jews due to his belief that they were enemies to Germany. German citizens were talked into participating or believing in the most extreme of things, like violent pogroms, deportations, attacks, and executions. Through the novel’s perspicacity of the Third Reich, readers can see how Hitler’s reign was a controversial time period summed up by courage, extremity, and most important of all, loyalty. The main purpose of the book was to emphasize how far fear of Hitler’s power, motivation to create a powerful Germany, and loyalty to the cause took Germany during the Third Reich. During the Third Reich, Germany was able to successfully conquer all of Eastern Europe and many parts of Western Europe, mainly by incentive.
All these sanctions against Germany created a feeling of discontent and resentment of German population to the rest of the European nations, activities, and actions that were taken by Adolf Hitler to rise to power and subsequent establishment of a Totalitarian State. We can say that the excesses committed by the Germans in the previous stages and during World War II, against the population and minorities of the cities they would occupy during the war were many, and ...
The debate as to whether Hitler was a ‘weak dictator’ or ‘Master of the Third Reich’ is one that has been contested by historians of Nazi Germany for many years and lies at the centre of the Intentionalist – Structuralist debate. On the one hand, historians such as Bullock, Bracher, Jackel and Hildebrand regard Hitler’s personality, ideology and will as the central locomotive in the Third Reich. Others, such as Broszat, Mason and Mommsen argue that the regime evolved out from pressures and circumstances rather than from Hitler’s intentions. They emphasise the institutional anarchy of the regime as being the result of Hitler’s ‘weak’ leadership. The most convincing standpoint is the synthesis of the two schools, which acknowledges both Hitler’s centrality in explaining the essence of Nazi rule but also external forces that influenced Hitler’s decision making. In this sense, Hitler was not a weak dictator as he possessed supreme authority but as Kershaw maintains, neither was he ‘Master of the Third Reich’ because he did not exercise unrestricted power.
In the year of 1933 Adolf Hitler seized the position of chancellor of Germany and this power that he received in January 30th is what shaped one of the most bloodlust dictatorships that this world has ever known. Hitler’s desire for power and victory made him one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen but it also made him one of the most cruel and heartless people known to mankind. But how did he do this, how did he become one of the greatest and cruellest dictators? Throughout this essay we will explore the long, short and immediate causes for Hitler’s sudden success.
Back on the night of the 27th of February 1933, what pulled down Germany to its democratic government was eradicated as the flames devoured the structure of the German parliament. This point in history is known to as “the Reichstag fire”. Even though a series of accusations where thrown to frame the communist party and Van der Lubbe (Dutch communist) who was caught red handed on the day of the fire, Historians still struggle and disagree to decide who was to blame for the Reichstag fire. This event is unclear and brings uncertainty, its is obvious that this event was crucial on Hitler’s road to power, how ever, there are other events to consider such as the night of the long knifes, the enabling act and Hindenburg’s death.