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How did the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression contribute to Hitler's rise?
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Hitler used the dissatisfaction of the German people with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the economic hardships of the Great Depression to win over his countrymen with promises of German glory and prosperity, and this aided his rise to power.
The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, delineated the terms of peace between the Allies and Germany at the close of World War I. The terms were humiliating and economically devastating for Germany, which had to accept full responsibility for the war, give up part of its territory to the conquering nations, demilitarize, limit its army and navy, and pay an enormous amount in reparations. This embittered the German people, who felt betrayed by the Allied countries.
Adolf Hitler became the head of the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party, in 1921. Among key party platforms were the pride of the German people and dissatisfaction with the terms of the Versailles Treaty. After the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, Hitler began to work within the electoral process to gain power and influence.
The Great Depression, which began in 1929, quickly spread around the world....
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It hit particularly hard in Germany. Hitler took advantage of the economic upheaval and the desperation of the German people to offer an agenda of German pride and prosperity. As a result, the Nazis captured a significant number of seats in the German Parliament, called theReichstag. In January of the following year of 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, and the Nazis quickly moved to ban all other political parties and control all facets of German life.
We see, then, that Hitler used the disgruntlement of the German people with the Treaty of Versailles to advance the program of the Nazi Party through propaganda. When the Great Depression caused so much hardship among the German People, they looked for an alternative to the government in power, and Hitler and the Nazi Party were there with promises of glory and prosperity for the German people. Once Hitler had power, he forcibly eliminated opposition, at which point he and the Nazis were free to do whatever they wanted.
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How did the Treaty of Versailles contribute to Hitler's rise to power in Germany?
The Treaty of Versailles put into place some of the conditions that allowed a racist demagogue like Hitler to rise to power. First, the terms of the treaty were humiliating, even to liberal Germans, because the treaty forced Germany to take total blame for the war. Second, the treaty laid most of the burden of paying for the war on the Germans. Third, it took territory away from Germany that many felt was rightfully theirs, and finally, it severely restricted the size of the German army. The last restriction worked especially well for Hitler, as, prior to this, the army had been a highly respected and available path for young men with no money or connections to get ahead in the world. Without a robust army, young men who wanted a future felt stymied in dead-end, low-status jobs or no jobs at all, making them ripe for recruitment to far right para-military groups, like Hitler's brownshirts, that promised them a better future.
Many Germans were stunned by the defeat. Because it made no sense to them that such a power as Germany had been brought to its knees, they were open to ideas that Hitler and others spread, such as the notion that the Versailles treaty was the result of a "Jewish backstab." Germans who felt keenly and angrily the loss of status the treaty represented often responded positively to Hitler and his desire to assert German power and superiority.
How did the Treaty of Versailles contribute to Hitler's rise in Germany?
The punitive nature of the Treaty of Versailles directly led to the economic conditions that allowed for a demagogue such as Hitler to gain support. First, the so-called Guilt Clause, which forced Germany to claim full responsibility for starting World War One -- when in fact it was a war of multi-lateral aggression -- eviscerated the pride of the German people.
Second, the imposition of trillions of dollars in "war reparations" that the already cash-starved German state was supposed to pay back to the victors drove Germany's economy to collapse, created unprecedented inflation not seen again until modern-day Zimbabwe, and led millions of Germans to acts of unbelievable desperation in order to avoid starvation.
On top of that, the Treaty of Versailles allowed for the Allied occupation of Germany's most productive land (the Rhineland and Sudetenland), and gave disputed territory like Alsace-Lorraine back to the French. The effect of the Treaty was to impoverish and humiliate the German people, create riots in the streets, and leave the government unable to meet its basic obligations, like preserving law and order and providing basic social services.
In that vacuum of power, both the far left (Communists) and the far right (National Socialists, who became known as the Nazis) gained support and raised well armed militias. Hitler and other Nazi leaders promised a return to greatness, assuaged German humiliation by blaming the loss of the war on socialists and Jews who had "stabbed Germany in the back," and promised that a new social order would restore Germany's economy by confiscating property and money from "undesirable races" that had, according to Hitler, leeched off Germany for centuries.
Had Germany not been punished so severely or been made to take full responsibility for a war that everyone in Europe was responsible for starting, the conditions under which Hitler thrived would simply not have existed. In hindsight, the Treaty of Versailles looks almost like a playbook for the creation of a demagogue.