The Great Depression: The Main Ingredient
- Unemployment high
- Many angry workers
- Hitler, like Roosevelt provided jobs and helped the economy recover through make work projects(eg. Autobahn)
- Fascist’s build armies
Brownshirts (S.A.)
- Hitler’s henchmen
- Used through the late 20’s and early 30’s to harrass opposition parties unmercifully
- Led by Ernst Rohm
- After Hitler is elected many are appointed auxiliary police
The Burning of the Reichstag
- February 1933
- Dutch communist ‘convicted of the crime’
- Hitler bullies (with the help of the Brownshirts) the Reichstag into passing the enabling act to face the coming ‘communist revolution’
The Enabling Act
- Agreed to by the Reichstag in 1933 under threats from the brownshirts (S.A.)
- Only 93 Social Democrats voted against it Allowed Hitler to pass laws without consulting the Reichstag
- Despite the lack of freedom of speech or press Hitler only won 288 seats, barely a majority
- By July 1933 all other political parties are outlawed
Hitler and Nazism
- Steps to power:
- 1928 - 12 members of Nazi party elected to Reichstag
- 1930 - 107 seats out of 647
- 1932 - 230 seats out of 647 which made them the largest party
- President Hindenburg refused to give Hitler the Chancellorship
- 1932 (second election) Nazis fall to 198 seats
- Hindenburg chooses Hitler as Chancellor as a tool against the Communists
- 1933 Feb. (Reichstag fire election) 288 seats (majority due to imprisonment of Communist members)
- 1933 March Enabling Act
- Forms the Gestapo (secret police)
The Night of the Long Knives
- 30 June 1934 those killed were:
- Any would be internal challengers were murdered
- Ernst Rohm leader of S.A.
- All ‘socialists’, whom he’d only adopted for electoral reasons
- He declared the Shutzstaffel (S.S.) had conducted the murders proudly and was congratulated by Hindenburg
- A month later Hindenburg dies and an ‘election’ was held which voted Hitler in as President
Hitler did a lot when he was in power, such as creating his own secret police to kill off threats to him and his power, they were called the brownshirts or the Gestapo.