3 thoughts on “Session 9- Democracy’s Deserted Temple’ The Rise of the Nazis”
Bessel seems to be focussing on the ‘forgotten historiography’ that he laments is now overlooked with a key question of whether Hitler seized power or was handed it. He also calls A-level syllabus the graveyard of history (or similar) which is reassuring as a future history teacher!
His argument seems to be that Hitler was handed power but the four key areas discussed put him in the strongest position to take it. In terms of historiography, Bessel’s saying the Third Reich must be viewed as part of continuation of Weimar, not a separate entity.
Kjostvedt believes he is adding a contextualisation of a longer-term strategy by the Nazis to create a microcosm of Germany within their organisation and that the focus on party structure and hierarchy acted as preparation for the Nazi state. Seems to give a lot of credit to Muchow before later saying he wasn’t that big a deal, though his (possibly borrowed) organisational idea was.
I liked some of the devices Frtizsche uses like the focus on the night of Jan 30th 1933 and the teacher who couldn’t work out if Hitler or Marx was going to be their man (which is quite extreme?) Frtizsche seems to conclude a broad nationalist uprising unsettled conservatives in the 1920s with working and middle class groups seeking a political voice.
Sorry about my confusion on who was doing what this week…
Neil
I agree with Robbie that the Bessel article discussed mainly the violence used by the Nazi movement to assert their dominance and intimidate the Jewish communities. What I thought was interesting about this was that the author argues that antisemitism against Jewish people was widespread throughout the country throughout the Weimar period and not only as a result of the Nazi campaign. Bessel also makes the case that antisemitism was more of an afterthought with hatred against communism and social democracy at the forefront. This would make sense as if racism was present within the society anyway, it makes it easier to see why they targeted the Jews to take out their political and economical frustrations out on the defenceless.
I found the Kjostvedt article interesting as it narrowed its focus into Berlin, where communism and social democracy had a strong political hold. It was interesting to see how they managed to target small individual non Nazi supporting groups, especially being able to take their names and addresses to follow up with them until they joined the movement. Intimidation at its finest.
In the Fritzsche article I found it interesting seeing where the Nazi movement all began and how Hitler managed to find his way into politics climbing the ladder until he was voted in as Chancellor. Especially how he managed to gain so much popularity and publicity while he was on trial for treason.
All three articles I believe highlight how diverse the Nazi movement was in being able to appeal to different groups of people regardless of age, gender or class. I feel that if they had not been able to do this they might not have gained so many votes in the election which saw their rise to power.
Siobhan Holland
Thanks, Robbie, for this summary – I would like to be able to see how both of you have contributed to this post. And thanks to Neil and Siobhan for starting the discussion.
There are some important points emerging here which I think we can discuss more in depth in the seminar, e.g. violence and the organisational ability of the Nazis. We do have to pay great care to the chronology here, however. Bessel is not saying that the Jews were ‘relentlessly and ruthlessly’ targeted before 1933, but rather antisemitic violence was not uncommon from the Nazis, yet did not affect them electorally – as Siobhan notes, there was widespread antisemitic feeling (although if we fast forward to 1938, many German found Kristallnacht to have gone too far). The main target of the violence prior to 1933 (and even in spring 1933) was the left. Similarly, we need to be careful in terms of how we describe Hitler’s popularity and where we fit in terms of the chronology; he never did win a majority of the vote in an election.
I also want you to all think about how and whether we should avoid reading history retrospectively; in other words, should we write the history of the Nazi Party through the lens of gaining power in 1933? Was this in anyway inevitable? In that sense I’m sceptical that the Nazis were lying low and waiting for the chance in the 1920s (they took their chance in 1923 and failed). Rather, they were relatively weak until the late 1920s.
I’m glad we’ve picked up on the diversity of the Nazi’s movements strategy and message, as well as the broadness of their appeal (e.g. picking up Marxists). It’s important to remember that not all Nazis were ideological zealots; some liked the idea of having a license to beat people up. And it’s perhaps easy to see how some would move across the political spectrum to join the Nazis (Timothy Brown has a book about communists who became Nazis)…
Bessel seems to be focussing on the ‘forgotten historiography’ that he laments is now overlooked with a key question of whether Hitler seized power or was handed it. He also calls A-level syllabus the graveyard of history (or similar) which is reassuring as a future history teacher!
His argument seems to be that Hitler was handed power but the four key areas discussed put him in the strongest position to take it. In terms of historiography, Bessel’s saying the Third Reich must be viewed as part of continuation of Weimar, not a separate entity.
Kjostvedt believes he is adding a contextualisation of a longer-term strategy by the Nazis to create a microcosm of Germany within their organisation and that the focus on party structure and hierarchy acted as preparation for the Nazi state. Seems to give a lot of credit to Muchow before later saying he wasn’t that big a deal, though his (possibly borrowed) organisational idea was.
I liked some of the devices Frtizsche uses like the focus on the night of Jan 30th 1933 and the teacher who couldn’t work out if Hitler or Marx was going to be their man (which is quite extreme?) Frtizsche seems to conclude a broad nationalist uprising unsettled conservatives in the 1920s with working and middle class groups seeking a political voice.
Sorry about my confusion on who was doing what this week…
Neil
I agree with Robbie that the Bessel article discussed mainly the violence used by the Nazi movement to assert their dominance and intimidate the Jewish communities. What I thought was interesting about this was that the author argues that antisemitism against Jewish people was widespread throughout the country throughout the Weimar period and not only as a result of the Nazi campaign. Bessel also makes the case that antisemitism was more of an afterthought with hatred against communism and social democracy at the forefront. This would make sense as if racism was present within the society anyway, it makes it easier to see why they targeted the Jews to take out their political and economical frustrations out on the defenceless.
I found the Kjostvedt article interesting as it narrowed its focus into Berlin, where communism and social democracy had a strong political hold. It was interesting to see how they managed to target small individual non Nazi supporting groups, especially being able to take their names and addresses to follow up with them until they joined the movement. Intimidation at its finest.
In the Fritzsche article I found it interesting seeing where the Nazi movement all began and how Hitler managed to find his way into politics climbing the ladder until he was voted in as Chancellor. Especially how he managed to gain so much popularity and publicity while he was on trial for treason.
All three articles I believe highlight how diverse the Nazi movement was in being able to appeal to different groups of people regardless of age, gender or class. I feel that if they had not been able to do this they might not have gained so many votes in the election which saw their rise to power.
Siobhan Holland
Thanks, Robbie, for this summary – I would like to be able to see how both of you have contributed to this post. And thanks to Neil and Siobhan for starting the discussion.
There are some important points emerging here which I think we can discuss more in depth in the seminar, e.g. violence and the organisational ability of the Nazis. We do have to pay great care to the chronology here, however. Bessel is not saying that the Jews were ‘relentlessly and ruthlessly’ targeted before 1933, but rather antisemitic violence was not uncommon from the Nazis, yet did not affect them electorally – as Siobhan notes, there was widespread antisemitic feeling (although if we fast forward to 1938, many German found Kristallnacht to have gone too far). The main target of the violence prior to 1933 (and even in spring 1933) was the left. Similarly, we need to be careful in terms of how we describe Hitler’s popularity and where we fit in terms of the chronology; he never did win a majority of the vote in an election.
I also want you to all think about how and whether we should avoid reading history retrospectively; in other words, should we write the history of the Nazi Party through the lens of gaining power in 1933? Was this in anyway inevitable? In that sense I’m sceptical that the Nazis were lying low and waiting for the chance in the 1920s (they took their chance in 1923 and failed). Rather, they were relatively weak until the late 1920s.
I’m glad we’ve picked up on the diversity of the Nazi’s movements strategy and message, as well as the broadness of their appeal (e.g. picking up Marxists). It’s important to remember that not all Nazis were ideological zealots; some liked the idea of having a license to beat people up. And it’s perhaps easy to see how some would move across the political spectrum to join the Nazis (Timothy Brown has a book about communists who became Nazis)…