The Reichstag Fire led to the Enabling Act because Hitler had managed to convince Hindenburg that it was a ‘communists uprising’. This manages Hitler to prove to Germany that communists were bad people and he would have get more votes, in the next elections. However, I also disagree with the statement ‘the Reichstag Fire more important than the Enabling Act in allowing Hitler to consolidate power’ because of other several reasons. Firstly, the Enabling Act made a Hitler a virtual dictator. Nobody could stop him, even Hindenburg.
This propaganda continued even once they had won the election. Furthermore, once the Nazi’s had gained power, they began to push anti-Jew and other very racist and fascist propaganda on the people of Germany. Hitler was shown in newspapers and presented on the radio as a strong and just leader; with the Jews being represented as evil. Propaganda was therefore crucial to the maintenance of power by the Nazis as it meant when they began their attack on the Jews, they had the support of their people. Furthermore, it can be argued that propaganda was crucial to the maintenance of power by the Nazis as they portrayed Hitler as powerful and showed him to be good for the country, making sure people continued to show support for the Nazis and it portrayed Hitler as above all party politicking and as a figure for national focus and loyalty.
They orchestrated the majority of the Holocaust; the solution to the “Jewish question” as it was called by German forces (USHMM: SS and the Holocaust). The SS were known for their harsh, merciless brutality toward the prisoners in concentration camps and often abused them simply for their own personal enjoyment. The SS are covered extensively in the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel and other accounts of the Holocaust, and their acts can be divided into categories; including their rise to and fall from power, key figures in the establishment of the SS, and the treatment of prisoners at concentration camps. One category with major significance is the Nazis’ rise to and fall from power. The Nazis rose to governmental power through a long, thought-out series of actions that turned Hitler’s leadership into a dictatorship and started the Holocaust and World War II.
Contrastingly, James Joll suggests that Germany’s defensive offensive war rooted from a fear of encirclement from the countries that it borders, and so presents the opinion most opposing to that of the question. L.F.C Turner’s opinion arises somewhere between the two other historians’ arguments, and states that Germany was aggressive during Europe’s last month of peace before war, but there were other factors that should be considered equally. On the one hand, it was German aggression that was responsible for the outbreak of a general European war in August 1914. One example of suggested German aggression can be seen in their long term foreign policy, ‘weltpolitik’ (world politics), which had been implemented in 1897. The aim of this foreign policy was to spread German influence throughout the world, the meaning of which is interpreted differently by different people.
'The Wilhelmine Germany was an entrenched authoritarian state'. How far do you agree with this judgement? Whether Wilhelmine Germany was an entrenched state is a subject of much debate among historians. Although many have argued that it was mainly the structure of the consititution in Wilhelmine Germany which gave the Kaiser complete authority over Germany. However structuralists have argued that mass political movements in Germany were on the rise and did in fact influence politics.
Dictator Puongyang in North Korea used technology and propaganda to “herd-poison” the masses to gain power. Hitler did the same thing. Adolph Hitler’s core value judgment was that “masses are utterly contemptible and that their behavior is determined not by knowledge and reason, but by feelings of unconscious drives”. Huxley states in the chapter that “they had been genetically standardized and postnatally
This source also shows that terror helped control the Germans and what they said or showed publicly. The amount of art exhibitions that were held during this period in Germany shows how much Goebbels valued art as a source of propaganda, helping me understand why artist were controlled as the one in the cartoon is. The paintings on the wall behind the artist gives an interesting perspective, this is a visual of Hitler being everywhere and that everyone represented him showing that there was no freedom of speech in Nazi Germany. Source F also gives us an understanding of how terror was used in Nazi Germany. Greifelt’s report gives us a primary source of information that Himmler’s personal staff were coercive when getting people to work.
Therefore abstaining Hitler from having a grand design to put into effect. They deem Hitler to be more of an opportunist than a mastermind and that the eradication of the Jews became a convenient division of Hitler’s charming of the Jewish population. Extreme structuralists tend to believe that that Holocaust was initiated by the German bureaucracy, with Hitler having no place in its inception. They believe he merely capitalized on what would became an opportune occurrence for his winning over of the population. While Structuralists with a more passive view would believe that although effort was made by the Nazis to eventually remove all Jews from Europe, mass genocide was merely a last resort.
I agree with Margret MacMillan that Hitler would want to gain more power no matter what happened. Hitler wanted more and more power, and to achieve the status that he desired for Germany he used many different tactics. Hitler convinced the Germans that they would return to international status through his speeches and Nazi propaganda. To achieve his own desire for more power Hitler created Lebensraum which
Exam Style Question - section B ‘The Nazi regime enjoyed broad consent brought about by popular policies’. How far do you agree with this opinion? Explain your answer using the evidence of Sources Y,Z and AA and your own knowledge of the issues relating to the controversy. Top tips * Plan your answer before you start * Be very sure you know what view is being expressed in all 3 sources * Analyse and interpret sources Z and AA so as to establish points that support and challenge the view given in source Y. * Cross reference between the sources by focussing on support and challenge.