Hitler displayed ultranationalism when he put Social Darwinism into action, he was creating a master race. Hitler believed in survival of the fittest; he eliminated people who didn't meet the ethnic idea. Lebensraum and Social Darwinism were both indications of ultranationalism that Germany displayed, that ultimately lead to the cause of the second world war.
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.
Hitler expressed that Germans were superior and all other races were irrelevant. Germany expressed this belief towards the United States And Jewish civilians. He enforced this belief once he first started his rule. Thus, resulted foreign policy. In his foreign policy, it stated to destroy the Treaty of Versailles, which was what Germany had to adhere to due to their defeat in World War II.
Taylor wrote a book called “The Struggle for Mastery in Europe”, in this book A.J.P. Taylor claimed that German ambitions were the cause of the war. All of these views have merit; however, while imperialism was one of the causes of World War 1, the Alliance system and militarism in the pre-war period were definitely the major causes of the war. The Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawn, came up with a theory, the "zero-sum game" theory. This theory was applicable to World War One because it was an "age of total war", therefore the war was "zero-sum game".
Explain how the Nazi Party came to power, despite setbacks, by 1934. The rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party came to prominence by a facilitated series of events and factors which subsequently saw the collapse of democracy and marked the introduction of the dictatorial rule. Although cautious of the drastic nature of the Nazi movement, the role of the conservative elites and the subversive elements of the Weimar Constitution played a key role in appointing Hitler as chancellor in 1933, signifying decisively the collapse of the democratic system. The Reichstag fire of 1933 further served as a symbolic display of the failure of democracy, the consequences of which would catalyse a campaign against communism and flag the way for Nazi electoral success at the March elections. With the Nazi Party now firmly rooted in the political scene, Hitler sought to combine his power through the implementation of the Enabling Act; this law would effectively abolish any trace of power held by the Reichstag and the president.
Several attempts from both the left and right sides of government tried to imbue the nationalistic beliefs that were embodied in Germany before they were destroyed by their humiliating defeat in WW1. These include the Spartacist uprising, the Kapp Putsch and the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. The disillusionment felt by the people and their need to restore pride in their nation influenced many factors that led to the failure of the democracy, and to the rise of the Nazi political party and its leader Adolf Hitler. In hindsight, a mixture of political, social and economic issues, combined with nationalistic goals give grounds to the reason that nationalism mainly brought about the fall of the democracy of the Weimar Republic in Germany. By the outbreak of WW1 in August 1914, Germany was well established as a major and prominent world power.
In 1933, Hitler, leader of the Nazi party, was named Chancellor of Germany. After World War I the League of Nations had forced Germany to accept responsibility for the war. They lost land, were banned from building new submarines and aircraft, and had to pay for damages caused by the war. (Gordon, page 343) Hitler and the Nazi party wanted revenge on the winners of World War I and the Socialists, Communists, and Jews, who he blamed for Germany’s loss in World War I. (Ward and Burns, page 16) Hitler decided to take over other countries and to kill Jews.
The first documentation about their intention to exterminate the Jews appears in the 1942 Wannsee conference, when Germany faced a difficult situation in the Soviet Union. This illustrates that the Nazis had decided on the complete eradication of the Jews as the war became increasingly difficult. The extreme anti-Semitism displayed by Hitler in his speeches and comments and Nazi propaganda has been used to support the belief that the Nazis had decided on extermination as soon as they gained power. However, Hitler was known to exaggerate in his speeches to the extremist audiences, with remarks such “As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected… Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink”. Clearly, the method mentioned is unfeasible and this had the role of causing a sensation.
The Nazi party now forced to think tactically and with the burning of the Reichstag building through a communist Hitler was able to blame the extremist party for the beginning of a revolution and with President Hindenburg's approval he arrested the ‘enemies of the state’. With this fortunate accident, the ‘missing’ SPD party and the agreement with Zentrum Hitler was able to get his two thirds majority to pass the Enabling Act which entitled him to pass laws without parliamentary approval. Although on the surface Hitler seemed to have a lot of control, this was not complete, due to the fact that President Hindenburg could over rule him and perhaps even terminate him as chancellor. This power, however, led to multiple sudden adjustments to Germany, after becoming a one party state by July 1933, through making the SPD party and all other competitors illegal, he continued to set loose on Germany’s very powerful and threatening trade unions. Trade unions posed a strong threat to the NSDAP due to their power in Germany, considering their support for the SPD and even KPD.
The founder of this organization is Aaron Zelman. When asked what the purpose of this organization was he proclaims that their main goal is, “ the destruction of the idea that gun control is a socially useful public policy" (Verberg, 1995). This organization has written number books that have re-visited history to prove their point that gun control can lead a country to lose its right and eventually genocide. In “Lethal Laws: Gun Control is the Key to Genocide” Simkin,, Zelman, & Rice (1994) Zelman and his group bring to light the laws in Germany and how they paved the way for Hitler to use gun control for his advantage. Before his rule the previous administration, under Weimar, enacted a strict gun control law in 1928.