Homework, please use your textbook (Access to History, Germany: The Third Reich, Geoff Layton)
1. P10: How
did Hitler create a dictatorship in two months?
2. P13: In
which ways did the Nazis achieve Gleichschaltung (co-ordination)?
3. P15: How
advanced was the process of Gleichschaltung by the end of 1933?
4. P16 - 23:
Write a short paragraph that addresses the question: Did Germany undergo a
political revolution in the years 1933 – 1934? (p23)
In your paragraph, make reference to the following:
Hitler’s ‘revolution from above’, Rohm’s ‘second
revolution’, night of the long knives, different political interests such as
the Junkers, big business, civil service and the army, arguments for and
against the concept of a revolution.
Key terms you need to know the meaning/significance of (in
detail). Use your textbook and the internet:
1. SA
2. SS
3. Reichstag
fire
4. Enabling
Act
5. Gleichschaltung
6. Volksgemeinschaft
7. Junkers
8. Night of
the long knives
9. Ernst
Rohm and his views on “revolution” and the role of the SA.
More material here: Germany Folder of the Google Drive
https://drive.google.com/#folders/0Bzn4b01DqAu5dFBfd3BBU3BxSFE
Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, P130, on Rohm,
post 1923.
The composition of his book [Mein Kampf], the massive
publicity he gained from the trial, the adulation that poured in from the
nationalist right after the attempted putsch, all helped convince Hitler, if he
had not been convinced before, that he was the man to turn these views into
reality. The failed putsch also taught him that he would not even be able to
take the first step - the acquisition of supreme power in Germany itself - by
relying on paramilitary violence alone. A ‘march on Rome’ was out of the
question in Germany. It was essential to win mass public support, by the
propaganda and public-speaking campaigns which Hitler knew were his forte. The
revolutionary conquest of power, still favoured by Röhm, would not work in any
case if it was undertaken without the support of the army, so conspicuously
lacking in November 1923. Hitler did not, as was sometimes later said, even by
himself, embark on a path of ‘legality’ in the wake of the failed putsch. But
he did realize that toppling the Weimar ‘system’ would require more than a few
ill-directed gunshots, even in a year of supreme crisis such as 1923. Coming to
power clearly required collaboration from key elements in the establishment,
and although he had enjoyed some support in 1923, it had not proved sufficient.
In the next crisis, which was to occur less than a decade later, he made sure
he had the army and the key institutions of the state either neutralized, or
actively working for him, unlike in 1923.80 Meanwhile, however, the situation
of the Nazi Party seemed almost irretrievable in the wake of Hitler’s arrest
and imprisonment. The paramilitary groups broke up in disorder, and their arms
were confiscated by the government. Kahr, Lossow and Seisser, badly compromised
by the putsch, were pushed aside by a new cabinet under the Bavarian People’s
Party leader, Heinrich Held. Bavarian separatism and ultra-nationalist
conspiracies gave way to more conventional regional politics. The situation
calmed down as the hyperinflation came to an end and the policy of ‘fulfilment’
took hold in Berlin, bearing fruit almost immediately with the rescheduling of
reparations under the Dawes Plan. Deprived of their leader, the Nazis split up
into tiny squabbling factions again. Röhm continued to try and reunite the
remaining fragments of the paramilitaries in allegiance to Ludendorff. Hitler
put Alfred Rosenberg in charge of the Nazi Party as virtually the only leading
figure left in the country who was still at large. But Rosenberg proved
completely incapable of establishing any authority over the movement
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