Hitler Harvest: Cashing in on the Crisis - Term Paper Example

here Sociology 14 June Hitler’s Harvest: Cashing in on the Crises Just what propelled such a ruthless and explosive person as Adolf Hitler into power? Would he have been given such a position of power had his nation not faced a crisis of modernity? When the Weimar Republic did not seem to have the remedies to resuscitate Germany from its post-World War I economic and social chaos ? of which many blamed on the Treaty of Versailles and the victors of the war ? a climate for welcoming change and extreme nationalism came rolling across the nation (Peukert 13). A longing for a new status identity and a sense of vitality were ripening in a nation that was not content with stagnation or decline, much less a feeling of inferiority to those of non-Germanic descent. Someone must be blamed for the decadence, and a new change – a new era of modernity – must be ushered in to reclaim the glory of the war-ravaged nation. This was the exact thinking of the Nazi party, which slowly crept into prominence through propaganda that assured the masses that eradicating the world of Jews, Communists, and civil morality would end the economic depression and fuel world domination, or Pan-Germanism. And by embracing the new concept of volksgemineschaft (people’s community) to eliminate class divisions and “make the German speaking world safe for small business, small farmers, and small-towners,” (Schoenbaum 276), along with advanced new technologies geared to expedite world domination both militarily and economically (Weinberg 763-64), Hitler provided the winning ticket to a nation disillusioned by defeat. The soon-to-be hailed Fuhrer (leader) rode the wave of the crisis of modernity to rise to power and dominance. Coming off a crushing defeat in World War I after more than four years as the chief aggressor against the Allied Powers, Germany found itself groveling for answers in 1918, as it was hard pressed by the Treaty of Versailles ? including continued allied pressure and war reparations in a land devastated by war – as well as by economic and political uncertainty. The Weimar Republic replaced the imperial form of government with a liberal democracy, and for the next 14 years, this new testing ground failed in numerous ways. New problems arose and new solutions needed to be presented. Even though some progress was made ? in the form of a new railway, consolidated tax politics, improved currency, and a lifting of many of the burdens from the post-war treaty – more challenges reared their head. Aggression from former World War I rivals, political upheaval, and unprecedented inflation made staying with the status quo seem suicidal. Hyperinflation was spurred in the early 1920s because the government had to print mass amounts of additional currency in order to pay benefits to striking workers, war loans and reparations to other nations, and large sums to once-powerful industrialists to help them pay back their loans – which led to pay raises that further exasperated the problem. On top of this, Germany had virtually no goods that it could trade with other countries, and compiled with the injection of currency into their monetary system, the value of the German Papiermark was reduced to nothing, declining from 4.2 per U.S. dollar at the onset of World War I to 1 million per dollar by mid-1923 (Wikipedia). A radical shift had to take place. Dealing with this crisis of modernity, a monetary reset was enacted later in the year to introduce a new currency known as the Rentenmark ? one equaled 1 trillion Papiermark – and 4.2 Rentenmark was worth one dollar. Just as this crisis called for a much-needed shift, other shifts in the political scene would soon need to take place in order for Germany to stay afloat in the tides of modernity. Even though there was not one all-encompassing event that paved the road to bringing Hitler’s’ Third Reich into power, the Great Depression of 1929 comes very close. After more than a decade of turmoil under the leadership of the Weimar Republic, the seismic shift that tipped the Richter Scale toward Hitler’s reign all began when Wall Street, the world’s largest stock market, crashed in New York on October 24, 1929. Germany overcame its potentially catastrophic hyperinflation six years earlier, and in 1929, an all new approach to the latest economic crisis was needed. But with the global proportions of this financial downturn, something more needed to be devised than merely implementing a new monetary policy. Something revolutionary had to be done, and after years of stirring up the German people with moderate success, Hitler’s radical ideas of national socialism, anti-Semitism, anti-Communism, and technological advances leading to world military and economic domination grabbed his fellow countrymen hook, line, and sinker ? once the crisis of modernity reached a level the nation could no longer bear. Hitler’s volkisch movement, which emerged from being little more than disunited nationalist and racist sects on the extreme political fringe, received just the crisis it needed to engulf Germany (Kershaw 194-95). The liberal democracy under the Weimar Republic was no longer seen as a viable vehicle to drive Germany to a new age of prominence. And when the Third Reich took over, its National Socialism led to the social revolution, which was fueled by modernity (Dahrendorf 402). Despite the fact that volksgemineschaft – the people’s community – was the centerpiece of the Nazi regime’s ideology to eliminate class divisions and protect the interests of those not in big business or urban areas, it still had to embrace the revolution of increased modernization, as it needed the tools of industrialized society in order to gain the military and technological might to make Pan-Germanism a reality (Schoenbaum 276). The modernization of the world around them gave German leadership little choice but to follow the flow of modernity ? if it wanted to reach a position of world dominance. A shift in demographics also helped spur on the formation of the Third Reich, as Germany had to adapt to these changes. Its population from 62 million at the beginning of the Weimar Republic swelled to 66 million by its waning years, inciting Germany to begin a conquest to expand its borders. Also, the higher concentration of youth in the population helped Hitler see that this resource must be exploited in order to achieve one mind toward world dominance. By the end of 1938, the Hitler Youth movement swelled to 7.7 million members, and the 4 million youth not included in this program were soon forced to join in a style similar to military conscription (Shirer 254-55). This bureaucratic movement was riddled with pro-war propaganda, extreme nationalism, and anti-Semitism, and parents not wanting their children to become enlisted in this group would quickly receive prison time for their “rebellion” against the regime. Hitler quickly controlled the entire education system of Germany, which now trumpeted the rhetoric of his Third Reich. Dissentients were quickly squashed so that the Nazi war machine would not be impeded in its quest to effectively maneuver through its crisis of modernity. Another hurdle that the Nazi party had to clear was the democratic post-war government under the Weimar Republic. From the early years proceeding World War I, Hitler had designs on overthrowing the republican form of government. Sharing political control was seen as an obstacle to bringing about the Germany that he envisioned. Shortly after Hitler rose to the position of Chancellor in 1933 under President Paul von Hindenburg, he authoritatively used the Enabling Act of 1933 to constitutionally exercise dictatorial power over Germany without legislative opposition. This effectively eliminated the Reichstag as active players in German politics, which not only gave the cabinet authority to enact law running contrary to the constitution, but empowerment to legislate without approval from the Reichstag or the President. The year after the act went into effect, von Hindenburg died, and the chancellorship and the presidency were then consolidated into the role of the Fuhrer ? Hitler (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia). The Third Reich managed to manipulate the crises in Germany’s political and gain full power over a once-democratic government in the name of modernity and nationalism. The Holocaust was yet another attempt of Germany to deal with its crisis of modernity. After many years of anti-Semitic propaganda resounding from within Germany’s borders, leaders under the Third Reich had to devise an effective plan to eradicate the “threat” of the Jews, and “only a [new] bureaucratic state could attempt to organize and carry out such a massive endeavor,” (Bauman 17). Hitler and his cohorts felt pressed to implement the destruction of the Jews in a highly rational, effective, and cost-efficient manner, which required high levels of innovation, technology, budgeting, planning, and resources. If the concentration camps throughout Germany were not conducted as a finely tuned bureaucratic machine, such a mass extermination of 6 million Jews in a businesslike fashion would have never been possible. This wave of anti-Semitism sweeping across the nation indoctrinated the Germanic population into believing that the crisis of modernity demanded that Jews must be dealt with and disposed of in a systematic and “rational” manner to bring about a new utopia. The Nazi regime also responded to the German people’s status anxiety with a new dose of modernity. Because of Hitler’s longstanding animosity and underlying feelings of inferiority toward the Jews, he did all that he could to separate them from the Germans. He sought to remedy the status anxiety Germans felt after losing World War I by insisting that they were part of a fabricated Aryan race, characterized primarily by blonde hair, blue eyes, and other Germanic traits. Jews were viewed as the antithesis of this “supreme” race, and were therefore a threat to the Aryans’ purity and success. Embracing Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory, Hitler convinced his countrymen that Germans were part of the elite Aryan race, which was much more highly evolved than their Jewish counterparts, who he characterized as being at the bottom of the so-called evolutionary scale, closer to apes. This teaching contributed to the rationalization of the extermination of the Jews, who Hitler through Darwin’s teaching explained away as being subhuman. This new adoption of the modernist trend of evolutionary teaching conveniently and tragically solved one more crisis of modernity for Hitler and his countrymen. Innovation. If Germany truly wanted to dig itself out of the hole it dug itself into by losing World War I, it had to outsmart, outperform, and overpower the nations that stood in way of it reaching global domination. That meant leading the way in military technology. Hitler knew that in order to come out the victor in World War II and keep the dream alive of the thousand-year Reich, advanced new technologies must pave the way. The German-designed V2 Rocket could turn London and Antwerp to ashes, and the skies could be reclaimed with new fighters such the jet-powered ML-262 – designed to take out British and American fighter planes ? and the ahead-of-its-time Zeppelin Rammer. The latter was a lethal rocket-powered glider that was built to physically attack the tails of enemy aircraft at high speeds with the leading edges of its razor-sharp reinforced wings – after firing off its anti-air rockets (Weinberg 763-64). The Nazi’s ultra stealth and swift Type XXI long-range submarine was the first fully submersible u-boat designed to win the war in the Atlantic. But even though these innovations seemed to represent the epitome of logic and reason, it is argued that the merciless and anti-intellectual Nazi Regime was actually the symbol of irrationality of the modern era with its brutal agents of destruction (Adorno xvi, 1). It is contended that Germany’s conservative rationalists became ideologically enamored with technology, as they exhibited “a strong push to modernity or at least to certain aspects of modern society,” (Herf 7). Once again, pressures put upon Germany to keep up with modernity were the very forces that put Hitler in power and kept him there. He had to constantly mitigate the fears of his countrymen and assure them that his regime would institute the changes and fashion the plans (and machines) that would deliver them from disaster and put them on top. Without the crisis of modernity that Germany faced after its defeat in World War I, it is quite evident that the nation would not have been ready to embrace the extreme National Socialism and anti-Semitism pushed by Hitler and his Nazi cohorts. Fears of military threats, the oppressive Treaty of Versailles and its war reparations, hyperinflation, political strife, the Great Depression, an ineffective democratic government, and the technological advancements of enemies ? not to mention increased anti-Communist hysteria and anti-Semitism – all paved the road to Hitler’s popularity and success. Hitler entered the scene at a time when Germans were looking for a vehicle of promise that would deliver them from the dismal ramifications of a lost war, and the newly appointed Weimar Republic, with its democratic government, failed to provide all the solutions the German people wanted that would bring them back to global prominence. Hitler’s radical ideas to tap into modernity and abort from the ways things were traditionally done increasingly gained traction throughout the nation, and by playing on its fears, the Chancellor-turned-Fuhrer was able to “justify” and implement his ruthless campaigns against the Jews and Communists, and push forward with his expansionist conquests. Hitler played upon the German’s identity crisis and established a new national identity through an extreme nationalism that would promote the supremacy of the Aryan race and the inferiority of other “less evolved” races. All of these crises of modernity that Germany underwent – most of which were addressed by the Nazi party ? were the essential building blocks that lifted Hitler to become one of the most extreme, ruthless, and irrational dictators of modern times. Works Cited Adorno, Theodore, and Horkheimer, Max. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. Bauman, Zygmunt. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Dahrendorf, Ralf. Society and Democracy in Germany. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967. Herf, Jeffrey. Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. “Hitler, Adolf.” Infoplease.com. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Columbia University Press. 2007. Web. 11 June 2011. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: A Biography. London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008. Peukert, Detlev J.K. The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity. New York: Hill Wang, 1993. Schowenbaum, David. Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933- 1939. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966. Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. “Weimar Republic.” En.Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia. May 2011. Web. 11 June 2011. Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. 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