Evidence 2

At the beginning of the 1930s, Adolf Hitlers Nazi Party exploited widespread and deep-seated
discontent in Germany to attract popular and political support. There was resentment at the
crippling territorial, military and economic terms of the Versailles Treaty, which Hitler blamed
on treacherous politicians and promised to overturn. The democratic post-World War I Weimar
Republic was marked by a weak coalition government and political crisis, in answer to which the
Nazi party offered strong leadership and national rebirth. From 1929 onwards, the worldwide
economic depression provoked hyperinflation, social unrest and mass unemployment, to which
Hitler offered scapegoats such as the Jews.
Hitler pledged civil peace, radical economic policies, and the restoration of national pride and
unity. Nazi rhetoric was virulently nationalist and anti-Semitic. The subversive Jews were
portrayed as responsible for all of Germanys ills.
In the federal elections of 1930 (which followed the Wall Street Crash), the Nazi Party won 107
seats in the Reichstag (the German Parliament), becoming the second-largest party. The
following year, it more than doubled its seats. In January 1933, President von Hindenburg
appointed Hitler chancellor, believing that the Nazis could be controlled from within the cabinet.
Hitler set about consolidating his power, destroying Weimar democracy and establishing a
dictatorship. On 27 February, the Reichstag burned; Dutch communist Marianus van der Lubbe
was found inside, arrested and charged with arson. With the Communist Party discredited and
banned, the Nazis passed the Reichstag Fire Decree, which dramatically curtailed civil liberties.

In March 1933, the Nazis used intimidation and manipulation to pass the Enabling Act, which
allowed them to pass laws which did not need to be voted on in the Reichstag. Over the next
year, the Nazis eliminated all remaining political opposition, banning the Social Democrats, and
forcing the other parties to disband. In July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. In the
Night of the Long Knives of June 1934, Hitler ordered the Gestapo and the SS to eliminate
rivals within the Nazi Party. In 1935, the Nuremburg Laws marked the beginning of an
institutionalised anti-Semitic persecution which would culminate in the barbarism of the Final
Solution.
Hitlers first moves to overturn the Versailles settlement began with the rearmament of Germany,
and in 1936 he ordered the remilitarisation of the Rhineland. Hitler became bolder as he realised
that Britain and France were unwilling and unable to challenge German expansionism. Between
1936 and 1939, he provided military aid to Francos fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War,
despite having signed the Non-Intervention Agreement. In March 1938, German troops
marched into Austria; the Anschluss was forbidden under Versailles. Anglo-French commitment
to appeasement and peace for our time meant that when Hitler provoked the Sudeten Crisis,
demanding that the Sudetenland be ceded to Germany, Britain and France agreed to his demands
at September 1938s Munich conference. Germanys territorial expansion eastwards was
motivated by Hitlers desire to unite Germanspeaking peoples, and also by the concept
of Lebensraum: the idea of providing Aryan Germans with living space.
At the end of the year, anti-Jewish pogroms erupted across Germany and Austria. Kristallnacht
a state-orchestrated attack on Jewish property resulted in the murder of 91 Jews. Twenty
thousand more were arrested and transported to concentration camps. In March 1939, Germany

seized the remainder of Czechoslovakia; in August Hitler signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact of nonaggression with the USSR. The next step would be the invasion of Poland and the coming
of World War II.
When Adolf Hitler was a struggling, poverty stricken artist in Vienna, he did not show any signs
of anti-Semitism. Many of his closest associates in the hostel where he lived were the Jewish
men who helped him to sell his pictures.
During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Hitler refused to shake the hand of African-American Jesse
Owens, who won four gold medals. However, when questioned about this Owens said: "Hitler
didn't snub me - it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."