Hey there, students!
Welcome back to the second part of my lecture on the Rise of Hitler.
Chandler and Natalie, this is for you.
We left off last time in 1921, when Hitler was elected leader of the Nazi Party - the
National Socialist German Workers Party.
Now, at the time, this party was a very small operation - just a few hundred people.
They actually started off their party membership list at number 500 to make it look like there
were more people in the party than were actually there.
So there really weren't a lot of people at the party when Hitler got there, but Hitler
is going to turn this party from something that is just a meeting of a few radicals to
a party that is really going to be a viable player on the political stage.
And what we're going to be looking at here is how Hitler turns the Nazi Party from a
very small fringe movement into one of the major political parties in Germany by the
late 1920s.
And so, there are three events that really represent a turning point for the Nazi Party
and for Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party.
In 1923, you're going to see the Beer Hall Putsch.
And then 1924, Hitler in prison.
1925, the publication of the first volume of Mein Kampf.
So, the Beer Hall Putsch, which is a 1923 event - this was a failed Nazi attempt to
overthrow the government by force.
So the Nazis, they decided that this government is weak enough to where they got together
in Munich and they were going to You know, they went in here and they surprised
these leaders of the government and for awhile, people didn't even know if this was going
to be successful or not, but then, the police and the military sided with the government.
And then, Hitler and his... helpers, I guess, for lack of a better word - that they were
put on trial.
You see in this picture the defendants, and notice that this says something about the
National Socialist German Workers Party - that you see of these nine people, only two of
them are in civilian clothing.
So Hitler and one more guy are in civilian clothing.
The rest of these men are wearing their military uniforms.
So you see really the militaristic nature of this party.
And so Hitler goes to jail for 264 days.
For what?
For treason.
Alright, now.
This is just stupid!
Alright?
Just let me go off on this for a second, alright?
Because there are so many things in history that happen just because of someone's stupidity.
Alright?
Because somebody was an idiot.
And when somebody commits treason, it's like, in America, you DIE if you commit treason,
but you know, hey... 264 days.
Bet he learned his lesson!
They even let him order a whole bunch of beer every month and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, it was almost like staying in a hotel or something like that.
But, here's a lesson: that if you're ever in charge of a government and you run into
this person who tries to violently overthrow the government,
*SLAPS* TAKE 'EM OUT!
Okay?
Whether it's Hitler, whether it's Fidel Castro.
You look at two of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century and both of these guys
made a very sloppy attempt to overthrow the government.
They were put in jail, and then the government's like, "Oh!
Hey, let's be nice!
Let's show everyone how nice we are and let's let these people out that want to overthrow
the government!"
And then, they turn around and they overthrow the government.
It's kind of like a serial killer.
Typically, their first kill is going to be very sloppy, but then, they learn how to do
it right.
And that's what happened with two of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century: Fidel
Castro and Adolf Hitler.
Now, there is one point of departure, though, where Hitler is different than Castro.
While Castro went to the jungle when he got out and started a guerrilla warfare campaign
once he was able to get back into Cuba, the objective here for Hitler is to overthrow
the government, but Hitler decides that, "You know what?
There could be another approach to this - that I don't really have to go the route of violent
revolution."
*MUSIC* Malcolm X once gave a speech, "The Ballot
or the Bullet."
And the whole point of Malcolm X's speech is that if elections don't work, guns will.
That we will try the ballot, but if the ballot doesn't work to get justice in this country,
then perhaps the bullet will.
Now, Hitler...
It's really kind of Malcolm X in reverse: The Bullet or the Ballot.
If guns don't work, elections will.
And the lesson that Hitler learned in jail is that the Beer Hall Putsch was a bad idea
- that really, the Nazi Party needs to use the democratic process in order to seize power.
That this can be done without firing a single shot.
And this is Hitler's goal: to do the same thing that he was doing - to overthrow the
government - but to do it without firing a shot.
So how does he do it?
First of all, he publishes his book, Mein Kampf, which means My Struggle.
Published in two volumes in 1925-1926.
And this book really doubled as an autobiography and as a political manifesto.
So he's telling you about himself so that you can get to know Hitler and then he's going
into his politics and why the current system was failing.
And the thing is here that when you think about Germany in the mid-1920s, with the reparations,
with the hyperinflation, and the bad economy and all of that kind of stuff, there were
a lot of people who were struggling.
So the idea here is, "Hi, I'm Hitler.
My struggle is your struggle."
And that's what he's trying to do is to try to write a book that will allow people to
get introduced to him and his ideology because his goal here is to form a political party
- to use the democratic process.
And the other side of this is the use of political propaganda.
Now, Hitler accomplishes this through his propagandist, Joseph Goebbels.
And Goebbels is responsible for this propaganda line.
We see here a propaganda poster and this says, "Germany's Liberation".
Now, you see a swastika and an eagle.
You see some chains.
I don't know if Prometheus was there or if the eagle was chained or something like that.
Now, this poster was published during a period when the Nazi Party was formally banned, so
you don't see anything about the Nazi Party but you see this swastika - this symbol of
the Nazi Party and the talk of Germany's liberation - that Germany is chained up and the Nazi
Party can do something about it.
And now, we see here a poster: National Socialism - The Organized Will of the Nation.
And you see here the type of artistry, with the square jaws.
You see these guys that, you know, they are what you would call "storm troopers".
These were the Nazi SA, as they called them.
And here is Hitler with storm troopers.
Now, these storm troopers were a lot of ex-veterans and people like that but this is the paramilitary
wing of Hitler's operation.
So people who were in the Nazi Party, a lot of them wore military uniforms and they had
a militaristic sort of organization.
And so this poster idealizes the paramilitary element and a lot of these Nazi propaganda
posters were drawn by a guy named Mjölnir.
Now, this wasn't actually his name - Mjölnir.
Now, Mjölnir is the hammer of Thor.
That's what it's called.
And so, this guy - he's an artist - and artists can be a little quirky.
Right?
So, it's just like, you know, "Hey, I'm Mjölnir."
And it's like, "Wait...
Isn't that like a hammer or something like that?
Like...
Who are you?"
And it's like, he's Joseph Goebbels' propaganda artist, so you know... I don't know... he
sits down to draw some propaganda and he's like, "It's hammer time!"
But just not, "It's hammer and sickle time!" because that would be communist and, you know,
he's not a communist.
He's a Nazi propagandist.
Not that one's necessarily any better than the other!
But the thing is here that you see Goebbels here with his artist, Mjölnir.
This was the guy who was really responsible for putting together Goebbels' vision because
when it comes down to it, a propagandist is nothing without a good artist because you
may imagine things, but if you can't have somebody bring that imagination to life on
paper, then it's hard to get that word out.
So it's important to consider the artistry.
And you see where he is idealizing these paramilitary storm troopers, which were a key element in
Nazi propaganda.
So let's look at the Reichstag elections between 1928-1933.
And what we're going to see here is what's going on as far as the Nazi Party rising to
power.
So in 1928, you see that the Social Democrats, the National Conservatives, and the Catholic
Centre Party are the largest vote getters.
Now, the Social Democrats - the hard left, quasi-Marxist party - the biggest vote getter,
but then you look at the National Conservatives and the Catholic Centre, you see that between
the two of them, they have just about as many seats as the Social Democrats.
So you've got a coalition government between these parties.
Now, this is the so-called "Golden Age" of the Weimar Republic, to the extent that it
ever had a golden age.
It was kind of doomed from the start with the reparations and the loss of the war and
the bad economy and all that stuff, but by the late 1920s, things seemed to be stabilizing.
And you can see by the parties that are getting elected that it's seeming to be a pretty normal
time.
So that's what you're looking at in 1928, and in that election, Hitler's Nazi Party
came in ninth place with 2.6% of the vote and 14 of 491 seats.
Now, this does not seem like a strategy to win.
If Hitler's going to use the democratic process, that doesn't seem to be going so well.
for Hitler, BUT... there is an intervening event.
And that intervening event is the Great Depression.
And this Great Depression is going to be a turning point because people are going to
start re-thinking the way that they vote and they're going to start getting into, "Well,
you know...
Who's going to make this country great again?"
[AIRHORN] for lack of a better term, or something like that.
So when we look at what's going on here in 1929, we see that the Nazis turn up the propaganda
machine.
BREAK THE DAWES CHAINS!
AMERICA IS NOT TRYING TO HELP YOU!
[ROARS] [MUSIC]