India And The Contemporary World I Chapter 3 Nazism And The Rise Of Hitler

The problems faced by the Weimer Republic are discussed below:
(i)This republic, however, was not received well by its own people largely because of the terms it was forced to accept after Germany’s defeat at the end of the First World War.
(ii)The peace treaty at Versailles with the Allies was a harsh and humiliating peace. Germany lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population, 13 per cent of its territories, 75 per cent of its iron and 26 per cent of its coal to France, Poland, Denmark and Lithuania.
(iii)The Allied Powers demilitarised Germany to weaken its power. The War Guilt Clause held Germany responsible for the war and damages the Allied countries suffered. Germany was forced to pay compensation amounting to £6 billion.
(iv)The Allied armies also occupied the resource-rich Rhineland for much of the 1920s.
(v)Many Germans held the new Weimar Republic responsible for not only the defeat in the war but the disgrace at Versailles.

The peculiar features of Nazi thinking were as follow:

Nazi state sought to establish total control over its people in the below mentioned ways:

(i)With the passage of famous Enabling Act dictatorship in Germany was established. It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree.
(ii)All political parties and trade unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its affiliates. The state established complete control over the economy, media, army and judiciary.
(iii)Special surveillance and security forces were created to control and order society in ways that the Nazis wanted. Apart from the already existing regular police in green uniform and the SA or the Storm Troopers, these included the Gestapo (secret state police), the SS (the protection squads), criminal police and the Security Service (SD). 
(iv)People could now be detained in Gestapo torture chambers, rounded up and sent to concentration camps, deported at will or arrested without any legal procedures. The police forces acquired powers to rule with impunity.

(v)Media was carefully used to win support for the regime and popularise its worldview. Nazi ideas were spread through visual images, films, radio, posters, catchy slogans and leaflets. In posters, groups identified as the ‘enemies’ of Germans were stereotyped, mocked, abused and described as evil.

The role of women in Nazi society:
(i)The children in Nazi Germany were repeatedly told that women were radically different from men. The fight for equal right for men and women that had become part of democratic struggle everywhere was wrong and it would destroy society. While boys were taught to be aggressive, masculine and steel-hearted, girls were told that they had to become good mothers and rear pure-blooded Aryan children. Girls had to maintain the purity of the race, distance themselves from Jews, look after the home, and teach their children Nazi values. They had to be the bearers of the Aryan culture and race.

(ii)In 1933 Hitler had said tht in his state the mother was the most important citizen. But in Nazi Germany all mothers were not treated equally. Women who bore racially undesirable children were punished and those who produced racially desirable children were awarded. They were given favoured treatment in hospitals and were also entitled to concessions in shops and on theatre tickets and railway fares. To encourage women to produce many children, Honour Crosses were awarded. A bronze cross was given for four children, silver for six and gold for eight or more.

The comparison of role of women in two periods:
(i)From the very beginning women were active participants in the events which brought about so many important changes in French society. In order to discuss and voice women's interest, the revolutionary government did introduce laws that helped to improve the lives of women. Together with the creation of state schools, schooling was made compulsory for all girls. Their fathers could no longer force them into marriage against their will. Marriage was made into a contract entered into freely and registered under civil law. Divorce was made legal and could be applied for by both women and men. Women could now train for jobs, could become artists or run small businesses.

(ii)Women's movements for voting rights and equal wages continued through the next two hundred years in many countries of the world. The fight for the vote was carried out through an international suffrage movement during the late ninteenth and early twentieth centuries. The example of the political activities of French women during the revolutionary years was kept alive as an inspiring memory. It was finally in 1946 that women in France won the right to vote.

D.

Nazi youth groups

B.

Freiedrich Ebert

A.

Adolf Hitler

C.

Hitler

B.

June 28, 1919

C.

1933

A.

December 8, 1941

B.

Jews

C.

India

A.

1939-45

C.

U.S.A.

A.

1929-33

B.

Germany, Italy and Japan

C.

Japan

A.

Aryan

A.

8 May, 1945

B.

8 Oct. 1941

C.

Germany

B.

Chamberlane

C.

A Nazi youth group of 14 years old

D.

Germans

The Treaty of Versailles.

A camp where people were isolated and detained without due process of law. Typically, it was surrounded by electrified barbed wire fences.

‘Mein Kampf’ is a book written by Hitler while in jail.

The implication of the economic crisis:
(i)The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people. The middle classes, especially salaried employees and pensioners, saw their savings diminish when the currency lost its value.
(ii)Small businessmen, the self-employed and retailers suffered as their businesses got ruined.
(iii)These sections of society were filled with the fear of proletarianisation, an anxiety of being reduced to the ranks of the working class, or worse still, the unemployed.
(iv)Only organised workers could manage to keep their heads above water, but unemployment weakened their bargaining power. Big business was in crisis.
(v)The large mass of peasantry was affected by a sharp fall in agricultural prices and women, unable to fill their children’s stomachs, were filled with a sense of deep despair.

Germany, Italy and Japan were known as the Axis powers.

Reichstag is the name of the German Parliament.

Jungvolks were Nazi youth groups below 14 years of age.

The Nazi worldview:
(i)Nazi ideology was synonymous with Hitler’s worldview. According to this there was no equality between people, but only a racial hierarchy.

(ii)In this view blond, blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung. 

(iii)They came to be regarded as an anti-race, the arch-enemies of the Aryans. All other coloured people were placed in between depending upon their external features.
(iv)The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would survive and the weak ones would perish.

(v)The Aryan race was the finest. It had to retain its purity, become stronger and dominate the world.

Propaganda is the specific type of message directly aimed at influencing the opinion of people.

U.S.A., Britain, France and Russia were known as the Allied powers during the Second World War.

Hitler was born in 1889 in Austria.

Swastika was the symbol of Nazi party.

On 30 January, 1933, Hitler was offered Chancellorship by President Hindenburg.

Hitler made the following promises:

The peace treaty at Versailles with the Allies was a harsh and humiliating peace.
(i)Germany lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population, 13 per cent of its territories, 75 per cent of its iron and 26 per cent of its coal to France, Poland, Denmark and Lithuania.
(ii)The Allied Powers demilitarised Germany to weaken its power.
(iii)The War Guilt Clause held Germany responsible for the war and damages the Allied countries suffered.
(iv)Germany was forced to pay compensation amounting to £6 billion.
(v)The Allied armies also occupied the resource-rich Rhineland for much of the 1920s.

Hitler acquired quick successes too in foreign policy.
(i)He pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933, reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan, One people, One empire, and One leader.
(ii)He then went on to wrest Germanspeaking Sudentenland from Czechoslovakia, and gobbled up the entire country.
(iii)In all of this he had the unspoken support of England, which had considered the Versailles verdict too harsh. These quick successes at home and abroad seemed to reverse the destiny of the country.

The USA had resisted involvement in the war.
(i)It was unwilling to once again face all the economic problems that the First World War had caused. But it could not stay out of the war for long.
(ii)Japan was expanding its power in the east. It had occupied French Indo-China and was planning attacks on US naval bases in the Pacific.
(iii)When Japan extended its support to Hitler and bombed the US base at Pearl Harbor, the US entered the Second World War.