HIST 2117: Modern GermanySpring 2013

Lecture Eighteen: Germany under the Nazis

Hitler Comes to Power

• Hitler against Hindenburg• Bruning, Papen, and Schleicher• July, 1932, the High Point• Hitler Appointed Chancellor, January 1933• Reichstag Fire• The Election of March, 1933• The Enabling Act

Gleichschaltung

• Coordination of Bureaucracy and Judiciary• Night of the Long Knives• Schutzstaffel (SS)• Death of Hindenburg• Proclamation as Fuhrer

How Hitler Ruled

• Nazi Symbolism and Propaganda• “Working Towards the Fuhrer”• The Gestapo and Concentration Camps• Economic Policies• Why So Little Resistance?

Racial Policies

• Nazi Concept of Race and “Race Hygiene”• Nuremberg Laws 1935• Political Uses of Anti-Semitism• Attacks on “Degenerate Art”• Eugenics and Euthanasia• Kristallnacht, November 1938

Nazi Foreign Policy

• Decline of the Versailles Consensus• Rearmament• Nazi Aggressive Diplomatic Stance• Remilitarization of the Rhineland 1936• Restructuring the Economy toward Militarism

Motivation and Strategy

• Lebensraum• Hossbach Memorandum and Hitler’s Goals• Anschluss with Austria• The Sudeten Crisis• International Situation• The Munich Agreement