One of Hitler’s postcards. Too bad he failed as an artist!

Hitler’s Personality Cult"I overcame chaos in Germany, restored order, enormously raised

production in all fields of our national economy...I succeeded in completely resettling in useful production those 7 million unemployed who so touched our hearts...I have not only politically united the German nation but also rearmed it militarily, and I have further tried to liquidate that Treaty sheet by sheet whose 448 Articles contain the vilest rape that nations and human beings have ever been expected to submit to. I have restored to the Reich the provinces grabbed from us in 1919; I have led millions of deeply unhappy Germans, who have been snatched away from us, back into the Fatherland; I have restored the thousand-year-old historical unity of German living space; and I have attempted to accomplish all that without shedding blood and without inflicting the sufferings of war on my people or any other. I have accomplished all this, as one who 21 years ago was still an unknown worker and soldier of my people, by my own efforts...“ --1939

A man of the people

• A series of photographic books were published:• "private" Hitler -- "The Hitler Nobody Knows"

(1932), "Youth Around Hitler“ (1934), "Hitler in his Mountains" (1935) and "Hitler Off Duty“ (1937)

• all aimed to highlight the "human" side of the Führer and show that his "heroic" qualities arose from the very fact that he was a "man of the people."

• President Paul Von Hindenburg – Never entirely a supporter of democracy. Helped Hitler come to power, and once he died, Hitler abolished the presidency and consolidated power.

Use of Mass politics and public spectacle

100,000 people attend a rally in 1936

• Hitler mobbed by a supportive crowd in Berlin, 1934

• Hitler utilizes the power of radio to broadcast his messages and create an image of himself as a popular leader.

• The room where the bomb planted by Stauffenberg was supposed to kill Hitler in the July Plot, 1944

1936 Olympics

• Anti-semitic signs were removed around Berlin to avoid shocking international press. Hosting the Olympics was a major boost in Hitler’s popularity.

• Ruins of Dresden

Mass Politics and Public Spectacle

• Fire in the Reichstag!

• Hitler had the Reichstag burned down as an excuse to go after his political enemies.

• Feb. 1933

Collaboration is necessary

• "Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Führer can hardly dictate from above everything which he intends to eventually accomplish. On the contrary, up till now everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, cooperated with the Führer."

• Willikens added that it was "the duty of everybody to try to cooperate with the Führer"

• ANSCHLUSS• Austrians are

encouraged to vote “yes” in a referendum to join Germany in 1938. The results: 99.8% voted to annex themselves to Germany.

Munich, 1938

• Hitler with Neville Chamberlain, Mussolini, and French leader, Edourad Daldier as they agree on the carving up of Czechoslovakia.

Munich = Appeasement

• In Munich, Allies (France and Britain) agree to all Nazi demands for the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

Could the Czechs have resisted?

• The Czech army was one of the best in Europe at the time!

• (Czechoslovakia was key in the alliance between France and the Soviet Union – The Nazis called it a French aircraft carrier in Central Europe). – Neither Czechoslovakia nor the Soviet Union were invited to the conference!

• About 2/3 of the population in the Sudetenland were ethnic Germans– Why do you think the Czechs didn’t resist.

Czech Capitulation

• The Czech government does not resist– Nazi propaganda had been broadcast into the

Sudetenland, promising support for “German rights,” which led to protests against police…

– Almost all of the Czech weapons factories were in the Sudetenland.

– About 1/3 of the Czech army was ethnically German. (Would they have fought?)

Colonization of Eastern Europe

• Nazi plans were to colonize the Ukraine and Yugoslavia.

Ukraine seen as a good source of food, and a place where Nazis could go on vacation.

ResettlementLebensraum ~ Living Space

• Led by the SS, Germany’s plan was to remove Slavic peoples from Eastern Europe to create “room” for Germans to move in.

• By 1942, 2 million Germans were resettled to Poland.– In Warsaw, Poland, about 400,000 people (30% of

the city’s population) were forced into a ghetto on only 2.8% of the city’s land.

Jews in Europe

• In 1933, there were about 523,000 Jews in Europe (about 1% of the total population), and about 2/3 of them lived in Poland.