Rise of the Nazis - Negative Reaction

the rise of the Nazis and the negative reaction to them

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  • Created by: Lollipop
  • Created on: 06-06-12 18:41

Rise of the Nazis - Negative Reaction

  • Not everyone was taken in by Nazi campaigning and Hitler's appeal
  • But even some of these people still supported them
  • This is called 'negative cohesion'
  • This means that people supported the Nazis not because they shared there views but because they shared Nazi fears and dislikes
  • They 'cohered' (joined together) over negatives because they thought the Nazi party couldn't be that bad because they hated the same things as them
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Weimar Government

  • The biggest factor of a shared dislike was the Weimar Government as they seemed to be unable to tackle the problems causes by the Depression
  • When the problems got really bad the Chancellor cut government spending and welfare benefits and urged the German people to make sacrifices
  • The Germany people didn't like this policy - Some historians thought he was making the situation worse to cancel reparation payments or to stop the reoccurance of hyperinflation
  • In protest the SPD party pulled out of the government so to get his measures passed the Chancellor relied on Hindnburgs powers of Article 48 to bypass the Reichstag
  • They decided to call new elections in 1930 which was a disastrous decision as it gave the Nazis the opportunity to exploit the fear and unhappiness of Germany to make there gains
  • The elections caused another divide in the Reichstag and the problems continued
  • The Reichstag meet less regulary and couldn't stop the problems in Germany and the Chancellor had to rely again on Hindenburgs emergency powers to bypass the democratic process altogether
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The Communist Threat

  • As this crisis deepened the Communist support was rising
  • The Nazis turned this to there advantage as fear of Communism was another 'shared negative'
  • The Communist Red Fighting League broke up opposition meetings like the SA and they fought battles on the street with police. So Nazis meet the Communist violence with there own
  • Many middle class business owners had read about how Communism in the USSR discriminated against people like them
  • The owners of big industries also feared them because they wanted to introduce state control of businesses and the owners were concerned about the growing number of trade unions - they felt Nazis could combat these threats so began to put money in Nazi campaign funds
  • Farmers were alarmed by Communism, they read that they had taken over all the farm land in the USSR and millions of peasants had been killed and imprisoned in the process
  • In contrast the Nazis promised to help Germany's struggling farmers
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Culture

  • As for modern self indulgent Weimar culture - the Nazis could count on all those who felt traditional German values were under threat
  • The Nazis talked about restoring old fashioned values
  • The Social Democratic Party thought wrong about the German peoples ability to fall for promises and underestimated the fear and anger they felt for the Weimar Government - the Nazis didn't make that  mistake
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