How did it happen?
How did a failed artist and fringe political agitator rise from the ashes of a defeated empire to plunge the world into its deadliest war?
The story of Adolf Hitler’s ascent, and the Nazi Party’s transformation from a gang of misfits into the brutal machinery of a totalitarian state, is not just a warning from history. It’s a masterclass in how democracy can be dismantled from within, how fear can be weaponised, and how a nation once seen as the pinnacle of European culture and science could be dragged into darkness.
This article doesn’t attempt to chart every twist and turn of that grim rise - volumes have done so. Instead, it hones in on the critical years leading up to World War II, viewed primarily through the German lens. It is a story of resentment and retribution, of international indifference, and of political ruthlessness on a scale the world had never seen.
What’s most terrifying is not just that it happened - but how easily it could happen again.
This article is written in response to the comments of Crazy Cat on my article titled The Flying Tigers. The details of the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis consume volumes of space well beyond the scope of any article written for this site. Therefore this article addresses the years of immediate relevance to the start and causes of WW2 primarily from the German standpoint. The detail is stunning, if not terrifying, how a group that started as a small minority, never achieved majority in democratic elections yet were able by sheer determination to subjugate the once most prosperous and successful country in Europe and the ineptitude of the rest of the world to do anything about it until it was almost too late.
Almost immediately after the end of WW1, Adolf Hitler, like many other German soldiers, was incensed by the capitulation of the Kaiser, for which, he held Jewish influence as largely to blame. When he formed his party he had four main objectives from which he never ever waivered.
These were the complete destruction of the Bolshevik movement, the creation of a pure bred dominant German race to the exclusion of every other race on the planet, the restoration of former German territory that the League of Nations had taken away and the cancellation of reparations and restrictions imposed on Germany by the League. In this he succeeded in all but the first.
The extermination of the Jews was not a primary aim. His hatred of the Jews stemmed from the fact that the Bolshevik Revolution was, in his opinion, a plot put together and executed by International Jewry. Karl Marx and Engels, the fathers of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, were both Jews. Antisemitism had been wide spread in Germany, and indeed much of Europe, for over 100 years.
In the days of the Weimer Republic Germany suffered greatly as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and this was compounded by the world wide depression of 1929 -1932. Germany lacked foreign exchange, there was wide spread unemployment, outrageous inflation to the point where money really was worthless and the nation’s ability to defend itself was severely restricted.
On 30th January, 1933 the ageing Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor and head of a new government with the support of the army. Hermann Goering was appointed as Prussian Minister for the Interior and became Vice Chancellor. Between the two they had absolute power of veto over the government and were able to make decisions of new appointments without reference to the parliament.
At the time, Germany was afflicted with extensive civil unrest. On 28th February, a lone Dutch anarchist set fire to and destroyed the Reichstag building. On that evening an emergency decree was signed and Goering recruited the Brown Shirts (SA) to restore order. Hitler persuaded the cabinet to suppress the Communist Party and 4,000 Communists, including the entire leadership were arrested, beaten, tortured and thrown into concentration camps. By the end of March 20,000 Communists were in prison. By the end of that summer over 100,000 Communists, Social Democrats and trade unionists were in prison. 600 were reported to have died in custody. He was also at war with the Catholic Church, which was dominant in Bavaria and Prussia. His objection to Catholics was that they held allegiance to the Pope in Rome above that to Germany.
When he came to power the Nazi Party were not held in great regard and never achieved a majority through democratic vote. Hitler, on the other hand, had a large personal popular following. He is credited with solving the inflationary crisis of the early 1930’s, brought stability to government and employment back to former levels, decreeing increased wages for workers and repudiating reparations payable to the Allies. He was personally responsible for the construction of the autobans which employed over 600 workers. In 1930 he started sketching his ideas of a “people’s car”. He personal designed the famous VW Beetle with the help of Ferdinand Porsche. The car had its first public display in 1937 and was released onto the market in 1939.
When he came to power he brought with him four long held basic ambitions. These were:-
1. The creation of the Nordic-Germanic race as the superior race worldwide.
2. The destruction of the Bolsheviks, the origin of Communism, which Hitler regarded as a Jewish plot to take over the world based on the fact that Karl Marx and Engels were both Jews
3. The restoration of territory taken from Germany by the Allies after WW1. This included the Ruhr, the Saar, Alsace-Lorraine, all territories bordering France and Danzig, a former part of Germany isolated when a corridor to the Baltic Sea was handed to Poland.
4. The renunciation of all provisions that limited German expansion of its armed forces and arms production.
Hitler started on the home front in achieving his first goal. He decreed the imprisonment of many opposed party officials. He decreed the sterilisation and extermination of various minority groups including inmates of mental hospitals, people afflicted with genetic disabilities, habitual criminals, aged and infirm people who could no longer work, gypsies and other elements considered to be “undesirable”. He did not specifically single out Jews at this time although they figured largely as members of other identified groups but a civil law passed in April, 1933 prevented Jews from being employed in the public service. The only exemptions were of people who had served in the German army in WW1. He also purged non-Germanic people from foreign countries, particularly Poles and Slavs who were considered to be inferior races. The assets of people treated in these ways, if not sold or passed to relatives, were confiscated by the state. Many Jews could see what was ahead of them and emigrated voluntarily, mainly to Britain and the USA.
The chief executioners of these policies were the Brown Shirts (SA) and as they too rose to power Goering could see that their ranks were being infiltrated by undesirables. To this end he appointed Heinrich Himmler to clean out the ranks. Himmler then created his own special police force to control the SA. It was called the Gestapo and the qualifications for recruitment were far stricter than for the SA. The Gestapo did not engage in wholesale thuggery against the general population. They were far more sophisticated than that as their first task was to keep the SA under control. The Gestapo was always under the direct control of Himmler.
Having brought the domestic situation under control he turned his attention to the recovery of lost lands. One of his first moves was to announce the cessation of reparation payments awarded by the Versailles Treaty. France sent troops into the Ruhr and the Saar to take physical assets in lieu of cash payments. The German army repelled the French and occupied both territories. The mandates given to France over these territories in 1919 had a 15 year period at the end of which a plebiscite was to be held as to who had control.
The overwhelming majority, with much intimidation from the SA and SS, voted in favour of returning to Germany. Danzig, a German speaking territory remained under League of Nations control but was governed by a strong Nazi Party. To protect his Eastern border Hitler entered into a 10 year non-aggression pact with Poland on 26th January, 1934.
As early as August, 1933, Hitler told two visiting American businessmen that he wanted to annex Austria, the Polish corridor, the German speaking parts of Denmark, Italy, Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia and in the long run Germany was to dominate the world. His immediate aim was to keep these adjacent countries at bay until Germany had re-armed.
Having bought the domestic scene under some kind of control. During the four years prior to 1938, the Nazi Party had become established in Austria, the birth country of Hitler and a German speaking country. Having perfected its tactics of intimidation, the Plebiscite held in April, 1938 voted 99% for unification with Germany and a personal endorsement of Hitler himself. The German policies of extermination were then launched in Austria and local Nazis replaced with German ones. And all civil servants of Jewish ancestry were dismissed.
In 1933, the Nazi party was established in Czechoslovakia. It was popular with the German speaking people of the western province known as the Sudetenland. In the elections of 1936, the Nazi Party gained 63% of the ethnic German vote. In 1938 following the annexation of Austria, the Sudeten German Party became more violent and with typical intimidation tactics its vote increased to 75% in local elections. Further pressure from Germany prompted the Czech government to detach the Sudeten from the rest of the country and create a separate state. The overall Czech population were not agreeable to annexation by Germany and Hitler determined that he would invade if necessary. The Czechs were a better armed and equipped force than Austria and Goering and his generals were against war with them as they considered that Germany was not then ready for war. However, Hitler was impatient and Goebells launched a huge campaign against supposed suppression of German Sudetens by the Czech government. The Czechs had defence treaties with France and Britain indicated that it would not stand aside in the event of war. If France went to war with Germany then Britain would have to join in.
Chamberlain was aware, despite now hurriedly re-arming, knew that Britain was in no fit state to engage in war. In a BBC broadcast in September, 1938 he stated that “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” Chamberlain was still unclear about Hitler’s plans for European conquest rather than the settlement to right wrongs inflicted on the Sudeten Germans. After Hitler’s speech at the Nuremberg Rally on 12th September, 1938 Chamberlain demanded a meeting.
For the first time in his life, Chamberlain boarded an aircraft and flew to Munich. Chamberlain agreed to a revision of Czech boundaries to accommodate the Sudeten German’s wishes. Hitler’s attitude was one of bluster and would admit no alternative to war. A second meeting was scheduled for 22nd September, 1938. Chamberlain had consulted his cabinet and the French with a consensus to agree with the terms. At this meeting Hitler presented a new set of terms with the ultimatum that if not agreed to he would invade Czechoslovakia on 1st October. Goering then intervened and persuaded Hitler that Germany could not at that time wage war and that most of their demands had been met anyway and on 29th September the famous Munich agreement was signed including a declaration by Chamberlain that Britain and Germany would never go to war again. On his return to London he waved the document with the famous “Peace in our time” statement and that Hitler was a man whose word could be trusted. Despite his own recent experiences.
German people generally were relieved that war had been averted but Hitler’s standing among them suffered badly. His track record of settling international disputes by negotiation was badly dented. Internal unrest expanded and there were plans among the German military to stage a coup, knowing as they were, that Germany was not in a fit state to wage war. Persecution of all kinds increased, German people were already suffering shortages brought on by the demands of the state for increased war preparations. Hitler was determine to proceed to war regardless. His relationship with Goering cooled and was replaced by a rise in the powers of Himmler and von Ribbentrop. On 1st October the German army marched across the Czech frontier and the Czech army retreated beyond the new Sudeten border.
The corpse of Czechoslovakia was then subjected to claims from neighbouring countries; Poland, Hungary and Croatia. The Slovak population succeeded in getting their part of the country partitioned as a new country called Slovakia. On 21st October Hitler instructed the German army to prepare for an invasion of Czechoslovakia. On 14th March, 1939 the Slovak parliament proclaimed self-government and asked the 3rd Reich for protection against Czech forces. That night, in Berlin, members of the Czech government were told that if they did not concede to Hitler’s demands Germany would invade. A document agreeing to that demand established a protectorate over the remaining Czech territory was signed on 15th March.
These events caused Britain and France to double their efforts to re-arm. Chamberlain gave notice in a speech on 17th March, 1939 that there was “a suspicion that Hitler was seeking, not to right the wrongs of the 1919 Peace Settlement but to dominate the world by force”. The next day talks began with Poland to see what can be done to stop Germany threatening the country. On 29th March, Chamberlain issued a public guarantee that if Poland’s independence was threatened, Britain would step in to defend it.
In retrospect, one wonders why such a poorly thought out statement was made. Britain, by its own admission, was not in a prepared state to wage war. The British people were firmly against another war. Poland was far away with other territory, mainly German, in between. It was a logistical impossibility to do anything to help. Further to that one wonders what the sympathetic connection to Poland was all about. Since 1935 Poland had been ruled by a military junta. It was far right wing, sympathetic to Nazi Germany and, despite the fact that Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe, it was strongly anti-semetic. Jews were herded into ghettos and offered assisted passage to migrate to Palestine. It had purged the senior military commands with numerous executions and was out dated in its thinking. The remaining commanders insisted that cavalry would always be superior to tanks. It is difficult to establish any common ground that would have prompted Chamberlain to rush to Poland’s support in the way he did.
Hitler regarded Chamberlain’s statement with disdain. He had experienced negotiations over the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia culminating with the Munich agreement and was convinced that Chamberlain would favour appeasement at any price. He had assessed the risk of American intervention and discarded it immediately. Further, Ribbentrop had been the German ambassador to England. He was an offensive type of man who was well disregarded in British diplomatic social circles. He resented this and hated the British with a passion. As a close confidant of Hitler at that time, he was urging war and contempted British threats.
On 23rd May, Hitler told his military leaders that “further success cannot be won without bloodshed”. He conceded that Germany was not ready for war with the West. It would take another 5 years to be fully prepared and the immediate policy was to isolate Poland and avoid a general European war.
To this end Germany concluded non-aggression pacts with Latvia, Estonia and Denmark. An agreement with Romania was signed to give Germany access to the Romanian oil fields in the event of war. Trade links were completed with Sweden and Norway for the supply of iron ore. The surprising agreement was that made with Russia to secure the border with Poland. To further this pact Stalin replaced his foreign minister, Litvinov, who was a Jew, with Molotov, who was not.
Stalin was in a weak position at the time. He had heavily purged his armed forces and munitions factory managers and that left few senior commanders who had war experience. Furthermore, he was convinced that after Hitler had conquered Poland he would attack Russia so this pact was as much in Stalin’s favour as Hitler’s. On 23rd August the non-aggression pact was signed agreeing to divide Poland in two. The pact entitled Russia to take over the Eastern part of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The agreement with Stalin enraged many Nazi Party members. One of the tenets of the party had been the abolition of Bolshevism and they regarded this pact as betrayal. On the other hand there were many who regarded it as a practical step forward and supported it while necessary.
The invasion of Poland was fixed for 26th August. Goebells had mounted a campaign denouncing the supposed suppression of German speaking people in Danzig and urged their relief. An attempt was made by the British government through its pro-German ambassador, Neville Henderson, stating that Britain was willing to guarantee a peacefully negotiated settlement of new German- Polish boundaries.
On 22nd August, Hitler summoned his top commanders. He told them that the invasion of Poland would proceed. The risk of war with Britain and France was ignored because France and Britain have taken on obligations that they have no hope of fulfilling. He further stated that Britain’s leaders were weak.
The plans for 26th August ended abruptly when Mussolini informed Hitler that Italy was not in a fit state to provide any military assistance. Hitler attempted to arrange a diplomatic settlement through Henderson. The Polish Corridor would be joined to Danzig and the new territory transferred to Germany. Also Britain’s pact with Poland would need to be cancelled. This offer was rejected by the British cabinet which refused to budge on the question of the Polish guarantee.
On 31st August Hitler’s offer was broadcast and blamed the British for its failure. Fresh orders were given to the German army to invade Poland on 1st September.
On the night of 31st August/1st September a contingent of SS men dressed in Polish army uniforms attacked a German radio station and murdered the occupants leaving evidence to confirm an attack by Poland on a German installation. At 4.45am on that morning, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish garrison at the Vistula estuary. All along the border German units crossed the Polish border.
World War 2 has begun.
The background to this story is very long and very complicated. The intrigue and interplay between political parties and personnel is difficult to follow as the names are not familiar. I have avoided as much detail of Nazi atrocities as I can as these are not pertinent to the topic, The Origins of World War 2. Ghastly and intriguing as they may be they do not relate to the roles of the most senior and better known Nazis.
Each is a story in itself and far worse than what we have been allowed to consume via the Australian and Allied media. This article has been, by far the most demanding of any that I have written so far.
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