The Roots of National Socialism and Germany's Reckoning with its Past

Some Provisional Conclusions

Historians of the era still find that much remains complex and mysterious about the rise of Hitler and the Nazi (NSDAP) party. There is no clear consensus on what caused his astonishing popularity among a wide segment of German society, causing them to be duped into joining the Hitler Youth, into mobilizing against and killing their own neighbors, and into fighting for Hitler in WW II. (Soldiers had no choice and, as the war waged on and men were killed in battle, younger and younger boys were conscripted into the armed forces: boys as young as 16.)

We can, however, summarize what is clear from the historical record about the root causes of the rise of the Nazi party. The reasons can be divided into these categories:
 
--psychological: Hitler’s inferiority complex, psychological frailty, and sense of being marginalized: blaming Jews for his own personal problems as well as Austria and Germany’s; his own failed aspirations as a painter; shame at his own and his family’s past.
 
--social: resurgence of anti-Semitism as Jews in Austria and Germany became more secular and more integrated into these societies, with the Jewish population growing from 2% to 8.5% in Vienna between 1857 and 1910 (Fest 27) and the Austrian society becoming more and more divided among Germans (25%), Czechs, Poles, Italians, Romanians, Slovenes, Croats, Jews, and others: jealousy and suspicion of Jews working in both finance and in socialist groups (ibid.), including wild rumors that Jewish elites had helped orchestrate WWI and sought “world domination.” Nazi propaganda based on idea of Volksgemeinschaft (equality of the people of the German “race”) and the marginalization and attempted eradication of the Jewish “race” (Arendt 360).
 
--economic: Germany had borrowed heavily during WWI in order to finance the war, believing that the country would be victorious. After WWI, the government began printing more and more paper money to meet its debt obligations, leading to inflation. Average Germans saw their salaries becoming insufficient to pay for daily living expenses, leading to panic, worry, frustration, and rage. Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), Alfred Döblin’s novel of gritty, underground Berlin, chronicles this period vividly.
 
--political: 1) Revolution of 1918: soldiers and average Germans took to the streets and revolted against the Kaiser, whose government had become weak and outmoded. 2) national shame at having lost WWI, at having lost over 27,000 square miles of territory (13%), and at having to pay heavy reparations to France and Belgium to help rebuild their countries, and also to the Allies, for the cost of conducting the war. These reparations were so severe that Germany only finished paying them off in 2010. 3) Lastly, given Germany’s severe economic and political challenges after WWI, there was fear of a Soviet-style communist revolution coming to German soil. In the cacophony of voices and political parties after WWI, socialists and leftists in general were particularly strong (and hated by Hitler and his NSDAP).
 
--historical: United formally rather late, in 1871, Germany had relatively little experience with representative democracy, leading to the period of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) being an era characterized by a loose, chaotic assemblage of political parties and organizations. Even though he was by no means a popular choice with everyone (he even lost the presidential election in 1932), Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933 by Hindenburg, in a vain hope that he could unite the country’s many factions.
 
 
 

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