Adolf Hitler's Rise to Power - Part i - 1889 - 1921

Hey there, students. Let's talk about Hitler. In this lecture, I'm going to specifically address the rise of Hitler and we're going to be going from Hitler's birth to his seizure of power in 1933 - likely going to divide this into three parts. And I'd like to give a quick shoutout to Miss Brantley Goss, who asked for this video about two years ago for her final exam. Hopefully, you'll still watch. So, let's go ahead and start from the very beginning. And there are a couple of essential questions that I'm looking to answer here, the first being, "How did Hitler come to power in Germany?" And the second being, "What influenced the development of Hitler's political ideology?" So, I'm going to be looking at both of those questions today as we look from Hitler's birth to his seizure of power. And so, first of all, Hitler was born in Austria on 4/20/1889 to Austrian parents. So, that's one thing that, technically, Hitler wasn't even German, but now, he did come across the philosophy of Pan-Germanism. You might remember from my lecture on German Unification where there were two philosophies of how Germany should be unified. There was the "Grossdeutschland," which was the "Greater Germany" and then "Kleindeutschland" - the lesser or "Little Germany." And the idea of Greater Germany included Austria. Now, the way that Germany was unified was under Prussian dominance and it excluded Austria but Hitler runs into a lot of Pan-German influence, so it's important to understand that although Hitler was technically Austrian, his identity was German. He got this from the politics of the time and another thing he picked up from politics at this time growing up in Vienna was Antisemitism. Here is a picture of Karl Lueger, who was the mayor of Vienna from 1897-1910 and he was part of a political party that was very much into Antisemitism. This was the Christian Social Party of Austria. And what you see here is the anaconda or whatever you've got there - boa constrictor? And you notice there at the very top that is is caricatured to look like a Jew. Now, Hitler was an aspiring artist. You might have heard this before. Before World War I, Hitler had in mind that he would paint things. This is the most famous of his surviving paintings. But then, when the war broke out, he fought in the war - became a World War I veteran. Now, in order to fight, he didn't fight for the Austrian Army. He went to Bavaria and he enlisted in the German Army. So after the war, we have the Treaty of Versailles. Of course, we know from our studies - or we should by now - that the Versailles Treaty was not a very good deal for Germany. And after the Treaty, which put all kinds of reparations on Germany, we see here an American political cartoon, so you see it's not just the Germans who think this treaty is unfair, but we see all of the reparations that Germany is being saddled with, which other countries can even see this isn't a very fair situation. Of course, the Germans didn't think this was very fair. You see this huge demonstration outside of the Reichstag in 1919 against the treaty. This gives birth to a lot of radicalism. All of this stuff that comes after the Treaty of Versailles that parties like the German Workers Party - they blamed the government they blamed Jews they blamed Marxists for Germany's defeat. That there must be some kind of conspiracy somewhere. There must have been some powerful people that were conspiring against Germany to make Germany lose the war. And this is where you have this "stabbed in the back" myth. And what you see there is the German soldier and there is a Jew going up behind him and stabbing him in the back. And so, this is the idea that a scapegoat is needed in order to justify why Germany lost the war because surely Germany can't just lose wars because Germany has the best military. Right? And so Hitler, after the war, he was actually given a little espionage task. He was told to go and spy on this German Workers Party. And when Hitler started going to these meetings and listening to what they said, some of the stuff resonated with him, and so afterwards, he became an active member of this German Workers Party, which in 1920 evolved into the National Socialist German Workers Party. Now, this is a very interesting collection of isms because we haven't really seen nationalism and socialism playing very well together. This party's going to combine the philosophies of nationalism, anti-Marxism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Semitism. Now, this is interesting in terms of this is a so-called "right wing" movement - what we might call "right wing socialism" or something like that - that it is not a capitalist enterprise but it also is not a Marxist or a communist enterprise. It's really kind of its own thing. Now, the logo for this party was designed by Hitler. Hitler never really stopped being an artist. But you see here that Hitler is taking a leadership role in this party very early, so when you look at these designs... I mean, Hitler put this together and spent a lot of energy doing it. He wrote, "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle. After long trials, I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika." So Hitler is really looking at every detail with an artist's eye and even in choosing the colors, he is throwing back to the German Empire. He is not using the black, red, and yellow of the Weimar Republic, but the black, red, and white of the German Empire. And also, there is some symbolism here in the colors in addition to being a throwback. So first of all, the red is for socialism, the white is for nationalism, and then the swastika represents the purity of the *** race and creative work or whatever point he was trying to make there. Hitler was an engaging public speaker. We all know that about him - all kinds of different gestures and all of his vocal changes and all of that kind of stuff - that Hitler knew how to work a crowd. And this ended up being something that was very beneficial for this National Socialist German Workers Party to have somebody who was such a captivating speaker. And in 1921, Hitler was elected the leader of the Nazi Party. He actually threatened to leave the Nazi Party and they said, "Well, we can't really do without this guy that's drawing crowds with all of his speeches." So Hitler now is the leader of this National Socialist German Workers Party. And with that, we go into the 1920s, where we're going to see some key events that are going to transform this National Socialist German Workers Party from a fringe party to a mainstream German party. So, as Hitler takes over in 1921, what we're going to see is a series of events that are going to bring the National Socialist German Workers Party from the outer fringe into the political mainstream. I invite you to go ahead and click through and go to the next segment of this lecture. See you in a bit.