The Corruption Of The Weimar Republic Is The Root Of The Holocaust

Introduction

History has always been my favorite subject out of every other subject that I’ve experienced. Learning about the different topics within different events in history is what makes me learn a lot more about what other people have gone through. People have gone from a lower level to an advanced level as the time period goes forward. We always learn something new about History, but among the same curriculum. The thing about History is that it never changes because the information stays the same. One of the events that intrigue me the most is The Holocaust. The Holocaust was one of the worse humanitarian genocide in Germany. The genocide was a conflict mainly between the Jews and the Germans. Before the Holocaust had even happened, Germany was going through a difficult time with the aftermath of World War I. Tensions had risen between the two sides, which were The Central Powers and The Allies. The Central Powers had consisted of Germany, Austria Hungary, Bulgaria and The Ottoman Empire. The Allies consisted of Great Britain, France and The U.S. At the end of the war, The Allies had won and Germany became economically devastated and extremely embarrassed after the war. Germany had to pay huge amounts of reparations to France and Great Britain, this was known to be The Treaty Of Versailles. Germany had to sign this agreement in 1919 by the victorious WW1 Allies. The Treaty Of Versailles had affected Germany with the dealt of paying reparations that cost among six million, transitioning into a international city, surrendering overseas colonies, losing West Prussia from the rest of Germany by the Polish, limiting their army to a hundred thousand men and lastly, giving up Alsace-Lorraine to France. The Holocaust had many causes for it to even happen and those causes were known to be Anti-Semitism, Social Darwinism, Adolf Hitler, The Political Corruption Of The German Weimar and The Nazi Party. Each of these causes all associated with the Holocaust for it to even happen. Furthermore, Anti-Semitism is the concept of prejudice or hatred towards Jewish people. Most historians would assume of Hitler or The Nazi Party creating this term, but it wasn’t either of them. Anti-Semitism had been effective in Europe societies for centuries. The next cause is Social Darwinism, which is the idea to how some ethnic groups are superior to others. This goes along with the Germans treating the Jews harshly, as if they were aberrant and discrepant. The Germans had made the Jews as their main target, but had also targeted gypsies, people with disabilities, soviet prisoners of war, afro-germans and poles. The last cause that contributes towards the Holocaust is the failure of the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was the government system within Germany from 1919 to 1933. Basically, this government system had failed for several reasons but the main reason was because they experienced hyperinflation and didn’t necessarily get the most support when it came to the form of democracy happening right ,during the devastation of what people are going through. The hyperinflation was caused by the effect of the reparation and the poor and economic decisions. To my way of thinking, the corruption of The Weimar Republic is the main source to the Holocaust because without the functional base of a political system in a nation, how will significant things even process? How would people even function to unify their country again? Ever since The Weimar Republic started to stop getting much support, that’s when the downfall of Germany started to come about and made a leader rise up for them and even led to more devastating events. Hitler initiating Complications in Germany With the suffering of Germany, everyone within the society knew they needed a leader to count on to get their nation going and improved. This is where the significance of Adolf Hitler comes into play. Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria. Many may say how Adolf Hitler was a terrible dictator or how he hadn’t brought any type of improvement within Germany.

However, Adolf Hitler had a huge role when it came to the beginning of WWII when he was rising to power. Adolf Hitler was a soldier on the Western Front and he had shown extreme courage and bravery during the battle within Arras. When it came to the Great War, the Germans had expected a quick victory, but that didn’t necessarily happen because of their incoherent actions. The main causes for WWI to happen were Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism and Nationalism. They all competed for maintaining a large navy, more specifically Germany trying to achieve that to replicate Britain’s navy. All of the nation even doubled the sizes of their armies. The Alliances had led countries to increase more wars against one another, making it hard for all the nations to get along with one another to unite. In Addition, Hitler was also serving in The Great War. At the end of world war one, the Allies had won and for their victory they decided to punish Germany harshly. The punishment that Germany had to go through was followed by a Peace Treaty called The Treaty of Versailles. This treaty is what made WW1 ended. More specifically, the treaty required them to dismantle their own armed forces and surrender great pieces of their territory. This was a huge example of a global economic depression with also the Germans high unemployment. This treatment was what made Germans perspective devastated and vanquished as if they had no more hope. The Germans had even tried to change the treaty but their efforts were unessential. Germany just had a full expression of embarrassment because this wasn’t supposed to end like this. When Adolf Hitler, the soon to become power German leader, had been exposed to the news of Germany losing the Great War, he believed that the reason why Germany lost was not because of the Allies, but to the insufficient patriotic. Not only was it him that believed this, but majority of the Germans did. Adolf Hitler wanted Germany to be omnipotent and affluent. With the determination of Hitler wanting this, he decided to rise up in power for the sake of the nation. He ran for the election that was opposing President Hindenburg. President Hindenburg was running again within this election. The people of Germany had turned to Adolf Hitler because he claimed many promises to how he would make Germany great again. Adolf Hitler was committed to make a huge change within Germany. So decided to help out the social and political party, known as The Nazis Party. Hitler had drove out the original leaders who represented the party, so he could now be the head of the party in July 1921. The Nazis Party can also refer to the National Socialist German Workers Party. Hitler admired The Nazis Party because it represented Germany’s nationalistic pride. The social political party was to show other nations that Germany would show an extreme pride for their own country and representing the ideas of Nazism. Germany’s main objective in this was to extend the party’s sphere of influence all over Europe. Before Hitler had become involved, before being acknowledge, in 1907 he had gone through a difficult time in Vienna. Such as, getting through the death of both of his parents, failing to get into Arts Academy in Vienna. During this time, Hitler was also starting to develop trouble among accepting multiculturalism. He even got sent to imprisonment because of treason, leading him to spend 5 years there. During the imprisonment, Hitler was started to share his political idea in the formation of his book called “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle). “The sacred mission of the German people...to assemble and preserve the most valuable racial elements...and raise them to dominant position”, quoted in the book of “Mein Kampf in the Volume Two: The National Socialist Movement. When interpreting that quote, Hitler was expressing how the German people are the ones to have the most valuable characteristic of racial features and that should be acknowledge to others. Another one is “It would be human and natural for the state to place race at the centre of general existence.

The state must assure the purity of the race”. Within those two quotes, it’s easy to identify that Hitler was demonstrating his own view within outlining his life to his political view and Anti-Semitic views. Also, including his interpretation to where Germany is as of right now and history of the world. Hitler had a racist world view and believed that Germany was the “master race” and believed that it should be taken all over Europe. The reason to why Hitler could actually be the main cause for the whole genocide to happen is because of how his process of thinking was when it came to handling the situation of Germany’s instability of economic and social problems. The fact that he was eager to participate in the Nazi Party shows to where he standed within his opinions of representing Germany with pride and sacrificing anything for Germany. He was basically the direct cause of WWII and presented his own speeches of hateful and attracted many Germans to follow him as the leader. However, Adolf Hitler was just a dictator who tried to manipulate and control majority of the lives in Germany but how does that go on to the Holocaust? How does one leader make a huge effect to everyone and the killings of Jews? This links to a historic and carried on concept during this time period known to be Anti-Semitism. Racialism Comes Through A concept known as Anti-Semitism had contributed to the human genocide, The Holocaust. Anti-Semitism goes back to the conflict between Jews being accused as ‘Killers Of Jesus Christ’ as the Christians would say. Within the 15th and 19th century, Jews were known to be in mass killings and identified being superior among their religion, specifically in Spain and Russia. Because of these brutal mass killings, Jews had been forced to live within ghettos and migrated all over Europe. Of course Jews felt affronted and segregated towards these acts of killings among their religious culture.[footnoteRef:10] However, in Germany during the period of the Reformation and the Peasants War, the leading spirit during this time named Martin Luther had been a Anti-Semitic. When Germany has a leader who is extremely Anti-Semitic, they get influenced to the idea of it. Since then, Anti-Semitism started to become a huge widespread within Germany. Especially the contribution of Adolf Hitler and the party. As this ideology spreaded in Germany, it started to become popular during the 1914 as it became a ritual within Germans. The reason to why it started to become popular was due to the fact that the Germans extremely believed to how the Jews were to be not trustworthy people and always somehow causing the problems. There was even propagandas going on to make the focus on Jews contributing to the problems of the Weimar Republic, like the factors of inflation, economic collapse and high rise of unemployment. With these types of factors, Germans suddenently just blamed the Jews for no good logical reason when it was just their government system falling apart. As Hitler started to rise with his words of his speeches, he got influenced to Anti-Semitism also. He would express violently to how much hatred he has for Jews and how Germans need to take action for these superior people to not be in their country any more. The actions that he specifically was getting at were to ‘eliminate’ all Jews from German Society. So, Hitler had gotten influenced with the concept of Anti-Semitism and rises it even more within Germany. Germany of course was in the mode of disaster and confusion with the aftermath of the front war ,but because Germans really didn’t know what their country was facing they followed the rising leaders of using Jews as their scapegoat. The role of Germany with this concept just seems encouraging in a way because it wasn’t determined for any of the Germans to stop it from rising and they just went along with it. As Anti-Semitism remained widespread within Germany, the focus that writers and Nazi had was the focus of Jews involvement with every problem Germany had encountered.

Hitler’s Anti-Semitism was what also contributed to the possibility of The Holocaust to even happen. For example, with the creation of the “Final Solution” goes back to the concept of racism. The racism that was present was specific to the stereotypes of Jews and their own typical behavior. The type of myths that was spreading around Germany and Europe was, Jews weaken their political stand, Jews controlling the finances of the reparations system to benefit their own profit and them being the ones to start the war. The Party That Came About The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, known as, The Nazi was brought about in the time period of 1919. The Party was based on the right of determination of all Germans making a greater Germany. It was also based on denying the membership to Jews of the Nation, majority of the land and territories for the German people and settle into in the surplus population and the revocation of the Versailles Treaty. As Hitler joined the party and became the dominant position in it, this is where more actions started to came about. Under him, was the National Socialism which had organized a detailed description of hatred. The National Socialism is what drew its own inspiration and power from the desire to destroy. This is when it was necessary for the development of a special force to protect the party and Hitler especially. The force was known as “SA” in its initial but in words “Stormtroopers”. This force had the position of breaking up meetings of the rival parties and creating an atmosphere of crisis along the way. Their main targets of course were The Communists and The Jews. As this force continued, it was determined that the brawl between the Nazis and the Communists was that the Nazis thugs won and the Communists thugs didn’t. However, many claimed to say how Nazism and Communists are extremely similar in particular ways but they had detested each other/ During the time period of 1933, when the Weimar government wasn’t having a little support from the country, The Nazis was the one being the largest single party. With the use of their powerful propaganda that stood out and the commitment to their supporters, is why other parties can’t match The Nazis Party. Many Germans had supported The Nazis Party because most of the audience was attracted to Hitler’s populist image, speeches from Hitler and the fact that the Weimar Republic was starting to be a realization of a complete failure. They looked up to Hitler as if he was the solution to all of their economic and social problems going on. Even the unemployed Germans saw hope within Nazis promise. Now during the time period of 1933, is when The Nazis started to organize and open violence against the Jews. The Storm Troopers would attack the Jews on streets and smashed their property. The year of 1934 is what marked Jews of being excluded in civil service and professions. As this progressed, it eventually comes to the big turning point which was The Holocaust. As quoted from Hitler, “The Jews have not brought about the 9 November 1918 for nothing. This day will be avenge”. Hitler wanted to get revenged among the Jews with his army along to cause this conflict to happen. Once the war had begun, the fate of Jews in Nazi hands were permanently sealed. Joseph Goebbels, known as a German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany, had stated “If international Finance Jewry once more succeed in driving the peoples into a world war, the result would be destruction of the Jewish race in Europe”. By this statement, Goebbels is destined for this to eventually happen so Germans could finally take over Europe. Those words are what was the cue for the Nazis to turn Hitler’s terrifying ideas into reality. During January 1942, is when the Nazi leaders had come together for a conference at Wannsee where was at a suburb of Berlin. The main topic of this conference was the “Final Solution” for executing many specific groups throughout Europe.

The Nazis even discussed the types of methods that would be used for the killings act and the huge problem for the exterminators which was on how to get rid of so much bodies. Nazi Germany was now considered to be a racial state, due to the representation of racial purity. The Nazis was also responsible for the concentration camps for their aim of removing from all of those in society because of their race, politics, religion or sexual orientation. This was meant for Gypsies, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Homosexuals and Jews. On the side of the ordinary Germans, they didn’t necessarily see how The Nazis actions were to be disturbing and horrific. Throughout looking at what the Nazi Germany’s had been originating, some say it’s easy to determine that the blame is all directed towards them. Backing it up with the evidence of what they were aiming for, following their beliefs and protocols, executing groups because of their identity, creation of the concentration camps and conferences regarding to how the plans of the executions should be about. Without the determination of The Nazis Party, The Holocaust wouldn’t have occurred and there wouldn’t be an army to eliminate the majority of Jews that was six million of them. A Try For A Republic Since Germany was going through economic and social problems after world war one, they decided to try out a democracy political system, called The Weimar Republic. The leader of this party was known to be Friedrich Ebert. This political system was created on November 9, 1918. The reason to why this republic failed is because they had faced many threats from communists and right-wing extremists. The republic was even responsible for signing The Treaty Of Versailles. Once they did this, that was basically the downfall towards their own nation and the republic. The goal for this republic was to go back to how Germany wasn’t involved in any conflict and prosperity was born to be happening. With the powerfulness of the treaty, it got to limit Germany of bringing back stability and it limited prosperity. To dig deeper within the Republic, they had faced many challenges to overcome. For example, people started to blame the Republic for signing the treaty that ruined their excellence and predicament[footnoteRef:14] for Germany. Another significant example is, the republic resisting the extremists’ attempts of seizing their power specifically. But however, they got into the situation of hyperinflation due to their economic decisions and reparations being present. The hyperinflation is what did most of its job making the nation in poverty, bankruptcies and into strikes. Surprisingly, the republic still got to stay present within those encounters of conflict and got to elect governments towards making important changes to the economy and society of German. During the time period of when the Great Depression had occurred in the United States, there became a revival in the extremist parties in Germany. The parties were starting to rise up, such as The Nazi Party, against the republic. Of course all these parties had to goal of achieving much power as they want and become the most dominant within the country. Hitler got offered of the chancellorship of keeping Communism out of their power. Once Hitler got involved and started to rise the most power and votes among Germany, that is when the republic started to go down and effectively dead.

When the Weimar Republic started to acknowledge Hitler coming into rise, they kind of knew that they couldn’t compete against him because of how much votes he would get and his party also rising up along. Along with that, Hitler also maintained to gain a sufficient amount of seating of Reichstag to official make him an official political player. Conservatives were hoping to control Hitler and hopefully bring down his popularity but that didn’t happen. When going back to the perspective of Friedrich Ebert, the main leader of bringing the constitution along and attempting to unite Germany as one in all. He had extreme hopeness and spirit towards making Germany great again after the difficulties they were facing. He was even facing terrorism and hyperinflation. However, once the election occurred for Hindenburg to be the president of Germany in 1932, he proved to weaken the republic considerably. Hindenburg had also failed to get a lot of support to win against the Nazi support. Throughout observing to what The Weimar Republic was going through, It’s easy to establish that the republic wasn’t going to last that long with the signing of giving away parts of their land and paying so much money within the reparations. Once the whole system became corrupted, Hitler took the step of getting to led the people of getting Germany into a much higher place in gaining much more power than any other nation that was present during the time. Conclusion In the final analysis, through researching and reading majority of sources of each cause to The Holocaust, it is easy to determine on how the failure of the political system within Germany was the one to be blamed for this whole event. The main reason as to why is it left confusion among the nation as in guidance which led them to follow Adolf Hitler since the Weimar Republic won't able to keep promises of gaining Germany to be in full prosperity. As time just progressed, it was easy to distinguish that the republic wasn’t going in a good direction with all the challenges they came across. The other causes: Adolf Hitler, Anti-Semitism, Nazis Party and The Weimar Republic, was also factors of The Holocaust to happen but if it wasn’t for The Republic to sign the Treaty Of Versailles which made Germany into a insufficient state and for Hitler to come involve, then the Holocaust wouldn’t have occured.

Bibliography

1. Lynch, Michael J. Nazi Germany. Teach Yourself, 2004.
2. Collotti, Enzo. Hitler and Nazism. Windrush, 1999.
3. McDonough, Frank. Hitler and Nazi Germany, 1933-1945. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999.
4. Altman, Linda Jacobs. The Holocaust, Hitler, and Nazi Germany. Enslow, 1999.
5. Nardo, Don. The Rise of Nazi Germany. Greenhaven Press, 1999.
6. The 4 M-A-I-N Causes Of World War One. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.historyhit.com/the-4-m-a-i-n-causes-of-world-war-one/
7. Editors, H. (2009, October 29). Adolf Hitler. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/adolf-hitler-1
8. GCSE Bitesize - Weimar - strengths and weaknesses. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/weimarstrengthweakrev_print.shtml
9. Editors, History.com. “Weimar Republic.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 4 Dec. 2017, www.history.com/topics/germany/weimar-republic.
10. Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic: the Crisis of Classical Modernity. Hill and Wang, 1993.
11. “Why Did the Weimar Republic Collapse?” How Did Public Sanitation Develop? - DailyHistory.org, dailyhistory.org/Why_did_the_Weimar_Republic_Collapse?
12. “Friedrich Ebert (1871-1925).” Facing History and Ourselves, www.facinghistory.org/weimar-republic-fragility-democracy/personalities/friedrich-ebert-1871-1925-personalities.