The Rise of the Nazis to Power in Germany

Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power due to the social and political circumstances that characterized the interwar
period in Germany. Many Germans could not concede their countrys defeat in World War I, arguing that
backstabbing and weakness in the rear had paralyzed and, eventually, caused the front to collapse. The Jews, they
claimed, had done much to spread defeatism and thus destroy the German army. Democracy in the Weimar
Republic, they argued, was a form of governance that had been imposed on Germany and was unsuited to the
German nature and way of life. They construed the terms of the Versailles peace treaty and the steep compensation
payments that it entailed as revenge by the victors and a glaring injustice. This frustration, together with intransigent
resistance and warnings about the surging menace of Communism, created fertile soil for the growth of radical rightwing groups in Germany, spawning entities such as the Nazi Party.

In 1925, a transitory economic upturn and a promising political dialogue brought relative calm into sight. However, the
severe international economic crisis that erupted in 1929 carried the instability to new heights.

In 1919, Adolf Hitler, a released soldier wounded in WWI, joined a small and insignificant group called the National
Socialist Party. He became the groups leader and formulated the racial and antisemitic principles in its charter. In
1923 party activists led a revolt and tried to seize power in Munich, but failed. Hitler was imprisoned, during which
time he wrote his venomous book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), in which he expressed his ideas about racial theory and
Nazi global dominion. Hitler realized that he must employ legitimate democratic means in his struggle to seize power.
However, he and his associates left no doubt about their belief in democratic freedoms as mere tools with which
power might be attained. After his release Hitler reorganized the party.

In the 1924 Reichstag elections, the Nazi Party received three percent of the votes cast and was represented in the
parliament by fourteen delegates. In the 1928 elections, its support declined; the party was able to send only twelve
delegates to the legislature. The turnaround came in 1930, the first elections after the economic crisis began.
Surprisingly, the Nazis received 18.3 percent of the vote and sent 107 delegates to the Reichstag, the German
Parliament. In July 1932, with 230 mandates, they became the largest faction in the House a political force that

made an impact and acceded to power legitimately. President Paul von Hindenburg gave Hitler the mandate to form a
government, and Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

The Beginning of the Persecution of Jews in Germany

In the 1930s, Germanys Jews some 500,000 people made up less than one percent (0.8%) of the German
population. Most considered themselves loyal patriots, linked to the German way of life by language and culture.
They excelled in science, literature, the arts, and economic enterprise. 24% of Germanys Nobel Prize winners were
Jewish. However, conversion, intermarriage, and declining birth rates, led some to believe that Jewish life was
doomed to disappear from the German scene altogether.

The paradox was that Nazi ideology stemmed from Germany and the German people, among whom Jews eagerly
wanted to acculturate. Indeed, there was a widespread belief amongst many Jews in the illusion that the role they
played within industry and trade and their contributions to the German economy would prevent the Germans from
completely excluding them.

Nazi anti-Jewish policy functioned on two primary levels: legal measures to expel the Jews from society and strip
them of their rights and property while simultaneously engaging in campaigns of incitement, abuse, terror and
violence of varying proportions. There was one goal: to make the Jews leave Germany.

On March 9, 1933, several weeks after Hitler assumed power, organized attacks on Jews broke out across Germany.
Two weeks later, the Dachau concentration camp, situated near Munich, opened. Dachau became a place of
internment for Communists, Socialists, German liberals and anyone considered an enemy of the Reich. It became the
model for the network of concentration camps that would be established later by the Nazis. Within a few months,
democracy was obliterated in Germany, and the country became a centralized, single-party police state.

On April 1, 1933, a general boycott against German Jews was declared, in which SA members stood outside Jewishowned stores and businesses in order to prevent customers from entering.

Approximately one week later, a law concerning the rehabilitation of the professional civil service was passed. The
purpose of the legislation was to purge the civil service of officials of Jewish origin and those deemed disloyal to the
regime. It was the first racial law that attempted to isolate Jews and oust them from German life. The first laws
banished Jews from the civil service, judicial system, public medicine, and the German army (then being
reorganized). Ceremonial public book burnings took place throughout Germany. Many books were torched solely
because their authors were Jews. The exclusion of Jews from German cultural life was highly visible, ousting their
considerable contribution to the German press, literature, theater, and music.

In September 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were passed, stripping the Jews of their citizenship and forbidding
intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. Jews were banned from universities; Jewish actors were dismissed from
theaters; Jewish authors works were rejected by publishers; and Jewish journalists were hard-pressed to find
newspapers that would publish their writings. Famous artists and scientists played an important role in this campaign
of dispossession and party labeling of literature, art, and science. Some scientists and physicians were involved in
the theoretical underpinnings of the racial doctrine.