Money

For much of my life I have followed politics.  As I have matured into voting age, my interest in the nature of American politics has drastically increased.  Being a student of political science, naturally I am fascinated by voting patterns.  During last year's presidential election, I felt enveloped by a sense of enlightenment when I realized that, from my perspective, the weight that tips the scales of the majority is simply money.  Obviously, to simplify politics to an exclusive taxation issue is stripping a piece of art of its colors, but without a medium of exchange there would be no canvass for the construction of civil society.  This inextricable link between money and society has influenced history greatly, and has everything to do with the rise of the Nazi's and the ensuing horrors that marked the 20th century's bleakest time.

Germany's post WWI economic woes have been well documented in our assigned reading for class.  The war reparations, irresponsible economic leadership at the federal level, and incredibly war debts set the stage for the devastation that the stock market crash brought upon the struggling Germans.  As fritzsche describes, "meat became a luxury," and it was only be eaten sporadically on Sundays.  Unemployment skyrocketed, and the national discontent for an already unpopular national government increased.  

The Nazi party, first organized in 1920, sought to rise to prominence and "overwhelm" German democracy.  Beginning only as a small group of power hungry individuals deciding on a preacable ideology, the party had battled it's downs(Beer Hall Putsch 1923) and began to emerge in the mid to late twenties as a legitimate party behind their exalted leader.  Reaching out to the industrial, agricultural, and bourgesouie classes, The Nazi's separated themselves from other falling parties of the era.  Despite these gains, before the stock market crash in 1929 the highest percentage the National Socialists had polled in a national election remained in the low teens.

When the depression sank to its lowest depths in Germany, nearly seven million Germans found themselved unemployed.  Vigorously organizing for his party, Hitler sought to familiarize the fatherland's people with the Nazi platform.  Outlining a distinctly new future Hitler won the votes of many workers.  Fritzsche asserts that 1 in 3 workers voted for the National Socialists in the 1932 election.  While still keeping votes in many other social classes, Hitler gave a viable option to economically concerned voters, particularly the unemployed.  

The Nazi's assume power in 1933.  This power was assumed on the appointment of Hitler as chancellor, and the forged majority in the Reichstag which came from the support of the Centre party.  History was not at an irrevocable point.  Hitler, clearly the most focused, visionary, and talented politician of his day, had assumed a position of immense power, but with a percentage of only 37.6 % in the 1932 elections he did not have the majoritarian mandate.  

The following four years, in which Germans saw their individual rights stripped, persecution of minorities increased, and the criminalization of political desent become the status quo, were made possible by the fact that unemployment was virutally eradicated in Germany.  Hitler has promised a prosperous future and the to the people of Germany he was not only the messiah but a prophet as well.  William L. Shirer asserts, Germans may have lost all of their freedoms, but they no longer had the "freedom to starve."  Hitler used many tactics to achieve his maniacal agenda throughout his decade and a half in power, but nothing was more effective to vindicate his mass support from the German people than his deliverance of the workers from unemployment.  Relieved of their ecnomic insecurities, the masses were vulnerable to the propoganda campaign of Goebbels.  This propoganda played to their nationalsim and "aryan" elitism, which in turned allowed Hitler to "legally" create his reich and all of the horrors that accompanied it.