8.6: Scientific Racism - Germany

Germany's Fragile Democracy 

The fascist Nazi government sought to get out of the Great Depression through a policy of massive rearmament and racial exclusion. Although Germany was a democracy during the 1920s, it was fertile ground for racist antisemitism in early 1900s where racists and social Darwinistic theories were widely held. Additionally, the Weimar government did not create a loyal military. The anti-democratic officers from the German Empire were kept in place. Early on, the Weimar Coalition faced a major communist revolution and needed the support of the military to put down this uprising. These officers were granted autonomy from the government, but they were virtually all anti-democratic and wanted the emperor brought back. The Weimar Coalition also failed to put in place democratic judges. Therefore, the German judiciary was sympathetic to the anti-democratic nationalist groups. During the 1920s, the German government was on life support. After the war, France sought to keep Germany powerless by requiring them to make yearly deliveries of coal to Britain, France, Italy, and Belgium. Germany got loans from the USA which were used to pay back for war reparations.

The disruption caused by the Wall Street crash and world trade brought down the moderate social democratic government. When US banks were unable to lend money to Germany, its economy collapsed, and millions of employees lost their jobs. The socialists in the German government supported welfare programs to help the poor but these were rejected by other parties who feared increased government spending would bring inflation. Then the moderates coalesced around Chancellor Heinrich Bruning, a conservative of the Catholic Center Party, who was tight-fisted on social and economic policies. The German government cut spending which kept unemployment high. This high unemployment led to less demand and then lower production.

Previously, the virulently antisemitic National Socialists (Nazis—German fascists), headed by Adolf Hitler, had been a fringe party, easily ignored.   As Germans became increasingly desperate, they looked for easy solutions, or at least someone to blame for the crisis of global capitalism.  Hitler was an anti-Marxist and gained the support of wealthy elites. Overall, the Nazis focused on obtaining support not from blue-collar workers but from members of the middle class who were economically vulnerable and felt threatened by communism. In Germany, one-third of the labor force was unemployed in the early 1930s. This unemployment weakened the power of unions and the Social Democrats, turning many of the unemployed towards the Nazis.

In the 1932 elections, no party won a clear majority (which was not unusual), but for the first time, most German voters backed either the Communists or the Nazis. So, the majority of the members of the German legislature, the Reichstag, supported the abolition of democracy in Germany. Meanwhile, intrigues began swirling around the aging President Paul von Hindenburg who was responsible for choosing a politician to take the role of chancellor and form a government. The chancellor ran the day-to-day affairs of the government and was supposed to have a majority of members in the Reichstag to work with and get things done.   Hindenburg took the advice of aristocratic nationalists in January 1933 to call upon Adolf Hitler to form a government. The elites believed Hitler could be controlled. Big business saw Hitler as the best hope in forestalling a communist takeover. He promised to create a new order based on class harmony, not on socialist class conflict. Big business would continue to hold sway in Nazi society.

Hitler and the Nazis were like the Italian Fascists in their anti-liberal, anti-democratic, hyper-nationalist ideology, and support of the totalitarian ideal for ruling their nation. The Nazis also appealed to many voters because of their consistent opposition to the Versailles Treaty, which nearly all Germans blamed for their economic distress. The Nazis successfully tapped into German nationalism.  Hitler’s policy was based on extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, and Social Darwinism. He believed Germany needed to expand or it would end up like a small power like the Netherlands. The Nazis were able to tap into a long history of anti-Semitism in Europe. Historically, Jews in Europe were often despised because they rejected Christianity. However, the Nazis combined biological racism with traditional anti-Semitism in Europe. For centuries Jews were the largest, and often the only minority in every European nation, and therefore provided a convenient scapegoat for the latest socio-economic problem. They argued that Jews were biologically inferior and posed a threat to the German or Aryan race. The blame for the Versailles treatment rested squarely on the Jews. The Nazis argued that Jews did not produce anything and benefited as exploiters in capitalism. They were depicted as bankers and middlemen. Incongruently, the Nazis claimed that Jews were behind both communism and the international banking and financial system that communists wanted to destroy.  According to Hitler, Marxism was a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. The Nazis believed the future lay with land-based not sea-based empires. So, Germany began a military buildup against the terms of Versailles to expand east. The Slavs of eastern Europe were also regarded as an inferior race. They would be slaves of the German colonists who would settle in Eastern Europe.

The Nazi Dictatorship

As Hitler took control, new elections were called for in March 1933.  During the campaign, the Reichstag building was burned down, supposedly by a disgruntled Communist. Hitler used this incident to arrest Communist politicians. Once again, the Nazis failed to win a majority in the election, but Hitler was granted near-dictatorial powers when the Enabling Act was passed in March 1933. Although the Nazis did not even have a majority in the Reichstag, they were able to get other parties to grant Hitler these powers.  Only the PSD voted against the Enabling Act.  Hitler threatened to use emergency powers to destroy the Christian Democratic Center Party unless they supported the Enabling Act.  These centrists feared the communists more and saw the Nazis as the lesser of two evils.

Hitler did not move against everyone at once. He attacked threats one at a time.  The Nazis took over the trade unions. All workers would belong to a government Nazi-controlled union. With the elimination of the trade unions, the PSD lost its base of supporters. Hitler prohibited strikes and independent unions and the PSD was then banned. The Center Party existed for the purpose of protecting the Catholic Church in Germany. The papacy saw Communism as the number one threat and favored authoritarian government. Hitler promised freedom of religion for Christians and the protection of Church institutions such as parochial schools. The Pope then pressured the Center Party to dissolve itself.  During the 1920s, the major right-wing parties were in favor of restoring the monarchy, but during the early 1930s, these parties lost support because people were voting for the Nazis instead.  Most conservatives liked the militarism and nationalism of the Nazi party.  The right-wing monarchist leaders were rewarded with government positions if they went over to the Nazi party. The right-wing parties then fused with the Nazi party. 

By 1934, The Nazis then became the only legal party and put its leaders in charge of the different state governments.  After Hindenberg’s death in 1934, Hitler sought complete power by demanding to become the president. The only institution that stood in his way was the German military.  Almost all of the German officers at first wholeheartedly supported the Nazis.  These officers were authoritarian, nationalistic, and anti-Semitic. Very few supported the Weimar Republic or the parties of the Weimar Coalition. Hitler rearmed Germany and expanded the army.  Therefore, officers got promotions and owed their careers to the Nazis

The Nazis wanted to create a totalitarian state by controlling how people behaved inside and outside of their own homes. They used the modern media including the radio, the “talkie,” and even the television to convey their ideology. In particular, the Nazis wanted to control arts and entertainment. The secret police, known as the Gestapo, employed around 100,000 informers who would report to the government about anyone who could potentially threaten Nazi rule. The Nazis also wanted to reshape the family. They argued that granting women rights had led to widespread misery for the women themselves. The female contribution was to be as mothers and wives. Families received marriage loans if the wives promised to stay home and raise children. For every baby, part of the loans would be canceled. Abortion and contraception were outlawed.  Children received Nazi indoctrination at a young age because they were forced to join the Hitler Youth. Initially, Hitler’s popularity in Germany was not based on Nazi racism. Instead, Germans appreciated the political, social, and economic stability the regime brought, and the ways Hitler was thumbing his nose at the Versailles Treaty. To lower unemployment, the government launched massive rearmament and massive public work projects.  

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Nazi Boycott, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in the Public Domain.

German Jews, however, suffered under the regime. Almost immediately after Hitler became chancellor, Jews were fired from government positions. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws prohibited mixed race marriage with Jews and defined Jewishness based on ancestry. Anyone with three or more grandparents regardless of their faith was considered Jewish.  The Nuremberg Laws also stripped the Jews of German citizenship and barred them from the professions.  In figure 8.6.1, the Nazis block the entrance to a Jewish-owned shop. The signs read: "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" and "Germans, defend yourselves, don't buy from Jews!" What would the “Jewish atrocity propaganda” be? Many Nazified German towns “encouraged” Jews to leave so that they could put up signs declaring that they were “Jew-free”.  A trickle of German Jews was able to emigrate: artists, actors, and film directors moved to Hollywood, while academics like Albert Einstein found positions in U.S. universities. However, most of the world did not accept Jewish immigrants. Anti-Semitism was an international problem.

Review Questions

• What were the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic
• How were Nazi policies based on exclusion and scientific racism?