Germany 1919 to 1945: the Weimar Republic and its problems, the rise of the Nazi Party, the consolidation of dictatorship, the Nazi state in peace and war, and the persecution that led to the Holocaust.

What this dot point is asking

You need to explain why the Weimar Republic struggled and fell, how the Nazi Party rose to power, how Hitler turned the chancellorship into a total dictatorship, how the regime ruled in peace and war, and how persecution escalated to the Holocaust and defeat in 1945. The AS 1 paper rewards causal analysis and judgement; the interpretations debate (especially the "intentionalist versus functionalist" argument over the road to genocide) is worth knowing.

The Weimar Republic and its problems

The Republic was born from defeat and was blamed for the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the "stab in the back" myth (the Dolchstosslegende). It survived early threats from left and right (the Spartacist rising (1919), the Kapp Putsch (1920), the catastrophic 1923 hyperinflation, and Hitler's failed Munich Putsch (1923)), then recovered under foreign minister Gustav Stresemann through the Dawes Plan (1924), the Locarno Treaties (1925) and entry to the League of Nations (1926). The "golden years" of 1924 to 1929 rested, however, on short-term American loans.

The rise of the Nazi Party

The elites believed they could "box Hitler in" with a cabinet of conservatives. They were wrong: within eighteen months he had destroyed the constitution they hoped to manage.

Consolidating the dictatorship

The Reichstag Fire Decree (28 February 1933) suspended civil rights, and the Enabling Act (March 1933) let the cabinet pass laws without the Reichstag, passed only after the KPD was excluded and the SA intimidated the chamber. Through Gleichschaltung (coordination), trade unions were abolished (May 1933) and rival parties banned (July 1933). The Nazis then purged the SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives (June 1934), reassuring the army, and on Hindenburg's death (August 1934) Hitler merged the offices of Chancellor and President as Fuhrer, with the armed forces swearing personal loyalty to him.

The Nazi state and society

• Terror and propaganda. The SS under Himmler, the Gestapo and the concentration-camp system (Dachau from 1933) enforced conformity, while Goebbels and the Fuhrer cult manufactured genuine consent.
• Economy. Recovery under Hjalmar Schacht was followed by the Four Year Plan (1936) under Goering, driving rearmament and autarky.
• Society. Policy targeted women (the cult of "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche"), youth (the Hitler Youth, compulsory from 1936) and workers (the German Labour Front replaced unions).

Persecution and the Holocaust

Anti-Jewish persecution escalated in stages: the boycott of Jewish businesses (April 1933), the Nuremberg Laws (1935) stripping Jews of citizenship, the violence of Kristallnacht (November 1938), and then, during the war, systematic genocide, the Einsatzgruppen mass shootings from 1941 and the death camps after the Wannsee Conference (January 1942). The Holocaust murdered around six million Jews, alongside Roma, disabled people (the T4 programme) and others. Historians debate whether genocide was always intended (the intentionalist view associated with Lucy Dawidowicz) or emerged through escalating wartime decisions (the functionalist view of Hans Mommsen); Ian Kershaw's "working towards the Fuhrer" synthesis bridges the two. Total war and Allied bombing ended in defeat and Hitler's suicide in May 1945.

Examples in context

A model AS paragraph on the fall of Weimar might read: "The Republic was not doomed from birth, but its inherited weaknesses left it dangerously exposed to crisis. Proportional representation guaranteed fragmented coalitions, so that no Weimar government commanded a stable majority for long, and Article 48 offered an alternative to parliamentary rule that Bruning and his successors used freely from 1930. Yet these flaws did not destroy the Republic in the relatively prosperous mid-1920s: under Stresemann it stabilised the currency, secured the Dawes Plan of 1924 and rejoined the international community at Locarno. What turned chronic weakness into terminal crisis was the external shock of the Wall Street Crash, which by 1932 had pushed unemployment past six million and radicalised the electorate towards the extremes. The decisive judgement, therefore, is that structural flaws made the Republic fragile but the Depression made its collapse likely, and the miscalculation of the conservative elites in January 1933 made Hitler's appointment the route by which it fell." This prioritises causes and reaches a clear judgement, which is what AO1 rewards.

Try this

Q1. What power did Article 48 give the President? [2 marks]

• Cue. To suspend civil rights and rule by emergency decree without the Reichstag.

Q2. Explain why the Nazi vote rose so sharply between 1928 and 1932. [6 marks]

• Cue. The Wall Street Crash and Depression, mass unemployment over six million, the failure of democratic government ruling by decree, and effective Nazi propaganda offering order and scapegoats.

Q3. How far was terror the main reason the Nazis stayed in power between 1933 and 1939? [20 marks]

• Cue. Weigh the SS, Gestapo and camps against propaganda, the Fuhrer cult, economic recovery and genuine popular consent. Reach a substantiated judgement.