by Norman Lowe
The Italian system was not as ruthless or as brutal as that in Germany and there were no mass atrocities, though there were unpleasant incidents like the murders of Matteotti and Amendola.
Italian fascism was not particularly anti-Jewish or racist until 1938, when Mussolini adopted the policy to emulate Hitler.
Mussolini was more successful than Hitler with his religious policy after his agreement with the pope in 1929.
Finally, their constitutional positions were different: the monarchy still remained in Italy, and though Mussolini normally ignored Victor Emmanuel, the king played a vital role in 1943 when Mussolini’s critics turned to him as head of state. He was able to announce Mussolini’s dismissal and order his arrest. Unfortunately there was nobody in Germany who could dismiss Hitler.
14.6 HOW SUCCESSFUL WAS HITLER IN DOMESTIC AFFAIRS?
There are conflicting views about this. Some argue that Hitler’s regime brought many benefits to the majority of the German people. Others believe that his whole career was a complete disaster and that his so-called successes were a myth created by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda. Taking the argument a step further, some German historians claim that Hitler was a weak ruler who never actually initiated any policy of his own.
(a) Successful?
One school of thought claims that the Nazis were successful up to 1939 because they provided many benefits of the sort mentioned above in Section 14.4(c), and developed a flourishing economy. Hence Hitler’s great popularity with the masses, which endured well on into the 1940s, in spite of the hardships of the war. If only Hitler had succeeded in keeping Germany out of war, so the theory goes, all would have been well, and his Third Reich might have lasted a thousand years (as he boasted it would).
(b) Only superficially successful?
The opposing view is that Hitler’s supposed successes were superficial and could not stand the test of time. The so-called ‘economic miracle’ was an illusion; there was a huge budget deficit and the country was, technically, bankrupt. Even the superficial success was achieved by methods unacceptable in a modern civilized society:
Full employment was achieved only at the cost of a brutal anti-Jewish campaign and a massive rearmament programme.
Self-sufficiency was not possible unless Germany was able to take over and exploit large areas of eastern Europe belonging to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia.
Permanent success therefore depended on success in war; thus there was no possibility of Hitler keeping out of war (see also Section 5.3(a)).
Nor was there much evidence of any improvement in the standard of living of ordinary people, which Hitler claimed was one of his main aims. As Richard J. Evans points out: ‘Most statistical investigations are agreed that the economic situation of the majority of middle-class wage-earners did not markedly improve between 1933 and 1939.’ As concentration on rearmament increased, there were shortages of food and other important goods; in fact the per capita consumption of many basic foodstuffs declined in the mid-1930s. Any wage increases came about only through working longer hours.
The conclusion must therefore be, as Alan Bullock wrote in his biography of Hitler, that
Recognition of the benefits which Hitler’s rule brought to Germany needs to be tempered by the realization that for the Fuhrer – and for a considerable section of the German people – these were by-products of his true purpose, the creation of an instrument of power with which to realize a policy of expansion that in the end was to admit no limits.
Even the policy of preparedness for war failed; Hitler’s plans were designed to be completed during the early 1940s, probably around 1942. In 1939 Germany’s economy was not ready for a major war, although it was strong enough to defeat Poland and France. However, as Richard Overy points out, ‘the large programmes of war production were not yet complete, some barely started. … The German economy was caught in 1939 midway through the transformation anticipated … as Hitler ruefully reflected some years later, militarization had been “mismanaged”.’ Adam Tooze argues that Hitler resisted pressure from his advisers to prepare for a long war because he believed that Germany had no chance of winning a long war. In fact, in the first year of the war most of the increased military expenditure went on the production of aircraft, artillery and ammunition for the war in the West, which was expected to be fairly short. Only then would preparations be made for the attack on Russia.
(c) The Hitler myth
Given that all Hitler’s work ended in disastrous failure, this raises a number of questions: for example, why was he so popular for so long? Was he genuinely popular, or did people merely put up with Hitler and the Nazis through fear of what would happen to them if they complained too loudly? Was his popular image just a myth created by Goebbels’s propaganda machine?
There can be no doubt that Hitler’s achievements in foreign affairs were extremely popular; with each new success – announcement of rearmament, remilitarization of the Rhineland, the Anschluss with Austria and the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the Reich, it seemed that Germany was reasserting its rightful position as a great power. This was where Goebbels’s propaganda probably had its greatest impact on public opinion, building up Hitler’s image as the charismatic and infallible Messiah who was destined to restore the greatness of the Fatherland. Even though there was little enthusiasm for war, Hitler’s popularity reached new heights in the summer of 1940 with the rapid defeat of France.
There is evidence too that Hitler himself was genuinely popular, although some sections of the Nazi party were not. Gotz Aly argued that ordinary Germans genuinely believed Hitler’s promise that he would raise their living standards and many of them had personal experience of improvement. Ian Kershaw, in his earlier work, The Hitler Myth, showed that Hitler was seen as being somehow above the unpleasantness of day-to-day politics, and people did not associate him with the excesses of the more extreme party members. The middle and propertied classes were grateful that Hitler had restored law and order; they even approved of the concentration camps, believing that communists and other ‘anti-social troublemakers’ deserved to be sent there. The propaganda machine helped, by portraying the camps as centres of re-education where undesirables were turned into useful citizens.
However, Richard J. Evans (in The Third Reich in Power, 2006) does not go along with the view that Hitler enjoyed widespread support after his first few years in power. He believes that the endless propaganda – in the newspapers, over the radio, in the cinema and in the theatre – together with the experiments in education, the limits on what types of culture were allowed and the constant military parades and Nazi celebrations simply led to boredom and escapism after the initial novelty wore off. Evans argues that the relative lack of opposition can be at least partly explained by the fact that people developed survival strategies, keeping clear of politics and immersing themselves in private, family and church life. Fear of arrest and violence were still the main reason why the vast majority of people merely tolerated the Nazis There can be no doubt that it was difficult and risky to criticize the regime; the government controlled all the media, so that the normal channels of criticism that exist in a modern democratic society were not available to ordinary Germans. Anyone who tried even to initiate discussion about Nazi policies risked the threats of informers, the Gestapo and the concentration camps.
It was during 1941 that Hitler’s image became seriously tarnished. As the war dragged on, and Hitler declared war on the USA, doubts about his infallibility began to creep in. The realization gradually dawned that the war could not be won. In February 1943, as news of the German surrender at Stalingrad spread, a group of students at Munich university courageously issued a manifesto: ‘The nation is deeply shaken by the destruction of the men of Stalingrad … the World War 1 corporal has senselessly and irresponsibly driven three hundred and thirty thousand German men to death and ruin. Führer, we thank you!’ Six of the leaders were arrested by the Gestapo and executed, a
nd several others were given lengthy jail sentences. After that the majority of people remained loyal to Hitler, and there was no popular uprising against him. The only significant attempt to overthrow him was made by a group of army leaders in July 1944; after the failure of that plot to blow Hitler up, the general public remained loyal to the bitter end, partly through fear of the consequences if they were seen to have turned against the Nazis, and partly through fatalism and resignation.
(d) A weak dictator?
It was the German historian Hans Mommsen, writing in 1966, who first suggested that Hitler was a ‘weak dictator’. He meant, apparently, that in spite of all the propaganda about the charismatic leader and the man of destiny, Hitler had no special programme or plan, and simply exploited circumstances as they occurred. Martin Broszat, in his 1969 book The Hitler State, developed this theme further, arguing that many of the policies attributed to Hitler were in fact instigated or pressed on him by others and then taken up by Hitler.
The opposite view, that Hitler was an all-powerful dictator, also has its strong proponents. Norman Rich, in Hitler’s War Aims (vol. 1, 1973), believed that Hitler was ‘master in the Third Reich’. Eberhard Jäckel has consistently held to the same interpretation ever since his first book about Hitler appeared in 1984 (Hitler in History): he used the term ‘monocracy’ to describe Hitler’s ‘sole rule’.
In his recent massive, two-volume biography of Hitler, Ian Kershaw suggests a ‘half-and-half’ interpretation. He emphasizes the theory of ‘working towards the Führer’ – a phrase used in a speech in 1934 by a Nazi official who was explaining how government policy took shape:
It is the duty of every single person, to attempt in the spirit of the Führer to work towards him. Anyone making mistakes will notice it soon enough. But the one who works correctly towards the Führer along his lines and towards his aim, will in future have the finest reward of suddenly one day attaining the legal confirmation of his work.
Kershaw explains how this worked: ‘initiatives were taken, pressures created, legislation instigated – all in ways which fell into line with what were taken to be Hitler’s aims, and without the dictator necessarily having to dictate. … In this way, policy became increasingly radicalized.’ The classic example of this way of working was the gradual introduction of the Nazi campaign against the Jews (see Section 6.8). It was a method of working which had the advantage that if any policy went wrong, Hitler could dissociate himself from it and blame somebody else.
In practice, therefore, this was hardly the method of a ‘weak dictator’. Nor did he always wait for people to ‘work towards him’. When occasion demanded it, he was the one who took the initiative and got what he wanted; for example, all his early foreign policy successes, the suppression of the SA in 1934, and the decisions that he took in 1939–40 during the early part of the war, when he reached the peak of his popularity – there was nothing weak about any of this. People who knew him well recognized how he became more ‘masterful’ as his confidence grew. Otto Dietrich, Hitler’s Press Chief, described in his memoirs how Hitler changed: he ‘began to hate objections to his views and doubts on their infallibility. … He wanted to speak, but not to listen. He wanted to be the hammer, not the anvil.’
Clearly Hitler could not have carried out Nazi policies without the support of many influential groups in society – the army, big business, heavy industry, the law courts and the civil service. But equally, without Hitler at the head, much of what happened during those terrible 12 years of the Third Reich would have been unthinkable. Ian Kershaw provides this chilling verdict on Hitler and his regime:
Never in history has such ruination – physical and moral – been associated with the name of one man. … Hitler’s name justifiably stands for all time as that of the chief instigator of the most profound collapse of civilization in modern times. … Hitler was the main instigator of a war leaving over 50 million dead and millions more grieving their lost ones and trying to put their shattered lives together again. Hitler was the chief inspiration of a genocide the like of which the world had never known. … The Reich whose glory he had sought lay at the end wrecked. … The arch-enemy, Bolshevism, stood in the Reich capital itself and presided over half of Europe.
FURTHER READING
Aly, G., Hitler’s Beneficiaries: How the Nazis Bought the German People (Verso, 2007).
Baranowski, S., Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Broszat, M., The Hitler State (Longman, 1983).
Bullock, A., Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (Penguin, 1990 edition).
Burleigh, M., The Third Reich: A New History (Macmillan, 2001).
Evans, R. J., The Coming of the Third Reich (Penguin Allen Lane, 2003).
Evans, R. J., The Third Reich in Power (Penguin Allen Lane, 2006).
Fest, J., Hitler (Penguin, new edition, 1982).
Fest, J., The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership (Tauris Parke, 2011).
Friedlander, S., The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939–1945 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007).
Gellately, R., Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2001).
Henig, R., The Weimar Republic (Routledge, 1998).
Housden, M., Hitler: Study of a Revolutionary (Routledge, 2000).
Kershaw, I., Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris (Penguin/Allen Lane, 1998).
Kershaw, I., Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis (Penguin/Allen Lane, 2000).
Machtan, L., The Hidden Hitler (Perseus Press, 2000).
Mommsen, H. (ed.) The Third Reich between Vision and Reality (Oxford University Press, 2001).
Namier, L., Avenues of History (Hamish Hamilton, 1952).
Overy, R. J., The Dictators (Allen Lane, 2004).
Tooze, A., The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (Penguin, 2007).
Traynor, J., Mastering Modern German History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Wright, J., Gustav Stresemann: Weimar’s Greatest Statesman (Oxford University Press, 2002).
QUESTIONS
1. Describe how the Weimar government and constitution came into existence after the end of the First World War, and explain why the Republic was so unstable in the years 1919 to 1923.
2. ‘The political instability of the Weimar Republic in the years 1919 to 1923 was largely the result of flaws in the constitution.’ Explain why you agree or disagree with this interpretation of events.
3. How far would you agree that it was political intrigue rather than the economic situation that enabled Hitler to come to power in Germany in January 1933?
4. How far was the popularity of Nazi ideology responsible for the success of the Nazi Party in the elections of 1930 to 1932?
(a) Explain why Hitler introduced the Enabling Law in March 1933.
(b) ‘Hitler’s dictatorship was complete by August 1934 and it was achieved entirely by legal means.’ Explain why you agree or disagree with this view.
5. To what extent did Hitler bring about a political, economic and social revolution in Nazi Germany in the years 1933 to 1939?
6. (a) Explain why the Nazis encouraged membership of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens.
(b) ‘In the years 1933 to 1939 there was support for the Nazis from all sections of German society.’ Explain why you agree or disagree with this view.
7. (a) Explain why the Nazis wanted control over the media.
(b) How far would you agree or disagree with the view that the various forms of Nazi propaganda had very little impact on the German people by 1939?
5. How far would you agree that the main reason for Hitler’s persecution of the Jews was that he was committed to racial purity?
There is a document question about how the Nazi state was run on the website.
Chapter 15
Japan and Spain
SUMMARY OF EVENTS
During the 20 years
after Mussolini’s March on Rome (1922), many other countries, faced with severe economic problems, followed the examples of Italy and Germany and turned to fascism or right-wing nationalism.
In Japan the democratically elected government, increasingly embarrassed by economic, financial and political problems, fell under the influence of the army in the early 1930s. The military soon involved Japan in war with China, and later took the country into the Second World War with its attack on Pearl Harbor (1941). After a brilliant start, the Japanese eventually suffered defeat and devastation when the two atomic bombs were dropped, the first on Hiroshima and the second on Nagasaki. After the war Japan returned to democracy and made a remarkable recovery, soon becoming one of the world’s most powerful states economically. During the 1990s the economy began to stagnate; it seemed as though the time had come for some new economic policies.
In Spain an incompetent parliamentary government was replaced by General Primo de Rivera, who ruled from 1923 until 1930 as a sort of benevolent dictator. The world economic crisis brought him down, and in an atmosphere of growing republicanism, King Alfonso XIII abdicated, hoping to avoid bloodshed (1931). Various republican governments failed to solve the many problems facing them, and the situation deteriorated into civil war (1936–9) with the forces of the right fighting the left-wing republic. The war was won by the right-wing Nationalists, whose leader, General Franco, became head of the government. He kept Spain neutral during the Second World War, and stayed in power until his death in 1975, after which the monarchy was restored and the country gradually returned to democracy. In 1986 Spain became a member of the European Union.
Portugal also had a right-wing dictatorship – Antonio Salazar ruled from 1932 until he had a stroke in 1968. His Estado Novo (New State) was sustained by the army and the secret police. In 1974 his successor was overthrown and democracy returned to Portugal. Although all three regimes – in Japan, Spain and Portugal – had many features similar to the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler, such as a one-party totalitarian state, death or imprisonment of opponents, secret police and brutal repression, they were not, strictly speaking, fascist states: they lacked the vital element of mass mobilization in pursuit of the rebirth of the nation, which was such a striking feature in Italy and Germany.
