Peace In Their Time

With internal opposition crushed, there remained just one problem for Hitler's new regime. The SA had been the vanguard of the Nazis, and had fought the National Socialist fight on the streets for years. But their independence, and the vocal threats of revolution coming from SA Chief of Staff Ernst Rohm, practically demanded a response. The enemies of the Brownshirts closed in through the first half of 1934, culminating in an internal purge that would only further cement Hitler's control of the nation.    Evans, Richard The Third Reich in Power Penguin Books 2005 Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998 Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976 Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020 Gellately, Robert Hitler's True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis Oxford University Press 2020   Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

This week is a break from the main narrative, and I head back to the 20s to cover the development of the SA, as well as touch on the origins of their off-shoots and eventual rivals, the SS. The relationship between Hitler and the Brownshirts would be fraught from almost the get-go, and ironically it would be the their mutual success in the removal of all other threats to the Nazi Party that would open the SA to be purged themselves. 

Hitler coming to power in Germany was bad enough, but a marked turn in the nation's trajectory came after the Reichstag fire. That incident, so random but also so impactful that it would spawn theories that it was a false flag by the Nazis, was the moment where the seizure of power went into overdrive. Nothing would ever be the same after it.    Evans, Richard The Coming of the Third Reich Penguin Books, 2003 Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998 Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976 Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020 Hett, Benjamin Carter The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic St. Martin's Press 2018 Barth, Rudiger and Hauke Friederichs The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic Pegasus Books 2021   Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

After years of scheming, Schleicher had gained the Chancellorship, but it turned out that his government was DOA. All his enemies came together against him, paving the way for Hitler to gain the power he had been demanding for years.    Bibliography for this episode:    Evans, Richard The Coming of the Third Reich Penguin Books, 2003 Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998 Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976 Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020 Hett, Benjamin Carter The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic St. Martin's Press 2018 Barth, Rudiger and Hauke Friederichs The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic Pegasus Books 2021   Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

The conspiracies and backstabbing roll on in the back half of 1932, and patience started wearing thin. Nobody in the establishment could force a settlement, and Hitler refused to cut a deal. But despite dissent in the NSDAP, Hitler stood firm in his demand for a government on his terms.    Bibliography for this episode:    Evans, Richard The Coming of the Third Reich Penguin Books, 2003 Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998 Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976 Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020 Hett, Benjamin Carter The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic St. Martin's Press 2018   Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

With the economy destroyed and the specter of privation and revolution haunting Germany, Hitler's political star was ascendant. Despite not being able to clench a majority of votes or convince (or want) anyone else to work with the Nazis, Hitler was an inescapable part of the nation's politics. Which meant that the conservative establishment bent on dissolving the country's democracy would be forced little by little to work with the manic upstart.    Bibliography for this episode:    Evans, Richard The Coming of the Third Reich Penguin Books, 2003 Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998 Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976 Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020 Hett, Benjamin Carter The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic St. Martin's Press 2018   Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

The aftershocks of the September 1930 election were felt immediately in Germany, and the Reichstag was left paralyzed. It was left to Chancellor Bruning to govern by decree, and in the depths of the Great Depression, that meant taking unprecedented steps to combat the crisis. The efforts wouldn't matter though, as Hitler was right there to exploit the continued economic collapse to bring himself ever-closer to power.    Bibliography for this episode:    Evans, Richard The Coming of the Third Reich Penguin Books, 2003 Peukert, Detlev The Weimar Republic Suhrkamp Verlag am Main, 1987 Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998 Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976 Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020 Hett, Benjamin Carter The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic St. Martin's Press 2018   Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

As the Depression got going in Germany, the Nazis were a fringe party with barely any national representation. Long story short, they weren't expected to be big players in Chancellor Bruning's constitutional crisis. But for years the Nazis had been carefully laying the groundwork for bigger ambitions, and after a few couple hiccups, were ready to make it big in the September 1930 elections.    Bibliography for this episode:    Evans, Richard The Coming of the Third Reich Penguin Books, 2003 Peukert, Detlev The Weimar Republic Suhrkamp Verlag am Main, 1987 Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998 Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976 Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020 Hett, Benjamin Carter The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic St. Martin's Press 2018   Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

The Weimar Republic was not a state built to last, and the Depression was a deathblow to it. Not only was the suffering bad enough, but conservative politicians saw it as their window to do away with democracy entirely. This would lead to outcomes they failed to predict, and within just a few years Germany would be unrecognizable compared to what it was before the start of the crisis. Took me a while to get to this point, but the rise of the Nazis begins here.    Bibliography for this episode:    Evans, Richard The Coming of the Third Reich Penguin Books, 2003 Peukert, Detlev The Weimar Republic Suhrkamp Verlag am Main, 1987 Kershaw, Ian Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1998 Toland, John Adolf Hitler, Volume 1 Doubleday & Company Inc 1976 Range, Peter Ross The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power Little, Brown and Company 2020 Hett, Benjamin Carter The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic St. Martin's Press 2018   Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]

The mini-tour of Central Europe ends this week, and I take a look at Czechoslovakia and Poland. Nations that shared no small number of problems, and each in their own way failed to address them. For Czechoslovakia it was being unable to get their German minority to stop making eyes across the border, and for Poland it was being unable to stabilize their government enough to even begin making accommodations with their own ethnic minorities.    Bibliography for this episode:  Berend, Ivan Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe Before World War II University of California Press 1998 Crowhurst, Patrick A History of Czechoslovakia Between the Wars: From Versailles to Hitler's Invasion I.B. Tauris 2015 Davies, Norman God's Playground: A History of Poland, Volume II Columbia University Press 2005 Kochanski, Halik The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War Penguin Books Ltd 2012 Leslie, R.F. The History of Poland Since 1863 Cambridge University Press 1980 Chu, Winson The German Minority in Interwar Poland Cambridge University Press 2012 Prazmowska, Anita Poland: A Modern History Palgrave Macmillan 2010 Stachura, Peter D. Poland, 1918-1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic Routledge 2004   Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]