German veterans who had nowhere to go, housed in a Heimkehrerlager , 1919/20

1. Returning to the career of Adolf Hitler, note that soldiers from the Western Front returned to an uncertain welcome in November 1918. Most quickly rejoined their families.

2. German veterans who had nowhere to go, housed in a Heimkehrerlager, 1919/20

3. In Munich Corporal Hitler remained in the barracks, and officers including Captain Ernst Röhm recruited him as a political agent.

4. Anton Drexler, the railroad machinist who invited Hitler into his “German Workers’ Party” in September 1919 and renamed it the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) in 1920

5. 25-Point Program of the German Workers’ Party (Feb. 1920) #1. We demand the union of all Germans to form a Great Germany. #3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the nourishment of our people and for settling our excess population. #4. None but members of the nation may be citizens of the state. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew therefore may be a member of the nation. #7. If it is not possible to nourish the entire population of the state, foreign nationals (noncitizens of the state) must be excluded from the Reich. #8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. #11. Abolition of incomes unearned by work. #13. We demand nationalization of all businesses (trusts). #14. We demand that the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared. #16. We demand creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class, immediate communalization of wholesale business premises, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders….

6. Hitler speaks at an open-air rally in Munich, January 1923

7. French troops occupy the Ruhr Valley, January 1923

8. French warplanes fly over a heavy industrial complex in the Ruhr, 1923

9. President Ebert visits the Ruhr to encourage passive resistance

10. Funeral for striking Krupp workers in Essen,shot by French troops in the summer of 1923

11. Target used by “Black Reichswehr” volunteers in 1923

12. A businessman picks up a wagonload of cash to meet the weekly payroll (1923)

13. German housewives search for coal, 1923

14. A tense crowd waiting to buy bread in 1923

15. “HITLER SPEAKS!”(mass rally in Munich’s Cirkus Krone, 1923)

16. The NSDAP worked closely with a paramilitary wing,the Sturmabteilung (Stormtroopers, SA) made up of self-confident combat veterans and youths who felt guilty or disappointed to have missed the Great War

17. Alfred Rosenberg and Adolf Hitler review marching stormtroopers in Munich, 4 November 1923

18. Nazi Stormtroopers outside Munich City Hall, 9 November 1923

19. Wilhelm Frick, Ludendorff, Hitler, & Ernst Röhmat their trial for treason

20. Postcard of Hitler in Landsberg Prison (1924), where he dictatedMein Kampf

21. WHAT POLICY MEASURES WERE NEEDED IN 1923/24 TO WRING INFLATION OUT OF THE ECONOMY?(See A.J. Nicholls, pp. 99-101, 112-14.) Nicholls focuses on the introduction of a new currency in November 1923, but the key to success lay in extremely harsh measures to balance the budget and revive production: • Overall taxation rose from 9% of total national income in 1913 to 17% in 1925. • Public expenditures sank from 42% of national income in 1920 to 25% in 1925. • One single decree of 27 October 1923 dismissed 300,000 public employees and reduced all civil service salaries to 60% of their prewar level. • State labor arbitrators pegged real wages in 1924/25 at 87% of the level of 1913. • Work hours were deregulated (meaning abolition of the very popular 8-hour day introduced in November 1918).

22. POSSIBLE STRATEGIES TO STABILIZE THEWEIMAR REPUBLIC • In December 1923 a broad consensus emerged in favor of the harsh austerity measures to combat inflation, but they were enacted on the basis of an “Enabling Act” and Article 48 presidential emergency decrees; no Reichstag majority would accept direct responsibility for this bitter medicine. • Some politicians in the middle-of-the-road parties then advocated close cooperation among all “good Republicans” in a left-of-center coalition. • Others insisted that the only hope for stability lay in transforming the DNVP into a moderately conservative party of “Tory democrats” by offering it a share of power.

23. STRATEGIES FOR POLITICAL STABILITY:#2 (1924-27): INVOLVE THE DNVP IN GOVERNMENT(as urged by Adam Stegerwald of the Center Party) "In the French Revolution Louis XVI and his wife were executed, and then 60-70,000 heads from the Old Regime fell. In Russia 20 million people died from 1917 to 1922; there the old ruling classes were exterminated root and branch. In Germany on the other hand, only leftists were shot, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Eisner, Haase, Erzberger, Rathenau, while all the rightists could merrily go about their business. Moreover, the National Assembly established in the constitution that all bureaucrats shall have tenure for life. As a result, today tens of thousands of teachers and judges are active in our elementary schools, high schools, universities and courts, who are educating our youth in anti-democratic values. At least 75% of the owners of the means of production belong to political groups on the Right. ...Whoever believes in such a situation that we can simply ignore the Right and exclude it from all cabinets, after what the Communists rightly call our 'botched revolution', is terribly naive. …The Right must be given a share of political responsibility before it becomes powerful enough to govern alone. Thus it will be forced to acknowledge, just as Social Democracy was forced after the Revolution, that even it cannot start cooking without first boiling water."