Just after World War I, in the defeated country of Germany, conflicts continued between the extreme left and the extreme right. Both sides hired soldiers who had returned from the battlefields of World War I as paramilitary forces.
In November 1918, on the ruins of the war, under strong pressure from U.S. President Wilson's insistence on the abolition of the autocratic monarchy, Germany established the Weimar Republic, governed by the Social Democratic Party.
The Weimar Republic's small army, along with the armies of far-right parties, put a damper on the efforts of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg to establish a Soviet Republic. , strangled in a pool of blood.
In 1919, the National Assembly held in Weimar adopted a constitution, which was the "Weimar Constitution".
However, restrained by the power clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, the situation in Germany further deteriorated.
In March 1920, a senior German military general and his followers tried to overthrow the Japanese government. The government was forced to flee Weimar to Dresden.
On the other hand, after the Paris Peace Conference, the issue of German war compensation has been unresolved. The Allied Compensation Commission made a new decision in 1921, requiring Germany to compensate the victorious countries a huge sum of US$33 billion within 30 years. In the same year, after Germany delivered its first reparations, it requested the Allies to defer the payment of reparations for the next year.
Since 52% of German reparations will be paid to France, France is very concerned about this issue.
France's top political figures and industrial and financial oligarchs have always been dissatisfied with the restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. They have been deliberately looking for opportunities to conflict with Germany and attempt to occupy Germany's most important Ruhr industrial area.
On January 11, 1923, France used the excuse that Germany deliberately failed to fulfill its coal supply obligations, and together with the Belgian ***, France sent troops to occupy the Ruhr region of Germany.
German soldiers swore allegiance to Hitler
It turned out that the "Versailles Peace Treaty" had cast a heavy shadow on Germany, causing the mark to depreciate extremely. By August 1920, Germany The currency rose from the original 7,000 marks to one dollar to one million marks to one dollar. France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr area, which made the German economy even worse.
With the acquiescence and support of the United Kingdom and the United States, Germany adopted a passive resistance policy towards the Ruhr issue. Statement: Stop continuing to pay reparations to France and Belgium and provide ore raw materials.
However, Germany soon realized that any resistance to the victorious country would lead to a complete collapse of the domestic economy, and was therefore forced to restart reparations.
In fact, France and Belgium did not gain any actual benefits from the occupation of the Ruhr area; on the other hand, they eventually withdrew their troops from there due to strong international pressure.
Through the Ruhr incident, both the extreme left and the extreme right in Germany felt that the government was weak and incompetent, so riots continued.
The conflict in Bavaria was particularly serious, and the civil war also prompted the rapid development of right-wing organizations.
It was against this background that Adolf Hitler began his political adventure.
This is Braunau, a small town on the border between Austria and Germany.
In 1889, Hitler was born in this small town.
As a boy, Hitler once dreamed of becoming a painter and once wandered the streets of Vienna.
This is a watercolor painting from his youth.
The Wall Street stock market plummeted
During World War I, Hitler was a corporal in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment in Germany; in 1919, he participated in the founding of Munich in 1919. The German Workers' Party has less than 100 members.
Hitler added the word "National Socialism" in front of the "German Workers' Party" and became the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or the Nazi Party for short.
If you just read it literally, people may mistakenly think that Hitler wants to establish a socialist country.
In fact, the socialist slogans of the Nazi Party were nothing more than a means for Hitler to win over the people at the bottom, defraud workers of their votes, and ultimately seize power.
With his inflammatory speeches and strong political skills, Hitler soon became the leader of the Nazi Party. His criticism of the Treaty of Versailles won him a lot of support and even the appreciation of Ludendorff, who was once the German Chief of Staff.
Hitler believed that the time was ripe to seize power with force and re-establish the Greater German Empire. Therefore, on November 8, 1923, he and *** Ludendorff planned a coup.
This is the famous "Beer Hall Putsch" in German history.
Hitler and Ludendorff originally hoped to seize power in Weimar through a coup and tear up the Treaty of Versailles.
However, contrary to expectations, the coup failed and they were brought to trial.
Although this was only a short-lived coup that lasted a few days, it was a preview of Hitler's future appearance on the political stage.
After the failed coup, Ludendorff was charged with treason and Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison and imprisoned in the Landsburg Fortress outside Munich.
Nazi ace pilot Commander G?ring
Due to the mediation of Nazi sympathizers in high-level government and Ludendorff’s special status as a World War I hero, he was finally acquitted; Hitler’s The sentence was also reduced from five years to nine months. It was during this time in prison that Hitler dictated his political manifesto, Mein Kampf.
However, after Hitler was released from prison, he was banned from speaking in public.
The international situation also seems to be favorable to Germany.
In May 1924, Director of the U.S. Bureau of Budget Dawes proposed a revised plan for postwar German reparations.
The Dawes Plan did not approve of a foreign loan of US$200 million to repay Germany's debts, but only required Germany to do its best to pay the reparations stipulated in the treaty.
France and Britain also expressed support for the Dawes Plan.
With the support of this revised plan, the German economy began to recover and its international status steadily increased.
In September 1926, Germany officially joined the League of Nations. Soon, it became a permanent member of the Executive Yuan of the League of Nations.
This year, restrictions prohibiting Hitler from speaking in public were also lifted. Hitler decided to abandon the strategy of seizing power through armed rebellion and achieve his political intention through parliamentary struggle: to make the Nazi Party the ruling party and then rule Germany.
However, this road was not as smooth as Hitler imagined - in the parliamentary election in May 1928, the Nazi Party only won 810,000 votes and only occupied 12 seats in the Parliament. , is the ninth smallest party.
However, the U.S. Wall Street stock market crash that broke out a year later brought a once-in-a-lifetime turn to Hitler’s so-called National Socialist Movement.
Hitler gave a speech
In October 1929, the stock price of the Wall Street stock market in New York, USA plummeted, followed by the collapse of companies and the bankruptcy of banks.
The fragile German economy has been hit even harder.
During the entire economic crisis, Germany's industrial production fell by 40.6 percent and agricultural production by 30 percent.
By the time Hitler became chancellor in 1933, Germany's economy had almost come to a standstill, and almost half of the country's 66 million people were struggling with hunger and poverty.
However, the suffering of the Germans became a bargaining chip for Hitler to realize his ambitions.
He turned all this into political power to support himself.
From 1930 to 1933, he was getting closer and closer to the supreme throne of power.
In the 1930 German parliamentary election, neither the Nazi Party nor the left-wing parties received enough votes to form a new government, so Hitler used the Stormtroopers to show the strength of the Nazi Party.
The election was marked by violent clashes between brown-shirted SA troops and left-wing parties.
In the spring of 1932, Hitler was strong enough to participate in the presidential election and received more than one-third of the vote.
This time, his opponent was the elderly but respected Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who had served two consecutive terms as president since 1925.
Hitler was planning to launch World War II
In the congressional election of that year, although the Nazi Party did not obtain an absolute majority of seats, it finally established its status as the largest party.
The development of the situation was unexpected.
Von Hindenburg believed that the only way to break the political deadlock was to persuade Hitler to become chancellor.
On January 30, 1933, Hitler accepted the position of chancellor, but among the cabinet members, the Nazi Party only occupied two places.
A month later, a mysterious fire broke out in the Reichstag, and the arsonist was said to be a half-mad Dutchman. Hitler took the opportunity to accuse left-wing parties of being behind the fire and persuaded Hindenburg to impose political restrictions on them.
However, even with the presidential orders paving the way, the Nazis still did not gain a majority in the 1933 election.
However, Hitler successfully solved this problem by arresting representatives of left-wing parties on the grounds of the Reichstag fire. Subsequently, other political parties were banned one by one.
In August 1934, von Hindenburg passed away, which meant that the last constraints on the Nazi Party were completely lifted.
Hitler succeeded the German president, combining the positions of president, prime minister and supreme commander of the army. Everyone respected him as "Fuhrer" and he declared himself "the supreme judge of the German people." At this point, Hitler completed absolute control of the German state power.
Hitler put forward the 25-point program of the Nazi Party in a typical politician's way. This program was all-encompassing and could meet almost every requirement of everyone.
The centerpiece of Hitler's thoughts is blood and soil, in other words, fanatical racism and territorial expansion policies.
Hitler was reviewing the Nazi Air Force
In Germany at the time, this not only attracted the army and industrial giants, but also deceived ordinary citizens living in the shadow of the defeated country. Sex and seduction.
As early as February 1, 1933, the third day after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, he published a "Letter to the German National" on the radio, claiming that the government would "save the German farmers, maintain supplies and survive." Foundation! Save the German workers and launch a massive all-out attack on unemployment!”
On the other hand, although Germany was still largely constrained by the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler was prepared to resolve. The German armed forces were rebuilt.
In 1933, Germany established the "State Secret Police Service", commonly known as the "Gestapo." By 1939, the secret police had grown to more than 30,000 members. They penetrated and controlled all areas of German society and the German-occupied areas, and owned a large number of prisons and concentration camps.
The Treaty of Versailles stipulates that Germany must abolish universal compulsory military service and the army must not exceed 100,000 people.
However, after Hitler came to power, he completely ignored this provision. The first thing he did was to massively expand the army and re-implement compulsory military service.
The most prominent of them are the three armored divisions established by Hitler.
Furthermore, in order to learn from the lessons of World War I, Germany's military management philosophy has also been rewritten: every soldier is carefully selected and accepted as a non-commissioned officer or officer who can take on the role of a sergeant or officer two levels higher than his own rank. Job training; all soldiers were required to take a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler.
This established the military’s supremacy in the national defense system and laid a platform for the rapid expansion of the military.
Rohm, Chief of Staff of the Stormtroopers, believes that they are the backbone of the Nazi revolution and should be based on them to organize an army that stands on the front line of national defense and be led by him personally.
This is very different from Hitler's idea. He believed that the SA should be a political force rather than a military force.
Hitler began to doubt the actual motives of R?hm, a potential political opponent, and finally decided to massacre the SA.
In June 1934, with the assistance of Heinrich Himmler and the SS, Hitler quickly arrested and executed the top leaders of the SA.
The crime he charged Roma with was destroying the relationship between the political party and the Wehrmacht.
Since then, the SS has become the embodiment of national socialist ideas, an independent agency that transformed Nazi racism into a code of conduct.
This elite group of killers, more arrogant than the Stormtroopers, penetrated into all fields of the German party, government, and military, participated in various bloody suppressive activities at home and abroad, and became an important pillar of the Nazi Party's rule.
In terms of foreign relations, Hitler also stepped up his efforts to tear up the Treaty of Versailles.
The "Peace Treaty" stipulated that Germany was not allowed to have an air force.
However, the Treaty of Raballo signed between Germany and Soviet Russia in 1922 broke this rule.
During the previous Weimar government, Germany did not have an air force.
However, starting in 1922, the victorious powers allowed Germany to develop civilian aircraft. As a result, Germany established Lufthansa, the national airline, and the aircraft industry developed significantly.
In 1933, after Hitler came to power, he strongly supported the establishment of a gliding club, which set off a flying craze in Germany.
The gliding club helped penetrate the concept of developing the air force. The most important thing was that Germany had the opportunity to secretly train military pilots in the Soviet Union. At the same time, it could also use Soviet equipment to research the design of military aircraft.
Next, Hitler ordered the secret preparation of the German Nazi Air Force and appointed his loyal follower Hermann Goering to be in charge of air force affairs.
Hermann Goering was an ace fighter pilot during World War I. After helping Hitler gain power in 1933, he was in charge of the Gestapo. In 1935, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force. In 1940, he was awarded the title of Marshal of the Reich, ranking second only to Hitler.
Originally, according to the provisions of the peace treaty: the German Navy could only retain light surface ships and was not allowed to possess capital ships and submarines. After Hitler became the Nazi leader, this situation changed.
In June 1935, Britain and Germany signed a naval agreement, agreeing that Germany would limit the number of surface ships to one-third of the size of the British Royal Navy fleet, while its submarine force would be equivalent to that of the United Kingdom.
Due to its commitment to arms expansion and war preparations, Nazi Germany was in urgent need of strategic materials such as tungsten and antimony. China's southern provinces have rich reserves of these mineral resources, which just meet Germany's needs; on the other hand, China is facing the aggression of Japanese militarism and is in great need of importing advanced weapons and equipment from Germany. Therefore, in the mid-1930s, there were frequent transactions in arms and strategic materials between Nazi Germany and the Nationalist Government in Nanjing, China.
In the mid-1930s, Hitler's apparent appeal for peace successfully disrupted his opponents' hearing, causing Britain and France to adopt appeasement policies against him, mistakenly believing that the Nazis' ambitions were still under control.
On October 19, 1933, Hitler announced that Germany would withdraw from the League of Nations. This further signaled that for Hitler, the Treaty of Versailles had expired, and the League of Nations was serving as a safeguard after World War I. The institutions of international peace and security have ceased to exist in name only.
Hitler is quietly preparing to create a huge disaster for Germany and all mankind.