Chapter 4: The “Roaring Twenties” Weren’t So Wonderful for Defeated Germany
Germany was a hot mess after World War I (called the Great War until World War II came along) under the newly established democratic Weimar Republic (1918-1933).
Perhaps the core issue was that Germans as a people were not prepared to be a democratic country (the ensuing political assassinations only being one indicator of this statement). In hindsight it is probably fair to say that the new Weimar Republic that replaced Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II was doomed from the start.
Even if we leave out the 1915 anti-Jewish plot and the STAB IN THE BACK myth immediately after the end of WWI, the Germans throughout history have favored being led by a strong leader with what we would today call dictatorial powers. In other words, the German people like being told what to do.
(As far back as the Roman Empire, historian Tacitus in his treatise “Germania” — written around year 98 of the Common Era — describes the warrior qualities of the different German tribes, whose kingdoms were only unified as Germany in 1871.)
Jason Bell in his book Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Agent A12 and the Solving of the Holocaust Code explains what came next:
“In 1919, the violent part of the war against the Jews had begun in Germany, subtly at first, but with the promise of greater pain to come… [On August 14, 1919] the Nazis plundered Jewish businesses in Dortmund. The coordination of the anti-Jewish attacks throughout Germany, and their polished character, showed the long hand of the plot’s military intelligence as it fought the first secret battle of the next Great War.
“Kristallnacht, the Nazis’ anti-Jewish vandalism campaign of November 1938, is infamous. But its forgotten prelude happened in broad daylight in July and August of 1919, before the Nazis had even heard of Hitler.”
Then political and military turmoil got off to an early start in Germany at the start of the 1920s: the Kapp-Putsch (or Kapp–Lüttwitz Putsch) took place on March 13, 1920. Here is the explanation from the Encyclopedia Britannica:
“Kapp Putsch, (1920) in Germany, a coup d’état that attempted to overthrow the fledgling Weimar Republic. Its immediate cause was the government’s attempt to demobilize two Freikorps brigades. One of the brigades took Berlin, with the cooperation of the Berlin army district commander. Reactionary politician Wolfgang Kapp (1858–1922) formed a government with Erich Ludendorff, and the legitimate republican regime fled to southern Germany. Within four days, a general strike by labor unions and the refusal by civil servants to follow Kapp’s orders led to the coup’s collapse.”
And now let’s return to Edgar Mowrer’s 1933 book Germany Puts the Clock Back. The front cover of my 1938 copy says:
“This was the book which gave such an uncomfortably realistic account of Hitler’s rise to power and of the National-Socialist ideology, that Mowrer, then Berlin correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, was forced to leave Germany in spite of a strong unanimous protest from the members of the Berlin Foreign Press Association, of which Mowrer was president. That was in 1933. For this Penguin edition the author has added a new chapter on the situation to-day.”
According to Wikipedia:
The book “angered Nazi officials to the point where Mowrer’s friends believed he faced mortal danger.”
And Wikipedia goes on to say:
“The German government openly pressured him to leave the country, with Germany’s ambassador to the United States notifying the State Department that because of the ‘people’s righteous indignation’ the government could no longer hope to keep Mowrer free from harm… Mowrer, who did not want to leave Germany, agreed to leave before covering the annual Nazi Party spectacle in Nuremberg set to begin on 1 September 1933.
“A Nazi official, assigned to make sure Mowrer actually left Berlin, approached him as he was boarding the train and asked when he was coming back to Germany; Mowrer answered: ‘Why when I can come back with about two million of my countrymen.’”
We’re getting ahead of ourselves now.
What I wanted to say was that the information revealed in Mowrer’s first-hand observations is incredible and also, I admit, seemingly somewhat difficult for a non-historian to understand.
Thus here is my layperson’s explanation of Mowrer’s invaluable reporting (errors are mine; not Mowrer’s):
German army size after WWI:
The Treaty of Versailles following WWI limited the size of the German army. This restrictive size had an advantage for the German militarists – they could choose the cream of the crop (by their standards) to serve in the military. In addition, there were established numerous private competing militias that we will leave aside for now.
In addition to this, as Mowrer explains, different German political factions came up with various schemes to reduce the reparation requirements of the Treaty of Versailles. These included the German financial policy that led purposely at one point to hyper-inflation in Germany.
Now we come to Adolf Hitler:
Born on April 20, 1889, in Austria-Hungary, he lived in Vienna in the first decade of the 1900s before moving to Munich in 1913. (We’ll skip his attempts to be an artist.) He served as a lance corporal in the Bavarian Army in WWI, having received the required permission needed due to his Austrian citizenship.
As explained in the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism’s book Munich and National Socialism:
“After the First World War, Hitler returned to Munich with his Bavarian regiment. Here he was trained as a speaker in the service of the propaganda division of the ‘Reichswehr’ Group Commando. This division assigned Hitler to the ‘German Workers’ Party’ in September 1919. The party, which had only been founded in January of that year, had few members but could call on the support of influential backers within the city’s ethnic chauvinist and anti-Semitic network. Thanks to his talent as an agitator, Hitler quickly rose to the top of the organization, which renamed itself the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) in February 1920.”
Take a moment to digest the above paragraph: Hitler was trained to be a propaganda speaker, and then, because of his talent as an AGITATOR, quickly rose to the top of the party.
Earlier in the same book this explanation of Hitler’s ideology is provided:
“Adolf Hitler’s ideology had its roots in ethnically chauvinist and racist ideas that had been spreading in Europe since the late 19th century. Even before the First World War, such attitudes were prevalent in parts of Munich. 1907 saw the establishment of the ‘Munich Society for Racial Hygiene.’ During [WWI], the ‘Pan-German League’ made Munich a hot spot of ethnic-nationalist agitation. Military defeat, revolution and counter-revolution further inflamed the climate and allowed extreme right-wing ideas to flourish.
“’Racism’ was the product of a biological view of the world. It posited a genetic inequality between people and divided humanity into superior and inferior races…Liberal and individualist values were to be expunged from the ‘body’ of the German people.”
In other words, the German people were not to think for themselves. They were to simply be part of a collective mind like the Borg in “Star Trek.”
Now let’s interrupt Hitler’s rise to power to look at important German political events in 1922 and 1923:
First, the Treaty of Rapallo (April 16, 1922) between Germany and its WWI opponent Italy as explained by the Encyclopedia Britannica:
“Treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union, signed at Rapallo, Italy. Negotiated by Germany’s Walter Rathenau and the Soviet Union’s Georgy V. Chicherin, it reestablished normal relations between the two nations. The nations agreed to cancel all financial claims against each other, and the treaty strengthened their economic and military ties.”
And who was Germany’s Walter Rathenau?
According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, Walter Rathenau, who was Jewish, “[a]gainst the advice of friends and the foreboding misgivings of his mother … became [Germany’s] foreign minister in February 1922.”
The encyclopedia goes on to say that “Rathenau had long been the target of antisemitism.” And then says:
“When serving as minister Rathenau realized that his life was in danger, but he refused to allow his being a Jew to deter him from leading Germany’s foreign policy. Ultimately a group of young conspirators fulfilled what many extreme right-wing elements had openly demanded and assassinated Rathenau on June 24, 1922.”
Rathenau’s assassination was not the only such one. In his book’s chapter on private German armies, Mowrer refers to the assassination of Rathenau and Matthias Erzberger, vice-chancellor of Germany when he was assassinated on August 26, 1921:
“The Ehrhardt Brigade, the Rossbach Organization, the Consul Organization, the Black Reichswehr, the Arbeitskommandos (Labor Battalions), were not much different. Fanatics connected with them were responsible for the murders of the Republican Ministers, Matthias Erzberger and Walter Rathenau. On at least three occasions they endeavored to overturn the frail Republic.”
As I said at the beginning of this chapter, things didn’t look good for the flourishing of democracy in post-WWI Germany.
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Hitler Youth Started in 1922
The Holocaust Encyclopedia states:
“Originally, the Hitler Youth was a Nazi youth group for boys. It was modeled after its adult counterpart, the Nazi paramilitary, called the SA (Sturmabteilung). The Hitler Youth was the Nazi Party’s second oldest paramilitary organ. (Boldface mine.)
“The organization began as the Youth League of the Nazi Party (Jugendbund der NSDAP) in March 1922. After the Nazis attempted to overthrow the German government during the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, the government temporarily banned Nazi organizations. This ban included the youth league.
“However, the youth movement secretly continued, most notably as the Greater German Youth Movement, founded in 1924. After the ban was lifted, the now official youth organization of the Nazi Party became the Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth (Hitler-Jugend, Bund deutscher Arbeiterjugend) in July 1926. This organization was officially incorporated into the SA.”
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Second, on Oct. 30, 1922, Benito Mussolini appointed Italy’s prime minister:
The organized mass demonstration – the March on Rome – in October 1922 led to Mussolini’s National Fascist Party gaining power in the Kingdom of Italy. On October 30, 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini as prime minister, and the political power now resided with the fascists.
(We will discuss later when Mussolini and Hitler formed what we might perhaps today call a “bromance.”)
And now back to Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch that led to Hitler’s writing of his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle) – his publicly stated blueprint for German world domination and the extermination of the Jews:
(It is my understanding that the early English translations of Mein Kampf did not include some of the more inflammatory statements that appeared in the original German, and also that President Roosevelt, fluent in German, read the manifesto in the original German. There were revisions in subsequent editions after the first edition published on July 18, 1925, so perhaps Roosevelt did not read the most inflammatory German version.)
The Holocaust Encyclopedia of the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum explains the Beer Hall Putsch (Munich Putsch) of Nov. 8-9, 1923::
“On November 8–9, 1923, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a coalition group in an attempt to overthrow the German government. This attempted coup d’état came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch.
“They began at the Bürgerbräu Keller, a beer hall in the Bavarian city of Munich. Hitler and the Nazi Party aimed to seize control of the state government, march on Berlin, and overthrow the German federal government. They sought to establish a new government to oversee the creation of a unified Greater German Reich. In this new government, citizenship would be based on race.
“The putsch failed and Bavarian authorities prosecuted nine participants, including Hitler. Despite its failure, the leaders ultimately redefined the putsch as a heroic effort to save the nation.”
Hitler was found guilty of treason during a 1924 trial and sentenced to just five years in a minimum security prison. There he was permitted to dictate the first volume of Mein Kampf to fellow inmate Rudolf Hess.
And after serving only nine months of his sentence, Hitler was released and continued working on his goal of German citizenship being based on race.
Ruhr occupation (1923–25):
We must pause to mention this event for future reference. Encyclopedia Britannica explains:
“Occupation of the industrial Ruhr River valley region in Germany by French and Belgian troops. The action was provoked by German deficiencies in the coal and coke deliveries to France required by the reparations agreement after World War I. French occupation of Düsseldorf, Duisburg, and Ruhrort in 1921 was followed by French-Belgian occupation of the entire region in 1923. Passive resistance by German workers paralyzed the Ruhr’s economy and precipitated the collapse of the German currency. The dispute was settled […] and the occupation ended in 1925.”
Then came the world-wide Great Depression in 1929 that ended the “Roaring Twenties”:
As Wikipedia explains:
“The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty; drastic reductions in liquidity, industrial production, and trade; and widespread bank and business failures around the world. The economic contagion began in 1929 in the United States, the largest economy in the world, with the devastating Wall Street stock market crash of October 1929 often considered the beginning of the Depression. Among the countries with the most unemployed were the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Germany.”
And so we move into the 1930s in Germany with the writing on the wall about the planned extermination of all European Jews as well as millions of others disliked or looked down upon by Nazi Germany.
NEXT CHAPTER: Chapter 5: 1933 – The Nazi Party Extinguishes the Democratic Weimar Republic