Explaining 1933

• When the American stock market crashed in 1929, the Americans demanded the Germans repay their loans

• The world plummeted into the Great Depression

• The whole basis of Germany’s recovery was undone and millions of German people lost their jobs

• At the same time, Gustav Stresemann, the outstanding German politician of the 1920s, died

• Weimar was unable to solve Germany’s economic problems

• Many put this experience together with the hyperinflation of 1923 and felt even angrier with the Weimar Republic

• Germans had again lost faith in parliamentary democracy

• Many Germans were worried about communism

• Goebbels used propaganda more effectively than any party had ever done before – speeches, posters, pamphlets, newspapers, radio and mass rallies

• The rallies at Nuremberg had begun and were filmed

• Goebbels set up photo opportunities

• Film, radio and records brought the Nazi message to everybody

• They produced generalised slogans rather than detailed policies

• Yet they changed their rhetoric depending on who they were talking to: the elites, the middle class, workers; mean or women

• Goebbels also concentrated on feelings and emotions rather than detailed policies

• Large rallies and torch-lit parades were very effective in presenting a sense of unity and power

• And always, Hitler was presented as the strong leader who would fight for Germans