The Inter-War Period (1920-1939)
Senior 6 · History
The Inter-War Period (1920-1939)
Lesson 5 of 5
25 min
On 15 September 1935, at the Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, the Reichstag passed two laws. Read the extracts in the box below. They show how, within three years of taking power, the Nazi state used the law itself to divide Germans into those who belonged to the nation and those who did not. Rwandan students will recognise the danger of a state that writes a group identity into its laws and documents. This lesson asks how Hitler came to power, how the Nazis controlled Germany, and how Britain and France responded to his foreign policy.
Important
Source: the Nuremberg Laws, 15 September 1935
"A citizen of the Reich is only that subject, who is of German- or kindred blood and who, through his conduct, shows that he is both desirous and fit to serve faithfully the German people and Reich. […] Only the citizen of the Reich enjoys full political rights in accordance with the provision of the laws."
Reich Citizenship Law, Article 2.
"Marriages between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood are forbidden."
Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, Section 1.
Both in the English translation prepared by the United States prosecution for the Nuremberg trials, published in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, volume IV, documents 1416-PS and 2000-PS (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946).
The Citizenship Law created two classes of people: "citizens" with political rights and mere "subjects" without them. German Jews, who had been equal citizens since 1871, were reduced to subjects. Notice the vague language: "German or kindred blood" and conduct showing one is "fit to serve" let the state decide who belonged. Notice also the source's own history: we read these laws in a translation made by the prosecutors who used them as evidence of crimes at Nuremberg.
Definition
Nazism (National Socialism): the ideology of Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party, combining extreme nationalism, a racial view of history, antisemitism, rule by one leader (the Führer principle) and the conquest of "living space" (Lebensraum) in eastern Europe.
Antisemitism: hostility to and discrimination against Jews.
Gleichschaltung ("coordination"): bringing every organisation in Germany, from state governments and trade unions to clubs and churches, under Nazi control.
Appeasement: a policy of meeting an aggrieved power's demands through negotiation and concessions in the hope of avoiding war; the policy of Britain and France towards Hitler, especially under Neville Chamberlain (1937–39).
| Stage | Key events |
|---|---|
| A troubled republic | The Weimar Republic was born in defeat (1918–19), blamed for Versailles, attacked by the left and the right, and shaken by the hyperinflation of 1923 |
| A failed putsch | Hitler's attempted coup in Munich (November 1923) failed; in prison he wrote Mein Kampf and decided to win power through elections |
| The "golden years" | 1924–29: American loans, the Dawes Plan and Stresemann's diplomacy brought stability; the Nazis won only 2.6 per cent of the vote in 1928 |
| The Depression | Unemployment reached about six million; governments ruled by presidential decree; the Nazis became the largest party in July 1932 (37.3 per cent), while the Communists also grew |
| A backstairs deal | Conservative politicians around President Hindenburg, led by Franz von Papen, believed they could control Hitler; Hindenburg appointed him chancellor on 30 January 1933 |
Control rested on terror (the SS, the Gestapo, concentration camps), propaganda (Joseph Goebbels's ministry controlled press, radio and film), and material gains for many Germans: unemployment fell through public works, rearmament and conscription. Persecution of Jews grew step by step: boycotts and dismissals (1933), the Nuremberg Laws (1935), and in November 1938 the pogrom of "Kristallnacht", when synagogues were burned, Jewish shops wrecked, about 30,000 Jewish men sent to concentration camps, and Jewish communities forced to pay for the damage. Historians debate how far ordinary Germans supported the regime: Ian Kershaw describes "working towards the Führer", while others stress how much consent rested on fear and on economic recovery.
Hitler's aims, set out in Mein Kampf, were to overturn Versailles, unite all Germans in one state, and win Lebensraum in the east. He advanced step by step, testing how Britain and France would react.
Why Britain and France appeased Hitler. Memories of 1914–18 made another war seem unthinkable; many in Britain felt Versailles had been too harsh, so German claims to the Rhineland or to German-speaking Austria and the Sudetenland seemed partly fair; the Depression made rearmament costly; the British dominions would not support a war over central Europe; military chiefs warned that Britain was not ready and could not fight Germany, Italy and Japan at once; many conservatives feared Soviet communism more than Nazism; and the United States was isolationist.
Munich, September 1938. Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, the German-speaking border lands of Czechoslovakia, a democracy allied to France. Chamberlain flew to Germany three times. At Munich on 29–30 September Germany, Britain, France and Italy agreed that Germany would take the Sudetenland in early October. Czechoslovakia was not invited. Chamberlain returned with a declaration signed by Hitler and was cheered as the man who had saved the peace. Six months later, on 15 March 1939, German troops occupied Prague, the first territory Hitler took that was not German-speaking. Britain and France then guaranteed Poland.
Important
Source analysis: the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938
"Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, taking into consideration the agreement, which has been already reached in principle for the cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory, have agreed on the following terms and conditions governing the said cession […]. (2) The United Kingdom, France and Italy agree that the evacuation of the territory shall be completed by the 10th October, without any existing installations having been destroyed, and that the Czechoslovak Government will be held responsible for carrying out the evacuation without damage to the said installations."
Agreement concluded at Munich, 29 September 1938, between Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy; official English text, via the Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
Read who the parties are: four powers decide the fate of a fifth state, which is "held responsible" for carrying out a decision it did not sign. Czechoslovakia lost its fortified frontier and much of its industry. Compare this with the Congress of Berlin (1878) and the Berlin Conference (1884–85) from Unit 3: great powers again redrew a smaller country's borders without it.
| View | Who | Argument |
|---|---|---|
| "Guilty Men" (orthodox) | Guilty Men (1940), written by three journalists under the pen name "Cato"; Winston Churchill's memoirs | Appeasement was cowardly and short-sighted; it let Hitler grow stronger and made war more likely |
| Revisionist | Historians writing after the British government papers were opened in the late 1960s and 1970s | Chamberlain had good reasons: Britain was unready, the dominions and public opinion opposed war, and Munich bought a year to rearm, especially in fighter aircraft and radar |
| Counter-revisionist | R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement (1993) | Chamberlain had alternatives, such as an alliance with France and the USSR, but rejected them; his personal confidence that he could deal with Hitler narrowed Britain's choices |
Warning
Judge by what was known then, not only by what we know now. In 1938 no one knew that Hitler would start a world war or carry out the Holocaust. A fair answer explains why appeasement seemed reasonable to many at the time, then uses the evidence of 1938–39 (Prague, the Nazi–Soviet Pact) to judge whether it was mistaken. Also, don't confuse appeasement with cowardice: it was a deliberate strategy, which can be criticised on its own terms.
Tip
Link domestic and foreign policy. The same regime that wrote the Nuremberg Laws pursued Lebensraum abroad: racial ideology drove both. In an essay on why Hitler was able to expand, combine his aims and methods with the reasons Britain and France held back and the weakness of the League after Abyssinia.
Important
Discuss. The Nuremberg Laws turned a group of fellow citizens into outsiders by law, three years before the violence of Kristallnacht and six years before mass murder began. What does this sequence teach about how persecution grows, and what responsibility do ordinary citizens have when a state begins to divide its people by law? Connect your answer to what you know of identity cards in Rwanda.
"Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich", a talk by the historian Richard J. Evans (The Brainwaves Video Anthology). Evans discusses the men and women who ran the Nazi regime and why they supported it. Watch for his explanation of how far Nazi leaders and ordinary Germans believed in the ideology.
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the timeline, the tables, the definitions and the exercises.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
