What with increasing echoes of history, particularly when it comes to propaganda in the media (hello, Fox, Sinclair, OANN, Breitbart, etc.) and disenfranchised masses in conjunction with hyper-nationalism and Other-izing of perceived enemies, feels like there might be something worthwhile in here, even if it's some shabby writing. It wasn't my best quarter of college and it was an intro course, what can I say?
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“‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared on January 11, 1944, a statement that can be seen in the accumulation of power by the NSDAP in Germany. One of the main reasons Germany entered—and helped provoke—the first World War, was for land acquisition. The majority of common people did not share the colonial desire for more land that inspired some of the zeal in Germany for the First World War and therefore nationalism quickly disintegrated and led to factions among the German people. Alfred Hugenberg, in attempting to manipulate these factions via propaganda to his own ends, helped to create disillusionment with the political process and paved the way for men like Anton Drexler and the Nazi party. Ultimately, the propaganda and nationalism of the time period following World War I, combined with funded political parties, led to a large group of disenfranchised workers looking for a political party to identify with, which was provided to them through Drexler, Hitler, and the National Socialist Party.
Nationalism played a large role in forming the First World War, and, by extension, in the creation of the Nazi party. The Kaiser’s Balcony Speech was an attempt to unite the German people through nationalistic means as seen in his appeal to unity: “we are all German brothers”. This declaration did lead to a briefly unified front, as Friedrich Meinecke notes: “All the rifts which had hitherto existed in the German people, both within the bourgeoisie and the working classes, were suddenly closed in the face of [our] common danger…” This intense nationalism can be seen in the photo of Adolf Hitler at the Felherrnhalle in Munich on August 2, 1914, which followed the declaration of war on Russia the day before, August 1. The enormity of the crowd gives an idea of how accepted and popular the war was in Germany at the time: the people are packed in tight, chaotic rows. However, this unification was a short-lived one that would conclude by the end of the year. Shortly after, in September of 1914, the magazine Kladderadatsch published a satirical image depicting defeated British, French, and Russian officers in addition to caricatures of colonial Africans. The portrayal of these other nationalities in stereotypical manners as opposed to the smiling, professional Germans, one of whom appears to be wearing an Iron Cross, was an attempt to summon up this shared spirit. Such propaganda, however, did not accurately represent the desires of the German people.
The peace and unity brought by war did not last long before the goals of the ruling class and the average person were revealed to be radically different. “Within a year the unity was shattered and the German people were again separated upon various paths,” Meinecke says, going on to refer to the “uplift of August 1914… coming to an end.” Alfred Hugenberg and other industrialists were strong advocates of annexation of new lands, but this was not an aim shared by the common German people, who had little to gain through it. With the exception of the socialists, it can be argued that no political party was looking out for the average worker, which Anton Drexler believed. Support for the military dwindled and most Germans preferred peace to continued war, leading to the Auxiliary Service Law and massive Hugenberg propaganda campaign for a “good peace.”
Dwindling support for the war can be seen particularly in the Auxiliary Service Law, passed about two years later, which calls for mandatory military service and restricts the ability of citizens to change jobs. This gave power to the government and was an attempt to keep the war going through conscription, but it also was a step in the direction of the Nazi party through consolidation of power. There are two particularly alarming passages: subsection fourteen states, “The exercise of the legal rights of association and assembly may not be limited for persons who are employed in national Auxiliary Service.” It does not protect the rights of the average citizen and therefore could easily be used to target Jewish people, but at least we know where Dolores Umbridge got the inspiration for Educational Decree Twenty-Four. Building off of this, subsection sixteen states that, “Industrial workers who are transferred under this law into agricultural labor are not subject to regulations of the law on agricultural domestic labor.” This means the government could, in theory, reassign Jews from industrial to agricultural jobs and proceed to work them to death without fear of legal reprisal. The Auxiliary Service Law only passed after a long struggle in parliament and was not favorable to workers; support for the war was waning and in response, both the German government and Hugenberg began sending out propaganda.
“Patriotic Enlightenment,” was the term for the propaganda the government sent to the military, hoping to prolong the war. The war was framed as a battle for the life or death of Germany: “the war has to do with the existence or destruction of the German people,” it claims, and once again tries to put aside all political questions in order to unite Germans and, hopefully, quell the Social Democratic Party within Germany, which was calling for peace. In addition, one of the goals was to prevent strikes and other work slowdowns, which were having an impact on production. These propaganda attempts by the government were not completely successful: “Patriotic Enlightenment” began in May, but by July, a bill for Peace Resolution had been both introduced and passed, which would prompt conservative retaliation, in particular from Hugenberg.
The German government was not the only institution churning out propaganda at this time, as Hugenberg was able to rely on his vast personal wealth and connections to shape what the public saw and how they perceived it. Following the passing of the Peace Resolution—which effectively stalled and went nowhere—Hugenberg footed the bill to start “both a new political party and a volkish-oriented periodical… to influence as broad a population base as possible in support of the annexationists’ goals.” The political party, the German Fatherland Party, did not conspicuously have Hugenberg’s name attached to it and claimed false unity: “Partisan strife must not be allowed to divide the German empire… We want no domestic strife!” This not honest; Hugenberg’s party and his magazine were both anti-Semitic and so their call for unity was not actually inclusive. In addition, the German Fatherland Party helped propagate the ‘Stab in the Back’ myth, claiming that Germany’s loss in World War I had been caused by cowardly politicians, reformers, and Jews, not any number of factors, most prominently: Germany was effectively out of soldiers and the people to conscript. As a nation, it could not fight.
Fortunately, however, Hugenberg’s efforts flopped during this period. While some ideas—in particular the ‘Stab in the Back’ myth—would become commonplace in German society, the German Fatherland Party failed to reach urban workers, who were “disillusioned about its apparent lack of interest in their plight.” This is understandable: Hugenberg had no interest in workers’ plights, he was interested in annexation, a continued war, and consolidation of power. This is where Anton Drexler entered the picture. Socialists were the only party who addressed the issue of the common worker during World War I, but Drexler more or less arbitrarily decides that, flying in the face of common sense, “the Socialists… were the tools of an international ‘Jewish/Marxist’ conspiracy.” He joins up with the Fatherland Party in the belief it will best represent the interests of the working man, but discovers that it is supported by “big business and landed aristocracy, two classes… notorious for their neglect and disdain of the worker.” Drexler derides the Fatherland party as a party of “intellectuals, professors, artists, lawyers, and businessmen,” but lacks the insight to reconsider his racist opinions about the Socialist party. Hoping to form a party dedicated to the patriotic cause, but not to big business, Drexler goes his own way, trying to find a new base of political power.
Propaganda in Germany at the time continued to spread the myth of the ‘stab in the back,’ and the deteriorating economic conditions helped to create a class of disenfranchised people. The ‘stab in the back,’ was one of the ways Hugenberg’s group attempted to explain “Germany’s desperate situation at the end of 1918,” which Drexler and other politicians tried to place blame for. Drexler, for example, blamed “Jews, the socialists, freemasonry, and ‘secret international associations of capitalists’,” apparently without wondering why socialists and capitalists would be working together. Here, Drexler specifically calls out Jews, with the implication being that they are either a different class or race of people. Volkish groups picked up the idea of racial purity and ran with it, until the Thule Society “demanded that Germany be reborn in order to stop the degeneration of the Volk.” By this point, the idea of racial purity and eugenics had begun to take some hold, as seen in the desire for a purer Germany, paving the way for the Nazi party in all but name, which would come soon enough.
The party that Drexler founded, the German Workers Party, was short-lived, but it would give birth to the Nazi party, the formative beginning of which had already been partially worked through. Beginning with cries for nationalism and expansion, the First World War had an enormous impact on the growth of the Nazi party. By the end of it, when German politicians refused to acknowledge defeat and instead made up excuses, such as the ‘Stab in the Back’ myth, the dialogue had changed. With groups like the Fatherland Party came calls to retain the purity of the German or Aryan race and other nationalistic groups supported these calls. Caught between socialists, who advocated complete societal restructuring, and industrialists like Hugenberg, the average German struggled to find a political party that seemed to have their interests at heart. Too many political parties, funded by Hugenberg, led to an intense sense of disenfranchisement, meaning that when Anton Drexler’s German Workers Party, later the National Socialist Party, arose, it appealed to these masses of disenfranchised Germans, giving them something to believe in and rally behind. Since Jews were only one percent of the German population, they presented an easy target for the National Socialists to single out without fear of alienating their members, building on a history of prevalent anti-Semitism in Germany and the surrounding areas, including fears of Russian Judeo-Bolshevism. The First World War and its ramifications had a nearly incalculable effect on the formation of the Nazi party and through his attempts to manipulate events, Alfred Hugenberg presents a stark historical example of the dangers of concentration of wealth and power.
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