Towards the end of the Paris Peace Conference, in April 1919, a German delegation from the brand-new German republic (Weimar republic) arrived in Paris. The Weimar government had replaced the German empire’s government when that fell apart in November 2018 as the war ended. This was a fragile time for the new democratic government and for the German people in general.
The newly elected head of government, Philipp Scheidemann, resigned in protest over the terms of the treaty. In consultation with other government representatives and the German military, his replacement, Friedrich Ebert, reluctantly agreed to the terms. The treaty was ratified by the German Assembly in June 1919. Weimar Germany’s leadership felt they had no choice.
The German public was very dissatisfied with the outcome of World War I and were angry with the new government and the Treaty of Versailles. Because of this, and the fact that Germany was now a republic and more open to political participation, many small political parties began emerging throughout Germany, many with strong opinions.
This was a very unstable time for Germany. Across the political spectrum, dozens of political parties represented German voices, many complaining about the Weimar government. One of these parties was called the German Workers’ Party, founded by Anton Drexler in January 1919. This party is the origin of the Nazi party.
Shortly after the German Workers' Party was founded, Adolf Hitler, a World War I veteran who still worked for the German army, limited as it was by the Versailles Treaty, was sent to spy on the political group. The German Workers’ Party promoted German nationalism, expressed anti-Semitism, and criticized the Treaty of Versailles. As part of his intelligence duties, Hitler became a member. Before the end of 1919, Hitler took over leadership of the party.
On February 24, 1920, Hitler outlined the 25 Points of the National Socialist German Workers Party at a mass rally of 2,000 people in Munich. These was written by the German Workers’ Party founder (Anton Drexler) with input from Hitler, who had been recognized by Drexler as a charismatic speaker. The program outlined in the 25 points illustrates the ideology of the Nazi party in its early days, when it competed with dozens of other political parties. By the early 1930s, the party would command a plurality of the Reichstag (the German parliament).
Assignment: Read through the 25 points and summarize each in a sentence.
The 25 Points of the German Workers’ Party (aka the National Socialist German Workers’ Party)
- We demand the union of all Germans in a Great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples.
- We demand that the German people have rights equal to those of other nations; and that the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain shall be abrogated.
- We demand land and territory (colonies) for the maintenance of our people and the settlement of our surplus population.
- Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of creed, can be our countrymen. Hence no Jew can be a countryman.
- Those who are not citizens must live in Germany as foreigners and must be subject to the law of aliens.
- The right to choose the government and determine the laws of the State shall belong only to citizens. We therefore demand that no public office, of whatever nature, whether in the central government, the province, or the municipality, shall be held by anyone who is not a citizen.
We wage war against the corrupt parliamentary administration whereby men are appointed to posts by favor of the party without regard to character and fitness. - We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.
- Any further immigration of non-Germans must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately.
- All citizens must possess equal rights and duties.
- The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.
Therefore we demand: - That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
- Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
- We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
- We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
- We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
- We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.
- We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
- We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.
- We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law.
- In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.
- The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young.
- We demand the abolition of the regular army and the creation of a national (folk) army.
- We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press. In order to make possible the creation of a German press, we demand:
(a) All editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens.
(b) Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State. They must not be published in the German language.
(c) All financial interests in or in any way affecting German newspapers shall be forbidden to non-Germans by law, and we demand that the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper and the expulsion of the non-Germans from the Reich.
Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed. We demand legal action against those tendencies in art and literature that have a disruptive influence upon the life of our folk, and that any organizations that offend against the foregoing demands shall be dissolved. - We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.
The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession. It fights against the Jewish materialist spirit within and without, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the principle:
COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD - In order to carry out this program we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the State, the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations.
The formation of professional committees and of committees representing the several estates of the realm, to ensure that the laws promulgated by the central authority shall be carried out by the federal states.
The leaders of the party undertake to promote the execution of the foregoing points at all costs, if necessary at the sacrifice of their own lives.
Follow up on the sequel to the Russian Revolution and Civil war by doing the reading below and answering the questions.
From Hope Against Hope, by Nadezhda Mandelstam
Introduction to the reading: You are currently reading Animal Farm in your English class. As you will learn in your history class, the rise of totalitarian governments is a feature of the interwar period, the period between World War 1 and World War 2. George Orwell wrote Animal Farm as a commentary on the rise of totalitarianism as it took shape in Russia and the Soviet Union after the 1917 revolution. A feature of totalitarian states, in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, was the control of virtually every aspect of life through networks of spies, informers, and secret police. The effect was a climate of surveillance and an absence of privacy.
The excerpt below is from a memoir published in 1970 by a woman who lived in the Soviet Union during the leadership of Josef Stalin, whom you will learn more about later in your history class. Her husband was a victim of Stalin’s repressive totalitarian regime. A dissident poet, he died in the labor camp system that had been set up after the Russian Revolution.
Read the excerpt below and respond to the following prompts:
- How did this system of surveillance corrode individual expression, judgement, and identity?
- How did it reduce people’s humanity?
- How did it make people obedient?
- Identify a passage that you find especially notable. Explain why you chose it.
As regards the Stalinist terror, we always knew that it might wax or wane, but that it might end—this we could never imagine. What reason was there for it to end? Everybody seemed intent on his daily round and went smilingly about the business of carrying out his instructions. It was essential to smile—if you didn’t, it meant you were afraid or discontented. This nobody could afford to admit—if you were afraid, then you must have a bad conscience. Everybody who worked for the State—and in this country even the humblest stall-keeper is a bureaucrat—had to strut around wearing a cheerful expression, as though to say: “What’s going on is no concern of mine, I have very important work to do, and I’m terribly busy. I am trying to do my best for the State, so do not get in my way. My conscience is clear—if what’s-his-name had been arrested, there must be good reason.” The mask was taken off only at home, and then not always—even from your children you had to conceal how horror-struck you were; otherwise, God save you, they might let something slip in school… Some people had adapted to the terror so well that they knew how to profit from it—there was nothing out of the ordinary about denouncing a neighbor to get his apartment or his job. But while wearing your smiling mask, it was important not to laugh—this could look suspicious to the neighbors and make them think you were indulging in sacrilegious mockery. We have lost the capacity to be spontaneously cheerful, and it will never come back to us….
The principles and aims of mass terror have nothing in common with ordinary police work or with security. The only purpose of terror is intimidation. To plunge the whole country into a state of chronic fear, the number of victims must be raised to astronomical levels, and on every floor of every building, there must always be several apartments from which the tenants have suddenly been taken away. The remaining inhabitants will be model citizens for the rest of their lives—this will be true for every street and every city through which the broom has swept. The only essential thing for those who rule by terror is not to overlook the new generations growing up without faith in their elders, and to keep on repeating the process in systematic fashion. Stalin rules for a long time and saw to it that the waves of terror recurred from time to time, always on an even greater scale than before. But the champions of terror invariably leave one thing out of account—namely, that they can’t kill everyone, and among their cowed, half-demented subjects there are always witnesses who survive to tell the tale.…
The only link with a person in prison was the window through which one handed parcels and money to be forwarded to him by the authorities. Once a month, after waiting three or four hours in line (the number of arrests was by now falling off, so this was not very long), I went up to the window and gave my name. The clerk behind the window thumbed through his list—I went on days when he dealt with the letter “M”—and asked me for my first name and initial. As soon as I replied, a hand stretched out of the window and I put my identity papers and some money into it. The hand then returned my papers with a receipt and I went away. Everybody envied me because I at least knew that my husband was alive and where he was. It happened only too often that the man behind the window barked: “No record … Next!” All questions were useless—the official would simply shut his window in your face and one of the uniformed guards would come up to you. Order was immediately restored and the next in line moved up to the window. If anybody ever tried to linger, the guard found ready allies among the other people waiting.
Sample Solution