Conflict and dictatorship · GCSE History
Germany 1890–1945
From Kaiserreich and total war through Weimar’s fragile democracy to Nazi dictatorship, terror, consent and war.
Democracy died of crisis, not of a single election.
The important bits
What you need to know
- 1
Under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany was an industrial great power with an autocratic core: the Kaiser controlled army and foreign policy; the Reichstag could not dismiss the chancellor. Weltpolitik, Navy Laws and colonial rivalry raised tension before 1914.
- 2
Defeat in 1918, the Kiel mutiny, the Kaiser’s abdication and the “stab in the back” myth poisoned the new republic before it wrote a constitution. Ebert’s deal with the army (Ebert–Groener) and Freikorps violence against the left were original sins of Weimar.
- 3
The Weimar Constitution looked modern: proportional representation, universal suffrage, civil rights. Article 48 (emergency decrees) and coalition arithmetic made it easy to bypass parliament when crises came.
- 4
Versailles (1919) billed Germany with blame, reparations, a 100,000-man army, lost territory (Alsace-Lorraine, Polish Corridor) and a demilitarised Rhineland. It was harsh enough to rage about and not harsh enough to make Germany incapable of later revision.
- 5
1923 bundled catastrophe: Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, passive resistance, hyperinflation, and Hitler’s failed Munich Putsch. Stresemann then stabilised the currency (Rentenmark), renegotiated reparations (Dawes 1924, Young 1929), and recovered diplomacy (Locarno, League).
- 6
The Depression after 1929 sent unemployment towards six million. Brüning, Papen and Schleicher governed by decree. Elites miscalculated that Hitler could be used. He was appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933.
- 7
Dictatorship was built at speed: Reichstag Fire, Decree for the Protection of People and State, Enabling Act (March 1933), ban on parties, Night of the Long Knives (1934), then Führer after Hindenburg’s death. Terror (SS, Gestapo, camps) worked with propaganda, jobs and foreign-policy success to produce consent as well as fear.
- 8
Nazi rule reshaped youth, women, churches and the economy around rearmament and racial ideology. Persecution of Jews ran from boycott (1933) and Nuremberg Laws (1935) through Kristallnacht (1938) to genocide during the war. Opposition existed (churches, youth cliques, army plotters) but never coordinated a successful removal until the regime was already losing the war.
Quotations worth analysing
Short evidence. Real method.
“Stabbed in the back.”
Blaming socialists, Jews and civilians for defeat let the army dodge responsibility and taught millions that Weimar was a betrayal, not a democracy to defend.
“Hitler did not seize power; he was offered it.”
The Nazis were the largest party in 1932 but had no majority. Conservative elites and Hindenburg appointed Hitler, believing he could be tamed. That decision, not a coup in Berlin, opened the legal road to dictatorship.
Go deeper
Was Weimar doomed from the start?
Doomed-from-the-start essays are too neat. The republic survived Spartacists, Kapp, political assassinations and 1923, then enjoyed a genuine recovery: new currency, American loans, cultural flowering, and falling support for Nazis in 1928. Structural weaknesses remained — PR splintering, Article 48, an unconverted civil service and army, and a public taught that Versailles was humiliation. The Depression turned those weaknesses lethal by destroying the moderate parties’ claim to competence. A balanced judgement is that Weimar was vulnerable, not predestined to die in 1919, and that 1929–33 was the killing crisis because elites chose authoritarian shortcuts and then Hitler.
Go deeper
How the Nazis turned a chancellorship into a dictatorship
Legal-looking steps mattered. The February 1933 fire decree suspended civil liberties. The Enabling Act, passed amid SA intimidation and with the Centre Party’s fatal yes, let Hitler legislate without the Reichstag. Gleichschaltung then coordinated states, unions (replaced by the Labour Front) and parties. The Night of the Long Knives murdered SA rivals and reassured the army. When Hindenburg died, the offices of chancellor and president fused and the army swore a personal oath to Hitler. Terror was real — Dachau opened in 1933 — but so was popularity from work programmes, Volkswagen promises and smashing Versailles. Examiners want both coercion and consent.
Go deeper
Persecution to genocide
Nazi antisemitism was not a late wartime improvisation. From 1933 Jews were pushed out of professions, then stripped of citizenship and marriage rights in 1935, then subjected to the November 1938 pogrom and forced emigration under robbery. War radicalised policy: ghettos, Einsatzgruppen shootings in the East, and from 1941–42 the decision for industrial murder, coordinated at Wannsee. Other groups — Roma and Sinti, disabled people in the T4 programme, political opponents, gay men, Jehovah’s Witnesses — were also targeted. In GCSE answers, keep the sequence and the responsibility clear: this was state policy, not chaotic street hatred alone, and it drew on longer racist and eugenic ideas made lethal by dictatorship and war.
See the idea in action
Question: “The Wall Street Crash was the main reason Hitler came to power.” How far? Support: unemployment, collapse of Müller’s coalition, Nazi jump from 12 to 107 then 230 seats, elites panicking. Challenge: without Versailles bitterness, the stab-in-the-back myth, Hitler’s oratory and organisation, and Hindenburg’s appointment, depression might have produced a different authoritarian outcome (Papen, army). Judgement: the Crash was the catalyst that made mass Nazi support possible; elite miscalculation made Hitler chancellor.
Exam technique
Turn knowledge into marks
Learn a short chronology you can land in any essay: 1918, 1919, 1923, 1924–29, 1929, January 1933, March 1933, 1934, 1935, 1938, 1939. Dates are not decoration; they are how you prove change over time.
Common mistakes
Do not give these marks away
- 01
Saying Hitler was elected dictator in 1933. The Nazis never won an outright majority; he was appointed, then dismantled democracy.
- 02
Treating hyperinflation (1923) and the Depression (from 1929) as the same crisis.
- 03
Writing “Germans supported Hitler because of propaganda” as the whole explanation. Propaganda worked on real grievances: Versailles, unemployment, fear of communism, and later foreign-policy wins.
How did Hitler become chancellor in January 1933?
AHe seized Berlin with the SA after winning an outright majority
BPresident Hindenburg appointed him after elite intrigue, despite no Nazi majority
CThe Kaiser restored him as hereditary ruler
DThe League of Nations ordered a Nazi government
Show the answer
President Hindenburg appointed him after elite intrigue, despite no Nazi majority. Papen and other conservatives convinced Hindenburg that Hitler could be boxed in as chancellor in a coalition. That appointment, not a majority election or a coup, opened the door.
Quick questions
If this is the bit you searched
Did the Treaty of Versailles make Nazi Germany inevitable?
No. It supplied a grievance the right endlessly used, but 1924–29 showed recovery was possible. The Depression, elite choices and Nazi organisation turned the grievance into a route to power. Versailles was fuel, not a completed fire.
What was Article 48?
A Weimar clause allowing the president to rule by emergency decree. Meant as a safeguard, it became the normal way to govern after 1930, teaching Germans that parliament was optional and making Hitler’s later decrees look familiar rather than revolutionary.