The First World War had taken a serious toll on the German nation. The Treaty of Versailles, forcing Germany to spend £6600 Million worth of reparations, had left the country economically crippled, with national pride at an all-time low. As well as this, around 2,037,000 German soldiers dying during the four years, the country was in mourning and turmoil. The Kaiser had fled in exile to the Netherlands, leaving the nation to determine who took power. Hence, the Weimar Government was created – a government promising Proportional Representation of German parties. The people demanded change, and the Weimar produced little that the public recognized. However, the weakness in Weimar was not the only contributing factor to the rise of Nazism. Firstly,
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Firstly, we have the fact that unemployment was at an all-time low. By circa 1922, the unemployment rate had dramatically risen to 28% . With over a quarter of the population out of work, and the Weimar republic doing nothing to fix this, many of the workers turned to the new alternative – the Nazi party. They promised the return of jobs (and mostly fulfilled that promise), thus garnering the support of the working class. Another contributing factor was the fact that Germany was going through a housing crisis. Thousands of homes were being built, but people could not afford to move into them . Empty houses were commonplace in the major cities at the time, despite the large number of homeless people at the time. With the Nazis promising work, pay, food and shelter, they obviously appealed to those at the bottom of the ladder, rather than suffer through more years of the weak Weimar Republic. Next, there is the infamous Wall Street crash of 1929. During this time, Germany was being given essential funding by America thanks to the Dawes plan. With the worst financial crash in American history, they were forced to stop giving money to Germany, thus leaving them to suffer their own financial crisis. This led the workers to fare even worse than they were prior to the crash, leading more and more of them to look for a viable alternative to the Weimar Republic. To conclude, the arguments that Worker Grievances led to the rise of the Nazi party are: the drastic unemployment rate rise, wide-spread homelessness despite the numerous empty houses, and the Wall Street crash causing mass hysteria and money-loss. However, much like the Nazi rallying power stated above, many of these problems were derivations of issues of the Weimar Government. Wide-spread homelessness was a result of the Mark’s hyperinflation, and the rise of unemployment was added to by the demilitarization
Firstly, we have the fact that unemployment was at an all-time low. By circa 1922, the unemployment rate had dramatically risen to 28% . With over a quarter of the population out of work, and the Weimar republic doing nothing to fix this, many of the workers turned to the new alternative – the Nazi party. They promised the return of jobs (and mostly fulfilled that promise), thus garnering the support of the working class. Another contributing factor was the fact that Germany was going through a housing crisis. Thousands of homes were being built, but people could not afford to move into them . Empty houses were commonplace in the major cities at the time, despite the large number of homeless people at the time. With the Nazis promising work, pay, food and shelter, they obviously appealed to those at the bottom of the ladder, rather than suffer through more years of the weak Weimar Republic. Next, there is the infamous Wall Street crash of 1929. During this time, Germany was being given essential funding by America thanks to the Dawes plan. With the worst financial crash in American history, they were forced to stop giving money to Germany, thus leaving them to suffer their own financial crisis. This led the workers to fare even worse than they were prior to the crash, leading more and more of them to look for a viable alternative to the Weimar Republic. To conclude, the arguments that Worker Grievances led to the rise of the Nazi party are: the drastic unemployment rate rise, wide-spread homelessness despite the numerous empty houses, and the Wall Street crash causing mass hysteria and money-loss. However, much like the Nazi rallying power stated above, many of these problems were derivations of issues of the Weimar Government. Wide-spread homelessness was a result of the Mark’s hyperinflation, and the rise of unemployment was added to by the demilitarization