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Cherish Sills
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TEACHER COMMENTS

Packet #1: Adolf Hitler

Assertion 1 Idea: The Rise of Adolf Hitler

Question 1: What was the state of Germany prior to Adolf Hitler coming to power?
EV:
1. The worldwide economic depression had hit the the country especially hard, and millions of
people were out of work
2. The German economy was especially vulnerable since it was built upon foreign capital,
mostly loans from America and was very dependent on foreign trade. When those loans suddenly
came due and when the world market for German exports dried up, the well oiled German industrial
machine quickly ground to a halt. As production levels fell, German workers were laid off. Along with
this, banks failed throughout Germany. Saving accounts, the result of years of hard work, were
instantly wiped out. Inflation soon followed making it hard for families to purchase expensive
necessities with devalued money
COMPLETE BELOW
Source #: 2 and 6
Citation: Waitman W. Beorn, Erik Steiner, Marc J. Masurovsky, Anne Kelly Knowles, Paul B. Jaskot,

Anna Holian, Chester Harvey, Alberto Giordano, Simone Gigliotti, and Tim Cole, The Holocaust: A
learning
Question 2: How did Hitler gain support of the people?
EV:
1. Hitler told the German people what they wanted to hear that conditions in the country would
improve, that their own lives would become the most powerful nation on earth
1. Hitler's speeches were inspiring, he was a great public speaker who could enthuse the
masses and ignite a sense of belief. his policies made sense and were aimed at the areas of politics
that the German masses were resentful of i.e. the treaty of Versailles and reparations. his party were
highly organised, flexible in their views (in the eyes of the electorate) and made promises that would
benefit all sectors of the population
Source #: 1 and 8
Citation: Eleanor H. Ayer,11 and
Question 3: How did Hitler solidify power? (if you dont know what solidify means, google it)
EV:
1. In the summer of 1921, he visited nationalist groups in Berlin to find out if it might be possible
to join forces. While he was gone the Nazi Party undermined his leadership. The partys executive
committee, of which Hitler was a member, feared that Hitler had become too much like a dictator
within the organization. To counter this, they formed an agreement with a Socialist group from a town
near Muinch. When Hitler learned what had happened, he resigned from the party. This caught the
executive committee by surprise. They knew Hitlers resignation would mean the end of the Nazi

Party. Hitler said that he would rejoin if he were mad chairman and given complete control. Some
committee members refused to bend to his wishes . A party pamphlet titled
2. The government was perceived as being at fault for signing the treaty of Versailles and had
lost support on several occasions for mismanaging the economic crisis.Hitler offered a feasible
solution to each of these faults and so gained support and ultimately power
3. "The first 2 years in office were almost wholly dedicated to the consolidation of power. With
several prominent Nazis in key positions (Hermann Gring, as minister of interior in Prussia, and
Wilhelm Frick, as minister of interior of the central government, controlled the police forces) and his
military ally Werner von Blomberg in the Defense Ministry, he quickly gained practical control. He
persuaded the aging president and the Reichstag to invest him with emergency powers suspending
the constitution in the so-called Enabling Act of Feb. 28, 1933. Under this act and with the help of a
mysterious fire in the Reichstag building, he rapidly eliminated his political rivals and brought all
levels of government and major political institutions under his control. By means of the Roehm purge
of the summer of 1934 he assured himself of the loyalty of the army by the subordination of the Nazi
storm troopers and the murder of its chief together with the liquidation of major rivals within the army.
The death of President Hindenburg in August 1934 cleared the way for the abolition of the
presidential title by plebiscite. Hitler became officially Fhrer of Germany and thereby head of state
as well as commander in chief of the armed forces. Joseph Goebbels's extensive propaganda
machine and Heinrich Himmler's police system simultaneously perfected totalitarian control of
Germany, as demonstrated most impressively in the great Nazi mass rally of 1934 in Nuremberg,
where millions marched in unison and saluted Hitler's theatrical appeals"
CHANCELLOR
Source #:5 and 8 and 9
Citation: Scott I , and ,

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Assertion 2 Idea: Hitler maintenance of power
Question 1: How did Hitler improve/take steps to improve the economy?
EV: The Hitler regimes economic policy, Galbraith goes on, involved large scale borrowing
for public expenditures, and at first this was principally for civilian work -- railroads, canals
and the Autobahnen [highway network]. The result was a far more effective attack on
unemployment than in any other industrial country. / 1 By late 1935, he also wrote,
unemployment was at an end in Germany. By 1936 high income was pulling up prices or
making it possible to raise them Germany, by the late thirties, had full employment at
stable prices. It was, in the industrial world, an absolutely unique achievement. / 2 Hitler
also anticipated modern economic policy, the economist noted, by recognizing that a rapid
approach to full employment was only possible if it was combined with wage and price
controls. That a nation oppressed by economic fears would respond to Hitler as Americans
did to F.D.R. is not surprising. / 3
Source #: 7
Citation: Mark Weber, How Hitler Tackled Unemployment And Revived Germanys Economy
Question 2: How did Hitler use his military to maintain control/expand his reign? (if you
dont know what reign means, google it)

EV: "On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler began World War IIwhich he hoped would lead to his control
of most of the Eurasian heartlandwith the lightning invasion of Poland, which he
immediately followed with the liquidation of Jews and the Polish intelligentsia, the
enslavement of the local "subhuman" population, and the beginnings of a German
colonization. Following the declaration of war by France and England, he temporarily turned
his military machine west, where the lightning, mobile attacks of the German forces quickly
triumphed. In April 1940 Denmark surrendered, and Norway was taken by an amphibious
operation. In May-June the rapidly advancing tank forces defeated France and the Low
Countries"
Source #: 9
Citation: , Adolf Hitler
Question 3: How did Hitler maintain control over the people/manipulate the people to
maintain control?
EV: Nevertheless, in July 1921 Hitler was made party leader and began to hold weekly
meetings, during which he gave speeches that were eventually attended by thousands of
people, including several men who would eventually become infamous Nazi leaders
Source #: INSERT SOURCE #
Citation: AUTHOR, PG #

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Assertion 1 Idea: Hitler fall from power
Question 1: When did things begin to go terribly wrong for Hitler?
EV: As 1942 began, the Axis powers had the upper hand in the war. That changed by the fall
of 1942, when the Germans were locked in a bloody fight against the Soviets that threatened
to destroy the German army. American forces had won a victory in the
Pacific and had landed in North Africa
Source #: INSERT SOURCE # 5
Citation: Scott Ingram, 97
Question 2: How did military losses in WWII affect the stability of Adolf Hitlers rule?
EV: With the waning fortunes of the German war effort, Hitler withdrew almost entirely from
the public; his orders became increasingly erratic and pedantic; and recalling his earlier
triumphs over the generals, he refused to listen to advice from his military counselors. He
dreamed of miracle bombs and suspected treason everywhere. Under the slogan of "total
victory or total ruin, " the entire German nation from young boys to old men, often barely
equipped or trained, was mobilized and sent to the front. After an unsuccessful assassination
attempt by a group of former leading politicians and military men on July 20, 1944, the regime
of terror further tightened. In the last days of the Third Reich, with the Russian troops in the
suburbs of Berlin, Hitler entered into a last stage of desperation in his underground bunker in
Berlin. He ordered Germany destroyed since it was not worthy of him; he expelled his trusted
lieutenants Himmler and Gring from the party; and made a last, theatrical appeal to the
German nation
Source #: 9
Citation: AUTHOR, PG #
Question 3: How did the peoples loss of faith in Hitler affect his rule/control of the country?
EV: The problem for Hitler, however, was that a growing number of his senior military
commanders had lost faith in him. And these practical-minded, battle-hardened leaders had
come to believe they were the last hope to save the German people from death and
destruction on a nearly unimaginable scale. By the summer of 1944, it had become obvious
that Germany was involved in a hopeless military struggle. And there was every indication
Hitler was prepared to sacrifice countless German military and civilian lives to sustain it
indefinitely for no good reason
Source #: INSERT SOURCE #
Citation: AUTHOR, PG #
Question 4: How does Hitler die?

EV: On April 30, 1945, as the Allied army was closing in on Berlin, in a bunker far below the
Reich chancellery, Hitler committed suicide
Source #: 4
Citation: Marylou Morano Kjelle, 11