AP World History DBQ The Rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying Documents. (The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.) This question is designed to test your ability to work with and understand historical documents. Write an essay that: • Has a relevant thesis and supports that thesis with evidence from the documents. • Uses all or all but one of the documents. • Analyzes the documents by grouping them in as many appropriate ways as possible. Does not simply summarize the documents individually. • Takes into account both the sources of the documents and the author’s points of view. You may refer to relevant historical information not mentioned in the documents. Question: Based on the following documents evaluate the successful methods of the Nazis for acquiring political power in Germany. What was the appeal of Hitler and the Nazi Party for Germans in the early 1930s? Historical Background : The peace and prosperity promised by the Versailles treaty was short lived. Disappointment and despair grew over issues like new boundary disputes, reparations payments, national pride and inflation until the American stock market crash sent the European economy into a tailspin. Eventually, Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists gained power in 1933 and created a totalitarian dictatorship.
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AP World History DBQ The Rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis
Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying Documents. (The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.) This question is designed to test your ability to work with and understand historical documents. Write an essay that:
• Has a relevant thesis and supports that thesis with evidence from the documents.
• Uses all or all but one of the documents. • Analyzes the documents by grouping them in as many appropriate ways as
possible. Does not simply summarize the documents individually. • Takes into account both the sources of the documents and the author’s points
of view. You may refer to relevant historical information not mentioned in the documents.
Question: Based on the following documents evaluate the successful methods of the Nazis for acquiring political power in Germany. What was the appeal of Hitler and the Nazi Party for Germans in the early 1930s? Historical Background: The peace and prosperity promised by the Versailles treaty was short lived. Disappointment and despair grew over issues like new boundary disputes, reparations payments, national pride and inflation until the American stock market crash sent the European economy into a tailspin. Eventually, Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists gained power in 1933 and created a totalitarian dictatorship.
Document 1
Document 2
Arnold Freiherr von Vietinghoff-Reisch, Prussian nobleman, 1934. …. For a year and a half, from January 31, 1933, to the first large scale violation of all law, the Rohm purge, and to the unmasking of evil that followed it, Hitler (and with him National Socialism) for many of us was the savior from economic and social disaster, the unifier of the German people, the man who was restoring the its honor abroad and raising it again to the proper rank among the European family of nations …..
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925. Referring to the future of the German state. The … state will have to fight for its existence. It will neither obtain it by Dawes [treaty] signatures, nor be able to defend its existence by them. For its existence and its protection, it will need the very things that people today think they can do without. The more incomparable and precious [the state’s] form and content will be, the greater will be the envy and resistance of it enemies. The state’s best defense will lie not in its weapons, but in its citizens; no fortress walls will protect it, but a living wall of men and women filled with supreme love of their fatherland and fanatical national enthusiasm.
Document 3
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Kurt Ludecke, Nazi Ambassador to North America in a pamphlet entitled “I Had Given Him My Heart,” (1938) referring to his conversion to Nazism during a political rally in the 1930s. “Hitler’s words were like a scourge. When he spoke of the disgrace of Germany, I felt ready to spring on any enemy…glancing around, I saw that his magnetism was holding these thousands as one….I was a man of 32, weary of disgust and disillusionment, a wanderer seeking a cause….a yearner after the heroic without a hero. The intense will of the man, the passion of his sincerity, seemed to flow from him into me. I experienced a feeling that could be likened only to a religious conversion ….I felt sure that no-one who heard Hitler that night that he was the man of destiny…I had given him my heart.”
Election Results to the German Reichstag from 1924 to 1932 and available unemployment statistics for the same period. Number of voters, percentage of votes and number of deputies (ex: 45/423 would be 45 deputies out of a total of 423 possible deputies) are given where applicable.
May 4th 1924 December 7th 1924
May 20th 1928 September 14th 1930
July 31st 1932 November 6th 1932
Number of eligible voters (in millions)
38.4 39.0 41.2 43.0 44.2 44.2
Votes cast (in millions) 29.7 30.7 31.2 35.2 37.2 35.7 NAZI Party 1,918,000 or
6.6% 32/472
908,000 or 3%
14/493
810,000 or 2.6%
12/491
6,407,000 or 18.3%
107/577
13,779,000 or 37.3%
230/608
11,737,000 or 33.1% 196/584
German Conservative Party
5,696,000 or 19.5%
6,209,000 or 20.5%
4,382,000 or 14.2%
2,458,000 or 7%
2,187,000 or 5.9%
3,131,000 or 8.8%
Catholic Center Party 3,914,000 or 13.4% 65/472
4,121,000 or 13.6% 69/493
3,712,000 or 12.1% 62/491
4,127,000 or 11.8% 68/577
4,589,000 or 12.4% 75/608
14,230,000 or 11.9% 70/584
German Democratic Party
1,655,000 or 5.7%
1,921,000 or 6.3%
1,506,000 or 4.9%
1,322,00 or 3.8%
373,000 or 1%
339,000 or 1%
Social Democratic Party 6,009,000 or 20.5%
100/472
7,886,000 or 26%
131/493
9,153,000 or 29.8%
153/491
8,575,000 or 24.5%
143/577
7,960,000 or 21.6%
133/608
7,251,000 or 20.4%
121/584 Communist Party 3,693,000 or
12.6% 62/472
2,712,000 or 9%
45/493
3,265,000 or 10.6% 54/491
4,590,000 or 13.1% 77/577
5,370,000 or 14.3% 89/608
5,980,000 or 16.9%
100/584
Unemployment in Germany 1924 to 1938
1924 1928 1930 1932 1933 1935 1938 978,000 1,368,000 3,076,000 5,575,500 4,804,400 2,151,000 429,000
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Bruno Heilig, Austrian journalist. From “Why the German Republic Fell,” 1938. Seven million men and women (one third of the wage-earning people) were unemployed … the middle class swept away: that was the position about one year after the climax of prosperity (1931). Progress, conditioned as it was, had rapidly produced the most dreadful poverty….In the first year of the crisis the number of Nazi deputies to the Reichstag rose from 8 to 107. A year later this figure was doubled. In the same time the Communists captured half of the votes of the German Social Democratic Party and the representation of the middle class practically speaking disappeared. In January, 1933, Hitler was appointed [Chancellor]; he attained power, as I said before, quite legally. All forms of democracy were observed. It sounds paradoxical but it was in fact absolutely legal.
Lilo Linke recalling the economic hardships of Germany in 1923 when she was a university student in Munich. The whole population had suddenly turned into maniacs. Everyone, was buying, selling, speculating, bargaining, and dollar, dollar, dollar, was the magic word which dominated every conversation, every newspaper, every poster in Germany. Nobody understood what was happening. There seemed to be no sense, no rules in the mad game but one had to take part in it if one did not want to be trampled underfoot at once….The middle class was hurt more than any other, the savings of a lifetime and their small fortunes melted into a few [pennies]. They had to sell their most precious belongings for ten [million] inflated marks to buy a bit of food or an absolutely necessary coat, and their pride and dignity were bleeding out of many wounds. Bitterness remained for ever in their hearts. Full of hatred, they accused the international financiers, the Jews and Socialists – their old enemies – of having exploited their distress. They never forgot and never forgave and were the first to lend a willing ear to Hitler’s fervent preaching.
Document 7
A German Dry Goods Store ca. 1936.
Document 8
German Newspaper account of the Nazi Party Nuremberg Convention in September 1936. “…We have witnessed many great march-pasts and ceremonies. But none of them were more thrilling, and at the same time more inspiring, than yesterday’s roll-call of 140 000 political wardens (heads of various local party groups) who were addressed by the Führer at night, on the Zepplin Meadow which floodlights had made bright as day …. Twenty straight columns cut across the square …. There are 140 000 political wardens who have formed ranks in rows of twelve. Innumerable swastika flags flutter in the evening breeze, torn from the darkness by the floodlights, and providing a sharp contrast to the pitch black nocturnal sky. The Zepplin Field proves to be too small. The stands will not hold the vast stream of people who are moving in with out pause….The Führer is there! Reich Organizational Leader Dr. Ley gives him a report of the men who are standing in parade formation…Dr. Ley speaks: ‘We believe in a Lord God, who directs us and guides us and who has sent you, My Führer.’ These are the final words of the Reich Organizational Leader; they are underlined by the applause that rises from 150 000 spectators and that lasts for minutes.”
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