The German People Oppose the Right Wing Extremists I BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1920 Part 2 of 4 - YouTube
While it was communism that was driving bloody wars in Eastern Europe,
it was independence movements and nationalism that fueled unrest in many other parts of the world, especially in Germany.
Welcome to between two wars, a summary of the interwar years. From the uncertainty and hedonism of the
1920s to humanity's descent into the darkness of the Second World War. I'm Indy Neidell.
Last year Germany emerged from a socialist revolution and established a nascent democracy. In
1920 that democracy comes under threat again, but now from the Nationalists. Now
when you think of nationalism and Germany,
it's hard to not think of a Adolf Hitler. That little Sith apprentice was hard at work in the final months of
1919 together with his Sith Lord Anton Drexler.
He's been forging a new ideology based on Drexler's ideas of
ultra-nationalism, anti-semitism and socialism.
These ideas seem like they fit right into Hitler's worldview forged during his youth in the staunchly imperialistic and
anti-semitic heartland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Coupled with their shared anti-capitalist ideas, the two have now formulated a doctrine: national socialism.
Hitler's also found his calling as a public speaker and agitator and with incredible energy and a newly discovered
knack for self-promotion, he's drawing bigger and bigger crowds.
He is now the executive member in charge of propaganda for the German Workers Party DAP. On February 24th
he managed to get 2,000 people to a rally in the Hofbrau house where he presents the
National Socialist program of the DAP, which renamed itself
NSDAP for National Socialist Workers Party, soon to be abbreviated to the Nazi Party. Hitler announced a
25-point program that will remain the essence of the Nazi Party through the next 25 years.
You can find a link to the 25 points in the description, but the essence of it is this: any
news outlets that don't agree with the party line are fake news and shall be forbidden.
A stop to immigration, and expulsion of anyone that emigrated to Germany
after August 2nd 1914.
Only people of the German race - they don't define what that is - will have citizenship and civil rights; specifically Jews are not
considered part of the German race.
Germany, Austria and all the parts of other countries where people are of this German race shall be united into greater
Germany.
Income from industry shall be redistributed to the people and passive income from real estate, stocks and so on
forbidden. The Treaty of Versailles shall be cancelled
Now the NSDAP is still a pretty insignificant actor on the German political scene. At the beginning of 1920
they have fewer than 60 members.
But now people with sympathies in this direction flocked to the party. Some of the early members that join in 1920 are Ernst Röhm,
who participated in the violent suppression of the Bavarian Soviet republic, Dietrich Eckart who has been called the
spiritual father of national socialism. Then student Rudolf Hess, Freikorps soldier Hans Frank and Alfred Rosenberg,
often credited as the
philosopher of the movement. All of them will play a very significant role in the Nazi Party during the next 25 years.
Hitler holds 31 public speeches this year.
Every single one with the same talking points: the demand to abrogate the Versailles Treaty and how to "solve" the Jewish Question.
His oratory style is promoted as political entertainment and the crowds keep growing. By the end of the year the party counts over
2,000 members.
Still not politically significant,
but that's a pretty aggressive growth curve. In any case Hitler and the NSDAP
are not the only ones with a chip on their shoulder about the Versailles Treaty. In Berlin, the Republic's first Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann
stepped down already last summer over disagreements about the treaty. The current Chancellor Gustav Bauer
is also facing problems with how to implement the demands of the treaty.
Most of all, the 120 Freikorps in the country are now in uproar as the treaty condition of
disbanding of these paramilitary nationalist units is enforced.
Also a majority of the Freikorps members are still on military pay.
But now the army is being reduced to just a hundred thousand men, by the treaty,
so three out of four of them are about to lose their income. To put it simply,
this is a really personal issue for the Freikorps members.
Well, lieutenant general Walther baron von Lüttwitz isn't going to have any of it. Now he works for defense minister Noske
and he was the one who carried out captain Pabst and the Freikorps attack on the socialist revolutionaries last year
Lüttwitz is part of a
nationalist political party that includes in its leadership Pabst
former quartermaster general Erich Ludendorff, in
1918 the de facto military dictator of Germany and journalist and Prussian bureaucrat Wolfgang Kapp.
Lüttwitz refuses to disband his Freikorps, so when Noske fires him for insubordination
he goes back to his unit and orders them to march on Berlin,
overthrow the government and proclaim Wolfgang Kapp chancellor. All right.
Well Ludendorff and Kapp are only informed after the fact and they're
somewhat surprised at this sudden development, but you know they play along.
The Freikorps,
surprise surprise,
do take Berlin and Bauer and the other SPD members of the government flee to Dresden and then Stuttgart. On a
side note, as they march into Berlin, many of the soldiers have painted white swastikas on their helmets to display their Germanic roots.
Hitler and the NSDAP have not yet adopted the symbol but soon will because of the same connection to pagan Germanic symbolism.
Anyhow, what happens now
is a remarkable thing. On a call from the SPD the whole country goes on strike. In
Berlin everything, I mean everything,
comes to a standstill. There isn't any gas, any electricity. No fuel, no food.
Even the water stops running. The financial bureaucrats also just refused to give Lüttwitz and his gang access to any money.
They try to bomb and shoot the strikers into submission,
but as they have neither fuel nor money and the rest of the army refuses to participate and give them any stuff,
this fizzles immediately and the casualties are minimal. In effect the refusal of the
entire German population makes Lüttwitz and Kapp incapable of governing and the coup breaks down after only three days.
Though this at first looks like a big win for the Weimar republic,
it won't be in the long run.
A major grievance of Kapp and company against the government was that the National Assembly was only supposed to serve
temporarily and was now acting like like a permanent Reichstag. This is a popular sentiment,
so to appease further unrest the assembly is dissolved in April and a general election held in June.
Although the current coalition of Social Democrats DDP and Zentrum have weathered the coup,
the electorate is not impressed. They get half the votes they got in 1919.
None of the parties can agree on a coalition with a majority and the Conservatives manage to form a minority government.
Effectively this leads to a paralysis of government as they can't advance their policies without support of the opposition. In fact,
the Weimar Republic will never have a majority government again,
and this will contribute to the constant chaos in German politics in the
1920s as the country will have no clear leadership.
But for now at least extremists on both sides have been hobbled. The German communists had been hoping for support from Soviet Russia
but now that the Polish army has stopped the Bolshevik advance that support isn't coming. The extreme left will never become very important again and
mainly serve as a foil for the extreme right,
inadvertently helping them to gain importance. So there we have it.
Democracy is only starting to spread slowly in the world and two kinds of movements are already threatening it: on one end of the spectrum
fascism and Nazism, on the other
Communism and socialism. The Communists of the world meet this year for the second Congress of the Comintern, that is to say the Communist
International from July 19th to August 7th in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The representatives are from socialist revolutionary parties all around the world.
Soviet Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin guides the Congress's course it is here
that the basic nature of communist parties is decided.
Here the terms for their admission to the International are laid out and here the relationship between national and
international organizations is determined.
The discussion around conditions for admission to the Comintern
eventually produces the document of 21 conditions mostly suggested by Lenin.
It's a pretty radical document which calls for the expulsion of reformists and centrists and stresses the necessity of
illegal acts to accomplish their goals. We put a link to the 21 points in the description.
Two movements on
opposite sides of the political spectrum are now starting to call for the dissolution of the state in favor of one-party rule.
The right-wing movement, although still immature and fractured is gaining traction in Germany,
Japan and Italy. The left-wing movement has established itself in Russia and continues to have great support in Eastern Europe in general.
But what about the rest of the world? Thing is, both
fascism and communism are on the march in most parts of the world at this point.
Although there will only be a fascist movement in Great Britain
actually labeling themselves fascist beginning 1923, the basic tenants of anti-labor,
strong autocratic leadership, traditional gender rules, violent activism and integral nationalism are already growing there. In
France, the land were much of the basis of fascism
originated with political philosophers like Charles Maurras at the end of the 19th century,
there is growing support for this kind of ideologies. In Greece, Poland
Scandinavia and the United States there are also pockets of political movements that will go in this direction over the next few years.
Communism is much further ahead with labor movements all over the Western world and in some parts of the East they've already amassed
millions of members. Now these movements are big enough to be seen as threats to democracy, freedom and prosperity.
Outside of Bolshevik Russia, they're being struck down with violence.
This is now feeding the reactionary movements as people flock to them in opposition of the perceived communist threat.
This struggle will not only define the first half of the century and contribute to the outbreak of war in 1939,
it will lead to the Cold War and continues to affect the world to this day.
Combined with the struggle between colonial imperialism and the drive for independence in the colonies, in
1920 there is an explosive cocktail of opposing ideologies in the mix. In our next episode
we'll look at those colonial conflicts and crumbling imperialism as we go to the Middle East and the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
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See you next time.
Historians of the world unite!
