World War II Prequel - The rise of Hitler (Part 3) AKA Hitler’s highway and prosecution of Jewish people
Let’s keep it going from the last part.
There is no doubt that Adolf Hitler is a natural mastermind. But a lot of the credit to his success and popularity goes to the doctor of philosophy in Germany and one of the founders of the modern propaganda science Dr. Joseph Goebbels
Here he is after he just found out that he has to wait another 2 hours to get into the bathroom.
The minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany had a primary goal that the Nazi propaganda reaches every home in Germany. The minister had a problem; the number of houses that had radios during that time was little, therefore a lot of people were out of reach and Apple has made a podcast app yet. Thus Joseph decided that every house in Germany must have a radio it; and within the first year with the Nazis in charge of Germany a million radio was produced , a big number at the time. Not only that, Goebbels took control over every cinematic production company as well as every newspaper, suffice to say he propaganded the shit out of Germany. All of that effort was a main reason Hitler that ended up receiving around 90% of the German votes.
You might be thinking “Is that enough? Is there anything more he needs to do?”, and you would be right; you have gotten smarter thanks to reading my articles. In his 2014 book “Nazi pork and popularity: How Hitler’s roads won German hearts and minds,the researchers Joachim Voth ans Nico Voigtländer tried to answer a question that long puzzled the economic and political world; does spending money on the infrastructure increases popularity? Historically, the studies disagreed over this; there were two school of thoughts, one that says that it doesn’t matter, while the other suggests that it does.
Studies that cities in Iraq that had a lot of infrastructure work on it had the least violence, AKA Aarasat, Mansour and Karada, while areas like Aadhamiya and Al-Thawra had the most. Nazi is the perfect template to provide an answer to all of that as it had the Autobahn, a humongous highway system that the construction off started in 17 cities at the same time extending now to almost 13 thousand kilometers. A highway of great magnitude connecting Germany’s cities to one another, those roads now officially have no speed limit.
The Autobahn was a priority to Hitler, that he even started the digging himself
Although it needs to be pointed out that there are articles and reports that the Nazis merely took credit for it and it wasn’t their project
But regardless of whether it is an original idea or not Hitler did in fact made it a priority. Hitler’s goal of the Autobahn was to employ 600,000 German and eliminates unemployment. The Autobahn was so important to Hitler and the Nazi party as a whole that the image of him digging in 1934 was the logo of his campaign at the time. Researchers compared the votes for Hitler and his party between 1933 and 1934 and found that the opposition vites decreased by 1.5% in average, while the cities that had the Autobahn it decreased by 2.5%. “So what? Doesn’t seem like a lot”, well, let me remind you that this an increase by 60% and to researchers that is a prove that the spending on the visible huge infrastructures such as an Autobahn that can be seen by all does in fact increases popularity; I agree with te, so discussion is over.
I am about to go search for honey, mind bearing with me? Why does a visible infrastructure plays a part in increasing of popularity? If we talk about the local economical improvement the Autobahn makes then we’re not talking about big numbers acvording to researchers; Hitler finished the first huge highway system in Europe that almost reached 3,000 Kilometers in length in 1938 in a country that has the lowest cars to people ratio. Adolf dude, you’re making the greatest highway when we have got no cars?
As I said, bear with me here. We could make an argument that Hitler’s care for highways and cars was the reason that the German cars are everywhere now. Hitler wanted three things in a car 1- Has to be fast 2- Doesn’t break a lot and 3- Cheap so the people can afford it; thus, the Volkswagen
Volks = People and Wagen = People. So thr people’s car
The Autobahn’s effect was big locally, people were employed, they made money and started spending it on local shops, the shops found success and thus a form of trickle down economics. Plus the constructions of the Autobahn was a picnic a place, people would actually take their families and hang out there every weekend to witness the building of that amazing highway. You might be wondering “He must have created a mircale!”, well, not really. Yes the unemployment rate went down but not as much as hoped as only 125 thousand people found jobs out of Hitler’s 600 thousand prediction. But once again Hitler gets lucky, this happened during the time the world was recovering from the Great Depression thus improving the country’s economics; the Germans thought it must be the Autobahn. Hitler’s luck during his rise to powr should not be underestimated.
The psychological effect of the Autobahn was far greater than the economical one. That is because a highway is one of the biggest things that can be seen by the biggest amount of people, that is whythe tallest buildings make the news and makes rulers of countries like UAE and Saudis adore their leaders even though they are monarchies; it gives trust and belief that a country is moving forward. Trusting them to meet their promises as well as reinforcing its image of capability.
But as it is known, nothing stays the same. The economic flourishing didn’t last long and people tightened their pockets. Old problems like unemployment and hyperinflation started to arise again, and Hitler needed a new hanger to put this one; what is Hitler’s favorite hanger? Za Jewz. Hitler always blamed the Jewish people starting from the economical difficulties all the way to the surrendering during war. That of course has its own reasons, it wasn’t created out of thin air, first of which is Hitler’s influence by the antisemitic views durinf his stay in Austria, the second of which is that Hitler was injured twice during the war and each time he was sent to be healed he would notice the Jewish merchants were trying their best to end the war. The Jewish merchants picked their own interests over Germany or so Hitler saw. The idea of Hitler and his brothers-in-arm dying while the merchants were looking out for themselves made his see the Jewish people as greedy traitors, add to that the communists whose protests was a big reason in destabilizing the country in 1918 had a lot of Jewish people among them, all of that added to his hatred. During the surrender of Germany in World War 1, Hitler was recoverinrf from temporary blindness caused british mustard gas, he heard the declaration of surrendering and relapsed again. Hitler says that during his blindness he ad a vision telling him to save Germany from the traitors and of course the Jewish people who caused the defeat.
Hitler never forgot the vision and once he reached power he declared the economical boycott of Jewish people and fired them from all public sextor jobs, and in May 1933 all Jewish books were burnt; the Jewish people in Germany were named the “Ungerman”. In 1935 during the Nuremberg rally Hitler decalred the Nuremberg Laws dividing the country into not so equal halves, the Germans and the Ungermans. Within a nigh the Jewish lost their German identification papers and were banned from marrying non-Jewish Germans and banned from entering universities and schools
And they were also forced to wear badges identifying them as jewish people
Hitler wanted everyone to be able to tell who is Jewish while walking down the street. The Nuremberg laws started the legal oppression of the Jewish people before the systimatic elimination and the use of them as cheap labor during the war. Same year national companies and shops announced that they wouldn’t sell or provide any service to Jewish people. But until this point there was no violence against them... yet.
All the “legal” oppression toward Jewish people changed on Novermber 1938. A very young Jewish boy by the name of Herschel Grynszpan
His family was deported from Germany to Poland angering the teenager at the time leading him to shoot at Nazi diplomat Ernst Vom Rath
Here he is looking kinda proud that you caught him masturbating.
The shooting happened France and two days later he RATHer died. Ernst’s funeral was attended by Hitler, and this of course is a golden moment for the minist of propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Thus starting a big campaign to oppress the Jewish people ending leading to the 9th November. A night that saw the death of 100 Jewish people in a wave of violence without the police moving an inch to stop it. Then there was destruction of Jewish houses of worship and burning of houses and shops with an absence of police still; the police and rescue forces would only move of the fires would threaten a house of the Aryans AKA German people. That night became known as “Kristallnacht” or the night of the broken glass per the destruction of shop fronts and house windows filling the streets with glass.
The Nazi government didn’t think that was enough but actually went on to fine the Jewish people of Germany of what equals 400 million dollars in today’s money, areestinf around 30 thousand Jewish person. The incident of the teenager murder of the diplomat was yet another gift from the Gods to Hitler that you would think he was celebrating his birthday every day there. He used the gift to justify his policies against the Jewish people as well as distracts Germans to the economical problems that was hitting the people harder than before, also shutting the mouths of the opposition.
Hitler’s hanger of Jewish people to hang the country problems on wasn’t enogh and thus he needed to find an outside one to accomplish his expansionism dream, a dream that ended with Germany taking over Austria, Czechoslovakia without a single bullet fired. But the moment he invaded Poland in 1939, the blood started to spill starting the great World War 2, a war that had 60 million deaths, a war I already uploaded its part one and will upload the other parts soon.
In Summary
A well-organized propaganda is essential to the success of any dictatorship, I wouldn’t if people in south Korea actually love their short lesbian leader when it is all said and done. Also a work on infrastructure in a country is important to the rise of popularity for a dictator, your people will love you if you give them something they can see all the time. Here we also learn the effect of lucky coincidences as Hitler’s rises to power was filled with those, from the burning of parliament all the way to the shooting of the Nazi diplomat were all important parts of Hitler’s success. As far as the holocaust, we all know it is bad.
Feels haunting for our current times. Great post!
It is actually kinda scary, few weeks ago Egypt's TV outlets started airing vague videos showing nothing but fire shots at the same time as the president is pushing for a bill that would let him be allowed to stay in presidency for 20 years. Egypt is literally going back to dictatorship few years after it became a democracy. It is in fact haunting
Thanks dude