The Rise & Fall of the Nazi Regime
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What motivated the Nazis to rise from the ruins of the Weimar Republic?
Talking History with Patrick Gagan. This is News Talk.
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Good evening and welcome. We're Talking History on Newstalk 106 to 108 with me, Patrick Gagan. In tonight's show, we're exploring one of the most consequential and disturbing chapters in modern history, the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany and what it meant for ordinary Germans. You can send us your thoughts and comments to talkinghistoryatnewstalk.com and we'd love to hear from you. From the ruins of the First World War and the fragile democracy of Weimar Germany emerged a movement that transformed German society, plunged Europe into catastrophe and unleashed a genocidal war that claimed tens of millions and lives. But as we'll see, the story goes beyond one of dictatorship and terror and it's a story of ordinary people, the choices they had to make, cultural change, propaganda, resistance and the erosion of democratic institutions.
A new search engine has just been released that allows users to search Nazi Party records in order to find out whether their ancestors were card-carrying members. And it has been accessed millions of times since it was launched a month ago. So we will discuss that. as we explore why so many Germans supported Hitler and the Nazis. And to help me do that, I'm delighted to welcome our panel of experts. Professor Nick Stargardt is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Oxford and is a fellow at Magdalen College there. One of the leading historians of Nazi Germany, his books include Witnesses of War and The German War, A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945. I'm also delighted to be joined by Katya Hoyer, an historian journalist, visiting research fellow at King's College London and fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
And her brilliant new book, Weimar, Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, has just been published. Well, you're both very welcome. And also, I suppose, just to flag for our listeners that some listeners may find some of this discussion, given the subject matter, upsetting. Well, you are both very welcome. And Katja, I might begin with you and I might begin with your wonderful new book about Weimar. And I wonder, why did you choose Weimar as the lens through which to examine Germany during this period?
Well, I think a lot has been written about this whole period already. So I was trying to find a new approach to it that would be less kind of abstract and less top-down, if you will. So I wanted a particular place and a particular group of people. that I could follow through the interval period. And the more I looked into this, the more I realized that actually the town of Weimar itself, where the Republic was founded, which is why we still call it the Weimar Republic today, has a lot of that history happening right in the town center. And so basically, apart from the Republic being founded there, you've got the modernist art and architecture movement, the Bauhaus, also founded there in 1919. And then later on, it becomes a very early Nazi stronghold as well, with Hitler visiting over 40 times and developing a very personal relationship to that town.
So it seemed a good place for me to go to because the people there basically saw history right in front of their doorstep.
And it very much is a town on the edge of catastrophe. And well, first of all, maybe why was Weimar chosen rather than Berlin?
So Berlin wasn't particularly safe in 1919 when the first post-war elections happened and also when the first parliament was supposed to sit together to try and decide what this new post-war Germany should look like. So they had to sit down somewhere to draft a constitution. And in Berlin you had communist uprisings, upheaval. Those were brutally crushed by the so-called tricorps troops, so basically former World War I veterans being unleashed onto those workers.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What motivated the Nazis to rise from the ruins of the Weimar Republic?
0:01–7:34
2
Why did Katja Hoyer choose Weimar as the lens to study the Nazi rise?
7:34–16:11
3
How did ordinary Weimar citizens react to the first Nazi rallies in the 1920s?
16:11–24:08
4
What role did economic hardship after the 1929 crash play in boosting Nazi support?
24:08–31:22
5
How did the Nazi regime shift from mass street violence to organized terror camps?
31:22–39:31
6
Why did many Germans continue to support the regime despite knowledge of the Holocaust?
39:31–48:45
7
What does the new Nazi‑party‑records search engine reveal about family histories?
48:45–52:21