PDF file: History - Advanced Higher - Germany - Education Scotland

PART THREE: THE THIRD REICH - SOURCES
SECTION ONE: POLITICS AND ECONOMICS - 1933-39
Source A
Ludendorff to Reich President Hindenburg in late January 1933.
You have delivered up our holy German Fatherland to one of the greatest
demagogues of all time. I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our
Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future
generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done.
Source B
Hitler’s ‘Appeal to the German People’ on 31 January 1933.
The task before us is the most difficult which has faced German statesmen in living
memory. But we all have unbounded confidence, for we believe in our nation and in
its eternal values. Farmers, workers, and the middle class must unite to contribute
the bricks wherewith to build the new Reich.
The National Government will therefore regard it as the first and supreme task to
restore to the German people unity of mind and will …
We, men of this Government, feel responsible to German history for the reconstitution
of a proper national body so that we may finally overcome the insanity of class and
class warfare. We do not recognise classes, but only the German people, its millions
of farmers, citizens and workers who together will either overcome this time of
distress or succumb to it.
(from Nazism:1919-1945 Vol I ,J Noakes and G Pridham (Eds), University of Exeter,
1983)
Source C
Goering on 2 March 1933
My main task will be to stamp out the Communist pestilence. I am going over to the
offensive all down the line … The Communists never expected 2,000 of their
top-swindlers to be sitting under lock and key just 48 hours later … I don’t need the
fire in the Reichstag to take action against Communism, and it’s no secret either that
if it had been up to Hitler and me the culprits would already be swinging from the
gallows.
(The Hitler State, Martin Broszat, Longman, 1981)
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 74