Nazi Germany

Great German Empire Großdeutsches Reicha
1933–1945
Flag National Insignia
Motto: "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." "One People, one Empire, one Leader."
Anthem: "Das Lied der Deutschen" b "Horst-Wessel-Lied"
Nazi Germany in 1941, prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Capital	Berlin
Common languages	German
Government	Dictatorship
Führer
• 1934–1945	Adolf Hitler
President
• 1919–1934	Paul von Hindenburg
• 1945	Karl Dönitz
Chancellor
• 1933–1945	Adolf Hitler
• 1945	Joseph Goebbels
• 1945	Ludwig von Krosigk
Historical era	Third Reich
• Election	January 30 1933
• Establishment	February 27, 1933
• Enabling Act	March 31, 1933
• Anschluss	April 10, 1938
• De facto defeat	May 2, 1945
• Surrender	May 8, 1945
• Disestablished	July 5 1945
Area
1939	633,786 km2 (244,706 sq mi)
Population
• 1939	69,314,000
Currency	Reichsmark
ISO 3166 code	DE
Preceded by Succeeded by Weimar Republic Saar (League of Nations) First Austrian Republic History of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938) File:Flag of Poland corrected (bordered).svg Second Polish Republic Grand Duchy of Luxembourg Allied Occupation Zones in Germany Allied-administered Austria History of Czechoslovakia (1945–1948) People's Republic of Poland File:Flag of Poland corrected (bordered).svg Luxembourg
a From 1943–45. From 1933 to 1943: Deutsches Reich ("German Empire"). The German state is identically the very same because it exists as a nation state since 1871. In 1949, at East–West Germany division there was no foundation of a new Germany, instead of that there were only formations or reorganizations. The GDR alleged an own foundation, and it saw itself as a succession of Germany (but in fact it only was part of it like West Germany). b Only first stanza was used. c Office declared vacant upon Hindenburg's death, allowing Chancellor Hitler to name himself "Führer and Chancellor".

Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich —officially called Deutsches Reich ("German Empire") and later Großdeutsches Reich ("Great German Empire") —refers to Germany in the years of 1933 to 1945, when it was governed by the dictatorship of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party), abbreviated as Nazi Party, with Adolf Hitler as elected chancellor and, from 1934, as head of state called the Führer (Leader) who ruled Germany under a totalitarian dictatorship until 1945.

The policies pursued by Nazi Germany, based on the concept of Lebensraum, "Aryan", Nordic racial purity, anti-Semitism, revenge for Germany's territorial losses and perceived loss of national pride at the Treaty of Versailles, and anti-communism directed at the Soviet Union were among the leading causes of the Second World War and the Nazi regime's systematic mass murder of millions of Jews and other minorities in the genocide known as the Holocaust or Shoah.

Territory

In addition to Weimar-era Germany proper, the Reich came to include areas with ethnic German populations such as Austria, the Sudetenland and the territory of Memel in the years leading up to the war.

Other regions were acquired only after the outbreak of conflict, but had been part of Imperial Germany prior to the Treaty of Versailles and had varying German populations: Eupen-et-Malmédy, Alsace-Lorraine, Danzig and parts of Poland. Some other acquired regions, especially parts of Slovenia and Polish Galicia, had once been part of the Austrian Empire. In addition, from 1939 to 1945, the Reich ruled Bohemia and Moravia as a Protectorate, subjugated prior to the start of the world war. Czech Silesia was incorporated into the province of Silesia during the same period. In 1942, Luxembourg was directly annexed into Germany. Central Poland and Polish Galicia, were run by a protectorate government called the General Government. Central Poland had not been part of any German state for centuries though Galicia had been part of the Austrian empire. By late 1943, Germany not only seized South Tyrol and Istria which had been under Austrian rule before 1918, but also seized Venice from its erstwhile ally Italy after it capitulated to the Allies. The states composing Germany were restricted in sovereignty by the Nazi regime and replaced in their political rights by Gaus, districts led by representatives called Gauleiter who were completely loyal to the central government. However some titles such as the Prime Minister of Prussia, which was legally given to the head of government, still remained.

Outside of what was directly annexed into Germany, were regional territories created in occupied land. In the occupied areas of the Soviet Union, occupational territories were called Reichskommissarat. These included Reichskommissariat Ostland and Reichskommissariat Ukraine, which were designed to foster German colonization of eastern Europe. In northern and western Europe, occupation authorities aided by Nazi sympathizers ran the governments of Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and northern France (after 1942, all of France). In parts of northern France, travel restrictions were imposed by the Nazi occupation authorities, as the Nazi regime intended to colonize those areas with German citizens.

The Reich's borders had changed de facto well before its military defeat in May 1945, as the German population fled westward from the advancing Red Army and the Western Allies pressed eastward from France. By the end of the war, a small strip of land stretching from Austria to Bohemia and Moravia — as well as a few other isolated regions — were the only areas not under Allied control. Upon its defeat, the Reich was in a state of debellation and was replaced by occupation zones administrated by France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. The prewar German lands east of the Oder-Neisse line and Stettin and its surrounding area were permanently sundered from Germany for annexation by Poland and the Soviet Union.

Names

The Nazi Party used the terms Drittes Reich and Tausendjähriges Reich ("Thousand-Year Empire") to describe the greater German ethnic empire they wished to forge. The term Third Reich referred to the Nazi recognition of former incarnations of important German realms while alluding to envisioned future prosperity and the new nation's alleged destiny. But on 10 July 1939, it was dropped from propaganda at Hitler's behest. The Holy Roman Empire ("Heiliges Römisches Reich", later with the appendage "Deutscher Nation"), deemed the First Empire or First Reich, had lasted almost a thousand years from 843 to 1806. The term Tausendjähriges Reich was used only briefly and also dropped from propaganda in 1939, officially to avoid mockery and possibly to even avoid religious connotations. In speeches, books and articles about the Third Reich after 8 May 1945, the phrase has taken on a new meaning and the early Nazi professions about a "thousand year" empire are often juxtaposed against the twelve years that the Third Reich actually existed.

The official name of Germany did not change after the Nazis came to power in 1933. It remained Deutsches Reich (literally translated as German Realm), the same as it had been since 1871. It was only in 1943 that the Nazi government officially modified the name of Germany, calling it Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Realm), which remained in use until the defeat of Nazi Germany in May, 1945.

Third Reich referred to a continuation of a German or Germanic empire, the First Reich being that of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Second Reich that of the establishment of the German Empire in 1871 until its replacement by the Weimar Republic following the abolition of the Empire in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

The term was taken by the Nazis from the 1923 book Das Dritte Reich ("The Third Reich"), by the cultural historian and writer Arthur Moeller van den Bruck - who was an anti-Versailles German nationalist, but far from enthusiastic about Hitler whom he met in 1922.

Nazi ideology

The Nazi regime took its ideological basis mainly from the ideals of Pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism, and Social Darwinism. Propaganda accredited all of the ideals and successes of the regime to regime's leader, or Führer, Adolf Hitler, who was portrayed by himself and propaganda as the genius behind the Nazi party's success and Germany's saviour. Hitler's ability to grasp the attention of audiences through his powerful speeches helped him earn a cult following by his Nazi followers.

The Nazis endorsed the concept of "Großdeutschland", or Greater Germany, and believed that the incorporation of the Germanic people into one nation was a vital step towards their national success. While the Nazis proposed the creation of an all-encompassing German ethnic State, others, particularly non-Germans, were in strong opposition to the idea, believing that a very large and powerful Germany would be to the disadvantage of the rest of Europe. Similarly, the "German problem", as it is often referred to in English scholarship, focuses on the issue of administration of Germanic regions within Northern and Central Europe, an important theme throughout German history. The "logic" of keeping Germany small worked in the favor of its principal economic rivals, and had been a driving force in the recreation of a Polish state. The goal was to create numerous counterweights in order to "balance out Germany's power." Regardless of one's position on these matters, it was the love affair with the Volk concept that led to Germany's expansion, culminating in World War II. Two important issues were administration of the Polish corridor and Danzig's incorporation into the Reich. As a further extension of racial policy, the Lebensraum program, adapted in the midst of the war, pertained to similar interests; it was decided that Eastern Europe would be settled with ethnic Germans, and the Slavic population who met the Nazi racial standard would be absorbed into the Reich. Those not fitting the racial standards were to be used as cheap labour force or deported eastward.

Racism was an important aspect of society within the Third Reich. The Nazis also combined anti-Semitism with anti-Communist ideology and regarded the leftist movement - as well as international market capitalism - as the work of "Conspiratorial Jewry". They referred to this so-called movement as the "Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans."[1] This platform manifested itself in the displacement, internment and later, the systematic extermination of an estimated eleven to twelve million people in the midst of World War II, roughly half of whom being Jews targeted in what is historically remembered as the Holocaust (Shoah), and another 100,000-1,000,000 being Roma, who were murdered in what they call the Porajmos. Other victims of Nazi persecution included Slavic populations in and outside of Slavic countries, blacks, political opponents, social outcasts, homosexuals, religious dissidents such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Freemasons, and unyielding Church-affiliated leadership (Confessing Church of German Lutherans and resisting Roman Catholic clergy).

World War II officially began after Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, which led to France and the United Kingdom both declaring war on Nazi Germany. The global conflict that followed left Europe in ruins and led to the deaths of roughly sixty-two million people.

Government

In the wake of the loss of land and perceived national humiliation imposed through the Treaty of Versailles, civil unrest, the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s causes by the Crash of '29 in the U.S., the counter-traditionalism of the Weimar period and the threat of Soviet-sponsored communism in Germany, many voters began turning their support towards the Nazi Party, which promised strong government, an end to civil unrest, radical changes to economic policy, cultural renewal based on traditionalism, military rearmament in opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, and to bring back national pride that the Nazis claimed was lost in the Treaty of Versailles and the creation of liberal democracy.^[5]. The Dolchstosslegende figured prominently. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg after attempts by General Kurt von Schleicher to form a viable government failed. Hindenburg was put under pressure by Hitler through his son Oskar von Hindenburg, as well as intrigue from former Chancellor Franz von Papen following his collection of participating financial interests and own ambitions to combat communism. Even though the Nazi Party had gained the largest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, they had no majority of their own, and just a slim majority in parliament with their Papen-proposed Nationalist DNVP-NSDAP coalition. This coalition ruled through accepted continuance of the Presidential decree, issued under Article 48 of the 1919 constitution.

The Nazi attacks on the Jews in the early months of 1933 marked the first step in a longer-term process of removing them from German society. By the summer of 1933, this process was on its way to becoming quite disastrous. This process also marked the core of Hitler's "cultural revolution" whereby the Nazi mind had begun to transform in a manner conducive to anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and anti-liberalism.

Consolidation of power

March at Reichsparteitag 1935

The new government installed a totalitarian dictatorship in a series of measures in quick succession (see Gleichschaltung for details).

On the night of February 27th, the Reichstag building was set on fire, and inside a Dutch council communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was found. He was arrested and charged with starting the fire. Historians still cannot agree on who was to blame for the Reichstag fire as it could have been either; Van der Lubbe acting alone, Van der Lubbe acting as part of a Communist plot, or the Nazis who started the fire themselves in order to gain full power. Whatever the case may be, Van der Lubbe was the scapegoat the Nazis needed in order to convince the German people that communists were trying to take over. This event gave the Nazis an excuse to act against the thousands of anarchists, socialists and communists scattered throughout the Reich (many were sent to the Dachau concentration camp), thus removing political dissidents. The event was quickly followed by the Reichstag Fire Decree, rescinding habeas corpus and other civil liberties.

The Enabling Act was passed in March 1933, with 444 votes, to the 94 of the remaining Social Democrats. The act gave the government (and thus effectively the Nazi Party) legislative powers and also authorized it to deviate from the provisions of the constitution for 4 years. With these powers, Hitler removed the remaining opposition and turned the Weimar Republic into the "Third Reich".

In order for Hitler to create the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, it had to become a one party state. This was easily achieved by the Nazis as by June 1933 the Social Democrats had been banned, the Communists had been banned and the German Nationalists (DNVP), German People's Party (DVP) and German Democratic Party (DDP) had all been forced to disband. The remaining Catholic Centre Party disbanded themselves on the 5th July 1933 after guarantees over catholic education and youth groups. On the 14th July 1933 Germany officially declared a one party state with the passing of the Law against the formation of parties.

Further consolidation of power was achieved on 30 January 1934, with the Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reichs (Act to rebuild the Reich). The act changed the highly decentralized federal Germany of the Weimar era into a centralized state. It disbanded state parliaments, transferring sovereign rights of the states to the Reich central government and put the state administrations under the control of the Reich administration.

Only the army remained independent from Nazi control. The German army had traditionally been somewhat separate from the government. The Nazi quasi-military SA expected top positions in the new power structure. Wanting to preserve good relations with the army, on the night of 30 June 1934, Hitler initiated the violent Night of the Long Knives, a purge of the leadership ranks of Röhm's SA as well as other political enemies, carried out by another, more elitist, Nazi organization, the SS.

At the death of president Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, the Nazi-controlled Reichstag merged the offices of Reichspräsident and Reichskanzler and reinstalled Hitler with the new title Führer und Reichskanzler. Until the death of Hindenburg, the army did not follow Hitler. However, with the death of Hindenburg, the entire army swore their obedience to Hitler.

The inception of the Gestapo, police acting outside of any civil authority, highlighted the Nazis' intention to use powerful, coercive means to directly control German society. Soon, an army estimated to be of about 100,000 spies and infiltrators operated throughout Germany, reporting to Nazi officials the activities of any critics or dissenters. Most ordinary Germans, happy with the improving economy and better standard of living, remained obedient and quiet, but many political opponents, especially communists and Marxist or international socialists, were reported by omnipresent eavesdropping spies, and put in prison camps where they were severely mistreated, and many tortured and killed. It is estimated that tens of thousands of political victims died or disappeared in the first few years of Nazi rule.

Social policy

Nazi social policy was dominated by the desire to create a "perfect" race and demanded a racially pure society. The effects of Nazi social policy in Germany was divided between those considered to be "Aryan" and those considered "non-Aryan", Jewish, or part of other minority groups. For "Aryan" Germans, a number of social policies put through by the regime to benefit them were remarkably progressive for the time, including: advanced health care studies (including opposition to the use of tobacco), an end to official stigmatization towards Aryan children who were born from parents outside of marriage, as well as giving financial assistance to Aryan German families who beared children. For "non-Aryans", specifically Jews, Roma, and other kinds of minorities, they faced racist laws, lack of any form of social assistance or help, and ethnic persecution and later genocide. The Nazis declared different types of minorities. The treatment of specified minorities was so poor that animals had more rights than these human beings, harmful and cruel experiments on animals were banned in Nazi Germany while harmful and cruel experiments were allowed to happen to "shameful life" (German: "unwertes Leben", the Nazi term for Jews and gypsies).

Racial Policy

See also: Racial policy of Nazi Germany

The "yellow badge" required to be attached to clothing worn by Jews in public in Nazi Germany and occupied territories.

The Nazi Party pursued its racial policy aims through persecution and killing of those considered "impure," especially targeting minority groups such as Jews, Roma (a.k.a. Gypsies), coloured people, Jehovah's Witnesses [2], Slavs, people with mental or physical disabilities, and homosexuals.

File:Kristallnacht example of physical damage.jpg

The aftermath of Kristallnacht, Jewish shops vandalized.

In the years following the Nazi rise to power, many Jews fled the country and were encouraged to do so. By the time the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, Jews were stripped of their German citizenship and denied government employment. Most Jews employed by Germans lost their jobs at this time, which were being taken by unemployed Germans. Notably, the Nazi government attempted to send 17,000 German Jews of Polish descent back to Poland, a decision which led to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew living in France. This provided the pretext for a pogrom the Nazi Party incited against the Jews on 9 November 1938, which specifically targeted Jewish businesses. The event was called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass, literally "Crystal Night"); the euphemism was used because the numerous broken windows made the streets look as if covered with crystals. By September 1939, more than 200,000 Jews had left Germany, with the Nazi government seizing any property they left behind.

File:Buchenwald-bei-Weimar-am-24-April-1945.gif

A member of the U.S. Congressional Nazi crimes committee visiting Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after its liberation.

The Nazis also undertook programs targeting "weak" or "unfit" people, such as the T-4 Euthanasia Program, killing tens of thousands of disabled and sick Germans in an effort to "maintain the purity of the German Master race" (German: Herrenvolk) as described by Nazi propagandists. The techniques of mass killing developed in these efforts would later be used in the Holocaust. Under a law passed in 1933, the Nazi regime carried out the compulsory sterilization of over 400,000 individuals labeled as having hereditary defects, ranging from mental illness to alcoholism.

Another component of the Nazi programme of creating racial purity was the Lebensborn, or "Fountain of Life" programme founded in 1936. The programme was aimed at encouraging German soldiers — mainly SS — to reproduce. This included offering SS families support services (including the adoption of racially pure children into suitable SS families) and accommodating racially-valuable women, pregnant with mainly SS men's children, in care homes in Germany and throughout Occupied Europe. Lebensborn also expanded to encompass the placing of racially pure children forcibly seized from occupied countries — such as Poland — with German families.

In the 1930s, plans to isolate and eventually eliminate Jews completely in Germany began with the construction of ghettos, concentration camps and labour camps. In 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, Nazi officials made clear their intention to elliminate the Jews of Europe as quickly as possible, when they discussed the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Extermination camps like Auschwitz used gas chambers to kill as many Jews as possible and cremated the bodies. By 1945, a number of concentration camps had been liberated by Allied forces who found the survivors to be severely malnourished from starvation. The Allies also found evidence that the Nazis were profiteering off of the mass murder of Jews not only by confiscating their property and personal valuables but also by extracting gold-fillings from the bodies of some Jews held in concentration camps.

Social Welfare

Recent research by academics such as Götz Aly has emphasized the role of the extensive Nazi social welfare programs that supposedly helped maintain public support for the regime that lasted long into the war. The idea of a national German community was heavily focused on, and labor and entertainment — from festivals, to vacation trips and traveling cinemas — were all made a part of the "Strength through Joy" (Kraft durch Freude) program. Also crucial to the building of loyalty and comradeship was the implementation of the National Labor Service and the Hitler Youth Organization, with the former being compulsory and the latter consisting of nearly six million boys and girls. In addition to this, a number of architectural projects were undertaken. The construction of the Autobahn made it the first National Motor Highway system in the world. Between 1933 and 1936, Germany outpaced the United States in construction, automobile production and employment.

Public Health

According to the research of Robert N. Proctor for his book "The Nazi War on cancer", Nazi Germany had arguably the most powerful anti-tobacco movement in the world. Anti-tobacco research received a strong backing from the government, and German scientists proved that cigarette smoke could cause cancer. German pioneering research on experimental epidemiology lead to the 1939 paper by Franz H. Müller, and the 1943 paper by Eberhard Schairer and Erich Schöniger which convincingly demonstrated that tobacco smoking was a main culprit in lung-cancer. The government urged German doctors to council patients against tobacco use.

German research on the dangers of tobacco was silenced after the war, and the dangers of tobacco had to be rediscovered by American and English scientists in the early 1950s, with a medical consensus arising in the early 1960s.

German scientists also proved that asbestos was a health hazard, and in 1943, as the first nation in the world, recognized the diseases caused by asbestos, e.g. lung cancer, as occupational illnesses eligible for compensation. The German asbestos-cancer research was later used by American lawyers doing battle against the JohnsManville corporation.

As part of the General public health campaign in Nazi Germany water supplies were cleaned up, lead and mercury were removed from consumer products, and women were urged to undergo regular screenings for breast cancer.

Women's Rights

The Nazis opposed women's emancipation and opposed the feminist movement, claiming that it was Jewish-led and was bad for both women and men. The Nazi regime advocated a patriarchial society in which German women would recognize the "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home." [[3]] Hitler claimed that women taking vital jobs away from men during the Great Depression was economically bad for families in that women were only paid 66% of what men earned.[[4]] At the same time for calling for women to leave work, the regime called for women to be actively supportive of the state regarding women's affairs. In 1933, Hitler appointed Gertrud Scholtz-Klink as the Realm's Women's Leader, who instructed women that their primary role in society was to bear children and that women should be subservient to men, once saying "the mission of woman is to minister in the home and in her profession to the needs of life from the first to last moment of man's existence." [[5]]. Organizations were made for the indoctrination of Nazi values to German women. Such organizations included the Jungmädel (Young Girls) section of the Hitler Youth for girls from the age 10 to 14, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (German Girl's League) for young women from 14 to 18.

Animal Protection Policy

One of the first acts of the new regime was to enact an animal protection law. The implemented law on animal protection was stringent and restricted research. [6] The law restricted the use of animals for research in experiments .

Economic policy

File:20 Deutschmark note 3rd Reich.jpg

The Reichsmark gained significant value during the Third Reich.

When the Nazis came to power the most pressing issue was an unemployment rate of close to 30%. The economic management of the state was first given to respected banker Hjalmar Schacht. Under his guidance, a new economic policy to elevate the nation was drafted. One of the first actions was to destroy the trade unions and impose strict wage controls.

The government then expanded the money supply through massive deficit spending. However at the same time the government imposed a 4.5% interest rate ceiling, creating a massive shortage in borrowable funds. This was resolved by setting up a series of dummy companies that would pay for goods with bonds. The most famous of these was the MEFO company, and these bonds used as currency became known as MEFO bills. While it was promised that these bonds could eventually be exchanged for real money, the repayment was put off until after the collapse of the Reich. These complicated manoeuvres also helped conceal armament expenditures that violated the Treaty of Versailles.

According to economic theory, price control combined with a large increase in the money supply should have produced a large black market, but harsh penalties that saw violators sent to concentration camps or even shot prevented this development. Repressive measures also kept volatility low, reducing inflationary pressures. New policies also limited imports of consumer goods and focused on producing exports. International trade was greatly reduced remaining at about a third of 1929 levels throughout the Nazi period. Currency controls were extended, leading to a considerable overvaluation of the Reichsmark. These policies were successful in cutting unemployment dramatically.

Most industry was not nationalized; however, industry was closely regulated with quotas and requirements to use domestic resources. These regulations were set by administrative committees composed of government and business officials. Competition was limited as major companies were organized into cartels through these administrative committees. Selective nationalization was used against businesses that failed to agree to these arrangements. The banks, which had been nationalized by the Weimar Republic, were returned to their owners and each administrative committee had a bank as member to finance the schemes.

While the strict state intervention into the economy, and the massive rearmament policy, led to full employment during the 1930s, real wages in Germany dropped by roughly 25% between 1933 and 1938. [7] Trade unions were abolished, as well as collective bargaining and the right to strike. [8] The right to quit also disappeared: Labour books were introduced in 1935, and required the consent of the previous employer in order to be hired for another job. [9]

The German economy was transferred to the leadership of Hermann Göring when, on 18 October, 1936, the German Reichstag announced the formation of a Four-Year Plan. The Nazi economic plan aimed to achieve a number of objectives. Under the leadership of Fritz Todt, a massive public works project, the Reichsarbeitsdienst, was started, rivalling Roosevelt's New Deal in both size and scope. It functioned as a military-like unit, its most notable achievements being the network of Autobahnen and, once the war started, the building of bunkers, underground facilities and entrenchments all over Europe.

Another part of the new German economy was massive rearmament, with the goal being to expand the 100,000-strong German Army into a force of millions. The Four-Year Plan was discussed in the controversial Hossbach Memorandum, which provides the "minutes" from one of Hitler's briefings. Some use the Hossbach Memorandum to show that Hitler planned a war in Eastern Europe in the pursuit of Lebensraum, believing that the Western powers of the United Kingdom and France would not intervene, leaving him free to take over the USSR, the "natural enemy" of Germany. However, this intentionalist view is disputed.

Nevertheless, the war came and although the Four-Year Plan technically expired in 1940, Hermann Göring had built up a power base in the "Office of the Four-Year Plan" that effectively controlled all German economic and production matters by this point in time. In 1942, the growing burdens of the war and the death of Todt saw the economy move to a full war economy under Albert Speer.

Art and Culture

Olympic Stadium
photo Josef Jindřich Šechtl

Traditional and masculine values in German culture were sought to be restored by the regime. All attempts at "artistic experimentation" and "sexual freedom" were repressed. The visual arts were strictly monitored and traditional, focusing on exemplifying Germanic themes, racial purity, militarism, heroism, power, strength, and obediance. Modern abstract art and avant-garde art was removed from museums and put on special display as "degenerate art", where it was to be ridiculed. In one notable example on 31 March 1937, huge crowds stood in line to view a special display of "degenerate art" in Munich, while a concurrent exhibition of 900 works personally approved by Adolf Hitler attracted a tiny, unenthusiastic gathering. Art forms considered to be degenerate included Dada, Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Impressionism, New Objectivity, and Surrealism.

Literature made by Jewish, other non-Aryans, or authors opposed to the Nazis were destroyed by the regime. The most infamous destruction of literature was the book burnings of 1933.

In 1933, Nazis burned works of Jewish authors, and other works considered "un-German" in Berlin.

Two major displays of Nazi German art and culture were at the 1936 Summer Olympics and at the German pavillion at the 1937 International Exposition or world fair in Paris. The 1936 Olympics was meant to display to the world the Aryan superiority of Germany to other nations. German athletes were carefully chosen not only for strength but for Aryan appearance. However one common belief of Hitler snubbing African-American athlete Jesse Owens has recently been discovered to be technically incorrect, it was African-American athlete Cornelius Cooper Johnson who was believed to have been snubbed by Hitler, who left the medal ceremonies after awarding a German and a Finn medals. Hitler claimed it was not a snub, but that he had official business to attend to which caused him to depart. Hitler was criticized for this and the Olympic committee officials then insisted Hitler greet each and every medalist or none at all. Hitler opted for the latter and skipped all further medal presentations. When Jesse Owens won his four medals, Hitler was not attending any of the medal ceremonies.

Despite the official attempt to forge a pure Germanic culture, architecture under Hitler's personal guidance, was neoclassical, a style based on architecture of ancient Rome. Various Roman buildings were examined by state architect Albert Speer for architectural designs for state buildings. One design that was pursued but never build, was a gigantic version of the Pantheon in Rome, called the Volkshalle to be the semi-religious centre of Nazism in a renamed Berlin called Germania, that was to be the "world capital" (Welthauptstadt). The design was impractical to construct because of its size and was pushed aside for attention to the war effort in World War II.

Environmental Policy

In recent years a link between Nazi Germany and environmentalism has been discovered in a number of articles and books. According to reviews of the book "How Green Were the Nazis?" this is one of the first more balanced analyses of the topic to emerge.

In 1935 the regime enacted the "Reich Nature Protection Act", while not a purely Nazi piece of legislation since parts of its influences pre-dated the Nazi rise to power, it nevertheless reflected Nazi ideology. The concept of the "Dauerwald" was promoted, best translated as the "perpetual forest", which included concepts such as forest management and protection. Efforts were also made to curb air-pollution.

In practice, the enacted laws and policies met resistance from various ministries that sought to undermine them, and from the priority that the war-effort took to environmental protection. Environmentalism was in the end often sacrificed for the sake of other goals of the state.

In the end some of the efforts were negated by the Allied occupation. Timber exports from the U.S. occupation zone were particularly heavy. Sources in the U.S. government stated that the purpose of this was the "ultimate destruction of the war potential of German forests." As a consequence of the practiced clear-felling extensive deforestation resulted which could "be replaced only by long forestry development over perhaps a century."

World War II

See also: European Theatre of World War II and History of Germany during World War II

German and Axis allies' conquests (in blue) in Europe during World War II.

The "Danzig crisis" peaked in the months after Poland rejected Nazi Germany's initial offer regarding both the Free City of Danzig and the Polish Corridor. After a series of ultimatums, the Germans broke from diplomatic relations and shortly thereafter, Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. This led to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe when on 3 September 1939, the United Kingdom and France both declared war on Germany. The Phony War followed. On 9 April 1940 the Germans struck north against Denmark and Norway, in part to secure the safety of continuing iron ore supplies from Sweden through Norwegian coastal waters. British and French forces landed in the north, only to be defeated in the ensuing Norwegian Campaign. In May, the Phony War ended when despite the protestations of many of his advisors, Hitler took a gamble and sent German forces into France and the Low Countries. The Battle of France was an overwhelming German victory. Later that year, Germany subjected the United Kingdom to heavy bombing during the Battle of Britain, and deliberately bombed civilian areas London. This may have served two purposes, either as a precursor to Operation Sea Lion or it may have been an effort to dissuade the British populace from continuing to support the war. Regardless, the United Kingdom refused to capitulate and eventually Sea Lion was indefinitely postponed in favor of Operation Barbarossa.

Barbarossa too was briefly postponed while Hitler's attention was diverted to bail out his failing Italian ally in North Africa and the Balkans. The Afrika Korps arrived in Libya in February of 1941. In what was to be one of many advances in the North African Campaign, the Germans took back much of what the Italians had so recently given up. In April, the Germans then launched an invasion of Yugoslavia. This was followed by the Battle of Greece and the Battle of Crete. But, by the time North Africa and the Balkans were subdued, February, March, April, and May were lost. Because of the diversions in North Africa and the Balkans, the Germans were not able to launch Barbarossa until late in June.

File:Heinkel He III over London 7 Sep 1940.jpg

German bomber over London in 1940.

In the West, after the failure of crippling the United Kingdom in the Battle of Britain, Germany turned to its navy, the Kriegsmarine, to raid the North Atlantic of convoys sending Britain needed supplies from the United States, Canada, and British colonies. British forces were forced to spread out to protect their convoys from submarine attacks by German U-Boats, as well as stopping surface raiders. The British successfully repelled many German surface raiding attempts, the most famous prevention and battle being with the German battleship Bismarck which was pursued and sunk by British naval forces in 1941. Attacks by U-Boats however, proved to be very successful and the most serious in damaging supply lines to Britain. Over time, the Allies developed improved defence tactics and new escorts that managed to reduce the numbers of merchant ships sunk. The German war machine managed to keep up with the steady losses of U-Boats because of their simple designs which allowed the U-Boats to be mass-produced and still remain a threat to the Allies throughout the war.

Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and on the eve of the invasion, Hitler's former deputy, Rudolf Hess, attempted to negotiate terms of peace with the United Kingdom in an unofficial private meeting after crash-landing in Scotland. These attempts failed and he was arrested.

By late 1941, Germany and her allies controlled almost all of mainland and Baltic Europe with the exception of neutral Switzerland, Sweden, Spain (debated whether it was an Axis ally), Portugal (debated), Liechenstein, Andorra, Vatican City (arguably an Italian dependent state), and Monaco. On the eastern front, the German Army was at the gates of Moscow and engaged in a long winter war with the Red Army. Eventually the German army was forced out of Moscow, but held much of the Baltic territories spanning to the Black Sea.

Nazi Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December, 1941, four days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. This allowed German submarines in the Atlantic to fight US convoys that had been supporting the United Kingdom and although Nazi hubris is often cited, Hitler presumably sought the further support of Japan. He was convinced of the United States' aggressive intentions following the leaking of Rainbow Five and hearing of the foreboding content of Franklin Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor speech. Before then, Germany had practiced its own policy of appeasement, taking drastic precautions in order to avoid the United States' entry into the war.

File:Einsatzgruppen-Killingfull.jpg

A member of Einsatzgruppe D murders a Jew who is kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. The back of the photo is inscribed "The last Jew in Vinnista".

The persecution of minorities and "undesirables" continued both in Germany and the occupied countries. From 1941 onward, Jews were required to wear a yellow badge in public and most were transferred to ghettos, where they remained isolated from the rest of the population. In January 1942, at the Wannsee Conference and under the supervision of Reinhard Heydrich, a plan for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (Endlösung der Judenfrage) in Europe was hatched. From then until the end of the war some six million Jews and many others, including homosexuals, Slavs, and political prisoners, were systematically killed. In addition, more than ten million people were put into forced labor. This genocide is called the Holocaust in English and the Shoah in Hebrew. Thousands were shipped daily to extermination camps (Vernichtungslager, sometimes called "death factories") and concentration camps (Konzentrationslager, KZ), some of which were originally detention centers but later converted into death camps for the purpose of killing their inmates.

Parallel to the Holocaust, the Nazis conducted a ruthless program of conquest and exploitation over the captured Soviet and Polish territories and their Slavic populations as part of their Generalplan Ost. According to estimates, 20 million Soviet civilians, three million non-Jewish Poles, and seven million Red Army soldiers died under Nazi maltreatment in what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War. The Nazis' plan was to extend German Lebensraum ("living space") eastward, a foreseen consequence of the war in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, said by the Nazis to have been waged in order "to defend Western Civilization against Bolshevism". Due to many of the atrocities suffered under Stalin, the Nazi message was interpreted by many to be legitimate. Many Ukranians, Balts and other disillusioned Soviets fought, or at least expected to fight, with the Germans, not to mention other Europeans enlisted in numerous Schutzstaffel divisions.

American soldiers cross the Siegfried Line, the border between Germany and France.

As the Soviet war economy recovered despite the loss of industrial territory to the German occupiers, the Red Army put up a strong front against the German army. By 1943 the Soviets had defeated the Germans at Stalingrad and began the push westward, winning the tank battle at Kursk-Orel in July.

From 1942 on, the Western Allies stepped up bombing raids and began plans to land on German-occupied territory. Of great controversy, were the Allied bombings of German cities, which resulted in the complete destruction of the cities of Cologne and Dresden as well as others. These bombings resulted in numerous civilian casualties and severe hardship for the survivors living amid the destroyed infrastructure. The invasion of Italy as well as the collapse of the Fascist regime there, caused German forces to be spread thin to fight the two fronts. The German Army was pushed back to the borders of Poland by February 1944, following the great success of Operation Bagration. The Allies opened a Western Front in June 1944 at Normandy, a year and a half after the Soviets turned the tide on the Eastern Front. With a three front campaign, depleting oil and supply lines, and constant bombing by the Allies, German occupied territory was slowly taken by the Allies. As the Red army neared East Prussia, German civilians began to flee from East Prussia, West Prussia and Silesia en masse westward, fearing persecution by Soviet soldiers. Though there were atrocities committed by the western allies, many Germans believed that they would be safer under occupation by the Western Allied forces, than under the Soviet forces, of whom both real and propaganda-told stories of atrocities terrified the German populations of Soviet occupation.

More than 2 million German soldiers died in World War II. German paratroopers (Fallschirmjäger) killed by American soldiers are stacked in a cart.

By early 1945, Soviet forces surrounded Berlin, American and British forces had taken most of western Germany and Soviet troops moving westward met Allied troops moving eastward at Torgau at the Elbe on April 26 1945 (Cohen). With Berlin under siege, Hitler and other key members of the Nazi regime were forced to live in the armoured underground Führerbunker while the upper terrain of Berlin was constantly shelled by the Red Army. Despite evident total defeat, Hitler refused to surrender and intense street fighting continued in the war-torn ruins of Berlin between remnant German army forces, Hitler Youth, and the Waffen SS against the Red Army. This battle was known as the Battle of Berlin. The German forces by this time were severely depleted, large numbers of German children and the elderly were forced into conscription by the Nazis to fight against the Red Army in the remaining pockets of territory not controlled by the Red Army in Berlin.

The Soviet Red Army takes the Reichstag in the ruins of Berlin in the last days of the war.

On April 30 1945, as the Battle for Berlin raged and the city was being over-run by Soviet forces, Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker. Two days later, on 2 May, German General Helmuth Weidling unconditionally surrendered Berlin to Soviet General Vasily Chuikov.

Hitler was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as Reich President only. Dönitz was not to replace Hitler as the Führer or even as the Reich Chancellor. The caretaker government Dönitz established near the Danish border unsuccessfully sought a separate peace with the Western Allies. On 4 May–8 May 1945, the remaining German armed forces throughout Europe surrendered unconditionally (German Instrument of Surrender, 1945). This was the end of Nazi Germany.

With the creation of the Allied Control Council on 5 July 1945, the four Allied powers "assume[d] supreme authority with respect to Germany" (Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany, US Department of State, Treaties and Other International Acts Series, No. 1520).

The post-war period

See also: Nuremberg Trials, Expulsion of Germans after World War II

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Nuremberg lies in hazy ruins shortly after the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces. Like many German cities, it had been devastated by Allied carpet bombing.

The Potsdam Conference in August 1945 created arrangements and outline for new government for the post-war Germany as well as war reparations and resettlement. All German annexations in Europe after 1937, such as the Sudetenland, were reversed, and in addition Germany's eastern border was shifted westwards to the Oder-Neisse line, effectively reducing Germany in size by approximately 25% compared to her 1937 border. The territories east of the new border comprised East Prussia, Silesia, West Prussia, two thirds of Pomerania, and even parts of Brandenburg. These areas were mainly agricultural, with the exception of Upper Silesia which was the second largest center of German heavy industry. France took control of a large part of Germany's remaining coal deposits. Virtually all Germans in Central Europe outside of Germany and Austria were subsequently over a period of several years expelled, affecting about seventeen million ethnic Germans. Most casualty estimates of this expulsion range between 1 to 2 million dead. The French, U.S. and British occupation zones later became West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany), while the Soviet zone became the communist East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, excluding sections of Berlin). The initial repressive occupation policy in Germany by the Western Allies was reversed after a few years when the Cold War made the Germans important as allies against communism. West Germany recovered economically by the 1960s, being called the economic miracle (German term Wirtschaftswunder), mainly due to the currency reform of 1948 which replaced the Reichsmark with the Deutsche Mark as legal tender, halting rampant inflation, but also to lesser degree helped by economic aid through the Marshall Plan which was extended to also include West Germany in 1949, and upheld thanks to fiscal policy and intense labor, eventually leading to labor shortages. Allied dismantling of West German industry was finally halted in 1950. In 1955 the military occupation of West Germany was ended. East Germany recovered at a slower pace under Communism until 1990, due to reparations paid to the Soviet Union and the effects of the centrally planned economy. Germany regained full sovereignty in 1991.

The US army blows up the Swastika atop the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg.

After the war, surviving Nazi leaders were put on trial by an Allied tribunal at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. A minority were sentenced to death and executed, but a number were jailed and then released by the mid-1950s due to poor health and old age. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, some renewed efforts were made in West Germany to take those who were directly responsible for "crimes against humanity" to court (e.g. Auschwitz trials). However, many of the less prominent leaders continued to live well into the 1980s and 1990s.

The victorious Allies outlawed the Nazi Party, its subsidiary organizations, and most symbols and emblems (including the swastika in most manifestations) throughout Germany and Austria; this prohibition remains in force to the present (2007). In all non-fascist European countries legal purges were established to punish the members of the former Nazi and Fascist parties. Even there, however, some of the former leaders found ways to accommodate themselves under the new circumstances.

Organization of the Third Reich

The leaders of Nazi Germany created a large number of different organizations for the purpose of helping them stay in power. They rearmed and strengthened the military, set up an extensive state security apparatus and created their own personal party army, the Waffen-SS.

The government of Nazi Germany gradually formed into a process known as "working towards the Führer." Although Hitler was the undisputable ideological force behind the third Reich, as leader of the country, he was very lazy, especially in the pre-war years, spending much of his time relaxing in his mountain retreat. Because of this, a system of government was formed whereby leading Nazi officials were forced to interpret Hitler's random speeches and rants on government policies, often based on chance overhearings, or off-the-cuff remarks, and turn them into legislation. This created an elite of ambitious Nazis, all of whom were desperate to win the approval of the Führer, and all of whom despised one another. Any government member could take one of Hitler's comments, and turn it into a new law, of which Hitler would casually either approve or disapprove when he finally heard about it. This became known as "working towards the Führer", as the government was not a co-ordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of individuals each trying to gain more power and influence over the Führer. This often made government very convoluted and divided, especially with Hitler's vague policy of creating a multitute of often very similar posts. The process allowed more unscrupulous and ambitious Nazis to get away with implementing the more radical and extreme elements of Hitler's ideology, such as anti-Semitism, and in doing so win political favour. Protected by Goebbels' extremely effective propaganda machine, which portrayed the government as a dedicated, dutiful and efficient outfit, the dog-eat-dog competition, and chaotic legislation was allowed to escalate out of control. Historical opinion is divided between "intentionalists" who believe that Hitler created this system as the only means of ensuring both the total loyalty and dedication of his supporters, and the complete impossibility of a conspiracy; and the "structuralists" who believe that the system evolved by itself, and was a serious limitation on Hitler's supposedly totalitarian power.

Through staffing of most government positions with Nazi Party members, by 1935 the German national government and the Nazi Party had become virtually one and the same. By 1938, through the policy of Gleichschaltung, local and state governments lost all legislative power and answered administratively to Nazi party leaders, known as Gauleiters, who governed Gaue and Reichsgaue.

The organization of the Nazi state, as of 1944, was as follows:

Cabinet and national authorities

• Office of the Reich Chancellery (Hans Lammers)
• Office of the Party Chancellery (Martin Bormann)
• Office of the Presidential Chancellery (Otto Meissner)
• Privy Cabinet Council (Konstantin von Neurath)
• Chancellery of the Führer (Philip Bouhler)

Reich Offices

• Office of the Four-Year Plan (Hermann Göring)
• Office of the Reich Master Forester (Hermann Göring)
• Office of the Inspector for Highways
• Office of the President of the Reich Bank
• Reich Youth Office
• Reich Treasury Office
• General Inspector of the Reich Capital
• Office of the Councillor for the Capital of the Movement (Munich, Bavaria)

Reich Ministries

• Reich Foreign Ministry (Joachim von Ribbentrop)
• Reich Interior Ministry (Wilhelm Frick, Heinrich Himmler)
• Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Joseph Goebbels)
• Reich Ministry of Aviation (Hermann Göring)
• Reich Ministry of Finance (Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk)
• Reich Ministry of Justice (Otto Thierack)
• Reich Economics Ministry (Walther Funk)
• Reich Ministry for Nutrition and Agriculture (R. Walther Darre)
• Reich Labor Ministry (Franz Seldte)
• Reich Ministry for Science, Education, and Public Instruction (Bernhard Rust)
• Reich Ministry for Ecclesiastical Affairs (Hanns Kerrl)
• Reich Transportation Ministry (Julius Dorpmüller)
• Reich Postal Ministry (Wilhelm Ohnesorge)
• Reich Ministry for Weapons, Munitions, and Armament (Fritz Todt, Albert Speer)
• Reich Ministers without Portfolio (Konstantin von Neurath, Hans Frank, Hjalmar Schacht, Arthur Seyss-Inquart)

Occupation authorities

• Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Alfred Rosenberg)
• General Government of Poland (Hans Frank)
• Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Konstantin von Neurath)
  • Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (Reinhard Heydrich)
• Office of the Military Governor of France

Legislative Branch

• Reichstag
  • President of the Reichstag (Hermann Göring)
• Reichsrat (disbanded February 14, 1934)

It has to be considered that there is little use talking about a legislative branch in a totalitarian state, where there is no separation of powers. For example, since 1933 the Reichsregierung (Reich cabinet) was enabled to enact Reichsgesetze (statute law) without respect to the constitution from 1919.

Judicial System

Most of the judicial structures and legal codes of the Weimar Republic remained in use during the Third Reich, but significant changes within the judicial codes occurred, as well as significant changes in court rulings. Most human rights of the constitution of the Weimar Republic were disabled by several Reichsgesetze (Reich's laws). Several minorities such as the Jews, opposition politicians and prisoners of war were deprived of most of their rights and responsibilities. The Plan to pass a Volksstrafgesetzbuch (people's code of criminal justice) arose soon after 1933 but didn't come into reality until the end of WWII.

As a new type of court, the Volksgerichtshof (people's court) was established in 1934, only dealing with cases of political importance. From 1934 to September 1944 5,375 death sentences were spoken by the court. Not included in this numbers are the death sentences from July 20, 1944 until April 1945 which are estimated at 2,000. Its most prominent member was Roland Freisler who headed the court from August 1942 to February 1945.

After the war, some surviving jurists were tried, convicted, and sentenced as war criminals.

Military organizations

• Wehrmacht (Defence Force)
  • Heer (Army)
  • Kriegsmarine (Navy)
  • Luftwaffe (Air force)

Paramilitary organizations

• Sturmabteilung (SA)
• Schutzstaffel (SS)
  • Allgemeine SS
  • Waffen SS
  • Germanische SS
• Deutscher Volkssturm
• Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrerkorps (NSKK)
• Nationalsozialistisches Fliegerkorps (NSFK)

National police

Reich Central Security Office (RSHA — Reichssicherheitshauptamt) Ernst Kaltenbrunner

• Order Police (Ordnungspolizei (Orpo))
  • Schutzpolizei (Safety Police (Schupo))
  • Gendarmerie (Rural Police)
  • Gemeindepolizei (Local Police)
• Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo))
  • Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo)
  • Reichskriminalpolizei (Kripo)
  • Sicherheitsdienst (SD)

Political organizations

• Nazi Party — National Socialist German Workers Party (abbreviated NSDAP)
• Youth organizations
  • Hitler-Jugend — Hitler-youth (for boys and young men) Baldur von Schirach
  • Bund Deutscher Mädel (for girls and young women)
  • Deutsches Jungvolk (for very young boys and girls ages 6-8)

Service organizations

• Deutsche Reichsbahn (State Railway)
• Reichspost (State Postal Service)
• Deutsches Rotes Kreuz (German Red Cross)

Religious organizations

• German Christians
• Protestant Reich Church

Academic organizations

• National Socialist German University Teachers League
• National Socialist German Students League

Prominent persons in Nazi Germany

For a listing of Hitler's cabinet, see: Hitler's Cabinet, January 1933 – April 1945

Nazi Party and Nazi government leaders and officials

• Artur Axmann — Reich Youth Leader (successor of Baldur von Schirach in 1940)
• Ernst Wilhelm Bohle — Under-Secretary of State, Head of the NSDAP Foreign Organisation (1933-1945)
• Martin Bormann — Head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) and Private Secretary to Adolf Hitler
• Karl Brandt — Reich Commissioner of Health and Sanitation
• Alois Brunner — SS Lieutenant Colonel and Adolf Eichmann’s most important assistant
• Otto Dietrich — Under-Secretary of State, Reich Chief of the Press
• Adolf Eichmann — recording secretary at the Wannsee Conference, facilitator of the Final Solution
• Fatos Von Pristina — Reich Ministry Of Albanian Territory
• Karl Fiehler — Nazi Lord Mayor of Munich and Head of the unity organization for local politics
• Hans Frank — Minister, Head of the German Law Academy
• Roland Freisler — Under-Secretary of State at the Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the Volksgerichtshof
• Wilhelm Frick — Minister of the Interior
• Hans Fritzsche — senior official of the Reich Ministry for Propaganda
• Walter Funk — Minister of Industries
• Joseph Goebbels — Minister of Propaganda, became Chancellor of Germany for one day following Hitler's death, was named his immediate successor as Reich Chancellor by Hitler himself.
• Hermann Göring — Reichsmarschall and Minister-President of Prussia. Air Minister. Minister of the Interior. President of the Reichstag.
• Franz Gürtner — Minister of Justice
• Karl Hanke — Under-Secretary of State, Propaganda Ministry
• Rudolf Hess — the Führer's Deputy
• Reinhard Heydrich — Head of Reich Main Security Office and Protector of Bohemia and Moravia
• Konstantin Hierl — Head of the Reich Labour Service
• Heinrich Himmler — Reich Leader SS
• Adolf Hitler — Führer and Reich Chancellor
• Ernst Kaltenbrunner — Chief of the RSHA (1943-1945)
• Hanns Kerrl — Reich Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs (1933–1941)
• Karl Otto Koch — SS Colonel and commandant of the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Majdanek
• Hans Lammers — Head of the Reich Chancellery
• Herbert Lange — SS Major, chief inspector of the Posen State Police Headquarters
• Robert Ley — Leader of the German Labour Front
• Viktor Lutze — Chief of Staff of the SA (1934–1943)
• Otto Meissner — Head of the Reich President’s Office
• Alfred Meyer — Under-Secretary of State at the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
• Konstantin von Neurath — Head of the Secret Cabinet
• Hans Nieland — Head of the NSDAP Foreign Organisation (1931-1933) and Lord Mayor of Dresden (1940-1945)
• Erich Priebke — SS Captain, participated in the massacres at the Ardeatine caves near Rome
• Joachim von Ribbentrop — Foreign Minister (1938–1945)
• Ernst Röhm — Chief of Staff of the SA (1931–1934)
• Alfred Rosenberg — ideologist of National Socialism, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
• Bernhard Rust — Minister of Education
• Carl Schmitt — expert on constitutional law and political philosopher, who affected Nazism with his anti-Semite and antidemocratic theses
• Fritz Sauckel — General Plenipotentiary for the Employment of Labour (1942–1945)
• Baldur von Schirach — Leader of the Hitlerjugend (Nazi Youth Organisation), Gauleiter of Vienna
• Franz Seldte — Reich Minister of Labor (1933–1945)
• Arthur Seyß-Inquart — Reichsstatthalter in Austria, Commissioner for the Occupied Netherlands
• Albert Speer — First Architect, Minister for Armament from 1942
• Julius Streicher — Gauleiter of Franconia (1923-1940), publisher of Der Stürmer
• Josef Terboven — Reichskommissar for Norway (1940–1945)
• Fritz Todt — Inspector General for German Roadways, Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions (1940-1942)
• Hjalmar Schacht — Minister, Governor of the Central Bank (Reichsbank) (1933-1939)
• Gertrud Scholtz-Klink — Reich Leader of Women (1934-1945)
• Hans von Tschammer und Osten — Under-Secretary of State and Reich Sports Leader (1933-1943)

SS personnel

• See: List of SS Personnel

Military

See also: OKH and OKW

• Karl Dönitz — Commander of the German U-Boat force, later the German Navy. Was named as Hitler's successor as Reich president (not to be confused with Chancellor of Germany).
• Gerd von Rundstedt
• Erwin Rommel
• Wilhelm Keitel
• Claus von Stauffenberg
• Wilhelm Canaris
• Alfred Jodl
• Erich Raeder
• Robert Ritter von Greim
• Albert Kesselring
• Erich von Manstein
• Heinz Guderian

Other

• Gottfried Benn
• Eva Braun
• Wernher von Braun
• Houston Stewart Chamberlain
• Anton Drexler
• Gottfried Feder
• Friedrich Flick
• Theodor Fritsch
• Arthur de Gobineau
• Karl Harrer
• Willibald Hentschel
• Alfred Hoche
• Armin D. Lehmann
• Lanz von Liebenfels
• Guido von List
• Karl Lueger
• Alfred Ploetz
• Ferdinand Porsche
• Traudl Junge
• John Rabe
• Geli Raubal
• Leni Riefenstahl
• Oskar Schindler
• Rudolf von Sebottendorf
• Dietrich Eckart — to whom Hitler dedicated Mein Kampf
• Richard Sorge
• Johannes Stark
• Walter Thiel
• Winifred Wagner
• Konrad Zuse
• Otto van Hinbrick
• Walther Sommerlath

Noted victims

See also: The Holocaust

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Georg Elser
• Anne Frank
• Hana Brady
• St. Maximilian Kolbe
• Janusz Korczak
• Erich Mühsam
• Carl von Ossietzky
• White Rose (Sophie and Hans Scholl and others)
• Bruno Schulz
• Edith Stein
• Ernst Thälmann
• Sophie Scholl

Noted refugees

• Hannah Arendt
• Albert Bassermann
• Johannes R. Becher
• Rudolf Belling
• Walter Benjamin
• Bertolt Brecht
• Marlene Dietrich
• Albert Einstein
• Lion Feuchtwanger
• Sigmund Freud
• Erich Fromm
• Kurt Gödel
• Walter Gropius
• Friedrich Hayek
• Heinrich Eduard Jacob
• Theodor Kramer
• Fritz Lang
• Erika Mann
• Heinrich Mann
• Thomas Mann
• Lise Meitner
• Ludwig von Mises
• Solomon Perel
• Erich Maria Remarque
• Anna Seghers
• Kurt Tucholsky
• Walter Ulbricht
• Kurt Weill

Noted survivors

• Leo Baeck
• Samuel Bak
• George Brady
• Trygve Bratteli
• Bruno Bettelheim
• Viktor Frankl
• Eugen Kogon
• Primo Levi
• Martin Niemöller
• Arnulf Øverland
• Kurt Schumacher
• Hella Taichman Zaltz Weinreb
• Franz von Papen
• Roman Polanski
• Elie Wiesel
• Simon Wiesenthal

See also

• Anschluss
• Awards and Decorations of Nazi Germany
• Sino-German cooperation (1911-1941)
• Effects of World War II
• First Reich
• Glossary of the Third Reich
• History of Germany
• Nazi architecture
• Nazi Plunder
• Nazism
• Second Reich
• Songs of the Third Reich
• Weimar Republic
• Consequences of German Nazism

Further reading

See also: List of Adolf Hitler books

1. William Sheridan Allen. The Nazi Seizure of Power : the Experience Of A Single German Town, 1922–1945 by New York ; Toronto: F. Watts, 1984. ISBN 0-531-09935-0.
2. Gisela Bock "Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the State" from When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany edited by Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984.
3. Karl Dietrich Bracher. The German Dictatorship; The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism; New York, Praeger 1970.
4. Michael Burleigh. The Third Reich: A New History, 2002. ISBN 0-8090-9326-X. Standard scholarly history, 1918–1945.
5. Martin Broszat. German National Socialism, 1919–1945 translated from the German by Kurt Rosenbaum and Inge Pauli Boehm, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1966.
6. ———. The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development Of The Internal Structure Of The Third Reich. Translated by John W. Hiden. London: Longman, 1981. ISBN 0-582-49200-9.
7. Richard J. Evans. The Coming of the Third Reich. ISBN 0-14-100975-6, standard scholarly history to 1933
8. ———. The Third Reich in Power 2005 ISBN 1-59420-074-2. the latest and most scholarly history
9. Richard Grunberger. A Social History of the Third Reich 1974 ISBN 0-14-013675-4.
10. Klaus Hildebrand. The Third Reich London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1984 ISBN 0-04-943033-5.
11. Andreas Hillgruber Germany and the two World Wars, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1981 ISBN 0-674-35321-8.
12. Heinz Höhne. The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS. Translated by Richard Barry. London: Penguin Books, 1971.
13. David Irving. Hitler's War. London: Focal Point Publications. ISBN 1-872197-10-8.
14. Ian Kershaw. The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 4th ed. London: Arnold, 2000. ISBN 0-340-76028-1
15. Claudia Koonz. Mothers In The Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-54933-4.
16. ———. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.
17. Guido Knopp. Hitler's Henchmen. 1998. Sutton Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0-7509-3781-5.
18. Christian Leitz, ed. The Third Reich: The Essential Readings. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. ISBN 0-631-20700-7.
19. Richard Overy & Timothy Mason "Debate: Germany, “Domestic Crisis” and War in 1939" pages 200-240 from Past and Present, Number 122, February 1989.
20. Hans Mommsen. From Weimar to Auschwitz Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-691-03198-3.
21. Roger Moorhouse. Killing Hitler. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006. ISBN 0-224-07121-1.
22. Detlev Peukert. Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life. London: Batsford, 1987. ISBN 0-7134-5217-X.
23. Hans Rothfels. The German Opposition to Hitler: An Assessment Longwood Pr Ltd: London 1948, 1961, 1963, 1970 ISBN 0-85496-119-4.
24. William L. Shirer. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. ISBN 0-671-72868-7
25. Henry Ashby Turner. German big business and the rise of Hitler. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. ISBN 0-19-503492-9.
26. Alfred Sohn-Rethel. Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism. London, CSE Bks, 1978. ISBN 0-906336-00-7
27. Sir John Wheeler-Bennett. The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918–1945, Palgrave Macmillan: London: 1953, 1964, 2005 ISBN 1-4039-1812-0.
28. Christian Zenter and Friedemann Bedurftig. The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. Munich: Sudwest Verlag GmbH & co. KG.

External links

• Axis History Factbook — Third Reich
• Third Reich in Ruins — Photos taken during the Nazi regime compared to present-day locations
• Hitler's Third Reich in the News — Daily edited review of Third Reich-related news and articles.
• Das NS-Regime at Lebendiges Museum Online. In German.