Nazi Germany

Greater German Reich Großdeutsches Reicha
1933–1945
Flag National Insignia of Germany 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 1942.
Capital	Berlin
Common languages	German
Government	Dictatorship
Führer
• 1934 – 1945	Adolf Hitler
President
• 1933 – 1934	Paul von Hindenburg
• 1945	Karl Dönitz
Chancellor
• 1933 – 1945	Adolf Hitler
• 1945	Joseph Goebbels
• 1945	Ludwig von Krosigk
Historical era	Interwar period
• 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
• Allied Occupation	July 5 1945
Area
1937	633,786 km2 (244,706 sq mi)
Population
• 1937	69,314,000
Currency	Reichsmark
ISO 3166 code	DE
Preceded by Succeeded by Weimar Republic Saar (League of Nations) First Austrian Republic First Republic of Czechoslovakia Free City of Danzig Second Polish Republic Luxembourg Drava Banovina Allied Occupation Zones in Germany Allied-administered Austria Third Republic of Czechoslovakia People's Republic of Poland Soviet Union Luxembourg Socialist Republic of Slovenia
a Name from 1943–45. From 1933–1943: Deutsches Reich ("German Reich"). b Only the first stanza was used. c Office declared vacant upon Hindenburg's death, allowing Chancellor Hitler to name himself "Führer and Chancellor".

Nazi Germany refers to Germany from the start of Adolf Hitler's government in 1933 until the beginning of denazification in 1945. In this period the country was governed by the National Socialist German Workers Party, or "Nazi Party" (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), and by Adolf Hitler as chancellor in 1933, and from 1934 onward as Führer ("Leader"). Nazi Germany is perceived as a depreciative expression to denominate this period, which is officially the "German Reich" (Deutsches Reich) and later the "Great German Reich" (Großdeutsches Reich). Another popular term is "Third Reich" (Drittes Reich).

The policies pursued during this period were based on the concept of Lebensraum, among them Aryan racial purity, anti-Semitism, territorial revision and revenge for Germany's territorial losses at the Treaty of Versailles and anti-communism, as both a response to Germany's post-war socio-political climate and because of the Soviet Union (all of these these topics were among the leading causes of the Second World War). The Nazi regime is infamous for the incarceration in concentration camps and mass murder of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), political opponents, homosexuals and others in the Holocaust or Shoah.

Under the Nazi regime Germany became the dominant nation state in Europe by the early 1940s. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, Nazi Germany became the first united German state since the Holy Roman Empire to include Austria within its boundaries. This combination ended in 1945 with the Nazi regime's defeat, together with the complete dissolution of Prussia as a regional component of Germany.

By the end of the war, Germany's major infrastructure was destroyed — and many of its major cities were in ruin as the result of Allied bombings.

Name

The official name of Germany did not change after the Nazis came to power in 1933. It remained Deutsches Reich (literally translated as "German Empire"), 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 (literally translated as "Great German Empire"), which remained in use until the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945.

Early on, the terms Drittes Reich ("Third Empire") and Tausendjähriges Reich ("Thousand-Year Empire") were used to describe the greater German ethnic empire which the Nazis wished to forge. The first 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. The term Tausendjähriges Reich was used only briefly and dropped from propaganda in 1939.

The term "Third Reich" referred to the Nazi recognition of former incarnations of German empires, while alluding to envisioned future prosperity and the new nation's alleged destiny. But it was dropped from propaganda on July 10 1939 at Hitler's request. The Holy Roman Empire (Heiliges Römisches Reich, later with the appendage "Deutscher Nation"), deemed the "First Reich", had lasted almost a thousand years, from 843 to 1806, hence the reference to the 1000-year Reich.

The "Second Reich" was the Prussian-ruled monarchy called the German Empire, and the first firmly unified German state, which existed from 1871 until its replacement by the Weimar Republic following the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918 and the abolition of the Empire in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Territory

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- In addition to Weimar-era Germany proper, the Reich came to include, in the years leading up to the war, areas with ethnic German populations such as Austria, the Sudetenland, and the territory of Memel. Regions acquired after the outbreak of conflict include Eupen-et-Malmédy, Alsace-Lorraine, Danzig and territories of Poland. In addition, from 1939 to 1945, the Reich ruled Bohemia and Moravia as a protectorate, subjugated and annexed prior to the start of the world war. Although considered a part of Greater Germany, the protectorate had its own currency.

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. Eventually, the Polish people were supposed to be "removed" and Poland itself populated with 5 million Germans. 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 Gaue; districts were led by representatives called Gauleiter who were completely loyal to the central government. In the majority of cases that Gauleiter was responsible in personal union for the Reichsgau too. These administrative changes dismantled the regional political hegemony, which had been held by Prussia over German affairs since 1871. However, the title of the Prime Minister of Prussia used by Hermann Göring from 1933 to 1945, and other titles, still remained in use.

Outside of what was directly annexed into Germany were the regional territories created in occupied lands. In many areas, occupied territories called Reichskommissariat were set up. In the occupied Soviet Union territories, these included the Reichskommissariat Ostland and Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In northern Europe, there was the Reichskommissariat Niederlande (Netherlands) and Reichskommissariat Norwegen (Norway) which were designed to foster German colonization. In 1944, a Reichskommissariat was founded in Belgium and northern France, previously known as the Military Administration of Belgium and North France, where travel restrictions were enforced in order to foster German colonization.

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 — was the only area 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 set under Polish and Soviet administration but factually sundered from Germany for annexation by Poland and the Soviet Union. These territorial changes resulted in the complete dissolution of Prussia as a German territorial component. Prussia was identified as a region neither of Poland nor of the Soviet Union (Kaliningrad Oblast). By signing the Treaty of Warsaw (1970) and the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (1990), Germany finally confirmed to abdicate any claims to territories lost during the Second World War.

Nazi ideology

Main article: Nazism

Nazism had much of the ideological basis of fascism which originally developed in Italy under Benito Mussolini. Both ideologies involved the political use of militarism, nationalism, anti-communism and paramilitary forces, and both intended to create a dictatorial state. The Nazis, however, were far more racially-oriented than fascists in Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The Nazis were also intent on creating a completely totalitarian state, unlike Italian fascists who allowed a larger degree of private liberties for their citizens. These differences allowed the Italian monarchy to continue to exist and have some official powers.

The totalitarian nature of the Nazi party was one of its principal tenets. The Nazis contended that all the great achievements in the past of the German nation and its people were associated with the ideals of National Socialism, even before the ideology officially existed. Propaganda accredited the consolidation of Nazi ideals and successes of the regime to the regime's Führer ("Leader"), Adolf Hitler, who was portrayed as the genius behind the Nazi party's success and Germany's saviour.

To secure their ability to create a totalitarian state, the Nazi party's paramilitary force, the Sturmabteilung (SA) or "Storm Unit" used acts of violence against leftists, democrats, Jews, and other opposition or minority groups. The SA's violence created a climate of fear in cities, with people anxious over punishment, or even death, if they displayed opposition to the Nazis. The SA also helped attract large numbers of alienated and unemployed youth to the party.

Adolf Hitler, the Führer ("Leader") of Germany from 1934 to 1945. Photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann.

The "German problem", as it is often referred to in English scholarship, focuses on the issue of administration of Germanic regions in 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".

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. But it was the Nazis' passionate support of the Volk concept that led to Germany's expansion, that gave legitimacy and the support needed for the Third Reich to proceed to conquer long-lost territories with overwhelmingly non-German population like former Prussian gains in Poland that it lost to Russia in the 1800s, or to acquire territories with German population like parts of Austria, or "needed" as the Nazi regime claimed for Lebensraum (living space) for a growing population.

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 pertained to similar interests; the Nazis determined 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 standard were to be used as cheap labour force or deported eastward.

Racialism and racism were important aspects of society within the Third Reich. The Nazis combined anti-Semitism with anti-Communist ideology, regarding the leftist-internationalist movement — as well as international market capitalism — as the work of "Conspiratorial Jewry". They referred to this so-called movement with terminology such as the "Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans." This platform manifested itself in the displacement, internment, and systematic extermination of an estimated 11 million to 12 million people in the midst of World War II, roughly half of them 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 the Porajmos. Other victims of Nazi persecution included communists, various political opponents, social outcasts, homosexuals, religious dissidents such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, the Confessing Church and Freemasons.

Government

In the wake of the loss of land, the heavy reparations and perceived national embarrassment imposed through the Treaty of Versailles, civil unrest, the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s spurred by the stock market crash in the U.S., the counter-traditionalism of the Weimar period, and the threat of communism in Germany, many voters began turning their support towards the Nazi Party, which promised strong government, cessation of civil unrest, radical changes to economic policy, cultural renewal based on traditionalism, military rearmament in opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, and restored national pride that the Nazis claimed was lost in the Treaty of Versailles and in the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic.^[5]. The Nazis also endorsed the Dolchstoßlegende ("Stab in the back legend") which figured prominently in their propaganda as it did in propaganda of most other nationalist-leaning parties in Germany.

From 1925 to the 1930s, the German government devolved from a democracy to a de facto conservative-nationalist authoritarian state under President and war hero Paul von Hindenburg, who opposed the liberal democratic nature of the Weimar Republic and wanted to find a way to make Germany into an authoritarian state. The natural ally of the foundation of an authoritarian state had been the German National People's Party (DNVP or "the Nationalists"), but increasingly, after 1929, more fanatic and younger-generation nationalists were attracted to the revolutionary nature of the Nazi party, to challenge the rising support for communism as the German economy floundered. By 1932, the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag. Hindenburg was reluctant to give any substantial power to Hitler, but worked out an alliance between the Nazis and the DNVP which would allow him to develop an authoritarian state. But Hitler consistently demanded to be appointed chancellor in order for Hindenburg to receive any Nazi Party support of his administration.

On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by Hindenburg after attempts by General Kurt von Schleicher to form a viable government failed (the Machtergreifung). Hindenburg was put under pressure by Hitler through his son Oskar von Hindenburg, as well as intrigue from former Chancellor Franz von Papen, leader of the Catholic Centre Party following his collection of participating financial interests and his own ambitions to combat communism. Even though the Nazis 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 Weimar 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 Adolf Hitler's "cultural revolution" whereby the Nazi mind had begun to transform in a manner conducive to anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and anti-liberalism, or in general anti-everything but the Nazis themselves.

Consolidation of power

The Reichstag fire was a pivotal event in the establishment of the Nazi regime.

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

On the night of 1933 February 27, the Reichstag building was set on fire and Dutch council communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found inside the building. He was arrested and charged with starting the blaze. The event had an immediate effect on thousands of anarchists, socialists and communists throughout the Reich, many of whom were sent to the Dachau concentration camp. The unnerved public worried that the fire had been a signal meant to initiate the communist revolution, and the Nazis found the event to be of immeasurable value in getting rid of potential insurgents. 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 four years. With these powers, Hitler removed the remaining opposition and turned the Weimar Republic into the "Third Reich".

For Hitler to create the Nazi dictatorship, Germany had to become a one party state. This was 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, at Papen's urging, disbanded itself on 5 July 1933 after guarantees over Catholic education and youth groups. On 14 July 1933 Germany officially declared a one-party state with the passing of the Law against the formation of parties.

March at Reichsparteitag 1935

Symbols of the Weimar Republic, including the black-red-gold flag (now the present-day flag of Germany), were abolished by the new regime which adopted both new and old imperial symbolism to represent the dual nature of the imperialist-Nazi regime of 1933. The old imperial black-white-red tricolour, almost completely abandoned during the Weimar Republic, was restored as one of Germany's two officially legal national flags. The other official national flag was the swastika flag of the Nazi party. It became the sole national flag in 1935. The national anthem continued to be "Deutschland über Alles" (also known as the "Deutschlandlied") except that the Nazis customarily used just the first verse and appended to it the "Horst Wessel Lied" accompanied by the so-called Hitler salute.

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.

In the spring of 1934 only the army remained independent from Nazi control. The German army had traditionally been separated from the government and somewhat of an entity of its own. The Nazi paramilitary SA expected top positions in the new power structure and wanted the regime to follow through its promise of enacting socialist legislation for Aryan Germans. Wanting to preserve good relations with the army and the major industries who were weary of more political violence erupting from the SA, 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 hard-left Nazis (Strasserists), and other political enemies, carried out by another, more elitist, Nazi organization, the SS.

At the death of president Hindenburg on 1934 August 2 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, partly because the paramilitary SA was much larger than the German Army (limited to 100,000 by the Treaty of Versailles) and because the leaders of the SA sought to merge the Army into itself and to launch the socialist "second revolution" to complement the nationalist revolution which had occurred with the ascendance of Hitler. The murder of Ernst Roehm, leader of the SA, in the Night of the Long Knives, the death of Hindenburg, the merger of the SA into the Army, and the promise of other expansions of the German military wrought friendlier relations between Hitler and the Army, resulting in a unanimous oath of allegiance by all soldiers to obey Hitler. The Nazis proceeded to scrap their official alliance with the conservative nationalists and began to introduce Nazi ideology and Nazi symbolism into all major aspects of life in Germany. Schoolbooks were either rewritten or replaced, and schoolteachers who did not support Nazification of the curriculum were fired.

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 informants 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 many were 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 advanced for the time, including state opposition to the use of tobacco, an end to official stigmatization toward Aryan children who were born from parents outside of marriage, as well as giving financial assistance to Aryan German families who bore children. For "non-Aryans", specifically Jews, Poles, Roma, and other kinds of minorities, which included homosexuals, fatally ill people and illegitimate children, they faced racist laws, lack of any form of social assistance or help, and ethnic persecution and later genocide.

Racial and social persecution

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, and some related social aims, through persecution and killing of those considered "impure" or otherwise "enemies of the Reich." Especially targeted were minority groups such as Jews, Roma (also known as Gypsies), Blacks and other people of color, Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses , people with mental or physical disabilities, and homosexuals.

In the 1930s, plans to isolate and eventually eliminate Jews completely in Germany began with the construction of ghettos, concentration camps, and labour camps which began with the 1933 construction of the Dachau concentration camp, which Heinrich Himmler officially described as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners."

In the years following the Nazi rise to power, many Jews were encouraged to leave the country and did 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:Kristallnacht example of physical damage.jpg

The aftermath of Kristallnacht, Jewish shops vandalized.

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.

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

At the outset of World War II, the German authority in the General Government in occupied Poland ordered that all Jews face compulsory labour and that those who were physically incapable such as women and children were to be confined to ghettos.

To the Nazis a number of ideas appeared on how to answer the "Jewish Question". One method was a mass forced deportation of Jews. Adolf Eichmann suggested that Jews be forced to emigrate to Palestine. Franz Rademacher made the proposal that Jews be deported to Madagascar; this proposal was supported by Himmler and was discussed by Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini but was later dismissed as impractical in 1942. The idea of continuing deportations to occupied Poland was rejected by the governor, Hans Frank, of the General Government of occupied Poland as Frank refused to accept any more deporations of Jews to the territory which already had large numbers of Jews. In 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, Nazi officials decided to eliminate the Jews altogether, as discussed the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Concentration camps like Auschwitz were converted and used gas chambers to kill as many Jews as possible. By 1945, a number of concentration camps had been liberated by Allied forces and they found the survivors to be severely malnourished. The Allies also found evidence that the Nazis were profiteering from 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. Heavily focused on was the idea of a national German community. To aid the fostering of a feeling of community, the German people's labor and entertainment experiences — 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 compulsory membership. In addition to this, a number of architectural projects were undertaken. The construction of the Autobahn made it the first freeway 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 counsel 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 to offer such a benefit — Germany 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 Johns-Manville 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." Hitler claimed that women taking vital jobs away from men during the Great Depression was economically bad for families in that women were paid only 66 percent of what men earned. Simultaneously with calling for women to leave work outside the home, 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 Reich 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." . The expectation even applied to Aryan women married to Jewish men—a necessary ingredient in the 1943 Rosenstrasse protest in which 1800 German women (joined by 4200 relatives) obliged the Nazi state to release their Jewish husbands.

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 (BDM, German Girl's League) for young women from 14 to 18. Nonetheless, one reason for Allied success in the war was that Germany never fully mobilized with regard to women while the nations arrayed against Germany not only recruited women into the military services but also unhesitatingly accepted women into the civilian workforce, particularly militarily critical jobs (such as heavy truck/lorry driver, shipfitter) previously held by men. Only late in the war, after many German municipalities were already bombed into rubble, did Germany begin training women and girls in how to operate anti-aircraft cannon located in their own neighborhoods.

On the issue of sexual affairs regarding women, the Nazis differed greatly from the restrictive stances on women's role in society. The Nazi regime promoted a liberal code of conduct as regards sexual matters, and were sympathetic to women bearing children out of wedlock. The collapse of 19th century morals in Germany accelerated during the Third Reich, partly due to the Nazis, and partly due to the effects of the war. Promiscuity increased greatly as the war progressed, with unmarried soldiers often involved intimately with several women simultaneously. Married women were often involved in multiple affairs simultaneously, with soldiers, civilians or slave laborers, provided that they were not Jewish. "Some farm wives in Württemberg had already begun using sex as a commodity, employing carnal favours as a means of getting a full day's work from foreign labourers." In so doing, they were following the example of many of the leaders, such as Goebbels, a prolific adulterer. Some concentration camps included brothels (for non-Jewish prisoners). In Der Stürmer, editor Julius Streicher regularly published pornographic photos displaying his concept of ideal "Aryan" women in the nude.

There were many contradictions within Nazi society, the role of women being just one arena of such oxymoronic behavior. Despite the somewhat official restrictions, some women forged highly visible, as well as officially praised, achievements. Examples are aviatrix Hanna Reitsch and film director Leni Riefenstahl.

An example of the almost cynical Nazi difference between doctrine and practice is that, whilst fornication among campers was explicitly forbidden, boys' and girls' camps of the Hitlerjugend associations were needlessly placed close together as if to make it happen. Pregnancy (including disruptive repercussions on established marriages) often resulted when fetching members of the Bund Deutscher Mädel were assigned to duties which juxtaposed them with easily tempted men.

Prior to the Night of the Long Knives and the lethal purge of Ernst Roehm and other homosexuals among the SA leadership for political reasons, the Nazis had paid little or no attention to homosexuality, considering it a matter of individual privacy or even an expression of the ultimate Aryan libido. In any event a characteristic running throughout Nazism is the hesitancy of the leaders to apply to themselves the rules they had for others.

Animal protection policy

Very early on, in 1933, the regime enacted an animal-protection law. The implemented law on animal protection was stringent. . A particular emphasis of the law was its prohibition on kosher slaughter, a Nazi concern which also emerged in the final scenes of the 1940 propaganda film Der ewige Jude (the eternal Jew).

Economic policy

See also: Forced labor in Germany during World War II and Hunger Plan

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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 policies of the Third Reich were in the beginning the brainchildren of Hjalmar Schacht, who assumed office as president of the central bank under Hitler in 1933, and became finance minister in the following year. Schacht was one of the few finance ministers to take advantage of the freedom provided by the end of the gold standard to keep interest rates low and government budget deficits high: massive public works funded by large budget deficits. The consequence was an extremely rapid decline in unemployment--the most rapid decline in unemployment in any country during the Great Depression. Eventually this Keynes-like policy was to be supplemented by the boost to demand provided by rearmament and swelling military spending.

Hjalmar Schacht was replaced in September 1936 by Hitler's lieutenant Hermann Goering, with a mandate to make Germany self-sufficient to fight a war within four years.Under Goering imports were slashed. Wages and prices were controlled--under penalty of being sent to the concentration camp. Dividends were restricted to six percent on book capital. And strategic goals to be reached at all costs (much like Soviet planning) were declared: the construction of synthetic rubber plants, more steel plants, automatic textile factories.

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. Trade unions were abolished, as well as collective bargaining and the right to strike. 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.

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.

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.

Foreign policy

The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to pay war reparations and frustrated the German economy. It also forbade the construction of aircraft, submarines, and large battleships and forced Germany to give up territory. Furthermore, Germany was not allowed to have any political union with German-populated Austria or the newly-formed Free City of Danzig.

From 1933 onward, Hitler and the Nazi regime performed a number of political maneuvers in order to restore German power on an international level, all in violation of the Versailles Treaty. As Germany's agenda became increasingly revisionist, opposition grew. However, the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement between Great Britain and Germany, allowing Germany to resume formerly-illegal naval construction, was seen by both sides as an important overture of peace given a ship-building rivalry of the past.

The same year, Germany endorsed a plebicite in German-populated Saar, which resulted in it returning to Germany in 1935, after being held by France as a protectorate since 1919. In 1936, with no British or French forces remaining in the Rhineland (which was to be permanently demilitarized of German forces), Germany defied the Versailles Treaty by sending military forces into the Rhineland.

From 1936 onward, Germany steadily proceeded on an interventionist foreign policy approach, beginning by supporting the fascist nationalist forces of Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War against the republican forces which were supported by the Soviet Union. German aircraft took part in attacks on Spanish republican forces as well as the infamous bombing of civilians in the Basque town of Guernica in 1937.

Although Germany's relations with Italy improved with creation of the Rome-Berlin Axis, tensions remained high because the Nazis wanted Austria to be incorporated into the Reich. Italy was opposed to this, as were France and Britain. In 1938, an Austrian-led Nazi coup took place in Austria and Germany sent in its troops, annexing the country. Italy and Britain no longer had common interests and, as Germany had stopped supporting the Germans who were under Italy's control in South Tyrol, Italy began to gravitate towards Germany.

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Hitler with (from left to right) Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, Benito Mussolini, and Galeazzo Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Agreement.

Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in September 1938 came about during talks with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in which Hitler, backed by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, demanded that the German territories be ceded. Chamberlain and Hitler came to an agreement when Hitler signed a piece of paper which said that with the annexation of the Sudetenland, Germany would proceed with no further territorial aims. Chamberlain took this to be a success in that it avoided a potential war with Germany. However, the Nazis helped to promote Slovakian dissention and declaring that the country was no more, seized control of the Czech part.

For quite some time, Germany had engaged in informal negotiations with Poland regarding the issue of territorial revision, but after the Munich Agreement and the reacquisition of Memel, the Nazis became increasingly vocal. Poland refused to allow the annexation of the Free City of Danzig.

Germany and the Soviet Union began talks over planning an invasion of Poland. In August 1939, the Molotov Pact was signed and Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Poland along a mutually-agreed set boundary. The invasion was put into effect on September 1, 1939. Last-minute Polish-German diplomatic proceedings failed, and Germany invaded Poland as scheduled. Germany alleged that Polish operatives had attacked German positions, but the result was the outbreak of World War II, as Allied forces refused to accept Germany's claims on Poland and blamed Germany for the conflict.

From 1939 to 1940, the so-called "Phony War" occurred, as German forces made no further advances but instead, both the Axis and Allies engaged in a propaganda campaign. However in early 1940, Germany began to concern that the British intended to stop trade between Sweden and Germany by bringing Norway into an alliance against Germany, with Norway in Allied hands, the Allies would be dangerously close to German territory. In response, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway ending the Phony War. After sweeping through the Low Countries and occupying northern France, Germany allowed French nationalist and war hero Philippe Petain to form a fascist regime in southern France known as the "French State" but more commonly referred to as Vichy France named after its capital in Vichy.

In 1941, Germany's invasion of Yugoslavia resulted in that state's splintering. In spite of Hitler's earlier view of inferiority of all Slavs, he supported Mussolini's agenda of creating a fascist puppet state of Croatia, called the Independent State of Croatia. Croatia was led by the extreme nationalist Ante Pavelić a long-time Croatian exile in Rome, whose Ustashe movement formed a government in modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Ustashe were allowed to persecute Serbs, while Germany contributed to that goal in German-occupied Serbia.

From 1941 to the end of the war, Germany engaged in war with the Soviet Union in its attempt to create the Nazi colonial goal of Lebensraum "living space" for German citizens. The German occupation authorities set up occupation and colonial authorities called Reichskommissariats such as Reichskommissariat Ostland and Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The Slavic populations were to be destroyed along with Jews there to make way for German colonists.

As the fortunes of war changed, Germany was forced to occupy Italy when Mussolini was thrown out as Prime Minister by Italy's king in 1943. German forces rescued Mussolini and instructed him to establish a fascist regime in Italy called the Italian Social Republic. This was the last major foreign policy delivered. The remainder of the war saw the decline of German power and desperate attempts by Nazi officials such as Heinrich Himmler to negotiate a peace with the western Allies against the wishes of Hitler.

Art and culture

Olympic Stadium (photo by Josef Jindřich Šechtl)

The regime sought to restore traditional values in German culture. The art and culture that came to define the Weimar Republic years was repressed. The visual arts were strictly monitored and traditional, focusing on exemplifying Germanic themes, racial purity, militarism, heroism, power, strength, and obedience. 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 1937 March 31, huge crowds stood in line to view a special display of "degenerate art" in Munich. Art forms considered to be degenerate included Dada, Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Impressionism, New Objectivity, and Surrealism. Literature written by Jewish, other non-Aryans, or authors opposed to the Nazis was destroyed by the regime. The most infamous destruction of literature was the book burnings of 1933.

In 1933, Nazis burned works considered "un-German" in Berlin, including those by Jewish authors

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 insisted that he greet each and every medalist. Hitler did not attend any of the medal presentations which followed, including the one after Jesse Owens won his four medals.

Despite the official attempt to forge a pure Germanic culture, one major area of the arts, architecture, under Hitler's personal guidance, was neoclassical, a style based on architecture of ancient Rome. This style stood out in stark contrast and opposition to newer, more liberal, and more popular architecture styles of the time such as Art Deco. Various Roman buildings were examined by state architect Albert Speer for architectural designs for state buildings. Speer constructed huge and imposing structures such as in the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg and the new Reich Chancellery building in Berlin. One design that was pursued, but never built, 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, which was to be the "world capital" (Welthauptstadt). Also to be constructed was a Triumphal arch several times larger than that found in Paris, which was also based upon a classical styling. Many of the designs for Germania were impractical to construct because of their size and the marshy soil underneath Berlin; materials that were to be used for construction were diverted to the war effort.

Environmental policy

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 (best translated as the "perpetual forest") which included concepts such as forest management and protection was promoted and 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.

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 Mid- and North Norway, 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 in response to a British bombing of Berlin. 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 save 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.

Before and after the German attempt to take Britain, Germany's navy, the Kriegsmarine, was raiding Allied convoys in the Atlantic Ocean which were 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 a number German surface raiding attempts during the war, the two most famous battles with surface raiders included one the battle with the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee and a British cruiser squadron in 1939, which set off a political controversy when the German ship attempted to take refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo, later being forced out and destroyed by her crew to avoid capture. The other was in 1941 with the German battleship Bismarck, Germany's largest and most powerful warship that sunk Britain's largest warship, the battlecruiser Hood, Bismarck was then pursued and sunk by British naval forces shortly afterward. 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.

Wartime poster of the United Nations, displaying international unity against Nazism and fascism.

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), Liechtenstein, 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 Delano 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.

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

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, who himself was commanded by Heinrich Himmler, a plan for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (Endlösung der Judenfrage) in Europe was designed. From then until the end of the war some six million Jews and many others, including homosexuals, Slavs, and political prisoners, were systematically killed under orders from Himmler. 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 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 because of the Nazis 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 of subhumans". Because of the many atrocities suffered under Stalin, the Nazi message was interpreted by many to be legitimate in parts of Soviet Union. Many Ukrainians, Balts, and other nationalities fought, or at least expected to fight, on the side of the Germans. Many Europeans enlisted in the infamous and numerous Schutzstaffel (SS) 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. A great controversy concerning Allied tactics, 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.

Millions of German soldiers would die over the course of World War II, with current highest estimates at 5.5 million. The corpses of German soldiers became so commonplace that they stopped generating any emotion whatsoever and became an inextricable part of the European landscape, and were often improperly buried or not at all. Hungry pigs often devoured the remains of German soldiers, such as near the Maas-Waal canal in 1944, where men of the 82nd Airborne were powerless to stop the swarms of hogs feasting on dead German soldiers.

More than 5.5 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. In the underground bunker Hitler grew increasingly isolated and detached from reality and increasingly exhibited signs of mental illness as he would burst into violent rages and temper tantrums when he was informed of the dire situation facing Berlin and the remaining German armed forces there. In one such rage at a meeting with military commanders it was claimed that Hitler began to consider committing suicide should Germany fail to win the war. Berlin was eventually surrounded and outward communications between Berlin and the rest of Germany were cut off. Despite evident total defeat, Hitler refused to relinquish his power or surrender. With no communications coming out of Berlin, Hermann Göring sent an ultimatum to Berlin take over the Nazi regime in April, if no communications the ultimatum was not responded to, in which Hitler would have been deemed to be incapacitated as leader. Upon receiving the message, Hitler angrily ordered Göring's immediate arrest, and had a plane deliver the message to Göring in Bavaria. Later, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in northern Germany began communicating with the western Allies about negotiating peace. Hitler once again reacted violently to Himmler's attempts to seek peace and ordered both his arrest and execution. With no intent by Hitler to surrender, 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 and Dr. Joseph Goebbels as Reich Chancellor. No one was to replace Hitler as the Führer which Hitler abolished in his will. However, Goebbels committed suicide in the Fuhrerbunker a day after assuming office. 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

Main articles: Aftermath of World War II, Effects of World War II, Consequences of German Nazism, Nuremberg Trials, Expulsion of Germans after World War II, and The industrial plans for Germany

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 the new eastern borders 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 a minor degree helped by economic aid (in the form of loans) through the Marshall Plan which was extended to also include West Germany. West German recovery was upheld thanks to fiscal policy and intense labor, eventually leading to labor shortages. Allied dismantling of West German industry was finally halted in 1951, and in 1952 West Germany joined the European Coal and Steel Community. 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, with the notable exception of Rudolf Hess, who died in Spandau Prison in 1987 while in permanent solitary confinement. 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 day. The end of Nazi Germany also saw the rise of unpopularity of related aggressive nationalism in Germany such as Pan-Germanism and the Völkisch movement which had previously been significant political ideas in Germany and in Europe prior to the Second World War, those that remain are largely at present, fringe movements. 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.

Nuremberg Trials

The accused at the Nuremberg Trials. The main target of the prosecution was Hermann Göring (at the left edge on the first row of benches), considered the most important surviving official in the Third Reich after Hitler's death.

Main article: Nuremberg Trials

The response to numerous crimes discovered to be committed by Nazi Germany, fostered a revival in both the western and eastern blocs of internationalism resulting in the creation of the United Nations (UN). One of the UN's first objectives was establishing a series of war crimes tribunals to convict Nazi officials, called the Nuremberg Trials, named after where the trials were held, in the Nazis' former political stronghold of Nuremberg, Bavaria. The first major and most well-known Nuremberg trial was officially called the Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). This trial involved twenty-four key Nazi officials including Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, Karl Dönitz, Hans Frank, and Julius Streicher. The trial found many of the accused to be guilty and many were sentenced to death by hanging. A few officials managed to avoid being executed, including Göring, who was scheduled to be hanged, but committed suicide by ingesting a cyanide tablet before he could be hung; Hess, a formerly close confidant to Hitler, was sentenced to life in prison and stayed in Spandau prison until his death in 1987; Speer, the state architect and later armaments minister, served twenty years despite his use of slave labour in projects; Konstantin von Neurath, a Third Reich cabinet minister who was in office prior to the Nazi regime; and another minister who also served in the pre-Nazi government, economist Hjalmar Schacht.

Some accused the Nuremberg Trials to be a form of "victor's justice", in that no similar action was taken to punish the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the victors, especially those of the Soviet Union during the World War II.

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 coordinated, 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 multitude 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 (Richard Walther Darré)
• 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, a total of 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 jurist 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
  • Germanische SS
  • Waffen-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

• Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (abbreviated NSDAP) — National Socialist German Workers Party (also known as "Nazi Party")
• Youth organizations
  • Hitler-Jugend (HJ) — Hitler-youth (for boys and young men); Baldur von Schirach
  • Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM) (for girls and young women)
  • Deutsches Jungvolk (for very young boys and girls ages 6-8)
• NS-Frauenschaft (NSF) — National Socialist Women's League; Gertrud Scholtz-Klink
• Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF)
• Nationalsozialistischer Reichskriegerbund (NS-RKB)

Service organizations

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

Religious organizations

• Deutsche Christen (German Christians)
• Protestantische Reichskirche (Protestant Reich Church)

Academic organizations

• Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (NSDDB) — National Socialist German University Teachers' League
• Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (NSDStB) — 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

Main article: List of Nazi Party leaders and officials

• Martin Bormann — Head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) and Private Secretary to Adolf Hitler
• Adolf Eichmann — recording secretary at the Wannsee Conference, facilitator of the Final Solution
• 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 state minister president of Prussia. Air Minister. Minister of the Interior. President of the Reichstag.
• Rudolf Hess — the Führer's Deputy
• Heinrich Himmler — Reichsführer-SS, Chief of German police, Secret Service, and Gestapo
• Adolf Hitler — Führer and Reich Chancellor
• Karl Otto Koch — SS Colonel and commandant of the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Majdanek
• Erich Priebke — SS Captain, participated in the massacres at the Ardeatine caves near Rome
• Joachim von Ribbentrop — Foreign Minister (1938–1945)
• Alfred Rosenberg — ideologist of National Socialism, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
• Baldur von Schirach — Leader of the Hitlerjugend (Nazi Youth Organisation), Gauleiter of Vienna
• Albert Speer — First Architect, Minister for Armament from 1942

SS personnel

• See: List of SS Personnel

Military

See also: OKH and OKW

• Wilhelm Canaris
• 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).
• Heinz Guderian
• Alfred Jodl
• Wilhelm Keitel
• Albert Kesselring
• Erich Raeder
• Robert Ritter von Greim
• Erwin Rommel
• Erich von Manstein
• Gerd von Rundstedt
• Claus von Stauffenberg

Other

Gottfried Benn Eva Braun Wernher von Braun Houston Stewart Chamberlain Anton Drexler Gottfried Feder Friedrich Flick Theodor Fritsch Arthur de Gobineau Karl Harrer Martin Heidegger 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 Hana Brady Georg Elser Anne Frank Fritz Gerlich St. Maximilian Kolbe Janusz Korczak

Erich Mühsam Carl von Ossietzky White Rose (Sophie and Hans Scholl and others) Sophie Scholl Bruno Schulz Edith Stein Ernst Thälmann

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 von Hayek Heinrich Eduard Jacob Theodor Kramer

Fritz Lang Erika Mann Heinrich Mann Thomas Mann Lise Meitner Ludwig von Mises Vladimir Nabokov Solomon Perel Karl Popper Erich Maria Remarque Anna Seghers Kurt Tucholsky Walter Ulbricht Kurt Weill Ludwig Wittgenstein

Noted survivors

Leo Baeck Samuel Bak George Brady Trygve Bratteli Bruno Bettelheim Corrie ten Boom Viktor Frankl Eugen Kogon Tom Lantos

Primo Levi Martin Niemöller Arnulf Øverland Kurt Schumacher Hella Taichman Zaltz Weinreb Franz von Papen Roman Polanski Elie Wiesel Simon Wiesenthal

See also

• Anschluss
• Art of the Third Reich
• First Reich
• German Resistance
• Glossary of the Third Reich
• History of Germany
• Nazi architecture
• Nazi plunder
• Nazi university
• Nazism
• New Order
• Orders, decorations, and medals of Nazi Germany
• Second Reich
• Sino-German cooperation (1911–1941)
• Songs of the Third Reich
• Swastika
• Weimar Republic

Further reading

See also: List of Adolf Hitler books

• 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.
• 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.
• Karl Dietrich Bracher. The German Dictatorship; The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism; New York, Praeger 1970.
• Michael Burleigh. The Third Reich: A New History, 2002. ISBN 0-8090-9326-X. Standard scholarly history, 1918–1945.
• Martin Broszat. German National Socialism, 1919–1945 translated from the German by Kurt Rosenbaum and Inge Pauli Boehm, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1966.
• Martin Broszat. 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.
• Richard J. Evans. The Coming of the Third Reich. ISBN 0-14-100975-6, standard scholarly history to 1933
• Richard J. Evans. The Third Reich in Power 2005 ISBN 1-59420-074-2. the latest and most scholarly history
• Richard Grunberger. A Social History of the Third Reich 1974 ISBN 0-14-013675-4.
• Klaus Hildebrand. The Third Reich London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1984 ISBN 0-04-943033-5.
• Andreas Hillgruber Germany and the two World Wars, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1981 ISBN 0-674-35321-8.
• Heinz Höhne. The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS. Translated by Richard Barry. London: Penguin Books, 1971.
• David Irving. Hitler's War. London: Focal Point Publications. ISBN 1-872197-10-8.
• Ian Kershaw. The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 4th ed. London: Arnold, 2000. ISBN 0-340-76028-1
• Claudia Koonz. Mothers In The Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-54933-4.
• Claudia Koonz. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.
• Guido Knopp. Hitler's Henchmen. 1998. Sutton Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0-7509-3781-5.
• Christian Leitz, ed. The Third Reich: The Essential Readings. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. ISBN 0-631-20700-7.
• Richard Overy & Timothy Mason "Debate: Germany, “Domestic Crisis” and War in 1939" pages 200-240 from Past and Present, Number 122, February 1989.
• Hans Mommsen. From Weimar to Auschwitz Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-691-03198-3.
• Roger Moorhouse. Killing Hitler. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006. ISBN 0-224-07121-1.
• Detlev Peukert. Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life. London: Batsford, 1987. ISBN 0-7134-5217-X.
• Hans Rothfels. The German Opposition to Hitler: An Assessment Longwood Pr Ltd: London 1948, 1961, 1963, 1970 ISBN 0-85496-119-4.
• William L. Shirer. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. ISBN 0-671-72868-7
• Henry Ashby Turner. German big business and the rise of Hitler. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. ISBN 0-19-503492-9.
• Alfred Sohn-Rethel. Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism. London, CSE Bks, 1978. ISBN 0-906336-00-7
• 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.
• 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
• Das NS-Regime at Lebendiges Museum Online. In German.