Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany (German: Nazideutschland ), also known as the Third Reich (German: Drittes Reich ) refers to the state of Germany when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Nazi Germany is best known for its aggressive foreign policy, its launching of World War II, and the Holocaust which resulted in the death of millions of European Jews and other minorities deemed a threat to the Aryan race.

On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler legally became chancellor of Germany. Although he initially headed a coalition government, he quickly eliminated his non-Nazi partners and ruled as the sole dictator. The Nazi regime restored economic prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending while suppressing labor unions and strikes. The return of prosperity gave the regime enormous popularity and made Hitler's rule mostly unchallenged, despite a growing resistance that culminated in the failed 20 July plot in 1944. The Gestapo (secret state police) under Heinrich Himmler destroyed the liberal, Socialist, and Communist opposition and persecuted the Jews. The party took control of the courts, local government, and all civic organizations except the Protestant and Catholic churches.

The Nazi state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("Leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Nazi propaganda was quite effective in creating what historians call the "Hitler Myth" – that Hitler was all-wise and all-powerful, so that any mistakes or failures by others would be corrected when brought to his attention. In reality, Hitler had a narrow range of interests and decision-making was diffused among overlapping, feuding power centers; on some issues he was passive, simply assenting to pressures from whoever had his ear. All top officials still reported to Hitler and followed his basic policies, but they had considerable autonomy on a daily basis. All expressions of public opinion were controlled by propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who made effective use of film, mass rallies, and Hitler's skillful oratory.

In foreign policy Nazi Germany used a strategy of making aggressive demands, threatening war if they were not met. When nations tried to compromise using appeasement, Hitler accepted the gains that were offered, then moved on to his next goal. That policy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations (1933), rejected the Versailles Treaty and began to re-arm (1935), won back the Saar (1935), remilitarized the Rhineland (1936), formed an alliance ("Axis") with Benito Mussolini's Italy (1936), sent massive military aid to Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), annexed Austria in the Anschluss (1938), took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement of 1938, signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union to divide up Eastern Europe in August 1939, and finally invaded Poland in September 1939. Britain and France responded with World War II. In 1939-42 Germany conquered most of Europe, intending to establish a "New Order" of complete hegemony, while eliminating Jews and Slavic inhabitants of Eastern Europe. After stunning German successes in 1941-42 in the East, the Soviets counter-attacked in a series of huge, fierce battles that overwhelmed the Nazis. Germany made ineffective use of its allies and was overrun in 1945 by the Soviets from the East and the Allies from the west. The winners set out to remove all traces of Naziism and put its leadership on trial. Up to 40 million Europeans died as a result of the war. In the 21st century Hitler, Nazism, and the Holocaust are often invoked as symbols of evil in the modern world. Newman and Erber (2002) wrote, "The Nazis have become one of the most widely recognized images of modern evil. Throughout most of the world today, the concept of evil can readily be evoked by displaying almost any cue reminiscent of Nazism ... "

Name and boundaries

The nation was officially called German Reich (German: Deutsches Reich ) from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich (German: Großdeutsches Reich ) from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to Germany from 1933 to 1945. Colloquially, the state was called Greater Germany (German: Großdeutschland ) after 1938. Historiographically, the period is generally referred to as die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus or NS-Zeit ("the National Socialist era") in Germany.

The most popular name to refer to this state in English is Nazi Germany (German: Nazideutschland ), mostly used to differentiate it from other historical German states such as Imperial Germany and Weimar Germany (although there is direct legal continuity between the Weimar and Nazi periods, see below). Third Reich (German: Drittes Reich ) is another common but informal term, suggesting a historical succession from the medieval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) and the modern German Empire (1871–1918). This term, although in common usage among many Germans at the time, eventually fell from favor with the Nazi authorities, who banned its continued use by the press in the summer of 1939. Germany had two official names during the Nazi period; German Reich (German: Deutsches Reich ), which was in use from the Unification of Germany in 1871 onward until 1943, when the regime legally renamed it Greater German Reich (German: Großdeutsches Reich ).

The German national borders in 1933 were those mapped out by the victors in World War I, at the Treaty of Versailles (1919). To the north, Germany was bounded by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east, it was divided into two and bordered Lithuania, the Free City of Danzig, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; to the south, it bordered Austria and Switzerland, and to the west, it touched France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Saarland. These borders changed after Germany regained control of the Saarland, transformed itself into Greater Germany by annexing Austria in the Anschluss (1938), and also gained control of the Sudetenland, the remainder of Bohemia and Moravia, and the Memel Territory before the war. Germany expanded further by seizing even more land during World War II, which began in September 1939.

History

Main article: History of Germany

Nazi Germany arose in the wake of the national shame, embarrassment, anger and resentment resulting from the Treaty of Versailles (1919), that dictated, to the vanquished Germans, responsibility for:

• Germany's acceptance of and admission to sole responsibility for causing World War I
• The permanent loss of various territories and the demilitarization of other German territory
• The payment by Germany of heavy reparations, in money and in kind, such payments being justified in the Allied view by the War Guilt clause
• Unilateral German disarmament and severe military restrictions

Other conditions fostering the rise of the Third Reich include nationalism and Pan-Germanism, civil unrest attributed to Marxist groups, hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, the global Great Depression of the 1930s, the reaction against the counter-traditionalism and liberalism of the Weimar Republic and the rise of communism in Germany, i.e. the growth of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Many voters, seeking an outlet for their frustrations and an expression for their repudiation of parliamentary democracy which appeared incapable of keeping a government in power for more than a few months, began supporting far right-wing and far left-wing political parties, opting for political extremists such as the Nazi Party.

Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, January 1933

The Nazis promised strong, authoritarian government in lieu of effete parliamentary republicanism, civic peace, radical economic policy (including full employment), restored national pride (principally by repudiating the Versailles Treaty), and racial cleansing, partly implemented via the active suppression of Jews and Marxists, all in the name of national unity and solidarity rather than the partisan divisions of democracy, and the social class divisiveness of Marxism. The Nazis promised national and cultural renewal based upon Völkisch movement traditionalism and proposed rearmament, repudiation of reparations, and reclamation of territory lost to the Treaty of Versailles.

The Nazi Party claimed that through the Treaty, the Weimar Republic’s liberal democracy, the traitorous “November criminals” had surrendered Germany's national pride by the inspiration and conniving of the Jews, whose goal was national subversion and the poisoning of German blood. To establish that interpretation of recent German history, Nazi propaganda effectively used the Dolchstoßlegende (“Stab-in-the-back legend”) explaining the German military failure.

From 1925 to the 1930s, the German government evolved from a democracy to a de facto conservative–nationalist authoritarian state under war hero-President Paul von Hindenburg, who disliked the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic and wanted to make Germany into an authoritarian state. The natural ally for establishing authoritarianism was the German National People's Party ( Deutschnationale Volkspartei , DNVP), "the Nationalists", but after 1929, with the German economy floundering, more radical and younger nationalists were attracted to the revolutionary nature o