Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for describing Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party (aka NSDAP or the Nazi Party), an anti-Semitic and racist fascist political party that established a totalitarian dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945. Officially, the state was called the Deutsches Reich (German Reich) and after 1943, Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich).

The state was a major European power from the 1930s through the mid-1940s. Its historical significance lies mainly in its responsibility for starting World War II, and its commission of large-scale crimes against humanity, such as the persecution and mass-murder of Jews, minorities, and dissidents in the genocide known as the Holocaust. The state introduced slave labour for those who were not deemed racially adequate to be German citizens. The state also permitted the deliberate destruction of civilian areas of cities during World War Two, such as in London during the Battle of Britain; Rotterdam, during the invasion of the Netherlands; and Stalingrad during the Battle of Stalingrad. The state came to an end in 1945, after the Allied Powers succeeded in seizing German-occupied territories in Europe and in occupying Germany itself.[3]

In 1935, Germany was bounded on the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Lithuania, Poland and Czechoslovakia; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. These borders changed after the state annexed Austria, the Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia and Memel, and after subsequent expansion during World War II.

Nazi Germany found its context in the wake of the loss of land, the heavy reparations, and the perceived national embarrassment imposed through the Treaty of Versailles which ended World War I. Following civil unrest, the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s spurred by the stock market crash in the US, the counter-traditionalism of the Weimar period, and the rise of communism in Germany,[citation needed] many voters began turning their support towards the Nazi Party with its promises of strong government, civil peace, radical changes to economic policy, and restored national pride. The Nazi party promised cultural renewal based on traditionalism, and it proposed military rearmament in opposition to the Treaty of Versailles; the Nazis claimed that in the Treaty of Versailles and the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic, Germany's national pride had been lost.[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.[citation needed] 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. Hitler consistently demanded to be appointed chancellor in order for Hindenburg to receive any Nazi Party support of his administration.


On January 30, 1933 Adolf 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.[citation needed] 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.[4]

The Nazi treatment of the Jews in the early months of 1933 marked the first step in a longer-term process of removing them from German society.[5] This plan was at the core of Adolf Hitler's "cultural revolution".[6]

Consolidation of power

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

On the night of February 27, 1933 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. In effect, Hitler seized dictatorial powers.

For Hitler to create the Nazi dictatorship, Germany had to become a one party state. The Communists had already been banned before the passage of the Enabling Act. The Social Democrats (SPD), despite efforts to appease Hitler, were banned in June. In June and July, the Nationalists (DNVP), People's Party (DVP) and State Party (DStP) had all been forced to disband. The remaining Catholic Centre Party, at Papen's urging, disbanded itself on July 5, 1933 after guarantees over Catholic education and youth groups. On July 14, 1933 Germany was officially declared a one-party state.

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 January 30, 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. This process had actually begun soon after the passage of the Enabling Act, when all state governments were thrown out of office and replaced by Reich governors (German: Reichsstatthalter. Further laws ended any autonomy in local government. Mayors of cities and towns with fewer than 100,000 people were appointed by the governors, while the Interior Minister appointed the mayors of all cities larger than 100,000 people. In the case of Berlin and Hamburg (and after 1938, Vienna), Hitler reserved the right to personally appoint the mayors.

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 June 30, 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 Hindenburg's death on August 2, 1934 the Nazi-controlled Reichstag merged the offices of Reichspräsident and Reichskanzler and reinstalled Hitler with the new title Führer und Reichskanzler. Until the death of Hindenburg, the army did not follow Hitler, 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.[citation needed] 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. 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.[citation needed] Most ordinary Germans, happy with the improving economy and better standard of living, remained obedient and quiet, but many political opponents, especially[citation needed] 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.

The end of the Third Reich

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 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 17 million ethnic Germans. Most casualty estimates of this expulsion range between one to two million dead. The French, US 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 labour, eventually leading to labour 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.

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 response to numerous crimes discovered[when?] 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, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, Karl Dönitz, Hans Frank, and Julius Streicher. The trial found many of the accused to be guilty and twelve were sentenced to death by hanging. A few officials managed to avoid being executed, including Göring, who committed suicide by ingesting a cyanide tablet before he could be hanged; 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",[who?] in that no similar action was taken to punish the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the victors, i.e. those of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States during World War II.

Further reading

Notes and references