Gestapo
The Geheime Staatspolizei, abbreviated Gestapo, was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various security police agencies of Prussia into one organisation. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it passed to the administration of Schutzstaffel national leader Heinrich Himmler, who in 1936 was appointed Chief of German Police by Hitler; the Gestapo at this time became a national rather than a Prussian state agency as a suboffice of the Sicherheitspolizei. From 27 September 1939 forward, it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, it became known as Amt 4 of the RSHA and was considered a sister organisation to the Sicherheitsdienst. During World War II, the Gestapo played a key role in the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe; as part of the agreement in which Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Hermann Göring—future commander of the Luftwaffe and the number two man in the Nazi Party—was named Interior Minister of Prussia.
This gave Göring command of the largest police force in Germany. Soon afterward, Göring detached the political and intelligence sections from the police and filled their ranks with Nazis. On 26 April 1933, Göring merged the two units as the Geheime Staatspolizei, abbreviated by a post office clerk for a franking stamp and became known as the "Gestapo", he wanted to name it the Secret Police Office, but the German initials, "GPA", were too similar to those of the Soviet Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie or "State Political Directorate", known as the GPU. The first commander of the Gestapo was a protégé of Göring. Diels was appointed with the title of chief of Abteilung Ia of the Political Police of the Prussian Interior Ministry. Diels was best known as the primary interrogator of Marinus van der Lubbe after the Reichstag fire. In late 1933, the Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick wanted to integrate all the police forces of the German states under his control. Göring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political and intelligence departments from the state interior ministry.
Göring took over the Gestapo in 1934 and urged Hitler to extend the agency's authority throughout Germany. This represented a radical departure from German tradition, which held that law enforcement was a Land and local matter. In this, he ran into conflict with Heinrich Himmler, police chief of the second most powerful German state, Bavaria. Frick did not have the political power to take on Göring by himself. With Frick's support, Himmler took over the political police of state after state. Soon only Prussia was left. Concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to counteract the power of the Sturmabteilung, Göring handed over control of the Gestapo to Himmler on 20 April 1934. On that date, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia. Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934 continued as head of the SS Security Service. Himmler and Heydrich both began installing their own personnel in select positions, several of whom were directly from the Bavarian Political Police, such as Heinrich Müller, Franz Josef Huber and Josef Meisinger.
Many of the Gestapo employees in the newly established offices were young and educated in a wide-variety of academic fields and moreover, represented a new generation of National Socialist adherents, who were hard-working and prepared to carry the Nazi state forward through the persecution of their political opponents. By the spring of 1934 Himmler's SS controlled the SD and the Gestapo, but for him, there was still a problem, as technically the SS was subordinated to the SA, under the command of Ernst Röhm. Himmler wanted to free himself from Röhm, whom he viewed as an obstacle. Röhm's position was menacing as more than 4.5 million men fell under his command once the militias and veterans organisations were absorbed by the SA, a fact which fuelled Röhm's aspirations. Several Nazi chieftains, among them Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, Himmler, began a concerted campaign to convince Hitler to take action against Röhm. Both the SD and Gestapo released information concerning an imminent putsch by the SA.
Once persuaded, Hitler acted by setting Himmler's SS into action, who proceeded to murder over 100 of Hitler's identified antagonists. The Gestapo supplied the information which implicated the SA and enabled Himmler and Heydrich to emancipate themselves from the organisation. For the Gestapo, the next two years following the Night of the Long Knives, a term describing the putsch against Röhm and the SA, were characterised by "behind-the-scenes political wrangling over policing". On 17 June 1936, Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in Germany and named Himmler as Chief of German Police; this action merged the police into the SS and removed it from Frick's control. Himmler was nominally subordinate to Frick as police chief, but as Reichsführer-SS, he answered only to Hitler; this move gave Himmler operational control over Germany's entire detective force. The Gestapo became a national state agency. Himmler gained authority over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies, which were amalgama
Women in Nazi Germany
Women in Nazi Germany were subject to doctrines of Nazism by the Nazi Party, promoting exclusion of women from political life of Germany along with its executive body as well as its executive committees. Although the Nazi party decreed that "women could be admitted to neither the Party executive nor to the Administrative Committee", this did not prevent numerous women from becoming party members; the Nazi doctrine elevated the role of German men, emphasizing their combat skills and the brotherhood among male compatriots. Women lived within a regime characterized by a policy of confining them to the roles of mother and spouse and excluding them from all positions of responsibility, notably in the political and academic spheres; the policies of Nazism contrasted starkly with the evolution of emancipation under the Weimar Republic, is distinguishable from the patriarchal and conservative attitude under the German Empire. The regimentation of women at the heart of satellite organizations of the Nazi Party, as the Bund Deutscher Mädel or the NS-Frauenschaft, had the ultimate goal of encouraging the cohesion of the "people's community" Volksgemeinschaft.
First and foremost in the implied Nazi doctrine concerning women was the notion of motherhood and procreation for those of child-bearing ages. The Nazi model woman did not have a career, but was responsible for the education of her children and for housekeeping. Women only had a limited right to training revolving around domestic tasks, were, over time, restricted from teaching in universities, from medical professions and from serving in political positions within the NSDAP. Many restrictions were lifted once wartime necessity dictated changes to policy in the regime's existence. With the exception of Reichsführerin Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, no women were allowed to carry out official functions, however some exceptions stood out in the regime, either through their proximity to Adolf Hitler, such as Magda Goebbels, or by excelling in particular fields, such as filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl or aviator Hanna Reitsch. Henceforth, while many women played an influential role at the heart of the Nazi system or filled official posts at the heart of the Nazi concentration camps, a few were engaged in the German resistance and paid with their lives, such as Libertas Schulze-Boysen or Sophie Scholl.
Under the Weimar Republic, the status of women was one of the most progressive in Europe. The Weimar Constitution of January 19, 1919 proclaimed their right to vote, equality of the sexes in civic matters, non-discrimination against female bureaucrats, maternity rights and spousal equality within marriage. Clara Zetkin, a prominent leader of the German feminist movement, was a Member of Parliament in the Reichstag from 1920 to 1933 and presided over the assembly in the role of Dean, but Weimar did not represent a huge leap forward for women's liberation. Women remained under-represented in the parliament. With the emergence of consumerism and government had an increasing need for labour. While most of the other parties under the Weimar Republic ran female candidates during elections, the Nazi party did not. In 1933, Joseph Goebbels justified this position by explaining that "it is necessary to leave to men that which belongs to men ". Germany went from having 37 female Members of Parliament out of 577, to none, after the election of November 1933.
Adolf Hitler's attaining power as Chancellor marked the end of numerous women's rights though Hitler had succeeded in his social rise in part thanks to the protection of influential women and female voters. Hitler's socializing within affluent circles, with socialites such as Princess Elsa Bruckmann, wife of the editor Hugo Bruckmann, Helene Bechstein, wife of industrialist Edwin Bechstein, early on brought the Nazi party significant new sources of financing. For example, Gertrud von Seidlitz, a widow of a noble family, donated 30,000 marks to the party in 1923. In regards to the role played by women voters in Hitler's rise to power, Helen Boak notes that the "NSDAP had been gaining proportionately more support from women than from men from 1928 onwards, not because of any concerted effort on its part nor because of its leader's charisma nor because of one specific element of its propaganda. Women chose to vote NSDAP for the same reasons men voted for the party - out of self-interest, out of a belief that the party best represented their own idea of what German society should be if they may have disagreed with the party's stand on individual issues.
The larger increase in the share of women's votes than in that of men's votes cast for the NSDAP from 1928 owes much to the party's growing prominence and respectability, as the party's dynamism, the contrast of its young leadership with the elder statesmen of the other parties, its growing strength, the disintegration of the liberal and local, conservative parties and the general disillusionment and dissatisfaction with what the Republic had brought or failed to bring all contributed to the reasons why German men and women turned to the NSDAP... Bec
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle; the Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, New Jersey to the east. Pennsylvania is the 33rd-largest state by area, the 6th-most populous state according to the most recent official U. S. Census count in 2010, it is the 9th-most densely populated of the 50 states. Pennsylvania's two most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh; the state capital and its 10th largest city is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of waterfront along the Delaware Estuary; the state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden.
It was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12, 1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the state's largest city of Philadelphia. During the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washington's headquarters during the bitter winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west. Of a total 46,055 square miles, 44,817 square miles are land, 490 square miles are inland waters, 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie, it is the 33rd-largest state in the United States. Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Of the original Thirteen Colonies, Pennsylvania is the only state that does not border the Atlantic Ocean; the boundaries of the state are the Mason–Dixon line to the south, the Twelve-Mile Circle on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border, the Delaware River to the east, 80° 31' W to the west and the 42° N to the north, with the exception of a short segment on the western end, where a triangle extends north to Lake Erie.
Cities include Philadelphia, Reading and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown and Easton in the central east. The northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest. State College serves the central region while Williamsport serves the commonwealth's north-central region as does Chambersburg the south-central region, with York and the state capital Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River in the east-central region of the Commonwealth and Altoona and Johnstown in the west-central region; the state has five geographical regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Erie Plain. New York Ontario Maryland Delaware West Virginia New Jersey Ohio Pennsylvania's diverse topography produces a variety of climates, though the entire state experiences cold winters and humid summers. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the southeastern corner, has a humid continental climate.
The southern portion of the state has a humid subtropical climate. The largest city, has some characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware and Maryland to the south. Summers are hot and humid. Moving toward the mountainous interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increases, snowfall amounts are greater. Western areas of the state locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the entire state receives plentiful precipitation throughout the year; the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, such as 30 recorded tornadoes in 2011; as of 1600, the tribes living in Pennsylvania were the Algonquian Lenape, the Iroquoian Susquehannock & Petun and the Siouan Monongahela Culture, who may have been the same as a little known tribe called the Calicua, or Cali. Other tribes who entered the region during the colonial era were the Trockwae, Saponi, Nanticoke, Conoy Piscataway, Iroquois Confederacy—possibly among others.
Other tribes, like the Erie, may have once held some land in Pennsylvania, but no longer did so by the year 1600. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their colonial lands in America; the Dutch were the first to take possession. By June 3, 1631, the Dutch had begun settling the Delmarva Peninsula by establishing the Zwaanendael Colony on the site of present-day Lewes, Delaware. In 1638, Sweden established the New Sweden Colony, in the region of Fort Christina, on the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. New Sweden claimed and, for the most part, controlled the lower Delaware River region (parts of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, Pe
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives, or the Röhm Purge called Operation Hummingbird, was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, carried out a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his hold on power in Germany, as well as to alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung, the Nazis' own mass paramilitary organization. Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm – the so-called Röhm putsch; the primary instruments of Hitler's action, who carried out most of the killings, were the Schutzstaffel paramilitary force under Himmler and its Security Service under Reinhard Heydrich, the Gestapo, the secret police, under Göring. Göring's personal police battalion took part in the killings. Many of those killed in the purge were leaders of the SA, the best-known being Röhm himself, the SA's chief of staff and one of Hitler's longtime supporters and allies.
Leading members of the socialist-leaning Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, including its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were killed, as were establishment conservatives and anti-Nazis, such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Bavarian politician Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had suppressed Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The murders of SA leaders were intended to improve the image of the Hitler government with a German public, critical of thuggish SA tactics. Hitler saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his newly gained political power, he wanted to conciliate leaders of the Reichswehr, the German military, who feared and despised the SA as a potential rival, in particular because of Röhm's ambition to merge the army and the SA under his own leadership. Additionally, Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhm's outspoken support for a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth. In Röhm's view, President Hindenburg's appointment of Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933 had brought the Nazi Party to power, but had left unfulfilled the party's larger goals.
Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate German critics of his new regime those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, as well as to settle scores with old enemies. At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds, with high estimates running from 700 to 1,000. More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested; the purge consolidated the support of the Wehrmacht for Hitler. It provided a legal grounding for the Nazi regime, as the German courts and cabinet swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extrajudicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime; the Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as the supreme administrator of justice of the German people, as he put it in his July 13 speech to the Reichstag. Before its execution, its planners sometimes referred to the purge as Hummingbird, the codeword used to send the execution squads into action on the day of the purge.
The codename for the operation appears to have been chosen arbitrarily. The phrase "Night of the Long Knives" in the German language predates the killings and refers to acts of vengeance. President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Over the next few months, during the so-called Gleichschaltung, Hitler dispensed with the need for the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic as a legislative body and eliminated all rival political parties in Germany, so that by the middle of 1933 the country had become a one-party state under his direction and control. Hitler did not exercise absolute power, despite his swift consolidation of political authority; as chancellor, Hitler did not command the army, which remained under the formal leadership of Hindenburg, a respected veteran field marshal. While many officers were impressed by Hitler's promises of an expanded army, a return to conscription, a more aggressive foreign policy, the army continued to guard its traditions of independence during the early years of the Nazi regime.
To a lesser extent, the Sturmabteilung, a Nazi paramilitary organisation, remained somewhat autonomous within the party. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years; the Freikorps were nationalistic organisations composed of disaffected and angry German combat veterans founded by the government in January 1919 to deal with the threat of a Communist revolution when it appeared that there was a lack of loyal troops. A large number of the Freikorps believed that the November Revolution had betrayed them when Germany was alleged to be on the verge of victory in 1918. Hence, the Freikorps were in opposition to the new Weimar Republic, born as a result of the November Revolution, whose founders were contemptuously called "November criminals". Captain Ernst Röhm of the Reichswehr served as the liaison with the Bavarian Freikorps. Röhm was given the nickname "The Machine Gun King of Bavaria" in the early 1920s, since he was responsible for storing and issuing illegal machine guns to the Bavarian Freikorps units.
Röhm left the Reichswehr in 1923 and became commander of the SA. During the 1920s and 1930s, the SA functioned as a private militia used by Hitler to intimidate rivals and disrupt the meetings of competing political parties those of the Social Democrats and the Communists. Known as the "brownshi
Religion in Nazi Germany
For the significance of occultism and paganism in Nazism see the article Religious aspects of Nazism. There was some diversity of personal views among the Nazi leadership as to the future of religion in Germany. Anti-Church radicals included Hitler's Personal Secretary Martin Bormann, Minister for Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, paganist Nazi Philosopher Alfred Rosenberg, paganist occultist Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler; some Nazis, such as Hans Kerrl, who served as Hitler's Minister for Church Affairs pushed for "Positive Christianity", a uniquely Nazi form which rejected its Jewish origins and the Old Testament, portrayed "true" Christianity as a fight against Jews, with Jesus depicted as an Aryan. Nazism wanted to transform the subjective consciousness of the German people—their attitudes and mentalities—into a single-minded, obedient "national community"; the Nazis believed they would therefore have to replace class and regional allegiances. Under the Gleichschaltung process, Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from Germany's 28 existing Protestant churches.
The plan failed, was resisted by the Confessing Church. Persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover. Hitler moved to eliminate Political Catholicism. Amid harassment of the Church, the Reich concordat treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1933, promised to respect Church autonomy. Hitler disregarded the Concordat, closing all Catholic institutions whose functions were not religious. Clergy and lay leaders were targeted, with thousands of arrests over the ensuing years; the Church accused the regime of "fundamental hostility to Christ and his Church". Historians resist however a simple equation of Nazi opposition to both Christianity. Nazism was willing to use the support of Christians who accepted its ideology, Nazi opposition to both Judaism and Christianity was not analogous in the minds of the Nazis. Smaller religious minorities such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Bahá'í Faith were banned in Germany, while the eradication of Judaism by the genocide of its adherents was attempted.
The Salvation Army, the Christian Saints and the Seventh-day Adventist Church all disappeared from Germany, while astrologers and fortune tellers were banned. The small pagan "German Faith Movement", which worshipped the sun and seasons, supported the Nazis. Many historians believed that Hitler and the Nazis intended to eradicate Christianity in Germany after winning victory in the war. In 1933, 5 years prior to the annexation of Austria into Germany, the population of Germany was 67% Protestant and 33% Catholic, while the Jewish population was less than 1%. A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era and after the annexation of Catholic Austria and Catholic Czechoslovakia into Germany, indicates that 54% considered themselves Protestant, 40% Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as gottgläubig, 1.5% as "atheist". Christianity has ancient roots among Germanic peoples dating to the missionary work of Columbanus and St. Boniface in the 6th–8th centuries; the Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther in 1517, divided the German population between a two-thirds majority of Protestants and a one-third minority of Roman Catholics.
The south and west remained Catholic, while north and east became Protestant. The Catholic Church enjoyed a degree of privilege in the Bavarian region, the Rhineland and Westphalia as well as parts in south-west Germany, while in the Protestant North, Catholics suffered some discrimination. Bismarck's Kulturkampf of 1871–78 had seen an attempt to assert a Protestant vision of German nationalism over Germany, fused anticlericalism and suspicion of the Catholic population, whose loyalty was presumed to lie with Austria and France, rather than the new German Empire; the Centre Party had formed in 1870 to represent the religious interests of Catholics and Protestants, but was transformed by the Kulturkampf into the "political voice of Catholics". Bismarck's Culture Struggle failed in its attempt to eliminate Catholic institutions in Germany, or their strong connections outside of Germany various international missions and Rome. In the course of the 19th century, both the rise of historical-critical scholarship of the Bible and Jesus by David Strauss, Ernest Renan and others, progress in the natural sciences the field of evolutionary biology by Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel and others, opposition to oppressive socioeconomic circumstances by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and others, resulted in increasing criticism of the traditional churches' dogmas, moved numerous German citizens into freethought.
They rejected fundamental theological concepts and either developed their own liberal form of religion or discarded it altogether. By 1859, they had established the Bund Freireligiöser Gemeinden Deutschlands, an association of persons who consider themselves to be religious without adhering to any established and institutionalized church or sacerdotal cult. In 1881 in Frankfurt am Main, Ludwig Büchner established the German Freethinkers League as the first German organisation for atheists and agnostics. In 1892 the Freidenker-Gesellschaft and in 1906 the Deutscher Monistenbund were formed. Christianity in Germany has, since the Protestant Reformation in 1517, been divided into Roman Catholicism and Protestantism; as a specific outcome of the Reformation in Germany, the large Protestant denominations are organized into Landeskirchen. The German wo
Far-right politics
Far-right politics are politics further on the right of the left-right spectrum than the standard political right in terms of extreme nationalism, nativist ideologies, authoritarian tendencies. The term is used to describe Nazism, neo-Nazism, neo-fascism and other ideologies or organizations that feature ultranationalist, xenophobic, anti-communist, or reactionary views; these can lead to oppression and violence against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority, or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group, state or ultraconservative traditional social institutions. Far-right politics includes but is not limited to aspects of authoritarianism, anti-communism and nativism. Claims that superior people should have greater rights than inferior people are associated with the far-right; the far-right has favored an elitist society based on its belief in the legitimacy of the rule of a supposed superior minority over the inferior masses. Some aspects of fascist ideology have been identified with right-wing political parties: in particular, the fascist idea that superior persons should dominate society while undesirable elements should be purged, which in the case of Nazism resulted in genocide.
Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London, has distinguished between right-wing nationalist parties—which are described as far-right such as the National Front in France—and fascism. One issue is whether parties should be labelled radical or extreme, a distinction, made by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany when determining whether or not a party should be banned. Another question is what the label "right" implies when it is applied to the extreme right, given the fact that many parties that were labeled right-wing extremist tended to advance neoliberal and free market agendas as late as the 1980s, but now advocate economic policies which are more traditionally associated with the left, such as anti-globalisation and protectionism. One approach, drawing on the writings of Norberto Bobbio, argues that attitudes towards political equality are what distinguish the left from the right and they therefore allow these parties to be positioned on the right of the political spectrum.
There is debate about how appropriate the labels fascist or neo-Fascist are. According to Cas Mudde, "the labels Neo-Nazi and to a lesser extent neo-Fascism are now used for parties and groups that explicitly state a desire to restore the Third Reich or quote historical National Socialism as their ideological influence". Right-wing populism, a political ideology that combines laissez-faire capitalism, nationalism and anti-elitism, is sometimes described as far-right. Right-wing populism involves appeals to the "common man" and opposition to immigration. Far-right politics sometimes involves anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are deemed inferior and undesirable. Concerning the socio-cultural dimension of nationality and migration, one far-right position is the view that certain ethnic, racial or religious groups should stay separate and it is based on the belief that the interests of one's own group should be prioritised. Proponents of the horseshoe theory interpretation of the left-right spectrum identify the far-left and the far-right as having more in common with each other as extremists than each of them has with moderate centrists.
In the United States, the term hard right has been used to describe groups such as the Tea Party movement and the Patriot movement. The term has been used to describe ideologies such as paleoconservatism, Dominion Theology and white nationalism; the German political scientist Klaus von Beyme describes three historical phases in the development of far-right parties in Western Europe after World War II. From 1945 to the mid-1950s, far-right parties were marginalised and their ideologies were discredited due to the recent existence and defeat of Nazism, thus in the years following World War II, the main objective of far-right parties was survival and achieving any political impact at all was not expected. From the mid-1950s to the 1970s, the so-called "populist protest phase" emerged with sporadic electoral success. During this period, far-right parties drew to them charismatic leaders whose profound mistrust of the political establishment led to an "us-versus-them" mind set: "us" being the nation's citizenry, "them" being the politicians and bureaucrats who were in office.
Beginning in the 1980s, the electoral successes of far-right political candidates made it possible for far-right political parties to revitalize anti-immigration as a mainstream issue. Jens Rydgren describes a number of theories as to why individuals support far-right political parties and the academic literature on this topic distinguishes between demand-side theories that have changed the "interests, emotions and preferences of voters" and supply-side theories which focus on the programmes of parties, their organisation and the opportunity structures within individual political systems; the most common demand-side theories are the social breakdown thesis, the relative deprivation thesis, the modernisation losers thesis and the ethnic competition thesis. The rise of far-right political parties has been viewed as a rejection of post-materialist values on the part of some voters; this theory, known as the reverse post-material thesis blames both left-wing and progressive parties for embracing a post-material agenda that alienates traditional working class voters.
Another study argues that individuals who join far-right parties determine whether those parties develop into major political players
Adolf Hitler's rise to power
Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in Germany in September 1919 when Hitler joined the political party known as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – DAP. The name was changed in 1920 to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – NSDAP, it was anti-Marxist and opposed to the democratic post-war government of the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles, advocating extreme nationalism and Pan-Germanism as well as virulent anti-Semitism. Hitler's "rise" can be considered to have ended in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month. President Paul von Hindenburg had appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues; the Enabling Act—when used ruthlessly and with authority—virtually assured that Hitler could thereafter constitutionally exercise dictatorial power without legal objection. Adolf Hitler rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Being one of its best speakers, he told the other members to either make him leader of the party or he would never return.
He was aided in part by his willingness to use violence in advancing his political objectives and to recruit party members who were willing to do the same. The Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923 and the release of his book Mein Kampf expanded Hitler's audience. In the mid-1920s, the party engaged in electoral battles in which Hitler participated as a speaker and organizer, as well as in street battles and violence between the Rotfrontkämpferbund and the Nazis' Sturmabteilung. Through the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazis gathered enough electoral support to become the largest political party in the Reichstag, Hitler's blend of political acuity and cunning converted the party's non-majority but plurality status into effective governing power in the ailing Weimar Republic of 1933. Once in power, the Nazis created a mythology surrounding the rise to power, they described the period that corresponds to the scope of this article as either the Kampfzeit or the Kampfjahre. Adolf Hitler became involved with the fledgling Nazi Party after the First World War, set the violent tone of the movement early, by forming the Sturmabteilung paramilitary.
Catholic Bavaria resented rule from Protestant Berlin, Hitler at first saw revolution in Bavaria as a means to power—but an early attempt proved fruitless, he was imprisoned after the 1923 Munich Beerhall Putsch. He used the time to produce Mein Kampf, in which he argued that the effeminate Jewish-Christian ethic was enfeebling Europe, that Germany needed a man of iron to restore itself and build an empire, he decided on the tactic of pursuing power through "legal" means. After being granted permission from King Ludwig III of Bavaria, 25-year-old Austrian-born Hitler enlisted in a Bavarian regiment of the German army, although he was not yet a German citizen. For over four years, Germany was a principal actor in World War I, on the Western Front. Soon after the fighting on the front ended in November 1918, Hitler returned to Munich after the Armistice with no job, no real civilian job skills and no friends, he remained in the Reichswehr and was given a meaningless assignment during the winter of 1918–1919, but was recruited by the Army's Political Department because of his assistance to the army in investigating the responsibility for the ill-fated Bavarian Soviet Republic.
He took part in "national thinking" courses under Captain Karl Mayr. His skills in oratory, as well as his extreme and open anti-Semitism, caught the eye of an approving army officer and he was promoted to an "education officer"—which gave him an opportunity to speak in public. In July 1919 Hitler was appointed Verbindungsmann of an Aufklärungskommando of the Reichswehr, both to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party; the DAP had been formed by Anton Drexler, Karl Harrer and others, through amalgamation of other groups, on 5 January 1919 at a small gathering in Munich at the restaurant Fuerstenfelder Hof. While he studied the activities of the DAP, Hitler became impressed with Drexler's antisemitic, anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist ideas. During the 12 September 1919 meeting, Hitler took umbrage with comments made by an audience member that were directed against Gottfried Feder, the speaker, a crank economist with whom Hitler was acquainted due to a lecture Feder delivered in an army "education" course.
The audience member asserted that Bavaria should be wholly independent from Germany and should secede from Germany and unite with Austria to form a new South German nation. The volatile Hitler arose and scolded the unfortunate Professor Baumann, using his speaking skills and causing Baumann to leave the meeting before its adjournment. Impressed with Hitler's oratory skills, Drexler encouraged him to join the DAP. On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party. Within a week, Hitler received a postcard stating he had been accepted as a member and he should come to a "committee" meeting to discuss it. Hitler attended the "committee" meeting held at the run-down Alte Rosenbad beer-house. Hitler wrote that joining the fledgling party "...was the most decisive resolve of my life. From here there was and could be no turning back.... I registered as a member of the German Workers' Party and received a provisional membership card with the number 7". Normally
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