1.
Nazism
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National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, as well as other far-right groups. Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism, identifying Germans as part of what Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race and it aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous society, unified on the basis of racial purity. The term National Socialism arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, the Nazi Partys precursor, the Pan-German nationalist and anti-Semitic German Workers Party, was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, Adolf Hitler assumed control of the organisation, following the Holocaust and German defeat in World War II, only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, still describe themselves as following National Socialism. The full name of Adolf Hitlers party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the shorthand Nazi was formed from the first two syllables of the German pronunciation of the word national. The term was in use before the rise of the NSDAP as a colloquial and derogatory word for a peasant, characterizing an awkward. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the first word of the name, Nationalsozialistische. The NSDAP briefly adopted the Nazi designation, attempting to reappropriate the term, the use of Nazi Germany, Nazi regime, and so on was popularised by German exiles abroad. From them, the spread into other languages and was eventually brought back to Germany after World War II. In English, Nazism is a name for the ideology the party advocated. The majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics, far-right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over other people and purge society of supposed inferior elements. Adolf Hitler and other proponents officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms, a major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I. The Nazis stated the alliance was purely tactical and there remained substantial differences with the DNVP, the Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party. After the elections in 1932, the alliance broke after the DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag, the Nazis denounced them as an insignificant heap of reactionaries. The DNVP responded by denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their violence. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was pressured to abdicate the throne and flee into exile amidst an attempted communist revolution in Germany, there were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical
2.
Nazi Party
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Its precursor, the German Workers Party, existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, the party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Pseudo-scientific racism theories were central to Nazism, the Nazis propagated the idea of a peoples community. Their aim was to unite racially desirable Germans as national comrades, while excluding those deemed either to be political dissidents, to maintain the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally handicapped. They imposed exclusionary segregation on homosexuals, Africans, Jehovahs Witnesses, the partys leader since 1921, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. Hitler rapidly established a regime known as the Third Reich. The term Nazi derives from the name given in German to a party member Nationalsozialist and was coined in response to the German term Sozi, members of the party referred to themselves as Nationalsozialisten, rarely as Nazis. The term Parteigenosse was commonly used among Nazis, with the feminine form Parteigenossin used when it was appropriate, the term was in use before the rise of the party as a colloquial and derogatory word for a backward peasant, characterising an awkward and clumsy person. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the name in intentional association to the long-time existing Sozi to the dismissive Nazi. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler assumed power of the German government, usage of the designation Nazi diminished in Germany, the use of Nazi Germany, and Nazi regime, was popularised by anti-Nazis and German exiles abroad. Thereafter, the spread into other languages and eventually was brought back to Germany after the Second World War. The party grew out of political groups with a nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I. In 1918, a called the Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden was created in Bremen. On 7 March 1918, Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist, Drexler saw the situation of political violence and instability in Germany as the result of the new Weimar Republic being out-of-touch with the masses, especially the lower classes. These were all well-known themes popular with various Weimar paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps, though very small, Drexlers movement did receive attention and support from some influential figures. Supporter Dietrich Eckhart brought military figure Count Felix Graf von Bothmer, later in 1918, Karl Harrer, convinced Drexler and several others to form the Politischer Arbeiterzirkel. The members met periodically for discussions with themes of nationalism and racism directed against the Jews and they became one of many völkisch movements that existed in Germany at the time
3.
Sturmabteilung
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The Sturmabteilung, literally Storm Detachment, functioned as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitlers rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s, the SA have been known in contemporary times as Brownshirts from the color of their uniform shirts, similar to Benito Mussolinis blackshirts. The SA developed pseudo-military titles for its members, the SA ranks were adopted by several other Nazi Party groups, chief amongst them the Schutzstaffel, which originated as a branch of the SA before being separated. The SA became disempowered after Adolf Hitler ordered the purge of 1934. This event became known as the Night of the Long Knives, the SA was effectively superseded by the SS, although it was not formally dissolved until after the Third Reichs final capitulation to the Allied powers in 1945. The term Sturmabteilung predates the founding of the Nazi Party in 1919, originally it was applied to the specialized assault troops of Imperial Germany in World War I who used Hutier infiltration tactics. Instead of large mass assaults, the Sturmabteilung were organised into small squads of a few soldiers each, on 2 October 1916, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff ordered all German armies in the west to form a battalion of stormtroops. They were first used during the 8th Armys siege of Riga, wider use followed on the Western Front in the Spring Offensive in March 1918, where Allied lines were successfully pushed back tens of kilometers. The DAP was formed in Munich in January 1919 and Adolf Hitler joined it in September of that year. His talents for speaking, publicity and propaganda were quickly recognized, and by early 1920 he had gained authority in the party, the precursor to the SA had acted informally and on an ad hoc basis for some time before this. Some 70 people attended, and a second meeting was advertised for 13 November in the Eberlbrau beer hall. Some 130 people attended, there were hecklers, but Hitlers military friends promptly ejected them by force, the next year, on 24 February, he announced the partys Twenty-Five Point program at a mass meeting of some 2000 people at the Hofbräuhaus. Protesters tried to shout Hitler down, but his former companions, armed with rubber truncheons. The basis for the SA had been formed, a permanent group of party members who would serve as the ruffian Saalschutzabteilung for the DAP gathered around Emil Maurice after the February 1920 incident at the Hofbräuhaus. There was little organization or structure to this group, the group was also called the Ordnertruppen around this time. More than a later, on 3 August 1921, Hitler redefined the group as the Gymnastic and Sports Division of the party. It was by now recognized as an appropriate, even necessary. By September 1921 the name Sturmabteilung was being used informally for the group, Hitler was the official head of the Nazi Party by this time
4.
Schutzstaffel
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The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party in Nazi Germany. It began with a guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed, under his direction, it grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance. The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS and Waffen-SS, the Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units of troops within Nazi Germanys military. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände, ran the concentration camps, additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst organizations. The SS was the organization most responsible for the killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II, the SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. After Nazi Germanys defeat, the SS and the NSDAP were judged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be criminal organizations, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking surviving SS officer at the time, was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and hanged in 1946. By 1923, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler had created a volunteer guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz to provide security at their meetings in Munich. The same year, Hitler ordered the formation of a bodyguard unit dedicated to his personal service. He wished it to be separate from the mass of the party, including the paramilitary Sturmabteilung. The new formation was designated the Stabswache, originally the unit was composed of eight men, commanded by Julius Schreck and Joseph Berchtold, and was modeled after the Erhardt Naval Brigade, a Freikorps of the time. The unit was renamed Stoßtrupp in May 1923, the Stoßtrupp was abolished after the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by the NSDAP to seize power in Munich. In 1925, Hitler ordered Schreck to organize a new bodyguard unit and it was tasked with providing personal protection for Hitler at NSDAP functions and events. That same year, the Schutzkommando was expanded to an organization and renamed successively the Sturmstaffel. Officially, the SS marked its foundation on 9 November 1925, the new SS was to provide protection for NSDAP leaders throughout Germany. Hitlers personal SS protection unit was enlarged to include combat units
5.
Gestapo
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The Gestapo, abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, or the Secret State Police, 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 agencies of Prussia into one organization. Then from 27 September 1939 forward, it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and was considered an organization to the SS Sicherheitsdienst. 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, which was abbreviated for a stamp and became known as the Gestapo. He originally wanted to name it the Secret Police Office, and its first commander was Rudolf Diels, 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 forces of the German states under his control. Göring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political and intelligence departments from the interior ministry. Göring himself took over the Gestapo in 1934 and urged Hitler to extend the agencys authority throughout Germany and 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, who was chief of the second most powerful German state. Frick did not have the muscle to take on Göring by himself so he allied with Himmler, with Fricks support, Himmler took over the political police of state after state. 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. Also 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, also continued as head of the SS Security Service. Himmler wanted to free himself entirely from Roehm, who he viewed as an obstacle, roehms position was menacing as upwards of over 4. Several Nazi chieftains, among them Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, both the SD and Gestapo released information concerning an imminent putsch by the SA. Once persuaded, Hitler acted by setting Himmlers SS into action, on 17 June 1936, Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in the Reich and named Himmler as Chief of German Police. This action effectively merged the police into the SS and removed it from Fricks control, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Frick as police chief, but as Reichsführer-SS, he answered only to Hitler
6.
Hitler Youth
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The Hitler Youth was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins dated back to 1922, with the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the organisation de facto ceased to exist. On 10 October 1945, it was outlawed by the Allied Control Council along with other Nazi Party organisations, in 1922 the Munich-based Nazi Party established its official youth organisation called Jugendbund der NSDAP. It was announced on 8 March 1922 in the Völkischer Beobachter, another youth group was established in 1922 as the Jungsturm Adolf Hitler. Based in Munich, Bavaria, it served to train and recruit members of the Sturmabteilung. Following the abortive Beer Hall Putsch the Nazi youth groups ostensibly disbanded, in April 1924 the Jugendbund der NSDAP was renamed Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung. On 4 July 1926 the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung was officially renamed Hitler Jugend Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend and this event took place a year after the Nazi Party itself had been reorganised. The architect of the re-organisation was Kurt Gruber, a law student from Plauen in Saxony, after a short power-struggle with a rival organisation—Gerhard Roßbachs Schilljugend—Gruber prevailed and his Greater German Youth Movement became the Nazi Partys official youth organisation. In July 1926 it was renamed Hitler-Jugend, Bund deutscher Arbeiterjugend and, for the first time, the name Hitler-Jugend was taken up on the suggestion of Hans Severus Ziegler. By 1930 the Hitlerjugend had enlisted over 25,000 boys aged 14 and it also set up a junior branch, the Deutsches Jungvolk, for boys aged 10 to 14. Girls from 10 to 18 were given their own parallel organisation, in April 1932 Chancellor Heinrich Brüning banned the Hitler Youth movement in an attempt to stop widespread political violence. But in June Brünings successor as Chancellor, Franz von Papen, lifted the ban as a way of appeasing Hitler, a further significant expansion drive started in 1933, after Baldur von Schirach was appointed by Hitler as the first Reichsjugendführer. All youth organizations were brought under Schirachs control, the members of the Hitler Youth were viewed as insuring the future of Nazi Germany and were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, including racism. The Hitler Youth appropriated many of its activities of the Boy Scout movement, although over time it changed in content and intention. For example, many activities closely resembled military training, with training, assault course circuits. The aim was to instill the motivation that would enable its members as soldiers, there was great emphasis on physical fitness and hardness and military training than on academic study. The Hitler Youth were used to break up Church youth groups, and in anti-Church indoctrination, used to spy on religious classes and Bible studies, and interfere with church attendance. Members summer uniform consisted of a black shorts and tan shirt with pockets, worn with a black neckerchief secured with a woggle
7.
Deutsches Jungvolk
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The Deutsches Jungvolk in der Hitler Jugend, German Youngsters in the Hitler Youth, was in Nazi Germany the separate section for boys aged 10 to 14 of the Hitler Youth organisation. Through a program of activities, parades and sports, it aimed to indoctrinate its young members in the tenets of Nazi ideology. Membership became fully compulsory for boys in 1939. By the end of World War II, some had become child soldiers, in 1945 after the end of the war the Deutsches Jungvolk, and its parent organisation the Hitler Youth, ceased to exist. The Deutsches Jungvolk was founded in 1928 by Kurt Gruber under the title Jungmannschaften but was renamed Knabenschaft, although not compulsory, the failure of eligible boys to join the DJ was seen as a failure of civic responsibility on the part of their parents. Parents could be fined or imprisoned for failing to register their children, boys were excluded if they had previously been found guilty of dishonourable acts, if they were found to be unfit for service for medical reasons, or if they were Jewish. Ethnic Poles or Danes living in the Reich could apply for exemption, the DJ and HJ copied many of the activities of the various German youth organizations that it replaced. For many boys, the DJ was the way to participate in sports, camping. However the main purpose of the DJ was the inculcation of boys in the principles of National Socialism. Members were obliged to attend Nazi party rallies and parades, on a weekly basis, there was the Heimabende, a Wednesday evening meeting for political, racial, and ideological indoctrination. Boys were encouraged to inform the authorities if their parents beliefs were contrary to Nazi dogma, recruits were called Pimpfen, a colloquial word from Upper German for boy, little rascal, scamp, or rapscallion, originally little fart. Groups of 10 boys were called a Jungenschaft with leaders chosen from the older boys and these units were further grouped into companies and battalions, each with their own leaders, who were usually young adults. Der Pimpf, the Nazi magazine for boys, was aimed at those in the Deutsches Jungvolk, with adventure. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, the DJ uniform was very similar to the Hitler Youth equivalent. The summer uniform consisted of a black shorts and tan shirt with pockets, worn with a black neckerchief secured with a woggle. Headgear originally consisted of a beret, but when this was discarded by the HJ in 1934, the emblem of the DJ was a white Sieg rune on a black background, which symbolised victory. This was worn on the uniform in the form of a cloth badge, by 1944, the Hitler Youth formed part of the Volkssturm, an unpaid, part-time militia, and often formed special HJ companies within Volkssturm battalions. Eye witness reports of the Battle of Berlin in April 1945 record instances of young boys fighting in their DJ uniforms, complete with short trousers
8.
League of German Girls
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The League of German Girls or Band of German Maidens was the girls wing of the Nazi Party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. It was the legal female youth organization in Nazi Germany. At first, the League consisted of two sections, the Jungmädel, or Young Girls League, for girls ages 10 to 14, and the League proper for girls ages 14 to 18. In 1938, a section was introduced, the Faith and Beauty Society. With the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the de facto ceased to exist. On 10 October 1945, it was outlawed by the Allied Control Council along with other Nazi Party organizations, the Bund Deutscher Mädel had its origins as early as the 1920s, in the first Mädchenschaften or Mädchengruppen, also known as Schwesternschaften der Hitler-Jugend. In 1930 it was founded as the branch of the Hitler Youth movement. Its full title was Bund Deutscher Mädel in der Hitler-Jugend, in the final electioneering campaigns of 1932, Hitler inaugurated it with a mass meeting featuring the League, on election eve, the League and Hitler Youth staged evening of entertainment. It did not attract a mass following until the Nazis came to power in January 1933, soon after taking office as Reichsjugendführer on 17 June 1933, Baldur von Schirach issued regulations that suspended or forbid existing youth organizations. Those youth groups were integrated into the BDM, which was declared to be the only legally permitted organization for girls in Germany. Many of the existing organizations closed down to avoid this and these Nazi activities were a part of the Gleichschaltung starting in 1933. The Reichskonkordat between the Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, signed on 20 July 1933, gave a shelter to the Catholic youth ministry. The Gesetz über die Hitlerjugend dated 1 December 1936, forced all eligible juveniles to be a member of HJ or BDM and they had to be ethnic Germans, German citizens and free of hereditary diseases. Girls had to be 10 years of age to enter this League, after Mohr married in 1937, she was required to resign her position, and was succeeded by Dr. She joined Schirach in resisting efforts by the head of the NS-Frauenschaft, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, Rüdiger led the BDM until its dissolution in 1945. As in the HJ, separate sections of the BDM existed, Girls between the ages of 10 and 14 years old were members of the Young Girls League, and girls between the ages of 14 and 18 were members of the Bund Deutscher Mädel proper. Ideally, girls were to be married and have children once they were of age, at the beginning of World War II, the Reichsarbeitsdienst became compulsory also for young women. Many young women became Blitzmädel during World War II, while these ages are general guidelines, there were exceptions for members holding higher leadership positions, starting at the organizational level of Untergau
9.
National Socialist Flyers Corps
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The NSFK organization was based closely on the organization of the Sturmabteilung and maintained a system of paramilitary ranks closely associated with the SA. A similar group was the National Socialist Motor Corps, during the early years of its existence, the NSFK conducted military aviation training in gliders and private airplanes. General der Flieger Friedrich Christiansen was NSFK Korpsführer from April 15,1937 until June 26,1943, the National Socialist Flyers Corps continued to exist after the Luftwaffe was founded, but to a much smaller degree
10.
National Socialist Motor Corps
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The National Socialist Motor Corps was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party that officially existed from May 1931 to 1945. The group was an organization to the older National Socialist Automobile Corps. The NSKK served as an organization, mainly instructing members in the operation. The NSKK was further used to transport NSDAP and SA officials/members, the NSKK also served as a roadside assistance group in the mid-1930s, comparable to the modern-day American Automobile Association or the British Automobile Association. With the outbreak of World War II NSKK ranks were recruited to serve in the corps of various German military branches. There was also a French section of the NSKK which was organized after the German occupation of France began in 1940, the NSKK was the smallest of the Nazi Party organizations. The National Socialist Motor Corps was an organization to the older National Socialist Automobile Corps. Martin Bormann founded the NSAK, which itself was the successor to the SA Motor Squadrons, Hitler made the NSAK an official Nazi organization on 1 April 1930. The NSAK was responsible for co-ordinating the donated use of vehicles belonging to party members. Adolf Hühnlein was appointed the leader of the NSAK which was to primarily as a motorized corps of the Sturmabteilung. The organizations name was changed to the National Socialist Motor Corps and it was essentially a paramilitary organization with its own system of paramilitary ranks and the smallest of the NSDAP organizations. Despite its relatively smaller size, when the Nazis celebrated Braunschweiger SA-day on 18 October 1931, the primary aim of the Corps was to educate its members in motoring skills or what the NSKK called fitness in motoring skills, but it also transported NSDAP and SA officials. In the mid-1930s, the NSKK also served as a roadside assistance group, membership in the NSKK did not require any prior knowledge of automobiles. It was thought that training in the NSKK would make up for any lack of knowledge. The NSKK did, however, adhere to Nazi racial doctrine, under the guidance of the police, numerous NSKK men were stationed at traffic junctions and trained in traffic control. On 20 July 1934, three weeks after the major purge the SA suffered during the Night of the Long Knives, from 1935 onward, the NSKK also provided training for Panzer crews and drivers of the German Army. The NSKK had two branches within the organization known as the Motor-Hitler Youth and Naval NSKK. The Motor-HJ branch was formed by Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach after he became a member of the NSKK and it operated 350 of its own vehicles for educational and training purposes
11.
National Socialist Women's League
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The National Socialist Womens League was the womens wing of the Nazi Party. It was founded in October 1931 as a fusion of several nationalist, the Frauenschaft was subordinated to the national party leadership, girls and young women were the purview of the Bund Deutscher Mädel. From February 1934 to the end of World War II in 1945 and it put out a biweekly magazine, the NS-Frauen-Warte. Propaganda organizations depended on it as the primary spreader of propaganda to women, the NS-Frauenschaft reached a total membership of 2 million by 1938, the equivalent of 40% of total party membership. The German National Socialist Womens League Childrens Group was known as Kinderschar, die NS-Frauenschaft at Lebendiges Museum Online. NS-Frauenpolitik und NS-Frauenorganisationen (NS womens policy and womens organisations] at Lebendiges Museum Online
12.
Black Front
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The Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists, more commonly known as the Black Front, was a political group formed by Otto Strasser after his expulsion from the Nazi Party in 1930. Strasser believed the original anti-capitalist nature of the NSDAP had been betrayed by Adolf Hitler, the Black Front was composed of former radical members of the NSdAP, who intended to cause a split in the main party. Strassers organisation published a newspaper, The German Revolution, and adopted the crossed hammer, the organisation was unable to oppose the NSDAP effectively, and Hitler’s rise to power proved to be the final straw. Strasser spent the years of the Third Reich in exile, first in Czechoslovakia, the social fascist wing of the party itself was eradicated in 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives, in which Gregor Strasser, Ottos elder brother, was killed
13.
Early timeline of Nazism
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The early timeline of Nazism begins with its origins and continues until Hitlers rise to power. 1834, The term Nationalsozialismus first appears in print, in Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel at page 36, gobineau also wrote that racial mixing would lead to chaos. While not an anti-Semite, his work is characterized as philosemitic. Fest, in his biography entitled Hitler, claims that Arthur de Gobineaus negative views on race mixing influenced Hitler and thereby. 1870, The term National Socialism first appears in English, in The sects of the Russian Church, The North British Review,1878, Founding year of the anti-Semitic Christian Social Workers Party by Adolf Stoecker. 1884, National Socialism is mentioned in Fabian Tracts, Fabian Publications,20 April 1889, Adolf Hitler born at Braunau am Inn, Austria. 1895, Alfred Ploetz coins the term Rassenhygiene,1896, The Czech National Social Party is formed. 1897, Franko Stein moves a small periodical Der Hammer from Vienna to Eger, may 1898, Maurice Barrès, while standing as a nationalist candidate for Nancy, France, coins the term Socialist Nationalism. 1898, German Workers Congress is organized by Stein in Eger,1899, Houston Stewart Chamberlain writes Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, a work which influenced many prominent Nazis. Ludwig Woltmann also publishes a tract asserting the superiority of Germanic people, April 1902, Organization of Nationalistic Labor takes place in Saaz. 15 November 1903, Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in Österreich is formed,1904, Hans Knirsch proposes to add National Socialist to the Austrian DAP name, but the proposal is rejected by party congress conferees. 1905, Racial Hygiene Society founded by Alfred Ploetz,1909, An All-Austrian congress of the German Workers’ Party is held in Prague. 1912, Controversial book, Wenn ich der Kaiser wär by Heinrich Class appears,28 July, World War I breaks out. 2 August, Adolf Hitler receives permission to enlist, joins the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment in Munich 30 October,1 November, Adolf Hitler is promoted to Gefreiter, the equivalent of a senior private or corporal. September, Pan-Germanic Deutsche Vaterlandspartei emerges under the leadership of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and Wolfgang Kapp, the infamous “stab-in-the-back myth” used by right-wing organizations as a political platform allegedly originated with this party. March, Anton Drexler founded a branch of Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden league in Munich,17 July, Adolf Hitler saves the life of the 9th Company Commander. 4 August, Adolf Hitler awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class,13 October, Adolf Hitler gassed near Ypres. 7 November,100,000 workers march on the Royal House of Wittelsbach,8 November, All 22 of Germany’s lesser kings, princes, grand dukes, and ruling dukes have been deposed
14.
Adolf Hitler's rise to power
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Adolf Hitlers 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 and this political party was formed and developed during the post-World War I era. Hitlers rise can be considered to have ended in March 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg had already 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 the best speakers of the party, he told the party 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, the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923 and the later release of his book Mein Kampf introduced Hitler to a wider audience. Hitler became involved with the fledgling Nazi Party after the First World War and 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, 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 he took part in national thinking courses under Captain Karl Mayr. In July 1919 Hitler was appointed Verbindungsmann of an Aufklärungskommando of the Reichswehr, 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 Drexlers antisemitic, 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 astonishing speaking skills, impressed with Hitlers oratory skills, Drexler invited him to join the DAP. Hitler accepted on 12 September 1919, in less than a week, Hitler received a postcard from Drexler stating he had officially been accepted as a DAP member and he should come to a committee meeting to discuss it. Hitler attended the meeting held at the run-down Alte Rosenbad beer-house. Later 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 membership card with the number 7. Normally, enlisted personnel were not allowed to join political parties. However, in case, Hitler had Captain Mayrs permission to join the DAP
15.
Machtergreifung
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The Nazi seizure of power, frequently referred to by the German name Machtergreifung, was the advent to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party. Hitler seized power after the Reichstag Fire, to this day scholars dispute who started the fire that allowed Hitler to establish totalitarian rule over Germany. From an economic perspective, Brüning pursued a policy of austerity and public budget balancing. A proposed coalition between the Centre Party, the national conservative German National Peoples Party, and the Nazis, in the German federal election of July 1932, the Nazi Party gained the largest number of seats in the Reichstag, yet were still without a majority. However these plans failed, and behind his back on 4 January 1933, Hitler met Papen, along with State Secretary Otto Meissner and Hindenburgs son Oskar, Papen could finally persuade the reluctant president to appoint Hitler. Adolf Hitlers rise to power Reichstag fire Gleichschaltung Stachura, Peter D. ed. Introduction, Weimar National Socialism, Machtergreifung – Anmerkungen zu einem historischen Begriff]. The Coming of the Third Reich, evans, Richard J. Das Dritte Reich – Aufstieg. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany
16.
German re-armament
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The German rearmament was an era of rearmament in Germany during the interwar period, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. It began as soon as the treaty was signed, on a small, secret, and informal basis, but it was massively expanded after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. The re-armament program quickly increased the size of the German officer corps, count Johann von Kielmansegg later said that the very involved process of outfitting 36 divisions kept him and his colleagues from reflecting on larger issues. The World War I reparations would be difficult or impossible to pay without viable export markets for Germanys industrial sector, another example was that the government tolerated that various Weimar paramilitary groups armed themselves to a dangerous degree. Thus various Freikorps, the Stahlhelm, the Reichsbanner, the Nazi SA, the Nazi SS, one of the reasons why this militarization of society was difficult to prevent relates to the distinction between the government and the state. The democratically elected government, being composed of groups of people, inevitably reflected the factional strife, some of the antidemocratic ideas aimed for zero democracy via totalitarianism. Others aimed for diminished democracy subordinated in power to other forces, after the Nazi takeover of power in January 1933, the Nazis pursued a greatly enlarged and more aggressive version of rearmament. During its struggle for power, the National Socialist party promised to recover Germanys lost national pride and it proposed military rearmament claiming that the Treaty of Versailles and the acquiescence of the Weimar Republic were an embarrassment for all Germans. The rearmament became the topmost priority of the German government, Hitler would then spearhead one of the greatest expansions of industrial production and civil improvement Germany had ever seen. Covert organizations like the Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule were established under a civilian guise in order to train pilots for the future Luftwaffe, although available statistics dont include non-citizens or women, the massive Nazi re-armament policy almost led to full employment during the 1930s. The re-armament began a change in fortune for many factories in Germany. Many industries were taken out of a crisis that had been induced by the Great Depression. By 1935, Hitler was open about rejecting the military restrictions set forth by the Treaty of Versailles, Rearmament was announced on 16 March as was the reintroduction of conscription. Some large industrial companies, which had until then specialized in traditional products began to diversify. Shipyards, for example, created branches that began to design, thus the German re-armament provided an opportunity for advanced, and sometimes revolutionary, technological improvements, especially in the field of aeronautics. The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 would provide an ideal testing ground for the proficiency of the new weapons produced by the German factories during the re-armament years, Hitler insisted, however, that his long-term designs were peaceful, a strategy labelled as Blumenkrieg. Re-armament in the 1930s saw the development of different theories of how to prepare the German economy for total war, the first amongst these was defence in depth which was put forward by Georg Thomas. He suggested that the German economy needed to achieve Autarky and one of the main proponents behind this was I. G, since World War II, both academics and laypeople have discussed the extent to which German re-armament was an open secret among national governments
17.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
18.
Religion in Nazi Germany
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For the significance of occultism and paganism in Nazism see the article Religious aspects of Nazism. In 1933, prior to the annexation of Austria into Germany, there was some diversity of personal views among the Nazi leadership as to the future of religion in Germany. Nazism wanted to transform the subjective consciousness of the German people—their attitudes, values and mentalities—into a single-minded, the Nazis believed they would therefore have to replace class, religious and regional allegiances. Under the Gleichschaltung process, Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from Germanys 28 existing Protestant churches, the plan failed, and was resisted by the Confessing Church. Persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover, Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism. Amid harassment of the Church, the Reich concordat treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1933, Hitler routinely disregarded the Concordat, closing all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious. Clergy, nuns, 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. Smaller religious minorities such as the Jehovahs Witnesses and Baháí Faith were banned in Germany, the Salvation Army, the Christian Saints and the Seventh-day Adventist Church all disappeared from Germany, while astrologers, healers and fortune tellers were banned. The small pagan German Faith Movement, which worshipped the sun and seasons, many historians believed that Hitler and the Nazis intended to eradicate Christianity in Germany after winning victory in the war. Christianity has ancient roots among Germanic peoples dating to the work of Columbanus. The Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther in 1517, divided German Christians between a majority of Protestants and a minority of Roman Catholics, the south and west remained mainly Catholic, while north and east became mainly Protestant. The Centre Party had formed in 1870, initially to represent the interests of Catholics and Protestants. Bismarcks Culture Struggle failed in its attempt to eliminate Catholic institutions in Germany, or their strong connections outside of Germany, particularly various international missions, Christianity in Germany has, since the Protestant Reformation, been divided into Catholicism and Protestantism. As a specific outcome of the Reformation in Germany, the large Protestant denominations are organized into Landeskirchen, the German word for denomination is Konfession. For the large churches in Germany the German government collects the church tax, for this reason, membership in the Catholic or Protestant Church is officially registered. It is apparent they were politically motivated and it is important to keep this official aspect in mind when turning to such questions as the religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels. Both men had ceased to attend Catholic mass or to go to Confession long before 1933, historians have taken a look at the number of people who left their church in Germany during the 1933-45 period. The option to be taken off the church rolls has existed in Germany since 1873, for parity this was made possible for Protestants, too, and for the next 40 years it was mostly they who took advantage of it
19.
Night of the Long Knives
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Leading members of the left-wing Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, along with its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were also killed, as were establishment conservatives and anti-Nazis. The murders of Brownshirt leaders were intended to improve the image of the Hitler government with a German public that was increasingly critical of thuggish Brownshirt tactics. Additionally, Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhms outspoken support for a revolution to redistribute wealth. Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate critics of his new regime, especially loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen. At least 85 people died during the purge, although the death toll may have been in the hundreds. Most of the killings were carried out by the Schutzstaffel and the Gestapo, the purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the Reichswehr for Hitler. The Night of the Long Knives was a point for the German government. It established Hitler as the supreme justiciar of the German people, before its execution, its planners sometimes referred to it 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 massacre and refers generally to acts of vengeance. Germans still use the term Röhm-Putsch to describe the murders, the given to it by the Nazi regime. German authors often use quotation marks or write about the sogenannter Röhm-Putsch for emphasis, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor on January 30,1933. Hitler did not exercise power, however, despite his swift consolidation of political authority. As chancellor, Hitler did not command the army, which remained under the leadership of Hindenburg. To a lesser extent, the Sturmabteilung, a Nazi paramilitary organisation, the SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. A very 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, which was born as a result of the November Revolution, 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, Röhm left the Reichswehr in 1923 and later became commander of the SA. Also known as the brownshirts or stormtroopers, the SA became notorious for their battles with the Communists
20.
Nuremberg Rally
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The Nuremberg Rally was the annual rally of the Nazi Party in Germany, held from 1923 to 1938. They were large Nazi propaganda events, especially after Hitlers rise to power in 1933 and these events were held at the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg from 1933 to 1938 and are usually referred to in English as the Nuremberg Rallies. Many films were made to them, the most famous of which is Leni Riefenstahls Triumph of the Will. The first Nazi Party rallies took place in 1923 in Munich, from 1927 on, they took place exclusively in Nuremberg. The Party selected Nuremberg for pragmatic reasons, it was in the center of the German Reich, in addition, the Nazis could rely on the well-organized local branch of the party in Franconia, then led by Gauleiter Julius Streicher. The Nuremberg police were sympathetic to the event, later, the location was justified by the Nazi Party by putting it into the tradition of the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, considered the First Reich. This point was emphasized by the yearly growing number of participants, which finally reached over half a million from all sections of the party, the army. Each rally was given a title, which related to recent national events,1923 – The First Party Congress took place in Munich on January 27,1923. 1923 – The German day rally was held in Nuremberg on September 1,1923,1926 – The 2nd Party Congress was held in Weimar on July 4,1926. 1927 – The 3rd Party Congress was held on August 20,1927, the propaganda film Eine Symphonie des Kampfwillens was made at this rally. 1929 – The 4th Party Congress, known as the Day of Composure, was held on August 2,1929, the propaganda film Der Nürnberger Parteitag der NSDAP was made at this rally. 1933 – The 5th Party Congress was held in Nuremberg, August 30 – September 3,1933 and it was called the Rally of Victory. The term victory relates to the Nazi seizure of power and the victory over the Weimar Republic, the Leni Riefenstahl film Der Sieg des Glaubens was made at this rally. Hitler announced that now on all Rallies would take place in Nuremberg. 1934 – The 6th Party Congress was held in Nuremberg, September 5–10,1934, initially it did not have a theme. Later it was labeled the Rally of Unity and Strength, Rally of Power, the Leni Riefenstahl film Triumph des Willens was made at this rally. It was called the Rally of Freedom, Freedom referred to the reintroduction of compulsory military service and thus the German liberation from the Treaty of Versailles. Leni Riefenstahl made the film Tag der Freiheit, Unsere Wehrmacht at this rally,1936 – The 8th Party Congress was known as the Rally of Honour
21.
Anti-Comintern Pact
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The Anti-Comintern Pact was an anti-communist pact concluded between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan on November 25,1936 and was directed against the Third International. In October 1935, the idea was mooted that an anti-Communist alliance might be able to tie in the Kuomintang regime, Japan, lack of Chinese interest doomed the projects original intention, but October–November 1935, Ribbentrop and Oshima worked out a treaty directed against the Comintern. The Pact was to be introduced in late November 1935 with invitations for Britain, Italy, China. The Pact was initialed on October 23,1936, and signed on November 25,1936, in case of an attack by the Soviet Union against Germany or Japan, the two countries agreed to consult on what measures to take to safeguard their common interests. They also agreed that neither of them would make any treaties with the Soviet Union. On November 6,1937, Italy and Spain also joined the pact, Italys decision was more or less a reaction against the failed Stresa Front, the Franco-British initiative of 1935 designed to keep Nazi Germany from extending beyond its present borders. In particular, both tried to block German expansionism, especially the annexation of Austria, which was also in Italys best interests to prevent. Distrustful relations and Benito Mussolinis own expansionism furthered the distance between Italy and the United Kingdom, as well as France, Italy invaded the Ethiopian Empire in October 1935, an act of unprovoked aggression that was a breach of League of Nations policy. Nevertheless, Britain and France hashed out an agreement with Italy to give it two-thirds of Ethiopia. When this information was leaked to the public in Britain and France, their governments were mired in scandal, consequently, the Hoare-Laval Pact was aborted. Earlier, in June 1935, the surprise Anglo-German Naval Agreement was signed between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany, Hitler also made an effort to influence the Poles into joining the Anti-Comintern Pact and spoke of his intention to settle territorial disputes between Germany and Poland. However, Poland refused Germanys terms, fearing that an alliance with Hitler would render Poland a German puppet state and they continued to plot war against either the Soviet Union or the Western democracies, assuming Germany would eventually act against either of them. Hitlers efforts to develop relations with Britain eventually failed, in August 1939, Germany broke the terms of the Anti-Comintern Pact when the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed between the Soviet Union and Germany. However, by 1940, Hitler began to plan for an invasion of the Soviet Union. The German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was sent to negotiate a new treaty with Japan. On September 25,1940, Ribbentrop sent a telegram to Vyacheslav Molotov and this was welcomed by the Soviet Union. The Anti-Comintern Pact was revised in 1941, after Germanys assault on the Soviet Union that commenced with Operation Barbarossa and on November 25 its renewal for another five years was celebrated
22.
Kristallnacht
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German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings. Estimates of the number of fatalities caused by the pogrom have varied, early reporting estimated that 91 Jewish people were murdered during the attacks. Modern analysis of German scholarly sources by historians such as Richard J. Evans puts the number much higher, when deaths from post-arrest maltreatment and subsequent suicides are included, the death toll climbs into the hundreds. Additionally,30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps, Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Over 1,000 synagogues were burned and over 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed or damaged. The event which caused the attacks was the assassination of the Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, in the 1920s, most German Jews were fully integrated into German society as German citizens. They served in the German army and navy and contributed to every field of German business, science, from its inception, Hitlers régime moved quickly to introduce anti-Jewish policies. Nazi propaganda singled out the 500,000 Jews in Germany, the subsequent 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped German Jews of their citizenship and forbade Jews to marry non-Jewish Germans. These laws resulted in the exclusion of Jews from German social and political life, the international Évian Conference on 6 July 1938 addressed the issue of Jewish and Gypsy immigration to other countries. As the number of Jews and Gypsies wanting to leave increased, by 1938, Germany had entered a new radical phase in anti-Semitic activity. In a 1997 interview, the German historian Hans Mommsen claimed that a motive for the pogrom was the desire of the Gauleiters of the NSDAP to seize Jewish property. In the fall of 1938, the pressure on Jewish property nourished the partys ambition. This, however, was one aspect of the origin of the November 1938 pogrom. The Polish government threatened to extradite all Jews who were Polish citizens, the immediate reaction by the Gestapo was to push the Polish Jews—16,000 persons—over the borderline, but this measure failed due to the stubbornness of the Polish customs officers. The loss of prestige as a result of this abortive operation called for some sort of compensation, thus, the overreaction to Herschel Grynszpans attempt against the diplomat Ernst vom Rath came into being and led to the November pogrom. The background of the pogrom was signified by a sharp cleavage of interests between the different agencies of party and state, Heydrich and Himmler were interested in fostering Jewish emigration. In August 1938 the German authorities announced that permits for foreigners were being cancelled
23.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
24.
Tripartite Pact
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It was a defensive military alliance that was eventually joined by Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, as well as by the German client state of Slovakia. Yugoslavias adherence provoked a coup détat in Belgrade, and Italy and Germany responded by invading Yugoslavia, the resulting Italo-German client state of Croatia joined the pact on 15 June 1941. The Tripartite Pact was directed primarily at the United States and its practical effects were limited, since the Italo-German and Japanese operational theatres were on opposite sides of the world and the high contracting powers had disparate strategic interests. Accordingly, the Governments of Japan, Germany and Italy have agreed as follows, Japan recognizes and respects the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe. Germany and Italy recognize and respect the leadership of Japan in the establishment of a new order in Greater East Asia, Japan, Germany, and Italy agree to cooperate in their efforts on aforesaid lines. With a view to implementing the present pact, joint technical commissions, to be appointed by the respective Governments of Japan, Germany and Italy, will meet without delay. Japan, Germany and Italy affirm that the above agreement affects in no way the political status existing at present between each of the three Contracting Powers and Soviet Russia. The present pact shall become valid immediately upon signature and shall remain in force ten years from the date on which it becomes effective. In due time, before the expiration of term, the High Contracting Parties shall, at the request of any one of them. In faith whereof, the duly authorized by their respective governments have signed this pact and have affixed hereto their signatures. Done in triplicate at Berlin, the 27th day of September,1940, in the 19th year of the fascist era, corresponding to the 27th day of the ninth month of the 15th year of Showa. In a ceremonial speech following the signing of the pact on 27 September, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported his words as follows, The purpose of the Pact is, above all things, to help restore peace to the world as quickly as possible. The official Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, however, as well as most of the press, reported a different version. It is likely that initially the adherence of other nations was not envisaged, the official record in the DNB therefore corrected his words to remove any reference to adherence by other states, but produced an awkward wording in the process. The Kingdom of Hungary was the state to sign the pact. The Hungarian ambassador in Berlin, Döme Sztójay, telegraphed his foreign minister, István Csáky, immediately after news of the signing and he urged Csáky to adhere to the pact, even claiming that it was the expectation of Germany and Italy that she would do so. He considered it important that Hungary sign the pact before Romania did. In response, Csáky asked Sztójay and the ambassador in Rome, Frigyes Villani, to make enquiries regarding Hungarys adherence, nonetheless, within the week the Hungarian government had sent out formal notice of its spiritual adherence to the pact
25.
The Holocaust
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The Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitlers Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis. The victims included 1.5 million children, and represented about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe, killings took place throughout German-occupied Europe, as well as within Nazi Germany, and across all territories controlled by its allies. Other victims of Nazi crimes included ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet citizens and Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovahs Witnesses, some 42,500 detention facilities were utilized in the concentration of victims for the purpose of gross violations of human rights. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators, the persecution was carried out in stages, culminating in the policy of extermination of European Jews termed the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Following Hitlers rise to power, the German government passed laws to exclude Jews from civil society, starting in 1933 the Nazis began to establish a network of concentration camps. After the outbreak of war in 1939 both German and foreign Jews were herded into wartime ghettos, in 1941, as Germany began to conquer new territory in the East, all anti-Jewish measures radicalized. Specialized paramilitary units called Einsatzgruppen murdered around two million Jews in mass shootings actions in less than a year, by mid-1942, victims were being regularly transported by freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in gas chambers. This continued until the end of World War II in Europe in April–May 1945, the most notable exception was the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, when thousands of poorly-armed Jewish fighters held the Waffen-SS at bay for four weeks. An estimated 20, 000–30,000 Jewish partisans actively fought against the Nazis, French Jews took part in the French Resistance, which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French authorities. Over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings took place, the term holocaust comes from the Greek adjective holókaustos, a variant of holókautos, referring to an animal sacrifice offered to a god in which the whole animal is completely burnt. Often used substantively in apposition with the noun thysia, the term appears in a fragment of pseudo-Callisthenes, writing in Latin, Jerome Latinized the Greek word as a neuter noun holocaustum, using it to translate references to the Jewish burnt offering in his translations of Exodus and Leviticus. In his Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi Primi, Richard of Devizes, the English poet John Milton had used the word to denote a conflagration in his 1671 poem Samson Agonistes and the word gradually developed to mean a massacre thereon. The term was used in the 1950s by historians as a translation of the Jewish word shoah to refer specifically to the Nazi genocide of Jews, the television mini-series Holocaust is credited with introducing the term into common parlance after 1978. The biblical word shoah, meaning calamity became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s, especially in Europe and Israel. Shoah is preferred by some Jews for several reasons including the offensive nature of the word holocaust which they take to refer to the Greek pagan custom. The Nazis used the phrase Final Solution to the Jewish Question, all branches of Germanys bureaucracy were engaged in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar, Michael Berenbaum, has called a genocidal state. Every arm of the countrys sophisticated bureaucracy was involved in the killing process, as prisoners entered the death camps, they were made to surrender all personal property, which was catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany to be reused or recycled. Berenbaum writes that the Final Solution of the Jewish question was in the eyes of the perpetrators, through a concealed account, the German National Bank helped launder valuables stolen from the victims
26.
Nuremberg trials
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The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical international law and contemporary international law. Not included were Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, all of whom had committed suicide in the spring of 1945, reinhard Heydrich was not included, as he had been assassinated in 1942. The second set of trials of war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No.10 at the U. S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals, which included the Doctors Trial. This article primarily deals with the IMT, see Subsequent Nuremberg Trials for details on the NMT, at the beginning of 1940, the Polish government-in-exile asked the British and French governments to condemn the German invasion of their country. The British initially declined to do so, however, in April 1940, three-and-a-half years later, the stated intention to punish the Germans was much more trenchant. In order that justice may be done and this intention by the Allies to dispense justice was reiterated at the Yalta Conference and at Berlin in 1945. British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, showed that as early as December 1944 the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt joked that perhaps 49,000 would do. Churchill was vigorously opposed to executions for political purposes, US Secretary of the Treasury, suggested a plan for the total denazification of Germany, this was known as the Morgenthau Plan. The plan advocated the forced de-industrialisation of Germany and the execution of so-called arch-criminals. Roosevelt initially supported this plan, and managed to convince Churchill to support it in a less drastic form, later, details were leaked generating widespread condemnation by the nations newspapers. Roosevelt, aware of public disapproval, abandoned the plan. The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for a method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the Trial of European War Criminals was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, following Roosevelts death in April 1945, the new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process. After a series of negotiations between Britain, the US, Soviet Union and France, details of the trial were worked out, the trials were to commence on 20 November 1945, in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg. On 20 April 1942, representatives from the nine countries occupied by Germany met in London to draft the Inter-Allied Resolution on German War Crimes, France was also awarded a place on the tribunal. The legal basis for the jurisdiction of the court was that defined by the Instrument of Surrender of Germany. Because the court was limited to violations of the laws of war, leipzig and Luxembourg were briefly considered as the location for the trial
27.
Neo-Nazism
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Neo-Nazism consists of post-World War II social or political movements seeking to revive the far-right tenets of Nazism. The term neo-Nazism can also refer to the ideology of these movements, Neo-Nazism borrows elements from Nazi doctrine, including ultranationalism, racism, ableism, xenophobia, homophobia, antiziganism, antisemitism, and initiating the Fourth Reich. Holocaust denial is a feature, as is incorporation of Nazi symbols. Neo-Nazi activity is a phenomenon, with organized representation in many countries. In some European and Latin American countries, laws have been enacted that prohibit the expression of pro-Nazi, racist, Many Nazi-related symbols are banned in European countries in an effort to curtail neo-Nazism. The major postwar far-right party was the Austrian National Democratic Party, until it was banned in 1988 for violating Austrias anti-Nazi legislation, the Freedom Party of Austria served as a shelter for ex-Nazis almost from its inception. In 1980, scandals undermined Austrias two main parties, and the economy stagnated, jörg Haider became leader of the FPÖ and offered partial justification for Nazism, calling its employment policy effective. Professor Ali Mazrui, however, identified the FPÖ as neo-Nazi in a BBC world lecture, Haider, who in 2005 left the Freedom Party and formed the Alliance for Austrias Future, was killed in a traffic accident in October,2008. Barbara Rosenkranz, the Freedom Partys candidate for the Austrian presidential election,2010, is controversial for having made allegedly pro-Nazi statements, Rosenkranz is married to Horst Rosenkranz, a key member of a banned neo-Nazi party, who is known for publishing far-right books. Rosenkranz says she cannot detect anything dishonourable in her husbands activities, the volume Rechtsextremismus in Österreich seit 1945, issued by DÖW in 1979, listed nearly 50 active far right organizations in Austria. Their influence waned gradually, partly due to programs in secondary schools and universities which emphasized Austrian identity. Votes for the RFS, the Freedom Partys academic student organization, in the 1995 elections for the student representative body Österreichische Hochschülerschaft, the RFS got 4% of the vote. The FPÖ won 22% of the votes at the General Election in the same year, in 1993 Küssel was repeatedly convicted on charges of NS-Wiederbetätigung under the Austrian anti-Nazi law and sentenced to ten years in prison. The VAPO de facto disbanded in the course of the imprisonment of its leading figures, due to procedural errors Küssels sentence was revoked by the OGH and his trial was reheld in 1994 at the end of which he was sentenced to eleven years in prison. A Belgian neo-Nazi organization, Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw, was created in 2004 after splitting from the international network. The group rose to prominence in September 2006, after 17 members were arrested under the December 2003 anti-terrorist laws and laws against racism, antisemitism. According to Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx and Interior Minister Patrick Dewael, a police operation, which mobilized 150 agents, searched five military barracks as well as 18 private addresses in Flanders. They found weapons, munitions, explosives and a homemade bomb large enough to make a car explode, the leading suspect, B. T. was organizing the trafficking of weapons and was developing international links, in particular with the Dutch far-right movement De Nationale Alliantie
28.
Fascism
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Fascism /ˈfæʃɪzəm/ is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum. Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought changes to the nature of war, society, the state. The advent of war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A military citizenship arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war, Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature, and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist, the descriptions neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far right with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th century fascist movements. The Italian term fascismo is derived from fascio meaning a bundle of rods and this was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates. According to Mussolinis own account, the Fascist Revolutionary Party was founded in Italy in 1915, in 1919, Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan, which became the Partito Nazionale Fascista two years later. The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity, a rod is easily broken. Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements, for example, historians, political scientists, and other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism. Each interpretation of fascism is distinct, leaving many definitions too wide or narrow, according to many scholars, fascism—especially once in power—has historically attacked communism, conservatism and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the far right. Roger Griffin describes fascism as a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a form of populist ultranationalism. Griffin describes the ideology as having three components, the rebirth myth, populist ultra-nationalism and the myth of decadence. Fascism is a revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis. Fascist Philosophies vary by application, but remain distinct by one theoretic commonality, all traditionally fall into the far-right sector of any political spectrum, catalyzed by afflicted class identities over conventional social inequities. John Lukacs, Hungarian-American historian and Holocaust survivor, argues there is no such thing as generic fascism. He claims that National Socialism and Communism are essentially manifestations of populism, Fascism was influenced by both left and right, conservative and anti-conservative, national and supranational, rational and anti-rational
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Totalitarianism
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Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. A distinctive feature of totalitarian governments is an ideology, a set of ideas that gives meaning. The concept of totalitarianism was first developed in the 1920s by the Weimar German jurist, and later Nazi academic, Carl Schmitt, Schmitt used the term, Totalstaat, in his influential work on the legal basis of an all-powerful state, The Concept of the Political. The concept became prominent in Western political discourse as a concept that highlights similarities between Fascist states and the Soviet Union, the term was later assigned a positive meaning in the writings of Giovanni Gentile, Italy’s most prominent philosopher and leading theorist of fascism. He used the term “totalitario” to refer to the structure and goals of the new state, according to Benito Mussolini, this system politicizes everything spiritual and human, Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Churchill was then a backbencher MP representing the Epping constituency, in a radio address two weeks later Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to a Communist or a Nazi tyranny. And went on to say Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state, when the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it. G. Wells, Henry Miller or twopenny color postcards, every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. During a 1945 lecture series entitled The Soviet Impact on the Western World, only the blind and incurable could ignore the trend towards totalitarianism, said Carr. Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine, used the term in connection with the Soviet Union, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argued that Nazi and State communist regimes were new forms of government, and not merely updated versions of the old tyrannies. According to Arendt, the source of the appeal of totalitarian regimes is their ideology, which provides a comforting, single answer to the mysteries of the past, present. For Nazism, all history is the history of race struggle, once that premise is accepted, all actions of the state can be justified by appeal to Nature or the Law of History, justifying their establishment of authoritarian state apparatus. In addition to Arendt, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds, each one of these describes totalitarianism in slightly different ways. Is only concerned with power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty. Authoritarianism does not attempt to change the world and human nature, in contrast, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life, and morals of citizens. The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into the deepest reaches of societal structure and it also mobilizes the whole population in pursuit of its goals. Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that a system has the following six, mutually supportive, defining characteristics. Single mass party, typically led by a dictator, system of terror, using such instruments as violence and secret police
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Houston Stewart Chamberlain
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He was also the son-in-law of German composer Richard Wagner, as, in December 1908, twenty-five years after Wagners death, Chamberlain married the composers daughter, Eva von Bülow. Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born in Southsea, Hampshire, England and his mother, Eliza Jane, daughter of Captain Basil Hall, RN, died before he was a year old, his grandmother brought him up in France. Chamberlains poor health led him to being sent to the warmer climates of Spain. This constant moving made it hard for Chamberlain to form lasting friendships and left him with a feeling of rootlessness. Chamberlains education, begun in a lycée at Versailles, took place mostly on the Continent, at the age of eleven he was sent to Cheltenham College, an English boarding school which produced many army and navy officers. Chamberlain deeply disliked Cheltenham, and felt lonely and out of place there, the young Chamberlain was a compulsive dreamer, more interested in the arts than in the military, and he developed a fondness for nature and a near-mystical sense of self. Chamberlains major interests in his studies at Cheltenham were the natural sciences, Chamberlain later recalled, The starlight exerted an indescribable influence on me. The stars seemed closer to me, more gentle, more worthy of trust, for the stars, I experienced true friendship. During his youth, Chamberlain - while not entirely rejecting at this point his liberalism - become influenced by the romantic conservative critique of the Industrial Revolution, the prospect of serving as an officer in India or elsewhere in the British Empire held no attraction for him. In addition, he was a child with poor health. At the age of fourteen he had to be withdrawn from school, Chamberlain then travelled to various spas around Europe, accompanied by a Prussian tutor, Herr Otto Kuntze, who taught him German and interested him in German culture and history. Fascinated by Renaissance art and architecture, Chamberlain learned Italian and planned to settle in Florence for a time, Chamberlain then went to Geneva, where he studied under Carl Vogt, Graebe, Müller Argoviensis, Thury, Plantamour, and other professors. He studied systematic botany, geology, astronomy, and later the anatomy, under the tutelage of Professor Julius von Wiesner of the University of Vienna, Chamberlain studied botany in Geneva, earning a Bacheliers en sciences physiques et naturelles in 1881. His thesis, Recherches sur la sève ascendante, was not finished until 1897, physical arguments, in particular transpirational pull and root pressure, have since been shown to be adequate for explaining the ascent of sap. Chamberlain often expressed his disgust with Disraeli, the man whom he blamed in large measure for the injection of selfish class interest and jingoism into British public life in the next decades. In 1881, he wrote to his family in Britain, praising William Ewart Gladstone for introducing the Land Bill to bring in fair rents in Ireland, Chamberlain was an early supporter of Hanns Hörbigers Welteislehre, the theory that most bodies in our solar system are covered with ice. Due in part to Chamberlains advocacy, this became official cosmological dogma during the Third Reich, still, his scientific credentials were often cited by admirers to give weight to his political philosophy. Chamberlain rejected Darwinism, evolution and social Darwinism and instead emphasized gestalt which he derived from Goethe
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Gleichschaltung
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The Nazis used the word Gleichschaltung for the process of successively establishing a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of society. It has been translated as Nazification of state and society, synchronization, bringing into line, and co-ordination. The period from 1933 to 1937 was characterized by the elimination of non-Nazi organizations that could potentially influence people, such as trade unions. Those critical of Hitlers agenda were suppressed, intimidated or murdered, the regime also assailed the influence of the churches, for example by instituting the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs under Hanns Kerrl. Organizations that the administration could not eliminate, such as the education system, the Gleichschaltung also included the formation of various organisations with compulsory membership for segments of the population, in particular the youth. Boys first served as apprentices in the Pimpfen, beginning at the age of six, boys remained there until age eighteen, at which time they entered into the Arbeitsdienst and the armed forces. Girls became part of the Jungmädel at age ten and at age fourteen were enrolled in the Bund Deutscher Mädel, at eighteen, BDM members went generally to the eastern territory for their Pflichtdienst, or Landjahr, a year of labor on a farm. In 1936 membership in the Hitler Youth numbered just under six million, for workers, an all-embracing recreational organization called Kraft durch Freude under the German Labor Front was set up. In Nazi Germany, even hobbies were regimented, and all clubs were brought under the control of KdF. The Kraft durch Freude organization provided vacation trips, with some 25 million members, KdF was the largest of the many organizations established by the Nazis. Workers were also brought in line with the party, through such as the Reichsberufswettkampf. It has no reason to fear the truth and it is a mistake to believe that the people cannot take the truth. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand. In a more specific sense, Gleichschaltung refers to the measures taken by the government during the 20 months following 30 January 1933. It was in this sense that the term was used by the Nazis themselves, in this atmosphere the Reichstag general election of 5 March 1933 took place. The Nazis had hoped to win a majority and push aside their coalition partners. However, the Nazis won only 43 percent of the vote, the Nazi-DNVP coalition did enjoy a slim majority, just enough to conduct the ordinary business of government. A state election was held in Prussia at the same time, which produced a similar result. When the newly elected Reichstag first convened on 23 March 1933—not including the Communist delegates because their party had been banned on 6 March—it passed the Enabling Act and this law gave the government—in practice, Hitler—the right to make laws without the involvement of the Reichstag
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Arthur de Gobineau
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Gobineaus writings were quickly praised by white supremacist, pro-slavery Americans like Josiah C. Gobineaus writings were influential on prominent anti-Semites such as Richard Wagner. Cuza and leaders of the Nazi Party, who edited and re-published his work. Gobineau came from an old well-established aristocratic family and his father, Louis, was military officer and staunch royalist, and his mother, Anne-Louise Magdeleine de Gercy, was the daughter of a non-noble royal tax official. Reflecting his hatred of the French Revolution, Gobineau later wrote, My birthday is July 14th, as a boy and young man, Gobineau loved the Middle Ages, which he saw as a golden age of chivalry and knighthood that was much preferable to his own time. One who knew Gobineau as a teenager described him as a romantic, already an Amadis with chivalrous ideas, Gobineaus father was very committed to restoring the House of Bourbon and helped the Polignac brothers escape from France. As punishment, Louis de Gobineau was imprisoned by Napoleons secret police and was freed when the Allies took Paris in 1814, despite expectations, the pay for a Royal Guardsman was very low, and the de Gobineau family struggled on his salary. To support herself, Madeline de Gobineau turned to fraud, making her into an embarrassment to her son. Gobineau spent the part of his teenage years in the town of Inzligen where his mother and her lover were staying, during which time he became fluent in German. Given his familys history of supporting the Bourbons, the young Gobineau regarded the July Revolution as a disaster for France, as a young man, Gobineaus views were those of a Legitimist committed to a Catholic France ruled over by the House of Bourbon. In 1831, de Gobineaus father took custody of his three children, and his son spent the rest of his adolescence in Lorient, Gobineau disliked his father, whom he dismissed as a boring and pedantic Army officer incapable of stimulating thought. As a young man, Gobineau was fascinated with the Orient as the Middle East was known in Europe in the 19th century, while studying at the Collège de Bironne in Switzerland, a fellow student recalled, All of his aspirations were towards the East. He dreamt only of mosques and minarets, he called himself a Muslim, in 1835, Gobineau failed the entrance exams to the St. Cyr military school. In September 1835, Gobineau left for Paris with just fifty francs in his pocket with the aim of becoming a writer, Gobineau moved in with an uncle, Thibaut-Joseph de Gobineau, a Legitimist who as his nephew noted, His hatred for Louis-Philippe was unlimited. Reflecting his tendency towards elitism, Gobineau founded a society of Legitimist intellectuals called Les Scelti, consisting of himself, Guermann Bohn, Maxime du Camp, in the later years of the July Monarchy, Gobineau made his living writing serialized fiction and contributing to reactionary periodicals. Gobineau wrote for the Union Catholique, La Quotidienne, LUnité, at one point in the early 1840s, Gobineau was writing an article every day for La Quotidienne to support himself. As a writer and journalist, Gobineau struggled financially and was looking for a wealthy patron willing to support him. In a letter to his father, Gobineau complained of the. the laxity, the weakness, Gobineau wrote about July Monarchy France, Money has become the principle of power and honour
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Political views of Adolf Hitler
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Historians and biographers note some difficulty in identifying the political views of Adolf Hitler. Hitler personally claimed he was fighting against Jewish Marxism, Hitler formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925, but did not acquire German citizenship until almost seven years later, thereby allowing him to run for public office. Hitler was influenced by Benito Mussolini who was appointed Prime Minister of Italy in October 1922 after his March on Rome, in many ways, Adolf Hitler epitomizes the force of personality in political life as mentioned by Friedrich Meinecke. He was essential to the framework of Nazisms political appeal. So important were Hitlers views that they affected the political policies of Nazi Germany. The principle relied on absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors, Hitler viewed the party structure and later the government structure as a pyramid, with himself—the infallible leader—at the apex. Hitler firmly believed that the force of will was decisive in determining the course for a nation. Hitlers views were influenced by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Gobineau, Sorel. Chamberlain, Paul de Lagarde, Alfred Ploetz and other thinkers, after World War I, Hitler stayed in the army, which was mainly engaged in suppressing socialist uprisings across Germany, including in Munich, where Hitler returned in 1919. He took part in national thinking courses organised by the Education and Propaganda Department of the Bavarian Reichswehr, Mayr recruited Hitler to help re-educate soldiers in the wake of the social revolution occurring across Germany. These helped popularize the notion that there was a responsible for the outbreak of war. Hitlers own bitterness over the collapse of the war also began to shape his ideology. International Jewry was described as a composed of communists relentlessly destroying Germany. Such scapegoating was essential to Hitlers political career, and it seems that he believed that Jews were responsible for Germanys post-war troubles. In July 1919 Hitler was appointed Verbindungsmann of an Aufklärungskommando of the Reichswehr, along those lines, Hitler proclaimed that the German yoke must be broken by German iron. Its final goal, however, must be the removal of the Jews themselves. Most people at the time understood this as a call for forced expulsion, Europe has a long history of expelling Jews and the auto-da-fé of the Inquisition. Further, while he studied the activities of the DAP, Hitler became impressed with founder Anton Drexlers antisemitic, Drexler was impressed with Hitlers oratory skills, and invited him to join the DAP
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Mein Kampf
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Mein Kampf is a 1925 autobiographical book by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work outlines Hitlers political ideology and future plans for Germany, Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926. The book was edited by Hitlers deputy Rudolf Hess, Hitler began the book while imprisoned for what he considered to be political crimes following his failed Putsch in Munich in November 1923. Although Hitler received many visitors initially, he devoted himself entirely to the book. As he continued, Hitler realized that it would have to be a two-volume work, in 2016, following the expiry of the copyright held by the Bavarian state government, Mein Kampf was republished in Germany for the first time since 1945. Hitler originally wanted to call his forthcoming book Viereinhalb Jahre gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit, or Four, max Amann, head of the Franz Eher Verlag and Hitlers publisher, is said to have suggested the much shorter Mein Kampf or My Struggle. The narrative describes the process by which he became increasingly antisemitic and militaristic and he speaks of not having met a Jew until he arrived in Vienna, and that at first his attitude was liberal and tolerant. When he first encountered the anti-semitic press, he says, he dismissed it as unworthy of serious consideration, later he accepted the same anti-semitic views, which became crucial to his program of national reconstruction of Germany. Mein Kampf has also studied as a work on political theory. For example, Hitler announces his hatred of what he believed to be the two evils, Communism and Judaism. He announced that he wanted to destroy the parliamentary system, believing it to be corrupt in principle. While historians dispute the exact date Hitler decided to force the Jewish people to emigrate to Madagascar, first published in 1925, Mein Kampf shows Hitlers personal grievances and his ambitions for creating a New Order. Historian Ian Kershaw points out that passages in Mein Kampf are undeniably of a genocidal nature. The racial laws to which Hitler referred resonate directly with his ideas in Mein Kampf, in his first edition of Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that the destruction of the weak and sick is far more humane than their protection. Apart from this allusion to humane treatment, Hitler saw a purpose in destroying the weak in order to provide the proper space and purity for the strong. In the chapter Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy, Hitler argued that the Germans needed Lebensraum in the East, a historic destiny that would properly nurture the German people. In Mein Kampf Hitler openly stated the future German expansion in the East and we take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, at long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future
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The Myth of the Twentieth Century
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The Myth of the Twentieth Century is a 1930 book by Alfred Rosenberg, one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi Party and editor of the Nazi paper Völkischer Beobachter. The titular myth is the myth of blood, which under the sign of the swastika unchains the racial world-revolution and it is the awakening of the race soul, which after long sleep victoriously ends the race chaos. The book has been described as one of the two great unread bestsellers of the Third Reich, in private Adolf Hitler said, I must insist that Rosenbergs The Myth of the Twentieth Century is not to be regarded as an expression of the official doctrine of the party. Hitler awarded the first State Prize for Art and Science to the author of The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Rosenberg was inspired by the racist theories of Arthur de Gobineau, in his 1853–1855 book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, Rosenbergs The Myth of the Twentieth Century was conceived as a sequel to Chamberlains 1899 book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. Rosenberg believed that God created mankind as separate, differentiated races in a hierarchy of nobility of virtue. Rosenbergs racial interpretation of history concentrates on the influence of the Jewish race in contrast to the Aryan race. He equates the latter with the Nordic peoples of northern Europe and also includes the Berbers from North Africa, according to Rosenberg, modern culture has been corrupted by Semitic influences, which have produced degenerate modern art, along with moral and social degeneration. In contrast, Aryan culture is defined by innate moral sensibility, Rosenberg believed that the higher races must rule over the lower and not interbreed with them, because cross-breeding destroys the divine combination of physical heredity and spirit. In Rosenbergs view of history, migrating Aryans founded various ancient civilizations which later declined. These civilizations included the Indo-Aryan civilization, ancient Persia, Greece and he saw the ancient Germanic invasions of the Roman empire as saving its civilization, which had been corrupted both by race mixing and by Judaized-cosmopolitan Christianity. In contemporary Europe, he saw the areas that embraced Protestantism as closest to the Aryan racial and spiritual ideal. The Mythus is very anti-Catholic, seeing the Churchs cosmopolitanism and Judaized version of Christianity as one of the factors in Germanys spiritual bondage. This account of history is used to support his dualistic model of human experience, as are ideas co-opted from Nietzsche. Thanks to Nazi support, the book had more than one million copies by 1944. After a year Hitler still had nothing to say, Hitler gave the still-unread work back to him saying, I feel sure that its all right. In his diary Joseph Goebbels called the very good when he first read it. Albert Speer however remembered that Goebbels mocked Alfred Rosenberg, Goebbels also called the book a philosophical belch
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Militarism
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It may also imply the glorification of the military and of the ideals of a professional military class and the predominance of the armed forces in the administration or policy of the state. Militarism has been a significant element of the imperialist or expansionist ideologies of several nations throughout history, after World War II, militarism appeared in many of the post-colonial nations of Asia and Africa. Sŏngun, North Koreas Military First policy, regards military power as the highest priority of the country and this has escalated so much in the DPRK that one in five people serves in the armed forces, and the military has become one of the largest in the world. Songun elevates the Korean Peoples Armed Forces within North Korea as an organization and as a function, granting it the primary position in the North Korean government. The principle guides domestic policy and international interactions and it provides the framework of the government, designating the military as the supreme repository of power. It also facilitates the militarization of non-military sectors by emphasizing the unity of the military, the North Korean government grants the Korean Peoples Army as the highest priority in the economy and in resource-allocation, and positions it as the model for society to emulate. Songun is also the concept behind a shift in policies which emphasize the peoples military over all other aspects of state. The roots of German militarism can be found in 19th-century Prussia, after Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Prussia in 1806, one of the conditions of peace was that Prussia should reduce its army to no more than 42,000 men. Thus, in the course of ten years, he was able to gather an army of 420,000 men who had at least one year of military training, the officers of the army were drawn almost entirely from among the land-owning nobility. The result was there was gradually built up a large class of professional officers on the one hand, and a much larger class. These enlisted men had become conditioned to obey all the commands of the officers. This system led to several consequences, a second result was that the governing class desired to continue a system which gave them so much power over the common people, contributing to the continuing influence of the Junker noble classes. Militarism in Germany continued after World War I and the fall of the German monarchy, during the period of the Weimar Republic, the Kapp Putsch, an attempted coup détat against the republican government, was launched by disaffected members of the armed forces. After this event, some of the more radical militarists and nationalists were submurged in grief and despair into the NSDAP, the Third Reich was a strongly militarist state, after its fall in 1945, militarism in German culture was dramatically reduced as a backlash against the Nazi period. Contemporary opinions vary but Germans predominantly oppose unilateral military actions and are suspicious of all claims advocating them, in parallel with 20th-century German militarism, Japanese militarism began with a series of events by which the military gained prominence in dictating Japans affairs. This was evident in 15th-century Japans Sengoku period or Age of Warring States, Japans militarism is deeply rooted in the ancient samurai tradition, centuries before Japans modernization. It is exemplified by the 1882 Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, in the 20th century, two factors contributed both to the power of the military and chaos within its ranks. One was the Cabinet Law, which required the Imperial Japanese Army and this essentially gave the military veto power over the formation of any Cabinet in the ostensibly parliamentary country
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National Socialist Program
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The National Socialist Programme was the party program of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Originally the name of the party was the German Workers Party but on the day of the announced party program it was renamed the NSDAP. Adolf Hitler announced the program on 24 February 1920 before approximately 2000 people in the Munich Festival of the Hofbräuhaus. In May 1918, before Austria became a republic, the Austrian DNSAP, in Munich, on 24 February 1920, Adolf Hitler publicly proclaimed the 25-point Program of the NSDAP, when the Nazis were still known as the DAP. They retained the National Socialist Program upon renaming themselves as the National Socialist German Workers Party in February 1920, and it remained the Party’s official program. ”Whereas historian William Brustein proposes that said program points and this is directed primarily against the Jewish land-speculation companies”. Throughout the 1920s, other members of the NSDAP, seeking ideologic consistency, in 1924, the economist Gottfried Feder proposed a 39-point program retaining some original policies and introducing new policies. Hitler suppressed every instance of programatic change, by refusing to broach the matters after 1925, because the National Socialist Program was “inviolable”, hence immutable. Historian Henry A. Turner notes that Hitler conspicuously omitted the text of the Program from his biography, Mein Kampf. We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the right to self-determination. We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the nations, abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles. We demand land and territory for the sustenance of our people, only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race. Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, the right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore, we demand that every office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich. We combat the corrupting parliamentary economy, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideration of character or abilities and we demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the population of the State. Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented and we demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich. All citizens must have equal rights and obligations, the first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or physically
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New Order (Nazism)
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The New Order or the New Order of Europe was the political order which Nazi Germany wanted to impose on the conquered areas under its dominion. Nazi Germany’s desire for aggressive territorial expansionism was one of the most important causes of World War II, the Führer gave expression to his unshakable conviction that the Reich will be the master of all Europe. We shall yet have to engage in fights, but these will undoubtedly lead to most wonderful victories. From there on the way to world domination is practically certain, whoever dominates Europe will thereby assume the leadership of the world. The term Neuordnung originally had a different and more limited meaning than in its present usage and it is typically translated as New Order, but a more correct translation would actually be more akin to reorganisation. The complete phrase which was used by the Nazi establishment was actually die Neuordnung Europas, Neuordnung was therefore hardly ever used in reference to Soviet Russia since theoretically there werent even any actual structures that could be re-organized along National Socialist designs. The actual objective was to ensure a state of total post-war continental hegemony for Nazi Germany and this was to be achieved by the expansion of the territorial base of the German state itself, combined with the political and economic subjugation of the rest of Europe to Germany. Through its wide use in Nazi propaganda it quickly gained coinage in Western media and it therefore holds approximately the same connotations as the term co-prosperity sphere did in Japanese circles in reference to their planned imperial domain. This concept is known as Nordicism, hitler’s ideas about eastward expansion that he promulgated in Mein Kampf were greatly influenced during his 1924 imprisonment by his contact with his geopolitical mentor Karl Haushofer. One of Haushofer’s primary geopolitical concepts was the necessity for Germany to get control of the Eurasian Heartland in order for Germany to attain eventual world domination and he realized that this extremely ambitious goal could never be achieved without an enormous amount of fighting. Hitler had alluded to future German world dominance even earlier in his political career and that can then provide a sort of world police, seeing to it at the same time that the most valuable race is guaranteed the necessary living space. And if no way is open to them, the lower races will have to restrict themselves accordingly. Heinrich Himmler discussed the territorial aspirations of Germany during his first Posen speech in 1943 and that war was carried on for seven years to ensure that the already conquered province of Silesia would remain part of Prussia. This war will ensure that everything annexed to the German Reich, to Greater Germany and this war is being carried on to keep the path to the East open, so that Germany may be a world power, to found the Germanic World Empire. Second, the Blitzkrieg attacks in northern and western Europe to neutralize opposition from the west and this resulted in the conquest of Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, all of which were under German rule by the early summer of 1940. Had Britain succumbed to Germany, the political re-ordering of Western Europe would have been accomplished, there was to be no post-war general peace conference in the manner of the one held in Paris after the First World War, merely bilateral negotiations between Germany and her defeated enemies. All still existing international organizations such as the International Labour Organization were to be dismantled or replaced by German-controlled equivalents and this represented about 25% of the surviving population. The United Kingdom was then to be plundered for anything of financial, military, industrial or cultural value, civilian hostages would be taken, and the death penalty immediately imposed for any acts of resistance
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Propaganda in Nazi Germany
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The pervasive use of propaganda by the Nazis is largely responsible for the word propaganda itself acquiring its present negative connotations. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler devoted three chapters of his 1925/26 book Mein Kampf, itself a tool, to the study. He claimed to have learned the value of propaganda as a World War I infantryman exposed to very effective British, the argument that Germany lost the war largely because of British propaganda efforts, expounded at length in Mein Kampf, reflected then-common German nationalist claims. Although untrue – German propaganda during World War I was mostly more advanced than that of the British – it became the truth of Nazi Germany thanks to its reception by Hitler. Mein Kampf contains the blueprint of later Nazi propaganda efforts, assessing his audience, Hitler writes in chapter VI, Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. All propaganda must be presented in a form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and this sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth, the receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget, such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion, the leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula. It was joined in 1927 by Joseph Goebbelss Der Angriff, another unabashedly and crudely propagandistic paper, during most of the Nazis time in opposition, their means of propaganda remained limited. With little access to media, the party continued to rely heavily on Hitler. One study finds that the Weimar governments use of pro-government radio propaganda retarded Nazi growth, in April 1930, Hitler appointed Goebbels head of party propaganda. Goebbels, a former journalist and Nazi party officer in Berlin, among his first successes was the organization of riotous demonstrations that succeeded in having the American anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front banned in Germany. On 13 March 1933, The Third Reich established a Ministry of Propaganda, a major political and ideological cornerstone of Nazi policy was the unification of all ethnic Germans living outside of the Reichs borders under one Greater Germany. In Mein Kampf, Hitler denounced the pain and misery of ethnic Germans outside of Germany, throughout Mein Kampf, he pushed Germans worldwide to make the struggle for political power and independence their main focus, made official in the Heim ins Reich policy beginning in 1938. On 22 August, Adolf Hitler told his generals, I will provide a casus belli
40.
Religious aspects of Nazism
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Historians, political scientists and philosophers have studied Nazism with a specific focus on its religious and pseudo-religious aspects. It has been debated whether Nazism would constitute a political religion, and there has also been research on the millenarian, messianic, voegelins work on political religion was first published in German in 1938. Emilio Gentile and Roger Griffin, among others, have drawn on his concept, the French author and philosopher Albert Camus is mentioned here, since he has made some remarks about Nazism as a religion and about Adolf Hitler in particular in LHomme révolté. Outside a purely academic discourse, public interest mainly concerns the relationship between Nazism and Occultism, and between Nazism and Christianity, the interest in the first relationship is obvious from the modern popular myth of Nazi occultism. The persistent idea that the Nazis were directed by occult agencies has been dismissed by historians as modern cryptohistory, the interest in the second relationship is obvious from the debate about Adolf Hitlers religious views--specifically, whether he was a Christian or not. There are many works that speculate about National Socialism and Occultism, from the perspective of academic history, however, most of these works are cryptohistory. Notable exceptions are Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab by Wilfried Daim, Uranias children by Ellic Howe, aside from these works, historians did not consider the question until the 1980s. Due to the literature on the topic, Nazi black magic was regarded as a topic for sensational authors in pursuit of strong sales. In the 1980s, two Ph. D. theses were written about the topic, Goodrick-Clarkes book The Occult Roots. is not only considered without exception to be the pioneering work on Ariosophy, but also the definitive book on the topic. The term Ariosophy refers to a movement in Germany and Austria of the 1900s to 1930s. It clearly falls under Goodrick-Clarkes definition of occultism, as it drew on the western esoteric tradition. Ideologically, it was similar to Nazism. According to Goodrick-Clarke, the Ariosophists wove occult ideas into the ideology that existed in Germany. The Ariosophic writings described a glorious ancient Germanic past, in which an elitist priesthood expounded occult-racist doctrines and ruled over a superior, the downfall of this imaginary golden age was explained as the result of the interbreeding between the master race and the untermenschen. With the exception of Karl Maria Wiligut, Goodrick-Clarke has not found evidence that prominent Ariosophists directly influenced Nazism and his follow-up book Black Sun, Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity examined ariosophic ideas after 1945 and neo-völkisch movements. After Nazi Germany had surrendered in World War II, the U. S. Office of Strategic Services published a report on the Nazi Master Plan of the Persecution of the Christian Churches, Alfred Rosenberg was influential in the development of Positive Christianity. The Nazi Party program of 1920 included a statement on religion as point 24, in this statement, the Nazi party demands freedom of religion, the paragraph proclaims the partys endorsement of positive Christianity. Historians have described this statement as a measure, cleverly left undefined in order to accommodate a broad range of meanings
41.
Strasserism
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It derives its name from Gregor and Otto Strasser, the two Nazi brothers initially associated with this position. Strasserism remains an active position within strands of neo-Nazism, Gregor Strasser began his career in ultranationalist politics by joining Freikorps after serving in World War I. Involved in the Kapp Putsch he formed his own völkischer Wehrverband which he merged into the NSDAP in 1921, initially a loyal supporter of Adolf Hitler, he took part in the Beer Hall Putsch and held a number of high positions in the Nazi Party. After Hitlers rise to power, Ernst Röhm, who headed the SA, then the most important paramilitary wing of the Nazi party, called for a second revolution, aimed at removing the elites from control. This was opposed by the movement, as well as by some Nazis who preferred an ordered authoritarian regime to the radical. Otto Strasser had also been a member of the Freikorps, but joined the Social Democratic Party, however he joined the Nazi Party in 1925, but nonetheless retained his ideas about the importance of socialism. The name Strasserism came to be applied to the form of Nazism that developed around the brothers, although they had been involved in the creation of the National Socialist Program of 1920, both called on the party to commit to breaking the shackles of finance capital. This opposition to Jewish finance capitalism, which contrasted to productive capitalism, was shared by Adolf Hitler himself. His 1930 follow-up Ministersessel oder Revolution went further by attacking Hitlers betrayal of the socialist aspect of Nazism, as well as criticizing the notion of Führerprinzip. Whilst Gregor Strasser echoed many of the calls of his brother, his influence on the ideology is less, due to his remaining in the Nazi Party longer and it is disputed, however, whether Strasserism was a distinct form of Nazism. According to historian Ian Kershaw, the leaders of the SA did not have another vision of the future of Germany or another politic to propose. The Strasserites advocated the radicalization of the Nazi regime, and the toppling of the German elites, calling Hitlers rise to power a half-revolution, which needed to be completed. During the 1970s the ideas of Strasserism began to be referred to more in European far-right groups as members with no ties to Hitler. Strasserite thought in Germany began to emerge as a tendency within the National Democratic Party during the late 1960s, the Free German Workers Party also moved towards these ideas under the leadership of Friedhelm Busse in the late 1980s. Opposing the leadership of John Tyndall, they formed an alliance with John Kingsley Read, the NP called for British workers to seize the right to work and offered a fairly Strasserite economic policy. Nonetheless, the NP failed to last for very long, due in part to Reads lack of enthusiasm for Strasserism, the main exponents of the idea drifted away. The idea was reintroduced to the NF by Andrew Brons in the early 1980s when he decided to make the partys ideology clearer. However Strasserism was soon to become the province of the radicals in the Official National Front, from this background Troy Southgate emerged, whose own ideology and those of related groups such as the English Nationalist Movement and National Revolutionary Faction were influenced by Strasserism
42.
Nazi symbolism
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The black-white-red colour scheme is based upon the colours of the flag of the German Empire. The colour scheme was commonly associated with anti-Weimar Republic German nationalists following the fall of the German Empire, the Nazis denounced the black-red-yellow/gold flag of the Weimar Republic – which now is the flag of Germany. f. In Nazi contexts, the s-rune is referred to as Sig, the Wolfsangel, while not a rune historically, has the shape of Lists Gibor rune. Runic SS was the symbol of the Schutzstaffel, many symbols used by the Nazis have further been appropriated by neo-Nazi groups, including a number of runes. Neo-Nazis also employ various number symbols such as,18, code for Adolf Hitler, the number comes from the position of the letters in the alphabet, A =1, H =8. Again, the number comes from the position of the letter H in the Latin alphabet,14, from the Fourteen Words coined by David Lane, a late 20th-century American white supremacist, We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. 14 and 88 are sometimes combined with each other
43.
Women in Nazi Germany
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While 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, 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, many restrictions were lifted once wartime necessity dictated changes to policy later in the regimes existence. Under the Weimar Republic, the status of women was one of the most progressive in Europe. Clara Zetkin, a prominent leader of the German feminist movement, was a Member of Parliament in the Reichstag from 1920 to 1933, but Weimar did not represent a huge leap forward for womens liberation. While most of the parties under the Weimar Republic ran female candidates during elections. 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 Hitlers attaining power as Chancellor marked the end of womens rights. In terms of voting however, a higher proportion of male voters supported the Nazi party compared to female voters. It places women in situations where they strengthen their position with regard to men and with society –. The fact that Hitler was unmarried and that he represented an ideal for many Germans led to his erotisation in the public imagination. Women were also instrumental in bringing their husbands into the Nazi political fold. In a society that was beginning to consider women as equals, Nazi policies constituted a setback. The Nazis policies pertaining to women were one aspect of their efforts to stem what they viewed as the decadence of the Weimar Republic, the path to homosexuality is not far. The movement, the ideology cannot be sustained if it is worn by women, because man conceives of everything through the mind, officially, the status of women changed from equal rights to an equivalence between men and women. This policy created worry among the militants in the NSDAP, who were concerned that it would harm the number of female graduates, in 1933, school programmes for girls were changed, notably with the goal of discouraging them from pursuing university studies. The five years of Latin classes and three years of science were replaced by courses in German language and domestic skills training, thus, the measures only decreased the enrollment in medical schools from 20% to 17%. Some womens associations, notably communist and socialist groups were banned, but rapidly, the majority of the associations disbanded or chose among themselves to disappear, such as the BDF, established in 1894 and which disbanded in 1933 to avoid being controlled
44.
Nazism and race
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Nazism adopted and further developed several hypotheses concerning race. Classifications of human races were made and various measurements of samples were carried out during the 1930s. The Nazis claimed to observe scientifically a strict hierarchy of human race, hitlers view towards race and people could be found in Chapter 11 of his doctrinal book, Mein Kampf. Hitler has made references to an Aryan Race founding a superior type of humanity, the purest stock of Aryans, according to him, was the Nordic people of Sweden and Norway. The Nazis claimed that Germanic people represented a branch of the Aryan-Nordic population. Hitlers ideals for German men were blonde hair, slim built, strong and tough, the Nazis, for political purposes, classified Celtic and Anglo-Saxon populations in France and the United Kingdom as secondary to Germans. Chinese and Japanese, although non-Aryan in origin, were bestowed the status of Ehrenarien so that they could conduct lives and businesses in the German Reich without notable difficulties, Hitler respected these ancient civilizations and their strength of keeping intact their traditional cultures in the face of foreign colonisation. The Nazis regarded Italians and Spanish as sharing a similar origin with Germans from ancient Indo-Aryan migration. The question of South Tyrol was largely dealt by Hitler and Mussolini pragmatically, ethnic Germans in South Tyrol were given the option of either migrating back to the German Reich or remaining in South Tyrol to undergo forced Italianization. Hitler shifted the blame of Germanys loss in the First World War upon enemies from within, in the face of economic hardship as triggered by the Treaty of Versailles, Jews who resided in Germany were blamed for sabotaging the country. The Nazis therefore classified them as the most inferior race and used derogatory terms Untermensch, to expand the Lebensraum for Germans, the Nazis later applied this classification to the Poles, Slavs and Romani east of Germany. Within the subhuman hierarchy, the Poles and Slavs were classified above the Romani, nonetheless, the Nazis treatment to these ethnic groups shared no differentiation towards each other. An Untermensch would be stripped of all rights, treated as an animal, deemed to have a Lebensunwertes Leben and fit only for enslavement. It was the catastrophe of losing the First World War with its devastating economic consequences which set the stage for racism to take root as one means of apportioning blame for Germanys misfortune, the Nazis exploited this popular latent racism extensively in their propaganda. Philosophers and other theoreticians participated in the elaboration of Nazi ideology, the relationship between Heidegger and Nazism has remained a controversial subject in the history of philosophy, even today. However Heidegger did to a certain extent criticise racial science, particularly in his Nietzsche lectures, while generally speaking even in Heideggers most German nationalist and pro-Nazi works of the early 30s, such as his infamous Rectorial address there is a lack of any overtly racialised language. Thus it is problematic to connect Heidegger with any racial theory, different Nazis offered a range of arguments—some pseudo-religious, others pseudoscientific—as to why the Aryan or Northern European man was racially superior to persons of other races. But the central dogma of Aryan superiority was espoused by officials throughout the party, the Nazi state used such ideas about the differences between European races as part of their various discriminatory and coercive policies which culminated in the Holocaust
45.
Aryan race
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The Aryan race was a racial grouping term used in the period of the late 19th century to the mid-20th century to describe multiple peoples. The term derives from the Aryan people, from Persia, who spoke a similar to those that have been found in Europe. Aryanism developed as an ideology based on this idea. The term Aryan originates from the Sanskrit word ārya, in origin an ethnic self-designation, in the 18th century, the most ancient known Indo-European languages were those of the ancient Indo-Iranians. The word Aryan was therefore adopted to refer not only to the Indo-Iranian peoples, but also to native Indo-European speakers as a whole, including the Romans, Greeks, and it was soon recognised that Balts, Celts, and Slavs also belonged to the same group. The ethnic group composed of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their descendants was termed the Aryans. This usage was common among knowledgeable authors writing in the late 19th, an example of this usage appears in The Outline of History, a bestselling 1920 work by H. G. Wells. However, in a climate of burgeoning racism it proved difficult to maintain such nuanced distinctions, so it was that despite the injunctions of writers like Wells, the notion of an Aryan race took root in mainstream culture. Thus, in the 1944 edition of Rand McNallys World Atlas, today the use of Aryan as a synonym for Indo-European or to a lesser extent for Indo-Iranian both in academia and in popular culture is obsolete, ideologically suspect, and politically incorrect. But the term may still appear in material that is based on older scholarship or written by persons accustomed to older usage. Thus in a 1989 article in Scientific American, Colin Renfrew uses the term Aryan as a synonym for Indo-European. The term Indo-Aryan is still used to describe the Indic half of the Indo-Iranian languages, i. e. the family that includes Sanskrit and modern languages such as Hindi, Urdu. This usage was considered to include most modern inhabitants of Australasia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, Siberia, South Asia, Southern Africa, and West Asia. Such claims became increasingly common during the early 19th century, when it was believed that the Aryans originated in the south-west Eurasian steppes. Max Müller is often identified as the first writer to mention an Aryan race in English, in his Lectures on the Science of Language, Muller referred to Aryans as a race of people. At the time, the race had the meaning of a group of tribes or peoples. Müller objected to the mixing of linguistics and anthropology, the Science of Language and the Science of Man cannot be kept too much asunder. I must repeat what I have said many times before, it would be wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar and he restated his opposition to this method in 1888 in his essay Biographies of words and the home of the Aryas
46.
Blood and Soil
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Blood and Soil refers to an ideology that focuses on ethnicity based on two factors, descent blood and territory. It celebrates the relationship of a people to the land they occupy and cultivate, the German expression was coined in the late 19th century, in tracts espousing racialism and national romanticism. It produced a regionalist literature, with social criticism. This romantic attachment was widespread prior to the rise of the Nazis, darré was an influential member of the Nazi party and a noted race theorist who assisted the party greatly in gaining support among common Germans outside the cities. Prior to their ascension to power, Nazis called for a return from the cities to the countryside and this agrarian sentiment allowed opposition to both the middle class and the aristocracy, and presented the farmer as a superior figure beside the moral swamp of the city. The doctrine not only called for a back to the approach and re-adoption of rural values, it held that German land was bound, perhaps mystically. This would also lead them to understand the natural order better, urban culture was decried as a weakness, asphalt culture, that only the Führers will could eliminate—sometimes as a code for Jewish influence. It contributed to the Nazi ideal of a woman, a sturdy peasant and that country women gave birth to more children than city ones also was a factor in the support. Carl Schmitt argued that a people would develop laws appropriate to its blood, neues Volk displayed demographic charts to deplore the destruction of the generous Aryan families farmland and how the Jews were eradicating traditional German peasantry. Posters for schools depicted and deplored the flight of people from the countryside to the city and he lent them money and made them pay interest. Thousands and thousands of Germans have been made wretched by the Jews, farmers whose land had been in the family for more than 100 years were driven from their land because they could not pay the interest. They had to move to the cities, torn from the land to which they belonged, robbed of their labour that gave their lives purpose and meaning, they fell victim to poverty and misery. Worn down, their souls crushed, they accepted Jewish doctrines that denied the Fatherland, the Jew had reached his goal. The program received far more ideological and propaganda support than concrete changes, when Gottfried Feder tried to settle workers in villages about decentralized factories, generals and Junkers successfully opposed him. Generals objected because it interfered with rearmament, and Junkers because it would prevent their exploiting their estates for the international market and it would also require the breakup of Junker estates for independent farmers, which was not implemented. The Reichserbhofgesetz, the State Hereditary Farm Law of 1933, implemented this ideology, stating that its aim was to, regional custom was only allowed to decide whether the eldest or the youngest son was to be the heir. In areas where no particular custom prevailed, the youngest son was to be the heir, the countryside was also regarded as the best place to raise infantry, and as having a organic harmony between landowner and peasant, unlike the race chaos of the industrial cities. It also prevented Jews from farming, Only those of German blood may be farmers, the concept was a factor in the requirement of a year of land service for members of Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls
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