Nazi Germany

Politics and institutions

Nazi Germany was the German state from 1933 to 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party transformed the Weimar Republic into a totalitarian dictatorship. Hitler became chancellor on 30 January 1933, and after the Reichstag fire the Enabling Act of March 1933 allowed him to legislate without parliament. The regime banned all other parties, destroyed the trade unions, purged the SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives, and after Hindenburg's death in 1934 merged the presidency and chancellery in Hitler's person as Führer. Power was exercised through competing party and state agencies, the Gestapo, the SS and concentration camps, while plebiscites and propaganda manufactured consent. The regime's ideology combined extreme antisemitism, racism, anti-communism and expansionism, and its rule ended with Germany's defeat in May 1945.

Economy and finance

The Nazi economy began with mass unemployment and ended in total war. Hitler's regime used deficit spending, public works, rearmament and the expansion of the Wehrmacht to reduce unemployment, and by 1939 the economy was geared toward war. The state controlled prices, wages and foreign exchange, promoted synthetic oil and rubber, and forced industry to follow the Four Year Plan under Hermann Göring. During the war, Germany plundered occupied Europe and enslaved some twelve million foreign workers, many of them Eastern Europeans, in factories and on farms. The war consumed 75 per cent of German GDP by 1944, and Allied bombing, the loss of resources and the regime's own mismanagement brought the economy to collapse in 1945.

Society and culture

Nazi society was organized around racial ideology and terror. The regime defined an “Aryan master race”, persecuted Jews, Roma, Slavs, disabled people, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, political opponents and others, and stripped Jews of citizenship through the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Propaganda, the Hitler Youth, the League of German Girls and controlled education promoted conformity, militarism and antisemitism, while the churches were pressured and opposition was crushed. The regime also pursued a cult of the Führer, mass rallies and a racialized culture that banned modern art and promoted “Aryan” art and music. At the same time, many Germans benefited from employment, welfare and a sense of national revival, and the regime's popularity rested on a mixture of material improvement, nationalism and fear.

Military and frontiers

The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, combining the army, navy and air force, and it was central to the regime's plans for conquest. Hitler personally commanded the armed forces, and soldiers swore unconditional obedience to him. The army developed the tactics of Blitzkrieg, combining tanks, aircraft and infantry to overwhelm opponents, and Germany conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, the Low Countries and much of Europe by 1940. The invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and the failure to take Moscow and Stalingrad marked the turning point, and the Wehrmacht was pushed back by the Red Army and the Western Allies. The SS, the Waffen-SS and the Einsatzgruppen also committed mass murder and war crimes, and the Wehrmacht was complicit in the Holocaust and the murder of prisoners of war.

Foreign relations

Nazi foreign policy aimed at racial empire in Eastern Europe. Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, remilitarized the Rhineland, annexed Austria and the Sudetenland, and destroyed Czechoslovakia before invading Poland in September 1939 with the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Germany allied with Fascist Italy, Japan and other Axis states, conquered most of Europe, and launched a war of extermination against the Soviet Union in 1941. The regime planned to Germanize or destroy the peoples of Eastern Europe through the Generalplan Ost and the Hunger Plan, and it murdered millions of Jews, Roma, Slavs and prisoners of war. The Grand Alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States defeated Germany in May 1945, and the Nazi regime was condemned at the Nuremberg trials.

Legacy and influence

Nazi Germany's legacy is dominated by the Holocaust and the Second World War. The regime murdered six million Jews and millions of Roma, Slavs, disabled people, homosexuals, political prisoners and others, and its war of extermination caused the deaths of tens of millions. The Nuremberg trials established the principles of crimes against humanity and genocide, and the United Nations Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were responses to Nazi atrocities. Germany was divided and occupied after 1945, and the memory of the Nazi era shaped the Federal Republic's commitment to democracy, human rights and European integration. Holocaust remembrance, education and the rejection of antisemitism and racism remain central to German public life and to international human-rights law.