Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm
control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer
Adolf Hitler as dictator.
The Third Reich is an Anglicization of the German expression Drittes Reich, and is used as a near-synonym for
Nazi Germany, that refers to the government and its agencies rather than the land and its people. The term was
first used in 1922, as the title of a book, by conservative writer Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. It was adopted
by Nazi propaganda, which counted the Holy Roman Empire as the first Reich, the 1871–1918
German Empire the second,
and its own regime as the third. This was done in order to suggest a return to alleged former German glory after the
perceived failure of the 1919 Weimar Republic.
The Third Reich was sometimes also referred to as the "Thousand Year Reich," as it was intended by its founder
to stand for one thousand years — similar to the Holy Roman Empire. The Nazi Party attempted to combine traditional
symbols of Germany with Nazi Party symbols in an effort to reinforce the perception of them as being one and the
same. Thus the Nazi Party used the terms "Third Reich" and "Thousand Year Reich" to connect the allegedly glorious
past to its supposedly glorious future.
Initially Hitler's plans seemed to be well on their way to fruition. At its height, the Third Reich controlled
the greater part of Europe. However, due to the defeat by the Allied powers in World War II, the Thousand Year Reich
in fact lasted only 12 years (from 1933 through to 1945).
During their rule, the Nazis sent massive armies throughout almost all of continental Europe (with the exception of
Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Sweden, Portugal and the land near the Ural Mountains). As part of this, the Nazis
endorsed the idea of a Greater Germany with Berlin renamed Germania as its capital, and integration of all people
of supposed pure Germanic origin. This policy manifested itself in the death of 11 million people of racial minority
and other social outcasts, as well as tens of millions of others as a direct or indirect result of combat.
Pre-War Politics 1933-1939
On 30. January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor by President
Paul von Hindenburg after attempts by General Kurt von Schleicher to
form a viable government failed and under heavy pressure from former Chancellor Franz von Papen. Even though the Nazi
Party had gained the largest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, they had no
majority in parliament.
Consolidation of power
The new government installed dictatorship in a series of measures in quick succession
(Gleichschaltung). On 27. February
1933 Hermann Göring orchestrated the Reichstag building fire, which was followed
immediately with the Reichstag Fire Decree, which rescinded many protective laws.
The next Reichstag elections on 5. March
1933, yielded 43.9 % of the vote for the NSDAP giving them a slight majority.
The Reichstag drove the final nails in
Weimar's coffin by passing the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) on 23. March 1933, which formally gave Hitler the power
to govern by decree and in effect disbanded the remainders of the Weimar constitution altogether.
Berlin during Nazi Period |
Further consolidation of power was achieved on 30. January 1934 with the Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reichs (act to
rebuild the Reich). The act changed the highly decentralized federal Germany of the Weimar era into a centralized state.
It disbanded state parliaments, transferred sovereign rights of the states to the Reich central government and put the
state administrations under the control of the Reich administration. At the death of president Hindenburg on 2. August 1934,
the Nazi controlled Reichstag merged the offices of Reichspräsident and
Reichskanzler and reinstalled Hitler with the new title Führer und Reichskanzler.
Only the army remained independent from Nazi control, and the quasi-militant Nazi military organisation SA expected top
positions in the new power structure. Wanting to preserve good relations with the army Hitler, on the night of 30. June 1934,
initiated what is known as the Night of the Long Knives, which was a purge
of the leadership ranks of the SA as well as other political enemies, carried out by another, more elitist, Nazi organisation,
the SS. Shortly thereafter the army leaders swore their obedience to Hitler.
The institution of the Gestapo, police to act outside of any civil authority, highlighted the Nazi's intention to hold
powerful means of directly controlling German society. Soon, mirroring Stalin's terror in the Soviet Union, an estimated
army of about 100,000 spies and infiltrants operated throughout Germany, reporting to Nazi officials the activities of
any critics or dissenters. Most ordinary Germans, happy with the improving economy and better standard of living remained
obedient and quiet, but many political opponents, especially communists and socialists, were reported by omnipresent
eavesdropping spies, and put in prison camps where they were severely mistreated, and many tortured and killed. Estimates
of political victims range in dozens of thousands dead and disappeared in the first few years of Nazi rule.
Social policy
The Nazi regime was characterized by political control of every aspect of society in a quest for racial (Aryan, Nordic),
social and cultural purity. Modern abstract art and avant-garde art was thrown out of museums, and put on special displays
of "Degenerate art" where it was ridiculed. However, the crowds
attending these displays of "decadent art" frequently
eclipsed those attending officially sanctioned displays. In one notable example on 31. March 1937, huge crowds stood in
line to view a special display of "degenerate art" in Munich while a concurrently running exhibiton of 900 works personally
approved by Adolf Hitler attracted a tiny, unenthusiastic gathering.
The Nazi Party pursued its aims through persecution of those considered impure, especially against targeted minority groups
such as Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.
By the Nuremberg Laws passed in 1935, Jews were stripped of their German citizenship and denied government employment.
Most Jews employed by Germans lost their jobs at this time, their jobs being taken by unemployed Germans. On 9. November 1938,
the Nazi party incited a pogrom against Jewish businesses called the
Kristallnacht ("Crystal Night" = Night of Broken Glass).
The euphemism was used because the numerous broken windows made the streets look as if covered with crystal. By September 1939,
more than 200,000 Jews had left Germany, with the Nazi government seizing any property they left behind.
The Nazis also undertook programs targeting "weak" or "unfit" members of their own population as well, such as the T-4
Euthanasia Program which killed off tens of thousands of disabled and sickly Germans in an effort to "maintain the purity
of the German Master race" (German: Herrenvolk) as described by Nazi propagandists. The techniques of mass-killing developed
in these efforts would later be used in the Holocaust. Under a law passed in 1933, the Nazi regime carried out the compulsory
sterilization of over 400,000 individuals labeled as having hereditary defects, ranging from mental illness to alcoholism.
Economic Policy
The economic management of the state was first given to respected banker Hjalmar Schacht.
Under his guidance, a new economic policy to elevate the nation was drafted, limiting imports of consumer goods and focusing
on producing exports. Massive loans and credits were issued by the Reichsbank to industries and the individuals who ran them.
The Germany economy was later transfered to the leadership of Hermann Göring when, on 18. October 1936, the
German Reichstag announced the formation of a Four year plan to shift the German
economy towards a war production base. The four year plan technically expired in 1940, but by this time Hermann Göring had
built up a power base in the "Office of the Four Year Plan" which effectively controlled all German economic and
production matters.
Under the leadership of Fritz Todt a massive public works project was started, rivaling the New Deal in both size and scope.
Its most notable achievement was the Autobahn. Once the war started, the massive organization that Todt founded was used in
building bunkers, underground facilities and entrenchments all over Europe. Another part of the new German economy was massive
rearmament with the goal being to expand the 100,000-strong German Army into a force of millions.
World War II
Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi party
(NSDAP), 1936 |
In 1939 Germany's actions lead to the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Poland, France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium and the
Netherlands were invaded. Initially, the United Kingdom could do little to come to the rescue of its European allies and
Germany subjected Britain to heavy bombing during the Battle of Britain. After invading Greece and North Africa, Germany
invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. It declared war on the United States
in December of 1941 after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
The persecution of minorities continued both in Germany and the occupied areas, from 1941 Jews were required to wear a
yellow star in public and most were transferred to Ghettos, where they remained isolated from the rest of the population.
In January 1942, at the Wannsee conference under the supervision of Reinhard Heydrich, a plan for the "Final solution for the
Jewish question" (German: "Endlösung der Judenfrage") in Europe was hatched. During this period around 6 million Jews and many
others, including homosexuals, Slavs and political prisoners, were systematically killed and more than 10 million people
were put in slavery. This genocide is referred to as the Holocaust in English, "Shoah" in Hebrew.
Parallel to the Holocaust the Nazis conducted a ruthless program of conquest, colonization and exploitation over the
captured Soviet and Polish territory and its Slavic population called Generalplan Ost. It is estimated 20 million
Soviet civilians, 3 million non-Jewish Poles, 7 million Red Army soldiers died under the Nazi maltreatment in what
the Russians call The Great Patriotic War. The Nazi plan was to extend the German Lebensraum "living space" eastward,
but their public pretext for launching war on Eastern Europe was "defense from Bolshevism".
After losing the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 and the Battle of Normandy in 1944, the regime started to disintegrate
quickly, losing ground to the Allied forces in the west and south and the Red Army in the east. By spring of 1945 the
Allies had invaded German territory. On 30. April 1945 as Berlin was taken by Soviet forces, Hitler committed suicide.
On 4-8. May 1945, the Germany armed forces surrendered unconditionally ending the war in Europe and with the creation
of the Allied Control Council on 5. June 1945, the four powers "assume supreme authority with respect to Germany".
Aftermath
The winning allies first split Germany into occupation zones. At the Potsdam conference German borders within the
Soviet occupation zone were moved westward, most given to Poland while a half of East Prussia was annexed by Soviet
Union. The German exodus from Eastern Europe, that was initiated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, was after the war
completed when virtually all Germans in Central Europe were evacuated to west of the Oder-Neisse line, with up to
about 12 million ethnic Germans affected, of which 2.1 million died or went missing during these evacuations.
The French, US and British zones later became the future
West Germany, while the Soviet zone became the communist
East Germany. West Germany recovered by the 1960s, but the East remained
communist until 1990.
After the war, surviving Nazi leaders were put on
trial by the Allied tribunal at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity.
Although a minority were sentenced to execution, most were released by the mid-1950s on account of health and old age.
Many continued to live well into the 1970s and '80s. In all non-fascist European countries there were established legal
purges to punish the members of the former Nazi and Fascist parties. An uncontrolled punishment hit the Nazi children
and the children fathered by German soldiers in occupied territories, including the so-called lebensborn children.
Please have a look at some banknotes from the World War II.
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