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Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is a term used in place of the official Deutsches Reich ("German Reich"), and later Großdeutsches Reich ("Greater German Reich"), and refers to Germany during the period from 1933 to 1945, when it was governed by the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party, or "Nazi Party"), with Adolf Hitler as chancellor and, from 1934, as head of state called the Führer (Leader). In Germany, the common term is the Third Reich.
The policies pursued by Nazi Germany were based on the concept of Lebensraum; among them: "Aryan" racial purity, anti-Semitism, revenge for Germany's territorial losses at the Treaty of Versailles and the perceived loss of pride because of it, and anti-communism directed at the Soviet Union (these were among the leading causes of the Second World War); also the Nazi regime's systematic mass murder of millions of Jews, and political opponents, and other minorities in the genocide known as the Holocaust or Shoah.
Under the Nazi regime, Germany, from a military and territorial standpoint, became the dominant nation state in Europe by the early 1940s. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, Nazi Germany became the first united German state since the Holy Roman Empire to include Austria within its boundaries, which was ended after the Nazi regime's defeat in 1945. The fall of the Nazi regime also saw the complete dissolution of Prussia as a regional component of Germany.
By the end of the war, Germany's major infrastructure was destroyed — and many of its major cities were in ruin as the result of Allied bombings and intense urban warfare (especially in Berlin in 1945).
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The official name of Germany did not change after the Nazis came to power in 1933. It remained Deutsches Reich (literally translated as German Empire), i.e. the same as it has been since 1871. It was only in 1943 that the Nazi government officially modified the name of Germany, calling it Großdeutsches Reich (literally translated as Great German Empire), which remained in use until the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945.
The Nazi Party used the terms Drittes Reich ("Third Empire") and Tausendjähriges Reich ("Thousand-Year Empire") to describe the greater German ethnic empire they wished to forge. The term Tausendjähriges Reich was used only briefly and dropped from propaganda in 1939, officially to avoid mockery and possibly to even avoid religious connotations.[citation needed] In speeches, books and articles about the Third Reich (after 8 May 1945) the phrase has taken on a new meaning[citation needed] and the early Nazi professions about a "thousand-year" empire are often juxtaposed against the twelve years that the Third Reich actually existed.
The term Third Reich referred to the Nazi recognition of former incarnations of German empires, while alluding to envisioned future prosperity and the new nation's alleged destiny. But it was dropped from propaganda on 10 July 1939 at Hitler's behest.
The Holy Roman Empire ("Heiliges Römisches Reich," later with the appendage "Deutscher Nation"), deemed the First Reich, had lasted almost a thousand years, from 843 to 1806, hence the Nazi reference to the 1000 year Reich. Second Reich was the Prussian-ruled monarchy called the German Empire, and the first firmly unified German state, which existed from 1871 until its replacement by the Weimar Republic following the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918 and the abolition of the Empire in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The term was taken by the Nazis from the 1923 book Das Dritte Reich ("The Third Reich"), by the cultural historian and writer Arthur Moeller van den Bruck — who was an anti-Versailles German nationalist, but far from enthusiastic about Hitler, whom he met in 1922.[citation needed]
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In addition to Weimar-era Germany proper, the Reich came to include, in the years leading up to the war, areas with ethnic German populations such as Austria, the Sudetenland and the territory of Memel. Regions acquired after the outbreak of conflict include Eupen-et-Malmédy, Alsace-Lorraine, Danzig and territories of Poland. In addition, from 1939 to 1945, the Reich ruled Bohemia and Moravia as a Protectorate, subjugated and annexed prior to the start of the world war. Although considered a part of Greater Germany, the protectorate had its own currency.
Czech Silesia was incorporated into the province of Silesia during the same period. In 1942 Luxembourg was directly annexed into Germany. Central Poland and Polish Galicia were run by a protectorate government, called the General Government. Eventually, the Polish people were supposed to be "removed" and Poland itself populated with 5 million Germans. By late 1943, Germany not only seized South Tyrol and Istria, which had been under Austrian rule before 1918, but also seized Venice from its erstwhile ally Italy after it capitulated to the Allies.
The states composing Germany were restricted in sovereignty by the Nazi regime and replaced in their political rights by Gaue; districts were led by representatives called Gauleiter who were completely loyal to the central government. In the majority of cases that Gauleiter was responsible in personal union for the Reichsgau too. These administrative changes dismantled the regional political hegemony, which had been held by Prussia over German affairs since 1871. However, the title of the Prime Minister of Prussia used by Hermann Göring from 1933-1945, and other titles, still remained in use.
Outside of what was directly annexed into Germany were the regional territories created in occupied land. In the occupied areas of the Soviet Union, occupational territories were called Reichskommissariat. These included Reichskommissariat Ostland and Reichskommissariat Ukraine, which were designed to foster German colonization of eastern Europe. In northern and western Europe, occupation authorities aided by Nazi sympathizers ran the governments of Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and northern France (after 1942, all of France). In parts of northern France, travel restrictions were imposed by the Nazi occupation authorities, as the Nazi regime intended to colonize those areas with German citizens.
The Reich's borders had changed de facto well before its military defeat in May 1945, as the German population fled westward from the advancing Red Army and the Western Allies pressed eastward from France. By the end of the war, a small strip of land stretching from Austria to Bohemia and Moravia — as well as a few other isolated regions — were the only areas not under Allied control. Upon its defeat, the Reich was in a state of debellation and was replaced by occupation zones administrated by France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. The prewar German lands east of the Oder-Neisse line and Stettin and its surrounding area were set under Polish and Soviet administration but factually sundered from Germany for annexation by Poland and the Soviet Union. These territorial changes resulted in the complete dissolution of Prussia as a German territorial component and was neither identified as a regional entity of Poland or the Soviet Union (Kaliningrad region). By signing the Treaty of Warsaw (1970) and the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (1990), Germany finally confirmed to abdicate any claims to territories lost during the Second World War.[citation needed]
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From an international perspective, Nazism had much of the ideological basis of fascism which originally developed in Italy under Benito Mussolini. Both ideologies involved the political use of militarism, nationalism, anti-communism, holism, paramilitaries, and intended to create a dictatorship-led state.[citation needed] However, the Nazis were far more racially-oriented than fascists in Italy, Portugal, and Spain and the Nazis were intent on creating a completely totalitarian state, unlike Italian fascists who allowed a larger degree of private liberties for their citizens than the Nazis permitted, and allowed the Italian monarchy to continue to exist and have some official powers.
The totalitarian nature of the Nazi party was one of its principal tenets. The Nazis connected that all the great achievements in the past of the German nation and its people were associated with the ideals of National Socialism even before the ideology officially existed. Propaganda accredited the consolidation of Nazi ideals and successes of the regime to regime's "Leader", or Führer, Adolf Hitler, who was portrayed by himself and propaganda as the genius behind the Nazi party's success and Germany's saviour. Hitler's ability to grasp the attention of audiences through his powerful speeches helped him earn a cult following by his Nazi followers. To secure their ability to create a totalitarian state, the Nazi party's paramilitary force, the Sturmabteilung (SA) "Storm Unit", used acts of violence against leftists, democrats, Jews, and other opposition or minority groups. The SA's violence created climates of fear in cities, with people fearing punishment and even death if they displayed opposition to the Nazis. The SA also helped attract large numbers of alienated and unemployed youth to join the party. The Nazis endorsed the concept of "Großdeutschland", or Greater Germany, and believed that the incorporation of the Germanic people into one nation was a vital step towards their national success.[citation needed] Similarly, the "German problem", as it is often referred to in English scholarship, focuses on the issue of administration of Germanic regions within Northern and Central Europe, an important theme throughout German history.[3] The "logic" of keeping Germany small worked in the favor of its principal economic rivals, and had been a driving force in the recreation of a Polish state[citation needed]. The goal was to create numerous counterweights in order to "balance out Germany's power". However it was the German passionate support of the Volk concept that led to Germany's expansion, that gave legitimacy and the support needed for the Third Reich to proceed to conquer long lost territories with overwhelmingly non-German population like former Prussian gains in Poland that it lost to Russia in the 1800s, or to acquire territories with German population like parts of Austria, or "needed" as the Nazi regime claimed for Lebensraum (living space) for a growing population. Two important issues were administration of the Polish corridor and Danzig's incorporation into the Reich. As a further extension of racial policy, the Lebensraum program, pertained to similar interests; it was decided that Eastern Europe would be settled with ethnic Germans, and the Slavic population who met the Nazi racial standard would be absorbed into the Reich. Those not fitting the racial standards were to be used as cheap labour force or deported eastward.[4] Racism was an important aspect of society within the Third Reich. The Nazis also combined anti-Semitism with anti-Communist ideology and regarded the leftist movement — as well as international market capitalism — as the work of "Conspiratorial Jewry". They referred to this so-called movement as the "Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans."[5] This platform manifested itself in the displacement, internment and later, the systematic extermination of an estimated eleven to twelve million people in the midst of World War II, roughly half of whom being Jews targeted in what is historically remembered as the Holocaust (Shoah), and another 100,000-1,000,000 being Roma, who were murdered in what they call the Porajmos. Other victims of Nazi persecution included communists, blacks, various political opponents, social outcasts, homosexuals, religious dissidents such as Jehovah's Witnesses, unyielding Church-affiliated leadership (Confessing Church of German Lutherans and resisting Roman Catholic clergy), and Freemasons.
World War II officially began after Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, which led to France and the United Kingdom both declaring war on Nazi Germany. The global conflict that followed left Europe in ruins and led to the deaths of roughly sixty-two million people.
In the wake of the loss of land and perceived national humiliation imposed through the Treaty of Versailles, civil unrest, the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s spurred by the stock market crash in the U.S., the counter-traditionalism of the Weimar period and the threat of the United States sponsored communism in Germany,[citation needed] many voters began turning their support towards the Nazi Party, which promised strong government, an end to civil unrest, radical changes to economic policy, cultural renewal based on traditionalism, military rearmament in opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, and to bring back national pride that the Nazis claimed was lost in the Treaty of Versailles and by liberal democracy.[5]. The Nazis also endorsed the Dolchstoßlegende ("Stab in the back legend") which figured prominently in their propaganda as it did in propaganda of most other nationalist-leaning parties in Germany.
From 1925 to the 1930s, the German government devolved from a democracy to a de facto conservative-nationalist authoritarian state under President and war hero Paul von Hindenburg, who opposed the liberal democratic nature of the Weimar Republic and wanted to find a way to officially make Germany into an authoritarian state.[citation needed] The natural ally of the foundation of an authoritarian state had been the German National People's Party (DNVP or "the Nationalists"), but increasingly after 1929, more fanatic and younger generation nationalists were attracted to the revolutionary nature of the Nazi party, to challenge the rising support for communism as the German economy floundered. By 1932, the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag. Hindenburg was reluctant to give any substantial power to Hitler, but worked out an alliance between the Nazis and the DNVP which would allow him to develop an authoritarian state. But Hitler consistently demanded on being appointed chancellor in order for Hindenburg to receive any Nazi Party support of his administration.
On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by Hindenburg after attempts by General Kurt von Schleicher to form a viable government failed. Hindenburg was put under pressure by Hitler through his son Oskar von Hindenburg, as well as intrigue from former Chancellor Franz von Papen following his collection of participating financial interests and own ambitions to combat communism.[citation needed] Even though the Nazis had gained the largest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, they had no majority of their own, and just a slim majority in parliament with their Papen-proposed Nationalist DNVP-NSDAP coalition. This coalition ruled through accepted continuance of the Presidential decree, issued under Article 48 of the 1919 constitution.
The Nazi attacks on the Jews in the early months of 1933 marked the first step in a longer-term process of removing them from German society.[6] By the summer of 1933, this process was on its way to becoming quite disastrous. This process also marked the core of Adolf Hitler's "cultural revolution" whereby the Nazi mind had begun to transform in a manner conducive to anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and anti-liberalism.[6]
The new government installed a totalitarian dictatorship in a series of measures in quick succession (see Gleichschaltung for details).
On the night of February 27th, the Reichstag building was set on fire and Dutch council communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found inside the building. He was arrested and charged with starting the blaze. The event had an immediate effect on thousands of anarchists, socialists and communists throughout the Reich, many of whom were sent to the Dachau concentration camp. The unnerved public worried that the fire had been a signal meant to initiate the communist revolution and the Nazis found the event to be of immeasurable value in getting rid of potential insurgents. The event was quickly followed by the Reichstag Fire Decree, rescinding habeas corpus and other civil liberties.
The Enabling Act was passed in March 1933, with 444 votes, to the 94 of the remaining Social Democrats. The act gave the government (and thus effectively the Nazi Party) legislative powers and also authorized it to deviate from the provisions of the constitution for four years. With these powers, Hitler removed the remaining opposition and turned the Weimar Republic into the "Third Reich".
For Hitler to create the Nazi dictatorship, Germany had to become a one party state.[citation needed] This was achieved by the Nazis as by June 1933 the Social Democrats had been banned, the Communists had been banned and the German Nationalists (DNVP), German People's Party (DVP) and German Democratic Party (DDP) had all been forced to disband. The remaining Catholic Centre Party disbanded itself on 5 July 1933 after guarantees over Catholic education and youth groups. On 14 July 1933 Germany officially declared a one-party state with the passing of the Law against the formation of parties.
Symbols of the Weimar Republic, including the black-red-gold flag (now the present-day flag of Germany), were abolished by the new regime which adopted both new and old imperial symbolism to represent the dual nature of the imperialist-Nazi regime of 1933. The old imperial black-white-red tricolour, almost completely abandoned during the Weimar Republic, was restored as one of Germany's two officially legal national flags. The other official national flag was the swastika flag of the Nazi party. It became the sole national flag in 1935.
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, transferring sovereign rights of the states to the Reich central government and put the state administrations under the control of the Reich administration.
Only the army remained independent from Nazi control. The German army had traditionally been separated from the government and somewhat of an entity of its own. The Nazi paramilitary SA expected top positions in the new power structure and wanted the regime to follow through its promise of enacting socialist legislation for Aryan Germans. Wanting to preserve good relations with the army and the major industries who were weary of more political violence erupting from the SA, on the night of 30 June 1934, Hitler initiated the violent Night of the Long Knives, a purge of the leadership ranks of Röhm's SA as well as hard-left Nazis (Strasserists), and other political enemies, carried out by another, more elitist, Nazi organization, the SS.
At 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. Until the death of Hindenburg, the army did not follow Hitler. However, with the death of Hindenburg, the entire army swore their obedience to Hitler.[citation needed] The Nazis proceeded to scrap their official alliance with the conservative nationalists, and began to introduce Nazi ideology and Nazi symbolism into all major aspects of life in Germany.
The inception of the Gestapo, police acting outside of any civil authority, highlighted the Nazis' intention to use powerful, coercive means to directly control German society. Soon, an army estimated to be of about 100,000 spies and informants operated throughout Germany, reporting to Nazi officials the activities of any critics or dissenters.[citation needed] Most ordinary Germans, happy with the improving economy and better standard of living, remained obedient and quiet, but many political opponents, especially[citation needed] communists and Marxist or international socialists, were reported by omnipresent eavesdropping spies and put in prison camps where many were tortured and killed. It is estimated that tens of thousands of political victims died or disappeared in the first few years of Nazi rule.[who?]
Nazi social policy was dominated by the desire to create a "perfect" race and demanded a racially pure society. The effects of Nazi social policy in Germany was divided between those considered to be "Aryan" and those considered "non-Aryan", Jewish, or part of other minority groups. For "Aryan" Germans, a number of social policies put through by the regime to benefit them were advanced for the time, including: state opposition to the use of tobacco due to health risks, an end to official stigmatization towards Aryan children who were born from parents outside of marriage, as well as giving financial assistance to Aryan German families who bore children.[7] For "non-Aryans", specifically Jews, Poles, Roma, and other kinds of minorities,which included homosexuals, fatally ill people and illegitemate children, they faced racist laws, lack of any form of social assistance or help, and ethnic persecution and later genocide. The Nazis declared different types of minorities. The treatment of specified minorities was so poor that animals had more rights than these human beings — harmful and cruel experiments on animals were banned in Nazi Germany while harmful and cruel experiments were allowed to happen to "shameful life" (German: "unwertes Leben", the Nazi term for Jews, Poles and Gypsies).
- See also: Racial policy of Nazi Germany
The Nazi Party pursued its racial policy aims, and some related social aims, through persecution and killing of those considered "impure" or otherwise "enemies of the Reich." Especially targeted were minority groups such as Jews, Roma (also known as Gypsies), Blacks and other people of color, Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses [8], people with mental or physical disabilities, and homosexuals.
In the 1930s, plans to isolate and eventually eliminate Jews completely in Germany began with the construction of ghettos, concentration camps and labour camps which began with the construction of the Dachau concentration camp in 1933 which Heinrich Himmler officially described the camp as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners."[9]
In the years following the Nazi rise to power, many Jews fled the country and were encouraged to do so. By the time the Nuremberg Laws were 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, which were being taken by unemployed Germans. Notably, the Nazi government attempted to send 17,000 German Jews of Polish descent back to Poland, a decision which led to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew living in France. This provided the pretext for a pogrom the Nazi Party incited against the Jews on 9 November 1938, which specifically targeted Jewish businesses. The event was called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass, literally "Crystal Night"); the euphemism was used because the numerous broken windows made the streets look as if covered with crystals. 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" people, such as the T-4 Euthanasia Program, killing tens of thousands of disabled and sick 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.
Another component of the Nazi programme of creating racial purity was the Lebensborn, or "Fountain of Life" programme founded in 1936. The programme was aimed at encouraging German soldiers — mainly SS — to reproduce. This included offering SS families support services (including the adoption of racially pure children into suitable SS families) and accommodating racially-valuable women, pregnant with mainly SS men's children, in care homes in Germany and throughout Occupied Europe. Lebensborn also expanded to encompass the placing of racially pure children forcibly seized from occupied countries — such as Poland — with German families.[citation needed]
At the outset of World War II, the German authority in the General Government in occupied Poland ordered that all Jews face compulsory labour and that those who were physically incapable such as women and children were to be confined to ghettos.[10]
To the Nazis a number of ideas appeared on how to answer the "Jewish Question" after the war began. One method was a mass forced deportation of Jews. Adolf Eichmann suggested that Jews be forced to emigrate to Palestine,[11] Franz Rademacher made the proposal that Jews be deported to Madagascar, this proposal was supported by Himmler and was discussed by Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini which was later dismissed as impractical in 1942.[12] The idea of continuing deportations to occupied Poland was rejected by the governor Hans Frank of the General Government of occupied Poland refused to accept anymore deporations of Jews to the territory which already had large numbers of Jews there.[13] In 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, Nazi officials made clear their intention to elliminate the Jews of Europe as quickly as possible, when they discussed the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Extermination camps like Auschwitz used gas chambers to kill as many Jews as possible and cremated the bodies. By 1945, a number of concentration camps had been liberated by Allied forces who found the survivors to be severely malnourished from starvation. The Allies also found evidence that the Nazis were profiteering off of the mass murder of Jews not only by confiscating their property and personal valuables but also by extracting gold fillings from the bodies of some Jews held in concentration camps.
Recent research by academics such as Götz Aly has emphasized the role of the extensive Nazi social welfare programs that supposedly helped maintain public support for the regime that lasted long into the war.[citation needed] Heavily focused on was the idea of a national German community. To aid the fostering of a feeling of community, the German people's labour and entertainment experiences — from festivals, to vacation trips and traveling cinemas — were all made a part of the "Strength through Joy" (Kraft durch Freude) program. Also crucial to the building of loyalty and comradeship was the implementation of the National Labor Service and the Hitler Youth Organization, with compulsory membership. In addition to this, a number of architectural projects were undertaken. The construction of the Autobahn made it the first freeway system in the world. Between 1933 and 1936, Germany outpaced the United States in construction, automobile production and employment.
According to the research of Robert N. Proctor for his book "The Nazi War on cancer"[14][15], Nazi Germany had arguably the most powerful anti-tobacco movement in the world. Anti-tobacco research received a strong backing from the government, and German scientists proved that cigarette smoke could cause cancer. German pioneering research on experimental epidemiology lead to the 1939 paper by Franz H. Müller, and the 1943 paper by Eberhard Schairer and Erich Schöniger which convincingly demonstrated that tobacco smoking was a main culprit in lung cancer. The government urged German doctors to counsel patients against tobacco use.
German research on the dangers of tobacco was silenced after the war, and the dangers of tobacco had to be rediscovered by American and English scientists in the early 1950s, with a medical consensus arising in the early 1960s.
German scientists also proved that asbestos was a health hazard, and in 1943 — as the first nation in the world to offer such a benefit — Germany recognized the diseases caused by asbestos, e.g., lung cancer, as occupational illnesses eligible for compensation. The German asbestos-cancer research was later used by American lawyers doing battle against the Johns-Manville Corporation.
As part of the general public-health campaign in Nazi Germany, water supplies were cleaned up, lead and mercury were removed from consumer products, and women were urged to undergo regular screenings for breast cancer.[16][17]
The Nazis opposed women's emancipation and opposed the feminist movement, claiming that it was Jewish-led and was bad for both women and men. The Nazi regime advocated a patriarchial society in which German women would recognize the "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home." [18] Hitler claimed that women taking vital jobs away from men during the Great Depression was economically bad for families in that women were only paid 66% of what men earned.[18] At the same time for calling for women to leave work, the regime called for women to be actively supportive of the state regarding women's affairs. In 1933, Hitler appointed Gertrud Scholtz-Klink as the Reich Women's Leader, who instructed women that their primary role in society was to bear children and that women should be subservient to men, once saying "the mission of woman is to minister in the home and in her profession to the needs of life from the first to last moment of man's existence." [18]. Organizations were made for the indoctrination of Nazi values to German women. Such organizations included the Jungmädel (Young Girls) section of the Hitler Youth for girls from the age 10 to 14, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (German Girl's League) for young women from 14 to 18.
On the issue of sexual affairs regarding women, the Nazis differed greatly from the restrictive stances on women's role in society. The Nazi regime promoted a liberal code of conduct as regards sexual matters, and were sympathetic to women bearing children out of wedlock.[7] The collapse of 19th century morals in Germany accelerated during the Third Reich, partly due to the Nazis, and partly due to the effects of the war.[7] Promiscuity increased greatly as the war progressed, with unmarried soldiers often dating several women simultaneously.[7] Married women were often involved in multiple affairs simultaneously, with soldiers, civilians or slave laborers.[7] "Some farm wives in Württemberg had already begun using sex as a commodity, employing carnal favours as a means of getting a full day's work from foreign labourers." [7]
After the war, with women now making up 56% of the population (1946) and the remaining men initially broken and bewildered, the women's emancipation movement returned after being repressed under Nazism. In the immediate post-war time period, women held political posts such as mayors and generally took on a more prominent role. [7]
One of the first acts of the new regime was to enact an animal protection law. The implemented law on animal protection was stringent and restricted research. [19][20]
When the Nazis came to power the most pressing issue was an unemployment rate of close to 30%[21]. The economic policies of the Third Reich were in the beginning the brainchildren of Hjalmar H.G. Schacht, who assumed office as president of the central bank under Hitler in 1933, and became finance minister in the following year[21]. Schacht was one of the few finance ministers to take advantage of the freedom provided by the end of the gold standard to keep interest rates low and government budget deficits high: massive public works funded by large budget deficits[21]. The consequence was an extremely rapid decline in unemployment--the most rapid decline in unemployment in any country during the Great Depression[21]. Eventually this Keynes-like policy was to be supplemented by the boost to demand provided by rearmament and swelling military spending.
Hjalmar H.G. Schacht was replaced in September 1936 by Hitler's lieutenant Hermann Goering, with a mandate to make Germany self-sufficient to fight a war within four years[21].Under Goering imports were slashed. Wages and prices were controlled--under penalty of being sent to the concentration camp. Dividends were restricted to six percent on book capital. And strategic goals to be reached at all costs (much like Soviet planning) were declared: the construction of synthetic rubber plants, more steel plants, automatic textile factories.[21]
While the strict state intervention into the economy, and the massive rearmament policy, led to full employment during the 1930s, real wages in Germany dropped by roughly 25% between 1933 and 1938. [22] Trade unions were abolished, as well as collective bargaining and the right to strike. [22] The right to quit also disappeared: Labour books were introduced in 1935, and required the consent of the previous employer in order to be hired for another job. [22]
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. The Four-Year Plan was discussed in the controversial Hossbach Memorandum, which provides the "minutes" from one of Hitler's briefings.
Nevertheless, the war came and although the Four-Year Plan technically expired in 1940, Hermann Göring had built up a power base in the "Office of the Four-Year Plan" that effectively controlled all German economic and production matters by this point in time. In 1942, the growing burdens of the war and the death of Todt saw the economy move to a full war economy under Albert Speer.
Upon coming to power in 1933, the Nazi regime was faced with the implications of the Treaty of Versailles which restricted Germany's presence on the international stage. The treaty forbade Germany to build war machines deemed to be aggressive, such as aircraft, submarines, and large battleships. Further Germany was not allowed to have any political union with German-populated Austria or Danzig.
During the 1930s, Hitler and the Nazi regime performed a number of political maneuvers to increase German power. The regime demanded that the international community allow Germany to increase the size of its navy so that it could adequately defend itself, this was agreed to in 1935, with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. The regime also pursued defying the Treaty of Versailles further by endorsing a plebicite in German-populated Saar which resulted in it returning to Germany in 1935, after being held by France as a protectorate since 1919. In 1936, with no British or French forces remaining in the Rhineland (which was to be permanently demilitarized of German forces), Germany once again defied Versailles by sending military forces into the Rhineland in 1936.
From 1936 onward, Germany steadily proceeded on an interventionist foreign policy approach, beginning by supporting the fascist nationalist forces of Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War against the republican forces which were supported by the Soviet Union. German aircraft took part in attacks on Spanish republican forces as well as the infamous bombing of civilians in the Basque town of Guernica in 1937. In 1936, Germany improved relations with Italy and created the Rome-Berlin Axis. Italy's earlier protests of the Nazi regime's intentions to annex Austria quelled as the Nazis and the Italian Fascists exchanged essential concessions to secure good relations, by Germany abandoning support of Germans in South Tyrol and by Italy adopting anti-Semitism, which was unpopular in Italy. With this achieved, Germany annexed Austria in 1938 with no opposition from Italy.
Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in September 1938 came about during talks with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in which Hitler backed by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini demanded that the German territories be ceded. Chamberlain and Hitler came to an agreement when Hitler signed a piece of paper which said that with the annexation of the Sudetenland, Germany would proceed with no further territorial aims. Chamberlain took this to be a success in that it avoided a potential war with Germany, but Hitler quickly broke the agreement in 1939, by invading and occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia.
After taking Czechoslovakia, Hitler turned his attention to Poland where he demanded that Poland allow Germany to annex the Free City of Danzig and that the Polish Corridor be given to Germany in which Poland refused. After this, Germany and the Soviet Union began talks over planning an invasion of Poland which the Soviet Union had territorial claims on. In August 1939, the Molotov Pact was signed in which Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Poland along a mutually agreed set boundary, the invasion was put into effect on September 1, 1939, when Germany alleged that Polish forces had attacked Germany. This resulted in the outbreak of World War II as Allied forces refused to accept Germany's claims on Poland.
From 1939 to 1940, the so-called "Phony War" occurred, as German forces made no further advances but instead, both the Axis and Allies engaged in a propaganda campaign. However in early 1940, Germany began to concern that the British intended to stop trade between Sweden and Germany by bringing Norway into an alliance against Germany, with Norway in Allied hands, the Allies would be dangerously close to German territory. In response, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway ending the Phony War. After sweeping through the Low Countries and occupying northern France, Germany allowed French nationalist and war hero Philippe Petain to form a fascist regime in southern France known as the "French State" but more commonly referred to as Vichy France named after its capital in Vichy.
In 1941, Germany's invasion of Yugoslavia resulted in that state's splintering. The Nazis supported the Croatian extreme nationalist Ustashe party to form a government in modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Ustashe were allowed to persecute Serbs, while Germany contributed to that goal in German-occupied Serbia.
From 1941 to the end of the war, Germany engaged in war with the Soviet Union in its attempt to create the Nazi colonial goal of Lebensraum "living space" for German citizens. The German occupation authorities set up occupation and colonial authorities called Reichskommissariats such as Reichskommissariat Ostland and Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The Slavic populations were to be destroyed along with Jews there to make way for German colonists.
As the war faltered, Germany was forced to occupy Italy when Mussolini was thrown out as Prime Minister by Italy's king in 1943. German forces rescued Mussolini and instructed him to establish a fascist regime in Italy called the Italian Social Republic. This was the last major foreign policy delivered. The remainder of the war saw the decline of German power and desperate attempts by Nazi officials such as Heinrich Himmler to negotiate a peace with the western Allies against the wishes of Hitler.
Traditional and masculine values in German culture were sought to be restored by the regime. All attempts at "artistic experimentation" and "sexual freedom" were repressed.[6][23]
Despite the official attempt to forge a pure Germanic culture, one major area of the arts, architecture, under Hitler's personal guidance, was neoclassical, a style based on architecture of ancient Rome.[24] This style stood out in stark contrast and opposition to newer, more liberal, and more pop