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The official name of the state was the "German Realm" ("Deutsches Reich") from 1933 to 1943, and the "Greater German Realm" ("Großdeutsches Reich") from 1943 to 1945. The name Deutsches Reich has often been translated into English as "German Empire" or the partially translated "German Reich", but it literally means "German Realm".[8][9][10][11]
The most popular name to refer to this state in English is "Nazi Germany" (German: Nazideutschland), mostly used to differentiate it from other historical German states such as Imperial Germany and Weimar Germany (although there is direct legal continuity between the Weimar and Nazi periods, see below). "Third Reich" (German: Drittes Reich) is another common but informal term, suggesting a historical succession from the medieval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) and the modern German Empire (1871–1918). This term, although in common usage among many Germans at the time, eventually fell from favor with the Nazi authorities, who banned its continued use by the press in the summer of 1939.[12]
Historiographically, the period is generally referred to as Zeit des Nationalsozialismus or the abreviated NS-Zeit ("National Socialist period") in Germany.
Tags:Reich,German,Nazi,Germany,German Reich,English,Imperial Germany,Weimar Germany,Holy Roman Empire,German Empire, | |
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Main article: History of Germany
Nazi Germany arose in the wake of the national shame, embarrassment, anger and resentment resulting from the Treaty of Versailles (1919),[13] that dictated, to the vanquished Germans, responsibility for:
Germany's acceptance of and admission to sole responsibility for causing World War I[14]
The permanent loss of various territories and the demilitarization of other German territory[15]
The payment by Germany of heavy reparations, in money and in kind, such payments being justified in the Allied view by the War Guilt clause[16]
Unilateral German disarmament and severe military restrictions[17]
Other conditions fostering the rise of the Third Reich include nationalism and Pan-Germanism, civil unrest attributed to Marxist groups, hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, the global Great Depression of the 1930s, the reaction against the counter-traditionalism and liberalism of the Weimar Republic and the rise of communism in Germany, i.e. the growth of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Many voters, seeking an outlet for their frustrations and an expression for their repudiation of parliamentary democracy which appeared incapable of keeping a government in power for more than a few months, began supporting far right-wing and far left-wing political parties, opting for political extremists such as the Nazi Party.
Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, January 1933
The Nazis promised strong, authoritarian government in lieu of effete parliamentary republicanism, civic peace, radical economic policy (including full employment), restored national pride (principally by repudiating the Versailles Treaty), and racial cleansing, partly implemented via the active suppression of Jews and Marxists, all in the name of national unity and solidarity rather than the partisan divisions of democracy, and the social class divisiveness of Marxism. The Nazis promised national and cultural renewal based upon Völkisch movement traditionalism and proposed rearmament, repudiation of reparations, and reclamation of territory lost to the Treaty of Versailles.
The Nazi Party claimed that through the Treaty, the Weimar Republic’s liberal democracy, the traitorous “November criminals” had surrendered Germany's national pride by the inspiration and conniving of the Jews, whose goal was national subversion and the poisoning of German blood.[18] To establish that interpretation of recent German history, Nazi propaganda effectively used the Dolchstoßlegende (“Stab-in-the-back legend”) explaining the German military failure.
From 1925 to the 1930s, the German government evolved from a democracy to a de facto conservative–nationalist authoritarian state under war hero-President Paul von Hindenburg, who disliked the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic and wanted to make Germany into an authoritarian state.[19] The natural ally for establishing authoritarianism was the German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP), "the Nationalists", but after 1929, with the German economy floundering, more radical and younger nationalists were attracted to the revolutionary nature of the National Socialist Party, to challenge the rising popular support for communism. Moreover, the middle-class political parties lost support as the voters aggregated to the left- and right- wings of the German political spectrum, thus making a majority government in a parliamentary system even more difficult.
In the federal election of 1928, when the economy had improved after the hyperinflation of the 1922–23 period, the Nazis won only 12 seats. Two years later, in the federal election of 1930, months after the US stock market crash, the Nazi Party won 107 seats, progressing from ninth-rated splinter group to second-largest parliamentary party in the Reichstag. After the federal election of 1932, the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag, holding 230 seats.[20] President Hindenburg was reluctant to confer substantial executive power to Hitler, but former chancellor Franz von Papen and Hitler concorded an NSDAP–DNVP party alliance that would allow Hitler’s chancellorship, subject to traditional-conservative control, to develop an authoritarian state. In the event, Hitler consistently demanded to be appointed chancellor in exchange for Hindenburg’s receiving any Nazi Party support of the cabinets appointed under his authority.
On 30 January 1933, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany after General Kurt von Schleicher’s failure to form a viable government (see Machtergreifung). Hitler pressured Hindenburg through his son Oskar von Hindenburg and via intrigue by von Papen, former leader of the Catholic Centre Party.[citation needed] By becoming the Vice Chancellor and keeping the Nazis a cabinet minority, von Papen expected to be able to control Hitler. Although the Nazis had won the greatest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, they had no majority of their own, not even with the NSDAP–DNVP alliance that started governing in 1933 by Presidential Decree per Article 48 of the 1919 Weimar Constitution.[21]
The National Socialist treatment of the Jews in the early months of 1933 marked the first step in a longer-term process of removing them from German society.[22] This plan was at the core of Adolf Hitler's "cultural revolution".[22]
Tags:President,Adolf Hitler,Reichstag,Machtergreifung,Propaganda,People,Nazi Party,Chancellor Of Germany,Versailles Treaty,History Of Germany,Treaty Of Versailles,Pan-germanism,Marxist,Hyperinflation In The Weimar Republic,Great Depression,Weimar Republic, | |
| Consolidation of power | |
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Within a few months, the new government installed a single party dictatorship in Germany with legal measures establishing a coordinated central government, (see Gleichschaltung). On the night of 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set afire (the Dutch council communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found inside; he was arrested, charged with arson, tried, and then decapitated.). The Nazis claimed that the arson was a signal for a communist uprising and thousands of communist party members were arrested, the party offices raided and all KPD publications banned. The Nazis imprisoned many in the Dachau concentration camp. The Reichstag Fire Decree (27 February 1933), rescinded most German civil liberties including habeas corpus, to so suppress their opponents. While Van der Lubbe had had contacts with communists in Holland, there was no evidence that the KPD was in any way implicated in planning or execution of the fire. The 'Fire Decree' was the second enactment that allowed the Nazi administration to restrict civil liberties. The first was a rule that forbade Germans from 'insulting the flag' and this was used consistently to repress any kind of opposition.[23]
In March 1933, with the Enabling Act, was passed by 444–94 (the remaining Social Democrats), the Reichstag changed the Weimar Constitution to allow Hitler's government to pass laws without parliamentary debate for a four-year period, even such deviating from other articles in the constitution (the Act, forming the legal basis for the regime, was subsequently renewed by Hitler's government in 1937 and 1941). Forthwith, throughout 1934, the Nazi Party ruthlessly eliminated all political opposition; the Enabling Act already had banned the Communists (KPD), the Social Democrats (SPD) were dissolved in J Tags:Flag,Gleichschaltung, | |
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