Coordinates	40°37′29″N73°57′8″N
Width	320px
Native name	Deutsches Reich1933–1943Großdeutsches Reich1943-1945
Conventional long name	German Reich1933–1943Greater German Reich1943-1945
Common name	Germany
Continent	Europe
Country	Germany
Era	Interwar period/WWII
Event start	Machtergreifung
Year start	1933
Date start	30 January
Event1	Gleichschaltung
Date event1	27 February 1933
Event2	Anschluss
Date event2	12 March 1938
Event3	World War II
Date event3	1 September 1939
Event4	Death of Adolf Hitler
Date event4	30 April 1945
Event end	German Instrument of Surrender
Year end	1945
Date end	7/8 May
House1	Reichsrat 4
Type house1	State council
P1	Weimar Republic
Flag p1	Flag_of_Germany_(3-2_aspect_ratio).svg
P2	Saar (League of Nations)
Flag p2	Flag of Saar 1920-1935.svg
P3	Federal State of Austria
Flag p3	Flag of Austria.svg
P4	Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938)Czechoslovak Republic
Flag p4	Flag of Czechoslovakia.svg
P5	Klaipėda Region
Flag p5	Flag of Lithuania 1918-1940.svg
P6	Free City of Danzig
Flag p6	Gdansk flag.svg
P7	Second Polish Republic
Flag p7	Flag of Poland.svg
P8	Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)Kingdom of Italy
Flag p8	Flag of Italy (1861-1946).svg
P9	Eupen-Malmedy
Flag p9	Flag of Belgium.svg
P10	Luxembourg
Flag p10	Flag of Luxembourg.svg
P11	Alsace-Lorraine
Flag p11	Flag of France.svg
P12	Drava Banovina
Flag p12	Flag of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.svg
S1	Flensburg Government
Flag s1	Flag_of_Germany_1933.svg
S2	Allied-occupied Germany
Flag s2	Flag of Germany (1946-1949).svg
S3	Allied-occupied Austria
Flag s3	Flag of Austria.svg
S4	History of Czechoslovakia (1945–1948)Third Republic of Czechoslovakia
Flag s4	Flag of Czechoslovakia.svg
S5	People's Republic of PolandRepublic of Poland
Flag s5	Flag_of_Poland.svg
S6	Alsace-Lorraine
Flag s6	Flag_of_France.svg
S7	Eupen-Malmedy
Flag s7	Flag_of_Belgium.svg
S8	Luxembourg
Flag s8	Flag_of_Luxembourg.svg
S9	Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)Kingdom of Italy
Flag s9	Flag of Italy (1861-1946).svg
S10	Kaliningrad Oblast
Flag s10	Flag of the Soviet Union 1923.svg
S11	Saar protectorate
Flag s11	Flag of Saar (1947–1956).svg
S12	Socialist Federal Republic of YugoslaviaDemocratic Federal Yugoslavia
Flag s12	Flag of SFR Yugoslavia.svg
S13	Dutch_annexation_of_German_territory_after_World_War_II#ImplementationElten and Selfkant
Flag s13	Flag of the Netherlands.svg
Flag	List of German flags
Image coat	Reichsadler.svg
Symbol type	National Insignia
Symbol type article	Coat of arms of Germany
Image map caption	Europe at the height of Nazi German domination, 1941-1942. }}

}} }} }} }} |national_motto =
"One People, one Reich, one Führer" |national_anthem = (official)First stanza offollowed by |capital = Berlin |largest_city = capital |common_languages = German |government_type = Totalitarian dictatorship, Single-party state |title_leader = President |leader1 = Paul von Hindenburg |year_leader1 = 1933–1934 |leader2 = Adolf Hitler ² |year_leader2 = 1934–1945 |leader3 = Karl Dönitz |year_leader3 = 1945 |title_deputy = Chancellor |deputy1= Adolf Hitler |year_deputy1 = 1933–1945 |deputy2 = Joseph Goebbels |year_deputy2 = 1945 |deputy3 = Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk ³ |year_deputy3 = 1945 |stat_area1 = 696265 |stat_pop1 = 90030775 |stat_year1 = 1941 (Großdeutschland) |ref_area1 = |currency = Reichsmark (ℛℳ) |today = |footnotes = 1: Including ''de facto'' annexed/incorporated territories. 2: Office formally vacant. Adolf Hitler styled himself Führer und Reichskanzler from August 1934. 3: Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk used the title of Leading Minister. 4: Through the Enabling Act of 1933, the German government was vested with legislative powers, although the Reichstag formally continued to exist as a law-making body. }}

Nazi Germany (), also known as the Third Reich (German: ''Drittes Reich''), but officially called German Reich (German: ''Deutsches Reich'') from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich (German: ''Großdeutsches Reich'') from June 26 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Colloquially the state was also called Greater Germany (German: ''Großdeutschland'') after 1938. Historiographically the period is generally referred to as ''die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus'' or ''NS-Zeit'' ("the National Socialist era") in Germany.

On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler legally became Chancellor of Germany, appointed by President Paul von Hindenburg. Although he initially headed a coalition government, he quickly made Hindenburg a figurehead and eliminated his non-Nazi partners. The Nazi regime restored economic prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending while suppressing labor unions and strikes. The return of prosperity gave the regime enormous popularity and made Hitler's rule mostly unchallenged, although resistance grew after the onset of military aggression, culminating in the failed 20 July plot in 1944. The Gestapo (secret state police) under Heinrich Himmler destroyed the liberal, Socialist and Communist opposition and persecuted the Jews, attempting to force them into exile while taking their property. The Party took control of the courts, local government, and all civic organizations except the Protestant and Catholic churches. All expressions of public opinion were controlled by Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who made effective use of film, mass rallies, and Hitler's skillful oratory.

The Nazi state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("Leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Nazi propaganda centered on Hitler and was quite effective in creating what historians call the "Hitler Myth" – that Hitler was all-wise and that any mistakes or failures by others would be corrected when brought to his attention. In reality, Hitler had a narrow range of interests and decision-making was diffused among overlapping, feuding power centers; on some issues he was passive, simply assenting to pressures from whoever had his ear. All top officials still reported to Hitler and followed his basic policies, but they had considerable autonomy on a daily basis.

Hitler's foreign policy during the 1930s used a diplomatic strategy of making seemingly reasonable demands, threatening war if they were not met. When opponents tried to appease him, he accepted the gains that were offered, then moved on to his next goal. That aggressive strategy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations (1933), rejected the Versailles Treaty and began to re-arm (1935), won back the Saar (1935), remilitarized the Rhineland (1936), formed an alliance ("axis") with Benito Mussolini's Italy (1936), sent massive military aid to Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), annexed Austria in the Anschluss (1938), took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement of 1938, formed a peace pact with the Soviet Union (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) in August 1939, and finally invaded Poland in September 1939. Britain and France declared war, resulting in the start of World War II - somewhat sooner than the Nazis had prepared for or expected.

During the war, Germany conquered or controlled most of Europe and North Africa, intending to establish a "New Order" in Europe and elsewhere of complete Nazi German hegemony. The Nazis also persecuted and killed millions of Jews, Romani people and others in the Holocaust. Despite its Axis alliance with other nations, mainly Italy and Japan, by 8 May 1945 Germany had been defeated by the Allied Powers, and was occupied by the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France. Some 40 million Europeans may have died as a consequence of the war.

Hitler, the Nazis and their Holocaust became the symbol of evil in the modern world. Newman and Erber (2002) write, "The Nazis have become one of the most widely recognized images of modern evil. Throughout most of the world today, the concept of evil can readily be evoked by displaying almost any cue reminiscent of Nazism...."

Name and boundaries

The most popular name to refer to this state in English is Nazi Germany (), 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 to 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. Germany had two official names during the Nazi period; German Reich (German: ''Deutsches Reich''), which was in use from the Unification of Germany in 1871 onward until 1943, when the regime legally renamed it Greater German Reich (German: ''Großdeutsches Reich'').

The German national borders in 1933 were those mapped out by the victors in World War I, at the Treaty of Versailles (1919). To the north, Germany was bounded by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east, it was divided into two and bordered Lithuania, the Free City of Danzig, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; to the south, it bordered Austria and Switzerland, and to the west, it touched France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Saarland. These borders changed after Germany regained control of the Saarland, transformed itself into Greater Germany by annexing Austria, and also gained control of the Sudetenland, the remainder of Bohemia and Moravia, and the Memel Territory before the war. Germany expanded further by seizing even more land during World War II, which began in September 1939.

History

Nazi Germany arose in the wake of the national shame, embarrassment, anger and resentment resulting from the Treaty of Versailles (1919), that dictated, to the vanquished Germans, responsibility for: Germany's acceptance of and admission to sole responsibility for causing World War I The permanent loss of various territories and the demilitarization of other German territory 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 Unilateral German disarmament and severe military restrictions

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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. This plan was at the core of Adolf Hitler's "cultural revolution".

Consolidation of power

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.

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 June, and in the June–July period, the Nationalists (DNVP), the People's Party (DVP) and the German State Party (DStP) were likewise obliged to disband, their members urged to join the Nazi Party or else leave politics. Moreover, at the urging of Franz von Papen, the remaining Catholic Centre Party disbanded on 5 July 1933 after obtaining Nazi guarantees for Catholic religious education and youth groups. On 14 July 1933, Germany became a ''de facto'' single-party state, as the founding of new parties was banned. Further elections in late 1933, 1936 and 1938 were entirely Nazi-controlled and only saw the Nazis and a minor number of independent "guests" (such as Hugenberg) elected for the rubber-stamp legislature.

The Nazi regime abolished the symbols of the Weimar Republic, including the black-red-gold tricolor flag, and adopted new and old imperial symbolism representing the dual nature of Germany’s third empire. The previous, imperial black-white-red tricolor was restored as one of Germany's two official national flags; the second was the swastika flag of the Nazi party which became the sole national German flag in 1935. The national anthem remained ''Deutschland über Alles'' (aka the ''Deutschlandlied'', "Song of Germany"), but only the first stanza was sung, immediately followed by the Nazi anthem ''Horst-Wessel-Lied'' ("Horst Wessel Song") accompanied by the Nazi salute.

On 30 January 1934, Chancellor Hitler formally centralized government power to himself with the ''Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reichs'' (Act to Rebuild the Reich) by disbanding ''Länder'' (federal state) parliaments and transferring states’ rights and administration to the Berlin central government. The centralization began soon after the March 1933 Enabling Act promulgation, when state governments were replaced with ''Reichsstatthalter'' (Reich governors). Local government also was deposed; Reich governors appointed mayors of cities and towns with populaces of fewer than 100,000; the Interior Minister appointed the mayors of cities with populaces greater than 100,000; and, in the cases of Berlin and Hamburg (and Vienna after the ''Anschluss Österreichs'' in 1938), Hitler had personal discretion to appoint their mayors.

By spring of 1934, only the ''Reichswehr'' remained independent of government control; traditionally, it was separate from the national government, a discrete political entity. The leaders of the Nazi paramilitary ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA, "Storm Detachment") which had well over a million members, had expected to assume command of the German army and absorb the ''Reichswehr'' (German Army) into its ranks under Ernst Röhm’s leadership. The ''Reichswehr'' opposed Röhm's ambition; moreover, Röhm favoured a "socialist revolution" to complement the "nationalist revolution" and which would in Röhm's view complete the Nazi revolution. Industrialists, who had provided funds for the Nazi victory, were unhappy with Röhm's socialistic goals and weary of SA political violence. Matters came to a head in June 1934 when President Hindenburg, who had the complete loyalty of the Army, informed Hitler that if he didn't move to curb the SA then Hindenburg would dissolve the Government and declare martial law.

Possessing absolute power only in theory without the support of the ''Reichswehr'', and wanting to preserve good relations with both the army and certain politicians and industrialists, Hitler ordered the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) and the ''Gestapo'' to assassinate his political enemies both in and outside the Nazi Party with the "Night of the Long Knives". The purges of Ernst Röhm, his SA cohort, the Strasserist, left-wing Nazis, and other political enemies lasted from 30 June to 2 July 1934. While some Germans were shocked by the killing, many others saw Hitler as the one who restored "order" to the country.

Upon the death of Hindenburg, on 2 August 1934, the Nazi-controlled ''Reichstag'' consolidated the offices of ''Reichspräsident'' (Reich President) and ''Reichskanzler'' (Reich Chancellor), and reinstalled Adolf Hitler as ''Führer und Reichskanzler'' (Leader and Reich Chancellor). After the "Night of the Long Knives" and Hindenburg’s death, the ''Reichswehr'' was prepared to accept Hitler's leadership. As Hitler had announced plans to rearm and increase the size of the Reichswehr, the agreement of the generals was unsurprising. The assassination of Röhm and the SA leaders consolidated the ''Reichswehr'' as the sole armed force of the ''Reich'', and the ''Führer''’s promises of military expansion guaranteed him military loyalty. Hindenburg’s death facilitated changing the German soldiers’ oath of allegiance from the ''Reich'' of the German Constitution to personal fealty to Adolf Hitler.

In the event, the Nazis ended the official NSDAP–DNVP government alliance and began introducing Nazism and Nazi symbolism to public and private German life; textbooks were revised, or rewritten to promote the Pan-German racist doctrine of ''Großdeutschland'' (Greater Germany) to be established by the Nazi ''Herrenvolk''; teachers who opposed curricular Nazification were dismissed. Furthermore, to coerce popular obedience to the state, the Nazis established the ''Gestapo'' (secret state police) as independent of civil authority. The ''Gestapo'' controlled the German populace with some 100,000 spies and informers, thereby were aware of anti-Nazi criticism and dissent.

The majority of the German people were relieved that the conflicts and street fighting had been ended and were deluged in a barrage of propaganda orchestrated by Josef Goebbels and which promised peace and plenty for all in a united, marxist-free country that would redress the wrongs done to Germany in the Versailles Treaty. The first concentration camp for political prisoners was opened at Dachau near Munich in 1933 and "between 1933 and 1945, more than 3 million Germans had been in concentration camps, or prison, for political reasons". "Tens of thousands of Germans were killed for one or another form of resistance. Between 1933 and 1945, Sondergerichte (Nazi "special courts") sentenced some 12,000 Germans to death, courts-martial ordered the execution of 25,000 German soldiers on charges of cowardice, while civil courts sentenced 40,000 Germans. Many of these Germans were part of the government, civil, or military service, a circumstance which enabled them to engage in subversion and conspiracy, while involved, marginally or significantly, in the government’s policies."

Foreign policy

Hitler began to systematically undermine and eradicate the provisions of the Versailles Treaty that were still valid in 1933. The disarmament clauses had been long since abandoned and Hitler achieved a minor victory when he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations on the grounds that disarmament was applied only to Germany. In January 1935 the Saarland voted to become part of Germany. The region had been placed under League of Nations supervision for 15 years and the decision was greeted as a great victory for the new Germany. In March 1935 Hitler announced that the Reichswehr would be increased to 550,000 men and that there would be a German Air Force. When Britain agreed that the Germans would be allowed to build a naval fleet, the Treaty had become little more than a piece of paper. The signees were ready in the name of peace, to negotiate away on a bilateral basis the terms that Germany had agreed to in 1919.

Hitler's next test of the resolve of the French and British governments' intention to uphold the Versailles Treaty came in March 1936. Mussolini, Hitler's forerunner as a dictator and at the time an object of admiration, invaded Ethiopia, leading to mild protests by the British and French governments. In the wake of this crisis, Hitler ordered the Reichswehr to march into the demilitarised zone along the Rhine, with the proviso that they should withdraw if the French mobilised in response. The French government was in its usual state of internal bickering and Britain had no interest in, and no way of stopping the Reichswehr. The result was a huge victory for Hitler. He had tested the resolve of his opponents and they had been found wanting. Not that there was anything they could have done, for French military strategy was dictated by the existence of the Maginot Line, behind which their army was to remain, come what may, and British politicians regarded the Rhineland as Germany's own backyard. Hitler then held an election in which he received an overwhelming vote of support and his reputation as a vigorous and determined leader was growing fast. The following year was relatively quiet on the foreign affairs front. The Spanish Civil War occupied the headlines in Europe, which was a useful trial ground for the growing Luftwaffe (German Air Force).

The Fate of Minorities in Nazi Germany From the very earliest speeches and writings of Hitler it was clear that the Jewish community in Germany were an object of hatred, together with gypsies, the mentally disdavantaged or the handicapped. The Nazi ideology laid down strict rules about who was or was not a 'pure German' and actions were set into motion to 'purify' the 'German race' soon after the Nazi takeover. The first wave of anti-semitism began in 1933, when the S.A. attacked Jewish-owned stores and called for a boycott of all Jewish commercial activities. Many Jewish families prepared to leave, but many others hoped that as they were German citizens, their livelihoods and property would be safe.

In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were enacted depriving Jews of all citizens' rights, using public transportation, banned from public parks and restaurants, theatres and cinemas, they were forced to bear a yellow star to show that they were Jewish.

In November 1938, a young Jewish male in Paris requested an interview with the German ambassador in Paris, was shown in to a meeting with a legation secretary, whom he shot in protest against the treatment meted out to his family in Germany. (By coincidence, both men were from Frankfurt and knew each other slightly. The attempt was used by the Nazi Party to stir up hatred against the Jewish communities in Germany and the SA was given the task of attacking synagogues and Jerwish property throughout Germany. On the night of 9-10 November at least 91 German Jews were killed and Jewish property destroyed. This was entitled 'Kristallnacht' by the Nazis - the Night of Broken Glass. This phase of exclusion made it very clear that the Jews in Germany were to be targetted in the future. To make this crystal clear, the Jewish communities were fined 1000 million marks and told that they would not receive compensation for their losses. The road to the Holocaust had begun.

Austria and Czechoslovakia

In November 1937, Hitler drew the military leadership together for a conference at which he elucidated the need for Germany to expand eastwards for "Lebensraum". At first he would have to deal with Austria and Czechoslovakia, but he was confident that Britain and France would do nothing when the German armies moved in.

In February 1938, Hitler called the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg to a meeting at the Berghof at which he harangued Schussnigg on the need for Germans to secure their frontiers. To forestall Hitler and to preserve Austria's independence, Schuschnigg scheduled a plebiscite on the issue for 13 March but Hitler demanded that it be canceled. On 11 March, Hitler sent an ultimatum to Schuschnigg, demanding that he hand over all power to the Austrian Nazis or face an invasion. On 12 March the Wehrmacht entered Austria, to be greeted with enthusiasm by the Austrians.

Hitler told the leader of the Sudetenland Nazi Party, Heinlein, to make a number of unacceptable demands to the Czech government. Mussolini insisted that Hitler meet the British and French prime ministers to discuss the Czech crisis. Hitler demanded the immediate annexation of the German areas (called "Sudetenland"). Two more meetings followed, in the second of which, the infamous Munich Agreement was signed, forcing the Czech government to accept the annexation, but having no part in the negotiations.

The Munich Agreement has had a highly controversial reception among historians and political scientists. One interpretation sees it as a cowardly "Appeasement"-- an unwise and unnecessarily capitulation to vehement threats. Other scholars argue that risking war at that stage was unwise because France and Britain had neither the weapons nor a coherent strategy to defeat Germany in 1938. Chamberlain was greeted as a hero when he landed in London bringing, he said, "peace in our time." The agreement lasted six months before Hitler seized the rest in March 1939. Hitler's next move was to call for adjustments to the borders of Poland. In the House of Commons, Chamberlian warned that any further attempts by Hitler to change the status quo would lead to war. In effect, this declaration guaranteed help to Poland and made the outbreak of war inevitable. The German Wehrmacht began to prepare for an invasion of Poland, while the German foreign office made attempts to keep Britain out of the conflict. On 23 May, 1939 Hitler ordered his generals to prepare for the attack on Poland This has been described as a typical Hitler 'bluff' by Taylor buy the dynamics of mobilisation probably belie this position, for it takes several months to prepare an army for such an attack and the war began with the invasion of Poland on 1 September, just as Hitler had ordered. Hitler was still uncertain what Stalin would do when Poland was attacked. The Russian regime might be the 'anti-christ' (Kershaw) to the Nazis but it was a crucial element in the invasion of Poland. Britain and France had sent envoy to Moscow with the aim of tying Stalin into a pact. Molotov, Stalin's foreign minister, visted Berlin in July 1939 and elegant hints were dropped about the need for an agreement between Berlin and Moscow. But Stalin was in no hurry. On 20 August, Hitler telegraphed Stalin with an offer of an agreement to be signed on 22 or 23 August. Ribbentrop, the german foreign minister, flew to Moscow and an agreement was signed between Russia and Germany that made the second world war inevitable. Hitler was delighted. He knew, he told his entourage, that Britain and France would do nothing. Their leaders were worms, he said, he had seen them at Munich. The compromise over Sudentenland still rankled. The agreement signed in Moscow provided for peace for a period of ten years between the two countries. There was a secret protocol attached in which Poland was divided up 'in the event of a conflict' between Russia and Germany. Russia got the Baltic countries and Hitler could attack Poland.

World War II

Conquest of Europe

The "Danzig crisis" peaked in early 1939, around the time that reports of controversy in the Free City of Danzig increased, the United Kingdom "guaranteed" to defend Poland's territorial integrity and the Poles rejected a series of offers by Nazi Germany regarding both the Free City of Danzig and the Polish Corridor. Then, the Germans broke off diplomatic relations. Hitler had learned that the Soviet Union was willing to sign a non-aggression pact with Germany and would support an attack on Poland. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and two days later, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. World War II was underway, but Poland fell quickly, as the Soviets attacked it on 17 September. The United Kingdom proceeded to bomb Wilhelmshaven, Cuxhaven, Heligoland and other areas. Still, aside from battles at sea, no other activity occurred. Thus, the war became known as "the Phoney War".

The year 1940 began with little more than the UK dropping propaganda leaflets over Prague and Vienna but a German attack on the British High Seas fleet was followed by the British bombing the port city of Sylt. After the Altmark Incident off the coast of Norway and the discovery of the United Kingdom's plans to encircle Germany, Hitler sent troops into Denmark and Norway. This safeguarded iron ore supplies from Sweden through coastal waters. Shortly thereafter, the British and French landed in Mid- and North Norway, but the Germans de facto defeated these forces in the ensuing Norwegian Campaign. In May 1940, the Phoney War ended. Against the will of his advisors, Hitler ordered an attack on France through the Low Countries. The Battle of France ended with an overwhelming German victory. However, with the British refusing Hitler's offer of peace, the war continued. Germany and Britain continued to fight at sea and in the air. However, on 24 August, two off-course German bombers accidentally bombed London – against Hitler's orders, changing the course of the war. In response to the attack, the British bombed Berlin, which sent Hitler into a rage. The German leader ordered attacks on British cities, and the UK was bombed heavily during The Blitz. This change in targeting priority interfered with the Luftwaffe's objective of achieving the air superiority over Britain necessary for an invasion and allowed British air defenses to rebuild their strength and continue the fight.

Hitler hoped to break British morale and win peace. However, the British refused to back down; eventually, Hitler called off the Battle of Britain strategic bombing campaign in favor of the long-planned invasion of the Soviet Union: Operation Barbarossa. Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. On the eve of the invasion, Hitler's former deputy, Rudolf Hess, attempted to negotiate terms of peace with the United Kingdom in an unofficial private meeting after crash-landing in Scotland. By contrast, Hitler had hoped that rapid success in the Soviet Union would bring Britain to the negotiating table.

Operation Barbarossa was supposed to begin earlier than it did; however, failed Italian ventures in North Africa and the Balkans concerned Hitler. In February 1941, the German ''Afrika Korps'' was sent to Libya to aid the Italians and hold the British Commonwealth forces from British-held Egypt. As the North African Campaign continued, in spite of orders to remain on the defensive, the ''Afrika Korps'' regained lost Italian territory, pushed the British back across the desert and advanced into Egypt. In April, the Germans launched the invasion of Yugoslavia to aid friendly forces and restore order in the midst of what was believed to be a British-supported coup. This was followed by the Battle of Greece, again to bail out the Italians, and the Battle of Crete. Because of the diversions in North Africa and the Balkans, the Germans were not able to launch Barbarossa until late in June. Moreover, men and material were diverted to create the "fortified Europe" that Hitler wanted before Germany focused its attention on the East.

Nevertheless, Barbarossa began with great success. Only Hitler worried that the German Army and its allies were not advancing into the Soviet Union fast enough. By December 1941, the Germans and their allies were at the gates of Moscow; to the north, troops had reached Leningrad and surrounded the city. Meanwhile, Germany and its allies controlled almost all of mainland Europe, with the exception of neutral Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Vatican City and Monaco.

On 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. Not only was this a chance for Germany to strengthen its ties with Japan, but after months of anti-German hysteria in the American media and Lend-Lease aid to Britain, the leaking of Rainbow Five and the foreboding content of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor speech made it clear to Hitler that the US could not be kept neutral. Moreover, Germany's policy of appeasement towards the US, designed to keep the US out of the war, was a burden to Germany's war effort. Germany had refrained from attacking American convoys, even if they were bound for the United Kingdom or the Soviet Union. By contrast, after Germany declared war on the US, the German navy began unrestricted submarine warfare, using U-boats to attack ships without warning.

The goal of Germany's navy, the ''Kriegsmarine'', was to cut off Britain's supply line. Under these circumstances, one of the most famous naval battles in history took place, with the , Germany's largest and most powerful warship, attempting to break out into the Atlantic and raid supply ships heading for Britain. ''Bismarck'' was sunk – but not before sending Britain's largest warship, the battlecruiser , to the depths of the ocean. German U-boats were more successful than surface raiders like ''Bismarck''. However, Germany failed to make submarine production a top priority early on and by the time it did, the British and their allies were developing the technology and strategies to neutralize it. Furthermore, in spite of the submarines' early success in 1941 and 1942, material shortages in Britain failed to fall to their World War I levels. The Allied victory in the Battle of the Atlantic was achieved at a huge cost: between 1939 and 1945, 3,500 Allied ships were sunk (gross tonnage 14.5 million) at a cost of 783 German U-boats.

Persecution and extermination campaigns

The persecution of racial, ethnic, and social minorities and "undesirables" continued in Germany and the occupied countries. From 1941, Jews were required to wear a yellow badge in public; most were kept in walled ghettos, where they remained isolated from the general populace. In January 1942, the Wannsee Conference, headed by Reinhard Heydrich (direct subordinate of ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler), redacted the plans for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (''Endlösung der Judenfrage''). From then until the end of the war some six million Jews and many others, including Slavs, homosexuals and political prisoners, were systematically killed. In addition, more than ten million people were put into forced labour. In 1978, the term "Holocaust" came into general use to describe this genocide in English. It is called the ''Shoah'' in Hebrew. Thousands were shipped daily to concentration- and extermination camps.

Parallel to the Holocaust, the Nazis executed the ''Generalplan Ost'' (General Plan East) for the conquest, ethnic cleansing, and exploitation of the populaces of the captured Soviet and Polish territories; some 13.7 million Soviet civilians (including Jews & 2.0 million deaths in the annexed territories which are also included with Poland's war dead). and 2.5 million non-Jewish Polish citizens died as a result of warfare, genocide, reprisals, forced labor or famine. The Nazis' aggressive war for ''Lebensraum'' (Living space) in eastern Europe was waged “to defend Western Civilization against the Bolshevism of subhumans”. Estimates indicate that, had the Nazis won the war and established the New Order, they would have deported some 51 million Slavs from Central and Eastern Europe to western Siberia. Because of the atrocities suffered under Joseph Stalin, many Ukrainians, Balts, and other oppressed nationalities, fought for the Nazis. The populaces of Nazi-occupied Soviet Russia who racially qualified as of the Aryan race, or had no immediate Jewish ancestors, were not persecuted, and often were recruited to the ''Waffen Schutzstaffel'' (''Waffen-SS'') divisions.

Eventually, the Nazi regime meant to Germanize the racially acceptable ''volk'' (ethnic groups) of occupied eastern Europe, with the rest to be exterminated. Parts of the plan were implemented in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, with the classification of Poles on the Nazi Volksliste, according to their racial characteristics. People classified as Germans who resisted were sent to concentration camps. Those who were not classified as Germans were expelled. Ethnic Germans from the Baltic states were encouraged to leave them, and were settled in Poland in the houses of the expelled Poles. These, and the Poles classified as Germans, were subjected to programs to Germanize them. Children were also abducted from Eastern Europe for Germanization.

Allied victory

In early 1942, the Red Army counter-attacked, and, by winter’s end, the ''Wehrmacht'' were no longer immediately outside Moscow. Yet the Germans and their allies held a strong line, and, in the summer, launched a major attack against the petroleum fields of the Caucasus in Southern Russia. For securing the flanks of this offensive, a line at the Volga had to be held, which led to the Battle of Stalingrad (17 July 1942 – 2 February 1943), wherein Germany and its allies were defeated. After winning a major tank battle at Kursk-Orel in July 1943, the Red Army progressed west, to Germany; henceforth, the ''Wehrmacht'' and its allies remained on the defensive.

In Libya, the ''Afrika Korps'' failed to break through the line at First Battle of El Alamein (1–27 July 1942), having suffered repercussions from the Battle of Stalingrad. Beginning in 1942, Allied bombing of Germany increased, razing, among others, the cities of Hamburg, Cologne and Dresden, killing thousands of civilians, and causing hardship for the survivors. Contemporary estimates of Nazi German military dead is 5.5 million.

In November 1942, the ''Wehrmacht'' and the Italian Army retreated to Tunisia, where they fought the Americans and the British in the Tunisia Campaign (17 November 1942 – 13 May 1943). The Allies invaded Sicily and Italy next, but met fierce resistance, particularly at Anzio (22 January 1944 – 5 June 1944) and Cassino (17 January 1944 – 18 May 1944), and the campaign continued from mid-1943 to nearly the end of the war. In June 1944, American, British and Canadian forces established the western front with the D-Day (6 June 1944) landings in Normandy, France. After the successful Operation Bagration (22 June – 19 August 1944), the Red Army was in Poland; and in East Prussia, West Prussia, and Silesia the German populaces fled ''en masse'', fearing Communist persecution, atrocity, and death. In spring of 1945, the Red Army was at Berlin; US and UK forces had conquered most of west Germany (and would go on to meet up with the Red Army at Torgau on the Elbe on 26 April 1945).

During the Battle of Berlin (16 April 1945 – 2 May 1945), Hitler and key staff members lived in the armoured, underground ''Führerbunker'' while aboveground the Red Army fought remnant forces made up of the German army, Hitler Youth, and ''Waffen-SS'', for control of the ruined capital city of Nazi Germany. In the ''Führerbunker'', Adolf Hitler, became psychologically isolated and detached. At the situation conference of 22 April, Hitler suffered a total nervous collapse when he was informed that the instructions he had issued the previous day for SS-General Felix Steiner's Army Detachment Steiner to move to the rescue of Berlin had not materialised. Hitler openly declared for the first time the war was lost and blamed the generals. Hitler announced he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself. On 23 April, as Berlin became more isolated, Hermann Göring sent Hitler an ultimatum, threatening to assume command of Nazi Germany if he received no reply—which he would interpret as Hitler being incapacitated. Upon receiving the ultimatum, the ''Führer'' ordered Göring's immediate arrest, and despatched an aeroplane delivering the reply to Göring in Bavaria. By 25 April the Red Army encirclement of Berlin was complete and secure radio communications with defending units had been lost; the command staff in the bunker were depending on telephone lines for passing orders and on public radio for news and information. Despite the losses of armies and lands, the ''Führer'' neither relinquished power, nor surrendered. On 28 April, a BBC report stated that ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler had offered surrender to the western Allies. Hitler ordered Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot.

Capitulation of German forces

On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat in Berlin, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in his underground bunker. Two days later, on 2 May 1945, German General Helmuth Weidling unconditionally surrendered Berlin to Soviet General Vasily Chuikov.

Hitler was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as Reich's President and Dr. Joseph Goebbels as Reich Chancellor. No one was to replace Hitler as the ''Führer'', a position Hitler abolished in his will. However, Goebbels committed suicide in the ''Führerbunker'' a day after assuming office. The caretaker government Dönitz established near the Danish border unsuccessfully sought a separate peace with the Western Allies. On 4–8 May 1945 most of the remaining German armed forces throughout Europe surrendered unconditionally (German Instrument of Surrender, 1945). This was the end of World War II in Europe.

The war was the largest and most destructive in human history, with 60 million dead across the world, including approximately 6 million Jews who perished during the Holocaust, 3 million Soviet prisoners of war and at least 3 million civilian non-Jewish victims of Nazi crimes. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties. One in four Soviets were killed or wounded. The postwar Soviet population was 45 to 50 million smaller than it would have been if pre-war demographic growth had continued. Towards the end of the war, Europe had more than 40 million refugees, the European economy had collapsed, and 70% of the European industrial infrastructure was destroyed.

With the creation of the Allied Control Council on 5 July 1945, the four Allied powers "assume[d] supreme authority with respect to Germany" (Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany, U.S. Department of State, Treaties and Other International Acts Series, No. 1520).

The fall of the Third Reich

The Allies' Potsdam Conference in August 1945 created arrangements for the Allied occupation and denazification of the country, as well as war reparations involving the removal of war-related factories. All German annexations in Europe after 1937, and Germany's eastern border was shifted westwards to the Oder-Neisse line. France took temporary control of a large part of Germany's remaining Saar region. The Allies each had its zone, which lasted until 1949; Berlin was also divided four ways, and remained under Allied control until 1990.

The United Nations organized trials of Nazi leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. At the Nuremberg Trials, the first, major trial was the ''Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal'' (IMT), of 24 key Nazi officials—including Hermann Göring, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, Karl Dönitz, Hans Frank, and Julius Streicher. Most defendants were found guilty, 12 were sentenced to execution.

The victorious Allies outlawed the Nazi Party, its subsidiary organizations, and most of its symbols and emblems especially the swastika throughout Germany and Austria; this prohibition remains in force.

The end of Nazi Germany also saw the rise in unpopularity of related aggressive manifestations of nationalism in Germany such as Pan-Germanism and the ''Völkisch'' movement which had previously been significant political ideas there, and in other parts of Europe, before World War II. Those that remain are largely fringe movements.

Geography

Administration

To consolidate Adolf Hitler’s control of Germany, in 1935, the Nazi régime de facto replaced the administration of the ''Länder'' (constituent states) with ''gaus'' (regional districts) headed by governors answerable to the central ''Reich'' government in Berlin. The reorganization politically weakened Prussia, which had historically dominated German politics. Moreover, despite having centralised and assumed the ''Gau'' governments, some Nazis still retained leadership title to the different ''Länder''; Hermann Göring was and remained the ''Reichsstatthalter'' (Reich state governor) and ''Minister President of Prussia'' until 1945, and Ludwig Siebert remained as ''Minister President of Bavaria''.

Territorial changes

In the years leading to war, in addition to the Weimar Republic proper, the ''Reich'' came to include areas with ethnic German populations, such as Austria, the Czechoslovak Sudetenland, and the Lithuanian territory of Memel (the Klaipėda Region). Regions conquered after the war's start include Eupen-Malmedy, Alsace-Lorraine, Danzig, and territories of Poland (Second Polish Republic).

From 1939 to 1945, the Third Reich ruled the ethnically-Czech parts of Czechoslovakia as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, with its own currency; Czech Silesia was incorporated into the province of Silesia; and Luxembourg was a wartime annexation in 1940. Central Poland and Polish Galicia were governed by the German-administered General Government. Eventually, the Polish people were to be removed, and Poland proper then re-populated with 5 million Germans. By late 1943, Nazi Germany had conquered South Tyrol and Istria, which had been parts of Austria-Hungary before 1919, and seized Trieste after the (erstwhile Axis Ally) Italian Fascist government capitulated to the Allies. Two puppet-districts were set up in their place, the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral and the Operational Zone of the Alpine Foothills.

Reichskommissariats

Beyond the territories incorporated into Germany were the ''Reichskommissariate'' (Reich Commissariats), quasi-colonial regimes established in a number of occupied countries and regions that were ruled by Nazi civilian administrators (Reichskommissars). Although "outside" of the Reich in a legal sense these were intended for eventual incorporation into it, most notably as sources for future Lebensraum. Nazi-occupied Soviet Russia included the ''Reichskommissariat Ostland'' (encompassing the Baltic states, eastern parts of Poland, and western parts of Belarus) and a ''Reichskommissariat Ukraine''. More such districts, the ''Reichskommissariat Moskowien'' for much of Western Russia, the ''Reichskommissariat Kaukasus'' for the Caucasus, and the ''Reichskommissariat Turkestan'' for Central Asia were also proposed in the event that they were brought under German rule.

In Northern and Western Europe, the Germans established a ''Reichskommissariat Norwegen'' (Norway), and a ''Reichskommissariat Niederlande'' (the Netherlands). In June 1944 a Franco–Belgian ''Reichskommissariat'', derived from the previous Military Administration in Belgium and Northern France was also established to "facilitate" the area's intended annexation into Germany. This subsequently happened in December 1944, when it was split into three new Reichsgaue of the Greater German Reich: Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels. This meant little in reality however as the majority of Belgium had already been liberated by the Allied forces at this point, although the Wehrmacht did make some small gains in retaking Wallonia during the Ardennes offensive.

Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazi politicians believed that the non-German Germanic peoples of Europe, such as the Scandinavians, the Dutch, and the Flemish, were part of the "Aryan master race". Hitler stated that he wanted to undo the "unnatural division" of the Nordic race into many different countries ("''kleinstaatengerümpel''"). This was expanded on by Nazi ideologists, who made the analogy that since the union with Austria had transformed the German Reich into a Greater German Reich (''Grossdeutsches Reich''), so too would its union with the rest of historically Germanic Europe create a Greater Germanic Reich (''Grossgermanisches Reich''). The United Kingdom however was expected to be accorded a somewhat higher status, as partners in the Nazis' New Order rather than subjects. Hitler professed an admiration for the British Empire and its people as proof of Aryan superiority in Zweites Buch.

Post-war changes

The ''de facto'' borders of the ''Reich'' changed long before its vanquishment in May 1945; as the Red Army progressed westwards, the colonist German populaces fled to Germany proper, as the Western Allies advanced eastwards, from France. At war’s end, a small strip of land, from Austria to Bohemia and Moravia (and other isolated regions) was the only area not occupied by the Allies. Upon its defeat, some historians have proposed that the ''Reich'' was in debellation. France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, established occupation zones. The prewar German lands east of the Oder-Neisse line and Stettin, and environs (nearly 25 per cent of pre-war German territory) were under Polish and Soviet administration, sundered for Polish and Soviet annexation; the Allies expelled the German inhabitants. In 1947, the Allied Control Council disestablished Prussia with Law No. 46 (20 May 1947); per the Potsdam Conference (6 July–2 August 1945), the Prussian lands east of the Oder-Neisse Line were divided and administered by Poland and the Kaliningrad Oblast, pending the final peace treaty Later, by signing the Treaty of Warsaw (1970) and the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (1990), Germany renounced claims to territories lost during World War II (1939–45).

Economy

In keeping with the political syncretism of fascism, the Nazi war economy was a mixed economy of free-market and central-planning practices; historian Richard Overy reports: “The German economy fell between two stools. It was not enough of a command economy to do what the Soviet system could do; yet it was not capitalist enough to rely, as America did, on the recruitment of private enterprise.”

When the Nazis assumed German government, their most pressing economic matter was a national unemployment rate of approximately 30 per cent; at the start, Third Reich economic policies were the brainchildren of the economist Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, President of the ''Reichsbank'' (1933) and Minister of Economics (1934), who helped ''Reichskanzler'' Adolf Hitler implement Nazi redevelopment, reindustrialization, and rearmament of Germany; formerly, he had been Weimar Republic currency commissioner and ''Reichsbank'' president. Trade unions were abolished, as well as collective bargaining and the right to strike. 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. Nazi control of business retained a diminished investment profit-incentive, controlled with economic regulation concording a company’s functioning with the ''Reich''’s national production requirements. Government financing eventually dominated private investment; in the 1933–34 biennium, the proportion of private securities issued diminished from more than 50 per cent of the total, to approximately 10 per cent in the 1935–38 quadrennium. Heavy profit taxes limited self-financing companies, and the largest companies (usually government contractors) mostly were exempted from paying taxes on profits—in practice. Peter Temin writes that government control allowed “only the shell of private ownership” in the Third Reich economy. By contrast, Christoph Buchheim and Jonas Scherner counter that despite state control, business had much production and investment planning freedom — while the economy was still to a larger degree politically controlled it "does not necessarily mean that private property of enterprises was not of any significance [...] For despite extensive regulatory activity by an interventionist public administration, firms preserved a good deal of their autonomy even under the Nazi regime".

In 1937, Hermann Göring replaced Schacht as Minister of Economics, and introduced the Four Year Plan that would establish German self-sufficiency for war—within four years—by curtailing foreign importations; fixing wages and prices (violators merited concentration-camp internment); stock dividends were restricted to six per cent on book capital, et cetera. Strategic goals were to be achieved regardless of cost (as in Soviet economics): thus the rapid construction of synthetic-rubber factories, steel mills, automatic textile mills, et cetera.

Politics

Through staffing of most government positions with Nazi Party members, by 1935 the German national government and the Nazi Party had become virtually one and the same. By 1938, through the policy of ''Gleichschaltung'', local and state governments lost all legislative power and answered administratively to Nazi Party leaders, known as Gauleiters, who governed ''Gaue'' and ''Reichsgaue''.

Government

Nazi Germany was made up of various competing power structures, all trying to gain favor with the ''Führer'', Adolf Hitler. Thus many existing laws were stricken and replaced with interpretations of what Hitler wanted. Any high party/government official could take one of Hitler's comments and turn it into a new law, of which Hitler would casually either approve or disapprove. This became known as "working towards the ''Führer''", as the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of individuals each trying to gain more power and influence through the Führer. This often made government very convoluted and divided, especially with Hitler's vague policy of creating similar posts with overlapping powers and authority. The process allowed the more unscrupulous and ambitious Nazis to get away with implementing the more radical and extreme elements of Hitler's ideology, such as anti-Semitism, and in doing so win political favor. Protected by Goebbels' extremely effective propaganda machine, which portrayed the government as a dedicated, dutiful and efficient outfit, the dog-eat-dog competition and chaotic legislation was allowed to escalate. Historical opinion is divided between "intentionalists", who believe that Hitler created this system as the only means of ensuring both the total loyalty and dedication of his supporters and the impossibility of a conspiracy; and "structuralists", who believe that the system evolved by itself and was a limitation on Hitler's supposedly totalitarian power.

Executive Cabinets

Cabinet Hitler

Cabinet Schwerin von Krosigk

National authorities

Office of the Reich Chancellery (Hans Lammers)

Office of the Party Chancellery (Martin Bormann)

Office of the Presidential Chancellery (Otto Meißner)

Privy Cabinet Council (Konstantin von Neurath)

Chancellery of the Führer (Philip Bouhler)

Reich offices

Office of the Four-Year Plan (Hermann Göring)

Office of the Reich Master Forester (Hermann Göring)

Office of the Inspector for Highways

Office of the President of the Reich Bank

Reich Main Security Office (Reinhard Heydrich)

Reich Youth Office

Reich Treasury Office

General Inspector of the Reich Capital

Office of the Councilor for the Capital of the Movement (Munich, Bavaria)

NSDAP offices

NSDAP Office of Racial Policy

NSDAP Office of Colonial Policy

NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs

Amt Rosenberg

Reich ministries

Reich Foreign Ministry (Joachim von Ribbentrop)

Reich Interior Ministry (Wilhelm Frick, Heinrich Himmler)

Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Joseph Goebbels)

Reich Ministry of Aviation (Hermann Göring)

Reich Ministry of Finance (Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk)

Reich Ministry of Justice (Franz Gürtner, Otto Thierack)

Reich Economics Ministry (Alfred Hugenberg, Kurt Schmitt, Hjalmar Schacht, Hermann Göring, Walther Funk)

Reich Ministry for Nutrition and Agriculture (Richard Walther Darré, Herbert Backe)

Reich Labour Ministry (Franz Seldte)

Reich Ministry for Science, Education, and Public Instruction (Bernhard Rust)

Reich Ministry for Ecclesiastical Affairs (Hanns Kerrl)

Reich Transportation Ministry (Julius Dorpmüller)

Reich Postal Ministry (Wilhelm Ohnesorge)

Reich Ministry for Weapons, Munitions, and Armament (Fritz Todt, Albert Speer)

Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Alfred Rosenberg)

Reich Ministers without Portfolio (Konstantin von Neurath, Hans Frank, Hjalmar Schacht, Arthur Seyss-Inquart)

State ideology

National Socialism had some of the key ideological elements of fascism which originally developed in Italy under Benito Mussolini; however, the Nazis never officially declared themselves fascists. Both ideologies involved the political use of militarism, nationalism, anti-communism and paramilitary forces, and both intended to create a dictatorial state. The Nazis, however, were far more racially oriented than the fascists in Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The Nazis were also intent on creating a completely totalitarian state, unlike Italian fascists who while promoting a totalitarian state, allowed a larger degree of private liberties for their citizens. These differences allowed the Italian monarchy to continue to exist and have some official powers. However the Nazis copied much of their symbolism from the Fascists in Italy, such as copying the Roman salute as the Nazi salute, use of mass rallies, both made use of uniformed paramilitaries devoted to the party (the SA in Germany and the Blackshirts in Italy), both Hitler and Mussolini were called the "Leader" (''Führer'' in German, ''Duce'' in Italian), both were anti-Communist, both wanted an ideologically driven state, and both advocated a middle-way between capitalism and communism, commonly known as corporatism. The party itself rejected the fascist label, claiming National Socialism was an ideology unique to Germany.

The totalitarian nature of the Nazi party was one of its principal tenets. The Nazis contended 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 the regime's ''Führer'' ("Leader"), Adolf Hitler, who was portrayed as the genius behind the Nazi party's success and Germany's saviour.

To secure their ability to create a totalitarian state, the Nazi party's paramilitary force, the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) or "Storm Detachment" used acts of violence against leftists, communists, democrats, Jews and other opposition or minority groups. The SA "storm troopers" violently clashed with the Communist Party of Germany (''German Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands'' – KPD) which created a climate of lawlessness and fear. In the cities, people were anxious over punishment or even death, if they displayed opposition to the Nazis. Given the frustrations of the people (after World War I and during the Great Depression) it was easy for the SA to attract large numbers of alienated (and unemployed) youth and working class people for the party.

The "German problem", as it is often referred to in English scholarship, focuses on the issue of administration of Germanic regions in Northern and Central Europe, an important theme throughout German history. 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. The goal was to create numerous counterweights in order to "balance out Germany's power".

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. It was the Nazis' passionate support of the Volk concept of Greater Germany 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 19th century, or to acquire territories with German population like parts of Austria. The German concept of ''Lebensraum'' ("living space") or more specifically its need for an expanding German population was also claimed by the Nazi regime for territorial expansion.

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; the Nazis determined 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 standard were to be used as cheap labour force or deported eastward.

Racialism and racism were important aspects of society within the Third Reich. The Nazis combined anti-Semitism with anti-Communist ideology, regarding the leftist-internationalist movement—as well as international market capitalism—as the work of "Conspiratorial Jewry". They referred to this so-called movement with terminology such as the "Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans". This platform manifested itself in the displacement, internment, and systematic extermination of an estimated 11 million to 12 million people in the midst of World War II, roughly half of them being Jews targeted in what is historically remembered as the Holocaust (''Shoah''), 3 million ethnic Poles that died as a result of warfare, genocide, reprisals, forced labor or famine, and another 100,000–1,000,000 being Roma, who were murdered in the Porajmos. Other victims of Nazi persecution included communists, various political opponents, social outcasts, homosexuals, freethinkers, religious dissidents such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, the Confessing Church and Freemasons.

Foreign relations

Foreign relations between Germany and the rest of Europe were riddled with political maneuvers and opportunistic decisions. Fearing a second world war, Britain and France sought a policy of appeasement towards Germany, and refused aggressive foreign policies to satisfy the newly empowered Nazis. Hitler aims upon coming to power was threefold; destroy Versailles, re-unite lost German territories under the decrees of Versailles, and ''Lebensraum''. It is said that Hitler wanted Britain as an ally with wars with the USSR, and eventually the USA. Hitler used the Appeasement policies of Britain and France to his opportunistic advantage when he announced in March 1935 that he would conscript men into his army and create the ''Luftwaffe''; both a direct violation of Versailles. His foreign policies were designed to test the nerve of Britain and France so he could see what else he was able to get away with. His other concern was Italy, whom under Mussolini had become a similarly fascist country, but had so much internal civil disruption Hitler wanted a more stable and powerful ally.

Although Germany's relations with Italy improved with creation of the Rome-Berlin Axis, tensions remained high because the Nazis wanted Austria to be incorporated into Germany. Italy was opposed to this, as were France and Britain. In 1938, an Austrian-led Nazi coup took place in Austria and Germany sent in its troops, annexing the country. Italy and Britain no longer had common interests and, as Germany had stopped supporting the German speaking population under Italy's control in South Tyrol, Italy began to gravitate towards Germany.

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. However, the Nazis helped to promote Slovakian dissention and declaring that the country was no more, seized control of the Czech part.

For quite some time, Germany had engaged in informal negotiations with Poland regarding the issue of territorial revision, but after the Munich Agreement and the reacquisition of Memel, the Nazis became increasingly vocal. Poland refused to allow the annexation of the Free City of Danzig.

Germany and the Soviet Union began talks over planning an invasion of Poland. In August 1939, the Molotov Pact was signed and Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Poland along a mutually agreed set boundary. The invasion was put into effect on 1 September 1939. Last-minute Polish-German diplomatic proceedings failed, and Germany invaded Poland as scheduled. Germany alleged that Polish operatives had attacked German positions, but the result was the outbreak of World War II, as Allied forces refused to accept Germany's claims on Poland and blamed Germany for the conflict.

From 1939-1940, the so-called "Phoney 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 Phoney War (leapfrogging the British invasion troops bound towards Norway by just 24 hours). 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.

On October 23, 1940 Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco, the dictator of Spain, met in Hendaye to discuss Spain entering the war. Franco asked too much from Hitler. Even though Spain would remain neutral during World War II Spain and Nazi Germany would remain allies during the war. Spain would send Volunteer soldiers to fight for Germany but only against the Soviet Union. Spain was subsequently isolated following the war until re-aligning towards economic liberalism and a pro-Western foreign policy in the 1950s.

In 1941, Germany's invasion of Yugoslavia resulted in that state's splintering. In spite of Hitler's earlier view of inferiority of all Slavs, he supported Mussolini's agenda of creating a fascist puppet state of Croatia, called the Independent State of Croatia. Croatia was led by the extreme nationalist Ante Pavelić a long-time Croatian exile in Rome, whose Ustashe movement formed 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 fortunes of war changed, 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.

Law

Most of the judicial structures and legal codes of the Weimar Republic remained in use during the Third Reich, but significant changes within the judicial codes occurred, as well as significant changes in court rulings. The Nazi party was the only legal political party in Germany; all other political parties were banned. Most human rights of the constitution of the Weimar Republic were disabled by several ''Reichsgesetze'' ("Reich's laws"). Several minorities such as the Jews, opposition politicians and prisoners of war were deprived of most of their rights and responsibilities. The Plan to pass a ''Volksstrafgesetzbuch'' ("people's code of criminal justice") arose soon after 1933, but didn't come into reality until the end of World War II.

As a new type of court, the ''Volksgerichtshof'' ("people's court") was established in 1934, only dealing with cases of political importance. From 1934-September 1944, a total of 5,375 death sentences were spoken by the court. Not included in this numbers are the death sentences from 20 July 1944-April 1945, which are estimated at 2,000. Its most prominent jurist was Roland Freisler, who headed the court from August 1942-February 1945.

Military

The military of the Third Reich – the Wehrmacht – was the name of the unified armed forces of Germany from 1935-1945 with ''Heer'' (Army), ''Kriegsmarine'' (Navy), ''Luftwaffe'' (Air Force) and a military organization ''Waffen-SS'' (military branch of the ''Schutzstaffel'', which was, de facto, a fourth branch of the ''Wehrmacht'').

The German Army furthered concepts pioneered during World War I, combining Ground and Air Force assets into combined arms teams. Coupled with traditional war fighting methods such as encirclements and the "battle of annihilation", the German military managed many lightning quick victories in the first year of World War II, prompting foreign journalists to create a new word for what they witnessed: ''Blitzkrieg''. The total number of soldiers who served in the ''Wehrmacht'' during its existence from 1935-1945 is believed to approach 18.2 million.

Racial policy

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, an end to official stigmatization toward Aryan children who were born from parents outside of marriage, as well as giving financial assistance to Aryan German families who bore children.

The Nazi Party pursued its racial and social policies through persecution and killing of those considered social undesirables or "enemies of the Reich". Especially targeted were minority groups such as Jews, Romani (also known as Gypsies), Jehovah's Witnesses, 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 1933 construction of the Dachau concentration camp, which Heinrich Himmler officially described as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners."

In the years following the Nazi rise to power, many Jews were encouraged to leave the country and did 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 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 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 1935. 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.

In 1941 it was decided to destroy the Polish nation completely and the German leadership decided that in 10 to 20 years the Polish state under German occupation was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists. The Nazis considered Jews, Romani people, Poles along with other Slavic people like the Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs and anyone else who was not an "Aryan" according to the contemporary Nazi race terminology to be ''Untermenschen'' ("subhumans"). The Nazis rationalized that the (Aryan) Germans had a biological right to displace, eliminate and enslave inferiors. After the war, under the "Big Plan", ''Generalplan Ost'' foresaw the deportation of 45 million non-Germanizable people from Eastern Europe, 85% of Poles, Belorussians (75%) and Ukrainians (65%), to West Siberia, and about 14 millions were to remain, but were to be treated as slaves. In their place, Germans would be settled in an extended ''"living space"'' of the ''1000-Year Empire''.

Herbert Backe was one of the orchestrators of the Hunger Plan - the plan to starve tens of millions of Slavs in order to ensure steady food supplies for the German people and troops. In the longer term, the Nazis wanted to exterminate some 30–45 million Slavs. According to Michael Dorland, "As Yale historian Timothy Snyder reminds us, had the Nazis succeeded in their war on Russia, the implementation of two further dimensions of the Holocaust, the ''Hunger Plan'' and ''Generalplan Ost'', would have led to the elimination through starvation of an additional 80 million people in Belarus, northern Russia and the USSR."

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.

To the Nazis, a number of ideas appeared on how to answer the "Jewish Question". One method was a mass forced deportation of Jews. Adolf Eichmann suggested that Jews be forced to emigrate to Palestine. 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 but was later dismissed as impractical in 1942. The idea of continuing deportations to occupied Poland was rejected by the governor, Hans Frank, of the General Government of occupied Poland as Frank refused to accept any more deportations of Jews to the territory which already had large numbers of Jews. In 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, Nazi officials decided to eliminate the Jews altogether, as discussed the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Concentration camps like Auschwitz were converted and used gas chambers to kill as many Jews as possible. By 1945, a number of concentration camps had been liberated by Allied forces and they found the survivors to be severely malnourished. The Allies also found evidence that the Nazis were profiteering from 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.

Social Policy

Education

Education under the Nazi regime focused on racial biology, population policy, culture, geography and especially physical fitness. Military education (''Wehrerziehung'') became the central component of physical education; the historical mission of Germany and the study of its “great men” were the primary subject of history classes; and science textbooks presented natural selection in terms meant to underline the concept of racial purity.

Anti-Semitic policy led to the expulsion of Jewish teachers and professors and officials from the education system. Likewise, politically undesirable teachers, such as socialists, were expelled as part of the “Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service” (''Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufbeamtentums''). The success of this policy is reflected in the membership of the National Socialist Teachers' Association (''Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund'' , NSLB), which by 1937 claimed 97% of all teachers as members. All university professors were required to be a member of the National Socialist Association of University Lecturers in order to be able to be employed as professors.

While the official line mandated that all vestiges of liberal education be discarded, the teaching methods promoted under National Socialism were experiential and active in their orientation. This was largely an extension of the anti-intellectual attitude of the Nazi leadership, however, and not primarily an attempt to experiment with new didactic methods. As Henrich Hansen, the head of the NS-Teachers' Association, put it: :"The youth of Germany will no longer be 'objectively' posed with the choice between an upbringing that is materialistic or idealistic, ethnic [''völkish''] or international, religious or godless, rather it will be consciously formed according to principles that have shown themselves to be true: the principles of the national socialist worldview.

In seeking a way to make education less abstract, less intellectual and less distant from children, educators called for a much-expanded role for film. Reichsfilmintendant and Head of the Film Section in the Propaganda Ministry Fritz Hippler wrote that film affects people “primarily on the optical and emotional, that is to say, non-intellectual” level,. Film also appealed to the Nazi leadership as a medium through which they could speak directly to children without the mediation of teachers. Dr. Bernhard Rust saw film as an essential tool, saying "The National Socialist State definitely and deliberately makes the film the transmitter of its ideology."

Social welfare

Recent research by academics such as Götz Aly has emphasized the role of the extensive Nazi social welfare programs that focused on providing employment for German citizens and insuring a minimal living standard for German citizens. Heavily focused on was the idea of a national German community or ''Volksgemeinschaft''.

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'', KdF) program. Also crucial to the building of loyalty and comradeship was the implementation of the National Labour Service and the Hitler Youth Organization, with compulsory membership. In addition to this, a number of architectural projects were undertaken. KdF created the ''KdF-wagen'', later known as the ''Volkswagen'' ("People's Car"), which was designed to be an automobile that every German citizen would be able to afford. With the outbreak of World War II the car was converted into a military vehicle and civilian production was stopped. Another national project undertaken was the construction of the Autobahn, which made it the first freeway system in the world.

The Winter Relief campaigns not only collected charity for the unfortunate, but acted as a ritual to generate public feeling. As part of the centralization of Nazi Germany, posters urged people to donate rather to give directly to beggars.

Health

According to the research of Robert N. Proctor for his book ''The Nazi War on Cancer'', 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 led 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.

The Nazi health care system also held as a central idea the concept of Eugenics. Certain people were deemed 'genetically inferior' and were targeted for elimination from the gene pool through sterilization (Hereditary Health Courts) or wholesale murder (Action T4). Medical information professionals used new processes and technology, like punch card systems, and cost analysis, to aid in the process and calculate the 'benefit' to society of these killings.

Women's rights

Women in the Third Reich were a cornerstone of Nazi social policy, however, this meant a sharp curtailment of women's rights. The Nazis opposed the feminist movement, claiming that it had a left-wing agenda (comparable to Communism) and was bad for both women and men. The Nazi regime advocated a patriarchal society in which German women would recognize the "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home." Hitler claimed that women taking vital jobs away from men during the Great Depression was economically bad for families in that women were paid only 66 percent of what men earned. Simultaneously with calling for women to leave work outside the home, 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.". The expectation even applied to Aryan women married to Jewish men—a necessary ingredient in the 1943 Rosenstrasse protest in which 1800 German women (joined by 4200 relatives) obliged the Nazi state to release their Jewish husbands. This position was so strongly held as to make it extremely difficult to recruit women for war jobs during World War II.

The Nazi regime discouraged women from seeking higher education in secondary schools, universities and colleges. The number of women allowed to enroll in universities dropped drastically under the Nazi regime, which shrank from approximately 128,000 women being enrolled in 1933 to 51,000 in 1938. Female enrollment in secondary schools dropped from 437,000 in 1926 to 205,000 in 1937. However with the requirement of men to be enlisted into the German armed forces during the war, women made up half of the enrollment in the education system by 1944.

On the other hand, the women were expected to be strong, healthy, and vital; a photograph subtitled "Future Mothers" showed teenage girls dressed for sport and bearing javelins. A sturdy peasant woman, who worked the land and bore strong children, was an ideal, contributing to praise for athletic women tanned by outdoor work.

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'' (BDM, "German Girls' League") for young women from 14 to 18, and the NS-Frauenschaft, a woman's organization.

The NS-Frauenschaft put out the ''NS-Frauen-Warte'', the only approved women's magazine in Nazi Germany. Despite its propaganda aspects, it was predominantly a woman's magazine, even including sewing patterns.

The BDM's activities encompassed physical education, including running, the long jump, somersaulting, tightrope walking, rout-marching, and swimming. ''Das deutsche Mädel'' was less adventure-oriented than the boy's ''Der Pimpf'', but far more emphasis was laid on strong and active German women than in ''NS-Frauen-Warte''. Also, before entering any occupation or advanced studies, the girls, like the boys in Hitler Youth, had to complete a year of land service.

Despite the somewhat official restrictions, some women forged highly visible, as well as officially praised, achievements, such as the aviatrix Hanna Reitsch and film director Leni Riefenstahl.

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. The collapse of 19th century morals in Germany accelerated during the Third Reich, partly due to the Nazis, and greatly due to the effects of the war. Promiscuity increased greatly as the war progressed, with unmarried soldiers often involved intimately with several women simultaneously. Married women were often involved in multiple affairs simultaneously, with soldiers, civilians or slave labourers. "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." Nevertheless, publically, Nazi propaganda opposed adultery and upheld the sancticity of marriage. Several films shot in this era altered their source material so that the woman, rather than the man, would suffer death for sexual transgressions, reflecting whose fault it was held to be. When attempts were made to destigmatize illegitimate births, Lebensborn homes were presented the public as for married women. Overtly anti-marriage statements, such as Himmler's statements regarding the care of the illegimate children of dead soldiers, were greeted with protests.

An example of the way in which Nazi doctrines differed from practice is that, whilst sexual relationships among campers was explicitly forbidden, boys' and girls' camps of the ''Hitlerjugend'' associations were needlessly placed close together as if to make it happen. Pregnancy (including repercussions on established marriages) often resulted when fetching members of the ''Bund Deutscher Mädel'' were assigned to duties which juxtaposed them with tempted men. Ilsa McKee noted that the lectures of Hitler Youth and the BDM on the need to produce more children produced several illegitimate children, which neither the mothers nor the possible fathers regarded as problematic.

Marriage or sexual relations between a person considered “Aryan” and one that was not were classified as Rassenschande were forbidden and under penalty (people found guilty could face incarceration in a concentration camp, while non-Aryans could face the death penalty). Pamphlets enjoined all German women to avoid sexual intercourse with all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their blood.

Abortion was heavily penalized in Nazi Germany unless on the grounds of "racial health"; from 1943 abortionists faced the death penalty. Display of contraceptives was not allowed and Hitler himself described contraception as "violation of nature, as degradation of womanhood, motherhood and love."

Environmentalism

In 1935, the regime enacted the "Reich Nature Protection Act". While not a purely Nazi piece of legislation, as parts of its influences pre-dated the Nazi rise to power, it nevertheless reflected Nazi ideology. The concept of the ''Dauerwald'' (best translated as the "perpetual forest") which included concepts such as forest management and protection was promoted and efforts were also made to curb air pollution.

In practice, the enacted laws and policies met resistance from various ministries that sought to undermine them, and from the priority that the war-effort took to environmental protection.

Animal protection policy

The Nazis had elements which were supportive of animal rights, zoos and wildlife, and took several measures to ensure their protection. In 1933 the government enacted a stringent animal-protection law. Many NSDAP leaders including Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring were supporters of animal protection. Several Nazis were environmentalists (notably Rudolf Hess), and species protection and animal welfare were significant issues in the regime. Heinrich Himmler made efforts to ban the hunting of animals. Göring was an animal lover and conservationist. The current animal welfare laws in Germany are more or less modification of the laws introduced by the National Socialist regime.

Although enacting various laws for animal protection, there was a lack of enforcement. According to ''Pfugers Archiv für die Gesamte Physiologie'' (Pfugers Archive for the Total Physiology), a science journal at that time, there were many animal experiments during the Nazi regime. The Nazi regime disbanded several unofficial organizations advocating environmentalism and animal protection, such as the ''Friends of Nature''.

Culture

The regime sought to restore traditional values in German culture. The art and culture that came to define the Weimar Republic years was repressed. The visual arts were strictly monitored and traditional, focusing on exemplifying Germanic themes, racial purity, militarism, heroism, power, strength, and obedience. Modern abstract art and avant-garde art was removed from museums and put on special display as "degenerate art", where it was to be ridiculed. In one notable example, on 31 March 1937, huge crowds stood in line to view a special display of "degenerate art" in Munich. Art forms considered to be degenerate included Dada, Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Impressionism, New Objectivity, and Surrealism. Literature written by Jewish, other non-Aryans, homosexual or authors opposed to the Nazis was destroyed by the regime. The most infamous destruction of literature was the book burnings by German students in 1933.

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. This style stood out in stark contrast and opposition to newer, more liberal, and more popular architecture styles of the time such as Art Deco. Various Roman buildings were examined by state architect Albert Speer for architectural designs for state buildings. Speer constructed huge and imposing structures such as in the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg and the new Reich Chancellery building in Berlin. One design that was pursued, but never built, was a gigantic version of the Pantheon in Rome, called the ''Volkshalle'' to be the semi-religious centre of Nazism in a renamed Berlin called ''Germania'', which was to be the "world capital" (''Welthauptstadt''). Also to be constructed was a Triumphal arch, several times larger than that found in Paris, which was also based upon a classical styling. Many of the designs for Germania were impractical to construct because of their size and the marshy soil underneath Berlin; later the materials that were to be used for construction were diverted to the war effort.

Cinema and media

The majority of German films of the period were intended principally as works of entertainment. The import of foreign films was legally restricted after 1936, and the German industry, which was effectively nationalised in 1937, had to make up for the missing foreign films (above all American productions). Entertainment also became increasingly important in the later years of World War II when the cinema provided a distraction from Allied bombing and a string of German defeats. In both 1943 and 1944 cinema admissions in Germany exceeded a billion, and the biggest box office hits of the war years were ''Die große Liebe'' (1942) and ''Wunschkonzert'' (1941), which both combine elements of the musical, wartime romance and patriotic propaganda, ''Frauen sind doch bessere Diplomaten'' (1941), a comic musical which was one of the earliest German films in colour, and ''Wiener Blut'' (1942), the adaptation of a Johann Strauß comic operetta. The importance of the cinema as a tool of the state, both for its propaganda value and its ability to keep the populace entertained, can be seen in the filming history of Veit Harlan's ''Kolberg'' (1945), the most expensive film of the era, for the shooting of which tens of thousands of soldiers were diverted from their military positions to appear as extras.

Despite the emigration of many film-makers and the political restrictions, the German film industry was not without technical and aesthetic innovations, the introduction of Agfacolor film production being a notable example. Technical and aesthetic achievement could also be turned to the specific ends of the Greater German Reich, most spectacularly in the work of Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl's ''Triumph of the Will'' (1935), documenting the Nuremberg Rally (1934), and ''Olympia'' (1938), documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, pioneered techniques of camera movement and editing that have influenced many later films. Both films, particularly ''Triumph of the Will'', remain highly controversial, as their aesthetic merit is inseparable from their propagandizing of Nationalsocialism ideals. Irreplacable artists deemed fitting the National socialist ideals such as Marika Rokk and Johannes Heesters where placed on the Gottbegnadeten list by Joseph Goebbels during the war.

Religion

Sports

Established in 1934, the Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen (NSRL), (sometimes also known under the acronym NSRBL) was the umbrella organization for sports during the Third Reich.

Two major displays of Nazi German art and culture were at the 1936 Summer Olympics and at the German pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. The 1936 Olympics was meant to display to the world the Aryan superiority of Germany to other nations. German athletes were carefully chosen not only for strength but for Aryan appearance.

See also

Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II

German resistance

Glossary of German military terms

Glossary of Nazi Germany

List of Nazi Party leaders and officials

Nazi architecture

Nazi rule over the Danube River

Nazi songs

Orders, decorations, and medals of Nazi Germany

Sino-German cooperation (1911–1941)

Vergangenheitsbewältigung

Women in the Third Reich

References

Further reading

Surveys and reference

Karl Dietrich Bracher. ''The German Dictatorship; The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism''; New York, Praeger 1970.

Michael Burleigh. ''The Third Reich: A New History'', 2002. ISBN 0-8090-9326-X. Standard scholarly history, 1918–1945.

Richard J. Evans. ''The Coming of the Third Reich''. ISBN 0-14-100975-6, standard scholarly history; ''The Third Reich in Power'' 2005 ISBN 1-59420-074-2; ''The Third Reich at war 1939-1945'' (2009)

Ian Kershaw. ''The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation'', 4th ed. London: Arnold, 2000. ISBN 0-340-76028-1

Christian Leitz, ed. ''The Third Reich: The Essential Readings''. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. ISBN 0-631-20700-7.

Mommsen, Hans. ''The Third Reich between Vision and Reality: New Perspectives on German History, 1918-1945'' (2001) online edition

Overy, Richard. ''The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia'' (2004)

Roderick, Stacke. ''Hitler's Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies'' (1999)

Scheck, Raffael. “Lecture Notes, Germany and Europe, 1871-1945” (2008) full text online, a brief textbook by a leading scholar

William L. Shirer. ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich''. ISBN 0-671-72868-7

Zentner, Christian and Bedürftig, Friedemann, eds. ''The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich.'' 2 vol. Macmillan, 1991. 1120 pp.

Economics

Overy, R. J. ''The Nazi Economic Recovery 1932-1938'' (1996)

Adam Tooze. ''The Wages of Destruction: The Making and the Breaking of the Nazi Economy''. New York: Viking, 2006. ISBN 978-0-670-03826-8.

Henry Ashby Turner. ''German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. ISBN 0-19-503492-9.

Alfred Sohn-Rethel. ''Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism''. London, CSE Bks, 1978. ISBN 0-906336-00-7

Hitler

Bullock, Alan. ''Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, '' (1962) online edition

Geary, Dick. ''Hitler and Nazism,'' (2000) 97 pages

Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris.'' vol. 1. 1999. 700 pp. ; vol 2: ''Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis.'' 2000. 832 pp.; the leading scholarly biography.

Kershaw, Ian. ''The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich.'' (1987). 297 pp.

Nicholls, David. ''Adolf Hitler: A Biographical Companion.'' ABC-CLIO, 2000. 344 pp.

Holocaust, ideology and racism

Gisela Bock "Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the State" from ''When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany'' edited by Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984.

Friedlander, Saul. ''Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939'' (1998); ''The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945'' (2007), the standard history

Gilbert, Martin. ''The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust'' (2002)

Heinz Höhne. ''The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS.'' Translated by Richard Barry. London: Penguin Books, 1971.

Claudia Koonz. ''The Nazi Conscience''. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.

Niewyk, Donald, and Francis Nicosia. ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.'' (2000) online edition

Detlev Peukert. ''Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life''. London: Batsford, 1987. ISBN 0-7134-5217-X.

Florian Ruhs: ''Foreign Workers in the Second World War. The Ordeal of Slovenians in Germany.'', in: aventinus nova Nr. 32 [29.05.2011].

Leadership

Martin Broszat. ''The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development Of The Internal Structure Of The Third Reich''. Translated by John W. Hiden. London: Longman, 1981. ISBN 0-582-49200-9.

Guido Knopp. ''Hitler's Henchmen''. 1998. Sutton Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0-7509-3781-5.

Frank McDonough, ''Hitler and the Rise of The Nazi Party,'' Pearson Longman, 2003.

Anthony Read. ''The Devils Disciples: The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle''. W. W. Norton & Co., 2003. ISBN 0-393-04800-4.

Ronald Smelser and Rainer Zitelmann, ''The Nazi Elite'' New York University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8147-7950-6.

Local and regional

William Sheridan Allen. ''The Nazi Seizure of Power : the Experience Of A Single German Town, 1922–1945'' New York: F. Watts, 1984. ISBN 0-531-09935-0.

Paul Garson. ''Album of the Damned: Snapshots from the Third Reich'' 2008 ISBN 978-0-89733-576-8, Academy Chicago Publishers

Military and foreign policy

Sir John Wheeler-Bennett. ''The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918–1945'', Palgrave Macmillan: London: 1953, 1964, 2005 ISBN 1-4039-1812-0.

Andreas Hillgruber ''Germany and the two World Wars'', Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1981 ISBN 0-674-35321-8.

David Irving. ''Hitler's War''. London: Focal Point Publications. ISBN 1-872197-10-8.

Norman Rich. ''Hitler's War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State, and the Course of Expansion''. vol. 1. 1972. 352 pp.; vol. 2: ''Hitler's War Aims: The Establishment of the New Order''. 1974. 548 pp.; definitive analysis of Nazi German war aims in World War II.

Resistance

Hamerow, Theodore S. ''On the Road to the Wolf's Lair: German Resistance to Hitler'' (1997) 454 pages

R. P. Heller. ''The Flame of Freedom: The German Struggle against Hitler.'' (1994) focus on Army online edition

Roger Moorhouse. ''Killing Hitler''. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006. ISBN 0-224-07121-1.

Thomsett, Michael C. ''The German Opposition to Hitler: The Resistance, the Underground, and Assassination Plots, 1938-1945'' (2nd ed 2007) 278 pages

Society and culture

Cosner, Shaaron and Cosner, Victoria. ''Women under the Third Reich: A Biographical Dictionary.'' Greenwood, 1998. 203 pp.

Richard Grunberger. ''A Social History of the Third Reich'' 1974 ISBN 0-14-013675-4.

Claudia Koonz. ''Mothers In The Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics''. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-54933-4.

Eric Michaud, ''The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany'', translated by Janet Lloyd, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8047-4327-4.

Rempel, Gerhard. ''Hitler's Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS,'' (1989) online edition

David Schoenbaum ''Hitler’s Social Revolution; Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939'', Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, 1966.

Stibbe, Matthew. ''Women in the Third Reich,'' 2003, 208 pp.

External links

The Third Reich

Third Reich in Ruins (Photos)

Lebendiges Museum Online Category:Former republics Category:Nazi Germany Category:Single-party states Category:States and territories established in 1933 Category:States and territories disestablished in 1945

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Coordinates	40°37′29″N73°57′8″N
Native name
Conventional long name	Federal Republic of Germany
Common name	Germany
National anthem	File:National anthem of Germany - U.S. Army 1st Armored Division Band.oggThe third stanza of ''The Song of the Germans''
Image coat	Coat of Arms of Germany.svg
Map caption
Official languages	German
Demonym	German
Capital	Berlin
Largest city	capital
Government type	Federal parliamentary republic
Leader title1	President
Leader name1	Christian Wulff (CDU)
Leader title2	Chancellor
Leader name2	Angela Merkel (CDU)
Leader title3	President of the Bundestag
Leader name3	Norbert Lammert (CDU)
Leader title4	President of the Bundesrat
Leader name4	Hannelore Kraft (SPD)
Sovereignty type	Formation
Established event1	Holy Roman Empire
Established date1	2 February 962
Established event2	Unification
Established date2	18 January 1871
Established event3	Federal Republic
Established date3	23 May 1949
Established event4	Reunification
Established date4	3 October 1990
Accessioneudate	25 March 1957
Euseats	99
Area km2	357,021
Area sq mi	137,847
Area rank	63rd
Area magnitude	1 E11
Percent water	2.416
Population estimate	81,799,600
Population estimate year	2010
Population estimate rank	15th
Population estimate rank	15th
Population density km2	229
Population density sq mi	593
Population density rank	55th
Gdp ppp year	2011
Gdp ppp	$3.089 trillion
Gdp ppp rank	5th
Gdp ppp per capita	$37,935
Gdp ppp per capita rank	18th
Gdp nominal	$3.628 trillion
Gdp nominal rank	4th
Gdp nominal year	2011
Gdp nominal per capita	$44,555
Gdp nominal per capita rank	19th
Hdi year	2011
Hdi	0.905
Hdi rank	9th
Hdi category	very high
Gini	27
Gini year	2006
Gini category	low
Currency	Euro (€)(2002 – present)
Currency code	EUR
Time zone	CET
Utc offset	+1
Time zone dst	CEST
Utc offset dst	+2
Drives on	right
Cctld	.de
Calling code	49
Iso 3166-1 alpha2	DE
Iso 3166-1 alpha3	DEU
Iso 3166-1 numeric	?
Alt sport code	GER
Vehicle code	D
Aircraft code	D
Footnote1	Danish, Low German, Sorbian, Romany and Frisian are officially recognised by the ECRML.
Footnote2	Before 2002: Deutsche Mark (DEM).
Footnote3	Also .eu, shared with European Union member states. }}

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany (, ), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km² and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.

A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Age, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, with the rising of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Versailles Treaty. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and the Second World War. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.

Germany was a founding member of the European Community in 1957, which became the EU in 1993. It is part of the Schengen Area and since 1999 a member of the eurozone. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, the OECD and the Council of Europe, and took a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2011–2012 term.

It has the world's fourth largest economy by nominal GDP and the fifth largest by purchasing power parity. It is the second largest exporter and third largest importer of goods. The country has developed a very high standard of living and a comprehensive system of social security. Germany has been the home of many influential scientists and inventors, and is known for its cultural and political history.

==Etymology== The English word ''Germany'' derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. In other languages it has various names.

The German term ''Deutschland'' (originally ''diutisciu land'', "the German lands") is derived from ''deutsch'', descended from Old High German ''diutisc'' "popular" (i. e., belonging to the ''diot'' or ''diota'' "people"; originally used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants). This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *''þiudiskaz'' "popular" (see also the Latinised form Theodiscus), derived from *''þeudō'', descended from Proto-Indo-European *''tewtéh₂-'' "people".

History

Germanic tribes and Frankish Empire

The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Nordic Bronze Age or the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south, east and west from the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well as Iranian, Baltic, and Slavic tribes in Eastern Europe. Under Augustus, the Roman General Publius Quinctilius Varus began to invade Germania (an area extending roughly from the Rhine to the Ural Mountains). In AD 9, three Roman legions led by Varus were defeated by the Cheruscan leader Arminius. By AD 100, when Tacitus wrote ''Germania'', Germanic tribes had settled along the Rhine and the Danube (the Limes Germanicus), occupying most of the area of modern Germany; Austria, southern Bavaria and the western Rhineland, however, were Roman provinces.

In the 3rd century a number of large West Germanic tribes emerged: Alamanni, Franks, Chatti, Saxons, Frisii, Sicambri, and Thuringii. Around 260, the Germanic peoples broke into Roman-controlled lands. After the invasion of the Huns in 375, and with the decline of Rome from 395, Germanic tribes moved further south-west. Simultaneously several large tribes formed in what is now Germany and displaced the smaller Germanic tribes. Large areas (known since the Merovingian period as Austrasia) were occupied by the Franks, and Northern Germany was ruled by the Saxons and Slavs.

Holy Roman Empire

On 25 December 800, Charlemagne founded the Carolingian Empire, which was divided in 843. The Holy Roman Empire resulted from the eastern portion of this division. Its territory stretched from the Eider River in the north to the Mediterranean coast in the south. Under the reign of the Ottonian emperors (919–1024), several major duchies were consolidated, and the German king was crowned Holy Roman Emperor of these regions in 962. The Holy Roman Empire absorbed northern Italy and Burgundy under the reign of the Salian emperors (1024–1125), although the emperors lost power through the Investiture Controversy.

Under the Hohenstaufen emperors (1138–1254), the German princes increased their influence further south and east into territories inhabited by Slavs, preceding German settlement in these areas and further east ''(Ostsiedlung)''. Northern German towns grew prosperous as members of the Hanseatic League. Starting with the Great Famine in 1315, then the Black Death of 1348–50, the population of Germany plummeted. The edict of the Golden Bull in 1356 provided the basic constitution of the empire and codified the election of the emperor by seven prince-electors who ruled some of the most powerful principalities and archbishoprics.

Martin Luther publicised his 95 Theses in 1517, challenging the Roman Catholic Church and initiating the Protestant Reformation. A separate Lutheran church became the official religion in many German states after 1530. Religious conflict led to the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which devastated German lands. The population of the German states was reduced by about 30%. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended religious warfare among the German states, but the empire was ''de facto'' divided into numerous independent principalities. From 1740 onwards, dualism between the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Prussia dominated German history. In 1806, the ''Imperium'' was overrun and dissolved as a result of the Napoleonic Wars.

German Confederation and Empire

Following the fall of Napoleon I of France, the Congress of Vienna convened in 1814 and founded the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund), a loose league of 39 sovereign states. Disagreement with restoration politics partly led to the rise of liberal movements, followed by new measures of repression by Austrian statesman Metternich. The ''Zollverein'', a tariff union, furthered economic unity in the German states. National and liberal ideals of the French Revolution gained increasing support among many, especially young, Germans. In the light of a series of revolutionary movements in Europe, which established a republic in France, intellectuals and commoners started the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was offered the title of Emperor, but with a loss of power; he rejected the crown and the proposed constitution, leading to a temporary setback for the movement.

Conflict between King William I of Prussia and the increasingly liberal parliament erupted over military reforms in 1862, and the king appointed Otto von Bismarck the new Prime Minister of Prussia. Bismarck successfully waged war on Denmark in 1864. Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 enabled him to create the North German Federation (Norddeutscher Bund) and to exclude Austria, formerly the leading German state, from the federation's affairs. After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the German Empire was proclaimed 1871 in Versailles, uniting all scattered parts of Germany except Austria (, or "Lesser Germany"). With almost two thirds of its territory and population, Prussia was the dominating constituent of the new state; the Hohenzollern King of Prussia ruled as its concurrent Emperor, and Berlin became its capital. In the period following the unification of Germany, Bismarck's foreign policy as Chancellor of Germany under Emperor William I secured Germany's position as a great nation by forging alliances, isolating France by diplomatic means, and avoiding war. Under Wilhelm II, however, Germany, like other European powers, took an imperialistic course leading to friction with neighbouring countries. As a result of the Berlin Conference in 1884 Germany claimed several colonies including German East Africa, German South-West Africa, Togo, and Cameroon. Most alliances in which Germany had previously been involved were not renewed, and new alliances excluded the country.

The assassination of Austria's crown prince on 28 June 1914 triggered World War I. Germany, as part of the Central Powers, suffered defeat against the Allies in one of the bloodiest conflicts of all time. An estimated two million German soldiers died in World War I. The German Revolution broke out in November 1918, and Emperor Wilhelm II and all German ruling princes abdicated. An armistice ended the war on 11 November, and Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919. The treaty was perceived in Germany as a humiliating continuation of the war, and is often cited as an influence in the rise of Nazism.

Weimar Republic and Third Reich

At the beginning of the German Revolution in November 1918, Germany was declared a republic. However, the struggle for power continued, with radical-left communists seizing power in Bavaria. The revolution came to an end on 11 August 1919, when the Weimar Constitution was signed by President Friedrich Ebert. Suffering from the Great Depression, the harsh peace conditions dictated by the Treaty of Versailles, and a long succession of unstable governments, Germans increasingly lacked identification with the government. This was exacerbated by a widespread right-wing , or stab-in-the-back myth, which argued that Germany had lost World War I because of those who wanted to overthrow the government. The Weimar government was accused of betraying Germany by signing the Versailles Treaty. By 1932, the German Communist Party and the Nazi Party controlled the majority of parliament, fuelled by discontent with the Weimar government. After a series of unsuccessful cabinets, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. On 27 February 1933 the Reichstag building went up in flames, and a consequent emergency decree abrogated basic citizens' rights. An Enabling Act passed in parliament gave Hitler unrestricted legislative power. Only the Social Democratic Party voted against it, while Communist MPs had already been imprisoned. Using his powers to crush any actual or potential resistance, Hitler established a centralised totalitarian state within months. Industry was revitalised with a focus on military rearmament.

In 1935, Germany reacquired control of the Saar and in 1936 military control of the Rhineland, both of which had been lost in the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938 and 1939, Austria and Czechoslovakia were brought under German control and the invasion of Poland was prepared through the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact and Operation Himmler. On 1 September 1939 the German Wehrmacht launched a blitzkrieg on Poland, which was swiftly occupied by Germany and by the Soviet Red Army. The UK and France declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. As the war progressed, Germany and its allies quickly gained control of much of continental Europe though plans to occupy the United Kingdom failed. On 22 June 1941, Germany broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact and invaded the Soviet Union. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor led Germany to declare war on the United States. The Battle of Stalingrad forced the German army to retreat on the Eastern front. In September 1943, Germany's ally Italy surrendered, and German troops were forced to defend an additional front in Italy. D-Day opened a Western front, as Allied forces advanced towards German territory. On 8 May 1945, the German armed forces surrendered after the Red Army occupied Berlin.

In what later became known as The Holocaust, the Third Reich regime had enacted policies directly subjugating many dissidents and minorities. Millions of people were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, including a sizeable number of Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles and other Slavs, including Soviet POWs, people with mental and/or physical disabilities, homosexuals, and members of the political opposition. World War II was responsible for more than 40 million dead in Europe. The Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals were held after World War II. The war casualties for Germany are estimated at 5.3 million German soldiers millions of German civilians; and losing the war resulted in large territorial losses; the expulsion of about 15 million Germans from the eastern areas of Germany and other countries; mass rape of German women; and the destruction of multiple major cities.

East and West Germany

After the surrender of Germany, the remaining German territory and Berlin were partitioned by the Allies into four military occupation zones. The western sectors, controlled by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, were merged on 23 May 1949 to form the ''Federal Republic of Germany'' (''Bundesrepublik Deutschland''); on 7 October 1949, the Soviet Zone became the ''German Democratic Republic'' (''Deutsche Demokratische Republik'', or DDR). They were informally known as "West Germany" and "East Germany". East Germany selected East Berlin as its capital, while West Germany chose Bonn as a provisional capital, to emphasise its stance that the two-state solution was an artificial and temporary ''status quo''.

West Germany, established as a federal parliamentary republic with a "social market economy", was allied with the United States, the UK and France. The country enjoyed prolonged economic growth beginning in the early 1950s (). West Germany joined NATO in 1955 and was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957. East Germany was an Eastern bloc state under political and military control by the USSR via the latter's occupation forces and the Warsaw Pact. Though East Germany claimed to be a democracy, political power was exercised solely by leading members (''Politbüro'') of the communist-controlled Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), supported by the Stasi, an immense secret service, and a variety of sub-organisations controlling every aspect of society. A Soviet-style command economy was set up; the GDR later became a Comecon state. While East German propaganda was based on the benefits of the GDR's social programmes and the alleged constant threat of a West German invasion, many of her citizens looked to the West for freedom and prosperity. The Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to stop East Germans from escaping to West Germany, became a symbol of the Cold War.

Tensions between East and West Germany were reduced in the early 1970s by Chancellor Willy Brandt's . In summer 1989, Hungary decided to dismantle the Iron Curtain and open the borders, causing the emigration of thousands of East Germans to West Germany via Hungary. This had devastating effects on the GDR, where regular mass demonstrations received increasing support. The East German authorities unexpectedly eased the border restrictions, allowing East German citizens to travel to the West; originally intended to help retain East Germany as a state, the opening of the border actually led to an acceleration of the ''Wende'' reform process. This culminated in the ''Two Plus Four Treaty'' a year later on 12 September 1990, under which the four occupying powers renounced their rights under the Instrument of Surrender, and Germany regained full sovereignty. This permitted German reunification on 3 October 1990, with the accession of the five re-established states of the former GDR (new states or "neue Länder").

Berlin Republic and the EU

Based on the Berlin/Bonn Act, adopted on 10 March 1994, Berlin once again became the capital of the reunified Germany, while Bonn obtained the unique status of a ''Bundesstadt'' (federal city) retaining some federal ministries. The relocation of the government was completed in 1999. Since reunification, Germany has taken a more active role in the European Union and NATO. Germany sent a peacekeeping force to secure stability in the Balkans and sent a force of German troops to Afghanistan as part of a NATO effort to provide security in that country after the ousting of the Taliban. These deployments were controversial since, after the war, Germany was bound by domestic law only to deploy troops for defence roles. In 2005, Angela Merkel became the first female Chancellor of Germany as the leader of a grand coalition.

Geography

Germany is in Western and Central Europe, bordering Denmark in the north, Poland and the Czech Republic in the east, Austria and Switzerland in the south, France and Luxembourg in the south-west, and Belgium and the Netherlands in the north-west. It lies mostly between latitudes 47° and 55° N (the tip of Sylt is just north of 55°), and longitudes 5° and 16° E. The territory covers , consisting of of land and of water. It is the seventh largest country by area in Europe and the 62nd largest in the world.

Elevation ranges from the mountains of the Alps (highest point: the Zugspitze at ) in the south to the shores of the North Sea (Nordsee) in the north-west and the Baltic Sea (Ostsee) in the north-east. The forested uplands of central Germany and the lowlands of northern Germany (lowest point: Wilstermarsch at below sea level) are traversed by such major rivers as the Rhine, Danube and Elbe. Glaciers are found in the Alpine region, but are experiencing deglaciation. Significant natural resources are iron ore, coal, potash, timber, lignite, uranium, copper, natural gas, salt, nickel, arable land and water.

Climate

Most of Germany has a temperate seasonal climate in which humid westerly winds predominate. The climate is moderated by the North Atlantic Drift, the northern extension of the Gulf Stream. This warmer water affects the areas bordering the North Sea; consequently in the north-west and the north the climate is oceanic. Rainfall occurs year-round, especially in the summer. Winters are mild and summers tend to be cool, though temperatures can exceed .

The east has a more continental climate; winters can be very cold and summers very warm, and long dry periods are frequent. Central and southern Germany are transition regions which vary from moderately oceanic to continental. In addition to the maritime and continental climates that predominate over most of the country, the Alpine regions in the extreme south and, to a lesser degree, some areas of the Central German Uplands have a mountain climate, characterised by lower temperatures and greater precipitation.

Biodiversity

The territory of Germany can be subdivided into two ecoregions: European-Mediterranean montane mixed forests and Northeast-Atlantic shelf marine. As of 2008 the majority of Germany is covered by either arable land (34%) or forest and woodland (30.1%); only 13.4% of the area consists of permanent pastures, 11.8% is covered by settlements and streets.

Plants and animals are those generally common to middle Europe. Beeches, oaks, and other deciduous trees constitute one third of the forests; conifers are increasing as a result of reforestation. Spruce and fir trees predominate in the upper mountains, while pine and larch are found in sandy soil. There are many species of ferns, flowers, fungi, and mosses. Wild animals include deer, wild boar, mouflon, fox, badger, hare, and small numbers of beavers.

The national parks in Germany include the Wadden Sea National Parks, the Jasmund National Park, the Vorpommern Lagoon Area National Park, the Müritz National Park, the Lower Oder Valley National Park, the Harz National Park, the Saxon Switzerland National Park and the Bavarian Forest National Park. More than 400 registered zoos and animal parks operate in Germany, which is believed to be the largest number in any country. The Zoologische Garten Berlin is the oldest zoo in Germany and presents the most comprehensive collection of species in the world.

Politics

Germany is a federal, parliamentary, representative democratic republic. The German political system operates under a framework laid out in the 1949 constitutional document known as the ''Grundgesetz'' (Basic Law). Amendments generally require a two-thirds majority of both chambers of parliament; the fundamental principles of the constitution, as expressed in the articles guaranteeing human dignity, the separation of powers, the federal structure, and the rule of law are valid in perpetuity.

The president, currently Christian Wulff, is the head of state and invested primarily with representative responsibilities and powers. He is elected by the ''Bundesversammlung'' (federal convention), an institution consisting of the members of the ''Bundestag'' and an equal number of state delegates. The second-highest official in the German order of precedence is the ''Bundestagspräsident'' (President of the ''Bundestag''), who is elected by the ''Bundestag'' and responsible for overseeing the daily sessions of the body. The third-highest official and the head of government is the Chancellor, who is appointed by the ''Bundespräsident'' after being elected by the ''Bundestag''.

The chancellor, currently Angela Merkel, is the head of government and exercises executive power, similar to the role of a Prime Minister in other parliamentary democracies. Federal legislative power is vested in the parliament consisting of the ''Bundestag'' (Federal Diet) and ''Bundesrat'' (Federal Council), which together form the legislative body. The ''Bundestag'' is elected through direct elections, by proportional representation (mixed-member). The members of the ''Bundesrat'' represent the governments of the sixteen federated states and are members of the state cabinets.

Since 1949, the party system has been dominated by the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party of Germany with all chancellors hitherto being member of either party. However, the smaller liberal Free Democratic Party (which has had members in the ''Bundestag'' since 1949) and the Alliance '90/The Greens (which has controlled seats in parliament since 1983) have also played important roles.

Germany has a civil law system based on Roman law with some references to Germanic law. The ''Bundesverfassungsgericht'' (Federal Constitutional Court) is the German Supreme Court responsible for constitutional matters, with power of judicial review. Germany's supreme court system, called ''Oberste Gerichtshöfe des Bundes'', is specialised: for civil and criminal cases, the highest court of appeal is the inquisitorial Federal Court of Justice, and for other affairs the courts are the Federal Labour Court, the Federal Social Court, the Federal Finance Court and the Federal Administrative Court. The ''Völkerstrafgesetzbuch'' regulates the consequences of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, and gives German courts universal jurisdiction in some circumstances. Criminal and private laws are codified on the national level in the ''Strafgesetzbuch'' and the ''Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch'' respectively. The German penal system is aimed towards rehabilitation of the criminal and the protection of the general public. Except for petty crimes, which are tried before a single professional judge, and serious political crimes, all charges are tried before mixed tribunals on which lay judges ('''') sit side by side with professional judges.

Constituent states

Germany comprises sixteen states that are collectively referred to as ''Länder''. Each state has its own state constitution and is largely autonomous in regard to its internal organisation. Due to differences in size and population the subdivision of these states varies, especially between city states (''Stadtstaaten'') and states with larger territories (''Flächenländer''). For regional administrative purposes five states, namely Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony, consist of a total of 22 Government Districts (''Regierungsbezirke''). As of 2009 Germany is divided into 403 districts (''Kreise'') on municipal level, these consist of 301 rural districts and 102 urban districts.

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Foreign relations

Germany has a network of 229 diplomatic missions abroad and maintains relations with more than 190 countries. As of 2011 it is the largest contributor to the budget of the European Union (providing 20%) and the third largest contributor to the UN (providing 8%). Germany is a member of NATO, the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the G8, the G20, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It has played a leading role in the European Union since its inception and has maintained a strong alliance with France since the end of World War II. Germany seeks to advance the creation of a more unified European political, defence, and security apparatus.

The development policy of the Federal Republic of Germany is an independent area of German foreign policy. It is formulated by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and carried out by the implementing organisations. The German government sees development policy as a joint responsibility of the international community. It is the world's third biggest aid donor after the United States and France.

During the Cold War, Germany's partition by the Iron Curtain made it a symbol of East-West tensions and a political battleground in Europe. However, Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik was a key factor in the ''détente'' of the 1970s. In 1999, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government defined a new basis for German foreign policy by taking part in the NATO decisions surrounding the Kosovo War and by sending German troops into combat for the first time since World War II. The governments of Germany and the United States are close political allies. The 1948 Marshall Plan and strong cultural ties have crafted a strong bond between the two countries, although Schröder's vocal opposition to the Iraq War suggested the end of Atlanticism and a relative cooling of German-American relations. The two countries are also economically interdependent: 8.8% of German exports are U.S.-bound and 6.6% of German imports originate from the U.S.

Military

Germany's military, the ''Bundeswehr'', is organized in ''Heer'' (Army), ''Marine'' (Navy), ''Luftwaffe'' (Air Force), ''Zentraler Sanitätsdienst'' (Central Medical Services) and ''Streitkräftebasis'' (Joint Support Service) branches. As of 2005, military spending was an estimated 1.5% of the country's GDP, that is position 99 in a ranking of all countries; absolutely, German military expenditure is the eighth-highest in the world. In peacetime, the Bundeswehr is commanded by the Minister of Defence. If Germany went to war, which according to the constitution is allowed only for defensive purposes, the Chancellor would become commander in chief of the ''Bundeswehr''.

the Bundeswehr employs 188,000 professional soldiers, 31,000 18–25 year-old conscripts who serve for at least six months. The German government plans to reduce the number of soldiers to 170,000 professionals and up to 15,000 short-time volunteers (''voluntary military service''). Reservists are available to the Armed Forces and participate in defence exercises and deployments abroad, a new reserve concept of their future strength and functions was announced 2011. , the German military had about 6,900 troops stationed in foreign countries as part of international peacekeeping forces, including about 4,900 Bundeswehr troops in the NATO-led ISAF force in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, 1,150 German soldiers in Kosovo, and 300 troops with UNIFIL in Lebanon.

Until 2011, military service was compulsory for men at age 18, and conscripts served six-month tours of duty; conscientious objectors could instead opt for an equal length of ''Zivildienst'' (civilian service), or a six-year commitment to (voluntary) emergency services like a fire department or the Red Cross. On 1 July 2011 conscription was officially suspended and replaced with a voluntary service. Since 2001 women may serve in all functions of service without restriction, but they are not subject to conscription. There are presently some 17,500 women on active duty and a number of female reservists.

Economy

Germany has a social market economy with a highly qualified labour force, a large capital stock, a low level of corruption, and a high level of innovation. It has the largest national economy in Europe, the fourth largest by nominal GDP in the world, and the fifth largest by PPP in 2009. The service sector contributes approximately 71% of the total GDP, industry 28%, and agriculture 0.9%. The average national unemployment rate in 2010 was about 7.5%. First estimates indicate a 3.6% increase in the price-adjusted GDP for 2010, following a 4.7% drop in 2009.

Germany is a founding member of the EU, the G8 and the G20, and was the world's largest exporter from 2003 to 2008. In 2009 it remained the second largest exporter and third largest importer of goods. Most of the country's exports are in engineering, especially machinery, automobiles, chemical goods and metals. Germany is a leading producer of wind turbines and solar-power technology. Annual trade fairs and congresses are held in cities throughout Germany.

Germany is an advocate of closer European economic and political integration. Its commercial policies are increasingly determined by agreements among European Union (EU) members and by EU legislation. Germany introduced the common European currency, the euro, on 1 January 2002. Its monetary policy is set by the European Central Bank. Two decades after German reunification, standards of living and per capita incomes remain significantly higher in the states of the former West Germany than in the former East. The modernisation and integration of the eastern German economy is a long-term process scheduled to last until the year 2019, with annual transfers from west to east amounting to roughly $80 billion. In January 2009 the German government approved a €50 billion economic stimulus plan to protect several sectors from a downturn and a subsequent rise in unemployment rates.

Of the world's 500 largest stock-market-listed companies measured by revenue in 2010, the Fortune Global 500, 37 are headquartered in Germany. 30 Germany-based companies are included in the DAX, the German stock market index. Well-known global brands are Mercedes-Benz, BMW, SAP, Siemens, Volkswagen, Adidas, Audi, Allianz, Porsche, and Nivea. Germany is recognised for its specialised small and medium enterprises. Around 1,000 of these companies are global market leaders in their segment and are labelled hidden champions.

The list includes the largest companies by turnover in 2009. Unranked are the largest bank and the largest insurance company in 2007:

style="text-align:center;" style="text-align:left;" style="text-align:left;" style="text-align:left;" style="text-align:left;" style="text-align:left;" style="text-align:left;" style="text-align:left;" style="text-align:left;" style="text-align:left;" style="text-align:left;"

style="text-align:center;"	Rank	Name||	Headquarters	Revenue(Mil. €)	Profit(Mil. €)	Employees(World)
1	Volkswagen AG ||	Wolfsburg	108,897	4,120	329,305
2	Daimler AG ||	Stuttgart	99,399	3,985	272,382
3	Siemens AG ||	Munich/Berlin	72,488	3,806	398,200
4	E.ON AG ||	Düsseldorf	68,731	7,204	87,815
5	Metro AG ||	Düsseldorf	64,337	825	242,378
6	Deutsche Post AG ||	Bonn	63,512	1,389	475,100
7	Deutsche Telekom AG ||	Bonn	62,516	569	241,426
8	BASF	BASF SE |>style="text-align:left;"| Ludwigshafen ||	57,951	4,065	95,175
9	BMW AG ||	Munich	56,018	3,126	107,539
10	ThyssenKrupp AG ||	Essen/Duisburg	51,723	2,102	191,350

Infrastructure

With its central position in Europe, Germany is a transport hub. This is reflected in its dense and modern transport networks. The motorway (Autobahn) network ranks as the third largest worldwide in length. Germany has established a polycentric network of high-speed trains. The InterCityExpress or ''ICE'' network of the Deutsche Bahn serves major German cities as well as destinations in neighbouring countries. The largest German airports are Frankfurt Airport and Munich Airport, both hubs of Lufthansa, while Air Berlin has hubs at Berlin Tegel and Düsseldorf. Other major airports include Berlin Schönefeld, Hamburg, Cologne/Bonn and Leipzig/Halle. Both airports in Berlin will be consolidated at a site adjacent to Berlin Schönefeld, which will become Berlin Brandenburg Airport in 2012.

, Germany was the world's sixth largest consumer of energy, and 60% of its primary energy was imported. Government policy promotes energy conservation and renewable energy. Energy efficiency has been improving since the early 1970s; the government aims to meet the country's electricity demands using only renewable sources by 2050. In 2010, energy sources were: oil (33.7%); coal, including lignite (22.9%); natural gas (21.8%); nuclear (10.8%); hydro-electric and wind power (1.5%); and other renewable sources (7.9%). In 2000, the government and the nuclear power industry agreed to phase out all nuclear power plants by 2021. Germany is committed to the Kyoto protocol and several other treaties promoting biodiversity, low emission standards, recycling, and the use of renewable energy, and supports sustainable development at a global level. The German government has initiated wide-ranging emission reduction activities and the country's overall emissions are falling. Nevertheless the country's greenhouse gas emissions were the highest in the EU as of 2007.

Science and technology

Germany's achievements in sciences have been significant, and research and development efforts form an integral part of the economy. The Nobel Prize has been awarded to 103 German laureates. For most of the 20th century, German laureates had more awards than those of any other nation, especially in the sciences (physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine).

The work of Albert Einstein and Max Planck was crucial to the foundation of modern physics, which Werner Heisenberg and Max Born developed further. Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays and was the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. Numerous mathematicians were born in Germany, including Carl Friedrich Gauss, David Hilbert, Bernhard Riemann, Gottfried Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, Hermann Weyl and Felix Klein. Research institutions in Germany include the Max Planck Society, the Helmholtz Association and the Fraunhofer Society. The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize is granted to ten scientists and academics every year. With a maximum of €2.5 million per award it is one of highest endowed research prizes in the world.

Germany has been the home of many famous inventors and engineers, such as Johannes Gutenberg, credited with the invention of movable type printing in Europe; Hans Geiger, the creator of the Geiger counter; and Konrad Zuse, who built the first fully automatic digital computer. German inventors, engineers and industrialists such as Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, Otto Lilienthal, Gottlieb Daimler, Rudolf Diesel, Hugo Junkers and Karl Benz helped shape modern automotive and air transportation technology. Aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun developed the first space rocket and later on was a prominent member of NASA and developed the Saturn V Moon rocket, which paved the way for the success of the US Apollo program. Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's work in the domain of electromagnetic radiation was pivotal to the development of modern telecommunication.

Germany is also one of the leading countries in developing and using green technologies. Companies specializing in green technology have an estimated turnover of 200€ billion. Especially the expertise in engineering, science and research of Germany is eminently respectable. The lead markets of Germany's green technology industry are power generation, sustainable mobility, material efficiency, energy efficiency, waste management and recycling, sustainable water management.

Demographics

With its estimated population of 81.8 million in January 2010, Germany is the most populous country in the European Union and ranks as the 15th most populous country in the world. Its population density stands at 229.4 inhabitants per square kilometre. The overall life expectancy in Germany at birth is 79.9 years. The fertility rate of 1.4 children per mother, or 7.9 births per 1000 inhabitants in 2009, is one of the lowest in the world. Since the 1990s, Germany's death rate has continuously exceeded its birth rate. The Federal Statistical Office of Germany forecast that the population will shrink to between 65 and 70 million by 2060 (depending on the level of net migration).

German nationals make up 91% of the population of Germany. As of 2009, about seven million foreign citizens were registered in Germany, and 19% of the country's residents were of foreign or partially foreign descent (including persons descending or partially descending from ethnic German repatriates), 96% of whom lived in Western Germany or Berlin. The United Nations Population Fund lists Germany as host to the third-highest number of international migrants worldwide, about 5% or 10 million of all 191 million migrants. As a consequence of restrictions to Germany's formerly rather unrestricted laws on asylum and immigration, the number of immigrants seeking asylum or claiming German ethnicity (mostly from the former Soviet Union) has been declining steadily since 2000. In 2009, 20% of the population had immigrant roots, the highest since 1945. , the largest national group was from Turkey (2.5 million), followed by Italy (776,000) and Poland (687,000). About 3 million "Aussiedler"—ethnic Germans, mainly from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union—have resettled in Germany since 1987.

Germany has a number of large cities. The largest conurbation is the Rhine-Ruhr region (11.5 million as of 2006), including Düsseldorf (the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia), Cologne, Essen, Dortmund, Duisburg, and Bochum.

Religion

Christianity is the largest religion in Germany, with around 51.5 million adherents (62.8%) in 2008, of which 30.0% are Catholics and 29.9% are Protestants, belonging to the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD); the remainder consists of small denominations (each less than 0.5% of the German population). Protestantism is concentrated in the north and east and [[Roman Catholicism in Germany|Roman Catholicism]] is concentrated in the south and west; 1.6% of the country's overall population declare themselves Orthodox Christians.

The second largest religion is Islam with an estimated 3.8 to 4.3 million adherents (4.6% to 5.2%), followed by Buddhism with 250,000 and Judaism with around 200,000 adherents (0.3%); Hinduism has some 90,000 adherents (0.1%). All other religious communities in Germany have fewer than 50,000 adherents. Of the roughly 4 million Muslims, most are Sunnis and Alevites from Turkey, but there are a small number of Shi'ites and other denominations. Germany has Europe's third largest Jewish population (after France and the United Kingdom). Approximately 50% of the Buddhists in Germany are Asian immigrants. Germans with no stated religious adherence make up 34.1% of the population, especially in the former East Germany and major metropolitan areas.

Languages

German is the official and predominant spoken language in Germany. It is one of 23 official languages in the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission. Recognised native minority languages in Germany are Danish, Low German, Sorbian, Romany, and Frisian; they are officially protected by the ECRML. The most used immigrant languages are Turkish, Kurdish, Polish, the Balkan languages, and Russian; 67% of German citizens claim to be able to communicate in at least one foreign language and 27% in at least two languages other than their own.

Standard German is a West Germanic language and is closely related to and classified alongside English, Low German, Dutch, and the Frisian languages. To a lesser extent, it is also related to the East (extinct) and North Germanic languages. Most German vocabulary is derived from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Significant minorities of words are derived from Latin and Greek, with a smaller amount from French and most recently English (known as Denglisch). German is written using the Latin alphabet. German dialects, traditional local varieties traced back to the Germanic tribes, are distinguished from varieties of standard German by their lexicon, phonology, and syntax.

Education

Over 99% of Germans age 15 and above are estimated to be able to read and write. However, a growing number of inhabitants are functionally illiterate. Responsibility for educational oversight in Germany lies primarily with the individual federated states. Since the 1960s, a reform movement attempted to unify secondary education in a ''Gesamtschule'' (comprehensive school); several West German states later simplified their school system to two or three tiers. A system of apprenticeship called ''Duale Ausbildung'' ("dual education") allows pupils in vocational training to learn in a company as well as in a state-run vocational school.

Optional kindergarten education is provided for all children between three and six years old, after which school attendance is compulsory for at least nine years. Primary education usually lasts for four years and public schools are not stratified at this stage. In contrast, secondary education includes three traditional types of schools focused on different levels of academic ability: the ''Gymnasium'' enrols the most gifted children and prepares students for university studies; the ''Realschule'' for intermediate students lasts six years; the ''Hauptschule'' prepares pupils for vocational education.

The general entrance requirement for university is Abitur, a qualification normally based on continuous assessment during the last few years at school and final examinations; however there are a number of exceptions, and precise requirements vary, depending on the state, the university and the subject. Germany's universities are recognised internationally; in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) for 2008, six of the top 100 universities in the world are in Germany, and 18 of the top 200. Nearly all German universities are public institutions, charging tuition fees of €50–500 per semester for each student.

Health

Germany has the world's oldest universal health care system, dating back to Otto von Bismarck's Social legislation in 1883. Currently the population is covered by a basic health insurance plan provided by statute. According to the World Health Organization, Germany's health care system was 77% government-funded and 23% privately funded as of 2005. In 2005, Germany spent 11% of its GDP on health care. Germany ranked 20th in the world in life expectancy with 77 years for men and 82 years for women, and it had a very low infant mortality rate (4 per 1,000 live births).

, the principal cause of death was cardiovascular disease, at 42%, followed by malignant tumours, at 25%. , about 82,000 Germans had been infected with HIV/AIDS and 26,000 had died from the disease (cumulatively, since 1982). According to a 2005 survey, 27% of German adults are smokers. A 2007 study shows Germany has the highest number of overweight people in Europe.

Culture

From its roots, culture in Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular. Historically Germany has been called ''Das Land der Dichter und Denker'' (the land of poets and thinkers). The federated states are in charge of the cultural institutions. There are 240 subsidised theatres, hundreds of symphonic orchestras, thousands of museums and over 25,000 libraries spread in Germany. These cultural opportunities are enjoyed by many: there are over 91 million German museum visits every year; annually, 20 million go to theatres and operas; 3.6 million per year listen to the symphonic orchestras. The UNESCO inscribed 33 properties in Germany on the World Heritage List.

Germany has established a high level of gender equality, promotes disability rights, and is legally and socially tolerant towards homosexuals. Gays and lesbians can legally adopt their partner's biological children, and civil unions have been permitted since 2001. Germany has also changed its attitude towards immigrants; since the mid-1990s, the government and the majority of Germans have begun to acknowledge that controlled immigration should be allowed based on qualification standards. Germany has been named the world's second most valued nation among 50 countries in 2010. A global opinion poll for the BBC revealed that Germany is recognised for having the most positive influence in the world in 2011.

Arts

! align=center	Ludwig van Beethoven	! align=center

Numerous German painters have enjoyed international prestige through their work in diverse artistic styles. Matthias Grünewald, and Albrecht Dürer were important artists of the Renaissance, Caspar David Friedrich of Romanticism, and Max Ernst of Surrealism. Architectural contributions from Germany include the [[Carolingian architecture">Carolingian and Ottonian styles, which were precursors of Romanesque. The region later became the site of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque art. Germany was particularly important in the early modern movement, especially through the Bauhaus movement founded by Walter Gropius. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became one of the world's most renowned architects in the second half of the 20th century. He conceived of the glass façade skyscraper.

German music includes works by some of the world's most well-known classical music composers, including Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, and Richard Wagner. As of 2008, Germany is the fourth largest music market in the world and has influenced popular music through artists such as Kraftwerk, Alphaville, Boney M., Nena, Nico, Nina Hagen, Scorpions, Die Toten Hosen, Tokio Hotel, Rammstein, and Paul van Dyk.

Literature and philosophy

German literature can be traced back to the Middle Ages and the works of writers such as Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. Well-known German authors include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. The collections of folk tales published by the Brothers Grimm popularised German folklore on an international level. Influential authors of the 20th century include Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Hesse, Heinrich Böll, and Günter Grass. German-speaking book publishers produce some 700 million books every year, with about 80,000 titles, nearly 60,000 of them new. Germany comes third in quantity of books published, after the English-speaking book market and the People's Republic of China. The Frankfurt Book Fair is the most important in the world for international deals and trading, with a tradition spanning over 500 years.

German philosophy is historically significant. Gottfried Leibniz's contributions to rationalism; the establishment of classical German idealism by Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling; Arthur Schopenhauer's composition of metaphysical pessimism; the formulation of communist theory by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; Friedrich Nietzsche's development of perspectivism; Gottlob Frege's contributions to the dawn of analytic philosophy; Martin Heidegger's works on Being; and the development of the Frankfurt school by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas have been particularly influential. In the 21st century Germany has contributed to the development of contemporary analytic philosophy in continental Europe, along with France, Austria, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries.

Media

German cinema dates back to the earliest years of the medium with the work of Max Skladanowsky, which was particularly influential with German expressionists such as Robert Wiene and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Director Fritz Lang's ''Metropolis'' (1927) is referred to as the first modern science-fiction film. In 1930 the Austrian-American Josef von Sternberg directed ''The Blue Angel'', the first major German sound film. During the 1970s and 1980s, New German Cinema directors such as Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder put West German cinema on the international stage. The annual European Film Awards ceremony is held every other year in Berlin, home of the European Film Academy (EFA); the Berlin Film Festival, held annually since 1951, is one of the world's foremost film festivals.

More recently, films such as ''Good Bye Lenin!'' (2003), ''Gegen die Wand (Head-on)'' (2004), ''Der Untergang (Downfall)'' (2004), and ''Der Baader Meinhof Komplex'' (2008) have had international success. The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film went to the German production ''Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum)'' in 1979, to ''Nowhere in Africa'' in 2002, and to ''Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)'' in 2007. Germany's television market is the largest in Europe, with some 34 million TV households. Around 90% of German households have cable or satellite TV, with a variety of free-to-view public and commercial channels.

Cuisine

German cuisine varies from region to region. The southern regions of Bavaria and Swabia, for instance, share a culinary culture with Switzerland and Austria. In all regions, meat is often eaten in sausage form. Organic food has gained a market share of ca. 2%, and is expected to increase further. Although wine is becoming more popular in many parts of Germany, the national alcoholic drink is beer. German beer consumption per person is declining, but at 116 litres annually it is still among the highest in the world. The Michelin guide has awarded nine restaurants in Germany three stars, the highest designation, while 15 more received two stars. German restaurants have become the world's second-most decorated after France.

Sports

Twenty-seven million Germans are members of a sports club and an additional twelve million pursue sports individually. Association football is the most popular sport. With more than 6.3 million official members, the German Football Association (''Deutscher Fußball-Bund'') is the largest sports organisation of its kind worldwide. The Bundesliga attracts the second highest average attendance of any professional sports league in the world.

The German national football team won the FIFA World Cup in 1954, 1974 and 1990 and the UEFA European Football Championship in 1972, 1980 and 1996. Germany hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1974 and 2006 and the UEFA European Football Championship in 1988. Among the most well-known footballers are Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller, Jürgen Klinsmann, Lothar Matthäus, and Oliver Kahn. Other popular spectator sports include handball, volleyball, basketball, ice hockey, and tennis.

Germany is one of the leading motor sports countries in the world. Constructors like BMW and Mercedes are prominent manufacturers in motor sport. Additionally, Porsche has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, an annual endurance race held in France, 16 times, and Audi has won it 9 times. Formula One driver Michael Schumacher has set many motor sport records during his career, having won more Formula One World Drivers' Championships and more Formula One races than any other driver; he is one of the highest paid sportsmen in history.

Historically, German sportsmen have been successful contenders in the Olympic Games, ranking third in an all-time Olympic Games medal count, combining East and West German medals. In the 2008 Summer Olympics, Germany finished fifth in the medal count, while in the 2006 Winter Olympics they finished first. Germany has hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice, in Berlin in 1936 and in Munich in 1972. The Winter Olympic Games took place in Germany once in 1936 in the twin towns of Garmisch and Partenkirchen.

See also

References

;Work cited

External links

deutschland.de – Official Germany portal (non-profit)

Official site of German Chancellor

Deutsche Welle – Germany's international broadcaster

Germany at ''UCB Libraries GovPubs''

Facts about Germany – by the German Federal Foreign Office

Destatis.de – Federal Statistical Office Germany

}} }}

Category:Alpine countries Category:Countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean Category:Countries bordering the Baltic Sea Category:European countries Category:Federal countries Category:G8 nations Category:G20 nations Category:German-speaking countries Category:Liberal democracies Category:Member states of NATO Category:Member states of the European Union Category:Member states of the Union for the Mediterranean Category:States and territories established in 1871 Category:Western Europe Category:Member states of the United Nations

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Coordinates	40°37′29″N73°57′8″N
name	Marika Rökk
birth date	November 03, 1913
birth place	Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt
death date	May 16, 2004
death place	Baden bei Wien, Austria
occupation	Actress
yearsactive	1930–1988
spouse	Georg Jacoby (1940–1964)Fred Raul (1968–1985) }}

Marika Rökk (3 November 1913 – 16 May 2004) was an Austrian-German singer, dancer and actress of Hungarian descent, who became famous in German films, notably in the Nazi era.

Life and work

Rökk was born in Cairo, Egypt, the daughter of the Hungarian architect Eduard Rökk and his wife Maria Karoly. She spent her early childhood in Budapest, before in 1924 her family moved to Paris. Here she learned to dance and starred as a dancer with the "Hoffmann Girls" at the Moulin Rouge cabaret. After a tour that led her to the Broadway and several cities in the United States, she came to the United Kingdom where she acted in her first film, ''Why Sailors Leave Home'' (1930) directed by Monty Banks, starring Leslie Fuller.

In 1934, Rökk was offered a contract with the Universum Film AG (UFA) in Germany, where she became one of the most famous filmstars of the time, performing in operetta movies like ''Leichte Kavallerie'', ''Der Bettelstudent'' or ''Gasparone'' together with Johannes Heesters. She had her final breakthrough with a double role in ''Kora Terry'', a 1940 film directed by her future husband Georg Jacoby with several dance interludes quite revealing at that time. In the same year, Rökk appeared in the propaganda film ''Wunschkonzert'' by Eduard von Borsody (as herself), followed by her performance in Georg Jacoby's ''Women Are Better Diplomats'' (''Frauen sind doch bessere Diplomaten'', UFA's first Agfacolor motion picture) in 1941, together with Willy Fritsch.

After World War II, she received a profession ban, but was rehabilitated in 1947 and could continue her movie career. In 1948 she was among the first recipients of the German Bambi media award. Rökk became one of Europe's most famous operetta singers, performing on stage until 1986.

She was married to Georg Jacoby from 1940 until his death in 1964, and to Hungarian actor Fred Raul from 1968 until he died in 1985. She is the mother of actress Gabriele Jacoby.

Rökk died of a heart attack in Baden bei Wien, Austria.

Awards

1948, 1968, 1987, 1990, 1998 Bambi

1981 ''Deutscher Filmpreis'', Special Award for Outstanding Contributions to German Cinema

1987 Bavarian Film Awards, Best Actress

Filmography

''Why Sailors Leave Home'' (1930)

''Csókolj meg, édes!'' (1932)

''Kiss Me Sergeant'' (1932)

''Kísértetek vonata'' (1933)

''Leichte Kavallerie'' (1935)

''Heißes Blut'' (1936)

''Der Bettelstudent'' (1936)

''Und du mein Schatz fährst mit'' (1937)

''Karussell'' (1937)

''Gasparone'' (1937)

''Eine Nacht im Mai'' (1938)

''Tanzendes Herz'' (1939)

''Vadrózsa'' (1939)

''Es war eine rauschende Ballnacht'' (1939)

''Hallo Janine!'' (1939)

''Kora Terry'' (1940)

''Wunschkonzert'' (1940)

''Zirkusblut'' (1940)

''Tanz mit dem Kaiser'' (1941)

''Hab mich lieb'' (1942)

''Die Frau meiner Träume'' (1944)

''Frauen sind doch bessere Diplomaten'' (1941)

''Fregola'' (1949)

''Sensation in San Remo'' (1951)

''Kind der Donau'' (1950)

''Die Czardasfürstin'' (1951)

''Maske in Blau'' (1953)

''Die geschiedene Frau'' (1953)

''Nachts im grünen Kakadu'' (1957)

''Das gab's nur einmal'' (1958)

''Bühne frei für Marika'' (1958)

''Die Nacht vor der Premiere'' (1959)

''Mein Mann, das Wirtschaftswunder'' (1961)

''Heute gehn wir bummeln'' (1961)

''Hochzeitsnacht im Paradies'' (1962)

''Die Fledermaus'' (1962)

''Der letzte Walzer'' (1973)

''Schloß Königswald'' (1988)

References

External links

Films, bibliography, photographs

Category:1913 births Category:2004 deaths Category:20th-century actors Category:Austrian film actors Category:German film actors Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:People from Budapest

de:Marika Rökk es:Marika Rökk eo:Marika Rökk fr:Marika Rökk it:Marika Rökk hu:Rökk Marika nl:Marika Rökk pl:Marika Rökk pt:Marika Rökk ru:Рёкк, Марика tr:Marika Rökk uk:Маріка Рьокк