native name	''Großdeutsches Reich''
conventional long name	Greater German Realm
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	Surrender of Germany
year end	1945
date end	8 May
legislature	Reichstag
house1	Reichsrat
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 German Reich (1935–1945).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 expansion, 1941–1942
national motto	"One People, one Realm, one Leader"
national anthem
capital	Berlin
largest city	capital
common languages	German
government type	Nazi single-party stateTotalitarian dictatorship
title leader	President / Führer
leader1	Paul von Hindenburg
year leader1	1933–1934
leader2	Adolf Hitler
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
stat area1	696265
stat pop1	90030775
stat year1	1941 (Großdeutschland)
ref area1
currency	Reichsmark (ℛℳ)
today
Footnotes	}}

Nazi Germany, also called the Third Reich, was the name for Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian state ruled by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP). Nazi Germany is best known for its aggressive foreign policy, for launching World War II in Europe and the Holocaust, which resulted in the death of millions of European Jews and other minorities.

On 30 January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of Germany, quickly eliminating all opposition to rule as sole leader. The state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Under the ''Führerprinzip'' ("leader principle"), the Führer's word was considered to be above all other laws. Top officials reported to Hitler and followed his policies, but they had considerable autonomy. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power and curry favor with the Führer. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazi government restored prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy of free-market and central-planning practices. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of the ''Autobahns''. The return to prosperity gave the regime enormous popularity and made Hitler's rule mostly unchallenged.

Racism, especially antisemitism, was a main tenet of society in Nazi Germany. The Gestapo (secret state police) and ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) under Heinrich Himmler destroyed the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition and persecuted and murdered the Jews. It was believed that the Germanic peoples—who were also referred to as the Nordic race—were the purest representation of the Aryan race, and were therefore the master race. Education focused on racial biology, population policy, and physical fitness. Membership in the Hitler Youth organization became compulsory. The number of women enrolled in post-secondary education plummeted, and womens' rights were sharply curtailed. Entertainment and tourism were organized via the Strength Through Joy program. The government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific forms of art and discouraging or banning others. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, and Hitler's hypnotizing oratory to control public opinion. The 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage.

Nazi Germany made aggressive demands for territory, threatening war if they were not met. Austria was annexed in the ''Anschluss'' in 1938, and the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia was taken via the Munich Agreement that same year. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939, starting World War II in Europe. In alliance with Benito Mussolini's Italy, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, and threatened its remaining major foe: Great Britain. ''Reichskommissariate'' (Reich Commissariats) were established in conquered areas, and a German administration termed the General Government was established in Poland. Concentration camps, established as early as 1933, were used to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime. The number of camps quadrupled between 1939 and 1942 to 300+, as slave-laborers from across Europe, Jews, political prisoners, criminals, homosexuals, gypsies, the mentally ill and others were imprisoned.

The tide turned after the failure of Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of the Soviet Union—in 1941. The Soviets counter-attacked in a series of huge, fierce battles that overwhelmed the Nazis. Germany was overrun in 1945 by the Soviets from the east and the remaining Allies from the west. The victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put the Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials.

Name[link]

The official name of the state was the ''Deutsches Reich'' ("German Realm") from 1933 to 1943, and the ''Großdeutsches Reich'' ("Greater German Realm") from 1943 to 1945. The name ''Deutsches Reich'' has often been translated into English as the "German Empire" or the partially translated "German Reich", but it literally means "German Realm". The term "reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people, the term "''Kaiserreich''" literally denotes an empire - particularly a hereditary empire led by a literal emperor, though "''reich''" has been used in German to denote the Roman Empire because it has a weak hereditary tradition. In the case of the German Empire, the official name was ''Deutsches Reich'' that is properly translated as "German Realm" because the official position of head of state in the constitution of the German Empire was officially a "presidency" of a confederation of German states led by the King of Prussia who would assume "the title of German Emperor" as referring to the German people but was not emperor of Germany as in an emperor of a state.

The most popular English terms are "Nazi Germany" and "Third Reich." The latter suggests a historical succession from the medieval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) and the modern German Empire (1871–1918). Historiographically, Germans today refer to the period as ''Zeit des Nationalsozialismus'' or the abbreviated ''NS-Zeit'' ("National Socialist period").

History[link]

The Nazi movement arose among angry young veterans in the early 1920s; they rejected the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the Weimar republic, and democracy generally. They called for a revival of the Aryan race and blamed the Jews for Germany's troubles. Highly effective Nazi propaganda effectively used the "Stab-in-the-back legend" to explain the German military defeat in 1918—that is that Jews, Communists and other subversives in Berlin were to blame. The Nazi movement was small until the global Great Depression that began in 1929. It intensified the reaction against the modernity and liberalism of the Weimar Republic,. Simultaneously on the left the Communist Party of Germany, controlled by Moscow, gained strength as the middle was squeezed. Many Germans decided the Nazi Party was capable of restoring order, quelling civil unrest, and restoring Germany's international reputation.

The Nazis promised a strong authoritarian government, civic peace, radical economic policies (including full employment), increased ''Lebensraum'' ("living space") for Germanic peoples, formation of a national community based on race, and racial cleansing via the active suppression of Jews. The Nazis promised national and cultural renewal based upon the ''Völkisch'' movement, traditionalism, proposed rearmament, repudiation of reparations, and reclamation of territory lost to the Treaty of Versailles. After the federal election of 1932, the Nazis were the largest party in the ''Reichstag'', holding 230 seats.

On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg, under pressure from Franz von Papen, appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. This event is knows as the ''Machtergreifung'' ("seizure of power"). 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 did not have a majority, so Hitler led a short-lived coalition government formed by the NSDAP and the German National People's Party (DNVP).

Consolidation of power[link]

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; a Dutch communist was found guilty. 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 to suppress their opponents. 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 Nazi anthem "Horst-Wessel-Lied" ("Horst Wessel Song") became a second national anthem.

On 30 January 1934, Chancellor Hitler formally centralized government power to himself with the Act to Rebuild the Reich, by disbanding ''Länder'' (federal state) parliaments and transferring states’ powers and administration to the Berlin central government. The centralization began soon after the March 1933 Enabling Act promulgation, when state governments were replaced with 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 in 1938), Hitler had personal discretion to appoint their mayors.

By spring of 1934, only the army remained independent of government control; traditionally, it was separate from the national government, a discrete entity. Ernst Röhm, leader of the Nazi paramilitary ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA, "Storm Detachment"), which had several million members, intended to assume command of the ''Reichswehr'' and absorb it into its ranks. To complement the "nationalist revolution", Röhm favored a "second revolution", which would tear down industrialists, big business, the Junker aristorcracy, and Prussian control of the military. Matters came to a head in June 1934 when President Hindenburg informed Hitler that if he didn't move to curb the SA then Hindenburg would dissolve the Government and declare martial law.

Convinced by Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring that a plot was afoot to depose him, 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, and resulted in up to 200 deaths. While some Germans were shocked by the killing, others admired Hitler's decisive actions to restore order.

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 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 Weimar 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 a racial version of the Pan-German 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, and 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 Joseph 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[link]

Germany pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933. 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 became 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 in the Rhineland, 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).

Austria and Czechoslovakia[link]

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 Sudeten German Party, Konrad Henlein, to make a number of unacceptable demands to the Czechoslovak government. Mussolini insisted that Hitler meet the British and French prime ministers to discuss the Czechoslovak 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 Czechoslovak 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 for 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, Chamberlain 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 ''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 but 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 envoys to Moscow with the aim of tying Stalin into a pact. Molotov, Stalin's foreign minister, visited 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 Sudetenland 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[link]

Conquest of Europe[link]

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. The British bombed Berlin, which sent Hitler into a rage. The German leader ordered attacks on British cities, and Britain 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. The Germans lost the Battle of Britain in fall 1940, but then turned to planning the invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, June 1941. Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Hitler hoped that rapid success in the Soviet Union would bring Britain to the negotiating table.

Operation Barbarossa was supposed to begin earlier, however, failed Italian ventures in North Africa and the Balkans caused Hitler concern. 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, 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 control in the Balkans. 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 Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, and Turkey.

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, 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[link]

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''). During the Nazi regime some six million Jews, and a sizeable number of Romani people, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles and other Slavs, Soviet POWs, people with mental and/or physical disabilities, homosexuals, and members of the political and religious opposition were killed. Altogether, 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.

In addition to eliminating the Jews the Nazis also planned the ethnic cleansing of some 30–45 million Slavs (Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, etc.) who would have been ruthlessly moved or killed in order to make way for 10 million German settlers. It was the ''Generalplan Ost'' (General Plan East) for the conquest, ethnic cleansing, and exploitation of the populaces of the captured territories. The food that went to Russians would be diverted to the German army and German civilians. The Russians would starve and their cities razed and turned into forests. Nationalists of peoples who had lived under Soviet rule as well as anti-communists of all nationalities collaborated with the Nazi occupation. 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 into the ''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[link]

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, severely damaging, 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.

While the strict state intervention into the economy, and the massive rearmament policy, almost led to full employment during the 1930s (statistics didn't include non-citizens or women), real wages in Germany dropped by roughly 25% between 1933 and 1938. 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". Speer established a war economy in Nazi Germany, which reduced civilian consumptions and made the war economy more efficient.

By 1944, the war was consuming 75% of German GDP, compared to 60% in the Soviet Union, 55% in Britain, and 45% in the U.S.

The highest high priority went to the manufacture of warplanes, which had been poorly coordinated and relied too heavily on skilled workers, who were in short supply. Speer produced a dramatic rise in production after 1942. His methods included streamlined organization, the use of single-purpose machines operated by unskilled workers, and the rationalization of production methods, and better coordination between the many different forms that made tens of thousands of components. Factories were relocated away from rail yards which were bombing targets. The system finally caught up with British production by 1944, but by then it was far too late and gasoline supplies meant the new warplanes had little flying time.

The economy now relied heavily upon the large-scale employment of forced labourers. To help operate the factories and farms, Germany took in some 12 million people, from some 20 European countries; approximately 75 per cent were Eastern European. They worked long hours, typically in munitions factories; many were assigned to clearing rubble after bombing raids. They received poor air raid protection, and many were casualties of Allied bombing. The very bad living conditions produced high rates of sickness, injury and death, as well as sabotage and criminality.

Women played an increasingly large role. Hagemann reports that in 1944 over a half million served as auxiliaries in the German armed forces, especially in anti-aircraft units of the Luftwaffe; a half million worked in civil aerial defense; and 400,000 were volunteer nurses in hospitals. Large numbers replaced drafted men in the wartime economy, especially on farms and in small family-owned shops.

Very heavy strategic bombing by the U.S. and Britain focused on the German transportation system, especially rail yards, canals, and refineries making synthetic oil and gasoline. The Luftwaffe tried to defend those targets but in turn was itself destroyed. Oil, diesel and gasoline supplies dried up by late 1944, and the railways were so disrupted that the economy went into a death spiral. Overy argues that the bombing created not only major social dislocation but a defensive response that strained the German war economy and forced it to divert up to one-fourth of its manpower and industry into anti-aircraft resources. Overy concludes the bombing campaign probably shortened the war.

Politics[link]

The Nazi state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("Leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Nazi propaganda centered on Hitler and created 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. Top officials reported to Hitler and followed his basic policies, but they had considerable autonomy on a daily basis.

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[link]

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[link]

Cabinet Hitler

Cabinet Schwerin von Krosigk

National authorities[link]

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[link]

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[link]

NSDAP Office of Racial Policy

NSDAP Office of Colonial Policy

NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs

Amt Rosenberg

Reich ministries[link]

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[link]

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'' 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.

Law[link]

Most of the judicial structures and legal codes of the Weimar Republic remained in use during and after 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 and 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.

Racial policy[link]

From the very earliest speeches and writings of Hitler, it was clear that the Jewish community in Germany were an object of hatred. Nazi ideology laid down strict rules about who was or was not of pure "Aryan" blood, actions were set into motion to purify the Aryan race—which was said to be identical with the Nordic race, followed by lesser sub-races of the Aryan race to represent an ideal and pure—master race. On 1 April 1933, Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish places of business. 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 their German citizenship. Marriage between Jews and Aryans was forbidden. Further rights were lost over the next few years. Jews were excluded from many professions and from shopping at many stores. Many towns posted signs forbidding the entry of Jews.

In November 1938, a young Jewish male in Paris requested an interview with the German ambassador and 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. The SA was given the task of attacking synagogues and Jewish property throughout Germany. During ''Kristallnacht'', the Night of Broken Glass, at least ninety-one German Jews were killed and Jewish property throughout was destroyed. This phase of exclusion made it very clear that the Jews in Germany were to be targeted in the future. To further illustrate, the Jewish communities were fined one billion marks and told that they would not receive compensation for their losses.

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.

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[link]

Education[link]

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 in order to prepare the Germans mentally, spiritually and physically for warfare. science textbooks presented natural selection in terms meant to underline the concept of racial purity. Anti-Semitic policy led to the expulsion in 1933 all of Jewish teachers, 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''). Most teachers were required to belong to the National Socialist Teachers' Association (''Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund'' , NSLB). All university professors were required to be a member in good standing of the National Socialist Association of University Lecturers.

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. 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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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, Biddiscombe argues 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, publicly, Nazi propaganda opposed adultery and upheld the sanctity 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 illegitimate children of dead soldiers, were greeted with protests. 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 and were forbidden and under penalty (Aryans 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[link]

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[link]

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 Hitler and 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. Himmler made efforts to ban the hunting of animals. Göring was an animal lover and conservationist. The current animal welfare laws in Germany are adapted from 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''.

Sports[link]

Sports played a central role in the Nazi goal of building strong young athletes to create the "perfect" race and help build Germany into a sports power. The political symbolism of masses of virile near-naked bodies occupying public spaces fit easily into the propaganda system, as typified by the 1938 film about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, "Olympia".

Established in 1934, the "Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen" (known by the acronyms ''NSRL'' or ''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.

Legacy[link]

Starting with the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–46, in which top Nazi leaders were tried for war crimes (and executed or given long prison terms), Hitler, Nazism, and (by the 1960s) the Holocaust became symbols of evil in the modern world. For the 21st century, Newman and Erber (2002) reported, "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, such as the swastika, the name of any of the principal Nazis, or their garb or affectations...." There is a high level of historical interest in the popular media as well as in academic world. Evans says it, "exerts an almost universal appeal because its murderous racism stands as a warning to the whole of humanity."

See also[link]

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

Notes[link]

{{notes | notes =

{{efn | name = statistics | In 1939, before Germany acquired control of the last two regions which had been in its control before the Versailles Treaty—Alsace-Lorraine, Danzig, and the part of West Prussia colloquially known as the "Polish Corridor"—its area was . See . }} }}

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

Further reading[link]

Surveys and reference[link]

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)

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

The Third Reich

Third Reich in Ruins (Photos)

Lebendiges Museum Online

Category:Former republics Category:Single-party states Category:States and territories established in 1933 Category:States and territories disestablished in 1945

af:Nazi-Duitsland als:Deutsches Reich (1933–1945) ang:Nazi Þēodscland ar:ألمانيا النازية an:Tercer Reich az:Üçüncü Reyx zh-min-nan:Nazi Tek-kok be:Нацысцкая Германія be-x-old:Трэці Райх bg:Германска империя (1933-1945) bs:Treći rajh br:Trede Reich ca:Tercer Reich cv:Виççĕмĕш райх cs:Nacistické Německo cy:Yr Almaen Natsïaidd da:Nazi-Tyskland de:Deutsches Reich 1933 bis 1945 et:Kolmas Riik el:Ναζιστική Γερμανία es:Alemania nazi eo:Nazia Germanio eu:Hirugarren Reicha fa:آلمان نازی hif:Nazi Germany fr:Troisième Reich fy:Nazi-Dútslân ga:Gearmáin na Naitsithe gl:Alemaña nazi ko:나치 독일 hy:Նացիստական Գերմանիա hr:Treći Reich id:Jerman Nazi ia:Germania Nazi os:Æртыккаг Рейх is:Þriðja ríkið it:Germania nazista he:גרמניה הנאצית jv:Jerman Nazi krc:Ючюнчю рейх ka:მესამე რაიხი kk:Үшінші Рейх sw:Dola la Tatu ku:Almanyaya Nazî la:Germania Nazistica lv:Trešais reihs lt:Trečiasis Reichas hu:Harmadik Birodalom mk:Нацистичка Германија ml:നാസി ജർമ്മനി mr:नाझी जर्मनी arz:المانيا النازيه mzn:آلمان نازی ms:Jerman Nazi mwl:Almanha Nazi mn:Нацист Герман nl:Nazi-Duitsland nds-nl:Nazi-Duutslaand new:नाजी जर्मनी ja:ナチス・ドイツ no:Tysklands historie (1933–1945) nn:Det tredje riket nov:Nazi Germania oc:Tresen Reich pfl:Daitsches Raisch vun 1933 bis 1945 pnb:نازی جرمنی pl:III Rzesza pt:Alemanha Nazi ro:Imperiul German 1933-1945 rue:Націстічне Нїмецько ru:Третий рейх stq:Nazi-Düütsklound sq:Gjermania Naziste simple:Nazi Germany sk:Nacistické Nemecko sl:Tretji rajh sr:Трећи рајх sh:Treći rajh su:Jérman Nazi fi:Natsi-Saksa sv:Nazityskland tl:Alemanyang Nazi ta:நாட்சி ஜெர்மனி th:นาซีเยอรมนี tr:Nazi Almanyası uk:Третій Рейх ur:نازی جرمنی vi:Đức Quốc Xã fiu-vro:Kolmas Riik war:Alemanya Nazi yi:נאצי דייטשלאנד yo:Jẹ́mánì Nazi zh-yue:納粹德國 bat-smg:Trets Reichs zh:納粹德國

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
Ethnic groups	Germans 87.5%, Other European 6.5%, Turks 2.1%, Africans 2%, Asians 1%, Other 1%
Capital	Berlin
Largest city	capital
Government type	Federal parliamentary constitutional republic
Leader title1	President
Leader name1	Joachim Gauck
Leader title2	Chancellor
Leader name2	Angela Merkel
Leader title3	President of the Bundestag
Leader name3	Norbert Lammert
Leader title4	President of the Bundesrat
Leader name4	Horst Seehofer
Legislature
Upper house	Bundesrat
Lower house	Bundestag
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	16th
Population estimate rank	16th
Population density km2	229
Population density sq mi	593
Population density rank	55th
Gdp ppp year	2011
Gdp ppp	$3.099 trillion
Gdp ppp rank	5th
Gdp ppp per capita	$37,896
Gdp ppp per capita rank	18th
Gdp nominal	$3.577 trillion
Gdp nominal rank	4th
Gdp nominal year	2011
Gdp nominal per capita	$43,741
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)Swiss franc (''de facto'' in Büsingen)
Currency code	EUR, CHF
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 Period, 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. 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, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise 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 Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. 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 Great Power and 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[link]

Germanic tribes and Frankish Empire[link]

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: Alemanni, 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[link]

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 The Ninety-Five 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[link]

Following the fall of Napoleon, 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 Minister President 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 Confederation (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 Nazi Regime[link]

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 democratic Weimar Constitution was signed by President Friedrich Ebert. Suffering from the Great Depression of 1929, 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 legend, 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, Austria was annexed, and in 1939, Czechoslovakia was brought under German control. 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 most of continental Europe and North Africa, though plans to force the United Kingdom to an armistice or surrender 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 approximately six million Jews, and a sizeable number of Romani people, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles and other Slavs, Soviet POWs, people with mental and/or physical disabilities, homosexuals, and members of the political and religious 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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

The territory of Germany can be subdivided into two ecoregions: European-Mediterranean montane mixed forests and Northeast-Atlantic shelf marine. 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[link]

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 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[link]

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''). 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[link]

Germany has a network of 229 diplomatic missions abroad and maintains relations with more than 190 countries. 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[link]

Germany's military, the ''Bundeswehr'', is organized in ''Heer'' (Army), ''Marine'' (Navy), ''Luftwaffe'' (Air Force), ''Bundeswehr Joint Medical Service'' and ''Streitkräftebasis'' (Joint Support Service) branches. , military spending was an estimated 1.3% of the country's GDP, that is low in a ranking of all countries; in absolute terms, German military expenditure is the ninth-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 183,000 professional soldiers and 17,000 volunteers. 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[link]

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 official average national unemployment rate in March 2012 was 7.2%. However, the official average national unemployment rate also includes people with a part-time job that are looking for a full-time job. The unofficial average national unemployment rate in 2011 was 5.7%.

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[link]

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 with speeds up to 300 kph (186 mph). 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 .

Science and technology[link]

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 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[link]

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 16th 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 1970s, 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. , 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 West 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 (11.7 million ), including Düsseldorf (the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia), Cologne, Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, and Bochum.

Religion[link]

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. German Muslims, a large portion of whom are of Turkish origin, lack full official state recognition of their religious community. 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. German reunification in 1990 greatly increased the country’s non-religious population, a legacy of the state atheism of the previously Soviet-controlled East. Christian church membership has decreased in recent decades, particularly among Protestants.

Languages[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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 fairly comprehensive health insurance plan provided by statute. Certain groups of people (lifetime officials, self-employed persons, employees with high income) can opt out of the plan and switch to a private insurance contract. Previously, these groups could also choose to do without insurance, but this option was dropped in 2009. According to the World Health Organization, Germany's health care system was 77% government-funded and 23% privately funded . 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 41%, followed by malignant tumours, at 26%. , 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.

Culture[link]

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[link]

! 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, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. , 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[link]

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, Friedrich Schiller, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Theodor Fontane. The collections of folk tales published by the Brothers Grimm popularised German folklore on an international level. Influential authors of the 20th century include Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, 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[link]

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 ''The Baader Meinhof Complex'' (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[link]

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 121.4 litres in 2009 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[link]

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[link]

Outline of Germany

Index of Germany-related articles

References[link]

;Work cited

External links[link]

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

Key Development Forecasts for Germany from International Futures

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name	Stephen Fry
birth name	Stephen John Fry
birth date	August 24, 1957
birth place	Hampstead, London, England
occupation	Actor, comedian, author, journalist, broadcaster, film director
nationality	British
years active	1981–present
partner	Daniel Cohen (1995–2010)
alma mater	Queens' College, Cambridge
parents	Alan John Fry Marianne Eve Fry (née Newman)
religion	None (atheist)
title	President of Mind (2011-present) Patron of the Lip Theatre Company Patron of the Norwich Playhouse theatre Vice President of the Noël Coward Society Honorary fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge Honorary fellow of Cardiff University Honorary president of the Cambridge University Quiz Society Rector of the University of Dundee (1992-1998)
influences	Oscar Wilde, P. G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Douglas Adams, Rowan Atkinson
website
signature	Stephen Fry signature.svg

Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.

After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.

He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in ''A Bit of Fry & Laurie'', and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in ''Jeeves and Wooster''.

As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film ''Wilde'', was Melchett in the BBC television series ''Blackadder'', starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series ''Kingdom'', has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series ''Bones'' and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller ''V For Vendetta''. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series ''Stephen Fry in America'', which saw him travelling across all 50 U.S. states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show ''QI''.

As well as his work in television, Fry has contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines, and has written four novels and two volumes of autobiography, ''Moab Is My Washpot'' and ''The Fry Chronicles''. He also appears frequently on BBC Radio 4, starring in the comedy series ''Absolute Power'', being a frequent guest on panel games such as ''Just a Minute'', and acting as chairman for ''I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'', where he was one of a trio of hosts who succeeded the late Humphrey Lyttelton. Fry is also known in the UK for his audiobook recordings, particularly as reader for all seven ''Harry Potter'' novels.

Early life[link]

Fry was born in Hampstead, London, on 24 August 1957, the son of Marianne Eve Fry (née Newman) and Alan John Fry, who was an English physicist and inventor. His maternal grandparents, Martin and Rosa Neumann, were Hungarian Jewish immigrants from Šurany, which is now in Slovakia, and his mother's aunt and cousins died in Auschwitz. Fry grew up in the village of Booton near Reepham, Norfolk, having moved from Chesham, Buckinghamshire at an early age.

Fry briefly attended Cawston Primary School, Cawston, Norfolk before going on to Stouts Hill Preparatory School at the age of seven, and then to Uppingham School, Rutland, where he joined Fircroft house and was described as a "near-asthmatic genius". He was expelled from Uppingham when he was 15, and subsequently from the Paston School.

At 17, after leaving Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, Fry absconded with a credit card stolen from a family friend, was arrested in Swindon, and as a result spent three months in Pucklechurch Prison on remand.

Following his release he resumed his education at City College Norwich, promising administrators that he would study rigorously to sit the Cambridge entrance exams. He scored well enough to gain a scholarship to Queens' College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, Fry joined the Cambridge Footlights, appeared on ''University Challenge'', and gained a degree in English literature. It was at the Footlights that Fry met his future comedy collaborator Hugh Laurie.

Career[link]

Television[link]

Comedy[link]

Fry's career in television began with the 1982 broadcasting of ''The Cellar Tapes'', the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue which was written by Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. The revue caught the attention of Granada Television, who, keen to replicate the success of the BBC's ''Not the Nine O'Clock News'', hired Fry, Laurie and Thompson to star alongside Ben Elton in ''There's Nothing to Worry About!.'' A second series, re-titled ''Alfresco'', was broadcast in 1983 and a third in 1984; it established Fry and Laurie's reputation as a comedy double act. In 1983, the BBC offered them their own show, which became ''The Crystal Cube'', a mixture of science fiction and mockumentary that was axed after the first episode. Undeterred, Fry and Laurie appeared in an episode of ''The Young Ones'' in 1984, and Fry in Ben Elton's 1985 series, ''Happy Families''. In 1986 and 1987 Fry and Laurie also performed sketches on the LWT/Channel 4 show ''Saturday Live''.

Forgiving Fry and Laurie for ''The Crystal Cube'', the BBC commissioned a sketch show in 1986 that was to become ''A Bit of Fry & Laurie''. The programme ran for 26 episodes spanning four series between 1986 and 1995, and was very successful. During this time Fry starred in ''Blackadder II'' as Lord Melchett, made a guest appearance in ''Blackadder the Third'' as the Duke of Wellington, then returned to a starring role in ''Blackadder Goes Forth'' as General Melchett. In the 1988 television special Blackadder's Christmas Carol he played the roles of Lord Melchett and Lord Frondo.

Between 1990 and 1993, Fry starred as Jeeves (alongside Hugh Laurie's Bertie Wooster) in ''Jeeves and Wooster'', 23 hour-long adaptations of P.G. Wodehouse's novels and short stories.

Towards the end of 2003, Fry starred alongside John Bird in the television adaptation of ''Absolute Power'', previously a radio series on BBC Radio 4.

In 2010 Fry took part in a Christmas series of Short Films called 'Little Crackers'. Fry's short is based on a story from his childhood at school. He appeared as the Christian God in 2011's ''Holy Flying Circus''.

Drama[link]

Fry has appeared in a number of BBC adaptations of plays and books, including a 1992 adaptation of the Simon Gray play ''The Common Pursuit'' (Fry had previously appeared in the West End stage production); a 1998 Malcolm Bradbury adaptation of the Mark Tavener novel, ''In the Red'', with Fry taking the part of the Controller of BBC Radio 2; and in 2000 Fry took the role of Professor Bellgrove in the BBC serial ''Gormenghast'' which were adapted from the first two novels of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. In 2011, Fry portrayed Professor Mildeye in the BBC adaption of Mary Norton's 1952 novel The Borrowers.

Fry narrates the English language version of the Spanish children's animated series ''Pocoyo''.

From 2007 to 2009, Fry played the lead role in (and was executive producer for) the legal drama ''Kingdom'', which ran for three series on ITV1. He has also taken up a recurring guest role as psychiatrist Dr. Gordon Wyatt in the popular American drama ''Bones''.

In 2010, having learned some Irish for the role, he filmed a cameo role in ''Ros na Rún'', an Irish language soap opera broadcast in Ireland, Scotland and the United States.

Documentaries and other factual programmes[link]

Fry made his first foray into documentary-making with the Emmy Award-winning ''The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive'' in 2006; also in 2006, he appeared in the genealogy series ''Who Do You Think You Are?'', tracing his maternal family tree to investigate his Jewish ancestry. Fry narrated ''The Story of Light Entertainment'', which was shown from July–September 2006. In 2007 he presented a documentary on the subject of HIV and AIDS, ''HIV and Me''.

On 7 May 2008, Fry gave a speech as part of a series of BBC lectures on the future of public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, which he later recorded for a podcast.

His six-part travel series ''Stephen Fry in America'' began on BBC One in October 2008 and saw him travel to each of the 50 U.S. states; in the same year he narrated the nature documentaries ''Spectacled Bears: Shadow of the Forest'' for the BBC ''Natural World'' series.

In the 2009 television series ''Last Chance to See'', Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine sought out endangered species, some of which had been featured in Douglas Adams' and Carwardine's 1990 book and radio series of the same name Also in 2009, Fry briefly hosted CBBC series ''Horrible Histories'', an educational TV show for school children.

In August 2011 ''Stephen Fry's 100 Greatest Gadgets'' was shown on Channel 4 as one of the ''100 Greatest'' strand. His choice for the greatest gadget was the lighter which he described as "fire with a flick of the fingers".

In September 2011 ''Fry's Planet Word'', a five-part documentary about language, aired on BBC HD and BBC Two.

''QI''[link]

In 2003, Fry began hosting the TV game show ''QI'' (Quite Interesting), a British comedy panel game television quiz show. ''QI'' was created and co-produced by John Lloyd, and features permanent panellist Alan Davies. ''QI'' has the highest viewing figures for any show on BBC Four and UKTV G2 (now Dave). In 2006, Fry won the Rose d'Or award for "Best Game Show Host" for his work on the series.

Film[link]

Having made his film debut in the 1985 film ''The Good Father'', Fry had a brief appearance in ''A Fish Called Wanda'' (in which he is knocked out by Kevin Kline, who is posing as an airport security man) and then appeared in the lead role for Kenneth Branagh's ''Peter's Friends'' in 1992. In the 1994 romantic comedy film ''I.Q.'', he played the role of James Moreland. Portraying Oscar Wilde (of whom he had been a fan since the age of 13) in the 1997 film ''Wilde'', he fulfilled to critical acclaim a role that he has said he was "born to play". It also earned him a nomination for Best Actor - Drama in the 1998 Golden Globe Award. A year later, Fry starred in David Yates' small independent film ''The Tichborne Claimant'', and in 2001 he played the detective in Robert Altman's period costume drama, ''Gosford Park''. In the same year he also appeared in the Dutch film ''The Discovery of Heaven'', directed by Jeroen Krabbé and based on the novel by Harry Mulisch.

In 2003, Fry made his directorial debut with ''Bright Young Things'', adapted by himself from Evelyn Waugh's ''Vile Bodies''. In 2001, he began hosting the BAFTA Film Awards, a role from which he stepped down in 2006. Later that same year, he wrote the English libretto and dialogue for Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of ''The Magic Flute''.

Fry continues to make regular film appearances, notably in treatments of literary cult classics. He portrayed Maurice Woodruff in ''The Life and Death of Peter Sellers'', served as narrator in the 2005 film version of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', and in 2005 he appeared in both ''A Cock and Bull Story'', based on ''Tristram Shandy'', and as a non-conforming TV Presenter who challenges the fascist state in ''V for Vendetta''. In 2006, he played the role of gadget-master Smithers in ''Stormbreaker'', and in 2007 he appeared as himself hosting a quiz in ''St Trinian's''. In 2007, Fry wrote a script for a remake of ''The Dam Busters'' for director Peter Jackson.

Fry was offered a role in ''Valkyrie'' but was unable to participate. Fry starred in the Tim Burton version of ''Alice in Wonderland'', as the voice of The Cheshire Cat. He played Mycroft Holmes in the sequel to ''Sherlock Holmes'' directed by Guy Ritchie. In 2010, Fry provided the voice of Socrates the Lion in the environmental animated film ''Animals United''. He will portray the Master of Lake-town in the 2012 film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Hobbit.''

Feature filmography[link]

1985: ''The Good Father'' – Creighton

1988: ''A Fish Called Wanda'' – Hutchison

1992: ''Peter's Friends'' – Peter

1994: ''I.Q.'' – James Moreland

1997: ''Wilde'' – Oscar Wilde

1998: ''The Tichborne Claimant'' – Hawkins

1999: ''Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?''- Dr.Peter Robinson

2001: ''Gosford Park'' – Inspector Thompson

2001: ''The Discovery of Heaven'' – Onno

2002: ''Thunderpants'' – Sir Antony Silk (Judge)

2003: ''Bright Young Things'' – Director

2004: ''The Life and Death of Peter Sellers'' – Maurice Woodruff

2005: ''V for Vendetta'' – Deitrich

2005: ''The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'' – The Narrator (Voice)

2006: ''The Magic Flute'' – Writer

2006: ''Stormbreaker'' – Smithers

2007: ''St. Trinian's'' – Himself

2007: ''Eichmann'' – Minister Tormer

2009: ''House of Boys'' - Dr Marsh

2010: ''Alice in Wonderland'' – Cheshire Cat (Voice)

2010: ''Animals United'' – Socrates the Lion (Voice)

2011: ''Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows'' – Mycroft Holmes

2012: ''The Hobbit: There and Back Again'' – Master of Lake-town

Radio[link]

Fry came to the attention of radio listeners with the 1986 creation of his alter-ego, Donald Trefusis, whose "wireless essays" were broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme ''Loose Ends''. In the 1980s he starred as David Lander in four series of the BBC Radio 4 show ''Delve Special'', written by Tony Sarchet, which became the six part Channel 4 series ''This is David Lander'' in 1988. In 1988, Fry wrote and presented a six-part comedy series entitled ''Saturday Night Fry''; frequent radio appearances have ensued (notably on panel games ''Just a Minute'' and ''I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue''). In 2000, he began starring as Charles Prentiss in the Radio 4 comedy ''Absolute Power'', reprising the role for three further series on radio and two on television. In 2002, Fry voiced Winnie-the-Pooh and was one of the narrators of A.A. Milne's ''Winnie-the-Pooh'' and ''The House at Pooh Corner''. He presented a 20-part, two-hour series, ''The Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music'', a "witty guide" to the genre over the past 1,000 years, on Classic FM.

In 2007, he hosted ''Current Puns'', an exploration of wordplay, and ''Radio 4: This Is Your Life'', to celebrate the radio station's 40th anniversary. He also interviewed Tony Blair as part of a series of podcasts released by 10 Downing Street.

In February 2008, Fry began presenting podcasts entitled ''Stephen Fry's Podgrams'', in which he recounts his life and recent experiences. In July 2008, he appeared as himself in ''I Love Stephen Fry'', an ''Afternoon Play'' for Radio 4 written by former ''Fry and Laurie'' script editor Jon Canter.

Since August 2008 he has presented ''Fry's English Delight'', a series on BBC Radio 4 about the English language. As of 2011, it has been running for four series and 15 episodes.

In the summer 2009 series of ''I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'', Fry was one of a trio of hosts replacing Humphrey Lyttelton (the others being Jack Dee and Rob Brydon).

In 2012 he appeared as a guest panellist in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel show ''Wordaholics''.

Theatre[link]

Fry wrote the play ''Latin! or Tobacco and Boys'' for the 1980 Edinburgh Festival, where it won the Fringe First prize. It had a revival in 2009 at London's Cock Tavern Theatre, directed by Adam Spreadbury-Maher. ''The Cellar Tapes'', the Footlights Revue of 1981, won the Perrier Comedy Award. In 1984, Fry adapted the hugely successful 1930s musical ''Me and My Girl'' for the West End, where it ran for eight years. He was also cast in a lead role in Simon Gray's 1995 play, ''Cell Mates'', which he left three days into the West End run, pleading stage fright. He later recalled the incident as a hypomanic episode in his documentary about bipolar disorder, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive. In 2007, Fry wrote a Christmas pantomime, ''Cinderella'', which ran at London's Old Vic Theatre.

Fry is a long-standing fan of the anarchic 1960s British musical comedy group, the ''Bonzo Dog Band'' and, particularly, of its eccentric front man, the late Vivian Stanshall. Fry helped to fund an ill-fated 1988 London re-staging of Stanshall's acclaimed ''Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera'', written by Vivian and Ki Longfellow-Stanshall for the Bristol-based Old Profanity Showboat. Fry performed several of Stanshall's numbers as part of the Bonzos' 2006 reunion concert at the London Astoria. He also appears as a shiny New Millennium Bonzo on their post-reunion album, ''Pour l'Amour des Chiens'', on which he recites a recipe for "Salmon Proust", plays a butler in "Hawkeye the Gnu", and voices ads for the fictitious "Fiasco" stores.

Following three one-man shows in Australia, Fry announced a "sort of stand-up" performance at The Royal Albert Hall in London for September 2010.

Audio books[link]

Stephen Fry has been the reader for the British versions of all of J.K.Rowling's ''Harry Potter'' series of audio books. He discussed this project in an interview with J.K. Rowling in 2005. Fry has also been the reader for Douglas Adams's ''The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy'' film tie-in edition. He has also made recordings of his own books, such as ''The Stars' Tennis Balls'' and ''Moab Is My Washpot''; and works by Roald Dahl, Michael Bond, A. A. Milne, and Anthony Buckeridge.

Video games[link]

Fry's distinctive voice has been featured in a number of video games, including an appearance as Reaver, a primary antagonist in Lionhead Studios games ''Fable II'' and ''Fable III'', and as the narrator in ''LittleBigPlanet'' and its sequel on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. He also served as narrator on the first four ''Harry Potter'' games (''Philosopher's Stone'', ''Chamber of Secrets'', ''Prisoner of Azkaban'' and the ''Goblet of Fire'').

Advertisements[link]

Fry has lent himself and his voice to many advertisements, starting with an appearance as "Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar" in a 1982 advert for Whitbread Best Bitter. Fry has said in his memoirs that after receiving his payment for this work – £25,000 – he has never subsequently experienced "what one could call serious money troubles". He has since appeared in adverts for products and companies such as Marks and Spencer, Twinings, Kenco, Vauxhall, Honda, Direct Line, Calpol, Heineken, Alliance & Leicester, After Eights, Trebor, Panama cigars and Orange Mobile.

Literature[link]

Since the publication of his first novel, ''The Liar'' (1991), Fry has written three further novels, several non-fiction works and two volumes of autobiography. ''Making History'' (1997) is partly set in an alternative universe where Adolf Hitler's father is made infertile and his replacement proves a rather more effective Führer. The book won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. ''The Hippopotamus'' (1994) is about Edward (Ted/Tedward) Wallace and his stay at his old friend Lord Logan's country manor in Norfolk. ''The Stars' Tennis Balls'' (2000) is a modern retelling of ''The Count of Monte Cristo''. Fry's book, ''The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within'', is a guide to writing poetry.

When writing a book review for ''Tatler'', Fry wrote under a ''nom de plume'', Williver Hendry, editor of ''A Most Peculiar Friendship: The Correspondence of Lord Alfred Douglas and Jack Dempsey'', a field close to Fry's heart as an Oscar Wilde enthusiast. Once a columnist in ''The Listener'' and ''The Daily Telegraph'', he now writes a weekly technology column in the Saturday edition of ''The Guardian''. His blog attracted more than 300,000 visitors in its first two weeks.

In May 2009, Fry unveiled ''The Dongle of Donald Trefusis'', an audiobook series following Donald Trefusis (a fictional character from Fry's novel ''The Liar'' and from the BBC Radio 4 series ''Loose Ends''), set over 12 episodes. After its release, it reached No. 1 on the UK Album Chart list.

Fry's use of the word "luvvie" in ''The Guardian'' on 2 April 1988 is given by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as the earliest recorded use of the word.

Football[link]

In August 2010, Fry joined the Board of Directors at Norwich City Football Club. A lifelong fan of "the Canaries" and a regular visitor to Carrow Road, he said on being appointed "Truly this is one of the most exciting days of my life and I am as proud and pleased as I could be."

Twitter[link]

In October 2008, Fry began posting to the social networking site Twitter, which he regularly updates. On 16 May 2009, he celebrated the 500,000-follower mark: "Bless my soul 500k followers. And I love you all. Well, all except that silly one. And that's not you."

Fry wields a considerable amount of influence through his use of Twitter. He is frequently asked to promote various charities and causes, often inadvertently causing their websites to crash because of the volume of traffic generated by his large number of followers; as Fry notes on his website: "Four thousand hits a second all diving down the pipeline at the same time for minutes on end." Fry uses his influence to recommend underexposed musicians and authors (who often see large increases in web hits and sales) and to raise awareness of contemporary issues in the world of media and politics, notably the dropping of an injunction against ''The Guardian'' and the lambasting of ''Daily Mail'' columnist Jan Moir over her article on the death of Boyzone member Stephen Gately.

In October 2009 Fry again sparked debate amongst users when he announced his intention to leave the social networking site after criticism from another user on Twitter. He retracted the intention the next day. In October 2010, Fry left Twitter for a few days following press criticism of a quote taken from an interview he had given, with a farewell message of "Bye bye". After returning, Fry explained that he had left Twitter to "avoid being sympathised with or told about an article I would otherwise never have got wind of".

In November 2009 Fry's Twitter account reached one million followers. He commemorated the million followers milestone with a humorous video blog in which a 'Step Hen Fry' clone speaks from the year 2034 where MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have combined to form 'Twit on MyFace'.

In November 2010 Fry welcomed his two millionth follower with a blog entry detailing his opinions and experiences of Twitter.

On 11 March 2012, Fry noted his passing of the four million follower mark with a tweet: "Lordy I've breasted the 4 million followers tape. Love you all. Yes even YOU. But let's dedicate today to Douglas Adams's diamond jubilee"

Acclaim[link]

In 1995, Fry was presented with an honorary doctorate from the University of Dundee, which named their main Students' Association bar after his novel ''The Liar''. Fry is a patron of its Lip Theatre Company. He also served two consecutive terms – 1992 to 1995 and 1995 to 1998 – as the student-elected Rector of the University of Dundee. Fry is considered to have been one of the most popular rectors the University has had, and was noted for his work to promote the University and his efforts to represent its students on the University Court. Such was his popularity, he was unopposed when he sought re-election to office in 1995, and by the time he completed his second term in office he had won the widespread admiration of the University's staff and students. He was awarded the AoC Gold Award in 2004, and was entered into their hall of fame. Fry was also awarded an honorary degree from Anglia Ruskin University in 2005. He was made honorary president of the Cambridge University Quiz Society and honorary fellow of his ''alma mater'' Queens' College, Cambridge. On 13 July 2010, he was made an honorary fellow of Cardiff University and on 28 January 2011 he was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Sussex for his work campaigning for people suffering from mental health problems, bipolar disorder and HIV.

He is a Patron of the Norwich Playhouse theatre and a Vice President of The Noël Coward Society. Fry was the last person to be named Pipe Smoker of the Year before the award was discontinued.

In December 2006 he was ranked sixth for the BBC's Top Living Icon Award, was featured on ''The Culture Show'', and was voted ''Most Intelligent Man on Television'' by readers of ''Radio Times''. The ''Independent on Sunday'' Pink List named Fry the second most influential gay person in Britain in May 2007; he had taken the twenty-third position on the list the previous year. Later the same month he was announced as the 2007 ''Mind Champion of the Year'' in recognition of the success of his documentary ''The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive'' in raising awareness of bipolar disorder. Fry was also nominated in "Best Entertainment Performance" for ''QI'' and "Best Factual Series" for ''Secret Life of the Manic Depressive'' at the 2007 British Academy Television Awards. That same year, ''Broadcast'' magazine listed Fry at number four in its "Hot 100" list of influential on-screen performers, describing him as a polymath and a "national treasure". He was also granted a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards on 5 December 2007 and the Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards on 20 January 2010.

BBC Four dedicated two nights of programming to Fry on 17 and 18 August 2007, in celebration of his 50th birthday. The first night, comprising programs featuring Fry, began with a sixty-minute documentary entitled ''Stephen Fry: 50 Not Out''. The second night was composed of programs selected by Fry, as well as a 60-minute interview with Mark Lawson and a half-hour special, ''Stephen Fry: Guilty''. The weekend programming proved such a ratings hit for BBC Four that it was repeated on BBC Two on 16 and 17 September 2007.

In 2011, he was the subject of Molly Lewis's song ''An Open Letter to Stephen Fry'', in which the singer jokingly offers herself as a surrogate mother for his child. In February 2011, Fry was awarded the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University, the Harvard Secular Society and the American Humanist Association.

Views on religion[link]

Fry has repeatedly expressed opposition to organised religion and has identified himself as an atheist and humanist, while declaring some sympathy for the ancient Greek belief in capricious gods. In his first autobiography he wrote, "I knew I couldn't believe in God, because I was fundamentally Hellenic in my outlook." He has accepted that religion can have positive effects, "Sometimes belief means credulity, sometimes an expression of faith and hope which even the most sceptical atheist such as myself cannot but find inspiring."

In 2009, ''The Guardian'' published a letter from Fry addressing his younger self, explaining how his future is soon to unfold, reflecting on the positive progression towards gay acceptance and openness around him, and yet not everywhere, while warning on how "the cruel, hypocritical and loveless hand of religion and absolutism has fallen on the world once more". Later that year, he and Christopher Hitchens participated in an "Intelligence Squared" debate in which they argued against Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan, who supported the view that the Catholic Church was a force for good. Fry and Hitchens argued that the church did more harm than good. Fry attacked the Catholic Church's teachings on sexuality and denounced its wealth.

In 2010 he was made a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, stating: "it is essential to nail one’s colours to the mast as a humanist." Later that year, Fry, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in ''The Guardian'', stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom being a state visit.

On 22 February 2011, Fry was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University, joining a list of previous honorees including novelist Salman Rushdie, screenwriter Joss Whedon, and Mythbusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.

Personal life[link]

Fry struggled to keep his homosexuality secret during his teenage years at public school, and has claimed not to have engaged in sexual activity for 16 years from 1979 until 1995. When asked when he first acknowledged his sexuality, Fry quipped: "I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself, 'That's the last time I'm going up one of those.'" Fry was in a 14-year relationship with Daniel Cohen, which ended in 2010. Fry has stated that he is 90% homosexual, but has been attracted to women on occasion.

Fry has a home in London and another in Hollywood. He also has a home near King's Lynn, Norfolk. When in London, Fry drives a dark green TX4 London cab.

Fry was an active supporter of the Labour Party for many years, and appeared in a party political broadcast on its behalf with Hugh Laurie and Michelle Collins in November 1993. Despite this, he did not vote in the 2005 General Election because of the stance of both the Labour and Conservative parties with regard to the Iraq War. Despite his praise of the Blair/Brown government's work on social reform, Fry has been critical of the Labour Party's "Third Way" concept. Fry appeared in literature to support changing the British electoral system from first-past-the-post to alternative vote for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons in the Alternative Vote referendum in 2011.

He is on cordial terms with Prince Charles (despite a mild parody Fry performed in his role of King Charles I in the comedy programme ''Blackadder: The Cavalier Years''), through his work with the Prince's Trust. He attended the Prince of Wales' and Camilla Parker Bowles' wedding in 2005.

Fry is a friend of British comedian and actor (and ''Blackadder'' co-star) Rowan Atkinson and was best man at Atkinson's wedding to Sunetra Sastry at the Russian Tea Room in New York City. Fry was a friend of British actor John Mills.

His best friend is Hugh Laurie, whom he met while both were at Cambridge and with whom he has collaborated many times over the years. He was best man at Laurie's wedding and is godfather to all three of his children.

A fan of cricket, Fry has claimed to be related to former England cricketer C.B. Fry, and was interviewed for the ''Ashes Fever'' DVD, reporting on England's victory over Australia in the 2005 Ashes series. Regarding football, he is a supporter of Norwich City, and is a regular visitor to Carrow Road.

He has been described as "deeply dippy for all things digital", claims to have bought the third Macintosh computer sold in the UK (his friend Douglas Adams bought the first two) and jokes that he has never encountered a smartphone that he has not bought. He counts Wikipedia among his favourite websites "because I like to find out that I died, and that I'm currently in a ballet in China, and all the other very accurate and important things that Wikipedia brings us all."

Fry has a long-standing interest in Internet production, including having his own website since 1997. His current site, ''The New Adventures of Mr Stephen Fry'', has existed since 2002 and has attracted many visitors following his first blog in September 2007, which comprised a 6,500 word "blessay" on smartphones. In February 2008, Fry launched his private podcast series, ''Stephen Fry's Podgrams'', and a forum, including discussions on depression and activities in which Fry is involved. The website content is created by Stephen Fry and produced by Andrew Sampson. Fry is also a supporter of GNU and the Free Software Foundation. For the 25th anniversary of the GNU operating system, Fry appeared in a video explaining some of the philosophy behind GNU by likening it to the sharing found in science.

On 30 April 2008, Fry signed an open letter, published in ''The Guardian'' newspaper by some well known Jewish personalities, stating their opposition to celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. Furthermore, he is a signatory member of the British Jews for Justice for Palestinians organisation, which campaigns for Palestinian rights.

Fry was among over 100 signatories to a statement published by Sense About Science on 4 June 2009, condemning British libel laws and their use to "severely curtail the right to free speech on a matter of public interest."

Poland controversy[link]

On 6 October 2009, Fry was interviewed by Jon Snow on ''Channel 4 News'' as a signatory of a letter to British Conservative Party leader David Cameron expressing concern about the party's relationship with Poland's opposition national conservative Law and Justice party in the European Parliament. During the interview, he stated: The remark prompted a complaint from the Polish Embassy in London, an editorial in ''The Economist'' and criticism from British Jewish historian David Cesarani. Fry has since posted an apology in a six-page post on his personal blog, in which he stated:{{bquote|I offer no excuse. I seemed to imply that the Polish people had been responsible for the most infamous of all the death factories of the Third Reich. I didn't even really at the time notice the import of what I had said, so gave myself no opportunity instantly to retract the statement. It was a rubbishy, cheap and offensive remark that I have been regretting ever since.

I take this opportunity to apologise now. I said a stupid, thoughtless and fatuous thing. It detracted from and devalued my argument, such as it was, and it outraged and offended a large group of people for no very good reason. I am sorry in all directions, and all the more sorry because it is no one's fault but my own, which always makes it so much worse.}}

Health[link]

Fry has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, specifically stating he suffers from Cyclothymia, referring to it as "bipolar lite". He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1995 while appearing in a West End play called ''Cell Mates'' and subsequently walked out of the production, prompting its early closure and incurring the displeasure of co-star Rik Mayall and playwright Simon Gray. Mayall's comedy partner, Adrian Edmondson, made light of the subject in his and Mayall's second ''Bottom'' live show. After walking out of the production, Fry went missing for several days while contemplating suicide. He abandoned the idea and left the United Kingdom by ferry, eventually resurfacing in Belgium.

Fry has spoken publicly about his experience with bipolar disorder, which was also depicted in the documentary ''Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive''. In the programme, he interviewed other sufferers of the illness including Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss and Tony Slattery. Also featured were chef Rick Stein, whose father committed suicide, Robbie Williams, who talks of his experience with major depression, and comedienne and former mental health nurse Jo Brand. He is also involved with the mental health charity Stand to Reason.

In 2009, Fry lent his support to a campaign led by the human rights organisation Reprieve to prevent the execution of heroin trafficker Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen originally from Pakistan. Some of Shaikh's supporters have said he suffered from undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Despite calls for clemency, Shaikh was executed in the People's Republic of China for drug trafficking.

In January 2008, he broke his arm while filming ''Last Chance to See'' in Brazil. He later explained in a podcast how the accident happened: while climbing aboard a boat, he slipped between it and the dock, and, while stopping himself from falling into the water, his body weight caused his right humerus to snap. The damage was more severe than first thought: the resulting vulnerability to his radial nerve – he was at risk of losing the use of his arm – was not diagnosed until he saw a consultant in the UK.

As the host of ''QI'', Fry has stated that he is allergic to both champagne and bumble bee stings.

Appearing on ''Top Gear'' in 2009, Fry had lost a significant amount of weight, prompting host Jeremy Clarkson to ask jokingly, "Where's the rest of you?" Fry explained that he had shed a total of , attributing the weight loss to doing a lot of walking while listening to downloaded Audiobooks.

Fry is between and in height.

Business[link]

In 2008, Fry formed SamFry Ltd, with long-term collaborator Andrew Sampson, to produce and fund new material, as well as manage his official website.

Bibliography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Five Minutes With: Stephen Fry, interview with Matthew Stadlen for the BBC

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name	Adolf Hitler
nationality
birth date	April 20, 1889
birth place	Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary
death date	April 30, 1945
death place	Berlin, Germany
death cause	Suicide
party	National Socialist German Workers' Party (1921–1945)
otherparty	German Workers' Party (1920–1921)
religion	See Adolf Hitler's religious views
spouse	Eva Braun (29–30 April 1945)
occupation	Politician, soldier, artist, writer
order	Führer of Germany
term start	2 August 1934
term end	30 April 1945
predecessor	Paul von Hindenburg (as President)
successor	Karl Dönitz (as President)
order2	Chancellor of Germany
term start2	30 January 1933
term end2	30 April 1945
president2	Paul von Hindenburg
deputy2
predecessor2	Kurt von Schleicher
successor2	Joseph Goebbels
order3	Reichsstatthalter of Prussia
term start3	30 January 1933
term end3	30 January 1935
primeminister3
predecessor3	''Office created''
successor3	''Office abolished''
signature	Hitler Signature2.svg
allegiance
branch	''Reichsheer''
unit	16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment
serviceyears	1914–1918
rank	''Gefreiter''
battles	World War I
awards	}}

Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party ( (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.

A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, ''Mein Kampf'' (''My Struggle''). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.

Hitler's foreign and domestic policies had the goal of seizing ''Lebensraum'' ("living space") for the Germanic people. He directed the rearmament of Germany and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939, leading to the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Under Hitler's rule, in 1941 German forces and their European allies occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed, and in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German army. Hitler's supremacist and racially motivated policies resulted in the systematic murder of eleven million people, including nearly six million Jews.

In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. On 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two committed suicide to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned.

Early years[link]

Ancestry[link]

Hitler's father, Alois Hitler (1837–1903), was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. Alois's birth certificate did not name the father, so the child bore his mother's surname. In 1842 Johann Georg Hiedler married Anna. After she died in 1847 and he in 1856, Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. It was not until 1876 that Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest before three witnesses. While awaiting trial at Nuremberg in 1945, Nazi official Hans Frank suggested the existence of letters claiming that Alois' mother was employed as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Graz and that the family's 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger, had fathered Alois. However, no Frankenberger, Jewish or otherwise, was registered in Graz during that period. Historians doubt the claim that Alois' father was Jewish.

At age 39, Alois assumed the surname "Hitler", also spelled as "Hiedler", "Hüttler", or "Huettler"; the name was probably regularised to its final spelling by a priest. The origin of the name is either "one who lives in a hut" (Standard German ''Hütte''), "shepherd" (Standard German ''hüten'' "to guard", English "heed"), or is from the Slavic words ''Hidlar'' and ''Hidlarcek''.

Childhood[link]

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Ranshofen, a village annexed in 1938 to the municipality of Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary. He was the fourth of six children to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl (1860–1907). Adolf's older siblings – Gustav, Ida, and Otto – died in infancy. When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany. There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, rather than Austrian German, which marked his speech all of his life. In 1894 the family relocated to Leonding (near Linz), and in June 1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld, near Lambach, where he tried his hand at farming and beekeeping. Adolf attended school in nearby Fischlham. Hitler became fixated on warfare after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War among his father's belongings.

The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father-son conflicts caused by Adolf's refusal to conform to the strict discipline of his school. Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and in 1897 the family moved to Lambach. Hitler attended a Catholic school in an 11th-century Benedictine cloister, the pulpit of which bore a stylized swastika symbol on the coat of arms of Theodorich von Hagen, a former abbot. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even entertained thoughts of becoming a priest. In 1898 the family returned permanently to Leonding. The death of his younger brother, Edmund, from measles on 2 February 1900 deeply affected Hitler. He changed from being confident and outgoing and an excellent student, to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.

Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. Hitler later dramatised an episode from this period when his father took him to visit a customs office, depicting it as an event that gave rise to a unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed. Ignoring his son's desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist, in September 1900 Alois sent Adolf to the ''Realschule'' in Linz. (This was the same high school that Adolf Eichmann would attend some 17 years later.) Hitler rebelled against this decision, and in ''Mein Kampf'' revealed that he did poorly in school, hoping that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to my dream."

Hitler became obsessed with German nationalism from a young age. Hitler expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg Monarchy and its rule over an ethnically-variegated empire. Hitler and his friends used the German greeting "Heil", and sang the German anthem "Deutschland Über Alles" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem.

After Alois' sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's performance at school deteriorated. His mother allowed him to quit in autumn 1905. He enrolled at the ''Realschule'' in Steyr in September 1904; his behaviour and performance showed some slight and gradual improvement. In the autumn of 1905, after passing a repeat and the final exam, Hitler left the school without showing any ambitions for further schooling or clear plans for a future career.

Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich[link]

From 1905, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna, financed by orphan's benefits and support from his mother. He worked as a casual labourer and eventually as a painter, selling watercolours. The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna rejected him twice, in 1907 and 1908, because of his "unfitness for painting". The director recommended that Hitler study architecture, but he lacked the academic credentials. On 21 December 1907, his mother died aged 47. After the Academy's second rejection, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909 he lived in a homeless shelter, and by 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men on Meldemannstraße. At the time Hitler lived there, Vienna was a hotbed of religious prejudice and 19th-century racism. Fears of being overrun by immigrants from the East were widespread, and the populist mayor, Karl Lueger, exploited the rhetoric of virulent antisemitism for political effect. Georg Schönerer's pan-Germanic antisemitism had a strong following and base in the Mariahilf district, where Hitler lived. Hitler read local newspapers such as the ''Deutsches Volksblatt'', that fanned prejudice and played on Christian fears of being swamped by an influx of eastern Jews. Hostile to what he saw as Catholic "Germanophobia", he developed an admiration for Martin Luther.

The origin and first expression of Hitler's antisemitism have been difficult to locate. Hitler states in ''Mein Kampf'' that he first became an antisemite in Vienna. Hitler's close friend, August Kubizek, claimed that Hitler was a "confirmed antisemite" before he left Linz. Kubizek's account has been challenged by historian Brigitte Hamann, who writes, "of all those early witnesses who can be taken seriously Kubizek is the only one to portray young Hitler as an antisemite and precisely in this respect he is not trustworthy." Several sources provide strong evidence that Hitler had Jewish friends in his hostel and in other places in Vienna. Hamann also notes that no antisemitic remark has been documented from Hitler during this period. Historian Ian Kershaw suggests that if Hitler had made such remarks, they may have gone unnoticed because of the prevailing antisemitism in Vienna at that time. Historian Richard J. Evans states that "historians now generally agree that his notorious, murderous anti-Semitism emerged well after Germany’s defeat [in World War I], as a product of the paranoid 'stab-in-the-back' explanation for the catastrophe".

Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich. Historians believe Hitler left Vienna to evade conscription into the Austrian army. Hitler later claimed that he did not wish to serve the Habsburg state because of the mixture of "races" in its army. After he was deemed unfit for service—he failed his physical exam in Salzburg on 5 February 1914—he returned to Munich.

World War I[link]

At the outbreak of World War I, Hitler applied to serve in the German army. He was accepted in August 1914, likely as the result of a clerical oversight—he was still an Austrian citizen. Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (1st Company of the List Regiment), he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium, spending nearly half his time well behind the front lines. He was present at the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele, and was wounded at the Somme. He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914. Recommended by Hugo Gutmann, he received the Iron Cross, First Class, on 4 August 1918, a decoration rarely awarded to one of Hitler's rank (''Gefreiter''). Hitler's post at regimental headquarters, providing frequent interactions with senior officers, may have helped him receive this decoration. Though his rewarded actions may have been courageous, they were probably not highly exceptional. He also received the Black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918.

During his service at the headquarters, Hitler pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded either in the groin area or the left thigh by a shell that had exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout. Hitler spent almost two months in the Red Cross hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917. On 15 October 1918, Hitler was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk. While there, Hitler learnt of Germany's defeat, and—by his own account—on receiving this news, he suffered a second bout of blindness.

Hitler became embittered over the collapse of the war effort, and his ideological development began to firmly take shape. He described the war as "the greatest of all experiences", and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery. The experience reinforced his passionate German patriotism and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918. Like other German nationalists, he believed in the ''Dolchstoßlegende'' (Stab-in-the-back legend), which claimed that the German army, "undefeated in the field," had been "stabbed in the back" on the home front by civilian leaders and Marxists, later dubbed the "November criminals".

The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany must relinquish several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland. The treaty imposed economic sanctions and levied heavy reparations on the country. Many Germans perceived the treaty—especially Article 231, which declared Germany responsible for the war—as a humiliation. The Versailles Treaty and the economic, social, and political conditions in Germany after the war were later exploited by Hitler for political gains.

Entry into politics[link]

After World War I Hitler returned to Munich. Having no formal education and career plans or prospects, he tried to remain in the army for as long as possible. In July 1919 he was appointed ''Verbindungsmann'' (intelligence agent) of an ''Aufklärungskommando'' (reconnaissance commando) of the Reichswehr, to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP). While monitoring the activities of the DAP, Hitler became attracted to the founder Anton Drexler's antisemitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas. Drexler favoured a strong active government, a "non-Jewish" version of socialism, and solidarity among all members of society. Impressed with Hitler's oratory skills, Drexler invited him to join the DAP. Hitler accepted on 12 September 1919, becoming the party's 55th member.

At the DAP, Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of its early founders and a member of the occult Thule Society. Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and introducing him to a wide range of people in Munich society. To increase its appeal, the DAP changed its name to the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (National Socialist German Workers Party – NSDAP). Hitler designed the party's banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background.

Hitler was discharged from the army in March 1920 and began working full time for the NSDAP. In February 1921—already highly effective at speaking to large audiences—he spoke to a crowd of over 6,000 in Munich. To publicise the meeting, two truckloads of party supporters drove around town waving swastika flags and throwing leaflets. Hitler soon gained notoriety for his rowdy, polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, and especially against Marxists and Jews. At the time, the NSDAP was centred in Munich, a major hotbed of anti-government German nationalists determined to crush Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic.

In June 1921, while Hitler and Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin, a mutiny broke out within the NSDAP in Munich. Members of the its executive committee, some of whom considered Hitler to be too overbearing, wanted to merge with the rival German Socialist Party (DSP). Hitler returned to Munich on 11 July 1921 and angrily tendered his resignation. The committee members realised that his resignation would mean the end of the party. Hitler announced he would rejoin on the condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman, and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich. The committee agreed; he rejoined the party as member 3,680. He still faced some opposition within the NSDAP: Hermann Esser and his allies printed 3,000 copies of a pamphlet attacking Hitler as a traitor to the party. In the following days, Hitler spoke to several packed houses and defended himself, to thunderous applause. His strategy proved successful: at a general membership meeting, he was granted absolute powers as party chairman, with only one nay vote cast.

Hitler's vitriolic beer hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. Early followers included Rudolf Hess, former air force pilot Hermann Göring, and army captain Ernst Röhm. The latter became head of the Nazis' paramilitary organisation, the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA, "Stormtroopers"), which protected meetings and frequently attacked political opponents. A critical influence on his thinking during this period was the Aufbau Vereinigung, a conspiratorial group formed of White Russian exiles and early National Socialists. The group, financed with funds channelled from wealthy industrialists like Henry Ford, introduced him to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy, linking international finance with Bolshevism.

Beer Hall Putsch[link]

Hitler enlisted the help of World War I General Erich Ludendorff for an attempted coup known as the "Beer Hall Putsch" (also known as the "Hitler Putsch" or "Munich Putsch"). The Nazi Party had used Italian Fascism as a model for their appearance and policies. Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini's "March on Rome" (1922) by staging his own coup in Bavaria, to be followed by challenging the government in Berlin. Hitler and Ludendorff sought the support of ''Staatskommissar'' (state commissioner) Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler. However, Kahr, along with Police Chief Hans Ritter von Seisser (Seißer) and Reichswehr General Otto von Lossow, wanted to install a nationalist dictatorship without Hitler.

Hitler wanted to seize a critical moment for successful popular agitation and support. On 8 November 1923 he and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people that had been organised by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall in Munich. Hitler interrupted Kahr's speech and announced that the national revolution had begun, declaring the formation of a new government with Ludendorff. Retiring to a backroom, Hitler, with handgun drawn, demanded and got the support of Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow. Hitler's forces initially succeeded in occupying the local Reichswehr and police headquarters; however, Kahr and his consorts quickly withdrew their support and neither the army nor the state police joined forces with him. The next day, Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government, but police dispersed them. Sixteen NSDAP members and four police officers were killed in the failed coup.

Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl, and by some accounts contemplated suicide. He was depressed but calm when arrested on 11 November 1923 for high treason. His trial began in February 1924 before the special People's Court in Munich, and Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the NSDAP. On 1 April Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison. He received friendly treatment from the guards; he was allowed mail from supporters and regular visits by party comrades. The Bavarian Supreme Court issued a pardon and he was released from jail on 20 December 1924, against the state prosecutor's objections. Including time on remand, Hitler had served just over one year in prison.

While at Landsberg, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of ''Mein Kampf'' (''My Struggle''; originally entitled ''Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice'') to his deputy, Rudolf Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an autobiography and an exposition of his ideology. ''Mein Kampf'' was influenced by ''The Passing of the Great Race'' by Madison Grant, which Hitler called "my Bible". The book laid out Hitler's plans for transforming German society into one based on race. Some passages implied genocide. Published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, it sold 228,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. One million copies were sold in 1933, Hitler's first year in office.

Rebuilding the NSDAP[link]

At the time of Hitler's release from prison, politics in Germany had become less combative, and the economy had improved. This limited Hitler's opportunities for political agitation. As a result of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the NSDAP and its affiliated organisations were banned in Bavaria. In a meeting with Prime Minister of Bavaria Heinrich Held on 4 January 1925, Hitler agreed to respect the authority of the state: he would only seek political power through the democratic process. The meeting paved the way for the ban on the NSDAP to be lifted. However, Hitler was barred from public speaking, a ban that remained in place until 1927. To advance his political ambitions in spite of the ban, Hitler appointed Gregor Strasser, Otto Strasser, and Joseph Goebbels to organise and grow the NSDAP in northern Germany. A superb organiser, Gregor Strasser steered a more independent political course, emphasising the socialist element of the party's programme.

Hitler ruled the NSDAP autocratically by asserting the ''Führerprinzip'' ("Leader principle"). Rank in the party was not determined by elections—positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank, who demanded unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader.

The stock market in the United States crashed on 24 October 1929. The impact in Germany was dire: millions were thrown out of work and several major banks collapsed. Hitler and the NSDAP prepared to take advantage of the emergency to gain support for their party. They promised to repudiate the Versailles Treaty, strengthen the economy, and provide jobs.

Rise to power[link]

+ Nazi Party election results
Date	Total votes	Votes, percentage	Reichstag seats	Notes
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Brüning administration[link]

The Great Depression in Germany provided a political opportunity for Hitler. Germans were ambivalent to the parliamentary republic, which faced strong challenges from right- and left-wing extremists. The moderate political parties were increasingly unable to stem the tide of extremism, and the German referendum of 1929 had helped to elevate Nazi ideology. The elections of September 1930 resulted in the break-up of a grand coalition and its replacement with a minority cabinet. Its leader, chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party, governed through emergency decrees from the president, Paul von Hindenburg. Governance by decree would become the new norm and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government. The NSDAP rose from obscurity to win 18.3% of the vote and 107 parliamentary seats in the 1930 election, becoming the second-largest party in parliament.

Hitler made a prominent appearance at the trial of two Reichswehr officers, Lieutenants Richard Scheringer and Hans Ludin, in the autumn of 1930. Both were charged with membership in the NSDAP, at that time illegal for Reichswehr personnel. The prosecution argued that the NSDAP was an extremist party, prompting defence lawyer Hans Frank to call on Hitler to testify in court. On 25 September 1930 Hitler testified that his party would pursue political power solely through democratic elections, a testimony that won him many supporters in the officer corps.

Brüning's austerity measures brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular. Hitler exploited this by targeting his political messages specifically at people who had been affected by the inflation of the 1920s and the Depression, such as farmers, war veterans, and the middle class.

Hitler had formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925, but at the time did not acquire German citizenship. For almost seven years Hitler was stateless, unable to run for public office, and faced the risk of deportation. On 25 February 1932 the interior minister of Brunswick, who was a member of the NSDAP, appointed Hitler as administrator for the state's delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin, making Hitler a citizen of Brunswick, and thus of Germany.

In 1932 Hitler ran against von Hindenburg in the presidential elections. The viability of his candidacy was underscored by a 27 January 1932 speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf, which won him support from many of Germany's most powerful industrialists. However, Hindenburg had support from various nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, and republican parties, and some social democrats. Hitler used the campaign slogan "''Hitler über Deutschland''" ("Hitler over Germany"), a reference to both his political ambitions and to his campaigning by aircraft. Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, garnering more than 35% of the vote in the final election. Although he lost to Hindenburg, this election established Hitler as a strong force in German politics.

Appointment as chancellor[link]

The absence of an effective government prompted two influential politicians, Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, along with several other industrialists and businessmen, to write a letter to von Hindenburg. The signers urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties", which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people".

Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor after two further parliamentary elections—in July and November 1932—had not resulted in the formation of a majority government. Hitler was to head a short-lived coalition government formed by the NSDAP and Hugenberg's party, the German National People's Party (DNVP). On 30 January 1933 the new cabinet was sworn in during a brief and simple ceremony in Hindenburg's office. The NSDAP held three of the eleven posts: Hitler was named chancellor, Hermann Göring was named minister without portfolio, and Wilhelm Frick was appointed minister of the interior.

Reichstag fire and March elections[link]

As chancellor, Hitler worked against attempts by the NSDAP's opponents to build a majority government. Because of the political stalemate, he asked President Hindenburg to again dissolve the Reichstag, and elections were scheduled for early March. On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Göring blamed a communist plot, because Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found in incriminating circumstances inside the burning building. At Hitler's urging, Hindenburg responded with the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. Activities of the German Communist Party were suppressed, and some 4,000 communist party members were arrested. Researchers, including William L. Shirer and Alan Bullock, are of the opinion that the NSDAP itself was responsible for starting the fire.

In addition to political campaigning, the NSDAP engaged in paramilitary violence and the spread of anti-communist propaganda in the days preceding the election. On election day, 6 March 1933, the NSDAP's share of the vote increased to 43.9%, and the party acquired the largest number of seats in parliament. However, Hitler's party failed to secure an absolute majority, necessitating another coalition with the DNVP.

Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act[link]

On 21 March 1933 the new Reichstag was constituted with an opening ceremony at the Garrison Church in Potsdam. This "Day of Potsdam" was held to demonstrate unity between the Nazi movement and the old Prussian elite and military. Hitler appeared in a morning coat and humbly greeted President von Hindenburg. To achieve full political control despite not having an absolute majority in parliament, Hitler's government brought the ''Ermächtigungsgesetz'' (Enabling Act) to a vote in the newly elected Reichstag. The act gave Hitler's cabinet full legislative powers for a period of four years and (with certain exceptions) allowed deviations from the constitution. The bill required a two-thirds majority to pass. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to keep several Social Democratic deputies from attending; the Communists had already been banned.

On 23 March, the Reichstag assembled at the Kroll Opera House under turbulent circumstances. Ranks of SA men served as guards inside the building, while large groups outside opposing the proposed legislation shouted slogans and threats toward the arriving members of parliament. The position of the Centre Party, the third largest party in the Reichstag, turned out to be decisive. After Hitler verbally promised party leader Ludwig Kaas that President von Hindenburg would retain his power of veto, Kaas announced the Centre Party would support the Enabling Act. Ultimately, the Enabling Act passed by a vote of 441–84, with all parties except the Social Democrats voting in favour. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship.

Removal of remaining limits[link]

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Having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his political allies embarked on a systematic suppression of the remaining political opposition. The Social Democratic Party was banned and all its assets seized. While many trade union delegates were in Berlin for May Day activities, SA stormtroopers demolished trade union offices around the country. On 2 May 1933 all trade unions were forced to dissolve and their leaders were arrested; some were sent to concentration camps. The German Labour Front was formed to represent all workers, administrators, and company owners together as one group. This new labour organisation reflected the concept of national socialism in the spirit of Hitler's "Volksgemeinschaft" (German racial community).

By the end of June, the other parties had been dissolved, and with the help of the SA, Hitler pressured his nominal coalition partner, Hugenberg, into resigning. On 14 July 1933 Hitler's Nazi Party was declared the only legal political party in Germany. The demands of the SA for more political and military power caused much anxiety among military, industrial, and political leaders. Hitler responded by purging the entire SA leadership in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Hitler targeted Ernst Röhm and other political adversaries (such as Gregor Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher). Röhm and other SA leaders, along with a number of Hitler's political enemies, were rounded up, arrested, and shot. While the international community and some Germans were shocked by the murders, many in Germany saw Hitler as restoring order.

On 2 August 1934 President von Hindenburg died. The previous day, the cabinet had enacted a law to take effect upon Hindenburg's death which abolished the office of president and combined its powers with those of the chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government, and was formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). This law actually violated the Enabling Act. While the Enabling Act allowed Hitler to deviate from the constitution, it explicitly barred him from passing any law that tampered with the presidency. In 1932, the constitution had been amended to make the president of the High Court of Justice, not the chancellor, acting president pending new elections. With this law, Hitler removed the last legal remedy by which he could be removed from office. As head of state, Hitler became Supreme Commander of the armed forces. The traditional loyalty oath of soldiers and sailors was altered to affirm loyalty to Hitler personally, rather than to the office of supreme commander. On 19 August, the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship was approved by a plebiscite with support of 90% of the electorate.

In early 1938 Hitler forced his War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, to resign when a police dossier was discovered showing that Blomberg's new wife had a record for prostitution. Hitler removed army commander Colonel-General Werner von Fritsch after the Schutzstaffel (SS) produced allegations that he had taken part in a homosexual relationship. Both men had already fallen into disfavour when they objected to his demand that they have the Wehrmacht ready to go to war as early as 1938. Hitler used this incident, known as the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair, to consolidate his hold over the military. He assumed Blomberg's title of Commander-in-Chief, thus taking personal command of the armed forces. He replaced the Ministry of War with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces, or OKW), headed by General Wilhelm Keitel. On the same day, sixteen generals were stripped of their commands and 44 more were transferred; all were suspected of not being sufficiently pro-Nazi. By early February 1938, twelve other generals had been removed.

Having consolidated his political powers, Hitler suppressed or eliminated his opposition by a process termed ''Gleichschaltung'' ("bringing into line"). He attempted to gain additional public support by vowing to reverse the effects of the Depression and the Versailles Treaty.

Third Reich[link]

Economy and culture[link]

In 1935 Hitler appointed Hjalmar Schacht as Plenipotentiary for War Economy, in charge of preparing the economy for war. Reconstruction and rearmament were financed through Mefo bills, printing money, and seizing the assets of people arrested as enemies of the State, including Jews. Unemployment fell substantially, from six million in 1932 to one million in 1936. Hitler oversaw one of the largest infrastructure improvement campaigns in German history, leading to the construction of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. Wages were slightly reduced in the pre–World War II years over those of the Weimar Republic, while the cost of living increased by 25%.

Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale. Albert Speer, instrumental in implementing Hitler's classicist reinterpretation of German culture, was placed in charge of the proposed architectural renovations of Berlin. In 1936 Hitler opened the summer Olympic games in Berlin.

Rearmament and new alliances[link]

In a meeting with German military leaders on 3 February 1933, Hitler spoke of "conquest for ''Lebensraum'' in the East and its ruthless Germanisation" as his ultimate foreign policy objectives. In March, Prince Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), issued a major statement of German foreign policy aims: Anschluss with Austria, the restoration of Germany's national borders of 1914, rejection of military restrictions under the Treaty of Versailles, the return of the former German colonies in Africa, and a German zone of influence in Eastern Europe. Hitler found Bülow's goals to be too modest. In his speeches of this period, he stressed the peaceful goals of his policies and willingness to work within international agreements. At the first meeting of his Cabinet in 1933, Hitler prioritised military spending over unemployment relief.

Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference in October 1933. In March 1935 Hitler announced an expansion of the Wehrmacht to 600,000 members—six times the number permitted by the Versailles Treaty—including development of an Air Force (Luftwaffe) and increasing the size of the Navy (Kriegsmarine). Britain, France, Italy, and the League of Nations condemned these plans as violations of the Treaty. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) of 18 June 1935 allowed German tonnage to increase to 35% of that of the British navy. Hitler called the signing of the AGNA "the happiest day of his life", as he believed the agreement marked the beginning of the Anglo-German alliance he had predicted in ''Mein Kampf''. France and Italy were not consulted before the signing, directly undermining the League of Nations and putting the Treaty of Versailles on the path towards irrelevance.

Germany reoccupied the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland in March 1936, in violation the Versailles Treaty. Hitler sent troops to Spain to support General Franco after receiving an appeal for help in July 1936. At the same time, Hitler continued his efforts to create an Anglo-German alliance. In response to a growing economic crisis caused by his rearmament efforts, Hitler issued a memorandum ordering Göring to carry out a Four Year Plan to prepare Germany for war within the next four years. The "Four-Year Plan Memorandum" of August 1936 envisaged an all-out struggle between "Judeo-Bolshevism" and German national socialism, which in Hitler's view required a committed effort of rearmament regardless of the economic costs.

Count Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of Benito Mussolini's government, declared an axis between Germany and Italy, and on 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. Britain, China, Italy, and Poland were also invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in 1937. Hitler abandoned his dream of an Anglo-German alliance, blaming "inadequate" British leadership. At a secret meeting in the Reich Chancellery with his foreign ministers and military chiefs that November, Hitler stated his intention of acquiring ''Lebensraum'' ("living space") for the German people. He ordered preparations for war in the east, to begin as early as 1938 and no later than 1943. He stated that the conference minutes, recorded as the Hossbach Memorandum, were to be regarded as his "political testament" in the event of his death. He felt the German economic crisis had reached a point that a severe decline in living standards in Germany could only be stopped by a policy of military aggression—seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia. Hitler urged quick action, before Britain and France obtained a permanent lead in the arms race. In early 1938, in the wake of the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair, Hitler asserted control of the military-foreign policy apparatus, dismissing Neurath as Foreign Minister and appointing himself ''Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht'' (supreme commander of the armed forces). From early 1938 onwards, Hitler was carrying out a foreign policy ultimately aimed at war.

The Holocaust[link]

|Adolf Hitler addressing the German Reichstag, 30 January 1939}}

A main Nazi concept was the notion of racial hygiene. On 15 September 1935, Hitler presented two laws—known as the Nuremberg Laws—to the Reichstag. The laws banned marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans, and forbade the employment of non-Jewish women under the age of 45 in Jewish households. The laws deprived so-called "non-Aryans" of the benefits of German citizenship. Hitler's early eugenic policies targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities in a programme dubbed Action Brandt, and later authorized a euthanasia programme for adults with serious mental and physical handicaps, now usually referred to as Action T4.

Hitler's idea of ''Lebensraum'', espoused briefly in ''Mein Kampf'', focused on acquiring new territory for German settlement in Eastern Europe. The ''Generalplan Ost'' ("General Plan for the East") called for the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to be deported to West Siberia, used as slave labour, or murdered; the conquered territories were to be colonised by German or "Germanised" settlers. The original plan called for this process to begin after the conquest of the Soviet Union, but when that failed to happen, Hitler moved the plans forward. By January 1942 the decision had been taken to kill the Jews and other deportees considered undesirable.

The Holocaust (the "''Endlösung der jüdischen Frage''" or "Final Solution of the Jewish Question") was organised and executed by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. The records of the Wannsee Conference—held on 20 January 1942 and led by Heydrich, with fifteen senior Nazi officials participating—provide the clearest evidence of systematic planning for the Holocaust. On 22 February Hitler was recorded saying to his associates, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews". Approximately thirty Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps were used for this purpose. By summer 1942 Auschwitz concentration camp was rapidly expanded to accept large numbers of deportees for killing or enslavement.

Although no specific order from Hitler authorising the mass killings has surfaced, he approved the ''Einsatzgruppen''—killing squads that followed the German army through Poland, the Baltic, and the Soviet Union—and he was well informed about their activities. During interrogations by Soviet intelligence officers, the records of which were declassified over fifty years later, Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, and his adjutant, Otto Günsche, stated that Hitler had a direct interest in the development of gas chambers.

Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, were responsible for the deaths of eleven to fourteen million people, including about six million Jews, representing two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe, and between 500,000 and 1,500,000 Roma. Deaths took place in concentration and extermination camps, ghettos, and through mass executions. Many victims of the Holocaust were gassed to death, whereas others died of starvation or disease while working as slave labourers.

Hitler's policies also resulted in the killings of Poles and Soviet prisoners of war, communists and other political opponents, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, and trade unionists. Hitler never appeared to have visited the concentration camps and did not speak publicly about the killings.

World War II[link]

Early diplomatic successes[link]

Alliance with Japan[link]

In February 1938, on the advice of his newly appointed Foreign Minister, the strongly pro-Japanese Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler ended the Sino-German alliance with the Republic of China to instead enter into an alliance with the more modern and powerful Japan. Hitler announced German recognition of Manchukuo, the Japanese-occupied state in Manchuria, and renounced German claims to their former colonies in the Pacific held by Japan. Hitler ordered an end to arms shipments to China and recalled all German officers working with the Chinese Army. In retaliation, Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek cancelled all Sino-German economic agreements, depriving the Germans of many Chinese raw materials, though they did continue to ship tungsten, a key metal in armaments production, through to 1939.

Austria and Czechoslovakia[link]

On 12 March 1938 Hitler declared unification of Austria with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss. Hitler then turned his attention to the ethnic German population of the Sudetenland district of Czechoslovakia.

On 28–29 March 1938 Hitler held a series of secret meetings in Berlin with Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten ''Heimfront'' (Home Front), the largest of the ethnic German parties of the Sudetenland. The men agreed that Henlein would demand increased autonomy for Sudeten Germans from the Czechoslovakian government, thus providing a pretext for German military action against Czechoslovakia. In April 1938 Henlein told the foreign minister of Hungary that "whatever the Czech government might offer, he would always raise still higher demands ... he wanted to sabotage an understanding by all means because this was the only method to blow up Czechoslovakia quickly". In private, Hitler considered the Sudeten issue unimportant; his real intention was a war of conquest against Czechoslovakia.

In April 1938 Hitler ordered the OKW to prepare for ''Fall Grün'' ("Case Green"), the code name for an invasion of Czechoslovakia. As a result of intense French and British diplomatic pressure, on 5 September 1938 Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš unveiled the "Fourth Plan" for constitutional reorganisation of his country, which agreed to most of Henlein's demands for Sudeten autonomy. Henlein's ''Heimfront'' responded to Beneš' offer with a series of violent clashes with the Czechoslovakian police that led to the declaration of martial law in certain Sudeten districts.

Germany was dependent on imported oil; a confrontation with Britain over the Czechoslovakian dispute could curtail Germany's oil supplies. Hitler called off ''Fall Grün'', originally planned for 1 October 1938. On 29 September 1938 Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, and Benito Mussolini attended a one-day conference in Munich that led to the Munich Agreement, which handed over the Sudetenland districts to Germany.

Chamberlain was satisfied with the Munich conference, calling the outcome "peace for our time", while Hitler was angered about the missed opportunity for war in 1938; he expressed his disappointment in a speech on 9 October 1938 in Saarbrücken. In Hitler's view, the British-brokered peace, although favourable to the ostensible German demands, was a diplomatic defeat which spurred his intent of limiting British power to pave the way for the eastern expansion of Germany. As a result of the summit, Hitler was selected ''Time'' magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.

In late 1938 and early 1939, the continuing economic crisis caused by rearmament forced Hitler to make major defence cuts. In his "Export or die" speech of 30 January 1939, he called for an economic offensive to increase German foreign exchange holdings to pay for raw materials such as high-grade iron needed for military weapons.

On 15 March 1939, in violation of the Munich accord and possibly as a result of the deepening economic crisis requiring additional assets, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to invade Prague, and from Prague Castle proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate.

Start of World War II[link]

In private discussions in 1939, Hitler described Britain as the main enemy to be defeated. In his view, Poland's obliteration as a sovereign nation was a necessary prelude to that goal. The eastern flank would be secured and land would be added to Germany's ''Lebensraum''. Hitler wanted Poland to become either a German satellite state or be otherwise neutralised to secure the Reich's eastern flank, and to prevent a possible British blockade. Initially, Hitler favoured the idea of a satellite state; this was rejected by the Polish government. Therefore, Hitler decided to invade Poland; he made this the main German foreign policy goal of 1939. Hitler was offended by the British "guarantee" of Polish independence issued on 31 March 1939, and told his associates that "I shall brew them a devil's drink". In a speech in Wilhelmshaven for the launch of the battleship on 1 April 1939, Hitler threatened to denounce the Anglo-German Naval Agreement if the British persisted with their guarantee of Polish independence, which he perceived as an "encirclement" policy. On 3 April 1939 Hitler ordered the military to prepare for ''Fall Weiss'' ("Case White"), the plan for an invasion of Poland on 25 August 1939. In a speech before the Reichstag on 28 April he renounced both the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact. In August Hitler told his generals that his original plan for 1939 was to "... establish an acceptable relationship with Poland in order to fight against the West". Since Poland refused to become a German satellite, Hitler stated his only option was the invasion of Poland. Historians such as William Carr, Gerhard Weinberg, and Ian Kershaw have argued that one reason for Hitler's rush to war was his morbid and obsessive fear of an early death, and hence his feeling that he did not have long to accomplish his work.

Hitler was concerned that a military attack against Poland could result in a premature war with Britain. However, Hitler's foreign minister—and former Ambassador to London—Joachim von Ribbentrop assured him that neither Britain nor France would honour their commitments to Poland, and that a German–Polish war would only be a limited regional war. Ribbentrop claimed that in December 1938 the French foreign minister, Georges Bonnet, had stated that France considered Eastern Europe as Germany's exclusive sphere of influence; Ribbentrop showed Hitler diplomatic cables that supported his analysis. The German Ambassador in London, Herbert von Dirksen, supported Ribbentrop's analysis with a dispatch in August 1939, reporting that Chamberlain knew "the social structure of Britain, even the conception of the British Empire, would not survive the chaos of even a victorious war", and so would back down. Accordingly, on 21 August 1939 Hitler ordered a military mobilisation against Poland.

Hitler's plans for a military campaign in Poland in late August or early September required tacit Soviet support. The non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) between Germany and the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, included secret protocols with an agreement to partition Poland between the two countries. In response to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact—and contrary to the prediction of Ribbentrop that the newly-formed pact would sever Anglo-Polish ties—Britain and Poland signed the Anglo-Polish alliance on 25 August 1939. This, along with news from Italy that Mussolini would not honour the Pact of Steel, caused Hitler to postpone the attack on Poland from 25 August to 1 September. In the days before the start of the war, Hitler tried to manoeuvre the British into neutrality by offering a non-aggression guarantee to the British Empire on 25 August and by having Ribbentrop present a last-minute peace plan with an impossibly short time limit in an effort to then blame the war on British and Polish inaction.

As a pretext for a military aggression against Poland, Hitler claimed the Free City of Danzig and the right to extraterritorial roads across the Polish Corridor, which Germany had ceded under the Versailles Treaty. Despite his concerns over a possible British intervention, Hitler was ultimately not deterred from his aim of invading Poland, and on 1 September 1939 Germany invaded western Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September. This surprised Hitler, prompting him to turn to Ribbentrop and angrily ask "Now what?" France and Britain did not act on their declarations immediately, and on 17 September, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland.

The fall of Poland was followed by what contemporary journalists dubbed the "Phoney War" or ''Sitzkrieg'' ("sitting war"). Hitler instructed the two newly-appointed Gauleiters of north-western Poland, Albert Forster of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Arthur Greiser of Reichsgau Wartheland, to "Germanise" their areas, and promised them "There would be no questions asked" about how this was accomplished. To Himmler's chagrin, Forster had local Poles sign forms stating that they had German blood, and required no further documentation. On the other hand, Greiser carried out a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign on the Polish population in his purview. Greiser complained to Hitler that Forster was allowing thousands of Poles to be accepted as "racial" Germans and thus, in Greiser's view, endangering German "racial purity". Hitler told Himmler and Greiser to take up their difficulties with Forster, and not to involve him. Hitler's handling of the Forster–Greiser dispute has been advanced as an example of Kershaw's theory of "working towards the Führer": Hitler issued vague instructions and expected his subordinates to work out policies on their own.

Another dispute broke out between different factions. One side, represented by Himmler and Greiser, championed carrying out ethnic cleansing in Poland, and another side, represented by Göring and Hans Frank, Governor-General of the General Government territory of occupied Poland, called for turning Poland into the "granary" of the Reich. At a conference held at Göring's Karinhall estate on 12 February 1940, the dispute was initially settled in favour of the Göring–Frank view of economic exploitation, which ended the economically disruptive mass expulsions. On 15 May 1940, however, Himmler presented Hitler with a memo entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East", which called for expulsion of the entire Jewish population of Europe into Africa and reducing the remainder of the Polish population to a "leaderless class of labourers". Hitler called Himmler's memo "good and correct"; and, ignoring Göring and Frank, implemented the Himmler–Greiser policy in Poland.

Hitler began a military build-up on Germany's western border, and in April 1940, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. On April 9 Hitler proclaimed the birth of the "Greater Germanic Reich" to his associates; this was his vision of a united empire of the Germanic nations of Europe, where the Dutch, Flemish, Scandinavians, and other peoples would join into a single, racially-pure polity under German leadership. In May 1940, Hitler's forces attacked France, and conquered Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. These victories prompted Mussolini to have Italy join forces with Hitler on 10 June 1940. France surrendered on 22 June 1940.

Britain, whose forces were forced to leave France by sea from Dunkirk, continued to fight alongside other British dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler made peace overtures to the British, now led by Winston Churchill, and when these were rejected he ordered bombing raids on the United Kingdom. Hitler's prelude to a planned invasion of the UK was a series of aerial attacks in the Battle of Britain on Royal Air Force airbases and radar stations in South-East England. However, the German Luftwaffe failed to defeat the Royal Air Force.

On 27 September 1940 the Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin by Saburō Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Hitler, and Italian foreign minister Ciano. The agreement was later expanded to include Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. They were collectively known as the Axis powers. The purpose of the pact was to deter the United States from supporting the British. By the end of October 1940, air superiority for the invasion of Britain—Operation Sea Lion—could not be achieved, and Hitler ordered nightly air raids of British cities, including London, Plymouth, and Coventry.

In the Spring of 1941, Hitler was distracted from his plans for the East by military activities in North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. In February, German forces arrived in Libya to bolster the Italian presence. In April, Hitler launched the invasion of Yugoslavia, quickly followed by the invasion of Greece. In May, German forces were sent to support Iraqi rebel forces fighting against the British and to invade Crete. On 23 May, Hitler released Führer Directive No. 30.

Path to defeat[link]

On 22 June 1941, contravening the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact of 1939, three million German troops attacked the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. The invasion seized a huge area, including the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine. However, the German advance was stopped outside Moscow in December 1941 by the Russian Winter and fierce Soviet resistance. Soviet troop concentrations on Germany's eastern border in the spring of 1941 may have prompted Hitler to engage in a ''Flucht nach vorn'' ("flight forward") to get in front of an inevitable conflict. Viktor Suvorov, Ernst Topitsch, Joachim Hoffmann, Ernst Nolte, and David Irving have argued that the official reason for Barbarossa given by the German military was the real reason—a preventive war to avert an impending Soviet attack scheduled for July 1941. This theory, however, has been faulted; American historian Gerhard Weinberg once compared the advocates of the preventive war theory to believers in "fairy tales".

The Wehrmacht invasion of the Soviet Union reached its peak on 2 December 1941, when the 258th Infantry Division advanced to within of Moscow, close enough to see the spires of the Kremlin. However, they were not prepared for the harsh conditions of the Russian winter, and Soviet forces drove back the German troops over .

On 7 December 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four days later, Hitler's formal declaration of war against the United States engaged Germany in war against a coalition that included the world's largest empire (the British Empire), the world's greatest industrial and financial power (the United States), and the world's largest army (the Soviet Union).

When Himmler met Hitler on 18 December 1941 and posed the question "What to do with the Jews of Russia?", Hitler replied "''als Partisanen auszurotten''" ("exterminate them as partisans"). Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust.

In late 1942 German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein, thwarting Hitler's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. In February 1943 the Battle of Stalingrad ended with the destruction of the German Sixth Army. Thereafter came a decisive defeat at the Battle of Kursk. Hitler's military judgment became increasingly erratic, and Germany's military and economic position deteriorated along with Hitler's health. Kershaw and others believe that Hitler may have suffered from Parkinson's disease.

Following the allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Mussolini was deposed by Pietro Badoglio, who surrendered to the Allies. Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler's armies into retreat along the Eastern Front. On 6 June 1944 the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in what was one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord. As a result of these significant setbacks for the German army, many of its officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that Hitler's misjudgement or denial would drag out the war and result in the complete destruction of the country. Several high-profile assassination attempts against Hitler occurred during this period.

Between 1939 and 1945 there were many plans to assassinate Hitler, some of which proceeded to significant degrees. The most well-known came from within Germany and was at least partly driven by the increasing prospect of a German defeat in the war. In July 1944, in the 20 July plot, part of Operation Valkyrie, Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in one of Hitler's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg. Hitler narrowly survived because someone had unknowingly pushed the briefcase that contained the bomb behind a leg of the heavy conference table. When the bomb exploded, the table deflected much of the blast away from Hitler. Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals resulting in the execution of more than 4,900 people.

Defeat and death[link]

By late 1944, the Red Army had driven the German army back into Western Europe, and the Western Allies were advancing into Germany. After being informed of the failure of his Ardennes Offensive, Hitler realised that Germany was going to lose the war. His hope, buoyed by the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945, was to negotiate peace with America and Britain. Acting on his view that Germany's military failures had forfeited its right to survive as a nation, Hitler ordered the destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands. Execution of this scorched earth plan was entrusted to arms minister Albert Speer, who quietly disobeyed the order.

On 20 April, his 56th birthday, Hitler made his last trip from the Führerbunker ("Führer's shelter") to the surface. In the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery, he awarded Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth. By 21 April, Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the last defences of German General Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights and advanced into the outskirts of Berlin. In denial about the increasingly dire situation, Hitler placed his hopes on the units commanded by Waffen SS General Felix Steiner, the ''Armeeabteilung Steiner'' ("Army Detachment Steiner"). Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the salient and the German Ninth Army was ordered to attack northward in a pincer attack.

During a military conference on 22 April, Hitler asked about Steiner's offensive. After a long silence, he was told that the attack had never been launched and that the Russians had broken through into Berlin. This news prompted Hitler to ask everyone except Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Hans Krebs, and Wilhelm Burgdorf to leave the room. Hitler then launched a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders, culminating in his declaration—for the first time—that the war was lost. Hitler announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself.

Goebbels made a proclamation on 23 April urging the citizens of Berlin to courageously defend the city. That same day, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, arguing that since Hitler was cut off in Berlin, he, Göring, should assume leadership of Germany. Göring set a time limit, after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated. Hitler responded angrily by having Göring arrested, and when writing his will on 29 April, he removed Göring from all his positions in the government.

Berlin became completely cut off from the rest of Germany. On 28 April, Hitler discovered that Himmler was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies. He ordered Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot.

After midnight on 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker. After a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife, he then took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament. The event was witnessed and documents signed by Hans Krebs, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Joseph Goebbels, and Martin Bormann. Later that afternoon, Hitler was informed of the assassination of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, which presumably increased his determination to avoid capture.

On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler and Braun committed suicide; Braun bit into a cyanide capsule and Hitler shot himself with his 7.65 mm Walther PPK pistol. The lifeless bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were placed in a bomb crater and doused with petrol. The corpses were set on fire and the Red Army shelling continued.

Berlin surrendered on 2 May. Records in the Soviet archives—obtained after the fall of the Soviet Union—showed that the remains of Hitler, Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, the six Goebbels children, General Hans Krebs, and Hitler's dogs, were repeatedly buried and exhumed. On 4 April 1970 a Soviet KGB team with detailed burial charts secretly exhumed five wooden boxes which had been buried at the SMERSH facility in Magdeburg. The remains from the boxes were thoroughly burned and crushed, after which the ashes were thrown into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.

Legacy[link]

thumb|Outside the building in Braunau am Inn, Austria, where Hitler was born, is a [[Hitler birthplace memorial stone|memorial stone reminder of the horrors of World War II. The inscription translates as: For peace, freedom and democracy never again fascism millions of dead remind [us]"]] Hitler's suicide was likened by contemporaries to a "spell" being broken. According to Toland, without its leader, National Socialism "burst like a bubble".

Hitler's actions and Nazi ideology are almost universally regarded as gravely immoral. His political programme had brought about a world war, leaving behind a devastated and impoverished Eastern and Central Europe. Germany itself suffered wholesale destruction, characterised as "Zero Hour". Hitler's policies inflicted human suffering on an unprecedented scale and resulted in the death of an estimated 40 million people, including about 27 million in the Soviet Union. Historians, philosophers, and politicians often apply the word "evil" in describing the Nazi regime. In Germany and Austria, Holocaust denial and the display of Nazi symbols such as the swastika are prohibited by law.

The German Liberal historian Friedrich Meinecke described Hitler as "one of the great examples of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life". The English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper saw him as "among the 'terrible simplifiers' of history, the most systematic, the most historical, the most philosophical, and yet the coarsest, cruellest, least magnanimous conqueror the world has ever known." For the historian John M. Roberts, Hitler's defeat marked the end of a phase of European history dominated by Germany. In its place emerged the Cold War, a global confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Religious views[link]

Hitler's parents were Roman Catholics, but after leaving home he never attended Mass or received the sacraments. He favoured aspects of Protestantism that suited his own views, and adopted some elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchical organisation, liturgy, and phraseology in his politics. After his move to Germany, Hitler did not leave his church. Historian Richard Steigmann-Gall concludes that he "can be classified as Catholic", but that "nominal church membership is a very unreliable gauge of actual piety in this context."

In public, Hitler often praised Christian heritage and German Christian culture, and professed a belief in an "Aryan" Jesus Christ—a Jesus who fought against the Jews. He spoke of his interpretation of Christianity as a central motivation for his antisemitism (hatred of the Jews), stating that "As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice." In private, Hitler was more critical of traditional Christianity, considering it a religion fit only for slaves; he admired the power of Rome but maintained a severe hostility towards its teaching. Historian John S. Conway states that Hitler held a "fundamental antagonism" towards the Christian churches. In political relations with the church, Hitler adopted a strategy "that suited his immediate political purposes". According to a US Office of Strategic Services report, Hitler had a general plan, even before his rise to power, to destroy the influence of Christian churches within the Reich. The report titled "The Nazi Master Plan" stated that the destruction of the church was a goal of the movement right from the start, but that it was inexpedient to express this extreme position publicly. His intention, according to Bullock, was to wait until the war was over to destroy the influence of Christianity.

Hitler admired the Muslim military tradition, but considered Arabs as "racially inferior". He believed that the racially-superior Germans, in conjunction with Islam, could have conquered much of the world during the Middle Ages. During a meeting with a Japanese professor in 1931, Hitler praised the Shinto religion and Japanese culture. Although Himmler was interested in the occult, the interpretation of runes, and tracing the prehistoric roots of the Germanic people, Hitler was more pragmatic, and his ideology centred on more practical concerns.

Health[link]

Researchers have suggested that Hitler suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat, Parkinson's disease, syphilis, and tinnitus. Theories about Hitler's medical condition are difficult to prove, and according them too much weight may have the effect of attributing many of the events and consequences of the Third Reich to the possibly impaired physical health of one individual. Kershaw feels that it is better to take a broader view of German history by examining what social forces led to the Third Reich and its policies rather than to pursue narrow explanations for the Holocaust and World War II based on only one person.

Hitler followed a vegetarian diet. At social events he sometimes gave graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make his dinner guests shun meat. A fear of cancer (from which his mother died) is the most widely cited reason for Hitler's dietary habits. An antivivisectionist, Hitler may have followed his selective diet out of a profound concern for animals. Bormann had a greenhouse constructed near the Berghof (near Berchtesgaden) to ensure a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for Hitler throughout the war. Hitler despised alcohol and was a non-smoker. He promoted aggressive anti-smoking campaigns throughout Germany. Hitler began using amphetamine occasionally after 1937 and became addicted to the drug in the fall of 1942. Albert Speer linked this use of amphetamines to Hitler's increasingly inflexible decision making (for example, never to allow military retreats).

Prescribed ninety different medications during the war years, Hitler took many pills each day for chronic stomach problems and other ailments. He suffered ruptured eardrums as a result of the 20 July plot bomb blast in 1944, and two hundred wood splinters had to be removed from his legs. Newsreel footage of Hitler shows tremors of his hand and a shuffling walk, which began before the war and worsened towards the end of his life. Hitler's personal physician, Theodor Morell, treated Hitler with a drug that was commonly prescribed in 1945 for Parkinson's disease. Ernst-Günther Schenck and several other doctors who met Hitler in the last weeks of his life each formed a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.

Family[link]

To the public, Hitler promoted his own image as that of a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the nation. He met his mistress, Eva Braun, in 1929, and married her in April 1945. In September 1931 his niece, Geli Raubal, committed suicide with Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment. It was rumoured among contemporaries that Geli was in a romantic relationship with him, and her death was a source of deep, lasting pain. Paula Hitler, the last living member of the immediate family, died in 1960.

Hitler in media[link]

Hitler was a renowned orator, and honed his skills by giving speeches in crowded Munich beer halls in the early 1920s. He became adept at using populist themes targeted at his audience, including the use of scapegoats who could be blamed for the economic hardships of his listeners. He had personal magnetism and an understanding of crowd psychology, traits he used to his advantage while engaged in public speaking. Alfons Heck, a former member of the Hitler Youth, describes the reaction to a speech by Hitler: "We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: ''Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!'' From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul". Although his oratory skills and personal traits were generally received well by large crowds and at official events, some who had met Hitler privately noted that his appearance and demeanour failed to make a lasting impression on them.

Hitler used documentary films as a propaganda tool. He was involved and appeared in a series of films by the pioneering filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl via Universum Film AG (UFA):

''Der Sieg des Glaubens'' (''Victory of Faith'', 1933)

''Triumph des Willens'' (''Triumph of the Will'', 1934), co-produced by Hitler

''Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht'' (''Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces'', 1935)

''Olympia'' (1938)

See also[link]

Führermuseum

Julius Schaub – chief aide

Karl Mayr – Hitler's superior in army Intelligence 1919–1920

Karl Wilhelm Krause – personal valet

List of books by or about Adolf Hitler

''Mein Kampf'' (online versions)

Poison Kitchen

Streets named after Adolf Hitler

Vorbunker

Footnotes[link]

{{notes | refs =30em {{efn | name = libel suit | Hitler also won settlement from a libel suit against the socialist paper the ''Münchener Post'', which had questioned his lifestyle and income. . }} {{efn | name = will and marriage | : "Hitler's will and marriage" on the website of MI5, using the sources available to Trevor Roper (a WWII MI5 agent and historian/author of ''The Last Days of Hitler''), records the marriage as taking place after Hitler had dictated his last will and testament. }} }}

References[link]

Sources[link]

Online

External links[link]

 – real life footage in documentaries  – as portrayed in film and TV

Adolf Hitler miscellaneous papers at the Hoover Institution Archives

| years = 1933–1945}} | years = 1934–1945}}

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