The Wayback Machine - http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com:80/Nazi
Thursday, 12 July 2012
Grammar Nazis
The Power of Nazi Propaganda
Bruno vs Skinheads
Iron Sky Official Berlin Trailer - NAZI'S on the MOON Movie (2012) HD
The Aldebaran Mystery - Nazi UFO Secrets
Lars Von Trier's 'Nazi' gaffe at Cannes Film Festival as he jokes about Adolf Hitler
Nazi Heroes? Waffen SS hailed in Latvia
Iron Sky Official Trailer #2 - Nazi's on the Moon Movie (2012) HD
Rise of the Nazis
Anti-Nazi protest: Video of clashes, police detain 700 in Germany
The Nazi Dream
Nazis - The Occult Conspiracy - Complete

Nazi

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Grammar Nazis/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 15 Jun 2010
  • Duration: 3:27
  • Updated: 25 Jun 2012
Author: collegehumor
CLICK FOR THAT CHEESY MEATY GOODNESS bit.ly See more www.collegehumor.com LIKE us on www.facebook.com FOLLOW us on: www.twitter.com FOLLOW us on: www.tumblr.com
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Grammar Nazis/video details
The Power of Nazi Propaganda/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 02 Dec 2010
  • Duration: 5:46
  • Updated: 24 Jun 2012
Author: ReasonTV
From radio and film to newspapers and publishing, the Nazi regime controlled every aspect of German culture from 1933-1945. Through Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the German state tightly controlled political messaging, promoting deification of the leader—the Führerprinzip—and the demonization of the ubiquitous and duplicitious "racial enemy." A new exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, examines "how the Nazi Party used modern techniques as well as new technologies and carefully crafted messages to sway millions with its vision for a new Germany." Reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan visited with museum historian and curator Steve Luckert to discuss the role and effectiveness of propaganda in the rise of fascism and what lessons can be drawn from the Nazi experiment in mass manipulation. Approximately 6 minutes. Produced by Jim Epstein and Michael C. Moynihan. Shot by Dan Hayes and Jim Epstein, with help from Joshua Swain. Go to reason.tv for downloadable iPod, HD, and audio versions of this and all our videos.
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/The Power of Nazi Propaganda/video details
Bruno vs Skinheads/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 11 Nov 2006
  • Duration: 3:28
  • Updated: 24 Jun 2012
Author: DrSnafu
Sacha Baron Cohen's character goes to a "Evil-fest"
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Bruno vs Skinheads/video details
Iron Sky Official Berlin Trailer - NAZI'S on the MOON Movie (2012) HD/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 25 Jan 2012
  • Duration: 2:16
  • Updated: 25 Jun 2012
Author: MovieclipsCOMINGSOON
Iron Sky Official Berlin Trailer - Nazi's on the Moon Movie (2012) HD Subscribe to TRAILERS: bit.ly www.ironsky.net Towards the end of World War II the Nazi scientists made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity. From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late '45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right. Now it's 2018, and it's the time for the first American Moon landing since the 70′s. Meanwhile the Nazi invasion, that has been over 70 years in the making, is on its way, and the world is goose-stepping towards its doom. The three main characters of the story are Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), Klaus Adler (Götz Otto), and James Washington (Christopher Kirby). "iron sky movie" "iron sky trailer" "iron sky HD" "nazi's on the moon" "nazi's in space" "nazi" moon "Timo Vuorensola" "Julia Dietze" "Christopher Kirby" "Udo Kier" exploitation awesome movie clips movieclips movieclipstrailers popuptrailer movieclipsDOTcom
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Iron Sky Official Berlin Trailer - NAZI'S on the MOON Movie (2012) HD/video details
The Aldebaran Mystery - Nazi UFO Secrets/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 03 Feb 2011
  • Duration: 39:20
  • Updated: 24 Jun 2012
Author: UFOTVstudios
During Adolf Hitler's rise to power, did a daring group of Nazi scholars and technicians learn the secrets of anti-gravity and space travel from extraterrestrials? If true, these conclusions may shock and amaze you. Get the facts about UFO Secrets of World War II - The 3rd Reich and beyond, in a way that will change the way we stare up at the stars for years to come. NOW ON DVD - The Aldebaran Mystery and The Eisenhower Briefing Papers: UFO Secrets of the 3rd Reich and World War II DVD Double Feature - LOADED WITH BONUS FEATURES, 148 min., CAT# U81101 - Go to www.UFOTV.com
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/The Aldebaran Mystery - Nazi UFO Secrets/video details
Lars Von Trier's 'Nazi' gaffe at Cannes Film Festival as he jokes about Adolf Hitler/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 18 May 2011
  • Duration: 2:16
  • Updated: 23 Jun 2012
Author: telegraphtv
Danish film director Lars Von Trier causes a stir at Cannes by admitting his 'sympathy' for Adolf Hitler and joking that he is a Nazi. Kirsten Dunst named best actress at Cannes Film Festival 2011, read more: tinyurl.com Read more: bit.ly
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Lars Von Trier's 'Nazi' gaffe at Cannes Film Festival as he jokes about Adolf Hitler/video details
Nazi Heroes? Waffen SS hailed in Latvia/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 17 Mar 2012
  • Duration: 4:25
  • Updated: 24 Jun 2012
Author: RussiaToday
Over a thousand people in Latvia have gathered to pay heroes' honours to SS veterans in a controversial annual march. Many condemned the rally as glorifying Nazism, worried about it inspiring nationalistic youths. Despite that, it's got support at the highest political levels, as Jacob Greaves reports. RT on Twitter twitter.com RT on Facebook www.facebook.com
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Nazi Heroes? Waffen SS hailed in Latvia/video details
Iron Sky Official Trailer #2 - Nazi's on the Moon Movie (2012) HD/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 09 Feb 2012
  • Duration: 1:54
  • Updated: 24 Jun 2012
Author: MovieclipsCOMINGSOON
Iron Sky Official Trailer #2 - Nazi's on the Moon Movie (2012) HD Subscribe to TRAILERS: bit.ly www.ironsky.net Towards the end of World War II the Nazi scientists made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity. From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late '45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right. Now it's 2018, and it's the time for the first American Moon landing since the 70′s. Meanwhile the Nazi invasion, that has been over 70 years in the making, is on its way, and the world is goose-stepping towards its doom. The three main characters of the story are Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), Klaus Adler (Götz Otto), and James Washington (Christopher Kirby). "iron sky movie" "iron sky trailer" "iron sky HD" "nazi's on the moon" "nazi's in space" "nazi" moon "Timo Vuorensola" "Julia Dietze" "Christopher Kirby" "Udo Kier" exploitation awesome movie clips movieclips movieclipstrailers popuptrailer movieclipsDOTcom
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Iron Sky Official Trailer #2 - Nazi's on the Moon Movie (2012) HD/video details
Rise of the Nazis/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 03 Sep 2009
  • Duration: 4:15
  • Updated: 24 Jun 2012
Author: DiscoveryTV
In August 1934 Hitler declared himself Fuhrer, absolute leader of Germany. Follow Hitler and his Nazi Party's rise to power in the lead up to the Second World War. Go to www.discoverychannel.co.uk to watch more footage from World War II in Colour and HD
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Rise of the Nazis/video details
Anti-Nazi protest: Video of clashes, police detain 700 in Germany/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 03 Jun 2012
  • Duration: 1:27
  • Updated: 25 Jun 2012
Author: RussiaToday
Violent clashes have broken out in Germany between the supporters and opponents of the neo-Nazi movement. Hamburg police have detained over 700 people after the demonstrators started throwing projectiles, injuring several officers. A group of anti-Nazi demonstrators have clashed with far-right activists marching in the city's Wandsbek district. The leftists erected barricades of trash bins and set them ablaze to stop their rivals from passing. After the police used water cannons to extinguish the flames, protesters attacked officers and the far-right demonstrators with pyrotechnics, bottles and stones. At least eight officers have been injured by the projectiles, thelocal.de reports. The police put around 700 demonstrators into custody. See photos of clashes: rt.com Subscribe to RT! www.youtube.com Watch RT LIVE on our website rt.com Like us on Facebook www.facebook.com Follow us on Twitter twitter.com Follow us on Google+ plus.google.com RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 500 million YouTube views benchmark.
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Anti-Nazi protest: Video of clashes, police detain 700 in Germany/video details
The Nazi Dream/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 06 Jan 2012
  • Duration: 3:00
  • Updated: 22 Jun 2012
Author: NationalGeographic
Nazi Hunters: Commander of Treblinka : THU JAN 12 8P et/pt : channel.nationalgeographic.com A man responsible for the death of 800000 slips quietly to Brazil for what seems to be a future of comfort and contentedness.
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/The Nazi Dream/video details
Nazis - The Occult Conspiracy - Complete/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 25 Jun 2011
  • Duration: 1:44:02
  • Updated: 24 Jun 2012
Author: docufans
For more great documentaries go to www.DOCUFANS.COM
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Nazis - The Occult Conspiracy - Complete/video details
Real Life Nazi Zombies/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 17 Feb 2012
  • Duration: 6:08
  • Updated: 24 Jun 2012
Author: andrewmfilms
Click to tweet! bit.ly The only two survivors of a plane crash find themselves fighting for their lives in an area infested with Nazi Zombies. CREDITS: Seth McMurry (twitter.com Joe Ochterbeck Tyler Herron CJ Bernard Garrett Whitehead Xavier Lagunas Jacob Sturgeon Nathan McMurry Greg Bowie Moriah Patterson (Make-Up) Kayla Esmond (Make-Up) Extra tags: Nazi Zombies Xbox 360 Video game real life black ops zombies
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Real Life Nazi Zombies/video details
Nazi Kindergarten Shame: Baltic divided over dark past/video details
  • Order:
  • Published: 24 May 2012
  • Duration: 3:31
  • Updated: 23 Jun 2012
Author: RussiaToday
A kindergarten in Latvia has been dragged into a row over teaching tyranny - after its toddlers were given a lesson by Nazi sympathisers, including getting hands-on with SS weapons. For some, it's vital schooling about their country's history but, as Aleksey Yaroshevsky reports, the fear is of nursery-age indoctrination. Subscribe to RT! www.youtube.com Watch RT LIVE on our website rt.com Like us on Facebook www.facebook.com Follow us on Twitter twitter.com Follow us on Google+ plus.google.com RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 500 million YouTube views benchmark.
http://web.archive.org./web/20120713033201/http://wn.com/Nazi Kindergarten Shame: Baltic divided over dark past/video details
  • Grammar Nazis...3:27
  • The Power of Nazi Propaganda...5:46
  • Bruno vs Skinheads...3:28
  • Iron Sky Official Berlin Trailer - NAZI'S on the MOON Movie (2012) HD...2:16
  • The Aldebaran Mystery - Nazi UFO Secrets...39:20
  • Lars Von Trier's 'Nazi' gaffe at Cannes Film Festival as he jokes about Adolf Hitler...2:16
  • Nazi Heroes? Waffen SS hailed in Latvia...4:25
  • Iron Sky Official Trailer #2 - Nazi's on the Moon Movie (2012) HD...1:54
  • Rise of the Nazis...4:15
  • Anti-Nazi protest: Video of clashes, police detain 700 in Germany...1:27
  • The Nazi Dream...3:00
  • Nazis - The Occult Conspiracy - Complete...1:44:02
  • Real Life Nazi Zombies...6:08
  • Nazi Kindergarten Shame: Baltic divided over dark past...3:31
CLICK FOR THAT CHEESY MEATY GOODNESS bit.ly See more www.collegehumor.com LIKE us on www.facebook.com FOLLOW us on: www.twitter.com FOLLOW us on: www.tumblr.com
3:27
Gram­mar Nazis
CLICK FOR THAT CHEESY MEATY GOOD­NESS bit.​ly See more www.​collegehumor.​com LIKE us on www.f...
pub­lished: 15 Jun 2010
5:46
The Power of Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da
From radio and film to news­pa­pers and pub­lish­ing, the Nazi regime con­trolled every as­pect ...
pub­lished: 02 Dec 2010
au­thor: Rea­sonTV
3:28
Bruno vs Skin­heads
Sacha Baron Cohen's char­ac­ter goes to a "Evil-fest"...
pub­lished: 11 Nov 2006
au­thor: DrSna­fu
2:16
Iron Sky Of­fi­cial Berlin Trail­er - NAZI'S on the MOON Movie (2012) HD
Iron Sky Of­fi­cial Berlin Trail­er - Nazi's on the Moon Movie (2012) HD Sub­scribe to TRA...
pub­lished: 25 Jan 2012
39:20
The Alde­baran Mys­tery - Nazi UFO Se­crets
Dur­ing Adolf Hitler's rise to power, did a dar­ing group of Nazi schol­ars and tech­ni­cia...
pub­lished: 03 Feb 2011
2:16
Lars Von Trier's 'Nazi' gaffe at Cannes Film Fes­ti­val as he jokes about Adolf Hitler
Dan­ish film di­rec­tor Lars Von Trier caus­es a stir at Cannes by ad­mit­ting his 'sym­pa­thy...
pub­lished: 18 May 2011
au­thor: tele­graphtv
4:25
Nazi Heroes? Waf­fen SS hailed in Latvia
Over a thou­sand peo­ple in Latvia have gath­ered to pay heroes' hon­ours to SS vet­er­ans i...
pub­lished: 17 Mar 2012
1:54
Iron Sky Of­fi­cial Trail­er #2 - Nazi's on the Moon Movie (2012) HD
Iron Sky Of­fi­cial Trail­er #2 - Nazi's on the Moon Movie (2012) HD Sub­scribe to TRAIL­ER...
pub­lished: 09 Feb 2012
4:15
Rise of the Nazis
In Au­gust 1934 Hitler de­clared him­self Fuhrer, ab­so­lute lead­er of Ger­many. Fol­low Hitler a...
pub­lished: 03 Sep 2009
au­thor: Dis­cov­eryTV
1:27
An­ti-Nazi protest: Video of clash­es, po­lice de­tain 700 in Ger­many
Vi­o­lent clash­es have bro­ken out in Ger­many be­tween the sup­port­ers and op­po­nents of the neo...
pub­lished: 03 Jun 2012
3:00
The Nazi Dream
Nazi Hunters: Com­man­der of Tre­blin­ka : THU JAN 12 8P et/pt : channel.​nationalgeographic.​co...
pub­lished: 06 Jan 2012
104:02
Nazis - The Oc­cult Con­spir­a­cy - Com­plete
For more great doc­u­men­taries go to www.​DOCUFANS.​COM...
pub­lished: 25 Jun 2011
au­thor: docu­fans
6:08
Real Life Nazi Zom­bies
Click to tweet! bit.​ly The only two sur­vivors of a plane crash find them­selves fight­ing fo...
pub­lished: 17 Feb 2012
3:31
Nazi Kinder­garten Shame: Baltic di­vid­ed over dark past
A kinder­garten in Latvia has been dragged into a row over teach­ing tyran­ny - after its tod...
pub­lished: 24 May 2012
3:37
Neo-Nazi's Mur­der-Sui­cide Mas­sacre
Via Alternet.​org:​ "JT Ready, who the Phoenix New Times de­scribes as "Ari­zona'...
pub­lished: 04 May 2012
3:00
Greek De­fault Cri­sis Neo Nazi lead­er de­nies the Holocaust.​Hitler's Dog Bark­ing.
What is the rel­e­vance of what this man has said to Mod­ern Greek pol­i­tics? Deny­ing the Holo...
pub­lished: 15 May 2012
2:53
Nazis Take a Dive - The Blues Broth­ers (3/9) Movie CLIP (1980) HD
The Blues Broth­ers Movie Clip - watch all clips j.​mp click to sub­scribe j.​mp Jake (John Be...
pub­lished: 27 May 2011
au­thor: movieclips
5:04
CIA Tor­ture Se­crets: 'Nazi-like' Pol­ish black site con­fes­sion
Last week saw a re­vival of the scan­dal sur­round­ing an al­leged CIA se­cret prison in Poland ...
pub­lished: 02 Apr 2012
3:28
Mys­tery­Box - Real life Nazi Zom­bies!
Real Life Zom­bies FPS - A trib­ute to our all time fa­vorite game! Mys­tery Box -- Cast and C...
pub­lished: 13 Dec 2011
0:22
On-Air At­tack: Greek Neo-Nazi slaps fe­male left­ists dur­ing TV de­bate
Athens' pros­e­cu­tors have or­dered the ar­rest of a far-right mem­ber of par­lia­ment, follo...
pub­lished: 07 Jun 2012
17:14
Sniper Elite V2 - Sniper Elite V2 Game­play | NAZI NUT­SHOT!
Let's Play Sniper Elite - 1st time playthrough of demo - had a blast - Take a look Sni...
pub­lished: 11 Apr 2012
45:50
Nazi Su­per­ship HD
Nazi Su­per­ship " Bis­mar­ck was the first of two Bis­mar­ck-class bat­tle­ships built for t...
pub­lished: 07 Jan 2012




  • Europe, France,
    Public Domain / Peter Weis
  • Immigrants shout slogans during a protest against racist attacks and the extreme-right Golden Dawn party, in central Athens on Friday, June 8 2012. The sign reads
    AP / Kostas Tsironis
  • Memorial at the site of the entry to the former concentration camp
    Creative Commons / Lüko Willms
  • The Center of Gauting abolition of the German Communist Party, immediately following the enabling act that gave the Nazi Party dictatorial powers, was one of the first administrative acts to be executed in Gauting in 1933.
    Creative Commons / Maturion
  • Museum in the Ninth Fort. As of early 2007, only the Ninth Fort had been completely renovated. It is now devoted to the Holocaust and Lithuania's occupations by the Nazis and the Soviets
    Creative Commons / Andrius Vanagas
  • Demonstration in Šiauliai. The coffins are decorated with national flags of the three Baltic states and are placed under Soviet and Nazi flags.
    Creative Commons / Rimantas Lazdynas
  • After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Germans civilians were sometimes forced to tour concentration camps and in some cases to exhume mass graves of Nazi victims.
    Creative Commons / Makthorpe
  • Nazi Criminal Activity is Strong In Scandinavia (Finland)
    WN / Bharat Shinde
  • Nazi Criminal Activity is Strong In Scandinavia (Finland)
    WN / Bharat Shinde
  • Renault 4CV after the French capitulation in 1940, Louis Renault refused to produce tanks for Nazi Germany, which took control of his factories. He produced lorries for the German occupiers instead.
    Creative Commons / Berthold Werner
  • Harstad Kulturhus (culture house).Adjacent to the church is the Trondenes Historical Center and nearby is the Adolf Gun, an enormous land-based cannon from World War II, and the last of four cannons originally constructed by the Nazis.
    Creative Commons / Event
  • José Castellanos Contreras helped save up to 40,000 Central European Jews from Nazi persecution by providing them with false papers of Salvadoran nationality.
    Creative Commons
  • Public execution of Polish civilians by the Nazi Germans in Krakow in 1942.In the territories occupied by Nazi Germany from 1939 to 1945, strangulation hanging was a preferred means of public execution, although more criminal executions were performed by guillotine than hanging.
    Creative Commons / "Ze zbiorow prywatnych"
  • Hitler (left), standing up behind Hermann Göring at a Nazi rally in Nuremberg (c. 1928)
    Public Domain / SF007
  • Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with his youngest son Nikolai, right, is seen during a parade marking Independence Day in Minsk, Belarus, Sunday, July 3, 2011, the day when Minsk was liberated by Red Army from the Nazi invaders in 1944.
    AP / Nikolai Petrov, BelTA
  • 101st Airborne troops posing with a captured Nazi vehicle air identification sign two days after landing at Normandy.
    Creative Commons / W.wolny
  • View from the Nazi Ordensburg Vogelsang of the valley and the Urft Reservoir
    Creative Commons / Rrhilber
  • The interior of the university Aula.Though David Hilbert remained, by the time he died in 1943, the Nazis had essentially gutted the university, since many of the top faculty were either Jewish or had married Jews.
    Creative Commons / Andreas Praefcke
  • The German Fliegerfaust in 1944, Nazi Germany was desperately short of mobile air-defense weapons. Borrowing from the concept of the simple and effective anti-tank Panzerfaust, an unguided multi barreled 20mm rocket launcher, the Fliegerfaust, was developed.
    Creative Commons / Plbcr
  • Elbe Day, 1945,In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 24 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939.
    Creative Commons / Fredy.00
  • Memorial to the Red Army in Prague.In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 24 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939.
    Creative Commons / Dezidor
  • In this Aug. 18, 2010 file photo, Palestinian students visit the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial during their tour in Jerusalem. Six decades after the German Nazis murdered 6 million Jews, Israel's national Holocaust memorial has launched a new effort to educate the country's Arab minority, many of whom either deny the horror or undermine its scope.
    AP / Tara Todras-Whitehill, file
  • German Nazi poster:
    Creative Commons
  • A memorial to 82 Lidice children killed by the Nazis in Chelmno.
    Creative Commons / Nazis in Chelmno
  • Cemetery's main passage. The soldiers' mass graves lie to either side of the obelisk . The Soviet Military Cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, is the burial place of over 20,000 Soviet soldiers who died fighting against Nazi Germany.
    Creative Commons / Mozzerati
  • The villa at 56–58 Am Großen Wansee, where the Wansee Conference was held, now a memorial and museum. The Wansee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wansee on 20 January 1942.
    Public Domain
  • The conference room at the Wannsee Conference House as it appears today. Heydrich opened the conference with an account of the anti-Jewish measures taken in Germany since the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.
    Creative Commons / Adam Carr,
  • French President Nicolas Sarkozy, left, speaks with French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, right, during a ceremony to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, in Paris, France, Saturday, May 8, 2010.
    AP / Philippe Wojazer, Pool
  • Nazi-parading-in-elysian-fields-paris-desert-1940.
    Creative Commons / Frank Capra
  • The Soviet monument of T-34 in the city commemorating the liberation from the Nazi occupation.
    Creative Commons


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photo: AP
Image from video of Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton during a television interview recorded and aired on the day they announced their engagement Tuesday Nov.16, 2010.
Kypost
12 Jul 2012
Photos from Kate Middleton and Prince William’s honeymoon leaked online Wednesday and are stirring up controversy. The royal couple spent their honeymoon on the north island of the Seychelles...



photo: AP / Papa Bois Conservation,Marc de Verteuil
In this image provided by the Papa Bois Conservation on Tuesday, July 10, 2012, a Ministry of Works employee operates a bulldozer next to destroyed leatherback turtle eggs and hatchlings on the banks of the Grande Riviere Beach in Trinidad.
CBC
10 Jul 2012
Thousands of leatherback turtle eggs and hatchlings have been crushed by heavy machinery along a Trinidad beach widely regarded as the world's densest nesting area for the biggest of all living sea...



photo: AP / Shaam News Network, SNN
This citizen journalism image provided by Shaam News Network SNN, taken on Monday, July 4, 2012, purports to show a Free Syrian Army soldier aiming his weapon in the northern town of Sarmada, in Idlib province, Syria.
Deutsche Welle
11 Jul 2012
The conflict in Syria is increasingly putting a strain on relations between Russia and the West. However, experts agree that at the heart of the matter is not just the future of Syria. It's become...



photo: UN / Eric Kanalstein
File - Women gather in the corridor of their home in Bagram, Afghanistan.
The Times of India
11 Jul 2012
SHARE AND DISCUSSTweetAfghanistan head of Human Rights Commision Seema Samar (Center) marches with Afghan women to protest the recent public execution of a young woman for alleged adultery, in Kabul...



photo: AP / Kafarsouseh Revolt
This citizen journalism image provided by Kafarsouseh Revolt, taken on Saturday, July 7, 2012 purports to show protesters chanting slogans and carrying Syrian revolutionary flags during a demonstration in Kafar Souseh, Damascus, Syria.
Zeenews
12 Jul 2012
Istanbul: The Syrian ambassador to Iraq has defected and will seek asylum in Turkey, the most senior diplomat to abandon the regime since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began 16 months...





photo: AP / Ronald Wittek
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble arrives at the German federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe southern Germany, Tuesday July 10, 2012. Germany's highest court is to hear arguments Tuesday against the country signing up to the Europe's emergency bailout fund and a new treaty limiting debt. Opponents of the treaties argue that joining the bailout fund and debt pact for the 17 countries that use the euro would impose limits on the German Parliament's constitutional power to say how taxpayer money is spent.
The Telegraph India
10 Jul 2012
German finance minister defends EU bailout in constitutional court, warns against delay...



photo: AP / Frank Augstein
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks during a media conference after an EU summit in Brussels on Monday, Jan. 30, 2012.
The Star
05 Jul 2012
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's popularity among German voters is at its highest level in three years, according to a poll published on Thursday that also confirmed strong support...



photo: AP / Nasser Shiyoukhi
View of the Church of the Nativity, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Friday , June 29, 2012.
The Independent
30 Jun 2012
Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi said the vote was an affirmation of Palestinian sovereignty over the site that marks the place where Christians believe Jesus was born. Israel angrily denounced...



  • Irish Times DEREK SCALLY in Berlin GERMANY���S DOMESTIC intelligence service is in meltdown over its failure to track an underground neo-Nazi group behind a series of xenophobic killings. Three intelligence chiefs have stood down as parliamentary probes have revealed institutional incompetence and in-fighting,...
  • Tampabay.com Erin SullivanTampa Bay Times ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Story Tools Print this story Purchase reprints Contact the editor Email Newsletters...
  • Ha'aretz FARNBOROUGH - For over a decade, the aerospace market has been dominated by the Boeing-Airbus duopoly, with the two giant airliners manufacturers vying with each other for the top. It is a competition for global dominance, with public image being a major part of it. This week at the biennial...
  • Star Tribune SANTIAGO, Chile - Chile's president signed an anti-discrimination law Thursday following the killing of a gay man...
  • Ha'aretz related articles Neo-Nazi aided Palestinian perpetrators of 1972 Munich massacre, report says By Ofer Aderet | Jul.12,2012 | 7:37 PM | 20...
  • The Washington Post SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile’s president signed an anti-discrimination law Thursday following the killing of a gay man beaten by attackers who carved swastikas into his body. The law was...
  • Deutsche Welle Neo-Nazis are increasingly using social networks to recruit young people, spreading often skillfully disguised right-wing extremist propaganda via Facebook and YouTube. Neo-Nazis have always used the Internet as a platform for propaganda. But for some time now, they have been turning to social...
  • Zeenews Dresden: The head of an agency which tracks extremists in the German state of Saxony has resigned after his staff failed to provide lawmakers with intelligence records related to a small neo-Nazi group that killed 10 people over a seven-year period. Reinhard Boos is the third high-ranking German...
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    National Socialism (common English short form Nazism, German: Nationalsozialismus) was the ideology practiced by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany.[1][2][3][4] It is a unique variety of fascism that incorporates biological racism and antisemitism.[5] Nazism was founded out of elements of the far-right racist völkisch German nationalist movement and the violent anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary culture that fought against the uprisings of communist revolutionaries in post-World War I Germany.[6] The ideology was developed as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism.[7] Nazis' paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (SA) engaged in violent attacks upon the movement's opponents, particularly communists, Jews, and social democrats.[8] The Nazis promoted German territorial expansionism to be Lebensraum ("living space") for German settlers.[9]

    Nazism advocated the supremacy of the claimed Aryan master race over all other races.[10] It claimed that Jews are the greatest threat to the Aryan race.[11] The Nazis claimed that Jews are a parasitic race that attached itself to various movements and systems to maintain its self-preservation, such as capitalism, the Enlightenment, industrialisation, liberalism, liberal democracy, Marxism, and trade unionism.[11] To.[12] To maintain the purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally disabled.[13] Other groups deemed "degenerate" and "asocial" who were not targeted for immediate extermination, but received exclusionary treatment by the Nazi state, included: homosexuals, blacks, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents.[13]

    Nazism promoted an economic system that supported a stratified economy with classes based on merit and talent while rejecting universal egalitarianism, retaining private property, freedom of contract, and promoted the creation of national solidarity that would transcend class distinction.[14][15] Hitler claimed that unconditional equality of opportunity for all able racially-sound Aryan German males in Germany was the essence of the socialism of German National Socialism.[16] Initially Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, though such aspects were later downplayed in the 1930s to gain the support from industrial owners for the Nazis; the focus shifting to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.[17] The Nazis criminalized strikes by employees and lockouts by employers for being contrary to national unity and the state took over the approval process of setting wage and salary levels.[18]

    The Nazis were presented by Hitler and other proponents and viewed by some scholars as being neither left-wing nor right-wing but politically syncretic.[19][20][21][22] Hitler in Mein Kampf directly attacked both left-wing and right-wing politics in Germany, he accused the political left of committing treason against Germany when left-wing politicians signed the Treaty of Versailles, he accused the political right as deserving equal reproach as the left, for being cowards in allowing the disarmament of Germany as stipulated by Versailles.[23] However major elements of Nazism have been deemed as clearly far-right, such as its goals of the right of claimed superior people to dominate while purging society of claimed inferior elements.[24]

    Contents

    Etymology[link]

    The full title of Adolf Hitler's party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party). The term Nazi was an "acronym formed from the first syllable of NAtional and the second syllable of SoZIalist. Such terms, usually formed from the initial letters or syllables of successive parts of compound names, were popular in the Third Reich. Another typical example was Gestapo for Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)."[25]

    Position in the political spectrum[link]

    Führer Adolf Hitler (first from left side), Hermann Göring (second from left side), Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (third from left side), Rudolf Hess (fourth from left side).
    Nazis alongside members of the far-right reactionary and monarchist German National People's Party (DNVP), during the brief Nazi-DNVP alliance in the Harzburg Front from 1931 to 1932.

    A majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics.[26] Far right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over others and purge society of supposed inferior elements.[24] Adolf Hitler and other proponents, however, officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but syncretic.[19][20] Hitler in Mein Kampf directly attacked both left-wing and right-wing politics in Germany, saying:

    Today our left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors [...] But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms.[27]

    The Nazis were strongly influenced by the post-World War I far-right in Germany, which held common beliefs such as anti-Marxism, anti-liberalism, and anti-Semitism, along with a chauvinist nationalism, contempt towards the Treaty of Versailles, and condemnnation of the Weimar Republic for signing the armistice in November 1918 that later led to their signing of the Treaty of Versailles.[28] A major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organizations that engaged in political violence immediately after World War I.[29] Initially, the post-World War I German far right was dominated by monarchists, but the far right's younger generation, who were associated with völkisch nationalism, were more radical than the older generation and did not express any emphasis on a restoration of the German monarchy.[30] This younger generation desired to dismantle the Weimar Republic and create a new radical and strong state based upon a martial ruling ethic that could revive the "Spirit of 1914" that was associated with German national unity (volksgemeinschaft).[31]

    The Nazis, the far-right monarchist and reactionary German National People's Party (DNVP), and others, such as monarchist officers of the German army and several prominent industrialists, who shared a common opposition to the Weimar Republic, formed an alliance on 11 October 1931 in Bad Harzburg, officially known as the "National Front", but commonly referred to as the Harzburg Front.[32] The Nazis stated that the alliance was purely tactical and that there remained substantial differences between them and the DNVP. The Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party.[33] The alliance with the DNVP broke in 1932 after the election in which DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag, with the Nazis denouncing them as "an insignificant heap of reactionaries".[34] The denouncements by the Nazis upon the DNVP for its reactionary stances were responded by the DNVP denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their street violence, and the "economic experiments" that would take place if the Nazis rose to power.[35]

    There were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical.[36]

    The conservative Nazi Hermann Göring urged Hitler to conciliate with capitalists and reactionaries.[36] Other prominent conservative Nazis included Heinrich Himmler, who was more conservative than Göring; and Reinhard Heydrich.[37]

    The radical Nazi Joseph Goebbels, hated capitalism, viewing it as having Jews at its core, and he stressed the need for the party to emphasize both a proletarian and national character. Those views were shared by Otto Strasser, who later left the Nazi Party in the belief that Hitler had betrayed the party's supposed socialist goals by allegedly endorsing capitalism.[36] Large segments of the Nazi Party staunchly supported its official socialist, revolutionary, and anti-capitalist positions and expected both a social and economic revolution upon the party gaining power in Germany in 1933.[38] Of the million members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), many were committed to the party's official socialist program.[38] The leader of the SA, Ernst Röhm, supported a "second revolution" (the "first revolution" being the Nazis' seizure of power) that would entrench the party's official socialist program, and he demanded the replacement of the nonpolitical German army with a Nazi-led army.[38]

    Prior to becoming an anti-Semite and a Nazi, Hitler had served the Bavarian Soviet Republic from 1918 to 1919, where he was elected Deputy Battalion Representative of his communist-led battalion, and he attended the funeral of communist Kurt Eisner (a German Jew), where Hitler wore a black mourning armband on one arm and a red communist armband on the other.[39] Hitler's political beliefs had not yet solidified by then, and at that time he supported the idea of a classless society and was an anti-monarchist.[39] In Mein Kampf, Hitler never mentioned his service with the Bavarian Soviet Republic, and he claimed that he became an anti-Semite in 1913 in Vienna, when in fact he was not an anti-Semite at that time.[40] Hitler massively altered his political views in response to the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919, and it was then that he became an anti-Semitic German nationalist.[40] As a Nazi, Hitler both in public and in private, had expressed opposition to capitalism; he regarded capitalism as having Jewish origins, and accused capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class.[41]

    Hitler took a pragmatic position between the conservative and radical factions of the Nazi Party, in that he accepted private property and allowed capitalist private enterprises to exist as long as they obeyed the goals of the Nazi state, but if a capitalist private enterprise resisted Nazi goals, he sought to destroy it.[36] Upon the Nazis achieving power, Röhm's SA began attacks against individuals deemed to be associated with conservative reaction, without Hitler's authorization to do so.[42] Hitler considered Röhm's independent actions to be violating and possibly threatening his leadership, as well as jeopardizing the regime by alienating the conservative President Paul von Hindenburg and the conservative-oriented German army.[43] This resulted in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA.[43]

    Alhough he opposed communist ideology, Hitler on numerous occasions publicly praised the Soviet Union's leader Joseph Stalin and Stalinism.[44] Hitler commended Stalin for seeking to purify the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of Jewish influences, noting Stalin's purging of Jewish communists such as Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Karl Radek.[45] While Hitler always intended to eventually bring Germany into territorial expansionist conflict against the Soviet Union to gain Lebensraum ("living space"), Hitler supported a temporary strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to form a common anti-liberal front to crush liberal democracies, particularly France.[44]

    Origins[link]

    A 1919 Austrian postcard depicting the "stab-in-the-back" legend, which blamed Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I.

    On 5 January 1919, the locksmith Anton Drexler, and five other men, founded the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP — German Workers' Party), the predecessor of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP — National Socialist German Workers' Party).[46][47] In July 1919, the Reichswehr intelligence department despatched Corporal Adolf Hitler, as a Verbindungsmann (police spy) to infiltrate and report on the DAP. His oratory so impressed the DAP members, they asked him to join the party, and, in September 1919, the police spy Hitler became the party's propagandist.[46][48] On 24 February 1920, the DAP was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, against Hitler's preferred "Social Revolutionary Party" name.[46] Later, in consolidating his control of the NSDAP, Hitler ousted Drexler from the party and assumed leadership on 29 July 1921.[46]

    The post-war crises of Weimar Germany (1919–33) consolidated Nazism as an ideology: military defeat in the World War I (1914–18), capitulation with the Treaty of Versailles, economic depression, and the consequent societal instability. In exploiting, and excusing, the military defeat, Nazism proffered the political Dolchstosslegende ("Legend of the Dagger-stab in the Back") [49] claiming that the Imperial German war effort was internally sabotaged, by Jews, socialists, and Bolsheviks. Proposing that, because the Reichwehr's defeat did not occur in Germany, the sabotage included a lack of patriotism among their political antagonists, specifically the Social Democrats and the Ebert Government, whom the Nazis accused of treason.

    Nationalism, antisemitism and racism[link]

    The seminal ideas of Nazism originated in the German cultural past of the Völkisch (folk) movement and the superstitions of Ariosophy, an occultism that proposed the Germanic peoples as the purest examples of the Aryan race, whose cultures feature runic symbols and the swastika. From among the Ariosophs, only the Thule-Gesellschaft (Thule Society) in Munich, features in the origin of Nazism; they sponsored the DAP.[46]

    Phillip Wayne Powell writes that "in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a powerful surge of German patriotism was stimulated by the disdain of Italians for German cultural inferiority and barbarism, which led to a counter-attempt, by German humanists, to laud German qualities."[50] M.W. Fodor wrote in The Nation in 1936, "No race has suffered so much from an inferiority complex as has the German. National Socialism was a kind of Coué method of converting the inferiority complex, at least temporarily, into a feeling of superiority".[51]

    Johann Gottlieb Fichte, considered one of the fathers of German nationalism.

    One of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis came from the German nationalist Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose works Hitler read, and who was recognized by other Nazi members including Dietrich Eckart and Arnold Fanck.[52] In Speeches to the German Nation (1808), written amid Napoleonic France's occupation of Berlin, Fichte called for a German national revolution against the French occupiers, making passionate public speeches, arming his students for battle against the French, and stressing the need of action by the German nation to free itself.[53] Fichte's nationalism was populist and opposed to traditional elites, and spoke of the need of a "People's War" (Volkskrieg), putting forward concepts much like those the Nazis adopted.[53] Fichte promoted German exceptionalism and stressed the need for the German nation to be purified. This priority included purging the German language of French words, a policy that the Nazis undertook upon rising to power.[53]

    Völkisch nationalism denounced soulless materialism, individualism, and secularized urban industrial society, while advocating a "superior" society based on ethnic German "folk" culture and way of life, based upon German "blood".[54] It also denounced foreigners, foreign ideas and declared that Jews, national minorities, Catholics, and Freemasons were "traitors to the nation" and unworthy of inclusion in the German Volk.[55] Völkisch nationalism saw the world in terms of natural law and romanticism, viewed societies as organic, it extolled the virtues of rural life, condemned the neglect of tradition and decay of morals, denounced the destruction of the natural environment, and condemned "cosmopolitan" cultures such as Jews and Romani.[56]

    During the era of Imperial Germany, völkisch nationalism was overshadowed by both Prussian patriotism and the federalist tradition of various states within Imperial Germany.[57] The events of World War I including the end of the Prussian monarchy in Germany, resulted in a surge of revolutionary völkisch nationalism.[58] The Nazis supported such revolutionary völkisch nationalist policies.[57] The Nazis claimed that their ideology was influenced by the leadership and policies of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the founder of the German Empire.[59] The Nazis declared that they were dedicated to continuing the process of creating a unified German nation state that Bismarck had begun and desired to achieve.[60] While Hitler was supportive of Bismarck's creation of the German Empire, he was critical of Bismarck's moderate domestic policies.[61] On the issue of Bismarck's support of a Kleindeutschland ("Lesser Germany", excluding Austria) versus the pan-German Großdeutschland ("Greater Germany") of the Nazis, Hitler claimed that Bismarck's attainment of Kleindeutschland was the "highest achievement" that Bismarck could have achieved "within the limits possible of that time".[62] In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler presented himself as a "second Bismarck".[62]

    The concept of the Aryan race that the Nazis used stems from racial theories asserting that Europeans are the descendants of Indo-Iranian settlers, people of ancient India and ancient Persia.[63] Proponents of this theory based their assertion on the similarity of European words and their meaning to those of Indo-Iranian languages.[63] Johann Gottfried Herder argued that the Germanic peoples held close racial connections with the ancient Indians and ancient Persians, who he claimed were advanced peoples possessing a great capacity for wisdom, nobility, restraint, and science.[63] Contemporaries of Herder utilized the concept of the Aryan race to draw a distinction between what they deemed "high and noble" Aryan culture versus that of "parasitic" Semitic culture.[63]

    Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority combined in the nineteenth century, with white supremacists maintaining that white people were members of an Aryan "master race" that is superior to all other races, and particularly superior to the Semitic race, which they associated with "cultural sterility".[63] Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued destroyed the purity of the Aryan race.[64] Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany,[64] emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan and Jewish cultures.[63]

    Aryan mysticism claimed that Christianity originated in Aryan religious tradition and that Jews had usurped the legend from Aryans.[63] Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an English proponent of racial theory, supported notions of Germanic supremacy and anti-Semitism in Germany.[65] Chamberlain's work, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899) praised Germanic peoples for their creativity and idealism while asserting that the Germanic spirit was threatened by a "Jewish" spirit of selfishness and materialism.[65] Chamberlain used his thesis to promote monarchical conservatism while denouncing democracy, liberalism, and socialism.[64] The book became popular, especially in Germany.[64] Chamberlain stressed the need of a nation to maintain racial purity in order to prevent degeneration, and argued that racial intermingling with Jews should never be permitted.[64] In 1923, Chamberlain met Hitler, whom he admired as a leader of the rebirth of the free spirit.[66]

    Antisemitic caricature shortly after the stock market crash of 1873

    Beginning in the 1870s, German völkisch nationalism began to adopt anti-Semitic and racist themes and was adopted by a number of radical right political movements.[67]

    The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1912) was an anti-Semitic forgery created by police of the Russian Empire. Anti-Semites believed it was real and the Protocol surged in popularity after World War I.[68] The Protocols claimed that there was a secret international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.[69] Hitler had been introduced to The Protocols by Alfred Rosenberg, and from 1920 onward Hitler focused his attacks on claiming that Judaism and Marxism were directly connected and that Jews and Bolsheviks were one and the same and that Marxism was a Jewish ideology.[70] Hitler believed that The Protocols were authentic.[71]

    Radical anti-Semitism was promoted by prominant advocates of völkisch nationalism including Eugen Diederichs, Paul de Lagarde, and Julius Langbehn.[56] De Lagarde called the Jews a "bacillus, the carrier of decay...who pollute every national culture...and destroy all faith with their materialistic liberalism" and he called for the extermination of the Jews.[72] Langbehn called for a war of annihilation of the Jews and Langbehn's genocidal policies were published by the Nazis and given to soldiers on the front during World War II.[72]

    Johann Gottlieb Fichte accused Jews in Germany of having been, and inevitably continuing to be a "state within a state" in Germany that was a threat to German national unity.[53] Fichte promoted two options to address this: the first was the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine to impel the Jews to leave Europe.[73] The other option was violence against Jews, saying that the goal would be "To cut off all their heads in one night, and set new ones on their shoulders, which should not contain a single Jewish idea".[74]

    The Nazis claimed that Bismarck was unable to complete German national unification because of Jewish infiltration of the German parliament, and that their abolition of parliament ended the obstacle to unification.[59] Using the "stab in the back" legend, the Nazis accused German Jews, and other populaces it considered non-German, of possessing extra-national loyalties, thereby exacerbating German anti-semitism about the Judenfrage (the Jewish Question), the perennial far right political canard popular when the ethnic Völkisch movement and their politics of Romantic nationalism for establishing a Großdeutschland were strong.[75][76]

    Nazism's racial policy positions were also developed from the views of important biologists of the 19th century, including French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and the father of genetics, German botanist Gregor Mendel. Lamarckism was an important influence on Nazism.[77] In particular the variant developed by Ernst Haeckel, was utilized by the Nazis.[78] Unlike Darwinian theory, Lamarckian theory officially ranked races in a hierarchy of evolution from apes while Darwinian theory did not grade races in a hierarchy of higher or lower evolution from apes, simply categorizing humans as a whole of all as having progressed in evolution from apes.[79] Many Lamarckians viewed "lower" races as having been exposed to debilitating conditions for too long for any significant "improvement" of their condition in the near future.[80] Haeckel utilized Lamarckian theory to describe the existence of interracial struggle and put races on a hierarchy of evolution, ranging from being wholly human to subhuman.[77]

    Mendelism was supported by the Nazis and also mainstream eugenics proponents at the time were Mendelian.[81] Mendelian theory of inheritance declared that genetic traits and attributes were passed from one generation to another.[81] Proponents of eugenics used Mendelian inheritance theory to demonstrate the transfer of biological illness and impairments from parents to children, including mental disability; others also utilized Mendelian theory to demonstrate the inheritance of social traits, with racialists claiming a racial nature of certain general traits such as inventiveness or criminal behaviour.[82]

    Fascism and National Socialism[link]

    During World War I, sociologist Johann Plenge spoke of the rise of a "National Socialism" in Germany within what he termed the "ideas of 1914" that were a declaration of war against the "ideas of 1789" (the French Revolution).[83] According to Plenge, the "ideas of 1789" that included rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism were being rejected in favour of "the ideas of 1914" that included "German values" of duty, discipline, law, and order.[83] Plenge believed that ethnic solidarity (volksgemeinschaft) would replace class division and that "racial comrades" would unite to create a socialist society in the struggle of "proletarian" Germany against "capitalist" Britain.[83] He believed that the "Spirit of 1914" manifested itself in the concept of the "People's League of National Socialism".[84] This National Socialism was a form of state socialism that rejected the "idea of boundless freedom" and promoted an economy that would serve the whole of Germany under the leadership of the state.[84] This National Socialism was opposed to capitalism due to the components that were against "the national interest" of Germany, but insisted that National Socialism would strive for greater efficiency in the economy.[84] Plenge advocated an authoritarian rational ruling elite to develop National Socialism through a hierarchical technocratic state.[85]

    Plenge's arguments at the time were recognized by a diverse group of people as an important argument in favour of social justice promoted within a strong state, including: right-wing Social Democrats Konrad Haenisch, Heinrich Cunow, Paul Lench and Kurt Schumacher; Conservative Revolutionaries including Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and Max Hildebert Boehm; and Nazis including Ernst Krieck, Gottfried Feder and Eduard Stadtler.[85] Plenge's ideas formed the basis of Nazism.[83]

    Oswald Spengler, a German cultural philosopher, was a major influence on Nazism, although after 1933 Spengler became alienated from Nazism and was later condemned by the Nazis for criticizing Adolf Hitler.[86] Spengler's conception of nationali socialism and a number of his political views were shared by the Nazis as well as the Conservative Revolutionary movement.[87] Spengler's views were also popular amongst Italian Fascists, including Benito Mussolini.[88]

    Spengler's book The Decline of the West (1918) written during the final months of World War I, addressed the claim of decadence of modern European civilization, whicht he claimed was caused by atomizing and irreligious individualization and cosmopolitanism.[86] In Decline of the West, Spengler's major thesis was that a law of historical development of cultures existed involving a cycle of birth, maturity, aging, and death when it reaches its final form of civilization.[89] Upon reaching the point of civilization, a culture will lose its creative capacity and succumb to decadence until the emergence of "barbarians" create a new epoch.[89] Spengler considered the Western world as having succumbed to decadence of intellect, money, cosmopolitan urban life, irreligious life, atomized individualization, and the end of biological fertility as well as "spiritual" fertility.[89] He believed that the "young" German nation as an imperial power would inherit the legacy of Ancient Rome and lead a restoration of value in "blood" and instinct, while the ideals of rationalism would be revealed as absurd.[89]

    In Preussentum und Sozialismus ("Prussiandom and Socialism", 1919), Spengler described "socialism" outside of a class conflict perspective, saying: "The meaning of socialism is that life is controlled not by the opposition between rich and poor, but by the rank that achievement and talent bestow. That is our freedom, freedom from the economic despotism of the individual."[87] Spengler utilized the anti-English ideas addressed by Plenge and Sombart during World War I that condemned English liberalism and English parliamentarianism while advocating a national socialism that was free from Marxism that would connect the individual to the state through corporatist organization.[86] Spengler claimed that socialistic Prussian characteristics existed across Germany, including creativity, discipline, concern for the greater good, productivity, and self-sacrifice.[90]

    Spengler's definition of socialism did not advocate a change to property relations.[87] He denounced Marxism for seeking to train the proletariat to "expropriate the expropriator", the capitalist, and then to let them live a life of leisure on this expropriation.[91] He claimed that "Marxism is the capitalism of the working class" and not true socialism.[91] True socialism, according to Spengler, would be in the form of corporatism, stating that "local corporate bodies organized according to the importance of each occupation to the people as a whole; higher representation in stages up to a supreme council of the state; mandates revocable at any time; no organized parties, no professional politicians, no periodic elections."[92]

    In Preussentum und Sozialismus Spengler prescribed war as a necessity, saying "War is the eternal form of higher human existence and states exist for war: they are the expression of the will to war."[93]

    Benito Mussolini (centre in suit with fists against body) along with other Fascist leader figures and Blackshirts during the March on Rome.

    Fascism was a major influence on Nazism. The seizure of power by Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the March on Rome in 1922 drew admiration by Hitler who less than a month after the March had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists.[94] After the March on Rome, Hitler presented the Nazis as a German fascism.[95][96] The Nazis attempted a "March on Berlin" modelled upon the March on Rome that resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923.[97] Although Hitler strongly admired Mussolini and fascism, other Nazis — especially more radical Nazis such as Gregor Strasser, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler — rejected Italian Fascism, accusing it of being too conservative or capitalist.[98] Alfred Rosenberg condemned Italian Fascism for being racially confused and having influences from philo-Semitism.[99] Strasser criticized the policy of Führerprinzip as being created by Mussolini, and considered its presence in Nazism as a foreign import.[100] Throughout the relationship between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a number of lower-ranking Nazis scornfully viewed fascism as a conservative movement that lacked a full revolutionary potential.[100]

    Ideology[link]

    Greater Germany in 1943, including annexed or occupied territories of other countries

    The Nazis advocated a strong, central government under the Führer, for defending Germany and the German nation, the Volk, against communism and Jewish subversion. To the end of establishing Großdeutschland (Greater Germany), the German peoples must acquire Lebensraum (living space) from Russia.[101]

    Europe, with pre-WW2 borders, showing the extension of Generalplan Ost, i.e., the massive depopulation and ethnic cleansing within German Lebensraum.
    Hitler, the Führer of Nazi Germany

    From 1920 to 1923, Hitler formulated his ideology, then published it in 1925–26, as Mein Kampf, a two-volume, biography and political manifesto.[102]

    Though Hitler for "tactical" reasons had rhetorically declared a 1920 party platform with socialist platitudes "unshakable," actually "many paragraphs of the party program were obviously merely a demagogic appeal to the mood of the lower classes at a time when they were in bad straits and were sympathetic to radical and even socialist slogans...Point 11, for example...Point 12...nationalization...Point 16...communalization.... put in at the insistence of Drexler and Feder, who apparently really believed in the 'socialism' of National Socialism."[103] In actual practice, such points were mere slogans, "most of them forgotten by the time the party came to power.... the Nazi leader himself was later to be embarrassed when reminded of some of them."[103] Historian Conan Fischer argues that the Nazis were sincere in their use of the adjective socialist, which the saw as inseparable from the adjective national, and meant it as a socialism of the master race, rather than the socialism of the "underprivileged and oppressed seeking justice and equal rights."[104]

    Social class[link]

    In 1922, Adolf Hitler discredited other nationalist and racialist political parties as disconnected from the mass populace, especially lower- and working-class young people:

    The racialists were not capable of drawing the practical conclusions from correct theoretical judgements, especially in the Jewish Question. In this way, the German racialist movement developed a similar pattern to that of the 1880s and 1890s. As in those days, its leadership gradually fell into the hands of highly honourable, but fantastically naïve men of learning, professors, district counsellors, schoolmasters, and lawyers — in short a bourgeois, idealistic, and refined class. It lacked the warm breath of the nation's youthful vigour.[105]

    Despite many working-class supporters and members, the appeal of the Nazi Party to the working class was neither true[dubious ] nor effective, because its politics mostly appealed to the middle class, as a stabilizing, pro-business[dubious ] political party, not a revolutionary workers' party.[106][106] Moreover, the financial collapse of the white collar middle-class of the 1920s figures much in their strong support of Nazism, thus the great percentage of declared middle-class support for the Nazis.[106] In the poor country that was the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s, the Nazi Party realised their socialist policies with food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless — later recruited to the Brownshirt Sturmabteilung (SA — Storm Detachment).[106]

    Sex and gender[link]

    Nazi ideology advocated excluding women from political involvement and confining them to the spheres of "Kinder, Küche, Kirche" (Children, Kitchen, Church).[citation needed]

    Opposition to homosexuality[link]

    Homophobia: Berlin Memorial to Homosexual Victims of the Holocaust; Totgeschlagen—Totgeschwiegen (Struck Dead—Hushed Up)

    After the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler promoted Himmler, who then zealously suppressed homosexuality, saying: "We must exterminate these people root and branch ... the homosexual must be eliminated."[107] In 1936, Himmler established the "Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und Abtreibung" ("Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion").[108] The Nazi régime incarcerated some 100,000 homosexuals during the 1930s.[109] As concentration camp prisoners, homosexual men were forced to wear pink triangle badges.[110][111]

    Racial policy[link]

    The Master Race: the Meyers Blitz-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1932) depicts German war hero Karl von Müller as an exemplar Nordic type of the Herrenvolk.
    A wagon piled high with corpses outside the crematorium in Buchenwald concentration camp. The Nazis sought the extermination of the Jewish people through the genocide known as the Holocaust.
    Soldiers of the Free Arabian Legion of the German Army in Greece, September 1943.
    Captured Soviet soldiers of Turkestani backgrounds were drafted in large numbers into the Ostlegionen of the Wehrmacht. France, 1943.[112]
    Haj Amin al-Husayni meeting with Adolf Hitler in December 1941.

    Hitler viewed race as being in a hierarchy, and spoke of the "aristocratic idea of nature" in which there existed an inequality of races where the superior and higher values of the Aryan race was the basis of all civilization.[113] Through struggle and proper "breeding", the "strong" would subdue the "weak" and rise to dominance.[113] Nazi policy since 1920 emphasized that only people of "German blood" could be considered German citizens while no one of Jewish descent could be a German citizen.[114] To maintain the purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally disabled.[13] Other groups deemed "degenerate" and "asocial" who were not targeted for extermination, but received exclusionary treatment by the Nazi state, included: homosexuals, blacks, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents.[13] The number of German blacks was low, but there were some instances of them being enlisted within Nazi organisations like the Hitler Youth and later the Wehrmacht.[115]

    The racist subject of Nazism is Das Volk, the German people living under continual cultural attack by Judeo-Bolshevism, who must unite under Nazi Party leadership, and, per the spartan nationalist tenets of Nazism: be stoic, self-disciplined and self-sacrificing until victory.[116]

    The Jewish–Bolshevism conspiracy theory derives from anti-Semitism and anti-communism; Adolf Hitler claimed to have first developed his worldview from living and observing Viennese life from 1907 to 1913, concluding that the Austro–Hungarian Empire comprised racial, religious, and cultural hierarchies; per his interpretations, atop were the "Aryans", the ultimate, white master race, whilst Jews and Gypsies were at bottom.[101]

    However, recent research strongly suggests that Hitler's virulent antisemitism was mostly a post war development, product of influences from the Russian civil war and that in his Vienna years it played little part in his thinking.[117] The idea of the Russian roots of Nazism has been explored by Walter Laqueur[118] and more recently filled out in much more detail by Michael Kellogg[119]

    Their ideas were synthesized by the Reichstag Secretary, Alfred Rosenberg, in The Myth of the Twentieth Century, a pseudoscientific treatise proposing that: "[F]rom a northern centre of creation which, without postulating an actual submerged Atlantic continent, we may call Atlantis, swarms of warriors once fanned out, in obedience to the ever-renewed and incarnate Nordic longing for distance to conquer and space to shape".[120] According to Terrence Ball and Richard Bellamy, The Myth of the Twentieth Century is the second-most important book to Nazism, after Mein Kampf.[121]

    Sketch plan of Treblinka extermination camp. Between the years 1942 and 1943, more than 850,000 Jews were murdered there and only 54 survived.

    .

    Hitler declared that racial conflict against Jews was necessary to save Germany from suffering under them and dispensed concerns about such conflict being inhumane or an injustice, saying:

    We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have achieved the greatest deed in the world. We may work injustice, but if we rescue Germany then we have removed the greatest injustice in the world. We may be immoral, but if our people is rescued we have opened the way for morality.[122]

    Nazi eugenics: "We Do Not Stand Alone" (1936).
    Schutzstaffel insignia: white Sig Runes on a black background

    In Germany, the master-race populace was realised by purifying the Deutsches Volk via (see: eugenics; the culmination was involuntary euthanasia of disabled people, and the compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded. The ideologic justification was Adolf Hitler's consideration of Sparta(11th c.–195 BC) as the original Völkisch state; he praised their dispassionate destruction of congenitally deformed infants in maintaining racial purity:[123][124]

    Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels said: "The Jew is the enemy and destroyer of the purity of blood, the conscious destroyer of our race ... As socialists, we are opponents of the Jews, because we see, in the Hebrews, the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation's goods."[125]

    Church and State[link]

    Hitler receives the papal nuncio Cesare Orsenigo, on January 1, 1935

    Point 24 of the Nazi Party Programme of 1920 guaranteed freedom for all religious denominations not inimical to the State and endorsed Positive Christianity to combat “the Jewish-materialist spirit”.[126]


    Relations between the Nazi state and the Catholic Church were regulated by the Concordat signed in July of that year, an agreement upheld by both parties despite breaches which were criticized in 1937 in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical With Burning Anxiety (Mit brennender Sorge).[127]

    The historian Joachim Remak thought that political innocence and misjudgement of the Nazis' true aims played their parts in the churches' acceptance of the new regime.[128] Traditional Christianity in Germany had also been undermined by racist and pagan ideologues in the 19th century who had progressively stripped Christianity of its "Jewish" features" and attempted to remould the biblical Christ into an "Aryan" superman.[129]

    Hitler respected the power of the Catholic Church and was wary of the negative effect any open confrontation might have on German public opinion.[130] Hitler saw the churches as embodying a socially conservative element that could not be replaced by party ideology.[131] He was prepared to tolerate them as long as they recognised the supremacy of the State and did not interfere in secular affairs.[132]

    Dissenting voices were heard in both mainstream churches, especially on the question of the regime's policy of euthanasia.[133] In the case of the Catholic Church opposition was expressed by individual priests and bishops who were punished by internment in concentration camps.[130] Goebbels retaliated to growing criticism by orchestrating occasional smear campaigns in the press against priests and monks, often "arraigned in the courts on trumped-up charges ranging from financial malfeasance to sexual aberrations".[133]

    Memorial tablet on the YMCA building in Berlin-Kreuzberg commemorating meetings of Confessing Church activists

    The historian Klaus Hildebrand gives a figure for 1937 of 800 members of the Confessing Church being arrested for their opposition.[134] Official harassment of the churches ceased on the outbreak of war.[135] While party fanatics like Bormann continued to press for a campaign against the churches (Kirchenkampf), Hitler wanted this postponed until after the war.[136][137] Both mainstream churches continued to supply chaplains to the armed forces and offered prayers for the Führer from their pulpits.[138] By the war's end the relationship between the Nazi state and the churches was still a "major unresolved issue".[139]

    Thule Society[link]

    Several of the founders and leaders of the Nazi Party were members of the Thule-Gesellschaft (Thule Society), who romanticized Aryan race superstitions with ritual and theology.[140] Generally, the society's lectures and excursions comprised anti-Semitism and Germanic antiquity, yet it is historically notable for having fought as a paramilitary militia against the Bavarian Soviet Republic.[141][142] The DAP was initially supported by the Thule Society — but Hitler quickly excluded them in favour of a mass movement political party, by denigrating their superstitious approach to politics.[143]

    Luther and Nazi propaganda[link]

    Julius Streicher

    The Nazis publicly displayed an original of Martin Luther's On the Jews and their Lies during the annual Nuremberg rallies, and the city also presented a first edition of it to Julius Streicher, the editor of Der Stürmer, which described Luther's treatise as the most radically anti-Semitic tract ever published.[144][145] Protestant Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings shortly after Kristallnacht; in the introduction, he approved of the burning of synagogues and mentioned the coincidental date: "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." He urged Germans to heed the words "of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews."[146]

    Luther's tract 'On the Jews and Their Lies (1543)

    Scholars debate the extent of Luther's influence and whether it is anachronistic to view his work as a precursor of the racial antisemitism of the National Socialists. Some scholars see Luther's influence as limited, and the Nazis' use of his work as opportunistic. Biographer Martin Brecht points out that "There is a world of difference between his belief in salvation and a racial ideology. Nevertheless, Prof. Diarmaid MacCulloch said that On the Jews and Their Lies was the blueprint for Kristallnacht.[147] His misguided agitation had the evil result that Luther fatefully became one of the 'church fathers' of anti-Semitism and thus provided material for the modern hatred of the Jews, cloaking it with the authority of the Reformer."[148] Theologian Johannes Wallmann, however, said Luther's anti-Semitic tract exercised no continual influence in Germany, that it was mostly ignored during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[149] Uwe Siemon-Netto agreed, arguing that it was because the Nazis were already anti-Semites that they revived Luther's work.[150][151] Hans J. Hillerbrand agreed that to focus on Luther was to adopt an essentially ahistorical perspective of Nazi antisemitism that ignored other contributory factors in German history.[152]

    Economics[link]

    Deutsches Volk–Deutsche Arbeit: German People, German Work, the alliance of worker and work. (1934)

    Hitler believed that private ownership was useful in that it encouraged creative competition and technical innovation, but insisted that it had to conform to national interests and be "productive" rather than "parasitical".[153] Private property rights were conditional upon the economic mode of use; if it did not advance Nazi economic goals, the state could nationalize it.[154] Although the Nazis privatised public properties and public services, they also increased economic state control.[155] Under Nazi economics, free competition and self-regulating markets diminished; nevertheless, Adolf Hitler's social Darwinist beliefs made him reluctant to entirely disregard business competition and private property as economic engines.[156][157]

    To tie farmers to their land, selling agricultural land was prohibited.[citation needed] Farm ownership was nominally private, but discretion over operations and residual income were proscribed.[citation needed] That was achieved by granting business monopoly rights to marketing boards, to control production and prices with a quota system.[citation needed]

    Anti-communism[link]

    Historians Ian Kershaw and Joachim Fest argue that in post-World War I Germany, the Nazis were one of many nationalist and fascist political parties contending for the leadership of Germany's anti-communist movement. The Nazis claimed that communism was dangerous to the well-being of nations because of its intention to dissolve private property, its support of class conflict, its aggression against the middle class, its hostility to small businessmen, and its atheism.[158] Nazism rejected class conflict-based socialism and economic egalitarianism, favouring instead a stratified economy with social classes based on merit and talent, retaining private property, and the creation of national solidarity that transcends class distinction.[14]

    During the 1920s, Hitler urged disparate Nazi factions to unite in opposition to "Jewish Marxism."[159] Hitler asserted that the "three vices" of "Jewish Marxism" were democracy, pacifism and internationalism.[160]

    In 1930, Hitler said: "Our adopted term ‘Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not."[161] In 1931, during a confidential interview with influential editor Richard Breiting of the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, a pro-business newspaper, Hitler said: "I want everyone to keep what he has earned, subject to the principle that the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State ... The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners."[162] In 1942, Hitler privately said: "I absolutely insist on protecting private property ... we must encourage private initiative".[163]

    During the late 1930s and the 1940s, anti-communist regimes and groups that supported Nazism included the Falange in Spain; the Vichy regime and the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French) in France; and the Cliveden Set, Lord Halifax, and associates of Neville Chamberlain in Britain.[164]

    Anti-capitalism[link]

    The Nazis argued that capitalism damages nations due to international finance, the economic dominance of big business, and Jewish influences.[158] Nazi propaganda posters in working-class districts emphasized anti-capitalism, such as one that said: "The maintenance of a rotten industrial system has nothing to do with nationalism. I can love Germany and hate capitalism."[165]

    Hitler, both in public and in private, expressed strong disdain for capitalism, accusing modern capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class.[166] He opposed free-market capitalism's profit-seeking impulses and desired an economy in which community interests would be upheld.[153] He distrusted capitalism for being unreliable, due to its egotistic nature, and he preferred a state-directed economy that is subordinated to the interests of the Volk.[166] Hitler told a party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day is the creation of the Jews."[166] Hitler said to Benito Mussolini that "Capitalism had run its course".[166] Hitler also said that the business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them."[167] Hitler admired Napoleon as a role model for his anti-conservative, anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois attitudes.[168] However, Hitler had little tolerance for Goebbels insistence upon adherence to socialist ideas and alliance with leftist and socialist parties as Hitler had abandoned them by the time the party rose to power. In correspondence Goebbels tried to convince Hitler the Nazis and the left share a common enemy in capitalists, however, Hitler disagreed and adamantly stated that capitalists are not the enemy of Nazis.[169]

    In Mein Kampf, Hitler effectively supported mercantilism, in the belief that economic resources from their respective territories should be seized by force; he believed that the policy of Lebensraum would provide Germany with such economically valuable territories.[170] He believed that the only means to maintain economic security was to have direct control over resources rather than being forced to rely on world trade.[171] He claimed that war to gain such resources was the only means to surpass the failing capitalist economic system.[170]

    A number of other Nazis held strong revolutionary socialist and anti-capitalist beliefs, most prominently Ernst Röhm, the leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA).[172] Röhm claimed that the Nazis' rise to power constituted a national revolution, but insisted that a socialist "second revolution" was required for Nazi ideology to be fulfilled.[42] Röhm's SA began attacks against individuals deemed to be associated with conservative reaction.[42] Hitler saw Röhm's independent actions as violating and possibly threatening his leadership, as well as jeopardizing the regime by alienating the conservative President Paul von Hindenburg and the conservative-oriented German army.[43] This resulted in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA.[43] Another radical Nazi, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels adamantly stressed the socialist character of Nazism, and claimed in his diary that if he were to pick between Bolshevism and capitalism, he said "in final analysis", "it would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism."[173]

    Strasserism[link]
    Gregor Strasser, founder of Strasserism.

    The Strasser brothers considered capitalism stained by Jewish finance, and called for a working-class, genuinely socialist and ultra-nationalist revolution following Hitler's rise to power (which they called a half-revolution), emphasizing the socialist component of National Socialism and proposing a cooperative economic ministry to direct Germany's economy in a more left-wing and guild-based direction.[174][175]

    See also[link]

    References[link]

    Bibliography[link]

    Notes[link]

    1. ^ Walter John Raymond. Dictionary of Politics. (1992). ISBN 1-55618-008-X p. 327.
    2. ^ Fritzsche, Peter. 1998. Germans into Nazis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
    3. ^ Kele, Max H. (1972). Nazis and Workers: National Socialist Appeals to German Labor, 1919–1933. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
    4. ^ Payne, Stanley G. 1995. A History of Fascism, 1914–45. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
    5. ^ Neocleous, Mark. Fascism. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 1997 p. 23.
    6. ^ Thomas D. Grant. Stormtroopers and Crisis in the Nazi Movement: activism, ideology and dissolution. London, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2004. Pp. 30-34, 44.
    7. ^ Otis C. Mitchell. Hitler's stormtroopers and the attack on the German Republic, 1919-1933. Jefferson, North Carolina, USA: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008. Pp. 47.
    8. ^ Richard Bessel. Nazism and War. Paperback Edition. New York, New York, USA: Modern Library, 2004. Pp. 24-27.
    9. ^ Lisa Pine. Education in Nazi Germany. Oxford, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Berg, 2011. Pp. 5.
    10. ^ Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul. World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006. p. 61.
    11. ^ a b Bendersky, Joseph W. A history of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945. 2nd ed. Burnham Publishers, 2000. p. 24.
    12. ^ Bendersky, Joseph W. A history of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945. 2nd ed. Burnham Publishers, 2000. p. 24. p. 30
    13. ^ a b c d Simone Gigliotti, Berel Lang. The Holocaust: a reader. Malden, Massachusetts, USA; Oxford, England, UK; Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Pp. 14.
    14. ^ a b Bendersky, Joseph W. A history of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945. 2nd ed. Burnham Publishers, 2000. p. 40.
    15. ^ European Journal of Political Economy, vol. 21, issue 4, pp. 1015.
    16. ^ MacGregor Knox. Common destiny: dictatorship, foreign policy, and war in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Cambridge, England, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. 208.
    17. ^ Frank McDonough. Hitler and the rise of the Nazi Party. Pearson/Longman, 2003. Pp. 64.
    18. ^ Eugene Davidson. The Unmaking of Adolf Hitler. First paperback edition. Columbia, Missouri, USA: Missouri University Press, 2004. Pp. 117.
    19. ^ a b Adolf Hitler, Max Domarus, Patrick Romane (ed). The essential Hitler: speeches and commentary. Waulconda, Illinois, USA: Bolchazi-Carducci Publishers, Inc., 2007 p. 170.
    20. ^ a b Rudy Koshar. Social life, local politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880-1935. University of North Carolina Press, 1986. p. 190.
    21. ^ Thomas Childers. The Formation of the Nazi constituency, 1919-1933. Barnes & Noble Books, 1986. p. 26.
    22. ^ Cyprian Blamires. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2006. p. 14. (Speaks of Nazism having a syncretic mix of left-wing and right-wing positions outside of the traditional linear left-right spectrum).
    23. ^ Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf. Bottom of the Hill Publishing, 2010. Pp. 287.
    24. ^ a b Oliver H. Woshinsky. Explaining Politics: Culture, Institutions, and Political Behavior. Oxon, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2008.Pp. 156.
    25. ^ L. L. Snyder, Encyclopedia Of The Third Reich, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1998, p. 245
    26. ^ Fritzsche, Peter. Germans into Nazis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); Eatwell, Roger, Fascism, A History (Viking/Penguin, 1996), pp. xvii-xxiv, 21, 26–31, 114–140, 352. Griffin, Roger, "Revolution from the Right: Fascism," in David Parker, ed., Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560-1991, (London: Routledge, 2000)
    27. ^ Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf (Bottom of the Hill Publishing, 2010), p. 287.
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    30. ^ Peukert, Detlev, The Weimar Republic. 1st paperback ed. (Macmillan, 1993), ISBN:9780809015566, p. 74.
    31. ^ Peukert, Detlev, The Weimar Republic. 1st paperback ed. (Macmillan, 1993), ISBN:9780809015566, p. 74.
    32. ^ Beck, Hermann The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light (Berghahn Books, 2008) ISBN:9781845456801 p. 72.
    33. ^ Beck, Hermann The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light (Berghahn Books, 2008) ISBN:9781845456801, p. 72.
    34. ^ Beck, Hermann The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light (Berghahn Books, 2008) ISBN:9781845456801 p. 72-75.
    35. ^ Beck, Hermann The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light (Berghahn Books, 2008) ISBN:97818454568011 p. 84.
    36. ^ a b c d Mann, Michael, Fascists (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 183.
    37. ^ Browder, George C., Foundations of the Nazi Police State: The Formation of Sipo and SD, paperback (Lexington, Kentucky, USA: Kentucky University Press, 2004) p. 202.
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    39. ^ a b Weber, Thomas, Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (Oxford, England, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 251.
    40. ^ a b Gaab, Jeffrey S., Munich: Hofbräuhaus & History: Beer, Culture, & Politics, 2nd ed. (New York City: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 2008) p. 61.
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    42. ^ a b c Nyomarkay, Joseph, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minnesota University Press, 1967) p. 130
    43. ^ a b c d Nyomarkay, Joseph, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minnesota University Press, 1967), p. 133
    44. ^ a b Furet, François, Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, Illinois' London, England: University of Chicago Press, 1999), ISBN 0-226-27340-7, pp. 191-12.
    45. ^ Furet, François, Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, Illinois' London, England: University of Chicago Press, 1999), ISBN 0-226-27340-7, p. 191.
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    49. ^ "Lexicon: Dolchstosslegende" (definition), www.icons-multimedia.com, 2005, webpage: DolchSL.
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    55. ^ Keith H. Pickus. Constructing modern identities: Jewish university students in Germany, 1815-1914. Detroit, Michigan, USA: Wayne State University Press, 1999. p. 86.
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    60. ^ Gerwarth, Robert, The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor (Oxford, England; New York, New York: Oxford University Press) p. 149.
    61. ^ Gerwarth, Robert, The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor (Oxford, England; New York, New York: Oxford University Press) p. 54.
    62. ^ a b Gerwarth, Robert, The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor (Oxford, England; New York, New York: Oxford University Press) p. 131.
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    66. ^ Blamires, Cyprian and Paul Jackson, World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1. (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2006) p. 126.
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    95. ^ Fulda, Bernhard. Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic. Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 65.
    96. ^ Carlsten, F.L. The Rise of Fascism. 2nd ed. University of California Press, 1982. p. 80.
    97. ^ David Jablonsky. The Nazi Party in dissolution: Hitler and the Verbotzeit, 1923–1925. London, England, UK; Totowa, New Jersey, USA: Frank Cass and Company Ltd., 1989. Pp. 20–26, 30
    98. ^ Stanley G. Payne. A history of fascism, 1914-1945. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. pp. 463-464.
    99. ^ Stanley G. Payne. A history of fascism, 1914-1945. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. p. 463.
    100. ^ a b Stanley G. Payne. A history of fascism, 1914-1945. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Wisconsin University Press, 1995. p. 464.
    101. ^ a b Ian Kershaw, Hitler: A Profile in Power, (London, 1991, rev. 2001), first chapter.
    102. ^ Ian Kershaw, 1991, chapter I.
    103. ^ a b William L. Shirer (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (3 ed.,1960). Simon and Schuster. p. 41. ISBN 0-671-72868-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=sY8svb-MNUwC&pg=PA41&dq=socialist+AND+communalization+AND+embarrassing+AND+%22These+demands+had+been+put+in+at+the+insistence+of+Drexler+and+Feder,+who+apparently+really+believed+in+the+socialism%22+AND+%22rise+and+fall+of+the+third+reich%22&hl=en&ei=HvVcTrXxKIaCgAfVoPT2AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved August 30, 2011. 
    104. ^ The Rise of the Nazis, Conan Fischer, Manchester University Press (2002), ISBN 0-7190-6067-2, p. 53
    105. ^ Burleigh, Michael. 2000. The Third Reich: A New History. New York, USA: Hill and Wang. pp. 76-77.
    106. ^ a b c d Burleigh, 2000. p. 77.
    107. ^ Plant, 1986, p. 99.
    108. ^ Pretzel, Andreas (2005). "Vom Staatsfeind zum Volksfeind. Zur Radikalisierung der Homosexuellenverfolgung im Zusammenwirken von Polizei und Justiz". In Zur Nieden, Susanne. Homosexualität und Staatsräson. Männlichkeit, Homophobie und Politik in Deutschland 1900-1945. Frankfurt/M.: Campus Verlag. p. 236. ISBN 978-3-593-37749-0. http://books.google.de/books?id=HaZwHeBm2lkC&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236#v=onepage&q=&f=false. 
    109. ^ Bennetto, Jason (1997-11-01). "Holocaust: Gay activists press for German apology". The Independent. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n14142669. Retrieved 2008-12-26. [dead link]
    110. ^ The Holocaust Chronicle, Publications International Ltd., p. 108.
    111. ^ Plant, Richard, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals, Owl Books, 1988, ISBN 0-8050-0600-1.
    112. ^ Robert L. Canfield, Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective (p.212) – "The majority of Central Asian soldiers taken prisoner opted for the enemy – a fact still hidden from the Soviet public today – although systematic starvation and cruel treatment in German hands, which resulted in appalling losses, must have been one of the major inducements to change sides. As Turkistanis they joined the so-called "Eastern Legions," which were part of the Wehrmacht and later the Waffen SS, to fight the Red Army (Hauner 1981:339-57). The estimates of their numbers vary between 250,000 and 400,000, which include the Kalmyks, the Tatars and members of the Caucasian ethnic groups (Alexiev 1982:33)."
    113. ^ a b Joseph W. Bendersky. A concise history of Nazi Germany. Plymouth, England, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Pp. 32.
    114. ^ Joseph W. Bendersky. A concise history of Nazi Germany. Plymouth, England, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Pp. 33.
    115. ^ Clarence Lusane. Hitler's black victims: the historical experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi era. Routledge, 2002. Pp. 112-113; 189.
    116. ^ Ian Kershaw, Hitler: A Profile in Power, first chapter "The power of the idea" (London, 1991, rev. 2001).
    117. ^ Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship by Brigitte Hamann New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 347-359.)
    118. ^ Russia and Germany, A Century of Conflict by Walter Laqueur London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1965.) p76
    119. ^ The Russian Roots of Nazism White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 * Michael Kellogg, Cambridge 2005
    120. ^ Alfred Rosenberg: Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit, 1-34. Aufl., München 1934
    121. ^ Ball, Terence and Bellamy, Richard (2003). The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56354-2
    122. ^ Richard A. Koenigsberg. Nations have the right to kill: Hitler, the Holocaust, and war. New York, New York, USA: Library of Social Science, 2009. Pp. 2.
    123. ^ Hitler, Adolf (1961). Hitler's Secret Book. New York: Grove Press. pp. 8–9, 17–18. ISBN 0-394-62003-8. OCLC 9830111. "Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject." 
    124. ^ Mike Hawkins (1997). Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: nature as model and nature as threat. Cambridge University Press. p. 276. ISBN 0-521-57434-X. OCLC 34705047. http://books.google.com/?id=SszNCxSKmgkC&pg=PA276&dq=Hitler%27s+Secret+Book+sparta. 
    125. ^ Goebbels, Joseph; Mjölnir (1932). Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken. Munich: Franz Eher Nachfolger. English translation: Those Damned Nazis.
    126. ^ J Noakes and G Pridham, Documents on Nazism, 1919-1945, London 1974
    127. ^ K Hildebrand, The Third Reich, London 1984, p.39
    128. ^ J Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years, A Documentary History, New Jersey 1969, p.95
    129. ^ K Fischer, Nazi Germany, A New History, London 1995, p.358
    130. ^ a b J Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years, A Documentary History, New Jersey 1969, p.105
    131. ^ A Speer, Inside The Third Reich, London 1970, p.95
    132. ^ A Hitler, ed. Trevor-Roper, Hitler's Table-Talk, OUP 1988, p.143
    133. ^ a b K Fischer, Nazi Germany, A New History, London 1995, p.363
    134. ^ K Hildebrand, The Third Reich, London 1984, p.40
    135. ^ L L Snyder, Encyclopedia Of The Third Reich, Wordsworth 1978, p.292
    136. ^ A Speer, Inside The Third Reich, London 1970, p.123
    137. ^ J Goebbels, ed. L P Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, Doubleday 1948, p.163
    138. ^ J Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years, A Documentary History, New Jersey 1969, p.94
    139. ^ J Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years, A Documentary History, New Jersey 1969, p.
    140. ^ Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 149 and 2003: 114.
    141. ^ per the diary of Johannes Hering; Goodrick-Clarke (2002), Black Sun, pp. 114, 117.
    142. ^ Goodrick-Clarke (2002), pp. 114, 117.
    143. ^ Goodrick-Clarke (1985), pp. 150–51.
    144. ^ Scholarship for Martin Luther's 1543 treatise, On the Jews and their Lies, exercising influence on Germany's attitude:
      • Wallmann, Johannes. "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century", Lutheran Quarterly, n.s. 1 (Spring 1987) 1:72–97. Wallmann writes: "The assertion that Luther's expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have been of major and persistent influence in the centuries after the Reformation, and that there exists a continuity between Protestant anti-Judaism and modern racially oriented anti-Semitism, is at present wide-spread in the literature; since the Second World War it has understandably become the prevailing opinion."
      • Michael, Robert. Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; see chapter 4 "The Germanies from Luther to Hitler," pp. 105–151.
      • Hillerbrand, Hans J. "Martin Luther," Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007. Hillerbrand writes: "[H]is strident pronouncements against the Jews, especially toward the end of his life, have raised the question of whether Luther significantly encouraged the development of German anti-Semitism. Although many scholars have taken this view, this perspective puts far too much emphasis on Luther and not enough on the larger peculiarities of German history."
    145. ^ Ellis, Marc H. "Hitler and the Holocaust, Christian Anti-Semitism", Baylor University Center for American and Jewish Studies, Spring 2004, slide 14. Also see Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Vol. 12, p. 318, Avalon Project, Yale Law School, April 19, 1946.
    146. ^ Bernd Nellessen, "Die schweigende Kirche: Katholiken und Judenverfolgung," in Büttner (ed), Die Deutchschen und die Jugendverfolg im Dritten Reich, p. 265, cited in Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners (Vintage, 1997)
    147. ^ Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490–1700. New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 2004, pp. 666–667.
    148. ^ Brecht 3:351.
    149. ^ Wallmann, Johannes. "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century", Lutheran Quarterly, n.s. 1, Spring 1987, 1:72-97
    150. ^ Siemon-Netto, The Fabricated Luther, 17–20.
    151. ^ Siemon-Netto, "Luther and the Jews," Lutheran Witness 123 (2004) No. 4:19, 21.
    152. ^ Hillerbrand, Hans J. "Martin Luther," Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007. Hillerbrand writes: "His strident pronouncements against the Jews, especially toward the end of his life, have raised the question of whether Luther significantly encouraged the development of German anti-Semitism. Although many scholars have taken this view, this perspective puts far too much emphasis on Luther and not enough on the larger peculiarities of German history."
    153. ^ a b Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 403.
    154. ^ Peter Temin (November 1991>). Economic History Review, New Series 44 (4): 573–593. 
    155. ^ Guillebaud, Claude W. 1939. The Economic Recovery of Germany 1933-1938. London: MacMillan and Co. Limited.
    156. ^ Barkai, Avaraham 1990. Nazi Economics. Ideology, Theory and Policy. Oxford Berg Publisher.
    157. ^ Hayes, Peter. 1987 Industry and Ideology IG Farben in the Nazi Era. Cambridge University Press.
    158. ^ a b Bendersky, Joseph W. A history of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945. 2nd ed. Burnham Publishers, 2000. p. 72.
    159. ^ "They must unite, [Hitler] said, to defeat the common enemy, Jewish Marxism." A New Beginning, Adolf Hitler, Völkischer Beobachter. February 1925. Cited in: Toland, John (1992). Adolf Hitler. Anchor Books. p. 207. ISBN 0-385-03724-4. 
    160. ^ Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. Yale University Press. p. 53. ISBN 0-300-12427-9. 
    161. ^ Carsten, Francis Ludwig The Rise of Fascism, 2nd ed. (University of California Press, 1982) p. 137. Quoting: Hitler, A., Sunday Express, September 28, 1930.
    162. ^ Calic, Edouard, Ohne Maske (Without a Mask) (Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, 1968) pp. 11, 32–33. Translated by R.H. Barry as Unmasked: Two Confidential Interviews with Hitler in 1931, (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971) ISBN 0-7011-1642-0. Hitler's confidential 1931 interviews were with Richard Breiting, editor of the Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten. Cited in: Bel, Germà (2006). Against The Mainstream: Nazi Privatization In 1930s Germany, Research Institute of Applied Economics 2006 Working Papers 2006/7, p. 14. Also cited in Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom, 1998, p. 416; which is cited in Epstein, Richard Allen, Principles for a Free Society (De Capo Press) p. 168. ISBN 0-7382-0829-9.
    163. ^ Hitler, A.; transl. Norman Cameron, R. H. Stevens; intro. H. R. Trevor-Roper (2000). "March 24, 1942". Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944: His Private Conversations. Enigma Books. pp. 162–163. ISBN 1-929631-05-7. 
    164. ^ Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966, p. 619.
    165. ^ Bendersky, Joseph W. A History of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945. 2nd ed. (Burnham Publishers, 2000) pp. 58-59.
    166. ^ a b c d Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 399
    167. ^ Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 230.
    168. ^ Hitler's Piano Player: The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanfstaengl: Confidant of Hitler, Ally of FDR (New York, New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2004) p. 284.
    169. ^ Goebbels#Nazi activist
    170. ^ a b ROvery, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 402.
    171. ^ Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004) p. 402
    172. ^ Nyomarkay, Joseph, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minnesota University Press, 1967) p. 132
    173. ^ Read, Anthony The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle, 1st American ed. (New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004) p. 142
    174. ^ Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 1973, pp. 230-1
    175. ^ Nolte, Ernst (1965). Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian fascism, National Socialism. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. pp. 425–426. 

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    Lars von Trier

    Lars von Trier at Cannes in 2000
    Born Lars Trier
    (1956-04-30) 30 April 1956 (age 56)
    Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
    Occupation Film director and screenwriter
    Influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Douglas Sirk, David Lynch, Jørgen Leth, Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Bertolt Brecht
    Spouse Cæcilia Holbek (m. 1987–1995)[1]
    Bente Frøge (m. 1997–present)

    Lars von Trier (Danish pronunciation: [ˈlɑːs fʌn ˈtʁiːˀɐ]; born Lars Trier; 30 April 1956)[2] is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective – an avant-garde filmmaking movement – although his own films have taken a variety of approaches. His work has frequently divided the critics.[3]

    Von Trier began making films at the age of eleven. Raised by a communist mother and a socialist father in an austere environment, he converted at the age of 30 to the Catholic Church. Von Trier suffers periodically from depression, as well as various fears and phobias, including an intense fear of flying. As he himself said in an interview, "Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking".[4]. His first publicly released film was an experimental short called The Orchid Gardener (1977) and his first feature film came seven years later with The Element of Crime (1984). Among many other prizes, awards and nominations, he is the recipient of the Palme d'Or, the Grand Prix, and the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

    Contents

    Early life and career[link]

    Lars Trier was born in Kongens Lyngby, north of Copenhagen, the son of Inger Trier (née Høst, 1915—1989). He had believed that his biological father was Ulf Trier (1907—1978), until his mother revealed to him on her deathbed that he had been conceived as a result of an affair she had with her employer, Fritz Michael Hartmann. His mother considered herself a communist, while his father was social democrat, and both were committed nudists,[5] and the young Lars went on several childhood holidays to nudist camps. They regarded the disciplining of children as reactionary. Trier has noted that he was brought up in an atheist family, and that although Ulf Trier was Jewish, he was not religious. He did not discover the identity of his biological father until 1989. His parents did not allow much room in their household for "feelings, religion, or enjoyment", and also refused to make any rules for their children,[6] with complex results for von Trier's personality and development.[7] He began making his own films at the age of 11 after receiving a Super-8 camera as a gift and continued to be involved in independent moviemaking throughout his high school years.[3]

    In 1979, he was enrolled in the National Film School of Denmark.[8] His peers at the film school nicknamed him "von Trier". The name is sort of an inside-joke with the von (German "of" or "from" used as a nobiliary particle), suggesting nobility and a certain arrogance, while Lars is a very common and Trier not an unusual name in Denmark.[9] He reportedly kept the "von" name in homage to Erich von Stroheim and Josef von Sternberg, both of whom also added it later in life.[10] During his time as a student at the school he made the films Nocturne (1980) and The Last Detail (Den sidste detalje, 1981),[11] both of which won Best Film awards at the Munich International Festival of Film Schools,[12] and he graduated with Images of a Relief (Befrielsesbilleder, 1982) in 1983.

    Europe trilogy[link]

    After graduation he began work on the very stylized crime drama, The Element of Crime (Forbrydelsens element 1984), which won a technical award at the Cannes Film Festival.

    His next film was Epidemic (1987), which was also shown at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section. The film is partly a dark science fiction-tale of a future plague epidemic, and partly chronicles two filmmakers (played by Lars von Trier and screenwriter Niels Vørsel) preparing that film, with the two storylines ultimately colliding.

    For television von Trier directed Medea (1988), which won the Jean d'Arcy prize in France. It was based on a screenplay by Carl Th. Dreyer and starred Udo Kier.

    He completed the Europe-trilogy in 1991 with Europa (released as Zentropa in the U.S.), which won the Prix du Jury at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival[13] and picked up awards at other major festivals.

    In 1990 he also directed the music video for the worldwide hit "Bakerman" by Laid Back.[14] This video was reused in 2006 by the English DJ and artist Shaun Baker who did a remake of Bakerman.

    [edit] Zentropa and The Kingdom

    In 1992 he and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen founded the movie production company Zentropa Entertainment, named after a train company in Europa, their most recent film at the time.[8] The reason for doing this was to achieve financial independence and to have total creative control. The production company has produced many movies other than von Trier's own as well as television series. It is also the world's only mainstream film studio to have produced hardcore sex films:[citation needed] Constance (1998), Pink Prison (1999), HotMen CoolBoyz (2000) and All About Anna (2005).

    In order to make money for his newly founded company,[15] he made The Kingdom (Riget, 1994) and The Kingdom II (Riget II, 1997), a pair of miniseries recorded in the Danish national hospital, the name "Riget" being a colloquial name for the hospital known as Rigshospitalet (lit. The Kingdom's Hospital) in Danish. A projected third installment in the series was derailed by the 1998 death of Ernst-Hugo Järegård, who played Helmer, one of the major characters.

    Dogme 95[link]

    In 1995, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg presented their manifesto for a new cinematic movement which they called Dogme 95. It would however take a while before the first of these films appeared, and at this point many thought of the concept mainly as a radical idea with no future.[citation needed]

    In 1996, von Trier conducted an unusual theatrical experiment in Copenhagen involving 53 actors, which he titled Psychomobile 1: The World Clock. A documentary chronicling the project was directed by Jesper Jargil, and was released in 2000 with the title De Udstillede (The Exhibited).

    Von Trier's next film, Breaking the Waves (1996), the first film in von Trier's 'Golden Heart Trilogy', won the Grand Prix at Cannes and featured Emily Watson, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Its grainy images and hand-held photography pointed towards Dogme 95. The second was The Idiots (1998), nominated for a Palme d'Or, which he presented in person at the Cannes Film Festival notwithstanding his dislike of travelling. Dancer in the Dark (2000) was the final component of the trilogy.

    As originator of the Dogme 95 concept, which has led to international interest in Danish film as a whole, he has inspired filmmakers all over the world.[16] Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the Dogme 95 Manifesto and the "Vow of Chastity" together with their fellow Dogme directors Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen shared in 2008 the European Film Award European Achievement in World Cinema.

    Explicit images[link]

    Von Trier's use of sexually explicit images in The Idiots (1998) started a wave[citation needed] of arthouse mainstream films with unsimulated sex, such as Catherine Breillat's Romance (1999), Baise-Moi (2000), Intimacy (2001), Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny (2003) and Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs (2004).

    In 1998, Lars von Trier also made history by having his company Zentropa be the world's first mainstream film company to produce hardcore pornographic films. Three of these films, Constance (1998), Pink Prison (1999) and the adult/mainstream crossover-feature All About Anna (2005), were made primarily for a female audience, and were extremely successful in Europe, with the first two being directly responsible for the March 2006 legalizing of pornography in Norway.[17]

    Women too like to see other people having sex. What they don’t like is the endless close-ups of hammering bodyparts without a story. Lars von Trier is the first to have realised this and produced valuable quality porn films for women.

    Stern No. 40, 27 September 2007[18]

    Lars von Trier's initiative spearheaded a European wave of female-friendly porn films from directors such as Anna Span, Erika Lust and Petra Joy, while von Trier's company Zentropa was forced to abandon the experiment due to pressure from English business partners.[19] In July 2009, women's magazine Cosmopolitan ranked Pink Prison as No. 1 in its Top Five of the best women’s porn, calling it the "role model for the new porn-generation".[20] Lars von Trier would return to explicit images in his self-directed Antichrist (2009), exploring darker themes.

    2000s[link]

    In 2000, von Trier premiered a musical featuring Icelandic musician Björk, Dancer in the Dark. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.[21] The song "I've Seen It All" (which Trier co-wrote) received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song.

    The Five Obstructions (2003), made by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, is a documentary, but also incorporates lengthy sections of experimental films. The premise is that Lars von Trier challenges director Jørgen Leth, his friend and mentor, to remake his old experimental film The Perfect Human (1967) five times, each time with a different 'obstruction' (or obstacle) specified by von Trier.[22]

    He then directed two films in his announced 'U.S. trilogy': Dogville (2003), starring Nicole Kidman and Manderlay (2005), starring Bryce Dallas Howard in the same role – as Grace. Both films are extremely stylized, with the actors playing their parts on a nearly empty soundstage with little but chalk marks on the floor to indicate the sets. Both films had huge casts of major international actors (Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, James Caan, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, etc.), and questioned various issues relating to American society, such as intolerance in Dogville and slavery in Manderlay.

    Controversy erupted on the 2004 set for Manderlay when actor John C. Reilly walked off the Trollhättan, Sweden, set in late March. Reilly walked off the film when he learned that an upcoming scene involved the slaughter of a donkey for food. The film's producer says the animal—who was old and not expected to live much longer—was killed off-camera by a certified veterinarian, in accordance with Swedish law. Reilly was replaced by Zeljko Ivanek.[23]

    The U.S. was also the scene for Dear Wendy (2005), a feature film directed by von Trier's "Dogme-brother" Thomas Vinterberg from a script by von Trier. It starred Jamie Bell and Bill Pullman and dealt with gun worship and violence in American society.

    In 2006, von Trier released a Danish-language comedy film, The Boss of it All. It was shot using a process that von Trier has called Automavision, which involves the director choosing the best possible fixed camera position and then allowing a computer to randomly choose when to tilt, pan or zoom.

    It was followed by an autobiographical film, De unge år: Erik Nietzsche sagaen del 1 (2007), scripted by von Trier but directed by Jacob Thuesen, which tells the story of von Trier's years as a student at the National Film School of Denmark. It stars Jonatan Spang as von Trier's alter ego, called "Erik Nietzsche", and is narrated by von Trier himself. All main characters in the film are based on real people from the Danish film industry,[citation needed] with the thinly veiled portrayals including Jens Albinus as director Nils Malmros, Dejan Čukić as screenwriter Mogens Rukov and Søren Pilmark in an especially unflattering portrayal as sex-obsessed school principal Henning Camre.

    Von Trier's next feature film was a horror movie, Antichrist, about "a grieving couple who retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping a return to Eden will repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage; but nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse". The film, which includes sexually explicit content, stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It premiered in competition at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where the festival's jury honoured the movie by giving the Best Actress award to Gainsbourg.[24] The Cannes Film Festival Ecumenical Jury, which gives prizes for movies that promote spiritual, humanist and universal values, also "honoured" the film with a special "anti-award"; a spokesman for the jury described it as "the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world."[25] In 2010 the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported on their website that the film production company Zentropa is reportedly making more revenue from suing movie pirates in Germany that have downloaded Antichrist illegally than from box office and DVD sales, demanding a payment of around 1,300 euros per download to avoid legal action.[26]

    2010s[link]

    Von Trier's latest work is Melancholia, a psychological disaster drama;[27] shot between 22 July and 8 September 2010 at Film i Väst's studios in Trollhättan, Sweden,[28] and with exteriors in the area surrounding the Tjolöholm Castle.[29] Magnolia Pictures has acquired the distribution rights for North America.[30] The film was in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.[31]

    Von Trier announced that after finishing Melancholia he hopes to begin production of The Nymphomaniac, a two-part film about the sexual awakening of a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg).[32] The director explained how he got the idea for the upcoming project: "my DP on [Melancholia], Manuel Claro, at one point voiced a surprising prejudice. He urged me not to fall into the trap that so many aging directors fall into – that the women get younger and younger and nuder and nuder. That's all I needed to hear. I most definitely intend for the women in my films to get younger and younger and nuder and nuder."[33]

    Phobias[link]

    Von Trier suffers from multiple phobias, including an intense fear of flying.[34] His fear of air travel frequently places severely limiting constraints on him and his crew, necessitating that virtually all of his films be shot in either Denmark or Sweden, even those set in the United States or other foreign countries. Von Trier has had a number of his films featured at the Cannes Film Festival over the course of his career, and each time has insisted on driving from Denmark to France for the festival and back.

    On numerous occasions von Trier has also stated that he suffers from occasional depression which renders him incapable of performing his work and unable to fulfill social obligations.[35]

    Filming techniques[link]

    Lars von Trier has said that "a film should be like a stone in your shoe". In order to create original art he feels that filmmakers must distinguish themselves stylistically from other films, often by placing restrictions on the filmmaking process. The most famous restriction is the cinematic "vow of chastity" of the Dogme95 movement with which he is associated, though only one of his films, The Idiots, is an actual Dogme 95 film. In Dancer in the Dark, jump shots[36] and dramatically-different color palettes and camera techniques were used for the "real world" and musical portions of the film, and in Dogville everything was filmed on a sound stage with no set where the walls of the buildings in the fictional town were marked as lines on the floor.

    Von Trier often shoots digitally and operates the camera himself, preferring to continuously shoot the actors in-character without stopping between takes. In Dogville he let actors stay in character for hours, in the style of method acting. These techniques often put great strain on actors, most famously with Björk during the filming of Dancer in the Dark. Often he uses the same regular group of actors in many of his films: some of his frequently used actors are Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier and Stellan Skarsgård.

    He is heavily influenced by the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer[37] and the film The Night Porter.[38] He was so inspired by the short film The Perfect Human directed by Jørgen Leth that he challenged Leth to redo the short five times in feature film The Five Obstructions.[39]

    Trilogies[link]

    Von Trier has on occasion referred to his films as falling into thematic and stylistic trilogies. This pattern began with his first feature film, marking the beginning of The Europa Trilogy, though he claims a trilogy was not initially planned, instead being applied to the films in retrospect. The Europe trilogy illuminated the traumas of Europe in the past and future. This trilogy includes The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991).

    The Golden Heart trilogy was about naive heroines who maintain their 'golden hearts' despite the tragedies they experience. This trilogy consists of Breaking the Waves (1996), The Idiots (1998) and Dancer in the Dark (2000). While all three films are sometimes associated with the Dogme 95 movement, only The Idiots is a certified Dogme 95 film.

    The USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy follows the character of Grace, and is set in a stylized American past. Von Trier has stated he was inspired to make a trilogy about the United States as a reaction to Americans at the Cannes film festival who said he had no right to make the Dancer in the Dark,[8] which was often viewed as being critical of a country he has never been to (and has no intention of ever visiting, due to his phobia of travel); however, von Trier himself has stated in interviews he did not intend it to be a criticism of America, saying the film takes place in a "fictional America". Von Trier proposed the films as ‘a series of sermons on America’s sins and hypocrisy’[citation needed], inspired by the fact that American movie makers have made many movies about places across the world to which they have not travelled. All three movies will be shot in the same distinctive style, on a bare sound stage with no set and buildings marked by lines on the floor. This style is inspired by 1970s televised theatre. The trilogy will consist of Dogville (2003), Manderlay (2005) and the so far not produced Wasington.

    The Kingdom (Riget) was planned as a trilogy of three seasons with 13 episodes in total, but the third season was not filmed due to death of star Ernst-Hugo Järegård shortly after completion of the second season.

    Biological father[link]

    In 1989, von Trier's mother revealed on her deathbed that the man whom he thought was his father was not, and that she had had a tryst with her former employer, Fritz Michael Hartmann (1909–2000),[40] who descended from a long line of Roman Catholic classical musicians (his grandfather was Emil Hartmann, his great grandfather J.P.E. Hartmann, his uncles included Niels Gade and Johan Ernst Hartmann and thus Niels Viggo Bentzon was his cousin). She stated that she did this in order to give her son "artistic genes".[41]

    Until that point I thought I had a Jewish background. But I'm really more of a Nazi. I believe that my biological father's German family went back two further generations. Before she died, my mother told me to be happy that I was the son of this other man. She said my foster father had had no goals and no strength. But he was a loving man. And I was very sad about this revelation. And you then feel manipulated when you really do turn out to be creative. If I'd known that my mother had this plan, I would have become something else. I would have shown her. The slut![42]

    During the German occupation of Denmark, Fritz Michael Hartmann worked as a civil servant and joined a resistance group (Frit Danmark), actively counteracting any pro-German and pro-Nazi colleagues in his department.[43] Another member of this infiltrative resistance group was Hartmann's colleague Viggo Kampmann, who would later become prime minister of Denmark.[44]

    After four awkward meetings with his biological father, the man refused further contact.[45] The revelations led von Trier to attempt to "erase" the connections with his stepfather by converting to Catholicism, and to rework his filmmaking into a style emphasizing "honesty".[3]

    I don't know if I'm all that Catholic really. I'm probably not. Denmark is a very Protestant country. Perhaps I only turned Catholic to piss off a few of my countrymen.[42]

    In 2009, he declared, "I'm a very bad Catholic. In fact I'm becoming more and more of an atheist."[46]

    Controversy at 2011 Cannes Film Festival[link]

    On 19 May 2011, Cannes Film Festival's board of directors declared von Trier persona non grata for comments he made during a press conference for his film Melancholia the day before, an unprecedented move for the film festival.[47][48] Responding to a question by The Times film critic Kate Muir about his German roots and his comments in a Danish film magazine about the Nazi aesthetic, von Trier claimed to have some sympathy for and understanding of Adolf Hitler,[49] and then jokingly claimed to be a Nazi himself:[50][51]

    Von Trier at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

    What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. ... He's not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I'm not for the Second World War, and I'm not against Jews. ... I am of course very much for Jews, no not too much, because Israel is pain in the ass, but still how can I get out of this sentence. ...

    Press Conference for Melancholia, Cannes, 2011[52][53]

    Referring to the art of Nazi architect Albert Speer, von Trier added:

    ... he had some talent that was kind of possible for him to use during... Ok, I'm a Nazi.

    Then, to Toronto Star film critic Peter Howell, who questioned whether Melancholia could be an answer to Hollywood blockbusters and asked von Trier if he could “envison doing a film on a grander scale than this”, von Trier replied:

    On a grander scale? Yeah. Yeah that's what we Nazis, we have a tendency to do things on a greater scale. Yeah, maybe you could persuade me into the final solution with journalists. ...

    Hours later, von Trier released a brief statement of apology about his comments at the press conference: "If I have hurt someone this morning by the words I said at the press conference, I sincerely apologise. I am not anti-semitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a Nazi."[54] The next day, the festival directors held an extraordinary meeting, deciding his remarks were "unacceptable, intolerable and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the very existence of the festival. [...] The board of directors condemns these comments and declares Lars von Trier persona non grata at the Festival de Cannes, with effect immediately."[54]

    Afterwards, von Trier held a news conference of his own in Danish. His first remark to the Danish journalists was: "If any of you journalists will beat me, so just do it. I will enjoy it." He went on to say that "The Holocaust is the worst crime that ever happened. I have nothing against Jews. I have a Jewish name, and all my children have Jewish names." He admitted that his remarks about the Nazis had been misguided, saying "It was really stupidly done and it was in the wrong forum. At the press conference with Danish journalists, there were no problems, but I do not think the international journalists understand my Danish humor." But he also said he was proud to have been kicked out of the Cannes festival: "I am proud to have been declared 'persona non grata'. It is perhaps the first time in cinematic history, it has happened. ... I think one reason is that French people treated the Jews badly during World War II. Therefore, it is a sensitive topic for them. I respect the Cannes festival very highly, but I also understand that they are very angry at me right now."[55][54]

    Speaking to other news outlets he said that his comments were "very sarcastic and very rude, but that's very Danish." He also added, "I don't sympathize with Hitler for one second."[56]

    In the October 2011 issue of GQ, von Trier is quoted in an interview saying he was not really sorry for the comments he made, only sorry he didn't make it clear that he was joking. He added, "I can't be sorry for what I said—it's against my nature."[57] On 5 October 2011, von Trier was interviewed by police in Denmark about his remarks at Cannes. Afterwards, he announced that he had 'decided from this day forth to refrain from all public statements and interviews'.[58]

    Honours[link]

    Von Trier was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog on 14 January 1997.[59] Ten years later von Trier decided to hand back the prize, saying that the Danish royal family are just "simple people of bad quality".[60]

    Filmography[link]

    References[link]

    Notes[link]

    1. ^ Lumholdt, Jan (2003). Lars von Trier: interviews. Univ. Press of Mississippi. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-1-57806-532-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=voTOt3GaRJAC&pg=PR22. Retrieved 14 October 2010. 
    2. ^ Krak, Ove Holger (2004) (in Danish). Kraks blaa bog 2004. Krak. p. 1184. ISBN 978-87-7225-797-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=xHJmAAAAMAAJ. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    3. ^ a b c "Biography". Starpulse.com. 30 April 1956. http://www.starpulse.com/Actors/Von_Trier,_Lars/Biography/. Retrieved 15 July 2010. 
    4. ^ Burke, Jason (13 May 2007). "Guardian UK interview 2007". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/13/film.filmnews. Retrieved 5 September 2010. 
    5. ^ In "Trier on von Trier", by Stig Bjorkman, 2005
    6. ^ Nicodemus, Katja (10 November 2005). "Lars von Trier, Katja Nicodemus: "I am an American woman" (17/11/2005) – signandsight". Die Zeit. http://www.signandsight.com/features/465.html. Retrieved 14 October 2010. "I come from a family of communist nudists. I was allowed to do or not do what I liked. My parents were not interested in whether I went to school or got drunk on white wine. After a childhood like that, you search for restrictions in your own life." 
    7. ^ "Copenhagen: Lars von Trier". Visit-copenhagen.com. http://visit-copenhagen.com/about-copenhagen/lars-von-trier.htm. Retrieved 15 July 2010. 
    8. ^ a b c "The Tomb: Lars von Trier Interview". Timeout.com. http://www.timeout.com/film/news/553.html. Retrieved 15 July 2010. 
    9. ^ "How many have the name – Statistics Denmark". http://www.dst.dk/HomeUK/Statistics/Names/HowMany.aspx. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    10. ^ Roman, Shari (15 September 2001). Digital Babylon: Hollywood, Indiewood & Dogme 95. IFILM. ISBN 978-1-58065-036-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=UJFZAAAAMAAJ. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    11. ^ Lumholdt, Jan (2003). Lars von Trier: interviews. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 72. ISBN 978-1-57806-532-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=voTOt3GaRJAC&pg=PA72. Retrieved 11 October 2010. "Nocture was the more important of the two and it also won a prize at the film festival in Munich" 
    12. ^ Cowie, Peter (15 June 1995). Variety International Film Guide 1996. Focal. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-240-80253-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=m8khh4m7c-4C. Retrieved 11 October 2010. "...he won two consecutive awards at the European Film School competition in Munich with Nocturne and The Last Detail" 
    13. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Europa". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/91/year/1991.html. Retrieved 9 August 2009. 
    14. ^ Schepelern, Peter (2000) (in Danish). Lars von Triers film: tvang og befrielse. Rosinante. p. 313. ISBN 978-87-621-0164-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=oXlZAAAAMAAJ. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    15. ^ "Lars von Trier fan site biography". Web.archive.org. 27 October 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20091027155703/http://www.geocities.com/lars_von_trier2000/biyografi.htm. Retrieved 6 October 2011. 
    16. ^ Chaudhuri, Shohini (2005). Contemporary world cinema: Europe, the Middle East, East Asia and South Asia. Edinburgh University Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-7486-1799-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=qOXoeyesZOIC&pg=PA37. Retrieved 12 October 2010. "The Dogme concept has, moreover, spilled across national borders and inspired filmmaking outside Denmark." 
    17. ^ "Norwegian Media Authority none-censorship decision" (PDF). http://www.medietilsynet.no/Documents/Aktuelt/Presedenssaker/Filmklagenemd/2006-0698-04_Flirtshop_Klagenemnda.pdf. Retrieved 15 July 2010. 
    18. ^ Stern No. 40, 27 September 2007
    19. ^ Thomas Vilhelm: Filmbyen (Ekstra Bladets Forlag, 2003), ISBN 978-87-7731-274-8, page 74
    20. ^ Cosmopolitan (German edition), July 2009, page 30
    21. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Dancer in the Dark". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/5140/year/2000.html. Retrieved 11 October 2009. 
    22. ^ Scott, A. O. (26 May 2004). "The Five Obstructions (2003) | FILM REVIEW; A Cinematic Duel of Wits For Two Danish Directors". Movies.nytimes.com. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C02E4D6143EF935A15756C0A9629C8B63. Retrieved 12 October 2010. 
    23. ^ Hohenadel, Kristin (30 April 2004). "Departure | Movies". EW.com. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,628792,00.html. Retrieved 15 July 2010. 
    24. ^ "Cannes jury gives its heart to works of graphic darkness". The Irish Times. 5 May 2009. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0525/1224247325203.html?digest=1. Retrieved 15 July 2010. 
    25. ^ "Antichrist gets an anti-award in Cannes". National Post. Canada. http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=1624286. Retrieved 15 July 2010. [dead link]
    26. ^ DN (29 December 2010). "11.000 kronor för en filmbiljett". DN.SE. http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/film-tv/11000-kronor-for-en-filmbiljett. Retrieved 6 October 2011. 
    27. ^ "Lars Von Trier has Melancholia". DreadCentral.com. 10/09/2009. http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/33943/lars-von-trier-has-melancholia. Retrieved 15 July 2010. 
    28. ^ Pham, Annika (28 July 2010). "Von Trier’s Melancholia kicks in". Cineuropa. http://cineuropa.org/newsdetail.aspx?lang=en&documentID=148856. Retrieved 28 July 2010. 
    29. ^ Erlandsson, Martin (11 August 2010). "Dunst och Skarsgård filmar i norra Halland" (in Swedish). Hallandsposten. http://hallandsposten.se/nojekultur/film/1.919882-dunst-och-skarsgard-filmar-i-norra-halland. Retrieved 13 February 2011. 
    30. ^ Lodderhose, Diana (13 February 2011). "Magnolia takes 'Melancholia'". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118032139?refCatId=13. Retrieved 13 February 2011. 
    31. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Official Selection". Cannes. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/article/58041.html. Retrieved 14 April 2011. 
    32. ^ Pham, Andrias (24 March 2011). "Lars von Trier to Make ‘The Nymphomaniac’ Next?". Slashfilm. http://www.slashfilm.com/lars-von-trier-the-nymphomaniac/. Retrieved 24 March 2011. 
    33. ^ Juul Carlsen, Per (May 2011). Neimann, Susanna. ed. "The Only Redeeming Factor is the World Ending". FILM (Danish Film Institute) (72): 5–8. ISSN 1399-2813. http://www.dfi.dk/Service/English/News-and-publications/FILM-Magazine/Artikler-fra-tidsskriftet-FILM/72/The-Only-Redeeming-Factor-is-the-World-Ending.aspx. Retrieved 12 May 2011. 
    34. ^ Lumholdt, Jan (2003). Lars von Trier: interviews. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 114. ISBN 978-1-57806-532-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=voTOt3GaRJAC&pg=PA114. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    35. ^ Goss, Brian Michael (January 2009). Global auteurs: politics in the films of Almodóvar, von Trier, and Winterbottom. Peter Lang. p. 118. ISBN 978-1-4331-0134-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=lR6sIjOBE_AC&pg=PA118. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    36. ^ Hurbis-Cherrier, Mick (13 March 2007). Voice & vision: a creative approach to narrative film and DV production. Focal Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-240-80773-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=X_ZIihJ_WpMC&pg=PA82. Retrieved 11 October 2010. "Lars von Trier uses jump cuts as an aesthetic device throughout Dancer in the Dark" 
    37. ^ Stevenson, Jack (2002). Lars von Trier. British Film Institute. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-85170-902-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=UHJZAAAAMAAJ. Retrieved 11 October 2010. "During work on a TV adaptation of the never-filmed Dreyer script, Medea, in 1988, von Trier claimed to have a telepathic connection with him. He even claimed his golden retriever, Kajsa, was also in spiritual contact with Dreyer ..." 
    38. ^ Loughlin, Gerard (2004). Alien sex: the body and desire in cinema and theology. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 195. ISBN 978-0-631-21180-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=b9iP9OWEqncC&pg=PA195. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    39. ^ Livingston, Paisley; Plantinga, Carl R.; Mette Hjort (3 December 2008). "58". The Routledge companion to philosophy and film. Routledge. pp. 631–40. ISBN 978-0-415-77166-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=hev6YYxFpYgC. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    40. ^ Philipps-Universität Marburg; Universität-Gesamthochschule-Siegen (32 December 2003) (in German). Medien Wissenschaft. Niemeyer. p. 112. http://books.google.com/books?id=f9kpAQAAIAAJ. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    41. ^ Grodal, Torben Kragh; Laursen, Iben Thorving (2005). Visual authorship: creativity and intentionality in media. Museum Tusculanum Press. p. 124. ISBN 978-87-635-0128-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=qRpxLdn7C4EC&pg=PA124. Retrieved 11 October 2010. 
    42. ^ a b Nicodemus, Katja (2005-11-10). "Lars von Trier, Katja Nicodemus: "I am an American woman" (17/11/2005) – signandsight". Die Zeit. http://www.signandsight.com/features/465.html. Retrieved 2010-10-14. 
    43. ^ Entry on Fritz Michael Hartmann in the Database of the Danish Resistance Movement (Danish)
    44. ^ Skov, Jesper (2004). ""Viggo Kampmann under besættelsen" (Danish)". Siden Saxo (4): 39. http://130.225.142.181/fileadmin/saxo-abstract-uploads/viggo_kampmann_under_besaettelsen_2004_4.pdf. Retrieved 21 May 2011. 
    45. ^ "Stranger and fiction". The Sydney Morning Herald. 22 December 2003. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/22/1071941658741.html. 
    46. ^ Fielder, Miles (4 August 2009). "Lars von Trier". The Big Issue Scotland. Retrieved 11 September 2011.
    47. ^ Barchfield, Jenny; Younis, Zara (May 2011). "Cannes festival bans Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier for Hitler sympathy remarks". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/cannes-festival-bans-von-trier-condemns-danish-filmmaker-for-hitler-remarks/2011/05/19/AF1Aa66G_story.html. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 
    48. ^ "Von Trier 'persona non grata' at Cannes after Nazi row". BBC News. 19 May 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13452978. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 
    49. ^ Dargis, Manohla (19 May 2011). "A Provocateur Steals Cannes Spotlight". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/movies/at-cannes-lars-von-triers-melancholia-and-jafar-panahi.html. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 
    50. ^ Higgins, Charlotte (18 May 2011). "Lars von Trier provokes Cannes with 'I'm a Nazi' comments". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/18/lars-von-trier-cannes-2011-nazi-comments. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 
    51. ^ Sharp, Rob (19 May 2011). "Von Trier stirs up controversy with Nazi claim". The Independent (London). http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/von-trier-stirs-up-controversy-with-nazi-claim-2286069.html. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 
    52. ^ (SWF) Lars Von Trier Nazi Comments at Cannes 2011 (Press conference). YouTube. May 18, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHKojTI-pNM. Retrieved May 28, 2011. 
    53. ^ Bagnetto, Laura Angela (22 May 2011). "Lars von Trier – Nazi or Nutter?". Radio France Internationale. http://www.english.rfi.fr/culture/20110521-lars-von-trier-press-conference. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 
    54. ^ a b c Hoyle, Ben (20 May 2011). "Von Trier gets kicked out of Cannes after his 'I am a Nazi' joke fails to raise a laugh". The Times (London): p. 9. 
    55. ^ Kastrup, Kim (19 May 2011). "Trier: – Jeg er stolt over at være bortvist" (in Danish). Ekstra Bladet. http://ekstrabladet.dk/flash/filmogtv/film/article1557641.ece. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 
    56. ^ "Lars von Trier Banned From Cannes, Which He's "A Little Proud" Of; Gives Brief Apology For Comments". Thefilmstage.com. 19 May 2011. http://thefilmstage.com/2011/05/19/lars-von-trier-banned-from-cannes-which-hes-a-little-proud-of-gives-brief-apology-for-comments/. Retrieved 6 October 2011. 
    57. ^ Heath, Chris (October 2011). "Lars Attacks!". GQ. http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201110/lars-von-trier-gq-interview-october-2011. 
    58. ^ 5 October 2011. "Lars von Trier seals his lips after police inquiry". Artsjournal.com. http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/10/lars-von-trier-seals-his-lips-after-police-inquiry.html. Retrieved 6 October 2011. 
    59. ^ "Entry in the Danish database". Borger.dk. 14 January 1997. https://www.borger.dk/foa/Sider/default.aspx?fk=26&foaid=10205318&searchKey=Trier. Retrieved 6 October 2011. 
    60. ^ 11:36, 09. sep 2007. "Lars von Trier sender ridderkors retur". Ekstrabladet.dk. http://ekstrabladet.dk/flash/dkkendte/article242983.ece. Retrieved 6 October 2011. 

    Further reading[link]

    External links[link]

    http://wn.com/Lars_von_Trier

    Related pages:

    http://ru.wn.com/Фон Триер, Ларс

    http://es.wn.com/Lars von Trier




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    Adolf Hitler
    Hitler in 1937
    Führer of Germany
    In office
    2 August 1934 – 30 April 1945
    Preceded by Paul von Hindenburg
    (as President)
    Succeeded by Karl Dönitz
    (as President)
    Chancellor of Germany
    In office
    30 January 1933 – 30 April 1945
    President Paul von Hindenburg
    Deputy
    Preceded by Kurt von Schleicher
    Succeeded by Joseph Goebbels
    Reichsstatthalter of Prussia
    In office
    30 January 1933 – 30 January 1935
    Prime Minister
    Preceded by Office created
    Succeeded by Office abolished
    Personal details
    Born (1889-04-20)20 April 1889
    Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary
    Died 30 April 1945(1945-04-30) (aged 56)
    Berlin, Germany
    Nationality
    • Austrian citizen until 7 April 1925[1]
    • German citizen after 25 February 1932
    Political party National Socialist German Workers' Party (1921–1945)
    Other political
    affiliations
    German Workers' Party (1920–1921)
    Spouse(s) Eva Braun
    (29–30 April 1945)
    Occupation Politician, soldier, artist, writer
    Religion See Adolf Hitler's religious views
    Signature
    Military service
    Allegiance  German Empire
    Service/branch Reichsheer
    Years of service 1914–1918
    Rank Gefreiter
    Unit 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment
    Battles/wars World War I
    Awards

    Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (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.

    Contents

    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.[2] It was not until 1876 that Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest before three witnesses.[3] 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.[4] However, no Frankenberger, Jewish or otherwise, was registered in Graz during that period.[5] Historians doubt the claim that Alois' father was Jewish.[6][7]

    At age 39, Alois assumed the surname "Hitler", also spelled as "Hiedler", "Hüttler", or "Huettler". 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.[8]

    Childhood[link]

    Adolf Hitler as an infant (c. 1889–1890)
    Hitler's mother, Klara

    Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Ranshofen,[9] 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.[10] When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany.[11] There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, rather than Austrian German, which marked his speech all of his life.[12][13][14] 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.[15][16]

    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.[17] 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.[18] The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even entertained thoughts of becoming a priest.[19] 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.[20]

    Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps.[21] 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 an unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed.[22][23][24] 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.[25] (This was the same high school that Adolf Eichmann would attend some 17 years later.)[26] 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."[27]

    Hitler became obsessed with German nationalism from a young age.[28] He expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg Monarchy and its rule over an ethnically-variegated empire.[29][30] Hitler and his friends used the German greeting "Heil", and sang the German anthem "Deutschland Über Alles" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem.[31]

    After Alois' sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's performance at school deteriorated. His mother allowed him to quit in autumn 1905.[32] He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in September 1904; his behaviour and performance showed some slight and gradual improvement.[33] 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 career.[34]

    Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich[link]

    File:The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich - Adolf Hitler.jpg
    The Alter Hof in Munich. Watercolour by Adolf Hitler, 1914

    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,[35] but he lacked the academic credentials.[36] 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.[37] At the time Hitler lived there, Vienna was a hotbed of religious prejudice and 19th-century racism.[38] 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.[39] 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.[40] Hostile to what he saw as Catholic "Germanophobia", he developed an admiration for Martin Luther.[41]

    The origin and first expression of Hitler's antisemitism have been difficult to locate.[42] Hitler states in Mein Kampf that he first became an antisemite in Vienna.[43] His close friend, August Kubizek, claimed that Hitler was a "confirmed antisemite" before he left Linz.[44] Kubizek's account has been challenged by historian Brigitte Hamann, who writes that Kubizek is the only person to have said that the young Hitler was an antisemite.[45] Hamann also notes that no antisemitic remark has been documented from Hitler during this period.[46] 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.[47] Several sources provide strong evidence that Hitler had Jewish friends in his hostel and in other places in Vienna.[48][49] 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".[50]

    Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich.[51] Historians believe he left Vienna to evade conscription into the Austrian army.[52] Hitler later claimed that he did not wish to serve the Habsburg Empire because of the mixture of "races" in its army.[51] After he was deemed unfit for service—he failed his physical exam in Salzburg on 5 February 1914—he returned to Munich.[53]

    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.[54] Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (1st Company of the List Regiment),[55][54] he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium,[56] spending nearly half his time well behind the front lines.[57][58] 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.[59]

    Hitler with his army comrades of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (c. 1914–1918)

    He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914.[59] Recommended by Hugo Gutmann, he received the Iron Cross, First Class, on 4 August 1918,[60] 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.[61] Though his rewarded actions may have been courageous, they were probably not highly exceptional.[62] He also received the Black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918.[63]

    Adolf Hitler as a soldier during the First World War (1914–1918)

    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[64] or the left thigh by a shell that had exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout.[65] Hitler spent almost two months in the Red Cross hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917.[66] On 15 October 1918, he was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk.[67] While there, Hitler learnt of Germany's defeat,[68] and—by his own account—on receiving this news, he suffered a second bout of blindness.[69]

    Hitler became embittered over the collapse of the war effort, and his ideological development began to firmly take shape.[70] He described the war as "the greatest of all experiences", and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery.[71] The experience reinforced his passionate German patriotism and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918.[72] 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".[73]

    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.[74] The Versailles Treaty and the economic, social, and political conditions in Germany after the war were later exploited by Hitler for political gains.[75]

    Entry into politics[link]

    After World War I Hitler returned to Munich.[76] Having no formal education and career plans or prospects, he tried to remain in the army for as long as possible.[77] 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.[78] 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,[79] becoming the party's 55th member.[80]

    A copy of Adolf Hitler's German Workers' Party (DAP) membership card

    At the DAP, Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of its early founders and a member of the occult Thule Society.[81] Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and introducing him to a wide range of people in Munich society.[82] To increase its appeal, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party – NSDAP).[83] Hitler designed the party's banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background.[84]

    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.[85] 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.[86] 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.[87]

    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).[88] 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.[89] 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.[90] 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.[90][a] 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.[91]

    Hitler's vitriolic beer hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. 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.[92][93][94] Historians have noted the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Kessel writes, "Overwhelmingly ... Germans speak with mystification of Hitler's 'hypnotic' appeal. The word shows up again and again; Hitler is said to have mesmerized the nation, captured them in a trance from which they could not break loose."[95] Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper described "the fascination of those eyes, which had bewitched so many seemingly sober men."[96] He used his personal magnetism and an understanding of crowd psychology to his advantage while engaged in public speaking.[97][98] 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".[99] 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.[100][101]

    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,[102] 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.[103]

    Beer Hall Putsch[link]

    Drawing of Hitler (30 October 1923)

    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.[104]

    Hitler wanted to seize a critical moment for successful popular agitation and support.[105] 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.[106] Retiring to a backroom, Hitler, with handgun drawn, demanded and got the support of Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow.[106] 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.[107] 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.[108] Sixteen NSDAP members and four police officers were killed in the failed coup.[109]

    Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl, and by some accounts contemplated suicide.[110] He was depressed but calm when arrested on 11 November 1923 for high treason.[111] His trial began in February 1924 before the special People's Court in Munich,[112] and Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the NSDAP. On 1 April Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison.[113] 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.[114] Including time on remand, Hitler had served just over one year in prison.[115]

    Dust jacket of Mein Kampf (1926–1927)

    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.[115] 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".[116] The book laid out Hitler's plans for transforming German society into one based on race. Some passages implied genocide.[117] 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. [118]

    Rebuilding the NSDAP[link]

    File:Hitler 1928.jpg
    Hitler (left), standing behind Hermann Göring at a Nazi rally in Nuremberg (c. 1928)

    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.[119] However, Hitler was barred from public speaking, [120] a ban that remained in place until 1927.[121] 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.[122]

    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.[123]

    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.[124]

    Rise to power[link]

    Nazi Party election results[125]
    Date Total
    votes
    Votes,
    percentage
    Reichstag
    seats
    Notes
    01924-05-01May 1, 1924May 1924 &100000000019183000000001,918,300 &100000000000000065000006.5 &1000000000000003200000032 Hitler in prison
    01924-12-01December 1, 1924December 1924 &10000000000907300000000907,300 &100000000000000030000003.0 &1000000000000001400000014 Hitler released from prison
    01928-05-01May 1, 1928May 1928 &10000000000810100000000810,100 &100000000000000026000002.6 &1000000000000001200000012  
    01930-09-01September 1, 1930September 1930 &100000000064096000000006,409,600 &1000000000000001830000018.3 &10000000000000107000000107 After the financial crisis
    01932-07-01July 1, 1932July 1932 &1000000001374500000000013,745,000 &1000000000000003729999937.3 &10000000000000230000000230 After Hitler was candidate for presidency
    01932-11-01November 1, 1932November 1932 &1000000001173700000000011,737,000 &1000000000000003310000033.1 &10000000000000196000000196  
    01933-03-01March 1, 1933March 1933 &1000000001727718000000017,277,180 &1000000000000004389999943.9 &10000000000000288000000288 During Hitler's term as chancellor of Germany

    Brüning administration[link]

    Hitler and NSDAP treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz at the dedication of the renovation of the Palais Barlow on Brienner Straße in Munich into the Brown House headquarters, December 1930

    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.[126] 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.[127] 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.[128]

    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.[129] The prosecution argued that the NSDAP was an extremist party, prompting defence lawyer Hans Frank to call on Hitler to testify in court.[130] On 25 September 1930 Hitler testified that his party would pursue political power solely through democratic elections,[131] a testimony that won him many supporters in the officer corps.[132]

    Brüning's austerity measures brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular.[133] 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.[134]

    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.[135] 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,[136] and thus of Germany.[137]

    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.[138] 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.[139] 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.[140]

    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".[141][142]

    Hitler, at the window of the Reich Chancellery, receives an ovation on the evening of his inauguration as chancellor, 30 January 1933

    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.[143]

    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.[144] 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.[145] Researchers, including William L. Shirer and Alan Bullock, are of the opinion that the NSDAP itself was responsible for starting the fire.[146][147]

    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.[148]

    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.[149][150]

    Paul von Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler on the Day of Potsdam, 21 March 1933

    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.[151] 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.[152]

    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.[153] 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.[154]

    Removal of remaining limits[link]

    At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense I tell you that the National Socialist movement will go on for 1,000 years! ... Don't forget how people laughed at me 15 years ago when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. They laugh now, just as foolishly, when I declare that I shall remain in power!

    Adolf Hitler to a British correspondent in Berlin, June 1934[155]

    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.[156] 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.[157] 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).[158]

    In 1934, Hitler became Germany's head of state with the title of Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor of the Reich).

    By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated into disbanding. 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.[158][156] 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.[159] 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.[160] While the international community and some Germans were shocked by the murders, many in Germany saw Hitler as restoring order.[161]

    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).[162] 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.[163] With this law, Hitler removed the last legal remedy by which he could be removed from office.

    Hitler's personal standard

    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.[164] On 19 August, the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship was approved by a plebiscite with support of 90% of the electorate.[165]

    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.[166][167] Hitler removed army commander Colonel-General Werner von Fritsch after the Schutzstaffel (SS) produced allegations that he had taken part in a homosexual relationship.[168] 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.[169] 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.[170] By early February 1938, twelve other generals had been removed.[171]

    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]

    Ceremony honouring the dead (Totenehrung) on the terrace in front of the Hall of Honour (Ehrenhalle) at the Nazi party rally grounds, Nuremberg, September 1934

    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.[172] Unemployment fell substantially, from six million in 1932 to one million in 1936.[173] 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%.[174]

    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.[175] 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.[176] 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.[177] In his speeches of this period, he stressed the peaceful goals of his policies and willingness to work within international agreements.[178] At the first meeting of his Cabinet in 1933, Hitler prioritised military spending over unemployment relief.[179]

    File:Hitlermusso2 edit.jpg
    On 25 October 1936 an Axis was declared between Italy and Germany.

    Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference in October 1933.[180] 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.[181] 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.[182] 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.[183]

    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.[184] 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.[185] 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.[186]

    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.[187] 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.[188] 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.[189][190] Hitler urged quick action, before Britain and France obtained a permanent lead in the arms race.[189] 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).[185] From early 1938 onwards, Hitler was carrying out a foreign policy ultimately aimed at war.[191]

    The Holocaust[link]

    If the international Jewish financiers outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe![192]

    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.[193] 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.[194]

    Hitler's idea of Lebensraum, espoused briefly in Mein Kampf, focused on acquiring new territory for German settlement in Eastern Europe.[195] 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;[196] the conquered territories were to be colonised by German or "Germanised" settlers.[197] 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.[196][198] By January 1942 the decision had been taken to kill the Jews and other deportees considered undesirable.[199]

    A wagon piled high with corpses outside the crematorium in the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp (April 1945)

    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".[200] Approximately thirty Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps were used for this purpose.[201] By summer 1942 Auschwitz concentration camp was rapidly expanded to accept large numbers of deportees for killing or enslavement.[202]

    Although no specific order from Hitler authorising the mass killings has surfaced,[203] he approved the Einsatzgruppen—killing squads that followed the German army through Poland, the Baltic, and the Soviet Union[204]—and he was well informed about their activities.[205] 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.[206]

    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,[207][208] and between 500,000 and 1,500,000 Roma.[209] 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.[210]

    Hitler's policies also resulted in the killings of Poles[211] and Soviet prisoners of war, communists and other political opponents, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled,[212][213] Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, and trade unionists. Hitler never appeared to have visited the concentration camps and did not speak publicly about the killings.[214]

    World War II[link]

    Early diplomatic successes[link]

    Alliance with Japan[link]

    Hitler and the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, at a meeting in Berlin in March 1941. In the background is Joachim von Ribbentrop.

    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.[215] Hitler ordered an end to arms shipments to China and recalled all German officers working with the Chinese Army.[215] 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.[216]

    Austria and Czechoslovakia[link]

    On 12 March 1938 Hitler declared unification of Austria with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss.[217][218] Hitler then turned his attention to the ethnic German population of the Sudetenland district of Czechoslovakia.[219]

    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".[220] In private, Hitler considered the Sudeten issue unimportant; his real intention was a war of conquest against Czechoslovakia.[221]

    October 1938: Hitler (standing in the Mercedes) drives through the crowd in Cheb (German: Eger), part of the German-populated Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, which was annexed to Nazi Germany due to the Munich Agreement

    In April 1938 Hitler ordered the OKW to prepare for Fall Grün ("Case Green"), the code name for an invasion of Czechoslovakia.[222] 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.[223] 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.[224][225]

    From left to right: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano, pictured before signing the Munich Agreement, which gave the Sudetenland to Germany

    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.[226] 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.[227][228]

    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;[229][230] he expressed his disappointment in a speech on 9 October 1938 in Saarbrücken.[231] 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.[232][233] As a result of the summit, Hitler was selected Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.[234]

    Jewish shops destroyed in Magdeburg, following Kristallnacht (November 1938)
    Hitler visits Prague Castle shortly after the occupation of Czechoslovakia, 15 March 1939

    In late 1938 and early 1939, the continuing economic crisis caused by rearmament forced Hitler to make major defence cuts.[235] 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.[235]

    On 15 March 1939, in violation of the Munich accord and possibly as a result of the deepening economic crisis requiring additional assets,[236] Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to invade Prague, and from Prague Castle proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate.[237]

    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.[238] 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.[239] 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.[240] 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".[241] In a speech in Wilhelmshaven for the launch of the battleship Tirpitz 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.[241] 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.[240] 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.[242] 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.[243][244][245]

    Hitler portrayed on a 42 pfennig stamp from 1944. The term Grossdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich) began to be used in 1943 for the expanded Germany under his rule.

    Hitler was concerned that a military attack against Poland could result in a premature war with Britain.[239][246] 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.[247][248] 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;[249] Ribbentrop showed Hitler diplomatic cables that supported his analysis.[250] 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.[248] Accordingly, on 21 August 1939 Hitler ordered a military mobilisation against Poland.[251]

    Hitler's plans for a military campaign in Poland in late August or early September required tacit Soviet support.[252] The non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) between Germany and the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin,[253] 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.[254] 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.[255][256]

    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.[257] Despite his concerns over a possible British intervention, Hitler was ultimately not deterred from his aim of invading Poland,[258] 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?"[259] France and Britain did not act on their declarations immediately, and on 17 September, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland.[260]

    Poland never will rise again in the form of the Versailles treaty. That is guaranteed not only by Germany, but also ... Russia.
    —Adolf Hitler, public speech in Danzig at the end of September 1939[261]
    Members of the Reichstag salute Hitler at the Kroll Opera House on 6 October 1939, at the end of the campaign against 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.[262] To Himmler's chagrin, Forster had local Poles sign forms stating that they had German blood, and required no further documentation.[263] On the other hand, Greiser carried out a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign on the Polish population in his purview.[262] 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.[262] 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.[264] 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.[264] 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".[264] Hitler called Himmler's memo "good and correct";[264] and, ignoring Göring and Frank, implemented the Himmler–Greiser policy in Poland.

    File:Adolf Hitler in Paris 1940.jpg
    Hitler visits Paris with architect Albert Speer (left) and sculptor Arno Breker (right), 23 June 1940

    Hitler began a military build-up on Germany's western border, and in April 1940, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. On 9 April 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.[265] 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.[266]

    Britain, whose forces were forced to leave France by sea from Dunkirk,[267] 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.[268]

    On 27 September 1940 the Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin by Saburō Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Hitler, and Italian foreign minister Ciano.[269] 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.[270]

    Hitler visiting Maribor (German: Marburg an der Drau), Yugoslavia, with Otto Dietrich, Siegfried Uiberreither, and Martin Bormann in 1941

    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.[271] 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.[272]

    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.[273] 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.[274]

    With generals Keitel, Paulus and von Brauchitsch, discussing the situation on the Eastern Front in October 1941

    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.[275] 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".[276]

    The Wehrmacht invasion of the Soviet Union reached its peak on 2 December 1941, when the 258th Infantry Division advanced to within 15 miles (24 km) of Moscow, close enough to see the spires of the Kremlin.[274] However, they were not prepared for the harsh conditions of the Russian winter, and Soviet forces drove back the German troops over 320 kilometres (200 mi).

    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).[277]

    Hitler during his speech to the Reichstag attacking American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 11 December 1941

    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").[278] 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.[278]

    In late 1942 German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein,[279] 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.[280] 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.[281]

    Following the allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Mussolini was deposed by Pietro Badoglio,[282] 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.[283] 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.[284] Several high-profile assassination attempts against Hitler occurred during this period.

    The destroyed map room at the 'Wolf's Lair' after the 20 July plot

    Between 1939 and 1945 there were many plans to assassinate Hitler, some of which proceeded to significant degrees.[285] 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.[286] 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.[287]

    Defeat and death[link]

    Front page of the U.S. Armed Forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, 2 May 1945

    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.[288] 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.[289] Execution of this scorched earth plan was entrusted to arms minister Albert Speer, who quietly disobeyed the order.[289]

    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.[290] 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.[291] 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.[292]

    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.[293] 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.[294]

    Goebbels made a proclamation on 23 April urging the citizens of Berlin to courageously defend the city.[293] 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.[295] 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.[296][297]

    Berlin became completely cut off from the rest of Germany.[298] On 28 April, Hitler discovered that Himmler was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies.[299] He ordered Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot.[300]

    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.[301][b] The event was witnessed and documents signed by Hans Krebs, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Joseph Goebbels, and Martin Bormann.[302] Later that afternoon, Hitler was informed of the assassination of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, which presumably increased his determination to avoid capture.[303]

    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[304] and Hitler shot himself with his 7.65 mm (0.3 in) Walther PPK pistol.[305] 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[306] and doused with petrol. The corpses were set on fire[307] and the Red Army shelling continued.[308]

    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.[309] 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.[310]

    Legacy[link]

    Outside the building in Braunau am Inn, Austria, where Hitler was born, is a memorial stone reminder of the horrors of World War II. The inscription translates as: <poem> For peace, freedom and democracy never again fascism millions of dead remind [us]"</poem>

    Hitler's suicide was likened by contemporaries to a "spell" being broken.[311][312] According to Toland, without its leader, National Socialism "burst like a bubble".[313]

    Hitler's actions and Nazi ideology are almost universally regarded as gravely immoral.[314] 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".[315] Hitler's policies inflicted human suffering on an unprecedented scale;[316] the Nazi regime was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 21 million civilians and prisoners of war.[317] In addition, 29 million soldiers were killed in the European theater of World War II.[317] Historians, philosophers, and politicians often apply the word "evil" in describing the Nazi regime.[318] 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".[319] 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."[320] For the historian John M. Roberts, Hitler's defeat marked the end of a phase of European history dominated by Germany.[321] In its place emerged the Cold War, a global confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.[322]

    Religious views[link]

    Hitler saw the church as important politically, as a conservative influence on society. He felt that if the church were eliminated the faithful would turn to mysticism, which he thought would be a step backwards politically and culturally. Though he never officially left the Catholic church, he had no real attachment to it.[323] After leaving home he never attended Mass or received the sacraments.[324] 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.[325][326] Historian Richard Steigmann-Gall concludes that he "can be classified as Catholic",[327] but that "nominal church membership is a very unreliable gauge of actual piety in this context."[328]

    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.[329] He spoke of his interpretation of Christianity as a central motivation for his antisemitism, 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."[330][331] In private, he 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.[332] Historian John S. Conway states that Hitler held a "fundamental antagonism" towards the Christian churches.[333]

    Hitler meeting Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. December 1941

    In political relations with the church, Hitler adopted a strategy "that suited his immediate political purposes".[333] 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.[334][335] 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.[336] His intention, according to Bullock, was to wait until the war was over to destroy the influence of Christianity.[332]

    Hitler admired the Muslim military tradition, but considered Arabs as "racially inferior".[337] He believed that the racially-superior Germans, in conjunction with Islam, could have conquered much of the world during the Middle Ages.[338] During a meeting with a Japanese professor in 1931, Hitler praised the Shinto religion and Japanese culture.[339] 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.[340][341]

    Health[link]

    Researchers have suggested that Hitler suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat, Parkinson's disease,[342][281] syphilis,[342] and tinnitus.[343] In a report prepared for the Office of Strategic Services in 1943, Walter C. Langer of Harvard University described Hitler as a "neurotic psychopath."[344] 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.[345] 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.[346]

    Hitler followed a vegetarian diet.[347] At social events he sometimes gave graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make his dinner guests shun meat.[348] A fear of cancer (from which his mother died)[349] 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.[350] 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[351] and was a non-smoker. He promoted aggressive anti-smoking campaigns throughout Germany.[352] Hitler began using amphetamine occasionally after 1937 and became addicted to the drug in the fall of 1942.[353] Albert Speer linked this use of amphetamines to Hitler's increasingly inflexible decision making (for example, never to allow military retreats).[354]

    Prescribed ninety different medications during the war years, Hitler took many pills each day for chronic stomach problems and other ailments.[355] 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.[356] 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.[355][357]

    Family[link]

    Hitler with his long-time mistress, Eva Braun, whom he married 29 April 1945

    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.[135][358] He met his mistress, Eva Braun, in 1929,[359] and married her in April 1945.[360] 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.[361] Paula Hitler, the last living member of the immediate family, died in 1960.[362]

    Hitler in media[link]

    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):[363]

    See also[link]

    Footnotes[link]

    1. ^ Hitler also won settlement from a libel suit against the socialist paper the Münchener Post, which had questioned his lifestyle and income. Kershaw 2008, p. 99.
    2. ^ MI5, Hitler's Last Days: "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]

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    Sources[link]

    Online

    External links[link]

    Political offices
    Preceded by
    Office created
    Reichsstatthalter of Prussia
    1933–1935
    Succeeded by
    Office abolished
    Preceded by
    Kurt von Schleicher
    Chancellor of Germany(1)
    1933–1945
    Succeeded by
    Joseph Goebbels
    Preceded by
    Paul von Hindenburg
    As President
    Führer of Germany(1)
    1934–1945
    Succeeded by
    Karl Dönitz
    As President
    Party political offices
    Preceded by
    Anton Drexler
    Leader of the NSDAP
    1921–1945
    Military offices
    Preceded by
    Franz Pfeffer von Salomon
    Leader of the SA
    1930–1945
    Preceded by
    Walther von Brauchitsch
    Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres (Army Commander)
    1941–1945
    Succeeded by
    Ferdinand Schörner
    Honorary titles
    Preceded by
    Chiang Kai-shek and Soong May-ling
    Time Person of the Year
    1938
    Succeeded by
    Joseph Stalin
    Notes and references
    1. The positions of Head of State and Government were combined 1934–1945 in the office of Führer and Chancellor of Germany

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