The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party, was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party, existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the extremist German nationalist, racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against communist uprisings in post–World War I Germany. The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeoisie, and anti-capitalism, using disingenuous socialist rhetoric to gain the support of the lower middle class; it was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders. By the 1930s, the party's main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes. The party had little popular support until the Great Depression, when worsening living standards and widespread unemployment drove Germans into political extremism.
The Commissar Order was an order issued by the German High Command (OKW) on 6 June 1941 before Operation Barbarossa. Its official name was Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars. It instructed the Wehrmacht that any Soviet political commissar identified among captured troops be summarily executed as a purported enforcer of the so-called Judeo-Bolshevism ideology in military forces. It is one of a series of criminal orders issued by the Nazi leadership.
The Party Chancellery, was the name of the head office for the German Nazi Party (NSDAP), designated as such on 12 May 1941. The office existed previously as the Staff of the Deputy Führer but was renamed after Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate a peace agreement without Adolf Hitler's authorization. Hess was denounced by Hitler, his former office was dissolved, and the new Party Chancellery was formed in its place under Hess' former deputy, Martin Bormann.
Sir Ian Kershaw is an English historian whose work has chiefly focused on the social history of 20th-century Germany. He is regarded by many as one of the world's foremost experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his biographies of Hitler.
Julius Schreck was an early senior Nazi official and close confidant of Adolf Hitler. Born in Munich, Schreck served in World War I and shortly afterwards joined right-wing paramilitary units. He joined the Nazi Party in 1920 and was a founding member of the Sturmabteilung. Later in 1925, he became the first leader of the Schutzstaffel. He then served for a time as a chauffeur for Hitler. Schreck developed meningitis in 1936 and died on 16 May of that year. Hitler gave him a state funeral.
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the start of the Second World War. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.
Near the end of his life, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) followed a vegetarian diet. It is not clear when or why he adopted it, since some accounts of his dietary habits prior to the Second World War indicate that he consumed meat as late as 1937. In 1938, Hitler's doctors put him on a meat-free diet, and his public image as a vegetarian was fostered; from 1942, he self-identified as a vegetarian.
Otto Günsche was a mid-ranking officer in the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was a member of the SS Division Leibstandarte before he became Adolf Hitler's personal adjutant. Günsche was taken prisoner by soldiers of the Red Army in Berlin on 2 May 1945. He was held in various labour camps and prisons by the Soviet Union until 2 May 1956 and provided key testimony regarding Hitler's death.
Erich Kempka was a member of the SS in Nazi Germany who served as Adolf Hitler's primary chauffeur from 1936 to April 1945. He was present in the area of the Reich Chancellery on 30 April 1945, when Hitler shot himself in the Führerbunker. Kempka delivered petrol to the garden behind the Chancellery, where the remains of Hitler and Eva Braun were burned. After Kempka's capture by United States forces, he served as an eyewitness as to Hitler's demise, albeit his self-admitted unreliability.
Julius Schaub was an aide and adjutant to German dictator Adolf Hitler from the 1920s until the dictator's suicide on 30 April 1945.
The religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, have been a matter of debate. His opinions regarding religious matters changed considerably over time. During the beginning of his political career, Hitler publicly expressed favorable opinions towards traditional Christian ideals, but later abandoned them. Most historians describe his later posture as adversarial to organized Christianity and established Christian denominations. He also staunchly criticized atheism.
SS-Begleitkommando des Führers, later known as the Führerbegleitkommando, was originally an eight-man SS squad formed from a twelve-man security squad tasked with protecting the life of Adolf Hitler during the early 1930s. Another bodyguard unit, the Reichssicherheitsdienst was formed in 1933, and by the following year replaced the FBK in providing Hitler's overall security throughout Germany. The FBK continued under separate command from the RSD and provided close, personal security for Hitler. The two units worked together for Hitler's security and protection, especially during trips and public events, though they operated at such events as separate groups and used separate vehicles. When the FBK unit was expanded, the additional officers and men were selected from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). The majority of these additional men were used by Hitler as guards for his residences while uninhabited and as orderlies, valets, waiters, and couriers.
The government of Nazi Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship governed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party according to the Führerprinzip. Nazi Germany was established in January 1933 with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, followed by suspension of basic rights with the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act which gave Hitler's regime the power to pass and enforce laws without the involvement of the Reichstag or German president, and de facto ended with Germany's surrender in World War II on 8 May 1945 and de jure ended with the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945.
Franz Schädle was the last commander of Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard, from 5 January 1945 until his death on 2 May 1945.
Albert Bormann was a German National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) officer, who rose to the rank of Gruppenführer during World War II. Bormann served as an adjutant to Adolf Hitler, and was the younger brother of Martin Bormann.
This is a list of books about Nazi Germany, the state that existed in Germany during the period from 1933 to 1945, when its government was controlled by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers' Party. It also includes some important works on the development of Nazi imperial ideology, totalitarianism, German society during the era, the formation of anti-Semitic racial policies, the post-war ramifications of Nazism, along with various conceptual interpretations of the Third Reich.
Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust. He was hated by his persecuted enemies and even by some of his own countrymen. Although attempts were made to assassinate him, none were successful. Hitler had numerous bodyguard units over the years which provided security.
Nazi architecture is the architecture promoted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime from 1933 until its fall in 1945, connected with urban planning in Nazi Germany. It is characterized by three forms: a stripped neoclassicism, typified by the designs of Albert Speer; a vernacular style that drew inspiration from traditional rural architecture, especially alpine; and a utilitarian style followed for major infrastructure projects and industrial or military complexes. Nazi ideology took a pluralist attitude to architecture; however, Hitler himself believed that form follows function and wrote against "stupid imitations of the past".
Adolf Hitler's cult of personality was a prominent feature of Nazi Germany (1933–1945), which began in the 1920s during the early days of the Nazi Party. Based on the Führerprinzip ideology, that the leader is always right, spread by incessant Nazi propaganda, and reinforced by Adolf Hitler's success in fixing Germany's economic and unemployment problems by remilitarising during the global Great Depression, his bloodless triumphs in foreign policy prior to World War II, and the rapid military defeat of the Second Polish Republic and the French Third Republic in the early part of the war, it eventually became a central aspect of the Nazi control over the German people.
