Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German Nazi politician who was the Nazi Gauleiter of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted acolytes, known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.
Martin Ludwig Bormann was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information and access to Hitler. He used his position to create an extensive bureaucracy and involve himself as much as possible in the decision making.
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 German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the 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-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric. This was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders, and in the 1930s the party's main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes.
Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was a German army officer best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair and remove the Nazi Party from power. Along with Henning von Tresckow and Hans Oster, he was one of the central figures of the German resistance to Nazism within the Wehrmacht. For his involvement in the movement, he was executed by firing squad shortly after Operation Valkyrie.
Baldur Benedikt von Schirach was a Nazi German politician who is best known for his role as the Nazi Party national youth leader and head of the Hitler Youth from 1931 to 1940. He later served as Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Vienna. After World War II, he was convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The Hitler Youth was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name Hitler-Jugend, Bund deutscher Arbeiterjugend in July 1926. From 1936 until 1945, it was the sole official boys' youth organisation in Germany and it was partially a paramilitary organisation; it was composed of the Hitler Youth proper for male youths aged 14 to 18, and the German Youngsters in the Hitler Youth for younger boys aged 10 to 14.
Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann was a German communist politician, and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933.
Artur Axmann was the German Nazi national leader (Reichsjugendführer) of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) from 1940 to 1945, when the war ended. He was the last living Nazi with a rank equivalent to Reichsführer.
Horst Ludwig Georg Erich Wessel was a Berlin Sturmführer of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's stormtroopers. After his murder in 1930, he was made into a martyr for the Nazi cause by Joseph Goebbels.
Paul Ludwig Troost was a German architect. A favourite master builder of Adolf Hitler from 1930, his Neoclassical designs for the Führerbau and the Haus der Kunst in Munich influenced the style of Nazi architecture.
The German Evangelical Church was a successor to the German Evangelical Church Confederation from 1933 until 1945.
The National Socialist Motor Corps was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) that officially existed from May 1931 to 1945. The group was a successor organisation to the older National Socialist Automobile Corps (NSAK), which had existed since April 1930.
Der Hitlerjunge Quex is a 1932 Nazi propaganda novel based on the life of Herbert “Quex” Norkus. The 1933 film Hitlerjunge Quex: Ein Film vom Opfergeist der deutschen Jugend was based on it and was described by Joseph Goebbels as the "first large-scale" transmission of Nazi ideology using the medium of cinema. Both the book and the film, like S.A.-Mann Brand and Hans Westmar, both released the same year, fictionalised and glorified death in the service of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler.
Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim was a German Army colonel and a resistance fighter in Nazi Germany involved in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler.
The Deutsches Jungvolk in der Hitlerjugend was the separate section for boys aged 10 to 14 of the Hitler Youth organisation in Nazi Germany. Through a programme of outdoor activities, parades and sports, it aimed to indoctrinate its young members in the tenets of Nazi ideology. Membership became fully compulsory for eligible boys in 1939. By the end of World War II, some had become child soldiers. After the end of the war in 1945, both the Deutsches Jungvolk and its parent organization, the Hitler Youth, ceased to exist.
Herbert Norkus was a Hitler Youth member who was killed by German Communists. He became a role model and martyr for the Hitler Youth and was widely used in Nazi propaganda, most prominently as the subject of novel and film Hitler Youth Quex.
Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in Germany in September 1919 when Hitler joined the political party then known as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – DAP. The name was changed in 1920 to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – NSDAP. It was anti-Marxist and opposed to the democratic post-war government of the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles, advocating extreme nationalism and Pan-Germanism as well as virulent anti-Semitism. Hitler attained power in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month, giving expanded authority. President Paul von Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues. The Enabling Act – when used ruthlessly and with authority – virtually assured that Hitler could thereafter constitutionally exercise dictatorial power without legal objection.
The Mocidade Portuguesa was a Portuguese youth organisation founded in 1936 under the far-right regime of Prime Minister Salazar's Estado Novo. Membership was compulsory between the ages of 7 and 14, and voluntary until the age of 25. A documentary film made in 1939 gives an insight into its activities, attitudes and values.
Eberhard Koebel also Eberhard Köbel, called tusk, i.e., "the German" in the language of the Sámi people he traveled among, was a German youth leader, writer, and publisher.
The comparative ranks of Nazi Germany contrasts the ranks of the Wehrmacht to a number of national-socialist organisations in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 in a synoptic table. Nazi organisations used a hierarchical structure, according to the so-called Führerprinzip, and were oriented in line with the rank order system of the Wehrmacht.
