Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was a German politician who was the 4th Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany, and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, primarily known for being a main architect of the Holocaust.
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, is a term used to describe the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after only 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.
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-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric; 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 Night of the Long Knives, or the Röhm purge or Röhm Coup, also called Operation Hummingbird, was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as "Brownshirts". Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm – the so-called Röhm Putsch.
James Hilton was an English novelist and screenwriter. He is best remembered for his novels Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Random Harvest, as well as co-writing screenplays for the films Camille (1936) and Mrs. Miniver (1942), the latter earning him an Academy Award.
The German Shepherd, also known in Britain as an Alsatian, is a German breed of working dog of medium to large size. The breed was developed by Max von Stephanitz using various traditional German herding dogs from 1899.
Ernst Julius Günther Röhm was a German military officer and a leading member of the Nazi Party. Initially a close friend and early ally of Adolf Hitler, Röhm was the co-founder and leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing, which played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power. He served as chief of the SA from 1931 until his murder in 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives.
Kristallnacht (German pronunciation:[kʁɪsˈtalnaχt]lit. 'crystal night') or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (German: Novemberpogrome, pronounced[noˈvɛm.bɐ.poˌɡʁoːmə] ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The euphemistic name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.
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.
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate prime minister of the French Third Republic; Francisco Largo Caballero, prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the crown prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents.
Leopold von Hoesch was a career German diplomat. Hoesch began his political career in France as the chargé d'affaires in 1923. After the recall of the German ambassador in 1923 after the Ruhr crisis, Hoesch was appointed acting head of the German Embassy in Paris. There, Hoesch worked closely with German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann. Hoesch played an important role in the Locarno Treaty of 1924.
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. During his dictatorship, he initiated the European theatre of World War II by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.
Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, and/or sexual orientation. The institutionalized practice by the Nazis of singling out and persecuting people resulted in the Holocaust, which began with legalized social discrimination against specific groups, involuntary hospitalization, euthanasia, and forced sterilization of persons considered physically or mentally unfit for society. The vast majority of the Nazi regime's victims were Jews, Sinti-Roma peoples, and Slavs but victims also encompassed people identified as social outsiders in the Nazi worldview, such as homosexuals, and political enemies. Nazi persecution escalated during World War II and included: non-judicial incarceration, confiscation of property, forced labor, sexual slavery, death through overwork, human experimentation, undernourishment, and execution through a variety of methods. For specified groups like the Jews, genocide was the Nazis' primary goal.
Werner Haase was a professor of medicine and SS member during the Nazi era. He was one of Adolf Hitler's personal physicians. After the war ended, Haase was made a Soviet prisoner of war. He died while in captivity in 1950.
Makravank is an Armenian church-complex located in the Makravan district of Hrazdan, the capital of Kotayk Province, Armenia. The monastic complex includes a half-ruined 11th-century chapel. The 13th-century church dedicated to Surb Astvatsatsin has a circular tambour and a conical cupola. The complex also includes the lower walls of the gavit and a medieval cemetery.
György Zala was a Hungarian sculptor. Along with Alajos Strobl and János Fadrusz, he is one of Hungary's leading public sculptors of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Arthur Löwenstamm was a Jewish theologian, writer and rabbi in Berlin and in London, where he came in 1939 as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
The following events occurred in January 1934:
The following events occurred in February 1934:
There is a widespread and long-lasting myth alleging that homosexuals were numerous and prominent as a group in the Nazi Party or the identification of Nazism with homosexuality more generally. It has been promoted by various individuals and groups from before World War II through the present, especially by left-wing Germans during the Nazi era and the Christian right in the United States more recently. Although some gay men joined the Nazi Party, there is no evidence that they were overrepresented. The Nazis harshly criticized homosexuality and severely persecuted gay men, going as far as murdering them en masse. Therefore, historians regard the myth as having no merit.
