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Gleichschaltung, or in English, co-ordination, was in Nazi terminology the process of Nazification by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party successively established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society and societies occupied by Nazi Germany "from the economy and trade associations to the media, culture and education".
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German Nazi politician who was the 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.
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazis' conceit that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany, 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 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.
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The 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 Reich Security Main Office was an organization subordinate to Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as Chef der Deutschen Polizei and Reichsführer-SS, the head of the Nazi Party's Schutzstaffel (SS). The organization's stated duty was to fight all "enemies of the Reich" inside and outside the borders of Nazi Germany.
Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning "people's community". This expression originally became popular during World War I as Germans rallied in support of the war, and it appealed to the idea of breaking down elitism and uniting people across class divides to achieve a national purpose.
Das Schwarze Korps was the official newspaper of the Schutzstaffel (SS). This newspaper was published on Wednesdays and distributed free of charge. All SS members were encouraged to read it. The chief editor was SS leader Gunter d'Alquen; the publisher was Max Amann of the Franz-Eher-Verlag publishing company. The paper was hostile to many groups, with frequent articles condemning the Catholic Church, Jews, Communism, Freemasonry, and others.
Propaganda in Nazi Germany was the practice of state directed communication to promote German nationalism, the goals of the Nazi Party of Germany, and the party itself. The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany (1933–1945) was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation of Nazi policies.
The Nazi regime in Germany actively promoted and censored forms of art between 1933 and 1945. Upon becoming dictator in 1933, Adolf Hitler gave his personal artistic preference the force of law to a degree rarely known before. In the case of Germany, the model was to be classical Greek and Roman art, seen by Hitler as an art whose exterior form embodied an inner racial ideal. It was, furthermore, to be comprehensible to the average man. This art was to be both heroic and romantic. The Nazis viewed the culture of the Weimar period with disgust. Their response stemmed partly from conservative aesthetics and partly from their determination to use culture as propaganda.
The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Romanis as "enemies of the race-based state", the same category as Jews.
A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era and after the annexation of mostly Catholic Austria and mostly Catholic Czechoslovakia into Germany, indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 40% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig, and 1.5% as "atheist". Protestants voted for the Nazi Party substantially more than Catholics did.
Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs have been a matter of debate. His opinions regarding religious matters changed considerably over time. During the beginning of his political life, Hitler publicly expressed favorable opinions towards Christianity. Some historians describe his later posture as being "anti-Christian". He also criticized atheism.
The National Socialist People's Welfare was a social welfare organization during the Third Reich. The NSV was established in 1931 as a local welfare organization in the city of Berlin. On 3 May 1933, shortly after the Nazi Party took power in Weimar Germany, Adolf Hitler turned it into a party organization that was to be active throughout the country. The structure of the NSV was based on the Nazi Party model, with local, county (Kreis) and district (Gau) administrations.
A referendum on merging the posts of Chancellor and President was held in Nazi Germany on 19 August 1934, seventeen days after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg. The German leadership sought to gain approval for Adolf Hitler's assumption of supreme power. The referendum was associated with widespread intimidation of voters, and Hitler used the resultant large "yes" vote to claim public support for his activities as the de facto head of state of Germany. In fact, he had assumed these offices and powers immediately upon Hindenburg's death and used the referendum to legitimise that move and take the title Führer und Reichskanzler.
The celebration of Christmas in Nazi Germany was allowed, though it included attempts by the regime to bring the Christian religious holiday into line with Nazi ideology. The Jewish origins of Jesus and the commemoration of his birth as the Jewish Messiah was troubling for some members of the Nazi group and their racial beliefs. Between 1933 and 1945, some government officials attempted to remove these aspects of Christmas from civil celebrations and concentrate on cultural pre-Christian aspects of the festival. However, church and private celebrations remained Christian in nature.
The relationship between Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and the leadership of the Arab world encompassed contempt, propaganda, collaboration, and in some instances emulation. Cooperative political and military relationships were founded on shared hostilities toward common enemies, such as the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic, along with communism, and Zionism. Another key foundation of this collaboration was the anti-Semitism of the Nazis and their hostility towards the United Kingdom and France, which was admired by some Arab and Muslim leaders, most notably the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini.
The propaganda of the Nazi regime that governed Germany from 1933 to 1945 promoted Nazi ideology by demonizing the enemies of the Nazi Party, notably Jews and communists, but also capitalists and intellectuals. It promoted the values asserted by the Nazis, including heroic death, Führerprinzip, Volksgemeinschaft, Blut und Boden and pride in the Germanic Herrenvolk. Propaganda was also used to maintain the cult of personality around Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and to promote campaigns for eugenics and the annexation of German-speaking areas. After the outbreak of World War II, Nazi propaganda vilified Germany's enemies, notably the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, and in 1943 exhorted the population to total war.
Nazism, officially National Socialism, is the ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism. The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the collapse of the Nazi regime.
References
- 1 2 Bytwerk, Randall L. (1979). "Rhetorical aspects of Nazi holidays". The Journal of Popular Culture . 13 (2): 239–247. doi:10.1111/j.0022-3840.1979.1302_239.x.
- ↑ Snyder, Louis L. (1998). Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. Robert Hale.
- ↑ Paldiel, Mordecai (2000). Saving the Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women who Defied the "Final Solution". Schreiber.
- ↑ Kershaw, Ian. The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. pp.57-59, 64, 72, 79, 141, 151, 159, 197-98, 213-14. ISBN 0-19-282234-9
- ↑ Gesetz über die Einführung eines Feiertags der nationalen Arbeit (10. April 1933), in: documentArchiv.de (Hrsg.)
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