Hermann Wilhelm Göring was a German politician, military leader, and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945.
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich until 1943, later the Greater German Reich, is the term used by historians 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.
Lebensraum is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I (1914–1918), as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion. The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany. Lebensraum was a leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II, and it would continue this policy until the end of the conflict.
The German Labour Front was the national labour organization of the Nazi Party, which replaced the various independent trade unions in Germany during the process of Gleichschaltung or Nazification.
Diplomatic history deals with the history of international relations between states. Diplomatic history can be different from international relations in that the former can concern itself with the foreign policy of one state while the latter deals with relations between two or more states. Diplomatic history tends to be more concerned with the history of diplomacy, but international relations concern more with current events and creating a model intended to shed explanatory light on international politics.
Theodor Eicke was a senior SS functionary and Waffen SS divisional commander during the Nazi era. He was one of the key figures in the development of Nazi concentration camps. Eicke served as the second commandant of the Dachau concentration camp from June 1933 to July 1934, and together with his adjutant Michael Lippert, was one of the executioners of SA Chief Ernst Röhm during the Night of the Long Knives purge of 1934. He continued to expand and develop the concentration camp system as the first Concentration Camps Inspector.
The military occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany began with the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of Czechoslovakia.
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a partially-annexed territory of Nazi Germany that was established on 16 March 1939 after the German occupation of the Czech lands. The protectorate's population was mostly ethnic Czech.
The causes of World War II have been given considerable attention by historians. The immediate precipitating event was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany made by Britain and France, but many other prior events have been suggested as ultimate causes. Primary themes in historical analysis of the war's origins include the political takeover of Germany in 1933 by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party; Japanese militarism against China, which led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Second Sino-Japanese War; Italian aggression against Ethiopia, which led to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War; the consent of Western countries to Germany's actions on the annexation of Austria and the partition of Czechoslovakia; and Germany's initial success in negotiating the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union to divide the territorial control of Eastern Europe between them.
As a political term, social imperialism is the political ideology of people, parties, or nations that are, according to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, "socialist in words, imperialist in deeds". Some academics use this phrase to refer to governments that engage in imperialism meant to preserve the domestic social peace.
Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning "people's community", "folk community", "national community", or "racial community", depending on the translation of its component term Volk. This expression originally became popular during World War I as Germans rallied in support of the war, and many experienced "relief that at one fell swoop all social and political divisions could be solved in the great national equation". The idea of a Volksgemeinschaft was rooted in the notion of uniting people across class divides to achieve a national purpose, and the hope that national unity would "obliterate all conflicts - between employers and employees, town and countryside, producers and consumers, industry and craft".
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.
The Four Year Plan was a series of economic measures initiated by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany in 1936. Hitler placed Hermann Göring in charge of these measures, making him a Reich Plenipotentiary (Reichsbevollmächtigter) whose jurisdiction cut across the responsibilities of various cabinet ministries, including those of the Minister of Economics, the Defense Minister and the Minister of Agriculture. The Four Year Plan was part of the alternative governmental structure created by Hitler and the Nazi Party, which included entities such as Organisation Todt and the unification of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the German police forces, including the Gestapo, under Heinrich Himmler.
Timothy Wright Mason was an English Marxist historian of Nazi Germany. He was one of the founders of the History Workshop Journal and specialised in the social history of the Third Reich. He argued for the "primacy of politics," i.e., that the Nazi government was "increasingly independent of the influence of the [German] economic ruling classes," and believed the Second World War had been triggered by an economic crisis inside Germany.
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of 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 World War II in Europe 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.
Like many other nations at the time, Germany suffered the economic effects of the Great Depression, with unemployment soaring after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he introduced policies aimed at improving the economy. The changes included privatization of state owned industries, import tariffs, and an attempt to achieve autarky. Weekly earnings increased by 19% in real terms from 1933 to 1939, but this was largely due to employees working longer hours, while the hourly wage rates remained close to the lowest levels reached during the Great Depression. In addition, reduced foreign trade meant rationing of consumer goods like poultry, fruit, and clothing for many Germans.
Berlin: The Downfall 1945 is a narrative history by Antony Beevor of the Battle of Berlin during World War II. It was published by Viking Press in 2002, then later by Penguin Books in 2003. The book achieved both critical and commercial success. It has been a number-one best seller in seven countries apart from Britain, and in the top five in another nine countries. Together this book and Beevor's Stalingrad, first published in 1998, have sold nearly three million copies.
The Third Reich Trilogy is a series of three narrative history books by British historian Richard J. Evans, covering the rise and collapse of Nazi Germany in detail, with a focus on the internal politics and the decision-making process. The three volumes of the trilogy – The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich In Power, and The Third Reich at War – were published between 2003 and 2008. The books are illustrated with maps created by András Bereznay.
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 Heldentod, 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, the common name in English for National Socialism, is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 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 Hitler's Third Reich.
