Anton Drexler was a German far-right political agitator for the Völkisch movement in the 1920s. He founded the pan-German and anti-Semitic German Workers' Party (DAP), the antecedent of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Drexler mentored his successor in the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler, during his early years in politics.
The German Workers' Party was a short-lived far-right political party established in Weimar Germany after World War I. It only lasted from 5 January 1919 until 24 February 1920. The DAP was the precursor of the Nazi Party, which was officially known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic. Approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazi Party members and four police officers.
Colonel 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.
On 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia, now Kętrzyn, in present-day Poland. The name "Operation Valkyrie"—originally referring to part of the conspiracy—has become associated with the entire event.
Hans Michael Frank was a German politician and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.
Dietrich Eckart was a German völkisch poet, playwright, journalist, publicist, and political activist who was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party. Eckart was a key influence on Adolf Hitler in the early years of the Party, the original publisher of the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, and the lyricist of the first party anthem, Sturmlied. He was a participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and died on 26 December of that year, shortly after his release from Landsberg Prison, from a heart attack.
Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer, also known as Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorff was a German occultist, writer, intelligence agent and political activist. He was the founder of the Thule Society, a post-World War I German occultist organization where he played a key role, and that influenced many members of the Nazi Party. He was a Freemason, a Sufi of the Bektashi order - after his conversion to Islam - and a practitioner of meditation, astrology, numerology, and alchemy. He also used the alias Erwin Torre.
Downfall is a 2004 German-language historical war drama film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel from a screenplay by its producer, Bernd Eichinger. It is set during the Battle of Berlin in World War II, when Nazi Germany is on the verge of defeat, and depicts the final days of Adolf Hitler. The cast includes Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler, Heino Ferch, Christian Berkel, Alexander Held, Matthias Habich, and Thomas Kretschmann. The film is a German-Austrian-Italian co-production.
Raimund Pretzel, better known by his pseudonym Sebastian Haffner, was a German journalist and historian. As an émigré in Britain during World War II, Haffner argued that accommodation was impossible not only with Adolf Hitler but also with the German Reich with which Hitler had gambled. Peace could be secured only by rolling back "seventy-five years of German history" and restoring Germany to a network of smaller states.
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg is a German film director, whose best known film is his lengthy feature Hitler: A Film from Germany.
The Reader is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink, published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States in 1997. The story is a parable, dealing with the difficulties post-war German generations have had comprehending the Holocaust; Ruth Franklin writes that it was aimed specifically at the generation Bertolt Brecht called the Nachgeborenen, those who came after. Like other novels in the genre of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the struggle to come to terms with the past, The Reader explores how the post-war generations should approach the generation that took part in, or witnessed, the atrocities. These are the questions at the heart of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses die and living memory fades.
Philosopher Martin Heidegger joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933, ten days after being elected Rector of the University of Freiburg. A year later, in April 1934, he resigned the Rectorship and stopped taking part in Nazi Party meetings, but remained a member of the Nazi Party until its dismantling at the end of World War II. The denazification hearings immediately after World War II led to Heidegger's dismissal from Freiburg, banning him from teaching. In 1949, after several years of investigation, the French military finally classified Heidegger as a Mitläufer or "fellow traveller." The teaching ban was lifted in 1951, and Heidegger was granted emeritus status in 1953, but he was never allowed to resume his philosophy chairmanship.
Historians, political scientists and philosophers have studied Nazism with a specific focus on its religious and pseudo-religious aspects. It has been debated whether Nazism would constitute a political religion, and there has also been research on the millenarian, messianic, and occult or esoteric aspects of Nazism.
Günter Wilhelm Grass was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Claus Hant is a German writer, best known as the creator of Der Bulle von Tölz, a TV series that ran on prime time for over a decade and made German TV history with its audience figures. Hant's films have been nominated for the Adolf Grimme Awards and have been honoured with the Goldener Löwe/Deutscher Fernsehpreis, the Cadrage Succes, the Romy and the Bavarian Film Awards.
Stefanie Rabatsch was an Austrian woman who was allegedly an unrequited love of then-teenage Adolf Hitler, a claim made by Hitler's childhood friend August Kubizek. Her Jewish-sounding maiden name, Isak, has been subject to speculation in this context. However, there is no evidence apart from Kubizek that Hitler ever had such an attachment.
Norman Ohler is a German New York Times bestselling author, novelist and screenwriter, best known for his book Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, which has been published in over 30 languages.
Endstufe is a 2004 novel by the German writer Thor Kunkel. Set in a hedonistic version of the Third Reich, it follows a biologist who works for the SS where he oversees the secret production of pornographic films.
Wieland der Schmied is the unfinished juvenilia opera by Adolf Hitler that he began around 1905, in his early 20s.
