https://www.conservapedia.com/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=CGLConservapedia - User contributions [en]2026-09-23T08:21:24ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.35.14https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&diff=1118196Adolf Hitler2014-11-16T17:58:59Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>{{Dictator bio<br />
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]<br />
| name =Adolf Hitler<br />
| birth =April 20, 1889<br/>Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary<br />
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber)<br/>Klara Pölzl<br />
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected)<br />
| spouse =Eva Braun<br />
| children =none<br />
| death =April 30, 1945<br/>Berlin, Germany <br />
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot<br />
| education =Realschule<br/>Linz, Austria<br />
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]<br />
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment<br/>Imperial German Army (1914-1918)<br />
| rank =''Obergefreiter'' (Lance Corporal/Private First Class)<br />
|burial = none, burned.<br />
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]]<br/>[[National socialism]] (Nazism)<br />
| party =German Workers' Party<br/>(''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1919–1920)<br/>[[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers' Party]]<br/>(''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1920–1945)<br />
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933<br />
| war =[[World War II]]<br />
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties<br />
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether<br />
<br />
Rummel: 21,000,000<br />
}}<br />
'''Adolf Hitler''' was the Austrian-born Chancellor of [[Germany]] from January 30, 1933, and dictator of [[Third Reich|Nazi Germany]] from August 2, 1934 (as ''[[der Führer]]'') until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader of the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (''National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'', or [[Nazi]] Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. He was born a Catholic, but he never took religion seriously beyond initially rebelling against his Catholic father by showing preferences for Lutheran Protestantism in predominantly Catholic Austria, as well as using quasi-religious rhetoric in Mein Kampf and in speeches in order to not lose potential religious supporters. He was far more interested in [[Social Darwinism]]. After having minor wounds from an assassination bombing attempt, Hitler abused drugs originally intended to help with his injuries long after he had recovered from his injuries. <br />
<br />
Hitler in his youth was an financially-irresponsible Bohemian (a German word of the time roughly the same as [[Hippy]]) who became broke after spending his father's inheritance wandering around Austria as a watercolour artist, practicing [[vegetarianism]], and rarely attempting to seek serious employment. Hitler worked with a Jewish art dealer and after being rejected entry into Vienna's leading art school due to his unoriginal art, Hitler was a complete failure and completely broke. Rather than accept responsibility for his Bohemian lifestyle, Hitler in denial and increasing signs of the mental illness of [[psychosis]], followed the political current in Europe at the time of blaming Jews for exploiting him. [[Anti-Semitism]] had become a significant phenomenon in Germany ever since [[Martin Luther]] during his severe mental illness at the end of his life had become anti-Semitic. But anti-Semites in Germany refused to acknowledge that Luther prior to the onset of mental illness was highly sympathetic towards Jews. It was adopted by a number of misguided conservative Protestants who were not aware of Luther's mental state when he became anti-Semitic. Hitler being rebellious to his Catholic father took up a brief interest in Lutheranism and may have been influenced by Luther's anti-Semitic remarks. Hitler without any prospects sought to be conscripted into the German Army (but refused to serve the Austrian army due to many Jews being in it), there Hitler mixed his anti-Semitic views with some of the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran conservative nationalist aspects (that left-wing historians exaggerate by calling Hitler "far right") in order to be accepted amongst conservative German army officers but also began to adopt radical socialist ideas as revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and elsewhere grew in strength.<br />
<br />
After World War I, Hitler behaved as a political opportunist - he played up conservative German themes to his army officers and was sent to investigate a bizarre radical party called the German Workers' Party that used the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran nationalist theme in combination with a revolutionary socialist agenda that denounced Jews as being responsible for capitalism, exploitation of Germany, and for Germany losing World War I. It was anti-Marxist - though only because [[Karl Marx]] was a Jew and due to their anti-Semitic hatred, and saw Marx as no different than capitalist Jews. The Party was disorganized and Hitler with his strong anti-Semitism took advantage of the situation and used demagoguery to raise himself in the party, and make himself leader of the party that was then named the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party in short form). He used the party and its members to exact revenge for his psychotic perception of Jews and capitalists as having ruined him in his youth, along with his megalomaniac and psychotic view of himself as being the "Leader" (German: ''Fuhrer'') of Germany. Many Nazis were highly mentally-ill people with delusions of grandeur of both themselves and Germany, such as [[Heinrich Himmler]], and especially [[Hermann Goring]] who was a morphine addict and an animal rights activist who preferred to have Jews used for scientific experiments.<br />
<br />
Due to the thematic influence of the historic anti-Semitic faction of conservative Lutheran extremists on the Nazi movement, left-wing Marxist historians have exaggerated the role of conservative Lutherans in the Nazi movement and because of it claim that the Nazis are "far right". They completely ignore and deny the far left socialist parts of the Nazis, out of political dogmatism just as the Nazis themselves completely denied the socialist elements of Marxism because Marx was Jewish. And left-wing historians almost always neglect to note the very clear similarity of Hitler's loose Bohemian lifestyle as a youth to that of Hippies.<br />
<br />
Adolf Hitler was an [[Evolution|evolutionary]] [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler’s policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and reportedly ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker. <br />
<br />
==Early life==<br />
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Adolf Hitler.]]<br />
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.<br />
<br />
When his father retired the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings. '' <ref> [http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.] {{dead link}}</ref><br />
<br />
==Who And What He Was==<br />
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich. <ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:<br />
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote> <br />
<br />
{{Clear}}<br />
<br />
== Beliefs ==<br />
According to Albert Speer, Hitler never left the Catholic Church but was hostile to its teachings. He did admire its power. Hitler only mentioned [[Christianity]] in his speeches to gain votes and favor. Any voiced tolerance during the 1930s changed to targeted persecution, mainly of Protestant "resisters" to Nazism.<ref>McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich''. (2009) pp. 182, 183</ref><br />
<br />
Although Hitler may have had some Christian rhetoric in his speeches, he certainly rejected it on a personal level. In the book, ''Hitler's Table Talk'', it reveals that Hitler thought of Christianity as a great "scourge" of history.<ref>http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm {{dead link}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===<br />
<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (NAZI) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Adolf Hitler.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> ]]<br />
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:<br />
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a [[socialism|socialist]] state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...<br />
<br />
The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.<br />
<br />
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.<br />
<br />
De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}<br />
<br />
=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]<br />
The staunch [[evolution|evolutionist]] Stephen Gould admitted the following: <br />
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78).<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:<br />
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf''). <ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}<br />
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Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':<br />
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref> <br />
[[Image:5712dawkins.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|[[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[atheism|atheist]] and [[evolution|evolutionist]]. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]<br />
Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following:<br />
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society. <ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" /><br />
<br />
[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:<br />
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.<br />
<br />
[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.<br />
<br />
There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}<br />
<br />
[[Evolution|Evolutionist]] and [[atheism|atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref><br />
<br />
== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==<br />
<br />
''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
!<br />
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto<br />
![[Nazi]] Party Platform<br />
!Analysis<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."<br />
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."<br />
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." <br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."<br />
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance." <br />
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished." <br />
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."<br />
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."<br />
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."<br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."<br />
|Central control of the financial system.<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."<br />
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."<br />
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c." <br />
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "<br />
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==War==<br />
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]<br />
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany’s defeat the following November.<br />
<br />
==Path to power==<br />
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors made up of civilian political leaders who betrayed the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.<br />
<br />
After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany’s defeat. In September 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers’ Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''); intrigued by the party’s apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member. He remained on the army payroll until he was discharged in March 1920. By then, Hitler had already devoted himself to improving the party’s propaganda, as well as his own position within.<br />
<br />
Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria’s traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was regarded as the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (“Popular Observer”), he spewed out propaganda. The meetings where he spoke grew from mere handfuls to hundreds, and then to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: [[Rudolf Hess]], [[Hermann Göring]], Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.<br />
<br />
Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, [[Ernst Röhm]], a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler’s rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the “Brown Shirts”, the violent squads used to attack socialists, battle communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army of the Party called the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'', abbreviated to SA.<br />
<br />
==The Beer Hall Putsch==<br />
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'etat (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail. <br />
<br />
The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would do eight months). <ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".<br />
<br />
===''Mein Kampf''===<br />
{{main|Mein Kampf}}<br />
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[evolutionist]] ideas.<br />
<br />
Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the Führer), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”<br />
<br />
From "Mein Kampf":<br />
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref> [http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.]</ref> }}<br />
<br />
{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref> [http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read. </ref><br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]<br />
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When he was released he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser’s opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.<br />
<br />
A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany’s leading nationalists, Alfred Hugenberg, whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.<br />
<br />
The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.<br />
<br />
==In power==<br />
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (but officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.<br />
<br />
===Night of the Long Knives===<br />
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]<br />
[[File:Diego Rivera, Hitler, Panel of Mural for the New Workers School, New York City, 1933..jpg|thumb|left|Hitler by [[Diego Rivera]], 1933.]]<br />
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army’s side, the three million-plus men of the [[SA]] and their leader, [[Ernst Röhm]], who wanted nothing less than to merge the SA into the much smaller army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm’s support by persuasion, but Hitler’s inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of SA leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref> The purge took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.<br />
<br />
On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.<br />
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''<br />
<br />
Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the SA leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of SA members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler’s actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler’s rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.<br />
<br />
===Beginnings of expansion===<br />
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany’s enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.<br />
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondie.]]<br />
Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany’s limited ambitious nature.<br />
<br />
While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.<br />
<br />
The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebecite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.<br />
<br />
==Anschluss==<br />
<br />
Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.<br />
<br />
While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia. <br />
<br />
==Poland==<br />
Poland’s turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. <br />
<br />
Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien’s plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium’s Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France’s Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.<br />
<br />
On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.<br />
<br />
Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.<br />
<br />
Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.<br />
<br />
==Barbarossa==<br />
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micro-managing military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.<br />
<br />
In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler’s new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref><br />
<br />
==Beginning of the end==<br />
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]<br />
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.<br />
<br />
But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler’s relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.<br />
<br />
===Assassination attempt===<br />
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]<br />
Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.<br />
<br />
Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.<br />
<br />
On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.<br />
<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler: <br />
{{cquote|Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}<br />
<br />
All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.<br />
<br />
==Death==<br />
On the afternoon of April 30, 1945 as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the center of Berlin, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography''. (2008) p. 955</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180</ref><ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945''. (2002) p. 359</ref> The majority of contemporary historians have rejected the other accounts of Hitler's demise or reported escape from Berlin as either Soviet propaganda or surmise.<ref>Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref> Following the end of the war, because of the different versions presented by the Soviet Union as to Hitler being dead and alive, both British Military Intelligence (led by agent Hugh Trevor-Roper) and the FBI conducted investigations as to the different claims made. The declassified information from British MI5, confirmed that Hitler shot himself.<ref>https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/world-war-ii/hitlers-last-days.html</ref> The declassified FBI documents report that Hitler and Eva Braun may have actually escaped to Argentina in a submarine and changed his identity. However, as the report states, "because of lack of information to support the story advanced...it is believed impossible to continue efforts to locate Hitler".<ref>http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view</ref> More recently in 2009, American researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on the skull fragment the Russians claim was from Hitler. The tests revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under 40 years of age who was not related to Eva Braun. However, the jaw fragments which had been recovered and identified as Hitler's<ref>Eberle and Uhl. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref> were not tested by the American researcher.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/hitler.skull.debate/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD</ref> Therefore, most historians are very skeptical as to these popular conspiracy theories, in particular because there are credible witnesses, who saw the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.<ref>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref><ref>Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte''. (2008) p. 47</ref><br />
<br />
== Adolf Hitler and Abortion ==<br />
<br />
''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Adolf Hitler]]<br />
<br />
In 1942 Adolf Hitler declared:<br />
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. <ref>http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]<br />
* [[Police state]]<br />
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]<br />
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From Mein Kampf by Hitler]<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.] Full text.<br />
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Adolf Hitler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]<br />
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]<br />
<br />
==Further reading==<br />
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.] Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
{{reflist|2}}<br />
<br />
==Sources==<br />
<small>*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.</small><br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT: Hitler, Adolf}} <br />
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[[Category:Dictators]]<br />
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[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&diff=1118195Adolf Hitler2014-11-16T17:58:11Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Dictator bio<br />
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]<br />
| name =Adolf Hitler<br />
| birth =April 20, 1889<br/>Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary<br />
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber)<br/>Klara Pölzl<br />
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected)<br />
| spouse =Eva Braun<br />
| children =none<br />
| death =April 30, 1945<br/>Berlin, Germany <br />
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot<br />
| education =Realschule<br/>Linz, Austria<br />
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]<br />
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment<br/>Imperial German Army (1914-1918)<br />
| rank =''Obergefreiter'' (Lance Corporal/Private First Class)<br />
|burial = none, burned.<br />
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]]<br/>[[National socialism]] (Nazism)<br />
| party =German Workers' Party<br/>(''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1919–1920)<br/>[[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers' Party]]<br/>(''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1920–1945)<br />
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933<br />
| war =[[World War II]]<br />
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties<br />
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether<br />
<br />
Rummel: 21,000,000<br />
}}<br />
'''Adolf Hitler''' was the Austrian-born Chancellor of [[Germany]] from January 30, 1933, and dictator of [[Nazi Germany]] from August 2, 1934 (as ''[[der Führer]]'') until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader of the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (''National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'', or [[Nazi]] Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. He was born a Catholic, but he never took religion seriously beyond initially rebelling against his Catholic father by showing preferences for Lutheran Protestantism in predominantly Catholic Austria, as well as using quasi-religious rhetoric in Mein Kampf and in speeches in order to not lose potential religious supporters. He was far more interested in [[Social Darwinism]]. After having minor wounds from an assassination bombing attempt, Hitler abused drugs originally intended to help with his injuries long after he had recovered from his injuries. <br />
<br />
Hitler in his youth was an financially-irresponsible Bohemian (a German word of the time roughly the same as [[Hippy]]) who became broke after spending his father's inheritance wandering around Austria as a watercolour artist, practicing [[vegetarianism]], and rarely attempting to seek serious employment. Hitler worked with a Jewish art dealer and after being rejected entry into Vienna's leading art school due to his unoriginal art, Hitler was a complete failure and completely broke. Rather than accept responsibility for his Bohemian lifestyle, Hitler in denial and increasing signs of the mental illness of [[psychosis]], followed the political current in Europe at the time of blaming Jews for exploiting him. [[Anti-Semitism]] had become a significant phenomenon in Germany ever since [[Martin Luther]] during his severe mental illness at the end of his life had become anti-Semitic. But anti-Semites in Germany refused to acknowledge that Luther prior to the onset of mental illness was highly sympathetic towards Jews. It was adopted by a number of misguided conservative Protestants who were not aware of Luther's mental state when he became anti-Semitic. Hitler being rebellious to his Catholic father took up a brief interest in Lutheranism and may have been influenced by Luther's anti-Semitic remarks. Hitler without any prospects sought to be conscripted into the German Army (but refused to serve the Austrian army due to many Jews being in it), there Hitler mixed his anti-Semitic views with some of the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran conservative nationalist aspects (that left-wing historians exaggerate by calling Hitler "far right") in order to be accepted amongst conservative German army officers but also began to adopt radical socialist ideas as revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and elsewhere grew in strength.<br />
<br />
After World War I, Hitler behaved as a political opportunist - he played up conservative German themes to his army officers and was sent to investigate a bizarre radical party called the German Workers' Party that used the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran nationalist theme in combination with a revolutionary socialist agenda that denounced Jews as being responsible for capitalism, exploitation of Germany, and for Germany losing World War I. It was anti-Marxist - though only because [[Karl Marx]] was a Jew and due to their anti-Semitic hatred, and saw Marx as no different than capitalist Jews. The Party was disorganized and Hitler with his strong anti-Semitism took advantage of the situation and used demagoguery to raise himself in the party, and make himself leader of the party that was then named the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party in short form). He used the party and its members to exact revenge for his psychotic perception of Jews and capitalists as having ruined him in his youth, along with his megalomaniac and psychotic view of himself as being the "Leader" (German: ''Fuhrer'') of Germany. Many Nazis were highly mentally-ill people with delusions of grandeur of both themselves and Germany, such as [[Heinrich Himmler]], and especially [[Hermann Goring]] who was a morphine addict and an animal rights activist who preferred to have Jews used for scientific experiments.<br />
<br />
Due to the thematic influence of the historic anti-Semitic faction of conservative Lutheran extremists on the Nazi movement, left-wing Marxist historians have exaggerated the role of conservative Lutherans in the Nazi movement and because of it claim that the Nazis are "far right". They completely ignore and deny the far left socialist parts of the Nazis, out of political dogmatism just as the Nazis themselves completely denied the socialist elements of Marxism because Marx was Jewish. And left-wing historians almost always neglect to note the very clear similarity of Hitler's loose Bohemian lifestyle as a youth to that of Hippies.<br />
<br />
Adolf Hitler was an [[Evolution|evolutionary]] [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler’s policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and reportedly ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker. <br />
<br />
==Early life==<br />
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Adolf Hitler.]]<br />
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.<br />
<br />
When his father retired the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings. '' <ref> [http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.] {{dead link}}</ref><br />
<br />
==Who And What He Was==<br />
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich. <ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:<br />
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote> <br />
<br />
{{Clear}}<br />
<br />
== Beliefs ==<br />
According to Albert Speer, Hitler never left the Catholic Church but was hostile to its teachings. He did admire its power. Hitler only mentioned [[Christianity]] in his speeches to gain votes and favor. Any voiced tolerance during the 1930s changed to targeted persecution, mainly of Protestant "resisters" to Nazism.<ref>McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich''. (2009) pp. 182, 183</ref><br />
<br />
Although Hitler may have had some Christian rhetoric in his speeches, he certainly rejected it on a personal level. In the book, ''Hitler's Table Talk'', it reveals that Hitler thought of Christianity as a great "scourge" of history.<ref>http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm {{dead link}}</ref><br />
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=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===<br />
<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (NAZI) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Adolf Hitler.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> ]]<br />
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:<br />
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a [[socialism|socialist]] state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...<br />
<br />
The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.<br />
<br />
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.<br />
<br />
De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}<br />
<br />
=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]<br />
The staunch [[evolution|evolutionist]] Stephen Gould admitted the following: <br />
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78).<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:<br />
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf''). <ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':<br />
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref> <br />
[[Image:5712dawkins.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|[[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[atheism|atheist]] and [[evolution|evolutionist]]. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]<br />
Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following:<br />
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society. <ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" /><br />
<br />
[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:<br />
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.<br />
<br />
[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.<br />
<br />
There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}<br />
<br />
[[Evolution|Evolutionist]] and [[atheism|atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref><br />
<br />
== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==<br />
<br />
''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
!<br />
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto<br />
![[Nazi]] Party Platform<br />
!Analysis<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."<br />
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."<br />
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." <br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."<br />
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance." <br />
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished." <br />
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."<br />
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."<br />
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."<br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."<br />
|Central control of the financial system.<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."<br />
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."<br />
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c." <br />
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "<br />
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==War==<br />
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]<br />
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany’s defeat the following November.<br />
<br />
==Path to power==<br />
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors made up of civilian political leaders who betrayed the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.<br />
<br />
After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany’s defeat. In September 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers’ Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''); intrigued by the party’s apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member. He remained on the army payroll until he was discharged in March 1920. By then, Hitler had already devoted himself to improving the party’s propaganda, as well as his own position within.<br />
<br />
Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria’s traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was regarded as the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (“Popular Observer”), he spewed out propaganda. The meetings where he spoke grew from mere handfuls to hundreds, and then to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: [[Rudolf Hess]], [[Hermann Göring]], Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.<br />
<br />
Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, [[Ernst Röhm]], a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler’s rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the “Brown Shirts”, the violent squads used to attack socialists, battle communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army of the Party called the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'', abbreviated to SA.<br />
<br />
==The Beer Hall Putsch==<br />
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'etat (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail. <br />
<br />
The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would do eight months). <ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".<br />
<br />
===''Mein Kampf''===<br />
{{main|Mein Kampf}}<br />
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[evolutionist]] ideas.<br />
<br />
Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the Führer), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”<br />
<br />
From "Mein Kampf":<br />
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref> [http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.]</ref> }}<br />
<br />
{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref> [http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read. </ref><br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]<br />
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When he was released he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser’s opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.<br />
<br />
A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany’s leading nationalists, Alfred Hugenberg, whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.<br />
<br />
The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.<br />
<br />
==In power==<br />
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (but officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.<br />
<br />
===Night of the Long Knives===<br />
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]<br />
[[File:Diego Rivera, Hitler, Panel of Mural for the New Workers School, New York City, 1933..jpg|thumb|left|Hitler by [[Diego Rivera]], 1933.]]<br />
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army’s side, the three million-plus men of the [[SA]] and their leader, [[Ernst Röhm]], who wanted nothing less than to merge the SA into the much smaller army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm’s support by persuasion, but Hitler’s inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of SA leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref> The purge took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.<br />
<br />
On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.<br />
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''<br />
<br />
Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the SA leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of SA members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler’s actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler’s rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.<br />
<br />
===Beginnings of expansion===<br />
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany’s enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.<br />
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondie.]]<br />
Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany’s limited ambitious nature.<br />
<br />
While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.<br />
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The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebecite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.<br />
<br />
==Anschluss==<br />
<br />
Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.<br />
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While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia. <br />
<br />
==Poland==<br />
Poland’s turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. <br />
<br />
Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien’s plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium’s Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France’s Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.<br />
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On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.<br />
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Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.<br />
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Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.<br />
<br />
==Barbarossa==<br />
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micro-managing military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.<br />
<br />
In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler’s new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref><br />
<br />
==Beginning of the end==<br />
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]<br />
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.<br />
<br />
But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler’s relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.<br />
<br />
===Assassination attempt===<br />
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]<br />
Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.<br />
<br />
Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.<br />
<br />
On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.<br />
<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler: <br />
{{cquote|Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}<br />
<br />
All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.<br />
<br />
==Death==<br />
On the afternoon of April 30, 1945 as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the center of Berlin, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography''. (2008) p. 955</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180</ref><ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945''. (2002) p. 359</ref> The majority of contemporary historians have rejected the other accounts of Hitler's demise or reported escape from Berlin as either Soviet propaganda or surmise.<ref>Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref> Following the end of the war, because of the different versions presented by the Soviet Union as to Hitler being dead and alive, both British Military Intelligence (led by agent Hugh Trevor-Roper) and the FBI conducted investigations as to the different claims made. The declassified information from British MI5, confirmed that Hitler shot himself.<ref>https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/world-war-ii/hitlers-last-days.html</ref> The declassified FBI documents report that Hitler and Eva Braun may have actually escaped to Argentina in a submarine and changed his identity. However, as the report states, "because of lack of information to support the story advanced...it is believed impossible to continue efforts to locate Hitler".<ref>http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view</ref> More recently in 2009, American researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on the skull fragment the Russians claim was from Hitler. The tests revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under 40 years of age who was not related to Eva Braun. However, the jaw fragments which had been recovered and identified as Hitler's<ref>Eberle and Uhl. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref> were not tested by the American researcher.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/hitler.skull.debate/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD</ref> Therefore, most historians are very skeptical as to these popular conspiracy theories, in particular because there are credible witnesses, who saw the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.<ref>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref><ref>Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte''. (2008) p. 47</ref><br />
<br />
== Adolf Hitler and Abortion ==<br />
<br />
''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Adolf Hitler]]<br />
<br />
In 1942 Adolf Hitler declared:<br />
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. <ref>http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]<br />
* [[Police state]]<br />
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]<br />
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From Mein Kampf by Hitler]<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.] Full text.<br />
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Adolf Hitler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]<br />
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]<br />
<br />
==Further reading==<br />
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.] Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
{{reflist|2}}<br />
<br />
==Sources==<br />
<small>*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.</small><br />
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{{DEFAULTSORT: Hitler, Adolf}} <br />
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[[Category:Dictators]]<br />
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[[Category:German History]]<br />
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[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&diff=1118194Adolf Hitler2014-11-16T17:57:09Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Dictator bio<br />
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]<br />
| name =Adolf Hitler<br />
| birth =April 20, 1889<br/>Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary<br />
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber)<br/>Klara Pölzl<br />
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected)<br />
| spouse =Eva Braun<br />
| children =none<br />
| death =April 30, 1945<br/>Berlin, Germany <br />
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot<br />
| education =Realschule<br/>Linz, Austria<br />
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]<br />
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment<br/>Imperial German Army (1914-1918)<br />
| rank =''Obergefreiter'' (Lance Corporal/Private First Class)<br />
|burial = none, burned.<br />
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]]<br/>[[National socialism]] (Nazism)<br />
| party =German Workers' Party<br/>(''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1919–1920)<br/>[[National Socialist German Workers' Party]]<br/>(''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1920–1945)<br />
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933<br />
| war =[[World War II]]<br />
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties<br />
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether<br />
<br />
Rummel: 21,000,000<br />
}}<br />
'''Adolf Hitler''' was the Austrian-born Chancellor of [[Germany]] from January 30, 1933, and dictator of [[Nazi Germany]] from August 2, 1934 (as ''[[der Führer]]'') until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader of the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (''National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'', or [[Nazi]] Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. He was born a Catholic, but he never took religion seriously beyond initially rebelling against his Catholic father by showing preferences for Lutheran Protestantism in predominantly Catholic Austria, as well as using quasi-religious rhetoric in Mein Kampf and in speeches in order to not lose potential religious supporters. He was far more interested in [[Social Darwinism]]. After having minor wounds from an assassination bombing attempt, Hitler abused drugs originally intended to help with his injuries long after he had recovered from his injuries. <br />
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Hitler in his youth was an financially-irresponsible Bohemian (a German word of the time roughly the same as [[Hippy]]) who became broke after spending his father's inheritance wandering around Austria as a watercolour artist, practicing [[vegetarianism]], and rarely attempting to seek serious employment. Hitler worked with a Jewish art dealer and after being rejected entry into Vienna's leading art school due to his unoriginal art, Hitler was a complete failure and completely broke. Rather than accept responsibility for his Bohemian lifestyle, Hitler in denial and increasing signs of the mental illness of [[psychosis]], followed the political current in Europe at the time of blaming Jews for exploiting him. [[Anti-Semitism]] had become a significant phenomenon in Germany ever since [[Martin Luther]] during his severe mental illness at the end of his life had become anti-Semitic. But anti-Semites in Germany refused to acknowledge that Luther prior to the onset of mental illness was highly sympathetic towards Jews. It was adopted by a number of misguided conservative Protestants who were not aware of Luther's mental state when he became anti-Semitic. Hitler being rebellious to his Catholic father took up a brief interest in Lutheranism and may have been influenced by Luther's anti-Semitic remarks. Hitler without any prospects sought to be conscripted into the German Army (but refused to serve the Austrian army due to many Jews being in it), there Hitler mixed his anti-Semitic views with some of the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran conservative nationalist aspects (that left-wing historians exaggerate by calling Hitler "far right") in order to be accepted amongst conservative German army officers but also began to adopt radical socialist ideas as revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and elsewhere grew in strength.<br />
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After World War I, Hitler behaved as a political opportunist - he played up conservative German themes to his army officers and was sent to investigate a bizarre radical party called the German Workers' Party that used the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran nationalist theme in combination with a revolutionary socialist agenda that denounced Jews as being responsible for capitalism, exploitation of Germany, and for Germany losing World War I. It was anti-Marxist - though only because [[Karl Marx]] was a Jew and due to their anti-Semitic hatred, and saw Marx as no different than capitalist Jews. The Party was disorganized and Hitler with his strong anti-Semitism took advantage of the situation and used demagoguery to raise himself in the party, and make himself leader of the party that was then named the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party in short form). He used the party and its members to exact revenge for his psychotic perception of Jews and capitalists as having ruined him in his youth, along with his megalomaniac and psychotic view of himself as being the "Leader" (German: ''Fuhrer'') of Germany. Many Nazis were highly mentally-ill people with delusions of grandeur of both themselves and Germany, such as [[Heinrich Himmler]], and especially [[Hermann Goring]] who was a morphine addict and an animal rights activist who preferred to have Jews used for scientific experiments.<br />
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Due to the thematic influence of the historic anti-Semitic faction of conservative Lutheran extremists on the Nazi movement, left-wing Marxist historians have exaggerated the role of conservative Lutherans in the Nazi movement and because of it claim that the Nazis are "far right". They completely ignore and deny the far left socialist parts of the Nazis, out of political dogmatism just as the Nazis themselves completely denied the socialist elements of Marxism because Marx was Jewish. And left-wing historians almost always neglect to note the very clear similarity of Hitler's loose Bohemian lifestyle as a youth to that of Hippies.<br />
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Adolf Hitler was an [[Evolution|evolutionary]] [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler’s policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and reportedly ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker. <br />
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==Early life==<br />
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Adolf Hitler.]]<br />
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.<br />
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When his father retired the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings. '' <ref> [http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.] {{dead link}}</ref><br />
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==Who And What He Was==<br />
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich. <ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:<br />
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote> <br />
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{{Clear}}<br />
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== Beliefs ==<br />
According to Albert Speer, Hitler never left the Catholic Church but was hostile to its teachings. He did admire its power. Hitler only mentioned [[Christianity]] in his speeches to gain votes and favor. Any voiced tolerance during the 1930s changed to targeted persecution, mainly of Protestant "resisters" to Nazism.<ref>McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich''. (2009) pp. 182, 183</ref><br />
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Although Hitler may have had some Christian rhetoric in his speeches, he certainly rejected it on a personal level. In the book, ''Hitler's Table Talk'', it reveals that Hitler thought of Christianity as a great "scourge" of history.<ref>http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm {{dead link}}</ref><br />
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=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===<br />
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''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]<br />
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[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (NAZI) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Adolf Hitler.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> ]]<br />
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:<br />
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a [[socialism|socialist]] state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...<br />
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The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.<br />
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What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.<br />
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De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}<br />
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=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]<br />
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[[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]<br />
The staunch [[evolution|evolutionist]] Stephen Gould admitted the following: <br />
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78).<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}<br />
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Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:<br />
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf''). <ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}<br />
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Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':<br />
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}<br />
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Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref> <br />
[[Image:5712dawkins.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|[[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[atheism|atheist]] and [[evolution|evolutionist]]. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]<br />
Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following:<br />
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society. <ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}<br />
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Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" /><br />
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[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:<br />
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.<br />
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[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.<br />
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There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}<br />
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[[Evolution|Evolutionist]] and [[atheism|atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref><br />
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== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==<br />
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''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]<br />
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{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
!<br />
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto<br />
![[Nazi]] Party Platform<br />
!Analysis<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."<br />
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."<br />
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." <br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."<br />
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance." <br />
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished." <br />
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."<br />
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."<br />
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."<br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."<br />
|Central control of the financial system.<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."<br />
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."<br />
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c." <br />
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "<br />
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
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==War==<br />
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]<br />
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany’s defeat the following November.<br />
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==Path to power==<br />
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors made up of civilian political leaders who betrayed the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.<br />
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After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany’s defeat. In September 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers’ Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''); intrigued by the party’s apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member. He remained on the army payroll until he was discharged in March 1920. By then, Hitler had already devoted himself to improving the party’s propaganda, as well as his own position within.<br />
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Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria’s traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was regarded as the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (“Popular Observer”), he spewed out propaganda. The meetings where he spoke grew from mere handfuls to hundreds, and then to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: [[Rudolf Hess]], [[Hermann Göring]], Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.<br />
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Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, [[Ernst Röhm]], a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler’s rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the “Brown Shirts”, the violent squads used to attack socialists, battle communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army of the Party called the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'', abbreviated to SA.<br />
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==The Beer Hall Putsch==<br />
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'etat (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail. <br />
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The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would do eight months). <ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".<br />
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===''Mein Kampf''===<br />
{{main|Mein Kampf}}<br />
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[evolutionist]] ideas.<br />
<br />
Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the Führer), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”<br />
<br />
From "Mein Kampf":<br />
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref> [http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.]</ref> }}<br />
<br />
{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref> [http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read. </ref><br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]<br />
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When he was released he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser’s opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.<br />
<br />
A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany’s leading nationalists, Alfred Hugenberg, whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.<br />
<br />
The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.<br />
<br />
==In power==<br />
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (but officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.<br />
<br />
===Night of the Long Knives===<br />
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]<br />
[[File:Diego Rivera, Hitler, Panel of Mural for the New Workers School, New York City, 1933..jpg|thumb|left|Hitler by [[Diego Rivera]], 1933.]]<br />
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army’s side, the three million-plus men of the [[SA]] and their leader, [[Ernst Röhm]], who wanted nothing less than to merge the SA into the much smaller army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm’s support by persuasion, but Hitler’s inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of SA leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref> The purge took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.<br />
<br />
On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.<br />
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''<br />
<br />
Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the SA leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of SA members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler’s actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler’s rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.<br />
<br />
===Beginnings of expansion===<br />
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany’s enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.<br />
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondie.]]<br />
Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany’s limited ambitious nature.<br />
<br />
While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.<br />
<br />
The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebecite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.<br />
<br />
==Anschluss==<br />
<br />
Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.<br />
<br />
While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia. <br />
<br />
==Poland==<br />
Poland’s turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. <br />
<br />
Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien’s plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium’s Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France’s Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.<br />
<br />
On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.<br />
<br />
Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.<br />
<br />
Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.<br />
<br />
==Barbarossa==<br />
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micro-managing military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.<br />
<br />
In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler’s new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref><br />
<br />
==Beginning of the end==<br />
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]<br />
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.<br />
<br />
But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler’s relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.<br />
<br />
===Assassination attempt===<br />
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]<br />
Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.<br />
<br />
Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.<br />
<br />
On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.<br />
<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler: <br />
{{cquote|Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}<br />
<br />
All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.<br />
<br />
==Death==<br />
On the afternoon of April 30, 1945 as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the center of Berlin, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography''. (2008) p. 955</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180</ref><ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945''. (2002) p. 359</ref> The majority of contemporary historians have rejected the other accounts of Hitler's demise or reported escape from Berlin as either Soviet propaganda or surmise.<ref>Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref> Following the end of the war, because of the different versions presented by the Soviet Union as to Hitler being dead and alive, both British Military Intelligence (led by agent Hugh Trevor-Roper) and the FBI conducted investigations as to the different claims made. The declassified information from British MI5, confirmed that Hitler shot himself.<ref>https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/world-war-ii/hitlers-last-days.html</ref> The declassified FBI documents report that Hitler and Eva Braun may have actually escaped to Argentina in a submarine and changed his identity. However, as the report states, "because of lack of information to support the story advanced...it is believed impossible to continue efforts to locate Hitler".<ref>http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view</ref> More recently in 2009, American researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on the skull fragment the Russians claim was from Hitler. The tests revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under 40 years of age who was not related to Eva Braun. However, the jaw fragments which had been recovered and identified as Hitler's<ref>Eberle and Uhl. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref> were not tested by the American researcher.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/hitler.skull.debate/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD</ref> Therefore, most historians are very skeptical as to these popular conspiracy theories, in particular because there are credible witnesses, who saw the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.<ref>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref><ref>Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte''. (2008) p. 47</ref><br />
<br />
== Adolf Hitler and Abortion ==<br />
<br />
''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Adolf Hitler]]<br />
<br />
In 1942 Adolf Hitler declared:<br />
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. <ref>http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]<br />
* [[Police state]]<br />
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]<br />
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From Mein Kampf by Hitler]<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.] Full text.<br />
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Adolf Hitler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]<br />
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]<br />
<br />
==Further reading==<br />
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.] Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
{{reflist|2}}<br />
<br />
==Sources==<br />
<small>*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.</small><br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT: Hitler, Adolf}} <br />
<br />
[[Category:Dictators]]<br />
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Evolutionists]]<br />
[[Category:Totalitarianism]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:Evolutionary Racists]]<br />
[[Category:War criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Socialists]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Police State]]<br />
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Joseph_Stalin&diff=1118119Joseph Stalin2014-11-16T04:44:52Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Dictator bio<br />
| image =[[Image:Stalin-140508 27880t.jpg|260px]]<br />
| name =Joseph Stalin<br />
| birth =December 18, 1878<br/>Gori, Tiflis Governorate ([[Republic of Georgia|Georgia]]), Russian Empire<br />
| parents =Vissarion Dzhugashvili<br/>Catherine Dzhugashvili<br />
| religion =Georgian Orthodoxy (rejected)<br/>[[Atheism]]<br />
| education =Tiflis Theological Seminary, Georgia<br />
| spouse =Ekaterina Svanidze (d. 1906-1907)<br/>Nadezhda Alliluyeva (d. 1919-1932)<br />
| children =Yakov Dzhugashvili<br/>Vasily Dzhugashvili<br/>Svetlana Alliluyeva<br />
| death =March 5, 1953<br/>Kuntsevo Dacha, Moscow<br />
| deathmanner =Complications of a stroke<br />
| burial =Near the Kremlin Wall, Moscow, Russia<br />
| country =[[Soviet Union]]<br />
| military =Soviet Armed Forces (1943–1953)<br />
| rank =Marshal of the Soviet Union (1943–1945) (de jure) <br/>Generalissimus of the Soviet Union (1945–1953) (de facto)<br />
| polbeliefs =[[Communism]]<br />
| party =[[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]]<br />
| dictatordate =By 1929<br />
| war =[[Great Purge of the Soviet Union]]<br/>[[World War II]] <br />
| deathnumber =33,000,000+<br />
}}<br />
'''Joseph (or Josef) Stalin''' (born '''Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili '''; (Russian: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Джугашви́ли) (1878 - 1953) was the dictator of the Soviet Union and General Secretary of the [[Communist Party]] of the [[Soviet Union]] ([[CPSU]]) from 1922 until his death from a stroke.<ref name="BBC Stalin">http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/stalin_joseph.shtml</ref> Joseph Stalin, who was a brutal proponent of [[atheism|atheistic]] [[communism]], was greatly influenced by the work of the [[evolution|neo-Lamarckian]] [[Trofim Lysenko]] as were other communist leaders.<ref>http://creation.com/the-darwinian-foundation-of-communism</ref><ref>http://creation.com/stalins-ape-man-superwarriors</ref><ref>http://creation.com/a-tale-of-four-countries</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwin-trotsky-connection</ref> During 1942 - 1943 Stalin reinstated the Russian Orthodox Church in order to boost morale while Russia was at war with Nazi Germany.<ref>http://faroutliers.blogspot.com/2008/08/stalin-reinstates-church-1942-43.html</ref><ref>http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/frroman1.aspx</ref> <br />
<br />
The son of a poor Georgian cobbler, Stalin was a former seminary student who joined the Communist Party when Georgia was still under the rule of the Russian Tsar. He became one of [[Lenin|Lenin's]] closest allies when the Kerensky regime was overthrown by Lenin's faction in 1917. During the [[Russian Civil War]] Stalin, who chose his name from the Russian word for steel, held the city of Tsaritsen on the Volga from counter-revolutionary forces. Stalin later re-named Tsaritsen [[Stalingrad]] in honor of his victory; Stalingrad would be the site of [[Germany]]'s massive defeat in [[World War II]].<br />
<br />
==Rise to Power==<br />
<br />
Stain was tapped by the Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police, as a low-level informer shortly after he was expelled from the Tiflis seminary in 1899. Stalin then began to systematically inform on revolutionary comrades in party organizations in Tiflis, Baku, and Batum over the next few years. He acquired a highly unsavory reputation among the [[Social Democrats]] of these cities and was finally arrested for cover purposes in 1902 when suspicions about him were about to boil over. It was the Okhrana that furnished the invisible means of support for the family he acquired after 1904. <br />
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In 1917, the Commissariat of Nationalities was formed with Stalin as its Commissar (Minister). The Commissariat addressed the question of the nationalities of the Russian Empire, and helped integrate them into the [[Soviet Union]]. From 1919-1922 he was also the People's Commissar of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Rabkrin, from the Russian), which was founded to be a check on the burgeoning Soviet bureaucracy.<br />
<br />
In 1922, Lenin named Stalin General Secretary of the CPSU. In 1924 Stalin in turn created the "Secret Department," a unit of 94 of his personal functionaries that maintained special privileges as the ''[[nomenklatura]]'', or a list of trusted individuals. He also appointed regional party secretaries who all, of course, supported Stalin. Through the Secret Department Stalin gained control of the [[Red Army]] after removing [[Leon Trotsky|Lev Trotsky]] in 1925 and the OGPU (later, [[KGB]]) when its leader [[Felix Dzerzhinsky]] died in 1926. Lenin had foreseen all of this and had warned in his last testament that Stalin should be removed from General Secretary because the position's power was unlimited.<br />
[[Image:Stalin-Lenin.jpg|right|thumb|[[Lenin]] left, Stalin right]]<br />
Stalin, however, did not allow this to happen. His most powerful rival, Lev Trotsky, who was the commander of the Red Army, was painted as a danger to the Revolution, because he continued to push the idea of international revolution; the "left opposition." Other Soviet leaders, like [[Zinoviev]], leader of the [[Comintern]], and [[Kaminev]], the head of the Communist Party in Moscow, were painted with the same brush because they supported Trotsky and did not wish to expel him from the CPSU in 1927. Later, he accused his ally [[Bukharin]] of being a member of the "right opposition," i.e. he was in favor of a more capitalistic economic system, as seen under the [[New Economic Policy]] (NEP) of the early 1920s. Trotsky was murdered in Mexico in 1940 by [[Ramón Mercader]] in an extensive conspiracy that included underground operatives from the [[Communist Party of the United States]] (CPUSA). Zinoviev, Kaminev, and Bukharin were the center of the famous "[[Great Purge|show trials]]" of the 1930s. All were put to death.<br />
<br />
==Objectives of the Comintern==<br />
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In 1932, [[Sergei Ivanovich Gussev]], who had served as [[Comintern]] agent and Stalin's personal representative in the United States, "commanded the [[Communist Party of the United States|Communists in the United States]] to take up four tasks. Two of them were the defence of the Soviet Union and the furtherance of Red conquest of [[China]]." In 1933 the notorious [[Gerhart Eisler]] "was secretly sent into the United States by Moscow to make sure these orders were carried out." <ref>[[Louis F. Budenz]], ''The Techniques of Communism'', (Chicago: Henry Regnery and Company, 1954), pp. 162-163.</ref> [[Edgar Snow]] wrote in his 1937 book, ''Red Star Over China,'' "The political ideology, tactical line and theoretical leadership of the [[Chinese Communists]] have been under the close guidance, if not positive direction, of the Communist International, which during the last decade has become virtually a bureau of the [[Russian Communist Party]]. In the final analysis this means that for better or worse, the policies of the Chinese Communists, like the Communists in every other country, have had to fall in line with, and usually subordinate themselves to, the broad strategic requirements of [[Soviet Russia]], under the dictatorship of Stalin."<ref>''Red Star Over China'' by Edgar Snow, New York, 1937, pg. 374.</ref><br />
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==Catch and Overtake==<br />
In 1928 Stalin decided that the Soviet Union was not properly industrialized to enjoy a communist future, so he initiated the First Five Year Plan and the campaign to collectivize agriculture in order to "build socialism," and to "catch and overtake" the capitalist world. Stalin fanned the fires of collectivization, claiming that peasants had been hording grain and that they needed to be controlled. Under this program, rich peasants (kulaks), were exiled or killed for being enemies of the people, and peasants' land was taken in order to introduce collective farming to expedite grain appropriations. Many were called kulaks by jealous neighbors, while the peasants who remained were often the laziest and most ill suited to producing enough grain. Collectivization caused massive famine in Russia, particularly in [[Ukraine]] (see [[Holodomor]]), where Stalin ordered the Red Army to blockade certain regions and take grain by force. It is estimated that the famine of 1931-33 killed 6-7 million people, while 20 million starved. <br />
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The First Five Year Plan was a program of crash-industrialization. After [[World War I]] and the Russian Civil War Russia had an industrial capacity equal to that of its 1861 capacity. The only way for Russia to be able to break the "capitalist encirclement," Stalin declared, was to industrialize. Brigades of shock workers were formed to work faster and harder than the world had ever seen. Most of this, however, was pure propaganda, although the shock workers did set the record for concrete poured in a single shift. Compared to the capitalist world which was experiencing the Great Depression, Soviet growth was impressive. Between 1929 and 1937, 8,000 factories were constructed, average GDP growth was around 10%, and the official unemployment statistics, which included gulag detainees, was 0. In 1936, after the Second Five Year Plan, Stalin declared socialism "built." Nevertheless, the capitalist world lived better than the Soviet Union, despite the Great Depression. [[John Scott]], an American CPUSA member and Comintern operative who was living in the Soviet Union during the Five Year Plans, notes this in his memoirs of that period "Behind the Urals." The legacy of the Five Year Plans (most of which Stalin declared "completed" in 4 years) injured the Soviet's production models, because the encouraged quantity and speed over quality. However, the planning of the 1930s enabled the Russians to defeat the Nazis in the 1940s. <ref>Suvorov, Viktor. ''Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?// (Viking Press/Hamish Hamilton; 1990) ISBN 0241126223.</ref><br />
<br />
==Stalin's Terror==<br />
Between 1936 and 1938, Joseph Stalin launched his purges to rid the Soviet Union of "fifth columnists," or spies who were loyal to the [[capitalist]] world. During the Terror 3 million people were arrested on various and often made-up charges, while 750,000 were executed. Due to the interrogation techniques of the NKVD (later, KGB), which often were torturous, most of those arrested confessed and were sent to work camps, called the [[Gulag]] for 10 years and sometimes even 25. Here, prisoners were forced to labor in mines, to log forests, or to do construction. Few lived through their sentences. <br />
<br />
In early 1937, a senior officer of the OGPU (KGB) stumbled upon a highly classified file in the old archives of the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana. It detailed the work of one J. V. Djugashvili as an informant and agent provocateur for the Okhrana inside the Bolshevik Party before the Russian Revolution. The OGPU officer, Stein, was shocked. Djugashvili was the true name of Stalin who was now purging the Old Bolsheviks on charges of being foreign spies and counter-revolutionaries.<br />
<br />
Stein took the file to a close friend, the head of the OGPU in the Ukraine, who went over it carefully with his trusted deputy, Zinovy Katsnelson, a cousin and close friend of Alexander Orlov. Convinced of its authenticity, they shared it with Jonah Yakir, commander of the Red Army in the Ukraine, and Stanislav Kossior, secretary of the Communist Party in the Ukraine. Alarmed by the file’s revelations, Yakir flew to Moscow and revealed its contents to [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]], Supreme Commander of the Red Army. They brought his deputy, Yan Gamarnik, into their confidence and decided to overthrow Stalin in a coup d’etat, denounce him and execute him.<br />
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As the coup plan was being developed, Katsnelson traveled to Paris and informed Orlov. The plot was foiled and Orlov’s fate was sealed.<br />
<br />
The infamous show trials of former leaders of the Soviet Union occurred during this period, where they were accused of working with Trotsky or sabotaging the Soviet Union. Stalin also eviscerated the high command of the Red Army, killing 90% of the leadership. The minions of oppression were not spared either; of the NKVD's 809 officials, 43 lived through the purges. The leadership of the communist party was persecuted as well. For example, in 1934 130 members of the 139-member Central Committee were arrested. The Terror forever made Russians afraid to speak out against the government, and also made sure that no one but Stalin could ever rule the Soviet Union as effectively.<br />
<br />
==Famine of 1933==<br />
{{main|Holodomor}}<br />
* "This famine was deliberately engineered by the regime of [[Josef Stalin]] {{years since|1933}} years ago claimed millions of lives, mostly in [[Ukraine]] but also in some other parts of the [[Soviet Union]]. It is today considered one of the worst [[atrocities]] of the Soviet regime and a terrifying act of [[genocide]]. Even so, the famine of 1933 is relatively unknown. ... Estimates of how many people died in Stalin's engineered [[famine]] of 1933 vary. But they are staggering in their scale -- between seven and 11 million people."<ref>[http://www.ukemonde.com/news/rferl.html Stalin's Starvation of Ukraine – Seventy Years Later, World Still Largely Unaware Of Tragedy], By Askold Krushelnycky, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Prague, 8 April 2003.</ref><br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
To avoid war with [[Germany]], Stalin ordered the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, [[Molotov]], to sign a non-aggression pact with [[Adolf Hitler]], named the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]], on August 19, 1939. The treaty detailed the agreement to split up [[Poland]] between Germany and the Soviet Union, give Stalin the Baltic Republics of [[Latvia]], [[Lithuania]], and [[Estonia]], and to allow the Soviets to wage war on [[Finland]], a war that ended in a humiliating Soviet defeat. Both sides, however, knew that they would eventually engage in hostilities. <br />
<br />
It seems that Stalin anticipated this less than Hitler, who, in June of 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with the largest land army ever assembled. It consisted of 170 divisions, or 3.5 million troops. Stalin was caught off guard, and the [[Nazis]] blazed a path through the Ukraine and European Russia. Reaching [[Moscow]] in October 1941, the Nazis threatened Stalin and the entire Soviet Union with defeat. In only 6 months, the Nazis controlled one third of the Soviet economy, a total of 5% of the Earth's surface. Hitler's troops were defeated at Moscow during the winter of 1941-42 after Stalin appointed [[Yorky Zhukov]] as commander of the Red Army. A spy in the German embassy in Tokyo, [[Richard Sorge]], informed Stalin that Japan was not going to attack [[Siberia]], freeing thousands of winter ski-troops to move to Moscow to defeat the Nazis. It was during this time that Stalin famously invoked the name of [[God]] and allowed religious services to be conducted after 20 plus years of repression. Also, 1500 factories were evacuated and restored in Siberia and 12-15 million workers were moved east of the [[Urals]], where Soviet production was higher than Germany's in 1942, despite Germany holding some 50% of Soviet industry.<br />
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The Red Army went on the offensive after the defense of Moscow, but soon the Nazis gained the advantage and pushed to Stalingrad. More than one million troops fought on each side in urban combat. Hitler refused to allow surrender, and eventually the Nazis were encircled and routed. After turning the tide of war in Stalingrad, the 1943 [[Kursk]] tank battle was decisive in pushing the Nazis from European Russia. In two years, the Red Army pushed the Nazis all the way back to [[Berlin]]. Stalin used his control of Eastern Europe to extract concessions from [[President Roosevelt]] at Allied conferences, including control over the region. [[Winston Churchill]] warned against this very control, for he greatly feared Soviet hegemony in Europe. Victorious, Stalin named himself Generalissimo and became more popular than ever in the Soviet Union and more dangerous than ever to the capitalist world.<br />
<br />
Over the course of World War II, around 25 million Russians died. Twenty million were in the armed services. The total number of 25 million reflects half of the worldwide losses of human life during World War II. The population did not recover until 1956. Many Soviet POWs, like famous writer [[Alexander Solzhenitsyn]], were sent to the Gulag after the war because they had fallen into German hands, and were accused of being spies. This swelled the prison camps by the thousands.<br />
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==Post-War Period and Death==<br />
Similar to the 1930s, Stalin undertook a harsh campaign of industrialization, which hurt the Soviets as much as it helped them rebuild. Money was devalued to one-tenth of its previous value, 2 million German and Japanese POWs were forced to stay in the Soviet Union and rebuild the country, and 10% of investment from 1945-46 was from looted machinery. The crops produced by household plots were collected by the government to sell, and a famine in 1947 caused by drought and Soviet single-crop farming killed 2 million. The recovery was built on the Soviet subjects.<br />
[[Image:Stalinfuneral.jpg|250px|right|thumb|''Right to left:'' Lavrenti Beria, Georgi Malenkov, Vassily Stalin, V.M. Molotov, Nikolai Bulganin]]<br />
After World War II, Stalin's [[cult of personality]] emerged as the dominant force of Soviet life. He was credited as the savior of the Soviet Union and the architect of victory, though it was really General Zhukov who was responsible for most of this. The communist youth group, the [[Komsomol]], devoted songs to "the Father of All Nations" or "the Driver of the Locomotive of History." Party membership increased by one million people between 1945 and 1953. Books quoted Stalin as an expert in communism, while he was often photographed surrounded by children to make him seem friendlier. This all served to form a deep, personal connection with Stalin for many Soviets. Indeed, he was loved by the Soviets. When he died in 1953 an anxious mob at his viewing crushed and trampled some mourners to death. Dissidents like Sakharov, the man forced in a prison to build the Soviet atom bomb, cried upon hearing that Stalin had died, despite their intense hatred of him. Despite his terror, he had convinced millions that he was their father.<br />
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The atheistic Stalin became increasingly paranoid as he grew older.<ref name="BBC Stalin"/> Following a stroke on March 1, 1953, Stalin died on March 5 after a period of declining performance. Between 1949 and 1952 Stalin increasingly took vacations and met with the [[Politburo]] less and less. When he died a short power struggle ensued, one which led to the execution of KGB head [[Beria]] as a spy. Eventually [[Khrushchev]] became the General Secretary of the CPSU and denounced Stalin's repressive tactics, his purges, gulags, and his cult of personality in the [[Secret Speech]] at the 20th Party Congress of 1956. Gulags were dismantled and the political climate was slightly less tense, but Soviet oppression still continued. The period following Stalin's rule is called the "thaw," the start of life again after a long winter.<br />
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==Quotes==<br />
"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." ~ to Churchill, 1945.<br />
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"Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem"<br />
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"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?"<br />
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"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything"<br />
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"The only real power comes out of a long rifle."<br />
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"When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use."<br />
==See also==<br />
*[[Stalinism]]<br />
*[[Darwin-Stalin connection]]<br />
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==References==<br />
<references/><br />
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==Sources==<br />
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*Hosking, Geoffrey. The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.<br />
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*Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1995.<br />
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*Scott, John. ''Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel''. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989.<br />
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*Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich, ''The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956''; an experiment in literary investigation'', Translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney, Publisher New York, Harper & Row (1974-78), 1st Edition, pg. 67n.<br />
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[[category:communists]]<br />
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]<br />
[[Category:Dictators]]<br />
[[Category:Totalitarianism]]<br />
[[Category:Cold War]]<br />
[[Category:New Deal]]<br />
[[Category:Soviet Union]]<br />
[[Category:Russian History]]<br />
[[Category:Marxism]]<br />
[[Category:Soviet Leaders]]<br />
[[Category:Atheists]]<br />
[[Category:Police State]]<br />
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Ernst_R%C3%B6hm&diff=1118118Ernst Röhm2014-11-16T04:42:10Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>[[File:362px-Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1982-159-21A, Nürnberg, Reichsparteitag, Hitler und Röhm.jpg|thumb|[[Adolf Hitler]] with Ernst Röhm.]]<br />
'''Ernst Röhm''' (November 28, 1887-July 1, 1934) - was a friend of [[Adolf Hitler]] and an early member of the [[Nazi Party]]. He was co-founder of and later became Supreme Commander of the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'' ("Storm Battalion") or [[SA]].<ref>The SA was also known as ("brownshirts") in reference to the color of their uniforms.</ref> He was also one of the many [[homosexual]]s who made up the higher echelons of the Nazis.<ref>Lively, Scott & Abrams, Kevin. ''The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party'', 4th Edition.</ref><br />
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Röhm had been in the military since 1906. During [[World War I]] he was twice wounded in combat and later was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. After World War I he was a member of the Socalist terror organization known as the Iron Fist. In 1919, Röhm joined the German Workers' Party, which soon became known as the ''Nationalsozialistche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ([[National Socialist German Worker's Party]] - Nazi Party).<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> Many of the first party meetings took place in a beer hall that catered to homosexuals, the Bratwurstgloeckl.<ref>Lively, Scott & Abrams, Kevin. ''The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party'', 4th Edition.</ref><br />
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Röhm also formed a para-military [[nationalist]] group known as the ''Reichskriegsflagge'' (Imperial War Flag). In November 1923, the ''Reichskriegsflagge'', in which [[Heinrich Himmler]] was a member, joined with the Nazi Party in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]]—the unsuccessful attempt by Hitler to seize power in Munich. In the aftermath, Röhm, Hitler and several others were tried, and convicted of treason.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref> However, Röhm's sentence was suspended. In 1927, German Communists leaked some of Röhm's letters which revealed his sexuality to the public and caused some loss of popularity for the Nazis at that time.<ref>Lively, Scott & Abrams, Kevin. ''The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party'', 4th Edition.</ref><br />
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During the early 1930s, Röhm's SA, with 2.9 million members, was a much larger and more powerful part of the Nazi Party than Himmler's [[SS]] ("blackshirts"). That suddenly changed in June 1934 as a result of a power struggle between the SA, which had a more radical vision than Hitler would tolerate, and a coalition of Himmler, [[Hermann Göring]], the army and [[big business]] (see [[Military industrial complex]]). The army feared the SA would absorb it into its ranks; which is what Röhm wanted to do. Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]] prepared the list of Röhm's SA associates who were executed or imprisoned in the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]" which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography'' (2008).</ref> Hitler had Röhm killed as well, for fear that he would be a rival in the near future.<ref>Lively, Scott & Abrams, Kevin. ''The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party'', 4th Edition.</ref> Himmler and his SS gained enormously from the killings; the SS became its own branch and Himmler reported only to Hitler.<ref>Weale, Adrian. ''The SS: A New History'' (2010).</ref><br />
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== Notes & sources ==<br />
<references/><br />
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[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Homosexuals]]<br />
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Röhm, Ernst}}</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Karl_D%C3%B6nitz&diff=1118117Karl Dönitz2014-11-16T04:35:33Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>[[Image:Karl Dönitz.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Karl Dönitz]]<br />
Grand Admiral '''Karl Dönitz''' was commander of the [[U-boat]] fleet of the [[Kriegsmarine]] (German Navy) during the [[Second World War]] and very briefly leader of the remaining area of Nazi Germany upon Hitlers Death. Dönitz also served as a U-Boat captain during the [[First World War]]. <br />
==President==<br />
Upon the death of [[Hitler]] and [[Joseph Goebbels|Goebbels]], Dönitz was appointed [[President]]<ref>http://www.flottenbasis.de/marine_kurier/ausgabe012005/achterstich1.html</ref><ref>http://lexikon.meyers.de/meyers/Bundespr%C3%A4sident</ref>. Dönitz immediately opened up negotiations with the [[Allied Powers]] to offer Germany's unconditional surrender <ref>http://www.br-online.de/wissen-bildung/thema/kriegsenden/09-kapitulation.xml</ref>. On May 7, the British and US governments accepted a surrender authorized by Dönitz <ref>http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/11/a3530611.shtml</ref>. The decision was controversial, as the the [[Big Three]] [[Allied Powers]] had agreed not to accept any separate peace terms. Dönitz was subsequently arrested and tried as a [[war criminal]] <ref>http://www.br-online.de/wissen-bildung/thema/kriegsenden/09-kapitulation.xml</ref>.<br />
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==Trial==<br />
Dönitz was placed on trial in [[Nuremberg Trials|Nürnberg]] where he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for war crimes, largely related to his policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. A part of his defense at the trial was that the US had also waged unrestricted submarine warfare from day one of their involvement.<br />
==Release==<br />
After his release he lived a quiet life writing a small number of books. His most famous being his memoir '''10 Jahre, 20 Tage'''. '''10 Years and 20 days'''; an allusion to his 10 years as a Kriegsmarine officer and his 20 days as the nominal head of the German state.<br />
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==References==<br />
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<References/><br />
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dönitz, Karl}}<br />
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[[Category: World War II Commanders]]<br />
[[Category:German People]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1118115Third Reich2014-11-16T04:35:00Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>{{Country<br />
|name =''Deutsches Reich''<br/>''Großdeutsches Reich'' (1943–1945)<br />
|map =ThirdReichMap.png<br />
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png<br />
|arms =<br />
|capital =Berlin<br />
|capital-raw =<br />
|government =<br />
|government-raw =[[Dictatorship]]; single-party<br />
|language =German<br />
|king =<br />
|queen =<br />
|monarch-raw =<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945; Führer)</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Lutz von Krosigk]] <nowiki>(1945; leading minister)</nowiki><br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =244,706 sq mi<br />
|pop =69,320,000 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1939<br />
|gdp = <br />
|gdp-year =<br />
|gdp-pc = <br />
|currency =Reichsmark <br />
|idd =<br />
|tld =<br />
}}<br />
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
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After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
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A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
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Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
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Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
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By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
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General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
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Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
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A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
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Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
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Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
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Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
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The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
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When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
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In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
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In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
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It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
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In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
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Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
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Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
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For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
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Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
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The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
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As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
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Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
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Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1118114Third Reich2014-11-16T04:34:34Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Country<br />
|name =''Deutsches Reich''<br/>''Großdeutsches Reich'' (1943–1945)<br />
|map =ThirdReichMap.png<br />
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png<br />
|arms =<br />
|capital =Berlin<br />
|capital-raw =<br />
|government =<br />
|government-raw =[[Dictatorship]]; single-party<br />
|language =German<br />
|king =<br />
|queen =<br />
|monarch-raw =<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945; ''Führer'')</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Lutz von Krosigk]] <nowiki>(1945; leading minister)</nowiki><br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =244,706 sq mi<br />
|pop =69,320,000 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1939<br />
|gdp = <br />
|gdp-year =<br />
|gdp-pc = <br />
|currency =Reichsmark <br />
|idd =<br />
|tld =<br />
}}<br />
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
<br />
Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
<br />
Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
<br />
Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
<br />
The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
<br />
In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
<br />
It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
<br />
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
<br />
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
<br />
Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
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== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
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[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Berlin&diff=1118113Berlin2014-11-16T04:33:17Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>[[Image:DSC00590_1.jpg|thumb|300|right|The Brandenburg Gate (''Brandenburger Tor''), viewed from the newly restored Paris Place (''Pariser Platz'').]]<br />
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'''Berlin''' is the capital of [[Germany]], and formerly of the [[Prussia|Kingdom of Prussia]] and the [[Margraviate of Brandenburg]].<br />
<br />
During the [[Cold War]] it was divided into an Eastern and a Western part. Both were considered to be under the control of the four [[WWII]] Allies. However, in fact, the [[USSR]] and East Germany (a.k.a. the German Democratic Republic) made [[East Berlin]] into the capital of [[East Germany]], whereas the Western Allies (USA, UK, France) and West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) insisted on the allied status of all sectors of Berlin and made [[Bonn]] into the provisional capital of West Germany. A [[Berlin Wall|wall]] between the two parts was built by East Germany in order to stop people escaping from East Berlin to [[West Berlin]] for economic as well as political reasons.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Berlin Philharmonic.jpg|thumb|left|280px|The Berlin Philharmonic in concert]]<br />
<br />
Berlin is well known world-wide for its cultural institutions, such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, its three opera houses, its museums and art galleries, and its remaining architectural history. Re-emerging from the aftermath of WWII and the Cold War, Berlin has since firmly established itself as one of Europe's brightest centres of culture. <ref> [http://www.berlin-life.com/culture/culture.php Culture in Berlin] </ref> The Hebbel-Theater is one of the centers for contemporary dance and opera in Europe. With seven major symphony orchestras (and several private ones), two major concert halls, and a plethora of smaller venues and churches, Berlin is indisputably one of the world's greatest cities for classical music. <ref> [http://www.berlinfo.com/Freetime/Art-Culture/classical_music/index.htm Classical Music] </ref> The Konzerthaus is Berlin’s most elegant venue for classical music. <br />
<br />
Berlin is well-known for the liberal attitudes that proliferate in its corners. During the time of the [[Cold War]], numerous young men from West Germany moved to West Berlin, in order to avoid military service. They founded numerous communities, mainly in the city district Kreuzberg, known also as the Turkish Quarter, for its large concentration of Turkish immigrants. Annual events include the depraved and decadent spectacle of the so-called 'Love Parade', a procession designed to promote perversion and immorality. A remarkable political event was the current mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, publicly announcing in his election campaign that he is homosexual. <ref>article in NY Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/world/europe/23wowereit.html?ei=5090&en=fab18328b0dbeafe&ex=1316664000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all]</ref><br />
<br />
A very short history to 1945:<br />
* grew from a pair of Wendish villages ( Berlin and K&ouml;lln), founded in the early 13th century.<br />
* was member of [[Hanseatic League]] from the 14th century. <br />
* became capital of Brandenburg.<br />
* became Protestant mid 16th century. (after 1540)<br />
* capital of [[Prussia]] from 1701<br />
* occupied by [[Austria]]ns, 1757, then the [[Russia]]ns, 1760<br />
* occupied by [[Napoleon]], 1806.<br />
* capital of the [[German Empire]], 1871-1918<br />
* Congress of Berlin, 1878 – Berlin Conference, 1885.<br />
* capital of the [[Weimar Republic]], 1918-1933<br />
* capital of [[Third Reich|Nazi Germany]], 1933-1945 (entered by Russians May 1945)<br />
* greatly damaged by Allied bombing, 1941 and 1943-45.<br />
* partitioned into zones and occupied (Americans, British, French, Russians), June 1945<br />
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== See also ==<br />
*[[Art cities]]<br />
*[[Walter Gropius]]<br />
*[[Ludwig Mies van der Rohe]]<br />
*[[Angela Merkel]]<br />
*[[Berlin International Film Festival]]<br />
<br />
{{Clear}}<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
*[http://www.museum.hu-berlin.de/index_english.html Berlin Museum of Natural History]<br />
*[http://home.att.net/~rw.rynerson/index2.htm Berlin 1969 - life in the U.S. Army's Berlin Brigade]<br />
*[http://travelguides.lastminute.com/sisp/index.htm?fx=location&loc_id=146451&sub_section=Culture Berlin Culture Guide]<br />
<br />
==References== <br />
<references/><br />
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{{Template:DEBundeslaender}}<br />
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[[Category:German Cities and Towns]]<br />
[[Category:Capital Cities]]<br />
[[Category:Urban History]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1118112Third Reich2014-11-16T04:32:04Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>{{Country<br />
|name =''Deutsches Reich'' (1933–1943)<br/>''Großdeutsches Reich'' (1943–1945)<br />
|map =ThirdReichMap.png<br />
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png<br />
|arms =<br />
|capital =Berlin<br />
|capital-raw =<br />
|government =<br />
|government-raw =[[Dictatorship]]; single-party<br />
|language =German<br />
|king =<br />
|queen =<br />
|monarch-raw =<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945; ''Führer'')</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Lutz von Krosigk]] <nowiki>(1945; leading minister)</nowiki><br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =244,706 sq mi<br />
|pop =69,320,000 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1939<br />
|gdp = <br />
|gdp-year =<br />
|gdp-pc = <br />
|currency =Reichsmark <br />
|idd =<br />
|tld =<br />
}}<br />
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
<br />
Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
<br />
Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
<br />
Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
<br />
The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
<br />
In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
<br />
It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
<br />
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
<br />
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
<br />
Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1118110Third Reich2014-11-16T04:31:07Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Country<br />
|name =''Deutsches Reich'' (1933–1943)<br/>''Großdeutsches Reich'' (1943–1945)<br />
|map =ThirdReichMap.png<br />
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|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945; ''[[der Führer]]'')</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Lutz von Krosigk]] <nowiki>(1945; leading minister)</nowiki><br />
|pm =<br />
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The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
<br />
Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
<br />
Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
<br />
Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
<br />
The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
<br />
In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
<br />
It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
<br />
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
<br />
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
<br />
Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1118108Third Reich2014-11-16T04:29:36Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
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|capital =Berlin<br />
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|monarch-raw =<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945; ''[[der Führer]]'')</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>Lutz von Krosigk <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =244,706 sq mi<br />
|pop =69,320,000 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1939<br />
|gdp = <br />
|gdp-year =<br />
|gdp-pc = <br />
|currency =Reichsmark <br />
|idd =<br />
|tld =<br />
}}<br />
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
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Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
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Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
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Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
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Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
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The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
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In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
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It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
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In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
<br />
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
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Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&diff=1118106Adolf Hitler2014-11-16T04:27:11Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Dictator bio<br />
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]<br />
| name =Adolf Hitler<br />
| birth =April 20, 1889<br/>Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary<br />
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber)<br/>Klara Pölzl<br />
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected)<br />
| spouse =Eva Braun<br />
| children =none<br />
| death =April 30, 1945<br/>Berlin, Germany <br />
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot<br />
| education =Realschule<br/>Linz, Austria<br />
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]<br />
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment<br/>Imperial German Army (1914-1918)<br />
| rank =''Obergefreiter'' (Lance Corporal/Private First Class)<br />
|burial = none, burned.<br />
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]]<br/>[[National socialism]] (Nazism)<br />
| party =German Workers' Party<br/>(''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1919–1920)<br/>National Socialist German Workers' Party<br/>(''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' 1920–1945)<br />
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933<br />
| war =[[World War II]]<br />
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties<br />
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether<br />
<br />
Rummel: 21,000,000<br />
}}<br />
'''Adolf Hitler''' was the Austrian-born Chancellor of [[Germany]] from January 30, 1933, and dictator of [[Nazi Germany]] from August 2, 1934 (as ''[[der Führer]]'') until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader of the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (''National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'', or [[Nazi]] Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. He was born a Catholic, but he never took religion seriously beyond initially rebelling against his Catholic father by showing preferences for Lutheran Protestantism in predominantly Catholic Austria, as well as using quasi-religious rhetoric in Mein Kampf and in speeches in order to not lose potential religious supporters. He was far more interested in [[Social Darwinism]]. After having minor wounds from an assassination bombing attempt, Hitler abused drugs originally intended to help with his injuries long after he had recovered from his injuries. <br />
<br />
Hitler in his youth was an financially-irresponsible Bohemian (a German word of the time roughly the same as [[Hippy]]) who became broke after spending his father's inheritance wandering around Austria as a watercolour artist, practicing [[vegetarianism]], and rarely attempting to seek serious employment. Hitler worked with a Jewish art dealer and after being rejected entry into Vienna's leading art school due to his unoriginal art, Hitler was a complete failure and completely broke. Rather than accept responsibility for his Bohemian lifestyle, Hitler in denial and increasing signs of the mental illness of [[psychosis]], followed the political current in Europe at the time of blaming Jews for exploiting him. [[Anti-Semitism]] had become a significant phenomenon in Germany ever since [[Martin Luther]] during his severe mental illness at the end of his life had become anti-Semitic. But anti-Semites in Germany refused to acknowledge that Luther prior to the onset of mental illness was highly sympathetic towards Jews. It was adopted by a number of misguided conservative Protestants who were not aware of Luther's mental state when he became anti-Semitic. Hitler being rebellious to his Catholic father took up a brief interest in Lutheranism and may have been influenced by Luther's anti-Semitic remarks. Hitler without any prospects sought to be conscripted into the German Army (but refused to serve the Austrian army due to many Jews being in it), there Hitler mixed his anti-Semitic views with some of the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran conservative nationalist aspects (that left-wing historians exaggerate by calling Hitler "far right") in order to be accepted amongst conservative German army officers but also began to adopt radical socialist ideas as revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and elsewhere grew in strength.<br />
<br />
After World War I, Hitler behaved as a political opportunist - he played up conservative German themes to his army officers and was sent to investigate a bizarre radical party called the German Workers' Party that used the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran nationalist theme in combination with a revolutionary socialist agenda that denounced Jews as being responsible for capitalism, exploitation of Germany, and for Germany losing World War I. It was anti-Marxist - though only because [[Karl Marx]] was a Jew and due to their anti-Semitic hatred, and saw Marx as no different than capitalist Jews. The Party was disorganized and Hitler with his strong anti-Semitism took advantage of the situation and used demagoguery to raise himself in the party, and make himself leader of the party that was then named the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party in short form). He used the party and its members to exact revenge for his psychotic perception of Jews and capitalists as having ruined him in his youth, along with his megalomaniac and psychotic view of himself as being the "Leader" (German: ''Fuhrer'') of Germany. Many Nazis were highly mentally-ill people with delusions of grandeur of both themselves and Germany, such as [[Heinrich Himmler]], and especially [[Hermann Goring]] who was a morphine addict and an animal rights activist who preferred to have Jews used for scientific experiments.<br />
<br />
Due to the thematic influence of the historic anti-Semitic faction of conservative Lutheran extremists on the Nazi movement, left-wing Marxist historians have exaggerated the role of conservative Lutherans in the Nazi movement and because of it claim that the Nazis are "far right". They completely ignore and deny the far left socialist parts of the Nazis, out of political dogmatism just as the Nazis themselves completely denied the socialist elements of Marxism because Marx was Jewish. And left-wing historians almost always neglect to note the very clear similarity of Hitler's loose Bohemian lifestyle as a youth to that of Hippies.<br />
<br />
Adolf Hitler was an [[Evolution|evolutionary]] [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler’s policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and reportedly ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker. <br />
<br />
==Early life==<br />
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Adolf Hitler.]]<br />
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.<br />
<br />
When his father retired the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings. '' <ref> [http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.] {{dead link}}</ref><br />
<br />
==Who And What He Was==<br />
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich. <ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:<br />
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote> <br />
<br />
{{Clear}}<br />
<br />
== Beliefs ==<br />
According to Albert Speer, Hitler never left the Catholic Church but was hostile to its teachings. He did admire its power. Hitler only mentioned [[Christianity]] in his speeches to gain votes and favor. Any voiced tolerance during the 1930s changed to targeted persecution, mainly of Protestant "resisters" to Nazism.<ref>McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich''. (2009) pp. 182, 183</ref><br />
<br />
Although Hitler may have had some Christian rhetoric in his speeches, he certainly rejected it on a personal level. In the book, ''Hitler's Table Talk'', it reveals that Hitler thought of Christianity as a great "scourge" of history.<ref>http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm {{dead link}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===<br />
<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (NAZI) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Adolf Hitler.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> ]]<br />
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:<br />
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a [[socialism|socialist]] state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...<br />
<br />
The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.<br />
<br />
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.<br />
<br />
De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}<br />
<br />
=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]<br />
The staunch [[evolution|evolutionist]] Stephen Gould admitted the following: <br />
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78).<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:<br />
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf''). <ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':<br />
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref> <br />
[[Image:5712dawkins.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|[[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[atheism|atheist]] and [[evolution|evolutionist]]. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]<br />
Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following:<br />
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society. <ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" /><br />
<br />
[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:<br />
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.<br />
<br />
[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.<br />
<br />
There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}<br />
<br />
[[Evolution|Evolutionist]] and [[atheism|atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref><br />
<br />
== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==<br />
<br />
''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
!<br />
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto<br />
![[Nazi]] Party Platform<br />
!Analysis<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."<br />
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."<br />
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." <br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."<br />
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance." <br />
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished." <br />
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."<br />
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."<br />
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."<br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."<br />
|Central control of the financial system.<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."<br />
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."<br />
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c." <br />
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "<br />
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==War==<br />
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]<br />
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany’s defeat the following November.<br />
<br />
==Path to power==<br />
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors made up of civilian political leaders who betrayed the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.<br />
<br />
After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany’s defeat. In September 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers’ Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''); intrigued by the party’s apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member. He remained on the army payroll until he was discharged in March 1920. By then, Hitler had already devoted himself to improving the party’s propaganda, as well as his own position within.<br />
<br />
Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria’s traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was regarded as the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (“Popular Observer”), he spewed out propaganda. The meetings where he spoke grew from mere handfuls to hundreds, and then to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: [[Rudolf Hess]], [[Hermann Göring]], Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.<br />
<br />
Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, [[Ernst Röhm]], a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler’s rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the “Brown Shirts”, the violent squads used to attack socialists, battle communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army of the Party called the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'', abbreviated to SA.<br />
<br />
==The Beer Hall Putsch==<br />
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'etat (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail. <br />
<br />
The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would do eight months). <ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".<br />
<br />
===''Mein Kampf''===<br />
{{main|Mein Kampf}}<br />
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[evolutionist]] ideas.<br />
<br />
Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the Führer), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”<br />
<br />
From "Mein Kampf":<br />
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref> [http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.]</ref> }}<br />
<br />
{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref> [http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read. </ref><br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]<br />
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When he was released he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser’s opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.<br />
<br />
A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany’s leading nationalists, Alfred Hugenberg, whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.<br />
<br />
The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.<br />
<br />
==In power==<br />
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (but officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.<br />
<br />
===Night of the Long Knives===<br />
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]<br />
[[File:Diego Rivera, Hitler, Panel of Mural for the New Workers School, New York City, 1933..jpg|thumb|left|Hitler by [[Diego Rivera]], 1933.]]<br />
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army’s side, the three million-plus men of the [[SA]] and their leader, [[Ernst Röhm]], who wanted nothing less than to merge the SA into the much smaller army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm’s support by persuasion, but Hitler’s inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of SA leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref> The purge took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.<br />
<br />
On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.<br />
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''<br />
<br />
Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the SA leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of SA members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler’s actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler’s rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.<br />
<br />
===Beginnings of expansion===<br />
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany’s enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.<br />
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondie.]]<br />
Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany’s limited ambitious nature.<br />
<br />
While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.<br />
<br />
The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebecite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.<br />
<br />
==Anschluss==<br />
<br />
Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.<br />
<br />
While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia. <br />
<br />
==Poland==<br />
Poland’s turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. <br />
<br />
Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien’s plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium’s Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France’s Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.<br />
<br />
On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.<br />
<br />
Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.<br />
<br />
Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.<br />
<br />
==Barbarossa==<br />
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micro-managing military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.<br />
<br />
In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler’s new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref><br />
<br />
==Beginning of the end==<br />
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]<br />
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.<br />
<br />
But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler’s relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.<br />
<br />
===Assassination attempt===<br />
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]<br />
Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.<br />
<br />
Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.<br />
<br />
On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.<br />
<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler: <br />
{{cquote|Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}<br />
<br />
All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.<br />
<br />
==Death==<br />
On the afternoon of April 30, 1945 as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the center of Berlin, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography''. (2008) p. 955</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180</ref><ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945''. (2002) p. 359</ref> The majority of contemporary historians have rejected the other accounts of Hitler's demise or reported escape from Berlin as either Soviet propaganda or surmise.<ref>Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref> Following the end of the war, because of the different versions presented by the Soviet Union as to Hitler being dead and alive, both British Military Intelligence (led by agent Hugh Trevor-Roper) and the FBI conducted investigations as to the different claims made. The declassified information from British MI5, confirmed that Hitler shot himself.<ref>https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/world-war-ii/hitlers-last-days.html</ref> The declassified FBI documents report that Hitler and Eva Braun may have actually escaped to Argentina in a submarine and changed his identity. However, as the report states, "because of lack of information to support the story advanced...it is believed impossible to continue efforts to locate Hitler".<ref>http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view</ref> More recently in 2009, American researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on the skull fragment the Russians claim was from Hitler. The tests revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under 40 years of age who was not related to Eva Braun. However, the jaw fragments which had been recovered and identified as Hitler's<ref>Eberle and Uhl. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref> were not tested by the American researcher.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/hitler.skull.debate/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD</ref> Therefore, most historians are very skeptical as to these popular conspiracy theories, in particular because there are credible witnesses, who saw the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.<ref>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref><ref>Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte''. (2008) p. 47</ref><br />
<br />
== Adolf Hitler and Abortion ==<br />
<br />
''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Adolf Hitler]]<br />
<br />
In 1942 Adolf Hitler declared:<br />
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. <ref>http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]<br />
* [[Police state]]<br />
* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]<br />
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From Mein Kampf by Hitler]<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.] Full text.<br />
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Adolf Hitler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]<br />
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]<br />
<br />
==Further reading==<br />
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.] Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
{{reflist|2}}<br />
<br />
==Sources==<br />
<small>*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.</small><br />
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{{DEFAULTSORT: Hitler, Adolf}} <br />
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[[Category:Dictators]]<br />
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Evolutionists]]<br />
[[Category:Totalitarianism]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:Evolutionary Racists]]<br />
[[Category:War criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Socialists]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Police State]]<br />
[[Category:Anti Second Amendment]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Berlin&diff=1101909Berlin2014-08-29T00:39:48Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>[[Image:DSC00590_1.jpg|thumb|300|right|The Brandenburg Gate (''Brandenburger Tor''), viewed from the newly restored Paris Place (''Pariser Platz'').]]<br />
<br />
'''Berlin''' is the capital of [[Germany]], and formerly of the [[Prussia|Kingdom of Prussia]] and the [[Margraviate of Brandenburg]].<br />
<br />
During the [[Cold War]] it was divided into an Eastern and a Western part. Both were considered to be under the control of the four [[WWII]] Allies. However, in fact, the [[USSR]] and East Germany (a.k.a. the German Democratic Republic) made [[East Berlin]] into the capital of [[East Germany]], whereas the Western Allies (USA, UK, France) and West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) insisted on the allied status of all sectors of Berlin and made [[Bonn]] into the provisional capital of West Germany. A [[Berlin Wall|wall]] between the two parts was built by East Germany in order to stop people escaping from East Berlin to [[West Berlin]] for economic as well as political reasons.<br />
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[[Image:Berlin Philharmonic.jpg|thumb|left|280px|The Berlin Philharmonic in concert]]<br />
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Berlin is well known world-wide for its cultural institutions, such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, its three opera houses, its museums and art galleries, and its remaining architectural history. Re-emerging from the aftermath of WWII and the Cold War, Berlin has since firmly established itself as one of Europe's brightest centres of culture. <ref> [http://www.berlin-life.com/culture/culture.php Culture in Berlin] </ref> The Hebbel-Theater is one of the centers for contemporary dance and opera in Europe. With seven major symphony orchestras (and several private ones), two major concert halls, and a plethora of smaller venues and churches, Berlin is indisputably one of the world's greatest cities for classical music. <ref> [http://www.berlinfo.com/Freetime/Art-Culture/classical_music/index.htm Classical Music] </ref> The Konzerthaus is Berlin’s most elegant venue for classical music. <br />
<br />
Berlin is well-known for the liberal attitudes that proliferate in its corners. During the time of the [[Cold War]], numerous young men from West Germany moved to West Berlin, in order to avoid military service. They founded numerous communities, mainly in the city district Kreuzberg, known also as the Turkish Quarter, for its large concentration of Turkish immigrants. Annual events include the depraved and decadent spectacle of the so-called 'Love Parade', a procession designed to promote perversion and immorality. A remarkable political event was the current mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, publicly announcing in his election campaign that he is homosexual. <ref>article in NY Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/world/europe/23wowereit.html?ei=5090&en=fab18328b0dbeafe&ex=1316664000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all]</ref><br />
<br />
A very short history to 1945:<br />
* grew from a pair of Wendish villages ( Berlin and K&ouml;lln), founded in the early 13th century.<br />
* was member of [[Hanseatic League]] from the 14th century. <br />
* became capital of Brandenburg.<br />
* became Protestant mid 16th century. (after 1540)<br />
* capital of Prussia from 1701<br />
* occupied by [[Austria]]ns, 1757, then the [[Russia]]ns, 1760<br />
* occupied by [[Napoleon]], 1806.<br />
* capital of German Empire, 1871-1918<br />
* Congress of Berlin, 1878 – Berlin Conference, 1885.<br />
* capital of the [[Weimar Republic]], 1918-1933<br />
* capital of [[Nazi Germany]], 1933-1945 (entered by Russians May 1945)<br />
* greatly damaged by Allied bombing, 1941 and 1943-45.<br />
* partitioned into zones and occupied (Americans, British, French, Russians), June 1945<br />
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== See also ==<br />
*[[Art cities]]<br />
*[[Walter Gropius]]<br />
*[[Ludwig Mies van der Rohe]]<br />
*[[Angela Merkel]]<br />
<br />
{{Clear}}<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
*[http://www.museum.hu-berlin.de/index_english.html Berlin Museum of Natural History]<br />
*[http://home.att.net/~rw.rynerson/index2.htm Berlin 1969 - life in the U.S. Army's Berlin Brigade]<br />
*[http://travelguides.lastminute.com/sisp/index.htm?fx=location&loc_id=146451&sub_section=Culture Berlin Culture Guide]<br />
<br />
==References== <br />
<references/><br />
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[[Category:German Cities and Towns]]<br />
[[Category:Capital Cities]]<br />
[[Category:Urban History]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Socialism&diff=1101908Socialism2014-08-29T00:35:04Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was socialistic was the [[Nazi Party]] (NSDAP) which was headed by the [[fascist]], [[evolution|evolutionary racist]] [[Adolf Hitler]].<ref name="mises">http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref name="darNaz">http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref><ref name="hott">http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> ]]<br />
'''Socialism''' has its roots in visions of imaginary ideal societies, from thinkers who drew up elaborated designs and concepts for creating what they considered a more equal society, along collectivist lines or abolished private property; the primarily ideas came from British and French thinkers like [[Saint-Simon]], [[Charles Fourier]], [[Louis Blanc]], and [[Robert Owen]] preceded by [[Thomas More]], [[Tommaso Campanella]], and [[Jean Meslier]]. One of [[Karl Marx]]'s titles was the father of socialism. Currently it is considered a [[leftist]] [[economics|economic]] system which advocates state ownership or direct control of the major means of production and distribution of goods and services.<ref>[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism Meriam-Webster]</ref> Socialism is the economic system imposed by [[Communism]], but another one of the most well known political parties of the 20th century that was socialistic was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (Nazi), headed by the [[fascist]], but anti-communist<ref>http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/adolf_hitler.htm</ref> [[Adolf Hitler]]. Often socialism is a matter of degree and numerous economies in the world are very socialistic such as [[Europe]]an countries (many of which are facing financial difficulties due to over taxation and excessive spending).<ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/05/european_socialism_is_bleeding.html</ref><br />
__TOC__<br />
[[Image:Ur8756.jpg|right|thumb|[[Ludwig von Mises]] ]]<br />
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:<br />
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a socialist state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...<br />
<br />
The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.<br />
<br />
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.<br />
<br />
De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.}} <br />
<br />
Because many businesses still are privately owned, ipso facto, the [[United States]] is not a socialistic government. "That definition is confuted by the earliest theoretical writings on socialism. In France, Henri de Saint-Simon, in the first decades of the 1800s, and his pupil and colleague [[Auguste Comte]], in the 1820s and 30s, along with [[Robert Owen]] contemporaneously in England, ''stated that the essential feature of what Owen called socialism is government regulation of the means of production and distribution."'' <ref>[http://www.thomasbrewton.com/index.php/weblog/once_again_what_is_socialism/ Thomas E. Brewton; Once Again: What Is Socialism?]</ref><br />
When the government controls the volume of money and its economic applications, it has the economy in a stranglehold. When government controls education so that nothing other than secular socialism may be taught, as Saint-Simon advocated, it controls the future destiny of a nation.<br />
<br />
== Barack Obama and his socialistic and "fascist light" policies ==<br />
[[File:Shepard-Fairey-imgs.JPG|right|thumb|250px|[[Shepard Fairey]], designer of the official Obama hope and change logo, is more known for his anti-American and pro-communist themes. Here a [[Mao Zedong|Maoist]] revolutionary is depicted. <ref>http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-ContextMenu&rlz=1I7ACAW_en___US352&tbs=isch:1&q=Shepard+Fairey&sa=N&start=40&ndsp=20</ref> ]]<br />
<br />
In April of 2010, [[American]] political consultant [[Dick Morris]] wrote:<br />
{{cquote|When [[Obama]] took office, federal, state and local spending accounted for 30 percent of [[gross domestic product]]. Now it is up to 35 percent, and when health care is fully implemented, it will rise to above 40 percent. But taxes are still below 30 percent. The difference is the deficit, now grown to 10 percent of our GDP.<br />
<br />
If our government is to continue spending 40 percent of our GDP, we will morph into the European model of a socialist democracy. But if we can roll the spending back to 30 percent, while holding taxes level, we will retain our free market system.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileenMcGann/2010/04/24/the_silent_killer_obamas_vat_proposal</ref>}}<br />
<br />
[[Anita Dunn]], the political strategist and former White House Communications Director, admitted that one of favorite political philosophers, one that she “turns to the most”, is [[Mao Zedong]], the [[communism|communist]] dictator responsible for the starvation, torture, and killing of 70 million Chinese.<ref>http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2009/10/16/anita-dunn-favorite-philosopher-mao-tse-tung/</ref><br />
Critics of the Obama administration have coined the word "[[Obamunism]]" to describe Barack Obama's socialistic and "[[fascism]] light" [[economic planning]] policies ([[Benito Mussolini]] defined fascism as the wedding of state and corporate powers. Accordingly, trend forecaster [[Gerald Celente]] labels [[Obama administration corporate bailouts|Obama's corporate bailouts]] as being "fascism light" in nature).<ref>http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/daily-intel/2009/07/20/obamunism-inc</ref><ref>http://www.smallbusinessadvocate.com/small-business-interviews/gerald-celente-6944</ref> Obamunism can also allude to Obama's [[Obama administration fiscal policy|ruinous fiscal policies]] and [[Obama administration monetary policy|reckless monetary policies]].<ref>http://seekingalpha.com/article/120883-monetary-policynot-obama-s-stimulusis-what-needs-watching</ref><ref>http://www.nypost.com/seven/05172009/postopinion/editorials/bams_wise_words_169731.htm</ref><ref>http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/</ref><br />
=== Larry Summers and Leftist Economics ===<br />
<br />
[[Larry Summers]] currently is the Director of the White House's National Economic Council (NEC) for President Barack Obama. George Gerald Reisman, Professor Emeritus of Economics at [[Pepperdine University]] and author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, wrote that Summers socialistic ideas on redistributing wealth demonstrate that [[Larry Summers]] is a "lightweight leftist" who "fails to understand the nature of the most essential feature of capitalism, namely, private ownership of the means of production and the indispensable role it plays in the standard of living of the average person."<ref name="misesblog">http://blog.mises.org/archives/009031.asp</ref> Reisman also wrote that Summers is a shallow and ignorant man whose knowledge of economics is minimal and whose evil views qualify him to be the economic advisor to [[Hugo Chavez]] of [[Venezuela]] or [[Robert Mugabe]] of [[Zimbabwe]], but do not qualify him to be an economic advisor to the President of the United States.<ref name="misesblog" /><br />
=== Obama administration and land ownership ===<br />
In August of 2010, [[Hot Air]] declared:<br />
{{cquote|The federal government, as the memo boasted, is the nation’s “largest land manager.” It already owns roughly [http://bigthink.com/ideas/21343 one of every three acres] in the United States. This is apparently not enough. At a “listening session” in New Hampshire last week, government bureaucrats trained their sights on millions of [http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9HGKEAG0.htm private forest land] throughout the [[New England]] region. Agriculture Secretary [[Tom Vilsack]] crusaded for “the need for additional attention to the Land and Water Conservation Fund — and the need to promptly support full funding of that fund.”<br />
<br />
Property owners have every reason to be worried. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) is a pet project of green radicals, who want the decades-old government slush fund for buying up private lands to be freed from congressional appropriations oversight. It’s paid for primarily with receipts from the government’s offshore oil and gas leases. Both Senate and House Democrats have included $900 million in full LWCF funding, not subject to congressional approval, in their energy/BP oil spill legislative packages.<ref>http://hotair.com/archives/2010/08/14/great-outdoors-initiative-a-federal-land-grab/</ref>}}<br />
<br />
== Influence of Russia on socialism ==<br />
Not until the birth of the [[Soviet Union]] after the [[Communist Revolution]] did the idea become generally accepted that socialism meant government seizing ownership of the economy. Experience in 19th and 20th century [[France]], [[England]], and [[Germany]], however, made it clear that regulatory control by government bureaucrats is sufficient to implement socialism. <ref>[http://www.thomasbrewton.com/index.php/weblog/once_again_what_is_socialism/ What is Socialism?]</ref><br />
<br />
In [[Communism]] (the primary variant of socialism) the central goal is to establish a "worker's paradise"-an ideal state with perfect equality.<br />
<br />
In practice the socialist government owns the banks, railroads, farmlands, factories, and stores, and is the only employer, or at least controls the regulation of production and distribution. The central goal is to destroy the "evils of capitalism" by government ownership or control of the means of production, usually with one party controlling the government on behalf of the working class. <br />
<br />
The socialist system never manages to establish this "paradise" because management for the benefit of the employees leads to featherbedding and lack of investment or economic growth, at the expense of consumers. Collective farming (operating farms like factories) sharply reduced the food supply. The most thoroughgoing efforts by Communist regimes turned into authoritarian dictatorships. The government controls all investments, production, distribution, income, and prices, as well as all organizations, schools, news media and formerly private societies. Churches and labor unions are suppressed or controlled by the government. Socialism is the antithesis of [[capitalism]], because it opposes private ownership of capital or land, and rejects the free market in favor of central planning. It also rejects "civil society" and makes sure that all organizations are controlled by the government. <br />
<br />
Theoretically, socialist regimes can have multiple parties. In practice there is only one political party, and it controls the government. The leaders of the party choose the government officials and set all policies for the nation and for cities and localities. Opposition parties are not allowed access to the media or to meeting halls or to funding, and their leaders are often arrested as "enemies of the people."<br />
<br />
As a political ideology based on the redistribution of wealth, socialism stresses the privileges of the many over the rights of the few, but in practice when socialist economic principles are forced onto a nation by a totalitarian government a new Upper Class appears which is much better off than the Lower Class.<br />
{{cquote|'''<big>Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.</big> <small>- Winston Churchill</small>''' <ref>[http://www.quotesdaddy.com/quote/280995/winston-churchill/socialism-is-a-philosophy-of-failure-the-creed-of Churchill; Quotesdaddy.com]</ref>}}<br />
<br />
==Contradictory Goals of Socialism==<br />
<br />
Socialism's stated purpose is to eliminate the huge gap between the highest and lowest classes of society. Their bitter complaint has been that the upper class exploits its dominance to gain privileges and wealth, while the lower class must suffer tyranny and poverty.<ref>"all socialists agree that a socialist economy must be run for the benefit of the vast majority of the people rather than for a small aristocratic, plutocratic, or capitalist class." [http://www.experiencefestival.com/socialism_-_an_economic_system] </ref> This obsession with class paradoxically creates a group of people with a vested interest in seeing class differences remain (socialist politicians, [[community organizer]]s, ''etc.''); if by some means the class system actually ''were'' destroyed, these people would be out of a job.<br />
<br />
Another essential goal of most socialist thinkers has been to eliminate [[Capitalism]],<ref>"... one of the fundamental goals of the socialist movement throughout history has been the abolition of capitalism" [http://www.experiencefestival.com/socialism_-_opposition_and_criticisms_of_socialism_arguments_for_and_against A Wisdom Archive on Socialism - Opposition and criticisms of socialism; arguments for and against]</ref> <br />
on the grounds that only "social control" of the economy can prevent abuses such as [[feudalism]], [[monopoly]], [[cartel]]s, etc.<br />
<br />
But experiments on both a moderate and a grand scale have shown that socialism's main purpose has been undermined by its unremitting opposition to [[free market]] economics. In its drive to eliminate capitalism, it has overlooked the fact that general prosperity is vouchsafed by [[economic freedom]], and that free market economics improves the lot of the poor much more quickly and permanently than any system of central economic control.<br />
<br />
The real aim of socialists is probably personal: why else would socialists want to create programs which encourage Dependency? Well, it fits into their lust for power. <br />
People who want to control others need people who are willing to be controlled.<br />
Independent, proactive people do not fit into the socialist Power Model. That is why the first thing [[Karl Marx|Marx]] wanted to remove from the economy was the [[Profit]] Motive: it gives people an incentive to make their own decisions!<br />
<br />
==Types of Socialism==<br />
<br />
There are three main kinds of Socialism, all of them are built on the premise of government control of the means of production.<br />
<br />
===Leninism===<br />
[[Image:Backrdv12n2.jpg|right|400px|thumb|The Russian caption reads, "Long live the great unbeatable flag of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Friedrich Engels|Engels]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]!"]]<br />
<br />
Marxist Socialism, or '''Leninism''', as revised by [[Vladimir Lenin]] and practiced in the pre-[[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] Soviet Union, was the Socialistic theory developed by Vladimir Lenin during his rise to power. Lenin defined socialism as a transitional stage between capitalism and communism.<ref>"In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism", Lenin, State and Revolution, Selected Works, Progress publishers, Moscow, 1968, p. 320. (End of chapter four)</ref> Leninism is totalitarian, with no [[democracy]] and all decision made by the leaders of the Communist party. Lenin saw the Communist Party as an "elite" that was committed to ending capitalism and instituting socialism in its place and attaining the power by any means possible, including revolution. Lenin was quite mild on the belief, believing that, though controlling of resources was important, the people's will comes first.<br />
<br />
Though [[Bolshevik]] Russia was somewhat more prosperous than its former [[Russian Empire|Tsardom]], Lenin's death in 1924 sparked the overthrow of his Marxist-Leninism and the imposition of [[Stalinism]], the violent, totalitarian belief that went against some of Lenin's ideas (many of Lenin's works were censored by Stalin post-1924).<br />
<br />
==="Democratic" Socialism===<br />
The second form of Socialism (sometimes called "Revisionism") prevailed in Europe down to the 1970s, and is typified by the British Labour Party. It was inspired by [[Socialism]] and closely linked to labor unions that had real power. The goal was for the government to own ("nationalize") major industries such as coal mining, railways, steel making, shipbuilding, airlines, and banking. Small businesses remained private. The idea was that labor unions controlled the government and therefore unions controlled working conditions and wages for the benefit of workers, regardless of the damage to long-term economic growth.<br />
<br />
The Socialists were well organized and after 1918 they bitterly fought the breakaway faction that became the [[Communist]] movement. In recent years major Socialist parties (in Europe and Canada) have sometimes dropped the long-standing demands for state ownership of the means of production and have mostly accepted "Controlled Capitalism". However they remain tied to labor unions and favor liberal policies regarding high taxes and public spending. Conservatives have been negative toward the economics of the second form of socialism. Conservatives complain socialists use government power to redistribute wealth. <br />
<br />
Within the [[European Union]], a form of [[democratic socialism]] was initially viewed as successful, but eventually lead to lowered social equity and a downward spiraling economy, as well as general discontent. Although this acts as a drag on the economy, in democratic countries of the industrialized west, some socialist ideas have been put into practice with varying degree of success. Beginning in 2010 many European countries were racked with rioting and social unrest as governments began to back away from out-of-control entitlements that began bankrupting them and lead to a world financial crisis because of unrestrained debt. <ref>[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703791804575439732358241708.html WSJ; "Obstacle to Deficit Cutting: A Nation on Entitlements"]</ref> <ref>[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100929/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_europe_austerity_protests_10 Anti-austerity protests sweep across Europe]</ref> <ref>[http://www.allbusiness.com/economy-economic-indicators/economic-policy-bailouts/14758032-1.html "Debt crisis pushes Europe toward economic reforms"]</ref><br />
<br />
===Communal Socialism===<br />
The third form of Socialism has nothing to do with Marx or government ownership, and emphasizes the importance of the community over the individual. Usually it means small communities sharing most of their possessions. The most famous examples are the religious [[Shakers]] of the 19th century (a conservative group), and the new-left communes that briefly existed in the 1960s and 70s.<br />
<br />
=== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ===<br />
<br />
''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
!<br />
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto<br />
![[Nazi]] Party Platform<br />
!Analysis<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."<br />
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."<br />
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." <br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."<br />
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance." <br />
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished." <br />
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."<br />
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."<br />
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."<br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."<br />
|Central control of the financial system.<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."<br />
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."<br />
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c." <br />
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "<br />
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Controversy==<br />
''This section confuses "interpretation" with "debate".''<br />
<br />
The ideology of '''Socialism''' is subject to a variety of interpretations. From a conservative perspective, Marxist socialism is an economic system whereby the means of production are seized and monopolized by the government sometimes without compensation to the builders of the [[capital]]. Investments, production, distribution, income, prices, and economic justice are administered by a government [[nomenklatura]] that regulates the transfer of money, goods (including capital goods), and services primarily through taxation, regulation and aggressive institutionalized coercion.<br />
<br />
However, some socialists reject this description. Democratic socialists advocate a system of governance based on the principles of [[solidarity]], [[equality]] and [[liberty]], viewing these principles as interconnected. They believe increased socio-economic equality is associated with increased practical freedom to fulfill human potential. In many countries, such as Britain, socialist movements have been built on Christian, democratic and co-operative bases, embracing the notion that individuals should 'treat others as they would wish to be treated', and arguing that all individuals have a moral responsibility for the welfare of other members of their society. Socialism seeks to prioritize human welfare over other goals, such as profit and wealth accumulation by elites; it views increased redistribution of wealth as vital to securing greater freedom and happiness for the bulk of the people. Though this rosy picture of socialism is appealing to many, it ignores what Hayek called "the road to serfdom." Though in theory socialism is an idealized, egalitarian form of economics, in practice it means rule by labor bosses who minimize individualism and economic growth in the name of equality and benefits for the working class.<br />
<br />
[[Karl Marx]] considered socialism to be a transitory stage between capitalism and communism. In his view, socialism is summed up by the expression: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." A major criticism of socialism is that it infringes individual rights in favor of the populace. In a very real sense, politics in the Western World throughout the 20th century was shaped by the conflict between socialist and capitalist governmental policies.<br />
<br />
Although socialist parties are common in Europe, the leading examples all currently embrace some free enterprise, individual property rights and certain other aspects of capitalism although leading European Socialists are very critical of America. In many European countries socialism has been changing to [[Social democracy]].<br />
<br />
==Key elements==<br />
<br />
As a political ideology based on the expropriation of wealth, socialism stresses the privileges of the nomenklatura over the rights of workers and earners. Many of the most notoriously oppressive dictatorships have been socialist, such as the [[Soviet Union]] and China under Mao Zedong. Private wealth was seized and the owners executed.<br />
<br />
===Welfare state===<br />
As an economic theory, democratic socialism calls for equalization of incomes, through taxation of private wealth coupled with welfare state spending. The [[nationalization]] of major industries is primarily a device to allow the unionized workers to control their own wages and working conditions, cutting out the capitalistic owners.<br />
<br />
State [[pension]]s and unemployment insurance were not brought in by Socialists--they were first introduced by arch-conservative Chancellor [[Bismarck]] in Germany in the 1870s. In Britain they were introduced about 1910 by [[Winston Churchill]] and [[David Lloyd George]] of the [[Liberal Party]], and in the U.S. were part of Democratic President, Franklin D. Roosevelt's,[[New Deal]] in the 1930s. Welfare state ideas such as [[universal health care]], and state control of key industries have been common throughout the developed world in the modern era. However, the United States has always rejected socialism as an ideological position, with a few exceptions such as the [[TVA]].<br />
<br />
===Religion===<br />
Some forms of socialism have often been [[atheistic]] in character, and many leading socialists (most prominently Karl Marx) have been critical of the role of religion - and conservative religion in particular - which they criticize for lending support to an unjust social order. Other Socialists have been Christians, and there has been considerable interplay between Christian and Socialist ideas. [[Christian socialists]] have asserted that early Christian communities, in particular, displayed certain traits, such as the holding of possessions in common,<ref>Acts 2:44: "Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need."</ref> the rejection of conventional sexual mores and gender roles, the provision for communal education, etc., that could be considered similar to socialism. <br />
<br />
During the chaos sparked by the advent of the Reformation in Europe, several sects with radical new interpretations of Christianity sprung up, many of them Anabaptists (believers in adult baptism). Under the leadership of the reformer Thomas Muntzer the peasants of south-west Germany rose up in arms against the clergy and nobility, establishing anarcho-communes in their wake. Though they were massacred to a man, ten years later a group of radical Anabaptists under the leadership of Jan Matthys seized control of the north-western Germany city of Munster from the Prince-Archbishop there and established a Christian-Communist state. True to the spirit of applied communism, Mathys took twelve wives, held lavish feasts for himself and his most loyal followers and had himself crowned King of the World as the city starved, besieged by an alliance of Protestant and Catholic forces keen to see them exterminated. Mathys and all his followers were all tortured and killed when the Prince-Archbishop returned with professional troops to sack the city and reassert his authority, effectively wiping out all non-pacifistic Anabaptists in north-western Germany. Only Baptists as we know them today survived the following persecution.<br />
<br />
See, for instance, Arnold Toynbee, the British historian, has responded to this,<br />
:"the Marxian excerpt from a Christian Socialism is an experiment which is doomed to failure because it has denied itself the aid of the spiritual power which alone is capable of making Socialism a success. ….'Christianity', they say, 'is the opiate of the People'; and, in the [[Soviet Union]]… Christianity or of any other theistic religion have been debarred… from admission to membership of the All-Union Communist Party. In fact, Communism has been definitely and militantly anti-Christian. Thus the campaign against Christianity which is to-day an integral part of the propaganda of [[Marxian Socialism]] is a challenge to the living generation of Christians …we latter-day Christians may still turn a Marxian attack upon Christianity to good account … a re-awakening of the Christian social conscience has been the one great positive practical achievement of Karl Marx" <ref>Arnold Toynbee, ''A Study of History'', Annex II to Vol. V, Part C (i) (c) 2, p. 585-586, Marxism, Socialism, and Christianity.</ref><br />
<br />
====New Testament socialism====<br />
The earliest Christians were decidedly living in a manner consistent with basic aims of socialism, albeit with critical requirements and distinctions from its secularist expressions. Luke 14:33 requires the forsaking of all one has if one will be a disciple of Christ, and while this is not shown to necessarily always require the literally forsaking of all,<ref>Lk. 19:8,9; Acts 16:14,15; 1Cor. 11:22; 2Tim. 4:13</ref> Acts 2:44 states that the communal believers "had all things common". Acts 4:32-5:11 also describes community redistribution of property, and details the Divine punishment of a husband and wife for hypocrisy, in keeping proceeds from the sale of a piece of property while openly pretending that they gave it all, as others voluntarily did.<ref>Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, 5:1-11)</ref> <br />
<br />
However, forsaking all is shown to be that of first surrendering oneself and life to the God of the Bible, and placing all at His disposal,<ref>Matthew Henry (1662 - 1714), ''Commentary on the Whole Bible'', Lk. 14:25-35</ref><ref>Archibald Thomas Robertson, ''WORD PICTURES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT'', Lk. 14:33</ref> with literal giving as a result being as He directs, and voluntary. (2Cor. 8,9) <br />
{{cquote|Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work: (2 Corinthians 9:7-8)}}<br />
<br />
While the early organic community provides a noble model of communal life, and of a "seminary" type experience, it was also soon dispersed by persecution (thus greatly expanding the church: Acts 8:1-5; 11:19), and it is later indicated that believers retained ownership of property after conversion. (Lk. 19:8,9; Acts 16:14,15; 1Cor. 11:22; 2Tim. 4:13) Rich Christians are evidenced to have been part of the early church, but were not mandated by the church itself to give all they had away, but to be lowly in mind, and to be ready and willing to distribute, in faith and surrender to God. (1Tim. 6:17-19) <br />
<br />
Moreover, in both Testaments capitalism is clearly supported,<ref>Gary North, ''Capitalism and the Bible''</ref> and indolence is not subsidized, but penalized by poverty, while diligence in work is rewarded by its fruits. (Prov. 6:6-11; 13:4; 20:4; 2 Thes. 3:10-12; 1 Tim. 5:17-18) Although holy widows over 60 years old who were without familial support were taken in by the church, a man is clearly required to provide for his own family, if able. (1Tim. 5:2ff) <br />
<br />
While the success of the early church as an organic community is often invoked in support of modern socialism, and many communes of the 1960s evoked the Bible, the early organic church was a result of the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit among believers, while the "administrators" were humble servants who were examples of self-sacrifice, and who worked with their own hands as needed, (1Cor. 4:9-16) and whose authority was established by manifest Divine attestation, including the pro-active exercise of church discipline being only by supernatural or otherwise spiritual means, not carnal force.<ref>Acts 2:43; 5:5,9,10; 1Cor. 4:19-21; 2Cor. 13:2,3; 2Thes. 3:14,15; 2Tim. 4:2</ref> <br />
<br />
In addition other distinctions, without the unique changes and influence resulting from faith and full surrender to Christ from all the community, and His anointing upon the work, attempts to mimic the communal life of Christians have failed. <br />
<br />
As one critic of modern-day socialism states: <br />
<blockquote>Socialism, unfortunately, completely disregards Biblical teaching about the fallen nature of human beings and assumes that human beings will act in a morally upright fashion if their basic needs are met. This is at the heart of why socialistic systems never work: because human nature does not work in this fashion.<ref>[http://www.dakotavoice.com/2009/06/capitalism-and-socialism-in-light-of-the-bible Bob Ellis, ''Capitalism and Socialism in Light of the Bible''] Dakota Voice, June 23rd, 2009</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
== Britain, the Labour Party and Socialism ==<br />
<br />
At its inception, the [[Labour Party]] borrowed socialist ideas by committing itself to a program of nationalization under 'Clause 4' of their Constitution, but was always fundamentally committed to the British system of parliamentary government. Clause 4 was formally dropped after the election of [[Tony Blair]] as Party leader, signaling the creation of 'New' Labour.<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/21/newsid_2515000/2515825.stm</ref> The British governments of 1945-1950 and 1950-1951 under [[Clement Attlee]] implemented the nationalization of several industries and utilities, including coal, steel, water, railways and electricity. Former owners of nationalized industries were compensated. The best known example is the nationalization of health care to create the [[National Health Service]] (NHS). This made - literally overnight - health care "free" at the point of delivery for everybody in Britain, and it remains so today.<br />
<br />
In the 1980s under Conservative Prime Minister [[Margaret Thatcher]] most of the nationalized industries were returned to the private sector, and public housing has been sold to the residents. These conservative decisions were endorsed by the "New Labour" of Tony Blair, to the annoyance of elderly radicals who fondly remember the poverty and inefficiencies of the old system.<br />
<br />
== Criticism of socialism ==<br />
<br />
[[Friedrich Hayek]] and [[Ludwig von Mises]] were important critics of socialism, particularly regarding what is known as the Socialist Calculation Debate. Hayek and Mises argued that a socialist economy would face information constraints that would prevent even well intentioned planners from efficiently allocating resources. That is, the planners would not know how much a battleship or a hospital cost, and could not efficiently allocate resources among different choices. This criticism should be considered as compatible with, but independent of, criticisms based on [[Public choice theory]] that bring into consideration the incentives of political actors.<br />
<br />
Svetlana Kunin, who lived in the Soviet Union until 1980 explains how the system worked: <br />
<blockquote><br />
Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures....Only the ruling class of communist leaders had access to special stores, medicine and accommodations that could compare to those in the West. The rest of the citizenry had to deal with permanent shortages of food and other necessities, and had access to free but inferior, unsanitary and low-tech medical care.<br />
</blockquote> <br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
USSR, 1959: I am a "young pioneer" in school. History classes remind us that there is a higher authority than their parents and teachers: the leaders of the Communist Party.<br />
</blockquote> <br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
Those who left Russia found a different set of values in America: freedom of religion, speech, individual pursuits, the right to private property and free enterprise....These opportunities let the average immigrant live a better life than many elites in the Soviet Communist Party...<br />
</blockquote> <br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
The slogans of "fairness and equality" sound better than the slogans of capitalism. But unlike at the beginning of the 20th century, when these slogans and ideas were yet to be tested, we have accumulated history and reality.<ref>[http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/SpecialReport.aspx?id=512665 ''The Perspective Of A Russian Immigrant''], ''Investors Business Daily,'' 09/10/2009 </ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
A government which adheres to economic socialistic principles also tends to have cultures which prize unmerited equality among citizen and criminal alike, and through extension of socialistic welfare policies, between the chronically employed and the chronically unemployed, by ensuring both groups receive income though only one group works for income. This enables people otherwise healthy to not seek gainful employment because they will receive income no matter their actions, thus providing no incentive to produce. The economies of socialistic governments are thus weak and riddled with flaws, such as expecting increased production from a reduced workforce, and when engendered with a progressive culture, which simply means people who do are the same as people who do not, eventually fall under the weight of their own poorly managed and over-extended public welfare institutions. Public welfare also decreases personal charity, thus making the people dependent on the aid of the government since charitable aid, such as from a church, is discouraged by the secular nature of socialistic nations.<br />
<br />
Socialists occasionally appeal to the fact that God, in the Old Testament, commanded His own nation to surrender a tenth of its proceeds for the maintenance of the priests and for the care of the sickly and weak. But, while fallen men, and their secular and pagan nations, shall always struggle to understand the righteous balances between government and liberty.<ref name="npr">[http://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139761274/how-the-a-p-changed-the-way-we-shop ''The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America''], "NPR’s interview of the book’s author, Marc Levinson"</ref> (i.e., between local and national logistics, as well as between the logistics of the individual person and those of his community) the mark of socialism is the general allowance for a naive, and willingly ignorant, adult sub-population whose members prefer, despite the limitations imposed by bureaucratic accountability, to live under all the securities rightly afforded in the fallen world only to infants. In the unfallen world, such security was a given for all persons, but without any of the bureaucracy required in the fallen world for maintaining it. In the fallen world, such security is an unattainable ideal, so that the more is done to attain it, the more the society suffers under the requisite bureaucracy. And, while the initial policy made toward that ideal is the creation of an executive class or executive vocation, such as monarchies and professional armies <ref>[http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=1Sa&c=8&t=KJV#19 ''First Samuel 8:19-20'']Blue Letter Bible</ref><ref>[http://www.wbur.org/media-player?url=http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2011/09/29/consequences-combat-vietnam&title=The+Consequences+Of+Combat&segment=consequences-combat-vietnam&pubdate=2011-09-29&source=hereandnow ''Interview of Vietnam war veteran, and '''What It Is Like To Go To War''' author, Karl Marlantes, on NPR's Here And Now''</ref>, there is a 'tipping point' in the creation of bureaucratic entities beyond which any civilization cannot help but increasingly lose its footing in the struggle to balance all its righteous human interests. The result is an ever-increasing proportion of that civilization's total population which, for all variety of reasons, becomes enslaved to their own demands for that ideal of security. When there is no judge who judges righteously, when all the people make the laws, and when the power of money is used to try to stay ahead of the natural consequences of unrighteousness, the 'bad money' cannot help but drive out the 'good money', until the 'Bank of Reality' is forced to call in the loan, and the civilization implodes to the point that it falls victim also to militant invaders and, or, to unmanageable internal unrest.<ref name="npr" /><br />
<br />
==Past Socialist Countries==<br />
===Chile===<br />
Marxist socialist leader [[Salvador Allende]] was elected in Chile in 1970 in a minority government run by the Popular Unity Party. Allende's economic policy, known as the Vuskovic Plan, sought to achieve transition to socialism. The Vuskovic Plan involved nationalization of large foreign enterprises, land redistribution to farmers, and redistribution of income. The majority in Parliament never supported it and the plan was never carried out as Allende was overthrown by the military.<br />
<br />
==Other Socialist Countries (Current )==<br />
<br />
===[[Cuba]]===<br />
Communist leader [[Fidel Castro]] violently overthrew the Cuban government in the 1950's and has declared Cuba to be communist since then, nationalizing millions of dollars worth of American-owned property. It is notable that Fidel Castro originally self-defined as [[liberal]], before coming out openly as a communist.<ref>[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CGoQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fib-global-history-ii-period-5.aspen.high.schoolfusion.us%2Fmodules%2Flocker%2Ffiles%2Fget_group_file.phtml%3Ffid%3D6868636%26gid%3D1176955%26sessionid%3D0&ei=o74IUPDNOqPp6wGbtPGxCg&usg=AFQjCNG1bEoHrxurCF_WL1OPKMxIb4hCTw Fidel Castro - His Rise and Rule of Cuba]</ref> Today, Cuba faces copious economic problems and the people lack their fundamental rights. (Fidel's brother [[Raul Castro]] now runs the country, having taken it over from his ailing brother Fidel.)<br />
<br />
===North Korea===<br />
<br />
[[North Korea]]'s form of communism is in the form of "Juche" - a doctrine established by [[Kim Il Sung]] and carried on by his son [[Kim Jong Il]] and after his death by the current leader [[Kim Jong-un]]. Although it is investing heavily in nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, extreme poverty on the verge of starvation is the fate of the people, who are very tightly controlled. The country has little to no electrical power at night outside the capital, which can be verified by looking at nighttime satellite photos. <ref>http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=87488</ref><br />
<br />
===Venezuela===<br />
<br />
The socialist policies of president-for-life Hugo Chavez have destroyed the economy of that oil-rich nation. In 2009, he seized the Venezuelan operations of U.S. based Cargill in order to tighten his grip on the shrinking food supply in his country. <ref>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/4938993/Venezuelas-Hugo-Chavez-tightens-state-control-of-food-amid-rocketing-inflation-and-food-shortages.html</ref> After the death of Chavez, [[Nicolás Maduro]] continues his politics.<br />
<br />
===Other Countires===<br />
[[Daniel Ortega]], the dictator of [[Nicaragua]], is a strong ally of Venezuela and Cuba. [[China]] and [[Vietnam]] have abolished the Socialist economy but are still governed by Communist parties. Other countries who are controlled by Socialist parties are [[Laos]], [[Angola]], [[Mozambique]] and [[Moldova]].<br />
<br />
==Quotes==<br />
Some quotes on socialism by historical figures and great thinkers.<br />
<br />
* "[[Socialist]]s can provide you shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you are ill, all the things guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave." -- [[President]] [[Ronald Reagan]]<br />
<br />
* "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the [[income redistribution|equal sharing]] of misery." -- [[Winston Churchill]]<br />
<br />
* "I've always doubted that the socialists had a leg to stand on intellectually" -- [[Friedrich Hayek]]<br />
<br />
* "The trouble is with socialism, which resembles a form of [[mental illness]] more than it does a philosophy" -- L. Neil Smith<br />
<br />
* "Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean — [[Nanny state|power over people]], [[Police state|power to the State]]." -- [[Margaret Thatcher]]<br />
<br />
* "All socialism involves [[slavery]]" -- Herbert Spencer<br />
<br />
* "Of all tyrannies, a [[tyranny]] [[exercise]]d for the good of its victims may be the most [[oppressive]]. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis<br />
<br />
* "Socialism is based on [[envy]] and eventually always creates a very powerful [[big government]] controlled by very mediocre people who envy any success and destroy it." -- Vlad<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
*[[List of Socialist States]]<br />
*[[Nazism and socialism]]<br />
*[[Essay:Resisting Socialist Landfills]]<br />
*[[Champagne socialist]]<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
*[http://www.mises.org/etexts/hayekintellectuals.pdf The Intellectuals and Socialism], By F.A. Hayek, ''The University of Chicago Law Review'', (Spring 1949), pp. 417-420, 421-423, 425-433. <br />
*[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109587/socialism Socialism] Encyclopædia Britannica.<br />
*[http://www.aim.org/wls/category/socialism/ What Liberals Say - Category: Socialism], [[Accuracy In Media]]<br />
<br />
==Bibliography==<br />
* Busky, Donald F. ''Communism in History and Theory: From Utopian Socialism to the Fall of the Soviet Union'' (2002) [http://www.amazon.com/Communism-History-Theory-Utopian-Socialism/dp/027597748X/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232396722&sr=1-24 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Dougherty, Jude P. "Socialist Man: A Psychological Profile," ''Modern Age'' Volume 46, Number 1-2; Winter/Spring 2004 [http://www.mmisi.org/ma/46_1-2/dougherty.pdf online edition], a conservative critique<br />
*Laslett, John, ed. ''Failure of a Dream: Essays in the History of American Socialism'' (1984)<br />
* Lindemann, Albert S. ''A History of European Socialism'' (1984)<br />
* Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Gary Marks. ''It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States'' (2001), Lipset was a leading conservative scholar [http://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Happen-Here-Socialism-Failed/dp/0393322548/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232396722&sr=1-21 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Malia, Martin. ''Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia'' (1995) [http://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Tragedy-History-Socialism-Russia/dp/0684823136/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228761853&sr=1-4 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Muravchik, Joshua. ''Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism'' (2003) by conservative historian [http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Earth-Rise-Fall-Socialism/dp/1893554783/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228761601&sr=1-21 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Novak, Michael. ''Capitalism and Socialism: A Theological Inquiry '' (1988) [http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Socialism-Theological-Michael-Novak/dp/0844721549/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228761601&sr=1-19 excerpt and text search], bu leading conservative scholar<br />
* Nove, Alec. ''An Economic History of the USSR 1917-1991'' (3rd ed. 1993) <br />
* Pipes, Richard. ''Communism: A History'' (2003), by a leading conservative <br />
* Suny, Ronald Grigor. ''The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States.'' (1998) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=24265044# online edition]<br />
<br />
{{Liberalism}}<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
{{reflist|2}}<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Socialism]]<br />
[[Category:Marxist terminology]]<br />
[[Category:Oppression]]<br />
[[Category: Anti-American]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&diff=1101907Adolf Hitler2014-08-29T00:27:14Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Dictator bio<br />
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]<br />
| name =Adolf Hitler<br />
| birth =April 20, 1889<br/>Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary<br />
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber)<br/>Klara Pölzl<br />
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected)<br />
| spouse =Eva Braun<br />
| children =none<br />
| death =April 30, 1945<br/>Berlin, Germany <br />
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot<br />
| education =Realschule<br/>Linz, Austria<br />
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]<br />
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment<br/>Imperial German Army (1914-1918)<br />
| rank =''Obergefreiter'' (Lance Corporal/Private First Class)<br />
|burial = none, burned.<br />
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]]<br/>[[National socialism]] (Nazism)<br />
| party =German Workers' Party<br/>(Deutsche Arbeiterpartei 1920–1921)<br/>National Socialist German Workers' Party<br/>(Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei 1921–1945)<br />
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933<br />
| war =[[World War II]]<br />
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties<br />
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether<br />
<br />
Rummel: 21,000,000<br />
}}<br />
'''Adolf Hitler''' was the Austrian-born Chancellor of [[Germany]] from January 30, 1933, and dictator of [[Nazi Germany]] from August 2, 1934 (as [[Der Führer]]) until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader (German: ''Der Führer'') of the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (''National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'', or [[Nazi]] Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. He was born a Catholic, but he never took religion seriously beyond initially rebelling against his Catholic father by showing preferences for Lutheran Protestantism in predominantly Catholic Austria, as well as using quasi-religious rhetoric in Mein Kampf and in speeches in order to not lose potential religious supporters. He was far more interested in [[Social Darwinism]]. After having minor wounds from an assassination bombing attempt, Hitler abused drugs originally intended to help with his injuries long after he had recovered from his injuries. <br />
<br />
Hitler in his youth was an financially-irresponsible Bohemian (a German word of the time roughly the same as [[Hippy]]) who became broke after spending his father's inheritance wandering around Austria as a watercolour artist, practicing [[vegetarianism]], and rarely attempting to seek serious employment. Hitler worked with a Jewish art dealer and after being rejected entry into Vienna's leading art school due to his unoriginal art, Hitler was a complete failure and completely broke. Rather than accept responsibility for his Bohemian lifestyle, Hitler in denial and increasing signs of the mental illness of [[psychosis]], followed the political current in Europe at the time of blaming Jews for exploiting him. [[Anti-Semitism]] had become a significant phenomenon in Germany ever since [[Martin Luther]] during his severe mental illness at the end of his life had become anti-Semitic. But anti-Semites in Germany refused to acknowledge that Luther prior to the onset of mental illness was highly sympathetic towards Jews. It was adopted by a number of misguided conservative Protestants who were not aware of Luther's mental state when he became anti-Semitic. Hitler being rebellious to his Catholic father took up a brief interest in Lutheranism and may have been influenced by Luther's anti-Semitic remarks. Hitler without any prospects sought to be conscripted into the German Army (but refused to serve the Austrian army due to many Jews being in it), there Hitler mixed his anti-Semitic views with some of the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran conservative nationalist aspects (that left-wing historians exaggerate by calling Hitler "far right") in order to be accepted amongst conservative German army officers but also began to adopt radical socialist ideas as revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and elsewhere grew in strength.<br />
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After World War I, Hitler behaved as a political opportunist - he played up conservative German themes to his army officers and was sent to investigate a bizarre radical party called the German Workers' Party that used the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran nationalist theme in combination with a revolutionary socialist agenda that denounced Jews as being responsible for capitalism, exploitation of Germany, and for Germany losing World War I. It was anti-Marxist - though only because [[Karl Marx]] was a Jew and due to their anti-Semitic hatred, and saw Marx as no different than capitalist Jews. The Party was disorganized and Hitler with his strong anti-Semitism took advantage of the situation and used demagoguery to raise himself in the party, and make himself leader of the party that was then named the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party in short form). He used the party and its members to exact revenge for his psychotic perception of Jews and capitalists as having ruined him in his youth, along with his megalomaniac and psychotic view of himself as being the "Leader" (German: ''Fuhrer'') of Germany. Many Nazis were highly mentally-ill people with delusions of grandeur of both themselves and Germany, such as [[Heinrich Himmler]], and especially [[Hermann Goring]] who was a morphine addict and an animal rights activist who preferred to have Jews used for scientific experiments.<br />
<br />
Due to the thematic influence of the historic anti-Semitic faction of conservative Lutheran extremists on the Nazi movement, left-wing Marxist historians have exaggerated the role of conservative Lutherans in the Nazi movement and because of it claim that the Nazis are "far right". They completely ignore and deny the far left socialist parts of the Nazis, out of political dogmatism just as the Nazis themselves completely denied the socialist elements of Marxism because Marx was Jewish. And left-wing historians almost always neglect to note the very clear similarity of Hitler's loose Bohemian lifestyle as a youth to that of Hippies.<br />
<br />
Adolf Hitler was an [[Evolution|evolutionary]] [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler’s policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and reportedly ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker. <br />
<br />
==Early life==<br />
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Adolf Hitler.]]<br />
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.<br />
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When his father retired the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings. '' <ref> [http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.] {{dead link}}</ref><br />
<br />
==Who And What He Was==<br />
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich. <ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:<br />
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote><br />
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<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote> <br />
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{{Clear}}<br />
<br />
== Beliefs ==<br />
According to Albert Speer, Hitler never left the Catholic Church but was hostile to its teachings. He did admire its power. Hitler only mentioned [[Christianity]] in his speeches to gain votes and favor. Any voiced tolerance during the 1930s changed to targeted persecution, mainly of Protestant "resisters" to Nazism.<ref>McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich''. (2009) pp. 182, 183</ref><br />
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Although Hitler may have had some Christian rhetoric in his speeches, he certainly rejected it on a personal level. In the book, ''Hitler's Table Talk'', it reveals that Hitler thought of Christianity as a great "scourge" of history.<ref>http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm {{dead link}}</ref><br />
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=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===<br />
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''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]<br />
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[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (NAZI) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Adolf Hitler.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> ]]<br />
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:<br />
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a [[socialism|socialist]] state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...<br />
<br />
The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.<br />
<br />
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.<br />
<br />
De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}<br />
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=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]<br />
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[[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]<br />
The staunch [[evolution|evolutionist]] Stephen Gould admitted the following: <br />
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78).<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}<br />
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Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:<br />
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf''). <ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}<br />
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Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':<br />
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}<br />
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Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref> <br />
[[Image:5712dawkins.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|[[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[atheism|atheist]] and [[evolution|evolutionist]]. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]<br />
Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following:<br />
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society. <ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}<br />
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Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" /><br />
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[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:<br />
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.<br />
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[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.<br />
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There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}<br />
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[[Evolution|Evolutionist]] and [[atheism|atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref><br />
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== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==<br />
<br />
''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
!<br />
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto<br />
![[Nazi]] Party Platform<br />
!Analysis<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."<br />
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."<br />
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." <br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."<br />
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance." <br />
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished." <br />
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."<br />
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."<br />
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."<br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."<br />
|Central control of the financial system.<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."<br />
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."<br />
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c." <br />
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "<br />
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==War==<br />
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]<br />
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany’s defeat the following November.<br />
<br />
==Path to power==<br />
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors made up of civilian political leaders who betrayed the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.<br />
<br />
After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany’s defeat. In September 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers’ Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''); intrigued by the party’s apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member. He remained on the army payroll until he was discharged in March 1920. By then, Hitler had already devoted himself to improving the party’s propaganda, as well as his own position within.<br />
<br />
Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria’s traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was regarded as the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (“Popular Observer”), he spewed out propaganda. The meetings where he spoke grew from mere handfuls to hundreds, and then to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: [[Rudolf Hess]], [[Hermann Göring]], Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.<br />
<br />
Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, [[Ernst Röhm]], a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler’s rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the “Brown Shirts”, the violent squads used to attack socialists, battle communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army of the Party called the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'', abbreviated to SA.<br />
<br />
==The Beer Hall Putsch==<br />
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'etat (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail. <br />
<br />
The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would do eight months). <ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".<br />
<br />
===''Mein Kampf''===<br />
{{main|Mein Kampf}}<br />
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[evolutionist]] ideas.<br />
<br />
Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the Führer), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”<br />
<br />
From "Mein Kampf":<br />
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref> [http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.]</ref> }}<br />
<br />
{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref> [http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read. </ref><br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]<br />
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When he was released he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser’s opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.<br />
<br />
A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany’s leading nationalists, Alfred Hugenberg, whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.<br />
<br />
The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.<br />
<br />
==In power==<br />
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (but officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.<br />
<br />
===Night of the Long Knives===<br />
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]<br />
[[File:Diego Rivera, Hitler, Panel of Mural for the New Workers School, New York City, 1933..jpg|thumb|left|Hitler by [[Diego Rivera]], 1933.]]<br />
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army’s side, the three million-plus men of the [[SA]] and their leader, [[Ernst Röhm]], who wanted nothing less than to merge the SA into the much smaller army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm’s support by persuasion, but Hitler’s inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of SA leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref> The purge took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.<br />
<br />
On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.<br />
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''<br />
<br />
Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the SA leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of SA members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler’s actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler’s rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.<br />
<br />
===Beginnings of expansion===<br />
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany’s enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.<br />
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondie.]]<br />
Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany’s limited ambitious nature.<br />
<br />
While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.<br />
<br />
The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebecite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.<br />
<br />
==Anschluss==<br />
<br />
Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.<br />
<br />
While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia. <br />
<br />
==Poland==<br />
Poland’s turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. <br />
<br />
Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien’s plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium’s Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France’s Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.<br />
<br />
On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.<br />
<br />
Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.<br />
<br />
Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.<br />
<br />
==Barbarossa==<br />
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micro-managing military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.<br />
<br />
In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler’s new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref><br />
<br />
==Beginning of the end==<br />
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]<br />
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.<br />
<br />
But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler’s relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.<br />
<br />
===Assassination attempt===<br />
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]<br />
Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.<br />
<br />
Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.<br />
<br />
On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.<br />
<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler: <br />
{{cquote|Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}<br />
<br />
All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.<br />
<br />
==Death==<br />
On the afternoon of April 30, 1945 as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the center of Berlin, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography''. (2008) p. 955</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180</ref><ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945''. (2002) p. 359</ref> The majority of contemporary historians have rejected the other accounts of Hitler's demise or reported escape from Berlin as either Soviet propaganda or surmise.<ref>Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref> Following the end of the war, because of the different versions presented by the Soviet Union as to Hitler being dead and alive, both British Military Intelligence (led by agent Hugh Trevor-Roper) and the FBI conducted investigations as to the different claims made. The declassified information from British MI5, confirmed that Hitler shot himself.<ref>https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/world-war-ii/hitlers-last-days.html</ref> The declassified FBI documents report that Hitler and Eva Braun may have actually escaped to Argentina in a submarine and changed his identity. However, as the report states, "because of lack of information to support the story advanced...it is believed impossible to continue efforts to locate Hitler".<ref>http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view</ref> More recently in 2009, American researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on the skull fragment the Russians claim was from Hitler. The tests revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under 40 years of age who was not related to Eva Braun. However, the jaw fragments which had been recovered and identified as Hitler's<ref>Eberle and Uhl. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref> were not tested by the American researcher.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/hitler.skull.debate/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD</ref> Therefore, most historians are very skeptical as to these popular conspiracy theories, in particular because there are credible witnesses, who saw the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.<ref>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref><ref>Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte''. (2008) p. 47</ref><br />
<br />
== Adolf Hitler and Abortion ==<br />
<br />
''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Adolf Hitler]]<br />
<br />
In 1942 Adolf Hitler declared:<br />
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. <ref>http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
<br />
*[[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]<br />
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From Mein Kampf by Hitler]<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.] Full text.<br />
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Adolf Hitler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]<br />
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]<br />
<br />
==Further reading==<br />
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.] Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
{{reflist|2}}<br />
<br />
==Sources==<br />
<small>*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.</small><br />
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{{DEFAULTSORT: Hitler, Adolf}} <br />
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[[Category:Dictators]]<br />
[[Category:Atheists]]<br />
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Evolutionists]]<br />
[[Category:Totalitarianism]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:Evolutionary Racists]]<br />
[[Category:War criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Socialists]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Der_F%C3%BChrer&diff=1101906Der Führer2014-08-29T00:26:44Z<p>CGL: Redirected page to Der Fuhrer</p>
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<div>#REDIRECT [[Der Fuhrer]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Der_Fuhrer&diff=1101905Der Fuhrer2014-08-29T00:26:27Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>'''Der Führer''', literally "The Leader", was the name that [[Adolf Hitler]] used for ruler when he became the ruler of [[Germany]].<br />
[[Category:World War II]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=German_Empire&diff=1095816German Empire2014-07-27T22:13:01Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>{{Country<br />
|name =''Deutsches Kaiserreich''<br/>1871-1918<br />
|map =German empire 1917.jpg<br />
|flag =Flag of the German Empire.png<br />
|arms =<br />
|capital =Berlin<br />
|capital-raw =<br />
|government =Constitutional monarchy<br />
|government-raw =<br />
|language =German<br />
|king =<br />
|queen =<br />
|monarch-raw =[[Wilhelm II]] (last)<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw =<br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw =[[Friedrich Ebert]] (last)<br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =208,826 sq mi<br />
|pop =64,925,993 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1910<br />
|gdp = <br />
|gdp-year =<br />
|gdp-pc = <br />
|currency =Goldmark, Papiermark <br />
|idd =<br />
|tld =<br />
}}<br />
The '''German Empire''' (''Deutsches Kaiserreich'') dominated central Europe, 1871-1918. It was established by Chancellor [[Otto von Bismarck]] in 1871 following the triumph of [[Prussia]] and its allies over [[France]] in the 1870 [[Franco-Prussian War]]. The unification of the German states (excluding [[Austria]]) into one entity was the culmination of Bismarck's policy . <br />
<br />
The empire was dissolved in 1918 with the abdication of [[Kaiser Wilhelm II]], the country's defeat in [[World War I]], and the subsequent formation of the German Republic.<br />
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==The German Confederation, 1815-66==<br />
The Congress of Vienna (1814-15), convened after Napoleon's defeat, sought to restore order to a Europe disrupted by revolutionary and imperial France. Its members' objective was a constellation of states and a balance of power that would ensure peace and stability after a quarter-century of revolution and war. In addition to the delegates of many small states, the congress included representatives of five large European states: Austria, Prussia, Russia, Britain, and France. After months of deliberations, the congress established an international political order that was to endure for nearly 100 years and that brought Europe a measure of peace.<br />
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The congress made no effort to restore the Holy Roman Empire and its 300-odd states. Instead, it accepted the disappearance of many small states that had occurred since 1789 and created the German Confederation. The confederation consisted of thirty-eight sovereign states and four free cities and included the five large kingdoms of Austria, Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, and Württemberg (see fig. 4). The confederation met at a diet in Frankfurt, with an Austrian always serving as president.<br />
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Prince [[Clemens von Metternich]], who directed Austria's foreign policy from 1809 until 1848, was the dominant political figure within the confederation. He waged a decades-long campaign to prevent the spread of revolution in Europe by seeking to restore much of the political and social order that had existed before the French Revolution. Metternich's Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 established a pervasive system of press censorship and regulation of the universities that dampened German intellectual life and hindered the publication of writings advocating the principles of liberalism. In the 1820s, he engineered the formation of the Holy Alliance of the monarchs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia to quash political, social, and economic developments within Central and Eastern Europe thought to threaten political stability.<br />
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====Economic and Political Trends Toward Unification====<br />
It was not possible for Metternich and his allies to suppress completely the desire for liberal reforms, including the establishment of constitutional parliamentary government, economic freedom, and civil liberties. Some of these reforms had already been under discussion during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and awareness of their desirability had spread during the Napoleonic era. In addition, the economic reforms introduced into the Rhineland by France had taken hold. The business class that formed after 1815 pressed for abolition of restrictive trade practices favored by traditional handicraft guilds. Businessmen also sought a common currency and system of measurements for Germany, as well as a reduction of the numerous tolls that made road and river travel expensive and slow.<br />
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During the 1820s, significant progress was made in reducing customs duties among German states. At Prussian instigation, the Zollverein (Customs Union) began to form, and by the mid-1830s it included all the most important German states except Austria. Prussia saw to it that its chief rival within Germany was excluded from the union. Vienna, for its part, did not realize at this early point the political and economic significance of intra-German trade.<br />
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Many of Germany's liberal intelligentsia--lower government officials, men of letters, professors, and lawyers--who pushed for representative government and greater political freedom were also interested in some form of German unity. They argued that liberal political reforms could only be enacted in a larger political entity. Germany's small, traditional states offered little scope for political reform.<br />
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Among those groups desiring reform, there was, ironically, little unity. Many businessmen were interested only in reforms that would facilitate commerce, and they gave little thought to politics. Political liberals were split into a number of camps. Some wished for a greater degree of political representation, but, given a widespread fear of what the masses might do if they had access to power, these liberals were content to have aristocrats as leaders. Others desired a democratic constitution, but with a hereditary king as ruler. A minority of liberals were ardent democrats who desired to establish a republic with parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage.<br />
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The ideal of a united Germany had been awakened within liberal groups by the writings of scholars and literary figures such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) and by the achievements of French nationalism after the revolution. France's easy victories over Germany's small states made the union of a people with a common language and historical memory desirable for practical reasons alone. Others were impressed by the political and commercial accomplishments of Britain, which made those of the small German states seem insignificant. Some writers warmed to romantic evocations of Germany's glory during the Middle Ages.<br />
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Many members of Germany's aristocratic ruling class were opposed to national unity because they feared it would mean the disappearance of their small states into a large Germany. Metternich opposed a united Germany because the Habsburg Empire did not embrace a single people speaking one language, but many peoples speaking different languages. The empire would not easily fit into a united Germany. He desired instead the continued existence of the loosely organized German Confederation with its forty-odd members, none equal to Austria in strength. Prussia's kings and its conservative elite sometimes objected to Austria's primacy in the confederation, but they had little desire for German unification, which they regarded as a potential threat to Prussia's existence.<br />
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Germany's lower classes--farmers, artisans, and factory workers--were not included in the discussions about political and economic reform. Germany's farmers had been freed to some degree from many obligations and dues owed to the landowning aristocracy, but they were often desperately poor, earning barely enough to survive. Farmers west of the Elbe River usually had properties too small to yield any kind of prosperity. Farmers east of the Elbe often were landless laborers hired to work on large estates. Artisans, that is, skilled workers in handicrafts and trades belonging to the traditional guilds, saw their economic position worsen as a result of the industrialization that had begun to appear in Germany after 1815. The guilds attempted to stop factory construction and unrestricted commerce, but strong economic trends ran counter to their wishes. Factory workers, in contrast, were doing well compared with these other groups and were generally content with their lot when the economy as a whole prospered.<br />
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===The Revolutions of 1848===<br />
Europe endured hard times during much of the 1840s. A series of bad harvests culminating in the potato blight of 1845-46 brought widespread misery and some starvation. An economic depression added to the hardship, spreading discontent among the poor and the middle class alike. A popular uprising in Paris in February 1848 turned into a revolution, forcing the French king Louis Philippe to flee to Britain.<br />
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The success of the revolution sparked revolts elsewhere in Europe. Numerous German cities were shaken by uprisings in which crowds consisting mainly of the urban poor, but also of students and members of the liberal middle class, stormed their rulers' palaces and demanded fundamental reform. Berlin and Vienna were especially hard hit by what came to be called the revolutions of 1848. The rulers of both cities, like rulers elsewhere, quickly acceded to the demands of their rebellious subjects and promised constitutions and representative government. Conservative governments fell, and Metternich fled to Britain. Liberals called for a national convention to draft a constitution for all of Germany. The National Assembly, consisting of about 800 delegates from throughout Germany, met in a church in Frankfurt, the Paulskirche, from May 1848 to March 1849 for this purpose.<br />
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===The Restoration===<br />
Within just a few months, liberal hopes for a reformed Germany were disappointed. Conservative forces saw that the liberal movement was divided into a number of camps having sharply different aims. Furthermore, the liberals had little support left among the lower classes, who had supported them in the first weeks of the revolution by constructing barricades and massing before their rulers' palaces. Few liberals desired popular democracy or were willing to enact radical economic reforms that would help farmers and artisans. As a result of this timidity, the masses deserted the liberals. Thus, conservatives were able to win sizable elements of these groups to their side by promising to address their concerns. Factory workers had largely withheld support from the liberal cause because they earned relatively good wages compared with farmers and artisans.<br />
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Once the conservatives regrouped and launched their successful counterattack across Germany, many of the reforms promised in March 1848 were forgotten. The National Assembly published the constitution it had drafted during months of hard debate. It proposed the unification of Germany as a federation with a hereditary emperor and a parliament with delegates elected directly. The constitution resolved the dispute between supporters of "Little Germany," that is, a united Germany that would exclude Austria and the Habsburg Empire, and those supporting "Large Germany," which would include both. The constitution advocated the latter.<br />
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The Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV (r. 1840-58), was elected united Germany's first emperor. He refused the crown, stating that he could be elected only by other kings. At that point, the assembly disbanded. A few subsequent rebellions by democratic liberals drew some popular support in 1849, but they were easily crushed and their leaders executed or imprisoned. Some of these ardent democrats fled to the United States. Among them was Carl Schurz, who later fought at the [[Battle of Gettysburg]] as a Union officer, served one term as a United States senator from [[Missouri]], and was appointed secretary of the interior by United States president [[Rutherford B. Hayes]].<br />
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The German Confederation was reestablished, and conservatives held the reins of power even more tightly than before. The failure of the 1848 revolutions also meant that Germany was not united as many had hoped. However, some of the liberals' more practical proposals came to fruition later in the 1850s and 1860s when it was realized that they were essential to economic efficiency. Many commercial restrictions were abolished. The guilds, with their desire to turn back the clock and restore preindustrial conditions, were defeated, and impediments to the free use of capital were reduced. The "hungry forties" gave way to the prosperity of the 1850s as the German economy modernized and laid the foundations for spectacular growth later in the century.<br />
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===Bismarck and Unification===<br />
Liberal hopes for German unification were not met during the politically turbulent 1848-49 period. A Prussian plan for a smaller union was dropped in late 1850 after Austria threatened Prussia with war. Despite this setback, desire for some kind of German unity, either with or without Austria, grew during the 1850s and 1860s. It was no longer a notion cherished by a few, but had proponents in all social classes. An indication of this wider range of support was the change of mind about German nationalism experienced by an obscure Prussian diplomat, Otto von Bismarck. He had been an adamant opponent of German nationalism in the late 1840s. During the 1850s, however, Bismarck had concluded that Prussia would have to harness German nationalism for its own purposes if it were to thrive. He believed too that Prussia's well-being depended on wresting primacy in Germany from its traditional enemy, Austria.<br />
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In 1862 King Wilhelm I of Prussia (r. 1858-88) chose Bismarck to serve as his minister president. Descended from the Junker, Prussia's aristocratic landowning class, Bismarck hated parliamentary democracy and championed the dominance of the monarchy and aristocracy. However, gifted at judging political forces and sizing up a situation, Bismarck contended that conservatives would have to come to terms with other social groups if they were to continue to direct Prussian affairs. The king had summoned Bismarck to direct Prussia's government in the face of the Prussian parliament's refusal to pass a budget because it disagreed with army reforms desired by the king and his military advisers. Although he could not secure parliament's consent to the government's budget, Bismarck was a tactician skilled and ruthless enough to govern without parlia-ment's consent from 1862 to 1866.<br />
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As an ardent and aggressive Prussian nationalist, Bismarck had long been an opponent of Austria because both states sought primacy within the same area--Germany. Austria had been weakened by reverses abroad, including the loss of territory in Italy, and by the 1860s, because of clumsy diplomacy, had no foreign allies outside Germany. Bismarck used a diplomatic dispute to provoke Austria to declare war on Prussia in 1866. Against expectations, Prussia quickly won the Seven Weeks' War (also known as the Austro-Prussian War) against Austria and its south German allies. Bismarck imposed a lenient peace on Austria because he recognized that Prussia might later need the Austrians as allies. But he dealt harshly with the other German states that had resisted Prussia and expanded Prussian territory by annexing Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, some smaller states, and the city of Frankfurt. The German Confederation was replaced by the North German Confederation and was furnished with both a constitution and a parliament. Austria was excluded from Germany. South German states outside the confederation--Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria--were tied to Prussia by military alliances.<br />
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Bismarck's military and political successes were remarkable, but the first had been achieved at considerable risk, and the second were by no means complete. Luck had played a part in the decisive victory at the Battle of Königgrätz (Hradec Králóve in the present-day Czech Republic); otherwise, the war might have lasted much longer than it did. None of the larger German states had supported either Prussia's war or the formation of the North German Confederation led by Prussia. The states that formed what is often called the Third Germany, that is, Germany exclusive of Austria and Prussia, did not desire to come under the control of either of those states. None of them wished to be pulled into a war that showed little likelihood of benefiting any of them. In the Seven Weeks' War, the support they gave Austria had been lukewarm.<br />
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In 1870 Bismarck engineered another war, this time against France. The conflict would become known to history as the Franco-Prussian War. Nationalistic fervor was ignited by the promised annexation of Lorraine and Alsace, which had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and had been seized by France in the seventeenth century. With this goal in sight, the south German states eagerly joined in the war against the country that had come to be seen as Germany's traditional enemy. Bismarck's major war aim--the voluntary entry of the south German states into a constitutional German nation-state--occurred during the patriotic frenzy generated by stunning military victories against French forces in the fall of 1870. Months before a peace treaty was signed with France in May 1871, a united Germany was established as the German Empire, and the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, was crowned its emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.<br />
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==Imperial Germany==<br />
The German Empire - often called the Second Reich to distinguish it from the First Reich, established by Charlemagne in 800 - was based on two compromises. The first was between the king of Prussia and the rulers of the other German states, who agreed to accept him as the kaiser (emperor) of a united Germany, provided they could continue to rule their states largely as they had in the past. The second was the agreement among many segments of German society to accept a unified Germany based on a constitution that combined a powerful authoritarian monarchy with a weak representative body, the Reichstag, elected by universal male suffrage. No one was completely satisfied with the bargain. The kaiser had to contend with a parliament elected by the people in a secret vote. The people were represented in a parliament having limited control over the kaiser.<br />
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As had been the tradition in Prussia, the kaiser controlled foreign policy and the army through his handpicked ministers, who formed the government and prepared legislation. The government was headed by a chancellor, also selected by the kaiser, who served in this post at the kaiser's pleasure and could be dismissed by him at any time. The Bundesrat (Federal Council) represented Germany's princes. About one-third of its seats were held by Prussians. Conceived as an upper house to the Reichstag, the Bundesrat, like the Reichstag, was required to vote on legislation drawn up by the government before it became law. The Reichstag had no power to draft legislation. In addition, the government's actions were not subject to the Reichstag's approval, and the government was not drawn from the Reichstag, as is ordinarily the case in parliamentary democracies.<br />
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The government needed the approval of the Bundesrat and the Reichstag to enact legislative proposals, and the kaiser and his chancellor had many means of securing this approval. Conservative in nature, the Bundesrat was usually docile and needed little wooing. Compliant in the early years of the empire, the Reichstag, by contrast, became less so with time. The easiest means of controlling the Reichstag was to threaten it with new elections in the hope of getting a legislative body more attuned to the intentions of the government. During elections the government campaigned for the parties it favored, sometimes cynically conjuring up fears of national catastrophe if particular parties won many seats. The government also bargained with parties, granting them what they sought in exchange for votes. A last means of taming the Reichstag was to spread rumors of a possible coup d'état by the army and the repeal of the constitution and universal suffrage. This technique was used repeatedly in imperial Germany and could even frighten the conservative Bundesrat. However little many of the Reichstag members might like the empire's political order, the prospect of naked despotism pleased them even less.<br />
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Although the Reichstag did not wield real power, elections to it were hotly contested, and Bismarck and later chancellors and governments were concerned with their outcome. As more-democratic parties came to dominate in the Reichstag, governing became more difficult for the kaiser and his officials. During the later decades of the reign of Wilhelm II (r. 1888-1918), the empire's governing system experienced such difficulties that some conservatives advocated scrapping it, and democrats argued for a new, truly parliamentary system. A fear of these drastic choices and their possible effects caused Germany to muddle through with the existing system until the disaster of World War I culminated in that system's abolition.<br />
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===Political Parties===<br />
Six major political parties were active in imperial Germany: the Conservative Party, the Free Conservative Party, the National Liberal Party, the Progressive Party, the Center Party, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (''Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands'', SPD). Only the SPD survived both the empire and the [[Weimar Republic]] (1918-33) and came to play a vital role in the Federal Republic. Even though the German Empire lacked a genuinely democratic system, the six main parties accurately reflected the interests and hopes of most of its people.<br />
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The most right-wing of the six parties was the Conservative Party, which represented Prussian nationalism, aristocracy, and landed property. Many of its members remained opposed to German unification because they feared Prussia's gradual absorption by the empire. The Conservatives also detested the Reichstag because it was elected by universal suffrage. The Free Conservative Party represented industrialists and large commercial interests. The views of this party most closely matched those of Bismarck. Its members supported unification because they saw it as unavoidable. The National Liberal Party was composed of liberals who had accepted Germany's lack of full democracy because they valued national unity more. They continued to favor a laissez-faire economic policy and secularization. In time, National Liberals became some of the strongest supporters of the acquisition of colonies and a substantial naval buildup, both key issues in the 1880s and 1890s.<br />
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Unlike the members of the National Liberal Party, members of the Progressive Party remained faithful to all the principles of European liberalism and championed the extension of parliament's powers. This party was in the forefront of those opposed to the authoritarian rule of Bismarck and his successors. The Center Party was Germany's Roman Catholic party and had strong support in southern Germany, the Rhineland, and in parts of Prussia with significant Polish populations. It was conservative regarding monarchical authority but progressive in matters of social reform. Bismarck's brutal campaign against the Roman Catholic Church in the 1870s--the Kulturkampf (cultural struggle), an attempt to reduce the church's power over education and its role in many other areas of German society--turned the Center Party against him. By the late 1870s, Bismarck had to concede victory to the party, which had become stronger through its resistance to the government's persecution. The party remained important during the Weimar Republic and was the forerunner of the Federal Republic's moderate conservative parties, the Christian Democratic Union (''Christlich Demokratische Union'', CDU) and the Christian Social Union (''Christlich-Soziale Union'', CSU).<br />
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The Marxist SPD was founded in Gotha in 1875, a fusion of Ferdinand Lassalle's General German Workers' Association (formed in 1863), which advocated state socialism, and the Social Democratic Labor Party (formed in 1869), headed by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, which aspired to establish a classless communist society. The SPD advocated a mixture of revolution and quiet work within the parliamentary system. The clearest statement of this impossible combination was the Erfurt Program of 1891. The former method frightened nearly all Germans to the party's right, while the latter would build the SPD into the largest party in the Reichstag after the elections of 1912.<br />
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Once Bismarck gave up his campaign against Germany's Roman Catholics, whom he had seen for a time as a Vatican-controlled threat to the stability of the empire, he attacked the SPD with a series of antisocialist laws beginning in 1878. A positive aspect of Bismarck's campaign to contain the SPD was a number of laws passed in the 1880s establishing national health insurance and old-age pensions. Bismarck's hope was that if workers were protected by the government, they would come to support it and see no need for revolution. Bismarck's antisocialist campaign, which continued until his dismissal in 1890 by Wilhelm II, severely restricted the activities of the SPD. Ironically, the laws may have inadvertently benefited the SPD by forcing it to work within legal channels. As a result of its sustained activity within the political system, the SPD became a cautious, pragmatic party, which, despite its fiery Marxist rhetoric, won increasing numbers of seats in the Reichstag and achieved some improvements in working and living conditions for Germany's working class.<br />
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===Economy===<br />
Germany experienced an economic boom immediately after unification. For the first time, the country was a single economic entity, and old impediments to internal trade were lifted. The federal chancellery published a new commercial code and established a uniform currency. The indemnity that France had to pay Germany after losing the 1870-71 war provided capital for railroad construction and building projects. A speculative boom resulted, characterized by large-scale formation of joint-stock companies and unscrupulous investment practices. This period of intense financial speculation and construction, called by Germans the Gründerzeit (founders' time), ended with the stock market crash of 1873.<br />
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Despite the crash and several subsequent periods of economic depression, Germany's economy grew rapidly. By 1900 it rivaled the more-established British economy as the world's largest. German coal production, about one-third of Britain's in 1880, increased sixfold by 1913, almost equaling British yields that year. German steel production increased more than tenfold in the same period, surpassing British production by far.<br />
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Industrialization began later in Germany than in Britain, and the German economy was not a significant part of the world economy until late in the nineteenth century. Germany's industrialization started with the building of railroads in the 1840s and 1850s and the subsequent development of coal mining and iron and steel production, activities that made up what is called the First Industrial Revolution. In Germany, the Second Industrial Revolution, that is, the growth of chemical and electrical industries, followed the enormous expansion of coal and steel production so closely that the country can be said to have experienced the two revolutions almost simultaneously. Germany took an early lead in the chemical and electrical industries. Its chemists became renowned for their discoveries, and by 1914 the country was producing half the world's electrical equipment. As a result of these developments, Germany became the continent's industrial giant.<br />
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===Population===<br />
Germany's population also expanded rapidly, growing from 41.0 million in 1871 to 49.7 million in 1891 and 65.3 million in 1911. The expanding and industrializing economy changed the way this rapidly expanding population earned its livelihood. In 1871 about 49 percent of the workforce was engaged in agriculture; by 1907 only 35 percent was. In the same period, industry's share of the rapidly growing workforce rose from 31 percent to 40 percent. Urban birth rates were often the country's highest, but there was much migration from rural areas to urban areas, where most industry was located. Berlin, by far the country's largest city and a major industrial center, grew from almost 1 million inhabitants in 1875 to 2 million in 1910. Many smaller cities, especially those in areas with much industry--such as the Ruhr region, the upper Rhine Valley, the Neckar Valley, and Saxony--tripled or quadrupled in size during this period.<br />
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===The Tariff Agreement of 1879 and Its Social Consequences===<br />
The crash of 1873 and the subsequent depression began the gradual dissolution of Bismarck's alliance with the National Liberals that had begun after his triumphs of 1866. In the late 1870s, Bismarck began negotiations with the economically protectionist Conservative Party and Center Party toward the formation of a new government coalition. Conservative electoral gains and National Liberal losses in 1879 brought a conservative coalition to power. Bismarck then abandoned his former allies in the National Liberal Party and put in place a system of tariffs that benefited the landed gentry of eastern Prussia - threatened by imports of cheaper grains from Russia and the United States - and industrialists who were afraid to compete with cheaper foreign manufactured goods and who believed they needed more time to establish themselves.<br />
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Bismarck's alliance with the Prussian landowning class and powerful industrialists and the parties representing their interests had profound social effects. From that point on, conservative groups had the upper hand in German society. The German middle class began to imitate its conservative social superiors rather than attempt to impose its own liberal, middle-class values on Germany. The prestige of the military became so great that many middle-class males sought to enhance their social standing by becoming officers in the reserves. The middle classes also became more susceptible to the nationalistic clamor for colonies and "a place in the sun" that was to become ever more virulent in the next few decades.<br />
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===Bismarck's Foreign Policy===<br />
Bismarck sincerely regarded the new German Empire as "satiated," that is, having no desire to expand further and hence posing no threat to its neighbors. The chancellor held that the country had to adjust to its new circumstances and that this would take decades. For this reason, he sought to convince the other European states of Germany's desire to live in peace, hoping thereby to secure Germany against attack. He aimed to arrange this security through a system of alliances. Believing that France would remain Germany's enemy because of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, an action he had opposed because of the enmity it would cause, he turned to other states.<br />
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Bismarck arranged an alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1879 and one with Italy in 1882. His triumph, however, was a secret alliance he formed by means of the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1887, although its terms violated the spirit of the treaty with Austria-Hungary. However much these agreements contributed to German security, Bismarck's plunge into the European scramble for overseas colonies ultimately weakened it by awakening British fears about Germany's long-term geopolitical aims. Subsequent feelers he put out with a view to establishing an understanding with Britain were rebuffed. In 1890 Bismarck was dismissed by young Kaiser Wilhelm over a dispute about antisocialist legislation.<br />
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===Foreign Policy in the Wilhelmine Era===<br />
Foreign policy in the Wilhelmine Era (1890-1914) turned away from Bismarck's cautious diplomacy of the 1871-90 period. It was also marked by a shrill aggressiveness. Brusque, clumsy diplomacy was backed by increased armaments production, most notably the creation of a large fleet of battleships capable of challenging the British navy. This new bellicosity alarmed the rest of Europe, and by about 1907 German policy makers had succeeded in creating Bismarck's nightmare: a Germany "encircled" by an alliance of hostile neighbors - in this case Russia, France, and Britain - in an alliance called the Triple Entente.<br />
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The first brick to fall out of Bismarck's carefully crafted edifice was Germany's Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. Harmed by Prussian trade policies, Russia did not renew the treaty and instead turned to France for economic assistance and military security. The two countries formally allied in early 1893. Britain joined them in 1907, even though France and Britain had nearly gone to war over a colonial dispute in 1898. Britain's main reason for abandoning its usual posture as an aloof observer of developments on the continent was Germany's plan to build a fleet of sixty battleships of the formidable Dreadnought class.<br />
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The German naval expansion program had many domestic supporters. The kaiser deeply admired the navy of his grandmother, Queen Victoria of Britain, and wanted one as large for himself. Powerful lobbying groups in Germany desired a large navy to give Germany a worldwide role and to protect a growing German colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific. Industry wanted large government contracts. Some political parties promoted naval expansion and an aggressive foreign policy to win votes from a nervous electorate they kept worked up with jingoistic rhetoric.<br />
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The chief figure in promoting the naval buildup was Admiral [[Alfred von Tirpitz]], who is considered the founder of the modern German navy. Tirpitz was an effective spokesman for the program and had the ear of the kaiser and his advisers. In 1898, after the Reichstag passed the first Naval Bill, Anglo-German relations deteriorated. The Supplementary Naval Act of 1900 further strained relations with Britain, as did a proposed Berlin-Baghdad railroad through the Ottoman Empire, a project that threatened British as well as Russian interests in the Balkans. Two crises over Morocco, in 1905 and 1911, drove France and Britain closer together and made for a tense international atmosphere. The great powers remained neutral during the Balkan Wars (1912-13), a nationalist rebellion against Ottoman rule, but European tensions were increased still further, and the expectation that there would eventually be war on the continent became more certain.<br />
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==World War I==<br />
The assassination of Archduke [[Franz Ferdinand]] in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, set off a series of diplomatic and military decisions that would end peace in Europe. The kaiser gave a so-called blank check to his ally, Austria-Hungary, saying that Germany would support any Habsburg measure taken against [[Serbia]], which had backed the assassination. Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia in late July was so harsh that war became inevitable. Within days, a set of interlocking alliances had Europe's great powers embroiled in what would become World War I.<br />
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Germany's leadership had hoped for a limited war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. But because Russian forces had been mobilized in support of Serbia, the German leadership made the decision to support its ally. The Schlieffen Plan, based on the assumption that Germany would face a two-front war because of a French-Russian alliance, required a rapid invasion through neutral Belgium to ensure the quick defeat of France. Once the western front was secure, the bulk of German forces could attack and defeat Russia, which would not yet be completely ready for war because it would mobilize its gigantic forces slowly.<br />
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Despite initial successes, Germany's strategy failed, and its troops became tied down in trench warfare in France. For the next four years, there would be little progress in the west, where advances were usually measured in meters rather than in kilometers. Under the command of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, the army scored a number of significant victories against Russia. But it was only in early 1918 that Russia was defeated. Even after this victory in the east, however, Germany remained mired in a long war for which it had not prepared.<br />
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Germany's war aims were annexationist in nature and foresaw an enlarged Germany, with Belgium and Poland as vassal states and with colonies in Africa. In its first years, there was widespread support for the war. Even the SPD supported it, considering it a defensive effort and voting in favor of war credits. By 1916, however, opposition to the war had mounted within the general population, which had to endure many hardships, including food shortages. A growing number of Reichstag deputies came to demand a peace without annexations. Frustrated in its quest for peace, in April 1917 a segment of the SPD broke with the party and formed the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. In July the Reichstag passed a resolution calling for a peace without annexations. In its wake, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg was forced to resign, and Hindenburg and Ludendorff came to exercise a control over Germany until late 1918 that amounted to a virtual military dictatorship.<br />
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Military leaders refused a moderate peace because they were convinced until very late in the war that victory ultimately would be theirs. Another reason for their insistence on a settlement that fulfilled expansionist aims was that the government had not financed the war with higher taxes but with bonds. Taxes had been seen as unnecessary because it was expected that the government would redeem these bonds after the war with payments from Germany's vanquished enemies. Thus, only an expansionist victory would keep the state solvent and save millions of German bondholders from financial ruin.<br />
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After the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, Russia and Germany began peace negotiations. In March 1918, the two countries signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The defeat of Russia enabled Germany to transfer troops from the eastern to the western front. Two large offensives in the west were met by an Allied counteroffensive that began in July. German troops were pressed back, and it became evident to many officers that Germany could not win the war. In September Ludendorff recommended that Germany sue for peace. In October extensive reforms democratized the Reichstag and gave Germany a constitutional monarchy. A coalition of progressive forces was formed, headed by SPD politician Friedrich Ebert. The military allowed the birth of a democratic parliament because it did not want to be held responsible for the inevitable armistice that would end the war on terms highly unfavorable to Germany. Instead, the civilian government that signed the truce was to take the blame for the nation's defeat.<br />
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The political reforms of October were overshadowed by a popular uprising that began on November 3 when sailors in Kiel mutinied. They refused to go out on what they considered a suicide mission against British naval forces. The revolt grew quickly and within a week appeared to be burgeoning into a revolution that could well overthrow the established social order. On November 9, the kaiser was forced to abdicate, and the SPD proclaimed a republic. A provisional government headed by Ebert promised elections for a national assembly to draft a new constitution. In an attempt to control the popular uprising, Ebert agreed to back the army if it would suppress the revolt. On November 11, the government signed the armistice that ended the war. Germany's loses included about 1.6 million dead and more than 4 million wounded.<br />
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Signed in June 1919, the [[Treaty of Versailles]] limited Germany to an army of 100,000 soldiers; it stipulated that the Rhineland be demilitarized and occupied by the western Allies for fifteen years. Germany was to surrender Alsace-Lorraine, northern Schleswig-Holstein, a portion of western Prussia that became known as the Polish Corridor because it gave Poland access to the Baltic, and all overseas colonies. An Allied Reparations Commission was established and charged with setting the amount of war-damage payments that would be demanded of Germany. And, most infuriatingly, the treaty also included the "war guilt clause," ascribing responsibility for World War I to Germany and Austria-Hungary. The clause would lay the seeds for the rise of the [[Nazi Party]], which would ultimately take power in Germany and cause another major war two decades later.<br />
==See also==<br />
* [[Kaiser Wilhelm II]]<br />
* [[Otto von Bismarck]]<br />
* [[Prussia]]<br />
==Further reading==<br />
* Blackbourn, David, and Geoff Eley. ''The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany'' (1984) [http://www.questia.com/read/27706474 online edition] <br />
* Clark, Christopher. ''Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947'' (2009), standard scholarly history<br />
* Craig, Gordon A. ''Germany, 1866-1945'' (1978) [http://www.questia.com/library/book/germany-1866-1945-by-gordon-a-craig.jsp online edition]<br />
* Holborn, Hajo. ''A History of Modern Germany'' (1964) vol 3. 1840-1945<br />
* Maehl, William Harvey. ''Germany in Western Civilization'' (1979), 833pp<br />
* Mann, Golo. ''History of Germany since 1789'' (1968), very well written<br />
* Mommsen, Wolfgang J. ''Imperial Germany 1867-1918: Politics, Culture and Society in an Authoritarian State'' (1995) <br />
* Reinhardt, Kurt F. ''Germany: 2000 Years'' (2 vols., 1961), stress on cultural topics<br />
* Retallack, James. ''Germany in the Age of Kaiser Wilhelm II'' (1996) [http://www.amazon.com/Germany-Wilhelm-Studies-European-History/dp/0312160313/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201322874&sr=8-11 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Sheehan, James J. ''German History, 1770-1866'' (1993), the major survey in English [http://www.amazon.com/German-History-1770-1866-Oxford-Modern/dp/0198204329/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201322874&sr=8-8 except and text search] <br />
* Taylor, A. J. P. ''The Course of German History: A Survey of the Development of German History since 1815.'' (2001). 280pp; [http://www.questia.com/read/107459655 online edition]<br />
* Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. ''The German Empire 1871-1918'' (1984), by the elading German historian of the era <br />
<br />
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[[Category:German History]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=German_Empire&diff=1095815German Empire2014-07-27T22:11:13Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Country<br />
|name =''Deutsches Reich''<br/>1871-1918<br />
|map =German empire 1917.jpg<br />
|flag =Flag of the German Empire.png<br />
|arms =<br />
|capital =Berlin<br />
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|government =Constitutional monarchy<br />
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|language =German<br />
|king =<br />
|queen =<br />
|monarch-raw =[[Wilhelm II]] (last)<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw =<br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw =[[Friedrich Ebert]] (last)<br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =208,826 sq mi<br />
|pop =64,925,993 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1910<br />
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|currency =Goldmark, Papiermark <br />
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}}<br />
The '''German Empire''' (''Deutsches Reich'') dominated central Europe, 1871-1918. It was established by Chancellor [[Otto von Bismarck]] in 1871 following the triumph of [[Prussia]] and its allies over [[France]] in the 1870 [[Franco-Prussian War]]. The unification of the German states (excluding [[Austria]]) into one entity was the culmination of Bismarck's policy . <br />
<br />
The empire was dissolved in 1918 with the abdication of [[Kaiser Wilhelm II]], the country's defeat in [[World War I]], and the subsequent formation of the German Republic.<br />
<br />
==The German Confederation, 1815-66==<br />
The Congress of Vienna (1814-15), convened after Napoleon's defeat, sought to restore order to a Europe disrupted by revolutionary and imperial France. Its members' objective was a constellation of states and a balance of power that would ensure peace and stability after a quarter-century of revolution and war. In addition to the delegates of many small states, the congress included representatives of five large European states: Austria, Prussia, Russia, Britain, and France. After months of deliberations, the congress established an international political order that was to endure for nearly 100 years and that brought Europe a measure of peace.<br />
<br />
The congress made no effort to restore the Holy Roman Empire and its 300-odd states. Instead, it accepted the disappearance of many small states that had occurred since 1789 and created the German Confederation. The confederation consisted of thirty-eight sovereign states and four free cities and included the five large kingdoms of Austria, Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, and Württemberg (see fig. 4). The confederation met at a diet in Frankfurt, with an Austrian always serving as president.<br />
<br />
Prince [[Clemens von Metternich]], who directed Austria's foreign policy from 1809 until 1848, was the dominant political figure within the confederation. He waged a decades-long campaign to prevent the spread of revolution in Europe by seeking to restore much of the political and social order that had existed before the French Revolution. Metternich's Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 established a pervasive system of press censorship and regulation of the universities that dampened German intellectual life and hindered the publication of writings advocating the principles of liberalism. In the 1820s, he engineered the formation of the Holy Alliance of the monarchs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia to quash political, social, and economic developments within Central and Eastern Europe thought to threaten political stability.<br />
<br />
====Economic and Political Trends Toward Unification====<br />
It was not possible for Metternich and his allies to suppress completely the desire for liberal reforms, including the establishment of constitutional parliamentary government, economic freedom, and civil liberties. Some of these reforms had already been under discussion during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and awareness of their desirability had spread during the Napoleonic era. In addition, the economic reforms introduced into the Rhineland by France had taken hold. The business class that formed after 1815 pressed for abolition of restrictive trade practices favored by traditional handicraft guilds. Businessmen also sought a common currency and system of measurements for Germany, as well as a reduction of the numerous tolls that made road and river travel expensive and slow.<br />
<br />
During the 1820s, significant progress was made in reducing customs duties among German states. At Prussian instigation, the Zollverein (Customs Union) began to form, and by the mid-1830s it included all the most important German states except Austria. Prussia saw to it that its chief rival within Germany was excluded from the union. Vienna, for its part, did not realize at this early point the political and economic significance of intra-German trade.<br />
<br />
Many of Germany's liberal intelligentsia--lower government officials, men of letters, professors, and lawyers--who pushed for representative government and greater political freedom were also interested in some form of German unity. They argued that liberal political reforms could only be enacted in a larger political entity. Germany's small, traditional states offered little scope for political reform.<br />
<br />
Among those groups desiring reform, there was, ironically, little unity. Many businessmen were interested only in reforms that would facilitate commerce, and they gave little thought to politics. Political liberals were split into a number of camps. Some wished for a greater degree of political representation, but, given a widespread fear of what the masses might do if they had access to power, these liberals were content to have aristocrats as leaders. Others desired a democratic constitution, but with a hereditary king as ruler. A minority of liberals were ardent democrats who desired to establish a republic with parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage.<br />
<br />
The ideal of a united Germany had been awakened within liberal groups by the writings of scholars and literary figures such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) and by the achievements of French nationalism after the revolution. France's easy victories over Germany's small states made the union of a people with a common language and historical memory desirable for practical reasons alone. Others were impressed by the political and commercial accomplishments of Britain, which made those of the small German states seem insignificant. Some writers warmed to romantic evocations of Germany's glory during the Middle Ages.<br />
<br />
Many members of Germany's aristocratic ruling class were opposed to national unity because they feared it would mean the disappearance of their small states into a large Germany. Metternich opposed a united Germany because the Habsburg Empire did not embrace a single people speaking one language, but many peoples speaking different languages. The empire would not easily fit into a united Germany. He desired instead the continued existence of the loosely organized German Confederation with its forty-odd members, none equal to Austria in strength. Prussia's kings and its conservative elite sometimes objected to Austria's primacy in the confederation, but they had little desire for German unification, which they regarded as a potential threat to Prussia's existence.<br />
<br />
Germany's lower classes--farmers, artisans, and factory workers--were not included in the discussions about political and economic reform. Germany's farmers had been freed to some degree from many obligations and dues owed to the landowning aristocracy, but they were often desperately poor, earning barely enough to survive. Farmers west of the Elbe River usually had properties too small to yield any kind of prosperity. Farmers east of the Elbe often were landless laborers hired to work on large estates. Artisans, that is, skilled workers in handicrafts and trades belonging to the traditional guilds, saw their economic position worsen as a result of the industrialization that had begun to appear in Germany after 1815. The guilds attempted to stop factory construction and unrestricted commerce, but strong economic trends ran counter to their wishes. Factory workers, in contrast, were doing well compared with these other groups and were generally content with their lot when the economy as a whole prospered.<br />
<br />
===The Revolutions of 1848===<br />
Europe endured hard times during much of the 1840s. A series of bad harvests culminating in the potato blight of 1845-46 brought widespread misery and some starvation. An economic depression added to the hardship, spreading discontent among the poor and the middle class alike. A popular uprising in Paris in February 1848 turned into a revolution, forcing the French king Louis Philippe to flee to Britain.<br />
<br />
The success of the revolution sparked revolts elsewhere in Europe. Numerous German cities were shaken by uprisings in which crowds consisting mainly of the urban poor, but also of students and members of the liberal middle class, stormed their rulers' palaces and demanded fundamental reform. Berlin and Vienna were especially hard hit by what came to be called the revolutions of 1848. The rulers of both cities, like rulers elsewhere, quickly acceded to the demands of their rebellious subjects and promised constitutions and representative government. Conservative governments fell, and Metternich fled to Britain. Liberals called for a national convention to draft a constitution for all of Germany. The National Assembly, consisting of about 800 delegates from throughout Germany, met in a church in Frankfurt, the Paulskirche, from May 1848 to March 1849 for this purpose.<br />
<br />
===The Restoration===<br />
Within just a few months, liberal hopes for a reformed Germany were disappointed. Conservative forces saw that the liberal movement was divided into a number of camps having sharply different aims. Furthermore, the liberals had little support left among the lower classes, who had supported them in the first weeks of the revolution by constructing barricades and massing before their rulers' palaces. Few liberals desired popular democracy or were willing to enact radical economic reforms that would help farmers and artisans. As a result of this timidity, the masses deserted the liberals. Thus, conservatives were able to win sizable elements of these groups to their side by promising to address their concerns. Factory workers had largely withheld support from the liberal cause because they earned relatively good wages compared with farmers and artisans.<br />
<br />
Once the conservatives regrouped and launched their successful counterattack across Germany, many of the reforms promised in March 1848 were forgotten. The National Assembly published the constitution it had drafted during months of hard debate. It proposed the unification of Germany as a federation with a hereditary emperor and a parliament with delegates elected directly. The constitution resolved the dispute between supporters of "Little Germany," that is, a united Germany that would exclude Austria and the Habsburg Empire, and those supporting "Large Germany," which would include both. The constitution advocated the latter.<br />
<br />
The Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV (r. 1840-58), was elected united Germany's first emperor. He refused the crown, stating that he could be elected only by other kings. At that point, the assembly disbanded. A few subsequent rebellions by democratic liberals drew some popular support in 1849, but they were easily crushed and their leaders executed or imprisoned. Some of these ardent democrats fled to the United States. Among them was Carl Schurz, who later fought at the [[Battle of Gettysburg]] as a Union officer, served one term as a United States senator from [[Missouri]], and was appointed secretary of the interior by United States president [[Rutherford B. Hayes]].<br />
<br />
The German Confederation was reestablished, and conservatives held the reins of power even more tightly than before. The failure of the 1848 revolutions also meant that Germany was not united as many had hoped. However, some of the liberals' more practical proposals came to fruition later in the 1850s and 1860s when it was realized that they were essential to economic efficiency. Many commercial restrictions were abolished. The guilds, with their desire to turn back the clock and restore preindustrial conditions, were defeated, and impediments to the free use of capital were reduced. The "hungry forties" gave way to the prosperity of the 1850s as the German economy modernized and laid the foundations for spectacular growth later in the century.<br />
<br />
===Bismarck and Unification===<br />
Liberal hopes for German unification were not met during the politically turbulent 1848-49 period. A Prussian plan for a smaller union was dropped in late 1850 after Austria threatened Prussia with war. Despite this setback, desire for some kind of German unity, either with or without Austria, grew during the 1850s and 1860s. It was no longer a notion cherished by a few, but had proponents in all social classes. An indication of this wider range of support was the change of mind about German nationalism experienced by an obscure Prussian diplomat, Otto von Bismarck. He had been an adamant opponent of German nationalism in the late 1840s. During the 1850s, however, Bismarck had concluded that Prussia would have to harness German nationalism for its own purposes if it were to thrive. He believed too that Prussia's well-being depended on wresting primacy in Germany from its traditional enemy, Austria.<br />
<br />
In 1862 King Wilhelm I of Prussia (r. 1858-88) chose Bismarck to serve as his minister president. Descended from the Junker, Prussia's aristocratic landowning class, Bismarck hated parliamentary democracy and championed the dominance of the monarchy and aristocracy. However, gifted at judging political forces and sizing up a situation, Bismarck contended that conservatives would have to come to terms with other social groups if they were to continue to direct Prussian affairs. The king had summoned Bismarck to direct Prussia's government in the face of the Prussian parliament's refusal to pass a budget because it disagreed with army reforms desired by the king and his military advisers. Although he could not secure parliament's consent to the government's budget, Bismarck was a tactician skilled and ruthless enough to govern without parlia-ment's consent from 1862 to 1866.<br />
<br />
As an ardent and aggressive Prussian nationalist, Bismarck had long been an opponent of Austria because both states sought primacy within the same area--Germany. Austria had been weakened by reverses abroad, including the loss of territory in Italy, and by the 1860s, because of clumsy diplomacy, had no foreign allies outside Germany. Bismarck used a diplomatic dispute to provoke Austria to declare war on Prussia in 1866. Against expectations, Prussia quickly won the Seven Weeks' War (also known as the Austro-Prussian War) against Austria and its south German allies. Bismarck imposed a lenient peace on Austria because he recognized that Prussia might later need the Austrians as allies. But he dealt harshly with the other German states that had resisted Prussia and expanded Prussian territory by annexing Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, some smaller states, and the city of Frankfurt. The German Confederation was replaced by the North German Confederation and was furnished with both a constitution and a parliament. Austria was excluded from Germany. South German states outside the confederation--Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria--were tied to Prussia by military alliances.<br />
<br />
Bismarck's military and political successes were remarkable, but the first had been achieved at considerable risk, and the second were by no means complete. Luck had played a part in the decisive victory at the Battle of Königgrätz (Hradec Králóve in the present-day Czech Republic); otherwise, the war might have lasted much longer than it did. None of the larger German states had supported either Prussia's war or the formation of the North German Confederation led by Prussia. The states that formed what is often called the Third Germany, that is, Germany exclusive of Austria and Prussia, did not desire to come under the control of either of those states. None of them wished to be pulled into a war that showed little likelihood of benefiting any of them. In the Seven Weeks' War, the support they gave Austria had been lukewarm.<br />
<br />
In 1870 Bismarck engineered another war, this time against France. The conflict would become known to history as the Franco-Prussian War. Nationalistic fervor was ignited by the promised annexation of Lorraine and Alsace, which had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and had been seized by France in the seventeenth century. With this goal in sight, the south German states eagerly joined in the war against the country that had come to be seen as Germany's traditional enemy. Bismarck's major war aim--the voluntary entry of the south German states into a constitutional German nation-state--occurred during the patriotic frenzy generated by stunning military victories against French forces in the fall of 1870. Months before a peace treaty was signed with France in May 1871, a united Germany was established as the German Empire, and the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, was crowned its emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.<br />
<br />
==Imperial Germany==<br />
The German Empire - often called the Second Reich to distinguish it from the First Reich, established by Charlemagne in 800 - was based on two compromises. The first was between the king of Prussia and the rulers of the other German states, who agreed to accept him as the kaiser (emperor) of a united Germany, provided they could continue to rule their states largely as they had in the past. The second was the agreement among many segments of German society to accept a unified Germany based on a constitution that combined a powerful authoritarian monarchy with a weak representative body, the Reichstag, elected by universal male suffrage. No one was completely satisfied with the bargain. The kaiser had to contend with a parliament elected by the people in a secret vote. The people were represented in a parliament having limited control over the kaiser.<br />
<br />
As had been the tradition in Prussia, the kaiser controlled foreign policy and the army through his handpicked ministers, who formed the government and prepared legislation. The government was headed by a chancellor, also selected by the kaiser, who served in this post at the kaiser's pleasure and could be dismissed by him at any time. The Bundesrat (Federal Council) represented Germany's princes. About one-third of its seats were held by Prussians. Conceived as an upper house to the Reichstag, the Bundesrat, like the Reichstag, was required to vote on legislation drawn up by the government before it became law. The Reichstag had no power to draft legislation. In addition, the government's actions were not subject to the Reichstag's approval, and the government was not drawn from the Reichstag, as is ordinarily the case in parliamentary democracies.<br />
<br />
The government needed the approval of the Bundesrat and the Reichstag to enact legislative proposals, and the kaiser and his chancellor had many means of securing this approval. Conservative in nature, the Bundesrat was usually docile and needed little wooing. Compliant in the early years of the empire, the Reichstag, by contrast, became less so with time. The easiest means of controlling the Reichstag was to threaten it with new elections in the hope of getting a legislative body more attuned to the intentions of the government. During elections the government campaigned for the parties it favored, sometimes cynically conjuring up fears of national catastrophe if particular parties won many seats. The government also bargained with parties, granting them what they sought in exchange for votes. A last means of taming the Reichstag was to spread rumors of a possible coup d'état by the army and the repeal of the constitution and universal suffrage. This technique was used repeatedly in imperial Germany and could even frighten the conservative Bundesrat. However little many of the Reichstag members might like the empire's political order, the prospect of naked despotism pleased them even less.<br />
<br />
Although the Reichstag did not wield real power, elections to it were hotly contested, and Bismarck and later chancellors and governments were concerned with their outcome. As more-democratic parties came to dominate in the Reichstag, governing became more difficult for the kaiser and his officials. During the later decades of the reign of Wilhelm II (r. 1888-1918), the empire's governing system experienced such difficulties that some conservatives advocated scrapping it, and democrats argued for a new, truly parliamentary system. A fear of these drastic choices and their possible effects caused Germany to muddle through with the existing system until the disaster of World War I culminated in that system's abolition.<br />
<br />
===Political Parties===<br />
Six major political parties were active in imperial Germany: the Conservative Party, the Free Conservative Party, the National Liberal Party, the Progressive Party, the Center Party, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (''Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands'', SPD). Only the SPD survived both the empire and the [[Weimar Republic]] (1918-33) and came to play a vital role in the Federal Republic. Even though the German Empire lacked a genuinely democratic system, the six main parties accurately reflected the interests and hopes of most of its people.<br />
<br />
The most right-wing of the six parties was the Conservative Party, which represented Prussian nationalism, aristocracy, and landed property. Many of its members remained opposed to German unification because they feared Prussia's gradual absorption by the empire. The Conservatives also detested the Reichstag because it was elected by universal suffrage. The Free Conservative Party represented industrialists and large commercial interests. The views of this party most closely matched those of Bismarck. Its members supported unification because they saw it as unavoidable. The National Liberal Party was composed of liberals who had accepted Germany's lack of full democracy because they valued national unity more. They continued to favor a laissez-faire economic policy and secularization. In time, National Liberals became some of the strongest supporters of the acquisition of colonies and a substantial naval buildup, both key issues in the 1880s and 1890s.<br />
<br />
Unlike the members of the National Liberal Party, members of the Progressive Party remained faithful to all the principles of European liberalism and championed the extension of parliament's powers. This party was in the forefront of those opposed to the authoritarian rule of Bismarck and his successors. The Center Party was Germany's Roman Catholic party and had strong support in southern Germany, the Rhineland, and in parts of Prussia with significant Polish populations. It was conservative regarding monarchical authority but progressive in matters of social reform. Bismarck's brutal campaign against the Roman Catholic Church in the 1870s--the Kulturkampf (cultural struggle), an attempt to reduce the church's power over education and its role in many other areas of German society--turned the Center Party against him. By the late 1870s, Bismarck had to concede victory to the party, which had become stronger through its resistance to the government's persecution. The party remained important during the Weimar Republic and was the forerunner of the Federal Republic's moderate conservative parties, the Christian Democratic Union (''Christlich Demokratische Union'', CDU) and the Christian Social Union (''Christlich-Soziale Union'', CSU).<br />
<br />
The Marxist SPD was founded in Gotha in 1875, a fusion of Ferdinand Lassalle's General German Workers' Association (formed in 1863), which advocated state socialism, and the Social Democratic Labor Party (formed in 1869), headed by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, which aspired to establish a classless communist society. The SPD advocated a mixture of revolution and quiet work within the parliamentary system. The clearest statement of this impossible combination was the Erfurt Program of 1891. The former method frightened nearly all Germans to the party's right, while the latter would build the SPD into the largest party in the Reichstag after the elections of 1912.<br />
<br />
Once Bismarck gave up his campaign against Germany's Roman Catholics, whom he had seen for a time as a Vatican-controlled threat to the stability of the empire, he attacked the SPD with a series of antisocialist laws beginning in 1878. A positive aspect of Bismarck's campaign to contain the SPD was a number of laws passed in the 1880s establishing national health insurance and old-age pensions. Bismarck's hope was that if workers were protected by the government, they would come to support it and see no need for revolution. Bismarck's antisocialist campaign, which continued until his dismissal in 1890 by Wilhelm II, severely restricted the activities of the SPD. Ironically, the laws may have inadvertently benefited the SPD by forcing it to work within legal channels. As a result of its sustained activity within the political system, the SPD became a cautious, pragmatic party, which, despite its fiery Marxist rhetoric, won increasing numbers of seats in the Reichstag and achieved some improvements in working and living conditions for Germany's working class.<br />
<br />
===Economy===<br />
Germany experienced an economic boom immediately after unification. For the first time, the country was a single economic entity, and old impediments to internal trade were lifted. The federal chancellery published a new commercial code and established a uniform currency. The indemnity that France had to pay Germany after losing the 1870-71 war provided capital for railroad construction and building projects. A speculative boom resulted, characterized by large-scale formation of joint-stock companies and unscrupulous investment practices. This period of intense financial speculation and construction, called by Germans the Gründerzeit (founders' time), ended with the stock market crash of 1873.<br />
<br />
Despite the crash and several subsequent periods of economic depression, Germany's economy grew rapidly. By 1900 it rivaled the more-established British economy as the world's largest. German coal production, about one-third of Britain's in 1880, increased sixfold by 1913, almost equaling British yields that year. German steel production increased more than tenfold in the same period, surpassing British production by far.<br />
<br />
Industrialization began later in Germany than in Britain, and the German economy was not a significant part of the world economy until late in the nineteenth century. Germany's industrialization started with the building of railroads in the 1840s and 1850s and the subsequent development of coal mining and iron and steel production, activities that made up what is called the First Industrial Revolution. In Germany, the Second Industrial Revolution, that is, the growth of chemical and electrical industries, followed the enormous expansion of coal and steel production so closely that the country can be said to have experienced the two revolutions almost simultaneously. Germany took an early lead in the chemical and electrical industries. Its chemists became renowned for their discoveries, and by 1914 the country was producing half the world's electrical equipment. As a result of these developments, Germany became the continent's industrial giant.<br />
<br />
===Population===<br />
Germany's population also expanded rapidly, growing from 41.0 million in 1871 to 49.7 million in 1891 and 65.3 million in 1911. The expanding and industrializing economy changed the way this rapidly expanding population earned its livelihood. In 1871 about 49 percent of the workforce was engaged in agriculture; by 1907 only 35 percent was. In the same period, industry's share of the rapidly growing workforce rose from 31 percent to 40 percent. Urban birth rates were often the country's highest, but there was much migration from rural areas to urban areas, where most industry was located. Berlin, by far the country's largest city and a major industrial center, grew from almost 1 million inhabitants in 1875 to 2 million in 1910. Many smaller cities, especially those in areas with much industry--such as the Ruhr region, the upper Rhine Valley, the Neckar Valley, and Saxony--tripled or quadrupled in size during this period.<br />
<br />
===The Tariff Agreement of 1879 and Its Social Consequences===<br />
The crash of 1873 and the subsequent depression began the gradual dissolution of Bismarck's alliance with the National Liberals that had begun after his triumphs of 1866. In the late 1870s, Bismarck began negotiations with the economically protectionist Conservative Party and Center Party toward the formation of a new government coalition. Conservative electoral gains and National Liberal losses in 1879 brought a conservative coalition to power. Bismarck then abandoned his former allies in the National Liberal Party and put in place a system of tariffs that benefited the landed gentry of eastern Prussia - threatened by imports of cheaper grains from Russia and the United States - and industrialists who were afraid to compete with cheaper foreign manufactured goods and who believed they needed more time to establish themselves.<br />
<br />
Bismarck's alliance with the Prussian landowning class and powerful industrialists and the parties representing their interests had profound social effects. From that point on, conservative groups had the upper hand in German society. The German middle class began to imitate its conservative social superiors rather than attempt to impose its own liberal, middle-class values on Germany. The prestige of the military became so great that many middle-class males sought to enhance their social standing by becoming officers in the reserves. The middle classes also became more susceptible to the nationalistic clamor for colonies and "a place in the sun" that was to become ever more virulent in the next few decades.<br />
<br />
===Bismarck's Foreign Policy===<br />
Bismarck sincerely regarded the new German Empire as "satiated," that is, having no desire to expand further and hence posing no threat to its neighbors. The chancellor held that the country had to adjust to its new circumstances and that this would take decades. For this reason, he sought to convince the other European states of Germany's desire to live in peace, hoping thereby to secure Germany against attack. He aimed to arrange this security through a system of alliances. Believing that France would remain Germany's enemy because of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, an action he had opposed because of the enmity it would cause, he turned to other states.<br />
<br />
Bismarck arranged an alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1879 and one with Italy in 1882. His triumph, however, was a secret alliance he formed by means of the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1887, although its terms violated the spirit of the treaty with Austria-Hungary. However much these agreements contributed to German security, Bismarck's plunge into the European scramble for overseas colonies ultimately weakened it by awakening British fears about Germany's long-term geopolitical aims. Subsequent feelers he put out with a view to establishing an understanding with Britain were rebuffed. In 1890 Bismarck was dismissed by young Kaiser Wilhelm over a dispute about antisocialist legislation.<br />
<br />
===Foreign Policy in the Wilhelmine Era===<br />
Foreign policy in the Wilhelmine Era (1890-1914) turned away from Bismarck's cautious diplomacy of the 1871-90 period. It was also marked by a shrill aggressiveness. Brusque, clumsy diplomacy was backed by increased armaments production, most notably the creation of a large fleet of battleships capable of challenging the British navy. This new bellicosity alarmed the rest of Europe, and by about 1907 German policy makers had succeeded in creating Bismarck's nightmare: a Germany "encircled" by an alliance of hostile neighbors - in this case Russia, France, and Britain - in an alliance called the Triple Entente.<br />
<br />
The first brick to fall out of Bismarck's carefully crafted edifice was Germany's Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. Harmed by Prussian trade policies, Russia did not renew the treaty and instead turned to France for economic assistance and military security. The two countries formally allied in early 1893. Britain joined them in 1907, even though France and Britain had nearly gone to war over a colonial dispute in 1898. Britain's main reason for abandoning its usual posture as an aloof observer of developments on the continent was Germany's plan to build a fleet of sixty battleships of the formidable Dreadnought class.<br />
<br />
The German naval expansion program had many domestic supporters. The kaiser deeply admired the navy of his grandmother, Queen Victoria of Britain, and wanted one as large for himself. Powerful lobbying groups in Germany desired a large navy to give Germany a worldwide role and to protect a growing German colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific. Industry wanted large government contracts. Some political parties promoted naval expansion and an aggressive foreign policy to win votes from a nervous electorate they kept worked up with jingoistic rhetoric.<br />
<br />
The chief figure in promoting the naval buildup was Admiral [[Alfred von Tirpitz]], who is considered the founder of the modern German navy. Tirpitz was an effective spokesman for the program and had the ear of the kaiser and his advisers. In 1898, after the Reichstag passed the first Naval Bill, Anglo-German relations deteriorated. The Supplementary Naval Act of 1900 further strained relations with Britain, as did a proposed Berlin-Baghdad railroad through the Ottoman Empire, a project that threatened British as well as Russian interests in the Balkans. Two crises over Morocco, in 1905 and 1911, drove France and Britain closer together and made for a tense international atmosphere. The great powers remained neutral during the Balkan Wars (1912-13), a nationalist rebellion against Ottoman rule, but European tensions were increased still further, and the expectation that there would eventually be war on the continent became more certain.<br />
<br />
==World War I==<br />
The assassination of Archduke [[Franz Ferdinand]] in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, set off a series of diplomatic and military decisions that would end peace in Europe. The kaiser gave a so-called blank check to his ally, Austria-Hungary, saying that Germany would support any Habsburg measure taken against [[Serbia]], which had backed the assassination. Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia in late July was so harsh that war became inevitable. Within days, a set of interlocking alliances had Europe's great powers embroiled in what would become World War I.<br />
<br />
Germany's leadership had hoped for a limited war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. But because Russian forces had been mobilized in support of Serbia, the German leadership made the decision to support its ally. The Schlieffen Plan, based on the assumption that Germany would face a two-front war because of a French-Russian alliance, required a rapid invasion through neutral Belgium to ensure the quick defeat of France. Once the western front was secure, the bulk of German forces could attack and defeat Russia, which would not yet be completely ready for war because it would mobilize its gigantic forces slowly.<br />
<br />
Despite initial successes, Germany's strategy failed, and its troops became tied down in trench warfare in France. For the next four years, there would be little progress in the west, where advances were usually measured in meters rather than in kilometers. Under the command of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, the army scored a number of significant victories against Russia. But it was only in early 1918 that Russia was defeated. Even after this victory in the east, however, Germany remained mired in a long war for which it had not prepared.<br />
<br />
Germany's war aims were annexationist in nature and foresaw an enlarged Germany, with Belgium and Poland as vassal states and with colonies in Africa. In its first years, there was widespread support for the war. Even the SPD supported it, considering it a defensive effort and voting in favor of war credits. By 1916, however, opposition to the war had mounted within the general population, which had to endure many hardships, including food shortages. A growing number of Reichstag deputies came to demand a peace without annexations. Frustrated in its quest for peace, in April 1917 a segment of the SPD broke with the party and formed the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. In July the Reichstag passed a resolution calling for a peace without annexations. In its wake, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg was forced to resign, and Hindenburg and Ludendorff came to exercise a control over Germany until late 1918 that amounted to a virtual military dictatorship.<br />
<br />
Military leaders refused a moderate peace because they were convinced until very late in the war that victory ultimately would be theirs. Another reason for their insistence on a settlement that fulfilled expansionist aims was that the government had not financed the war with higher taxes but with bonds. Taxes had been seen as unnecessary because it was expected that the government would redeem these bonds after the war with payments from Germany's vanquished enemies. Thus, only an expansionist victory would keep the state solvent and save millions of German bondholders from financial ruin.<br />
<br />
After the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, Russia and Germany began peace negotiations. In March 1918, the two countries signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The defeat of Russia enabled Germany to transfer troops from the eastern to the western front. Two large offensives in the west were met by an Allied counteroffensive that began in July. German troops were pressed back, and it became evident to many officers that Germany could not win the war. In September Ludendorff recommended that Germany sue for peace. In October extensive reforms democratized the Reichstag and gave Germany a constitutional monarchy. A coalition of progressive forces was formed, headed by SPD politician Friedrich Ebert. The military allowed the birth of a democratic parliament because it did not want to be held responsible for the inevitable armistice that would end the war on terms highly unfavorable to Germany. Instead, the civilian government that signed the truce was to take the blame for the nation's defeat.<br />
<br />
The political reforms of October were overshadowed by a popular uprising that began on November 3 when sailors in Kiel mutinied. They refused to go out on what they considered a suicide mission against British naval forces. The revolt grew quickly and within a week appeared to be burgeoning into a revolution that could well overthrow the established social order. On November 9, the kaiser was forced to abdicate, and the SPD proclaimed a republic. A provisional government headed by Ebert promised elections for a national assembly to draft a new constitution. In an attempt to control the popular uprising, Ebert agreed to back the army if it would suppress the revolt. On November 11, the government signed the armistice that ended the war. Germany's loses included about 1.6 million dead and more than 4 million wounded.<br />
<br />
Signed in June 1919, the [[Treaty of Versailles]] limited Germany to an army of 100,000 soldiers; it stipulated that the Rhineland be demilitarized and occupied by the western Allies for fifteen years. Germany was to surrender Alsace-Lorraine, northern Schleswig-Holstein, a portion of western Prussia that became known as the Polish Corridor because it gave Poland access to the Baltic, and all overseas colonies. An Allied Reparations Commission was established and charged with setting the amount of war-damage payments that would be demanded of Germany. And, most infuriatingly, the treaty also included the "war guilt clause," ascribing responsibility for World War I to Germany and Austria-Hungary. The clause would lay the seeds for the rise of the [[Nazi Party]], which would ultimately take power in Germany and cause another major war two decades later.<br />
==See also==<br />
* [[Kaiser Wilhelm II]]<br />
* [[Otto von Bismarck]]<br />
* [[Prussia]]<br />
==Further reading==<br />
* Blackbourn, David, and Geoff Eley. ''The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany'' (1984) [http://www.questia.com/read/27706474 online edition] <br />
* Clark, Christopher. ''Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947'' (2009), standard scholarly history<br />
* Craig, Gordon A. ''Germany, 1866-1945'' (1978) [http://www.questia.com/library/book/germany-1866-1945-by-gordon-a-craig.jsp online edition]<br />
* Holborn, Hajo. ''A History of Modern Germany'' (1964) vol 3. 1840-1945<br />
* Maehl, William Harvey. ''Germany in Western Civilization'' (1979), 833pp<br />
* Mann, Golo. ''History of Germany since 1789'' (1968), very well written<br />
* Mommsen, Wolfgang J. ''Imperial Germany 1867-1918: Politics, Culture and Society in an Authoritarian State'' (1995) <br />
* Reinhardt, Kurt F. ''Germany: 2000 Years'' (2 vols., 1961), stress on cultural topics<br />
* Retallack, James. ''Germany in the Age of Kaiser Wilhelm II'' (1996) [http://www.amazon.com/Germany-Wilhelm-Studies-European-History/dp/0312160313/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201322874&sr=8-11 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Sheehan, James J. ''German History, 1770-1866'' (1993), the major survey in English [http://www.amazon.com/German-History-1770-1866-Oxford-Modern/dp/0198204329/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201322874&sr=8-8 except and text search] <br />
* Taylor, A. J. P. ''The Course of German History: A Survey of the Development of German History since 1815.'' (2001). 280pp; [http://www.questia.com/read/107459655 online edition]<br />
* Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. ''The German Empire 1871-1918'' (1984), by the elading German historian of the era <br />
<br />
<br />
----<br />
Source: [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/detoc.html]<br />
<br />
====references====<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[Category:German History]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&diff=1095813Adolf Hitler2014-07-27T21:59:09Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Dictator bio<br />
| image =[[Image:Hitler7.JPG|200px]]<br />
| name =Adolf Hitler<br />
| birth =April 20, 1889<br/>Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary<br />
| parents =Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber)<br/>Klara Pölzl<br />
| religion =Roman Catholic (rejected)<br />
| spouse =Eva Braun<br />
| children =none<br />
| death =April 30, 1945<br/>Berlin, Germany <br />
| deathmanner =Suicide by gunshot<br />
| education =Realschule<br/>Linz, Austria<br />
| country =[[Third Reich|Germany]]<br />
| military =16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment<br/>Imperial German Army (1914-1918)<br />
| rank =''Obergefreiter'' (Lance Corporal/Private First Class)<br />
|burial = none, burned.<br />
| polbeliefs =[[Socialism]]<br/>[[National socialism]] (Nazism)<br />
| party =German Workers' Party<br/>(Deutsche Arbeiterpartei 1920–1921)<br/>National Socialist German Workers' Party<br/>(Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei 1921–1945)<br />
| dictatordate =March 23, 1933<br />
| war =[[World War II]]<br />
| deathnumber =12,000,000+ exclusive of battle casualties<br />
20,000,000 to 25,000,000 altogether<br />
<br />
Rummel: 21,000,000<br />
}}<br />
'''Adolf Hitler''' was the Austrian-born Chancellor from January 30, 1933 and [[Führer]] from August 2, 1934 of [[Germany]] until his death on April 30, 1945. He was also the leader (German: ''Der Führer'') of the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (''National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'', or [[Nazi]] Party) which gained political power through threat, intimidation, and outright violence throughout Germany in the aftermath of the [[First World War]]. He was born a Catholic, but he never took religion seriously beyond initially rebelling against his Catholic father by showing preferences for Lutheran Protestantism in predominantly Catholic Austria, as well as using quasi-religious rhetoric in Mein Kampf and in speeches in order to not lose potential religious supporters. He was far more interested in [[Social Darwinism]]. After having minor wounds from an assassination bombing attempt, Hitler abused drugs originally intended to help with his injuries long after he had recovered from his injuries. <br />
<br />
Hitler in his youth was an financially-irresponsible Bohemian (a German word of the time roughly the same as [[Hippy]]) who became broke after spending his father's inheritance wandering around Austria as a watercolour artist, practicing [[vegetarianism]], and rarely attempting to seek serious employment. Hitler worked with a Jewish art dealer and after being rejected entry into Vienna's leading art school due to his unoriginal art, Hitler was a complete failure and completely broke. Rather than accept responsibility for his Bohemian lifestyle, Hitler in denial and increasing signs of the mental illness of [[psychosis]], followed the political current in Europe at the time of blaming Jews for exploiting him. [[Anti-Semitism]] had become a significant phenomenon in Germany ever since [[Martin Luther]] during his severe mental illness at the end of his life had become anti-Semitic. But anti-Semites in Germany refused to acknowledge that Luther prior to the onset of mental illness was highly sympathetic towards Jews. It was adopted by a number of misguided conservative Protestants who were not aware of Luther's mental state when he became anti-Semitic. Hitler being rebellious to his Catholic father took up a brief interest in Lutheranism and may have been influenced by Luther's anti-Semitic remarks. Hitler without any prospects sought to be conscripted into the German Army (but refused to serve the Austrian army due to many Jews being in it), there Hitler mixed his anti-Semitic views with some of the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran conservative nationalist aspects (that left-wing historians exaggerate by calling Hitler "far right") in order to be accepted amongst conservative German army officers but also began to adopt radical socialist ideas as revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and elsewhere grew in strength.<br />
<br />
After World War I, Hitler behaved as a political opportunist - he played up conservative German themes to his army officers and was sent to investigate a bizarre radical party called the German Workers' Party that used the anti-Semitic factional-Lutheran nationalist theme in combination with a revolutionary socialist agenda that denounced Jews as being responsible for capitalism, exploitation of Germany, and for Germany losing World War I. It was anti-Marxist - though only because [[Karl Marx]] was a Jew and due to their anti-Semitic hatred, and saw Marx as no different than capitalist Jews. The Party was disorganized and Hitler with his strong anti-Semitism took advantage of the situation and used demagoguery to raise himself in the party, and make himself leader of the party that was then named the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party in short form). He used the party and its members to exact revenge for his psychotic perception of Jews and capitalists as having ruined him in his youth, along with his megalomaniac and psychotic view of himself as being the "Leader" (German: ''Fuhrer'') of Germany. Many Nazis were highly mentally-ill people with delusions of grandeur of both themselves and Germany, such as [[Heinrich Himmler]], and especially [[Hermann Goring]] who was a morphine addict and an animal rights activist who preferred to have Jews used for scientific experiments.<br />
<br />
Due to the thematic influence of the historic anti-Semitic faction of conservative Lutheran extremists on the Nazi movement, left-wing Marxist historians have exaggerated the role of conservative Lutherans in the Nazi movement and because of it claim that the Nazis are "far right". They completely ignore and deny the far left socialist parts of the Nazis, out of political dogmatism just as the Nazis themselves completely denied the socialist elements of Marxism because Marx was Jewish. And left-wing historians almost always neglect to note the very clear similarity of Hitler's loose Bohemian lifestyle as a youth to that of Hippies.<br />
<br />
Adolf Hitler was an [[Evolution|evolutionary]] [[racist]] and [[socialism|socialist]] (see also: [[evolutionary racism]]).<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref><ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> Hitler’s policies and beliefs resulted in the [[Genocide|mass extermination]] of the [[Jews]], [[Gypsies]], and other peoples he considered “[[Racial Supremacy|inferior]]” throughout central and eastern [[Europe]] and were directly responsible for the outbreak of [[World War II]], which caused the deaths of untold millions on and off the battlefield and reportedly ended only after Hitler's [[suicide]] in his Berlin bunker. <br />
<br />
==Early life==<br />
[[File:Hitler Roses.jpg|thumb|Roses by Adolf Hitler.]]<br />
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, [[Austria]]. Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was a customs official who was himself born out of wedlock, carrying for a time his mother's name, Schicklgruber. By 1876 he had his baptismal entry corrected in his church records, establishing his father as Johan Heidler, which was altered slightly to Hitler.<br />
<br />
When his father retired the family moved to Linz, Austria, where it remained a favorite for young Adolf for the rest of his life, and where he gave his wish to be buried. When Alois died in 1903 he left enough of a pension to support his wife and children; Adolf would take his and live off of it in Vienna after leaving school, dreaming of becoming an artist. Although somewhat competent as a painter of landscapes and architecture, his renderings of humans were considered “lifeless” and “crude” by the standards of the Academy of Fine Arts, and his application was rejected twice. Remaining in [[Vienna]], he moved from one cheap flop house to another, painting postcards and advertisements to earn a meager living after his allowance had dried up. By then he had developed traits which characterized his life as a whole: secretiveness, loneliness, a Spartan mode of everyday life, and a hatred of the cosmopolitan, multinational character that was the makeup of Vienna. ''He never sought a proper job or regular employment. Instead he immersed himself in the works of [[Hegel]], [[Nietzsche]], and the anti-Semitic writings of the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He loved the operas of Wagner, and the stories of the Nordic Gods... In early 1910, he entered a shelter for the homeless, populated in the main by poor Jews, on Meldemenstrasse, and was eating at soup kitchens. By this time he had pawned all his belongings. '' <ref> [http://socyberty.com/history/young-adolf-the-adolescent-hitler-and-beyond/ Young Adolf: The Adolescent Hitler and Beyond.] {{dead link}}</ref><br />
<br />
==Who And What He Was==<br />
[[Image:Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach.jpg|150px|left|thumb|This painting, one of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, had once belonged to Hitler. New evidence has come to light that Lucas Cranach's ''Cupid Complaining to Venus'', currently on loan to an exhibition in Bristol, hung on the sitting-room wall of his flat in Munich. <ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/28/art.secondworldwar Hitler owned painting now in National Gallery]</ref>]]<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote famously, and most eloquently about Hitler in 1998:<br />
<blockquote>''"At the same time that he terrorized his adversaries, he knew how to please, impress and charm the very interlocutors from whom he wanted support. Diplomats and journalists insist as much on his charm as they do on his temper tantrums. The savior admired by his own as he dragged them into his madness, the Satan and exterminating angel feared and hated by all others, Hitler led his people to a shameful defeat without precedent. That his political and strategic ambitions have created a dividing line in the history of this turbulent and tormented century is undeniable: there is a before and an after. By the breadth of his crimes, which have attained a quasi-ontological dimension, he surpasses all his predecessors: as a result of Hitler, man is defined by what makes him inhuman. With Hitler at the head of a gigantic laboratory, life itself seems to have changed."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"How did this Austrian without title or position manage to get himself elected head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission? How to explain the success of his cheap demagogy in the heart of a people so proud of having inherited the genius of a Wolfgang von Goethe and an Immanuel Kant?"''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed. German society had rallied behind him: the judicial, the educational, the industrial and the economic establishments gave him their support. Few politicians of this century have aroused, in their lifetime, such love and so much hate; few have inspired so much historical and psychological research after their death. Even today, works on his enigmatic personality and his cursed career are best sellers everywhere. Some are good, others are less good, but all seem to respond to an authentic curiosity on the part of a public haunted by memory and the desire to understand."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"We think we know everything about the nefarious forces that shaped his destiny: his unhappy childhood, his frustrated adolescence; his artistic disappointments; his wound received on the front during World War I; his taste for spectacle, his constant disdain for social and military aristocracies; his relationship with [[Eva Braun]], who adored him; the cult of the very death he feared; his lack of scruples with regard to his former comrades of the SA, whom he had assassinated in 1934; his endless hatred of [[Jews]], whose survival enraged him — each and every phase of his official and private life has found its chroniclers, its biographers."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"And yet. There are, in all these givens, elements that escape us. How did this unstable paranoid find it within himself to impose gigantic hope as an immutable ideal that motivated his nation almost until the end? Would he have come to power if Germany were not going through endless economic crises, or if the winners in 1918 had not imposed on it conditions that represented a national humiliation against which the German patriotic fiber could only revolt? We would be wrong to forget: Hitler came to power in January 1933 by the most legitimate means. His [[Nationalist Socialist Party]] won a majority in the parliamentary elections. The aging [[Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg]] had no choice but to allow him, at age 43, to form the new government, marking the end of the Weimar Republic. And the beginning of the [[Third Reich]], which, according to Hitler, would last 1,000 years."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"From that moment on, events cascaded. The burning of the [[Reichstag]] came only a little before the openings of the first concentration camps, established for members of the opposition. Fear descended on the country and squeezed it in a vise. Great writers, musicians and painters went into exile to France and the U.S. Jews with foresight emigrated toward Palestine. The air of Hitler's Germany was becoming more and more suffocating. Those who preferred to wait, thinking that the Nazi regime would not last, could not last, would regret it later, when it was too late."''</blockquote><br />
<br />
<blockquote>''"The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people — not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. It was idolatry on a national scale. One had to see the crowds who acclaimed him. And the women who were attracted to him. And the young who in his presence went into ecstasy. Did they not see the hateful mask that covered his face? Did they not divine the catastrophe he bore within himself?<ref name="time">http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/hitler.html"''</ref></blockquote> <br />
<br />
{{Clear}}<br />
<br />
== Beliefs ==<br />
According to Albert Speer, Hitler never left the Catholic Church but was hostile to its teachings. He did admire its power. Hitler only mentioned [[Christianity]] in his speeches to gain votes and favor. Any voiced tolerance during the 1930s changed to targeted persecution, mainly of Protestant "resisters" to Nazism.<ref>McNab, Chris. ''The Third Reich''. (2009) pp. 182, 183</ref><br />
<br />
Although Hitler may have had some Christian rhetoric in his speeches, he certainly rejected it on a personal level. In the book, ''Hitler's Table Talk'', it reveals that Hitler thought of Christianity as a great "scourge" of history.<ref>http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0110.htm {{dead link}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Hitler, Nazism and socialism ===<br />
<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Nazism and socialism]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler.jpg|thumb|250px|right|One of the most well known political parties of the 20th century which was [[socialism|socialistic]] was the [[National Socialist German Workers Party]] (NAZI) which was headed by the [[Evolutionary racism|evolutionary racist]] Adolf Hitler.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref><ref>http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust</ref><ref>http://www.hourofthetime.com/socialist.htm</ref> ]]<br />
The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] declares:<br />
{{cquote|The identification of [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] as a [[socialism|socialist]] state was one of the many great contributions of [[Ludwig von Mises]]...<br />
<br />
The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.<br />
<br />
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.<br />
<br />
De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.<ref>http://mises.org/daily/1937</ref>}}<br />
<br />
=== Hitler and the Theory of Evolution ===<br />
''For more information please see:'' [[Evolutionary racism]] and [[Social effects of the theory of evolution]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitlerrisetopower.jpg|right|225px|thumb]]<br />
The staunch [[evolution|evolutionist]] Stephen Gould admitted the following: <br />
{{cquote|[[Ernst Haeckel|[Ernst] Haeckel]] was the chief apostle of evolution in [[Germany]].... His evolutionary racism; his call to the German people for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a "just" state; his belief that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate others; the irrational mysticism that had always stood in strange communion with his brave words about objective science - all contributed to the rise of Nazism. - Stephen J. Gould, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, pp.77-78).<ref>http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/social.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Robert E.D. Clark in his work ''Darwin: Before and After'' wrote concerning Hitler's evolutionary racism:<br />
{{cquote|The Germans were the higher race, destined for a glorious evolutionary future. For this reason it was essential that the Jews should be segregated, otherwise mixed marriages would take place. Were this to happen, all nature’s efforts 'to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile' (''Mein Kampf''). <ref>http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Hitler wrote in ''Mein Kampf'':<br />
{{cquote|The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.<ref>http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=268</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Dr. Robert E.D. Clark wrote in his work ''Darwin, Before and After'' the following regarding Hitler and the theory of evolution: “Adolf Hitler’s mind was captivated by evolutionary teaching — probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas — quite undisguised — lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf — and in his public speeches”.<ref name="courier">http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/read/the_holocaust_why_did_it_happen</ref> <br />
[[Image:5712dawkins.jpg|alt=Richard Dawkins|right|thumbnail|200px|[[Richard Dawkins]] is a prominent [[atheism|atheist]] and [[evolution|evolutionist]]. [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> ]]<br />
Richard Hickman in his work ''Biocreation'' concurs and wrote the following:<br />
{{cquote|It is perhaps no coincidence that Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in and preacher of evolutionism. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his [[psychosis]], it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important for]. . . his book, Mein Kampf clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and extermination of the weak to produce a better society. <ref>http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v08n3p24.htm</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Noted evolutionary [[anthropology|anthropologist]] Sir Arthur Keith conceded the following in regards to Hitler: “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution”.<ref name="courier" /><br />
<br />
[[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning author Marilynne Robinson wrote the following regarding Hitler's racism in the November 2006 issue of ''Harper’s'' magazine:<br />
{{cquote|While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in [[Europe]], it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.<br />
<br />
[[Richard Dawkins|[Richard] Dawkins]] deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific [[eugenics]] theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.<br />
<br />
There is indeed historical precedent in the [[Spanish Inquisition]] for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.<ref>http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20</ref><ref>http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/someone-finally-said-it-dawkinss-hysterical-scientism/</ref>}}<br />
<br />
[[Evolution|Evolutionist]] and [[atheism|atheist]] [[Richard Dawkins]] stated in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref> The interviewer wrote, regarding the Hitler comment, "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own [[philosophy|philosophical]] position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."<ref>http://byfaithonline.com/page/in-the-world/richard-dawkins-the-atheist-evangelist</ref><br />
<br />
== Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism ==<br />
<br />
''See also:'' [[Similarities between Communism, Nazism and liberalism]]<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
!<br />
![[Communism|Communist]] Manifesto<br />
![[Nazi]] Party Platform<br />
!Analysis<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."<br />
|"We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land."<br />
|The stripping away of land from private owners. [[Liberalism]] today demands "eminent domain" on property.<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." <br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts...profit-sharing in large industries...a generous increase in old-age pensions...by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor...and the creation of a national (folk) army."<br />
|The points raised in the [[Nazi]] platform demand an increase in taxes to support them. Liberalism today demands heavy progressive and graduated income taxes.<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|"Abolition of all rights of inheritance." <br />
|"That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished." <br />
|Liberalism today demands a "death tax" on anyone inheriting an estate.<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|"Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."<br />
|"We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately."<br />
|The Nuremburg Laws of 1934 allowed Germany to take Jewish property.<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|"Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."<br />
|"We demand the nationalization of all trusts."<br />
|Central control of the financial system.<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|"Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State."<br />
|"We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press...editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens...Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State...the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper..."<br />
|Central control of the press. Liberals today demand control or suppression of talk radio and Fox News.<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|"Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c." <br />
|"In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. "<br />
|Central control of education, with an emphasis on doing things their way. Liberals today are doing things ''their way'' in our schools.<br />
|-<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==War==<br />
[[Image:Hitler munich1914.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler in the crowd in Munich, 1914, reacting to the news of Germany's entry in the First World War.]]<br />
By 1913 Hitler was in Munich, Germany, with war clouds on the horizon. Classified as unfit for service in the Austrian army (possibly by faking, as he did not like the thought of serving Austria) in 1914, he volunteered for the German army, joining the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, greeting the war with enthusiasm, and finding the military discipline and comradeship satisfying. He served during the entire [[First World War]] as a messenger carrying dispatches between units, and often at the front lines under fire; he was wounded in 1916, and gassed in 1918. His bravery during this time earned him the [[Iron Cross]], 2nd Class, in December, 1914, and in August 1918 he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class – a rare decoration for a corporal. But the gassing would take him out of the war and into a hospital, where he would be told the heart-wrenching news of Germany’s defeat the following November.<br />
<br />
==Path to power==<br />
After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. This was despite the fact that the German Army's strongest position, the Hindenburg line, had been broken by the Allies, and the German Army itself was in full retreat. However, the army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors made up of civilian political leaders who betrayed the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as if repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.<br />
<br />
After his discharge from the hospital, Hitler acted as an army political agent, assigned in Munich to gather information on the various political parties which had spring up amid the social chaos following Germany’s defeat. In September 1919, he was given orders to investigate the relatively-minor German Workers’ Party (''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''); intrigued by the party’s apparatus and its racial, pan-German nationalism, he joined, becoming its 55th member. He remained on the army payroll until he was discharged in March 1920. By then, Hitler had already devoted himself to improving the party’s propaganda, as well as his own position within.<br />
<br />
Conditions in Germany fostered the development of the party. Economic woes brought widespread discontent, added to the furor surrounding the loss of the war and the harsh terms heaped upon Germany by the Allied Powers in the Versailles Peace Treaty. Bavaria’s traditional separatism from the central government in Berlin made current conditions especially sharp, and Hitler was savvy enough to take full advantage of them. When he joined, he found the party ineffective in leadership and uncertain as to its aims; he accepted the party program, but regarded it as a means to an end. He caused friction with other members of the party, and their attempts to control him caused a threat of resignation; realizing that the future of the party now depended on Hitler, who clearly had a talent of organization, fund collecting, and above all, speaking, they declined to accept it; from July, 1921 Hitler was regarded as the party leader with nearly unlimited power. From his party newspaper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (“Popular Observer”), he spewed out endless propaganda. His meetings where he spoke grew from mere handfuls to hundreds, and then to thousands. A man of charismatic personality, he quickly attracted a circle of loyal and devoted followers: [[Rudolf Hess]], [[Hermann Göring]], Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg.<br />
<br />
Munich was also a gathering place for former servicemen dissatisfied with conditions in the country; members of the Freikorps, which had been organized after the war from army units that refused to return to civilian life; and those civilians who plotted against the republic. Many of these men joined the Nazi Party. Among them was a staff member of the district command who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, [[Ernst Röhm]], a pudgy man with a scared face who saw his own ambition in helping further Hitler’s rise within the party. Röhm recruited what came to be known as the “Brown Shirts”, the violent squads used to attack socialists, battle communists, and to protect party meetings whenever Hitler was speaking. By 1921 they were organized into a private army of the Party called the ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'', abbreviated to SA.<br />
<br />
==The Beer Hall Putsch==<br />
Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince [[Erich Ludendorff]], an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'etat (''Putsch'' in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist prime minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls (the Haufbrau Haus), he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went inside and took the prime minister hostage, announced a revolution, and attempted to convince him to join the coup against Berlin and become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin; the putsch had begun to fail. <br />
<br />
The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength to regain the momentum. In the ensuing fight between Hitler's marchers and a cordon of police and army units at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen were killed and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison (he would do eight months). <ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/thirdreich/a/beerhallputsch_2.htm</ref><ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/putsch2.htm</ref> The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".<br />
<br />
===''Mein Kampf''===<br />
{{main|Mein Kampf}}<br />
Hitler had his inner circle as frequent visitors in his prison cell, which was made more comfortable due to his celebrity. While there, he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' (“My Struggle”), his political autobiography and a compendium of his many ideas, including his [[evolutionist]] ideas.<br />
<br />
Hitler believed in the inequality of the races, nations, and individuals as part of the natural order of mankind, and chief among them was the exalted “Aryan race”, and the greatest of the Aryans were the Germans. It was the German, according to Hitler, that gave the world civilization and the arts; to safeguard the German people as a race (the “Volk”), they would need to be united under a single leader (the Führer), where they would be protected from their three principle enemies: Marxism, which included social democracy as well as communism; democracy and its mob-rule, as shown by the failings of the Weimar Republic; and above all what Hitler called the poisoners of humanity, the Jews. “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition,” he wrote in 1919. “Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he told the world that the Jew was the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”<br />
<br />
From "Mein Kampf":<br />
{{cquote|The Jew "... he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around." <ref> [http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.]</ref> }}<br />
<br />
{{cquote| Hitler portrays Jews as leaders in politics and banking, both groups seeking to strengthen their cause, [[Zionism]], to ensure Jewish domination. From his Social Darwinist perspective, Hitler perceived a racial war as inevitable and he sought to halt the "[[Jewish]] drive towards world conquest"... As Berlin collapsed around him, Adolf asserted: "Out of the ruins of our towns and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible for everything, International Jewry." <ref> [http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=32043&amid=30237234 Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler’s Vision] Robert Carr dissects a book frequently referred to but seldom read. </ref><br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Rebuilding the Nazi Party==<br />
<br />
[[Image:Hitler-3.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in car, saluting passing S.A. at one of many parades.]]<br />
Internal dissension within the party caused it to languish while Hitler was in prison. When he was released he saw difficulties in the country that had not existed before the Putsch, namely currency reform that brought economic stability, and the scaling back of the war reparations as a result of the Dawes Plan. Hitler was also forbidden to speak in public, and remained so until 1928; nonetheless he worked to rebuild the party and re-establish his own position within it as leader, despite Gregor Strasser’s opposition in northern Germany. By 1927 the number of Nazis was in the hundreds of thousands.<br />
<br />
A new period of political and economic instability began with the onset of the Great Depression which threw millions out of work in Europe and North America. To campaign against the [[Young Plan]] (a second renegotiation of war reparations payments) Hitler made an alliance with one of Germany’s leading nationalists, Alfred Hugenberg, whose newspapers enabled Hitler to reach a national audience for the first time. The alliance also had another advantage: it enabled him to seek support from many in business and industry who controlled funds going into politics, and who themselves were desirous of seeing Germany under the control of a strong anti-Soviet and anti-Communist regime. The subsidies Hitler received placed the Nazi Party on a strong financial footing, enabling him to make his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed in his faith that Germany would recover from its suffering and be a great nation once more. The alliance with the industrialists also demonstrated another aspect of Hitler, a skill of effectively using those that would use him, which many would discover when it was too late.<br />
<br />
The electoral strength of the Nazis grew during the Depression, as unceasing propaganda accused the government of failing to improve conditions for the working man. By the fall of 1930 the Nazis captured more than 18 percent of the vote, compared to just 2.6 percent in 1928. Hitler captured 36.8 percent of the vote when he opposed Paul von Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election; his mass following put him in such a strong position that he entered a series of closed-door intrigues with Franz von Papen, Oskar Hindenburg, and Otto Meissner, all sharing a fear and loathing of a communist government. Despite the party losing votes in the November, 1932 election, Hitler insisted on nothing less than the office of chancellor for himself. For him, it was all or nothing. Hindenburg offered it to him on January 30, 1933.<br />
<br />
==In power==<br />
Almost immediately, Hitler established himself as dictator. Less than a month after taking office, on February 27 the Reichstag building was set on fire under mysterious circumstances (but officially blamed on a feeble-minded Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe); Hitler soon after succeeded in getting several decrees passed removing much of the freedom guaranteed the constitution in the name of state security, and which also allowed an intensified campaign of violence against dissidents. Incredibly, in a special election set in those conditions on March 5, the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote. On March 21, the new Reichstag assembled at the Potsdam Church, as much a show of unity between the old guard under Hindenburg and the Nazis as it was a show of peace. Two days later the Enabling Act was passed, giving Hitler full powers; with the exception of the Nazis, all other political parties, including those which had helped pass the Enabling Act, ceased to exist within three months. Many of their leaders were imprisoned in concentration camps.<br />
<br />
===Night of the Long Knives===<br />
[[Image:HitlerRohm1933.JPG|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with Ernst Röhm in 1933]]<br />
[[File:Diego Rivera, Hitler, Panel of Mural for the New Workers School, New York City, 1933..jpg|thumb|left|Hitler by [[Diego Rivera]], 1933.]]<br />
Hitler, however, did not wish to start an immediate revolution. In order to implement his ideas he still needed the support of the army. But he did have one growing problem that was a thorn in the army’s side, the three million-plus men of the [[SA]] and their leader, [[Ernst Röhm]], who wanted nothing less than to merge the SA into the much smaller army, with himself in overall command. At first, Hitler tried getting Röhm’s support by persuasion, but Hitler’s inner circle was for removing him by any means possible. On June 29, 1934, Hitler ordered a purge, flew towards a resort near Munich where a number of SA leaders were vacationing, and had them all arrested; many would be shot without trial. Refusing to shoot himself when offered, Röhm was killed in his cell at Dachau, his last words, ironically, “Mein Führer, mein Führer!” <ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/roehm.htm</ref><ref>http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html {{dead link}}</ref><ref>http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html</ref> The purge took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.<br />
<br />
On July 13, Hitler gave speech in the Reichstag, announcing that some seventy-four individuals had been shot for threatening the stability of the Reich.<br />
:''"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people…It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot." ''<br />
<br />
Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Satisfied that the SA leadership was thoroughly broken up (thousands of SA members were either arrested or killed that night), the army approved of Hitler’s actions. Hindenburg died a few days later on August 2, and Hitler merged the office of president with the chancellorship, and with it the supreme command of the German armed forces. During this time the world was slowly recovering economically from the Depression, but it quickened in Germany, coincidently with Hitler’s rise to power. Taking credit for the recovery made him very popular, bringing him a 90 percent approval rating in a voter plebiscite that year.<br />
<br />
===Beginnings of expansion===<br />
In matters of state, the running of domestic affairs was left to subordinates, which was something Hitler had little attention for. Foreign policy always peaked his interest, in so much as to the advantages of a “Greater Germany”, which was his chief ambition. The first part of realizing this, according to ''Mein Kampf'', was to be a reunion of the German peoples within Europe; the second would be an expansion of Germany to the east (lebensraum). Expanding would mean a renewed conflict with the Slavic peoples, whom Hitler intended to serve as slaves to the “New German Order.” To follow through on his ambitions, he would have to remove Poland and the Soviet Union as countries; France also would have to be stabilized in the west, as she was Germany’s enemy for more than a century. He counted as possible allies Italy, with its fascist government under [[Benito Mussolini]], and Britain, whom he regarded as having a similar, Teutonic heritage.<br />
[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondie.]]<br />
Before any of his ambitions could take place, there was one thing he detested which needed immediate removal: the restrictions placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Posing as a man of peace to allay suspicions, he insisted that he was a champion of Europe wishing only for the removal of the inequalities leveled by the treaty, and posturing as a shield against Bolshevism. In October, 1933, he had Germany withdraw from the [[League of Nations]]. The following January he signed a non-aggression treaty with Poland. His individual repudiations of parts of the treaty were followed by offers of negotiations for new agreements, while maintaining Germany’s limited ambitious nature.<br />
<br />
While this was going on, Germany was steadily building up the armed forces. Rigorous training using wooden guns and trucks marked as “tanks” got needed battlefield training for officers. Potential fighter pilots began their training in gliders at public demonstrations – Germany, under terms of the treaty, was not allowed an air force – and later they would fly in new civilian stunt planes and transports, which on the drawing board were designed to be rapidly turned into fighters and bombers. Conscription was introduced in January, 1935, and in June of that year Hitler successfully signed a naval treaty with Britain, giving him rights to a respectable navy; but even while the ink was drying, Germany was secretly building a large U-boat fleet.<br />
<br />
The matter of reuniting the German peoples came into being in July, 1934, and here Hitler overreached. German organizations were covertly aiding Austrian Nazis in the overthrow of their government, culminating in an attempted revolt as well as murdering Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. When the attempt clearly failed, Hitler denied involvement. In January, 1935, a plebecite was introduced in the Saarland; more than 90 percent voted to return the territory to Germany. Then in March, 1936, came his greatest slap to the Versailles Treaty: against the advice of his generals, and in open defiance of France and Britain, he ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Germany was once again becoming the leading power in continental Europe. By October, 1936, Germany had signed an alliance with Italy, proclaiming a “Rome-Berlin axis,” followed by the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. All three countries would sign a single, mutual alliance pact, the following year.<br />
<br />
==Anschluss==<br />
<br />
Removed from their offices in January 1938 were Hjalmar Schacht (economic ministry); Werner von Fritsch (soldiers’ representative); and Konstantin von Neurath (foreign office); the reason being was they were not fully accepting of Nazism. Beginning his plans of German conquest, he started with Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian chancellor, was invited to Berchtesgaden in February, where he was browbeaten and forced to sign an agreement placing Austrian Nazis in the government. When Schuschnigg resisted and announced a plebiscite for Austrian voters concerning independence, Hitler ordered German troops into Austria, completely taking over the country within days. His return to Vienna was in triumph; enthusiastic crowds greeted him by the tens of thousands, in sharp contrast to the scenes of privation he had gone through there in his youth. Austria was annexed (Anschluss) to the Reich a short time later.<br />
<br />
While the Anschluss was going on, Hitler was speaking in friendly terms with Czechoslovakia; nearly as soon as Austria ceased to exist, Hitler proceeded with his plans against the Czechs. The northwestern region of Czechoslovakia was the Sudetenland, inhabited by a German minority, and the leader of them, Konrad Henlein, was instructed to make impossible demands for those Germans on the Czech government. In the interest of preventing a general war (which Hitler wanted), Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded a peaceful agreement in Munich on September 30, giving Hitler the Sudetenland without firing a shot. Chamberlain would return to Britain, waving the agreement signed between himself and Hitler, declaring it to be “peace for our time”, but his act of appeasement would ensure the peace would last only a few more months. Despite assurances that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demands, “Czechia”, as the remainder of Czechoslovakia was called, became a German protectorate on March 15, 1939, when Hitler ordered it occupied. Just over a week later, Lithuania was forced to cede to Germany the territory of Memel (Klaipeda), on the border of East Prussia. <br />
<br />
==Poland==<br />
Poland’s turn was next, and listening to the rumblings was France and Britain, which signed guarantees of mutual assistance to the Polish nation should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler also signed pacts: a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, strengthening the alliance between Rome and Berlin, and then a treaty that caught many off-guard: a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23. A secret clause in the pact allowed for the simultaneous invasion of Poland, and the division of the country in the center from north to south. Poland was invaded on September 1; two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. <br />
<br />
Hitler assumed his own war strategy. Poland was conquered within weeks, and when a desired peace accord with Britain failed to materialize, he ordered the army to prepare for a western offensive. Norway was invaded and occupied, forestalling a British move on that country; Denmark was occupied by April, 1940. Hitler than adopted General Erich von Manstien’s plan for an offensive against France itself, which would move through neutral Belgium’s Ardenne Forest on May 10, taking that country as a matter of convenience, as well as avoiding the static fortifications of France’s Maginot Line. The German forces, extremely successful in their operations, reached the coastal ports on the English Channel in 10 days; Holland and Belgium both surrendered within days. But south of Dunkirk was where the army was ordered to halt. Hitler had hoped even at this stage in the battle that Britain would commit to peace; instead, the halting of the German army allowed the British to remove 170,000 fighting men.<br />
<br />
On June 10, Italy entered the war as German tanks were sweeping across northern France. Hitler signed an armistice with France on June 22, the signing taking place in the same rail car at the same site where the Germans surrendered in 1918.<br />
<br />
Having failed in getting the British to sign an armistice, Hitler prepared his forces for “Operation Sea Lion,” the invasion of Britain. However, the Luftwaffe was defeated in its attempt to gain air superiority over British airspace, also known as the Battle Of Britain, which forced the permanent postponement of Sealion.<br />
<br />
Facing the failure of the British to give in, Hitler started to prepare to double-cross his erstwhile partner in the Poland conquest, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, got bogged down in the Balkans, and the threat loomed that he would lose his whole army there. Hitler found it necessary to come to his aid, while at the same time taking direct control of Yugoslavia in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government.<br />
<br />
==Barbarossa==<br />
The attack on Soviet Russia began June 22, 1941. Rapid in its advancement, the German army captured a large swath of territory between the Baltic and Black seas, and captured close to 3,000,000 prisoners. But Hitler, already micro-managing military operations, became overbearing to his generals; he preferred to go after many targets, while his generals argued for a single objective. A few miles in front of Moscow, the German army was halted by a Russian offensive in December, as well as something he had absolutely no control over: the severe Russian winter.<br />
<br />
In the lands already occupied by German forces, S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler was preparing the ground for Hitler’s new German order. Expelling the Jews from Germany was the first step, and this was carried out by laws and decrees beginning in 1933; the Germans would switch to outright force in 1939, as Jews were first deported en-masse to Poland, then walled into ghettos after the occupation began. By 1941, a policy crafted under S.S. general Reinhard Heydrich had changed expulsion for extermination in what was called "a final solution to the Jewish question" (''die Endlösung der Judenfrage''). The system of concentration camps was supplemented by the creation of specialized killing centers in the occupied countries, especially in Poland, where camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzac “processed” thousands of victims daily. Some six million Jews died during what was called the [[Holocaust]], as well as an additional five million Slavs, Gypsies, the handicapped, the aged, and many others that the Nazis considered “subhuman” in accordance with German racial policies.<ref>http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm</ref><br />
<br />
==Beginning of the end==<br />
[[Image:Adolf_hitler6.jpg |right|200px|thumb|Hitler in 1944, by now looking tired and strained.]]<br />
Hitler grew increasingly strained by the end of 1942, depending on large amounts of drugs supplied by his physician, Theodor Morell, as a result of the twin defeats of El Alamein (which he lost the bulk of his Afrika corps to British general Montgomery), and Stalingrad (where he lost an entire army of 250,000 men to the Russians). He spent more time in his headquarters in East Prussia, and his time in the public eye ceased to exist. He refused to visit bombed German cities, and, as with Stalingrad, refused to allow German armies to withdraw from the battlefield when the situation was lost. Still, he could make stunning, decisive decisions when called for, such as the commando raid that resulted in the rescue of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in July, 1943.<br />
<br />
But the defeat of Germany in the war was looming closer. Hitler’s relations with his leading commanders grew strained, the more so as he allowed units of the S.S. to take positions traditionally held by the army. The line at the eastern front was slowly being pushed back by the Soviets, while in the Atlantic his U-boats campaign had faltered. German cities were constantly being bombed, and a successful invasion on the Normandy coast of France in June, 1944 marked the beginning of the end.<br />
<br />
===Assassination attempt===<br />
[[Image:NWT Hitler dead.jpg|left|200px|thumb|Hitler's death as covered by the ''New York Times'', May 2, 1945.]]<br />
Seeing Germany’s chances of surviving the war were desperate, a group of officers plotted to assassinate Hitler, planning several attempts in 1943-44, but nearly successful on July 20, 1944, when a bomb hidden in a briefcase by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg went off under a table that Hitler and others were leaning over; four were killed outright, several suffered injuries, but Hitler escaped relatively unharmed (the bomb itself was set down away from Hitler behind a solid oak table leg, saving him). The conspirators were quickly rounded up; Stauffenberg was shot. The remainder were put on show trials and condemned to hang on meat hooks with piano wire. It was said that Hitler enjoyed watching film of their executions. As a result of the bomb, Nazi members were employed at key positions within the army, removing any trace of the army’s independence.<br />
<br />
Within months nearly all of the territory occupied by Germany was now in Allied hands. A last offensive in December, 1944 to take the port of Antwerp, Belgium, failed. Hitler had by them grown ill; his hopes for a German victory bordered on the fantastical and the imagination. By January, 1945 he had moved into his command bunker in Berlin, where he gave orders deploying fictional divisions to counter the ever-closer Soviets. When all seemed lost, he gave out his final orders: first, appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and his successor, and Josef Goebbels as chancellor; and second, dictating his last political will which was an attempt to justify his life’s work.<br />
<br />
On April 29, he committed the one truly-chivalrous act of his life: he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress. After retiring to his room in the bunker the next day, Eva took poison, and Hitler put a bullet in his head. In accordance with his wishes, both bodies were burned. His Third Reich would outlive him for another week.<br />
<br />
[[Elie Wiesel]] wrote the following in [[Time Magazine]] regarding Hitler: <br />
{{cquote|Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and [[evil]] were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." <ref name="time" />}}<br />
<br />
All in all, Hitler survived over forty assassination attempts. The Stauffenburg attempt was the closest anyone ever came to killing Hitler. George Elser, a communist, came very close in 1938, having planted a bomb in a beam that Hitler stood in front of while giving a speech. Luck saved Hitler, as he left the hall early and twelve minutes later the bomb exploded.<br />
<br />
==Death==<br />
On the afternoon of April 30, 1945 as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the center of Berlin, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.<ref>Kershaw, Ian. ''Hitler: A Biography''. (2008) p. 955</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler, Anton. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180</ref><ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin – The Downfall 1945''. (2002) p. 359</ref> The majority of contemporary historians have rejected the other accounts of Hitler's demise or reported escape from Berlin as either Soviet propaganda or surmise.<ref>Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref> Following the end of the war, because of the different versions presented by the Soviet Union as to Hitler being dead and alive, both British Military Intelligence (led by agent Hugh Trevor-Roper) and the FBI conducted investigations as to the different claims made. The declassified information from British MI5, confirmed that Hitler shot himself.<ref>https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/world-war-ii/hitlers-last-days.html</ref> The declassified FBI documents report that Hitler and Eva Braun may have actually escaped to Argentina in a submarine and changed his identity. However, as the report states, "because of lack of information to support the story advanced...it is believed impossible to continue efforts to locate Hitler".<ref>http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view</ref> More recently in 2009, American researchers were allowed to perform DNA tests on the skull fragment the Russians claim was from Hitler. The tests revealed that the skull fragment belonged to a woman under 40 years of age who was not related to Eva Braun. However, the jaw fragments which had been recovered and identified as Hitler's<ref>Eberle and Uhl. ''The Hitler Book''. (2005) p. 282</ref> were not tested by the American researcher.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/hitler.skull.debate/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD</ref> Therefore, most historians are very skeptical as to these popular conspiracy theories, in particular because there are credible witnesses, who saw the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.<ref>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html</ref><ref>Joachimsthaler. ''The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth''. (1999) [1995] pp. 160-180, 240-260</ref><ref>Fischer, Thomas. ''Soldiers of the Leibstandarte''. (2008) p. 47</ref><br />
<br />
== Adolf Hitler and Abortion ==<br />
<br />
''For more information see:'' [[Abortion and Adolf Hitler]]<br />
<br />
In 1942 Adolf Hitler declared:<br />
{{cquote|In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-[[German]] population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. <ref>http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07090708.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
<br />
*[[Nazi Germany and homosexuality]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
[[File:Hitler Siegestor Munich Victory Gate.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of the Arch of Triumph in Munich by Hitler.]]<br />
*[http://www.eucontest.org/go.php?pdf=www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%201994.pdf Extracts From Mein Kampf by Hitler]<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.] Full text.<br />
*[http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/hartworks.htm Adolf Hitler ORIGINAL Watercolor Artworks.]<br />
*[http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/ Hitler Was a Leftist]<br />
<br />
==Further reading==<br />
*[http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/medical.htm STATE MEDICAL SERVICES OF THE THIRD REICH], FROM THE OPENING STATEMENT BY TELFORD TAYLOR, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10. Nuremberg, October 1946–April 1949. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1949–1953.] Retrieved from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
{{reflist|2}}<br />
<br />
==Sources==<br />
<small>*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.htmlA Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend], Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.</small><br />
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{{DEFAULTSORT: Hitler, Adolf}} <br />
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[[Category:Totalitarianism]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:Evolutionary Racists]]<br />
[[Category:War criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Socialists]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Berlin&diff=1095812Berlin2014-07-27T21:52:51Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>[[Image:DSC00590_1.jpg|thumb|300|right|The Brandenburg Gate (''Brandenburger Tor''), viewed from the newly restored Paris Place (''Pariser Platz'').]]<br />
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'''Berlin''' is the capital of [[Germany]], and formerly of the [[Prussia|Kingdom of Prussia]] and the [[Margraviate of Brandenburg]].<br />
<br />
During the [[Cold War]] it was divided into an Eastern and a Western part. Both were considered to be under the control of the four [[WWII]] Allies. However, in fact, the [[USSR]] and East Germany (a.k.a. the German Democratic Republic) made [[East Berlin]] into the capital of [[East Germany]], whereas the Western Allies (USA, UK, France) and West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) insisted on the allied status of all sectors of Berlin and made [[Bonn]] into the provisional capital of West Germany. A [[Berlin Wall|wall]] between the two parts was built by East Germany in order to stop people escaping from East Berlin to [[West Berlin]] for economic as well as political reasons.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Berlin Philharmonic.jpg|thumb|left|280px|The Berlin Philharmonic in concert]]<br />
<br />
Berlin is well known world-wide for its cultural institutions, such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, its three opera houses, its museums and art galleries, and its remaining architectural history. Re-emerging from the aftermath of WWII and the Cold War, Berlin has since firmly established itself as one of Europe's brightest centres of culture. <ref> [http://www.berlin-life.com/culture/culture.php Culture in Berlin] </ref> The Hebbel-Theater is one of the centers for contemporary dance and opera in Europe. With seven major symphony orchestras (and several private ones), two major concert halls, and a plethora of smaller venues and churches, Berlin is indisputably one of the world's greatest cities for classical music. <ref> [http://www.berlinfo.com/Freetime/Art-Culture/classical_music/index.htm Classical Music] </ref> The Konzerthaus is Berlin’s most elegant venue for classical music. <br />
<br />
Berlin is well-known for the liberal attitudes that proliferate in its corners. During the time of the [[Cold War]], numerous young men from West Germany moved to West Berlin, in order to avoid military service. They founded numerous communities, mainly in the city district Kreuzberg, known also as the Turkish Quarter, for its large concentration of Turkish immigrants. Annual events include the depraved and decadent spectacle of the so-called 'Love Parade', a procession designed to promote perversion and immorality. A remarkable political event was the current mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, publicly announcing in his election campaign that he is homosexual. <ref>article in NY Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/world/europe/23wowereit.html?ei=5090&en=fab18328b0dbeafe&ex=1316664000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all]</ref><br />
<br />
A very short history to 1945:<br />
* grew from a pair of Wendish villages ( Berlin and K&ouml;lln), founded in the early 13th century.<br />
* was member of [[Hanseatic League]] from the 14th century. <br />
* became capital of Brandenburg.<br />
* became Protestant mid 16th century. (after 1540)<br />
* capital of Prussia from 1701<br />
* occupied by [[Austria]]ns, 1757, then the [[Russia]]ns, 1760<br />
* occupied by [[Napoleon]], 1806.<br />
* capital of German Empire, 1871-1918<br />
* Congress of Berlin, 1878 – Berlin Conference, 1885.<br />
* capital of the [[Weimar Republic]], 1918-1933<br />
* capital of the [[Third Reich]], 1933-1945 (entered by Russians May 1945)<br />
* greatly damaged by Allied bombing, 1941 and 1943-45.<br />
* partitioned into zones and occupied (Americans, British, French, Russians), June 1945<br />
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<br />
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== See also ==<br />
*[[Art cities]]<br />
*[[Walter Gropius]]<br />
*[[Ludwig Mies van der Rohe]]<br />
*[[Angela Merkel]]<br />
<br />
{{Clear}}<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
*[http://www.museum.hu-berlin.de/index_english.html Berlin Museum of Natural History]<br />
*[http://home.att.net/~rw.rynerson/index2.htm Berlin 1969 - life in the U.S. Army's Berlin Brigade]<br />
*[http://travelguides.lastminute.com/sisp/index.htm?fx=location&loc_id=146451&sub_section=Culture Berlin Culture Guide]<br />
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==References== <br />
<references/><br />
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[[Category:German Cities and Towns]]<br />
[[Category:Capital Cities]]<br />
[[Category:Urban History]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1094002Third Reich2014-07-20T17:39:00Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>{{Country<br />
|name =''Deutsches Reich'' (1933–1943)<br/>''Großdeutsches Reich'' (1943–1945)<br />
|map =ThirdReichMap.png<br />
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png<br />
|arms =<br />
|capital =Berlin<br />
|capital-raw =<br />
|government =Dictatorship; single-party<br />
|government-raw =<br />
|language =German<br />
|king =<br />
|queen =<br />
|monarch-raw =<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1933 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>Lutz von Krosigk <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =244,706 sq mi<br />
|pop =69,320,000 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1939<br />
|gdp = <br />
|gdp-year =<br />
|gdp-pc = <br />
|currency =Reichsmark <br />
|idd =<br />
|tld =<br />
}}<br />
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
<br />
Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
<br />
Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
<br />
Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
<br />
The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
<br />
In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
<br />
It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
<br />
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
<br />
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
<br />
Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1093068Third Reich2014-07-14T03:11:12Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
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|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>Lutz von Krosigk <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
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The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
<br />
Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
<br />
Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
<br />
Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
<br />
The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
<br />
In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
<br />
It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
<br />
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
<br />
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
<br />
Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
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== References ==<br />
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[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Joseph_Goebbels&diff=1093067Joseph Goebbels2014-07-14T03:09:04Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>'''Paul Joseph Goebbels''' (1897-1945), member of the German National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and propaganda minister during the era of the [[Third Reich]]. He was a slightly built man with a crippled left leg. Goebbels had earned a PhD and was a frustrated writer when he joined the Nazi Party in the 1920's during the time of the [[French]] occupation of the [[Ruhr]]. He became an ardent admirer of [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] and took national office when the [[Nazis]] seized power in January 1933. He was known for his oratory skills and for spreading Nazi propaganda to the masses. He molded German newspapers, movies, art and culture into areas which followed and reflected Nazi doctrine. He was a noted anti-Semite.<ref>Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders and Personalities of the Third Reich'' (1984).</ref><br />
<br />
A proponent of the concept of total war, Goebbels used his position as propaganda minister to exhort the German people to greater effort and efficiencies. During the latter stages of the war he was able to use the intrigues of the Nazi Party to bring himself closer to Hitler.<ref>Snyder, Louis. ''Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'' (1994) [1976].</ref><br />
<br />
As the war drew to an end Goebbels spent his last days with Hitler in Berlin. After Hitler's suicide Goebbels decided that there would be no redemption for himself or his family. On May 1 1945 he and his wife, Magda had their six children poisoned. Goebbels then shot himself and his wife took poison. An SS officer then "gave them the coup de grace".<ref>Hamilton, Charles. ''Leaders and Personalities of the Third Reich'' (1984).</ref><br />
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==References==<br />
{{reflist}}<br />
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==External links==<br />
*[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/goebbels.html Joseph Goebbels - Jewish Virtual Library]<br />
*[http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/joseph_goebbels.htm Joseph Goebbels - History Learning Site]<br />
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[[Category: World War II]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:German People]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1093066Third Reich2014-07-14T03:07:57Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>{{Country<br />
|name =Deutsches Reich (1933–1943)<br/>Großdeutsches Reich (1943–1945)<br />
|map =ThirdReichMap.png<br />
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png<br />
|arms =<br />
|capital =Berlin<br />
|capital-raw =<br />
|government =Dictatorship; single-party<br />
|government-raw =<br />
|language =German<br />
|king =<br />
|queen =<br />
|monarch-raw =<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>Lutz von Krosigk <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =244,706 sq mi<br />
|pop =69,320,000 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1939<br />
|gdp = <br />
|gdp-year =<br />
|gdp-pc = <br />
|currency =Reichsmark <br />
|idd =<br />
|tld =<br />
}}<br />
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Reich") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
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Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
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By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
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General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
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Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
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Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
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Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
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The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
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In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
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In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
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It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
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In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
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Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
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Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1093065Third Reich2014-07-14T03:07:26Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Country<br />
|name =Deutsches Reich (1933–1943)<br/>Großdeutsches Reich (1943–1945)<br />
|map =ThirdReichMap.png<br />
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png<br />
|arms =<br />
|capital =Berlin<br />
|capital-raw =<br />
|government =Dictatorship; single-party<br />
|government-raw =<br />
|language =German<br />
|king =<br />
|queen =<br />
|monarch-raw =<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>Lutz von Krosigk <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =244,706 sq mi<br />
|pop =69,320,000 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1939<br />
|gdp = <br />
|gdp-year =<br />
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|currency =Reichsmark <br />
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}}<br />
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Empire") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
<br />
Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
<br />
Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
<br />
Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
<br />
The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
<br />
In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
<br />
It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
<br />
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
<br />
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
<br />
Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1093064Third Reich2014-07-14T03:06:09Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
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|president =<br />
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1925 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br/>Lutz von Krosigk <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
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The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Empire") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
<br />
Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
<br />
Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
<br />
Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
<br />
The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
<br />
In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
<br />
It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
<br />
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
<br />
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
<br />
Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1088246Third Reich2014-06-07T19:33:16Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
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The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Empire") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
<br />
Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
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Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
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A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
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Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
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“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
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[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
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Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
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Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
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Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
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The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
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When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
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In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
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It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
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In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
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Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
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Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
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For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
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Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
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Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
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The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
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===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
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Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
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As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
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Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
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The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
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Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
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Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
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As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
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“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
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Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
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Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
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On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
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Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
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It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
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== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
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== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
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== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
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[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Weimar_Republic&diff=1088245Weimar Republic2014-06-07T19:31:10Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Weimar map.gif|thumb|Weimar 1924 - 1933]]<br />
The '''Weimar Republic''' is the name of the administration which governed [[Germany]] from 1919 to 1933 after its defeat in [[World War I]] and the stepping down of [[Kaiser Wilhelm II]]. The name Weimar Republic is given because the constitution had been drafted in the city of [[Weimar]] as the capital, [[Berlin]], was considered too dangerous in the period immediately following the end of World War I. To contemporaries, the country was still referred to as ''Germany'', and officially (despite the new republican constitution) the ''German Reich''. The republic experienced many problems.<br />
<br />
One reason were the harsh terms of [[Versailles Treaty]]. Although the terms of the treaty were never fully enforced, the psychological damage was immense, since they were perceived as a grave injustice. Most German civilians were taken by surprise by their nation's surrender in the war, seeing as they had no idea that they were losing the war. <ref>Dr E.J. Feuchtwanger wrote, "The defeat of 1918 hit the German public with brutal suddenness. To the very end they had been told that victory was within their grasp." [http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~semp/weimar.htm] </ref> In truth Germany had no choice. They were not allowed to give input, and were only told to sign. Seeds of [[anti-Semitism]] also began to grow at a grassroots level, which partially paved the way for the rise to power of [[Adolf Hitler]]. The press, and many Germans, irrationally blamed Jews for their loss, and radical groups began to grow in influence as the economy grew worse. The [[National Socialism]] movement (also known as the [[Nazi Party]]) in particular blamed [[Jews]] for the country's woes, and promised that in a [[Third Reich]], they would be denied their rights. The party cranked up their hate [[propaganda]] machine, particularly after 1929, and was elected into power in 1933. <ref>Shoah Resource Center: http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203261.pdf</ref><br />
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[[Image:Wheelbarrow money.jpg|right|thumb|A wheelbarrow full of printed currency]]<br />
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The republic was also struggling with the rejection by monarchist, who were still occupying important position in the state. Many WWI veterans believed that the German forces in WW I were not defeated, but that the social democratic leaders, who founded the Weimar republic to thwart a communist revolution, surrendered to the allies for political gains. It was know is known as the "stab-in-the-back myth", and was used to discredit the republic <ref>German Notes: "Dolchstosslegende social mythos and propaganda to blame loss of World War I upon non-Germans and non-nationalists"[http://www.germannotes.com/hist_weimar_dolch.shtml]</ref>. <br />
<br />
The early years were characterized by [[hyper-inflation]], which was caused when the government started [[printing money]] since it was low on cash, in part due to reparation payments. The value of the German mark went from 4 to the dollar to over 1 trillion to the dollar at the peak of the inflation in 1923. Although the Weimar Republic enjoyed a time of economic resurgence after the early years of hyper-inflation it failed to gain deep public support. The Weimar Republic was famously called a '[[democracy]] without democrats'.<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
* [[Hyperinflation]]<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[Category:European History]]<br />
[[Category:Germany]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Third_Reich&diff=1085991Third Reich2014-05-11T18:00:08Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Country<br />
|name =''Deutsches Reich''<br/>1933-1945<br />
|map =ThirdReichMap.png<br />
|flag =Flag of Nazi Germany.png<br />
|arms =<br />
|capital =Berlin<br />
|capital-raw =<br />
|government =Dictatorship; single-party<br />
|government-raw =<br />
|language =German<br />
|king =<br />
|queen =<br />
|monarch-raw =<br />
|president =<br />
|president-raw = [[Paul von Hindenburg]] <nowiki>(1933 - 1934)</nowiki><br/>[[Adolf Hitler]] <nowiki>(1934 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Karl Dönitz]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|chancellor =<br />
|chancellor-raw = Adolf Hitler <nowiki>(1933 - 1945)</nowiki><br/>[[Joseph Goebbels]] <nowiki>(1945)</nowiki><br />
|pm =<br />
|pm-raw =<br />
|area =244,706 sq mi<br />
|pop =69,320,000 (est)<br />
|pop-basis =1939<br />
|gdp = <br />
|gdp-year =<br />
|gdp-pc = <br />
|currency =Reichsmark <br />
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}}<br />
The '''Third Reich''' (German: ''Deutsches Reich'', "German Empire") was the dictatorship of [[Germany]] from 1933-1945 while under the control of the [[Nazi Party]] and its leader, [[Adolf Hitler]]. Quickly consolidating power after his appointment by President [[Paul von Hindenburg]], Hitler pulled the country out of the world-wide depression and transformed it once again into a major [[Europe]]an power; his lust for German territorial expansion at the expense of other countries, beliefs in an Aryan "master race", and a hatred of those considered "sub-human" (primarily the Jews) led to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which left Germany and much of Europe in ruins and millions of people dead. <br />
<br />
In taking over Germany, Hitler believed that he was creating a third German empire, following the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (800-1806) - what he called the [[First Reich]] - and the [[Second Reich]] created by [[Otto von Bismarck]], which lasted 1871-1918. <br />
<br />
==Beginnings==<br />
Adolf Hitler was still attached to the German Army in Bavaria after [[World War I]], serving primarily as a gatherer of information on the various political parties which were created as a result of the country's loss in the war. After being assigned to document a small party in Munich known as the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("German Workers' Party" or DAP), he liked what he saw in it and became a member in September 1919; the following year, the party changed its name to the ''National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' ("National Socialist German Workers' Party" or NSDAP). In 1921 Hitler assumed leadership of the NSDAP.<br />
<br />
As leader of the NSDAP, Hitler reorganized the party and encouraged the assimilation of other radical right-wing groups. Gangs of unemployed demobilized soldiers were gathered under the command of a former army officer, [[Ernst Röhm]], to form the [[Storm Troopers]] (''Sturmabteilung'' or SA), Hitler's private army. Under Hitler's leadership, the NSDAP joined with others on the right in denouncing the Weimar Republic and the "November criminals" who had signed the [[Treaty of Versailles]]. The postwar economic slump won the party a following among unemployed ex-soldiers, the lower middle class, and small farmers; in 1923 membership totaled about 55,000. General Erich Ludendorff supported the former corporal in the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] of November 1923 in Munich, an attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government. The putsch failed, and Hitler received a light sentence of five years, of which he served less than one. Incarcerated in relative comfort, he wrote ''Mein Kampf'' (My Struggle), in which he set out his long-term political aims.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the putsch, Hitler turned to "legal revolution" as the means to power and chose two parallel paths to take the Nazis to that goal. First, the NSDAP would employ propaganda to create a national mass party capable of coming to power through electoral successes. Second, the party would develop a bureaucratic structure and prepare itself to assume roles in government. Beginning in the mid-1920s, Nazi groups sprang up in other parts of Germany. In 1927 the NSDAP organized the first Nuremberg party congress, a mass political rally. By 1928 party membership exceeded 100,000; the Nazis, however, polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in May.<br />
<br />
A mere splinter party in 1928, the NSDAP became better known the following year when it formed an alliance with the DNVP to launch a plebiscite against the Young Plan on the issue of reparations. The DNVP's leader, Alfred Hugenberg, owner of a large newspaper chain, considered Hitler's spellbinding oratory a useful means of attracting votes. The DNVP-NSDAP union brought the NSDAP within the framework of a socially influential coalition of the antirepublican right. As a result, Hitler's party acquired respectability and access to wealthy contributors.<br />
<br />
Had it not been for the economic collapse that began with the [[Wall Street]] stock market crash of October 1929, Hitler probably would not have come to power. The [[Great Depression]] hit Germany very hard because the German economy's well-being depended on short-term loans from the United States. Once these loans were recalled, Germany was devastated. Unemployment went from 8.5 percent in 1929 to 14 percent in 1930, to 21.9 percent in 1931, and, at its peak, to 29.9 percent in 1932. Compounding the effects of the Depression were the drastic economic measures taken by Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning, who served as chancellor from March 1930 until the end of May 1932. Brüning's budget cuts were designed to cause so much misery that the Allies would excuse Germany from making any further reparations payments. In this at least, Brüning succeeded. United States president [[Herbert Hoover]] declared a "reparations moratorium" in 1932. In the meantime, the Depression deepened, and social discontent intensified to the point that Germany seemed on the verge of civil war.<br />
<br />
In times of desperation, voters are ready for extreme solutions, and the NSDAP exploited the situation. Skilled Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels launched an intensive media campaign that ceaselessly expounded a few simple notions until even the dullest voter knew Hitler's basic program. The party's program was broad and general enough to appeal to many unemployed people, farmers, white-collar workers, members of the middle class who had been hurt by the Depression or had lost status since the end of World War I, and young people eager to dedicate themselves to nationalist ideals. If voters were not drawn to some aspects of the party platform, they might agree with others. Like other right-wing groups, the party blamed the Treaty of Versailles and reparations for the developing crisis. Nazi propaganda attacked the Weimar political system, the "November criminals," Marxists, internationalists, and Jews. Besides promising a solution to the economic crisis, the NSDAP offered the German people a sense of national pride and the promise of restored order.<br />
<br />
Three elections - in September 1930, in July 1932, and in November 1932 - were held between the onset of the Depression and Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The vote shares of the SPD and the Center Party fluctuated somewhat yet remained much as they had been in 1928, when the SPD held a large plurality of 153 seats in the Reichstag and the Center Party held sixty-one, third after the DNVP's seventy-three seats. The shares of the parties of the extreme left and extreme right, the KPD and the NSDAP, respectively, increased dramatically in this period, KPD holdings almost doubling from fifty-four in 1928 to 100 in November 1932. The NSDAP's success was even greater. Beginning with twelve seats in 1928, the Nazis increased their delegation seats nearly tenfold, to 107 seats in 1930. They doubled their holdings to 230 in the summer of 1932. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag, far surpassing the SPD with its 133 seats. The gains of the NSDAP came at the expense of the other right-wing parties.<br />
<br />
Chancellor Brüning was unable to secure parliamentary majorities for his austerity policy, so he ruled by decree, a right given him by President [[Hindenburg]]. Head of the German army during World War I, Hindenburg had been elected president in 1925. Ruling without parliament was a major step in moving away from parliamentary democracy and had the approval of many on the right. Many historians see this development as part of a strategic plan formulated at the time by elements of the conservative establishment to abolish the republic and replace it with an authoritarian regime.<br />
<br />
By late May 1932, Hindenburg had found Brüning insufficiently pliable and named a more conservative politician, Franz von Papen, as his successor. After the mid-1932 elections that made the NSDAP Germany's largest party, Papen sought to harness Hitler for the purposes of traditional conservatives by offering him the post of vice chancellor in a new cabinet. Hitler refused this offer, demanding the chancellorship instead.<br />
<br />
General Kurt von Schleicher, a master intriguer and a leader of the conservative campaign to abolish the republic, convinced Hindenburg to dismiss Papen. Schleicher formed a new government in December but lost Hindenburg's support within a month. On January 30, 1933, Papen again put together a cabinet, this time with Hitler as chancellor. Papen and other conservatives thought they could tame Hitler by tying him down with the responsibilities of government and transferring to themselves his tremendous popularity with a large portion of the electorate. But they proved no match for his ruthlessness and his genius at knowing how - and when - to seize power. Within two months, Hitler had dictatorial control over Germany.<br />
<br />
===The Reichstag and Its Aftermath===<br />
On February 27, 1933, the [[Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]] was destroyed in a fire that had plainly been deliberately set. Exactly who set the fire remains a question never fully resolved. Most contemporary observers both in and outside of Germany blamed and still blame the Nazis themselves, though Shirer admits in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that “The whole truth about the Reichstag Fire will probably never be known.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Hitler and his followers lost no time in blaming the arson on the Communists. “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution,” declared Goering as he watched fire consume the building. Hitler himself told then [[Gestapo]] Chief Diels that “The German Volk will have no sympathy with lenience. Every communist official will be shot where he is found. The communist deputies must be hanged this night. Everything connected with the communists is be settled – no more indulgence will be shown the social democrats or the Reichsbanner.” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref> <br />
<br />
A day later a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state” was passed:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”<br />
</blockquote> <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
Thus, the first taste of Nazi state [[terror]] was rendered “legal,” as over the next week [[SA]] storm troopers took into “protective custody” several thousand Communist officials and many Social Democrats and liberals. These prisoners, often snatched from their homes and off the streets, were loaded onto trucks and carried off to SA barracks and hastily set up prisons where many of them were held, [[torture]]d and killed without the formality of a hearing or trial. The rationale for these drastic measures, Hitler’s government insisted, was the dire threat posed by the communist menace. The same day as the “defensive measure” was passed, the government declared that documents had been uncovered revealing a Communist plot (these documents were never actually produced):<br />
<br />
“”The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war…it was ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.” <br />
<br />
[[Goering]] announced just a few days after the fire, “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking…I don’t have to worry about justice! My mission is to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!” <ref>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Book Two, “Triumph and Consolidation.” William Shirer</ref><br />
<br />
==The Consolidation of Power==<br />
[[File:Early-leaders-of-the-nazi-party-full.jpg|thumb|left|250px| Early leaders of the Third Reich]]<br />
The election of March 5 was the last held in Germany until after World War II. Although opposition parties were severely harassed, the NSDAP won only 43.9 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, with the help of political allies, Hitler presented the Reichstag with the proposal for an Enabling Act that, if passed by a two-thirds majority, would allow him to govern without parliament for four years. On March 23, the proposal was passed with the support of the Center Party and others. All Communists and some Social Democrats were prevented from voting.<br />
<br />
Hitler used the Enabling Act to implement ''Gleichschaltung'' (synchronization), that is, the policy of subordinating all institutions and organizations to Nazi control. First, left-wing political parties were banned; then, in July 1933, Germany was declared a one-party state. The civil service and judiciary were purged of "non-Aryans" (Jews) and leftists. Local and state governments were reorganized and staffed with Nazis. Trade unions were dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations. Even the NSDAP was purged of its social-revolutionary wing, the SA. The enormous and unruly SA was brought under control by a [[massacre]] of its leadership which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934 in what became known as the "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". Other opponents were also killed during this purge, among them Schleicher. After Hindenburg's death in early August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of the president and the chancellor. With the SA tamed, Hitler assured the army that he regarded it as Germany's military force, and the soldiers swore an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler, pledging unconditional obedience. [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s guard detachment, the (''Schutzstaffel'') or [[SS]] replaced the SA as Hitler's private army.<br />
<br />
====Beginnings of Genocide====<br />
[[File:Aprilboykott.jpg|right|thumb|250px| Boycott of Jewish businesses]]<br />
Once the regime was established, terror was the principal means used to maintain its control of Germany. Police arrests, which had focused originally on Communists and Socialists, were extended to other groups, most particularly to Jews. This systematic use of terror was highly effective in silencing resistance. Some enemies of the regime fled abroad. However, all but a tiny minority of those opposed to Hitler resigned themselves to suppressing their opinions in public and hoping for the regime's eventual demise.<br />
<br />
Like its secular institutions, Germany's churches were subjected to Nazi pressure. They resisted incorporation into the regime and retained a substantial degree of independence. This situation was tolerated by the regime, provided that the churches did not interfere with its efforts to control public life. When the churches were outraged by such Nazi practices as euthanasia and sterilization, they protested. The regime responded by more carefully concealing such medical procedures. Otherwise, with the exception of a few brave clergymen, the churches rarely spoke out against the regime. The regime's chief victims--Jews, [[Communist]]s, [[Socialist]]s, labor leaders, and writers--generally had not been close to the churches, and their persecution was witnessed in silence.<br />
<br />
Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, contributed to the regime's consolidation with the establishment of the (''Reichskulturkammer'') Reich Cultural Chamber, which extended ''Gleichschaltung'' to the educational system, the radio, and the cultural institutions. However, an elaborate system of censorship was not considered necessary to control the press. Non-Nazi party newspapers had already been suppressed. The editors of the remaining newspapers soon were able to figure out what was deemed suitable for public consumption. Goebbels also took an interest in Germany's substantial film industry, pressuring it to make pleasant, amusing films that would distract the German public in its leisure hours.<br />
<br />
The regime soon achieved its desired consolidation. Many Germans supported it, some out of opportunism, some because they liked certain aspects of it such as full employment, which was quickly achieved. The regime also brought social order, something many Germans welcomed after fifteen years of political and economic chaos. Many were won over by Hitler's diplomatic successes, which began soon after he came to power and continued through the 1930s and which seemed to restore Germany to what they saw as its rightful place in the international community.<br />
<br />
When Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938, the deliberate harassment and humiliation of individual Austrian Jews by Nazis was a public spectacle. “I was given a bucket of boiling water,” wrote Morris Fleischman, a Jewish survivor of that era, “and I was told to clean the steps. I lay down on my stomach and began to clean the pavement. It turned out that the bucket was half-full of acid and this burned my hands.” Martin Gilbert, author of "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", observes that “Dozens of passersby also watched these scenes of humiliation, laughing and mocking as Jews, having been forced to put their sacred prayer bands on their arms, were then made to clean unflushed lavatory bowls…The Germans who carried out the atrocities had already become corrupted by their tasks; laughing when inflicting pain and drawing in passersby to laugh with them. Gradually entire populations became immune to feelings of outrage, and learned to shun compassion.” <ref>The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Chapter 5, “Hunted Like Rats.”</ref><br />
<br />
In November of 1938, a young Jewish man distraught over the deportation of his family, assassinated Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The result was November 9th, 1938, a night that would afterwards be known as ''Kristalnacht'', a reference to the amount of broken glass littering the streets afterwards. Jewish homes in Germany were ransacked, Synagogues burned, Jews chased down and beaten to death. More than 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The German government responded by charging the Jewish community for the damage and a few days later, barring all Jewish children from German schools. Some 35,000 Jews were arrested.<br />
<br />
==Foreign Policy==<br />
[[File:Monetary-Coin Nazi.jpg|right]]<br />
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a "de facto" revision to the Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early 1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.<br />
<br />
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist [[Italy]], a pariah state because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and international communism.<br />
<br />
It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under the direction of [[Hermann Goering]], it set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.<br />
<br />
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers. Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for Germany's expansion.<br />
<br />
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political leadership. The annexation (''Anschluss'') of Austria was welcomed by most Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.<br />
<br />
Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy known as the [[Pact of Steel]]. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War I.<br />
<br />
==World War II==<br />
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. [[Britain]] and France declared war on Germany two days later. By the end of the month, Hitler's armies had overrun western [[Poland]]. Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland, and the two countries subsequently formally divided Poland between them. In April 1940, German forces conquered Denmark and Norway, and in May they struck at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and [[France]]. French and British troops offered ineffective resistance against the lightning-like strikes, or ''blitzkrieg'', of German tanks and airplanes. A large part of the French army surrendered, and some 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk on the coast of northern France. However, because Hitler, for a combination of political and military reasons, had halted the advance of his armored divisions, the British were able to rescue the men at Dunkirk. France, however, surrendered in June.<br />
<br />
For Hitler the war in the west was a sideshow, a prelude to the building of an empire in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that Britain would stay out of the war. In his vision of the near future, he foresaw the two countries sharing the world between them--Britain would keep its overseas empire, and Germany would construct a new one to its east. When approached with the suggestion of a separate peace, British prime minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer and rallied his people to fight on. The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the [[Battle of Britain]], in which the [[Royal Air Force]], during the summer and fall of 1940, prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.<br />
<br />
Hitler concluded by June 1941 that Britain's continuing resistance was not a serious impediment to his main geopolitical goal of creating an empire extending east from Germany deep into the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, negating their 1939 nonaggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances. A counteroffensive, launched in early 1942, drove the Germans back from Moscow. In the summer of 1942, Hitler shifted the attack to the south of the Soviet Union and began a large offensive to secure the Caucasian oil fields. By September 1942, the Axis controlled an area extending from northern Norway to North Africa and from France to Stalingrad.<br />
<br />
Japan's attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the [[United States]] into the war. In support of Germany's fellow Axis power, Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. But with the United States involvement, a coalition now existed that, with its vast human and material resources, was almost certain to defeat the Third Reich. To ensure that the alliance not break apart as had happened in 1918 when Russia signed a truce with Germany, the Allies swore to fight Germany until an unconditional surrender was secured. Another reason the Allies wanted the complete military defeat of Germany was that they wished to preclude any possibility of German politicians claiming that "a stab in the back" had caused Germany's undoing, as they had done after World War I.<br />
<br />
The military turning point of the war in Europe came with the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43; some 300,000 of Germany's finest troops were either killed or captured. By May 1943, Allied armies had driven the Axis forces out of Africa and had landed in Italy. Also of great importance, by 1943 the United States and British navies had succeeded in substantially reducing the German submarine threat to shipping. This cleared the way for the movement of arms and troops to Britain in preparation for a cross-channel invasion of France.<br />
<br />
===Total Mobilization and Resistance===<br />
<br />
Once it became clear that the war would not be a short one, Germany's industry was reorganized for a total mobilization. Between February 1942 and July 1944, armaments production increased threefold despite intense Allied bombing raids. Much of the labor for this increase came from the employment of some 7 million foreigners, taken from their homelands and forced to work under terrible conditions. Also contributing to the Nazi war effort was the systematic requisitioning of raw materials and food from occupied territories. As a result, Germans remained fairly well fed for most of the war, in contrast to the hunger endured during World War I.<br />
<br />
Despite their comparative physical well-being until late in the war, it gradually became clear to many Germans that the regime's series of military triumphs had come to an end. Even the most intense, mendacious propaganda could not conceal that Germany's forces were being beaten back. Sharing this growing awareness that defeat was likely, a group of military officers decided to assassinate Hitler. Although elements of the military had long opposed him, no one had acted to this point. During 1943 and 1944, the conspirators, who included many high-ranking officers and numerous prominent civilians, worked out elaborate plans for seizing power after the dictator's death. On June 20, 1944, the conspirators ignited a bomb that would probably have killed Hitler except for a stroke of bad luck--the misplacement of the device under a conference room table. The regime struck back and after months of reprisals had killed several thousand people, among them one field marshal and twenty-two generals. Several earlier attempts on Hitler's life had also failed. Because of these failures, it would be up to the Allies to remove Hitler and his regime from power.<br />
<br />
==The [[Holocaust]]==<br />
As much of Europe [[Germany]] had been anti-Semitic for centuries, but in the years immediately preceding Third Reich it had in fact been considered a good place, even a refuge for Jews, who in Germany had been “emancipated,” i.e, granted most of the same rights as gentile citizens, in the 19th century. The formation of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1918 eliminated any remaining restrictions and German Jews could now act as complete citizens in German Civic life. <ref>Yadvashem Website Mhttp://www1.yadvashem.org/download/education/units/crystal_2.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
As [[Jewish]] artists, writers, politicians and civil servants became more visible, however, anti-semitism became more virulent, and the Nazis were able to tap into the resentment that inevitably rises to the surface when members of a minority group begin to make strides in fields that had formerly been closed to them. <br />
<br />
Anti-Semitism was one of the Third Reich's most faithfully executed policies. Hitler saw the Jews' existence as inimical to the well-being of the German race. In his youth in Vienna, he had come to believe in a social Darwinist, life-or-death struggle of the races, with that between the German race and the Jews being the most savage. Because of his adherence to these racist notions, he dreamed of creating a German empire completely free of Jews, believing that if the Jewish "bacillus" were permitted to remain within the Teutonic empire, the empire would become corrupted and fail.<br />
<br />
The violence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be measured in a disturbingly prescient quote from ''Mein Kampf'': <br />
<blockquote><br />
“If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” <ref>Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch15.html</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Upon taking power, the Nazis began immediately to rid Germany of its Jewish citizens. In the Aryan Paragraph of 1933, the regime decreed that Jews could not hold civil service positions. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 deprived Jews of the right to citizenship and restricted relationships between "Aryans" (racially pure Germans) and Jews. After the ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night) of November 9, 1938, an organized act of violence perpetrated by Nazis against Jews in all parts of Germany, the persecution of Jews entered a new phase. Random acts of violence, by then commonplace, were replaced by the systematic isolation of the Jewish population in Germany, which had numbered about 600,000 in the early 1930s.<br />
<br />
Much of the groundwork for selling the mass murder of Jews to average [[German]]s was laid by [[Julius Streicher]], whose newspaper, ''Der Sturmer'', offered a heady cocktail of simple-minded hatred, malice, and slander against Jews and anyone perceived as having sympathy for the Jews. While many educated Germans, even educated Nazis, considered Streicher a joke, the dehumanizing language he popularized helped to inure Germans to the increasingly draconian legal measures against the Jewish population. Streicher’s rhetoric presumed that Jews were inherently and unalterably evil, and flatly rejected the concept of the Jew as a human being like other human beings. “His blood,” Streicher wrote, “carries not honor and honesty, rather criminality, fraud, hypocrisy, lies, the lust for defilement, and the lust for murder…a race that has drives toward the unnatural and toward criminality cannot recognize natural moral laws.” [[Heinrich Himmler]], the man who oversaw the genocidal policies of the Third Reich, said of Streicher, “"In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind."<br />
<br />
As Streicher whipped up Hitler’s base of the uneducated and fearful, Hitler’s propaganda Minister, [[Joseph Goebbels]] offered a steady diet of smooth vindictiveness for those Germans too well informed to accept at face value Streicher’s wild tales of Jewish seduction and human sacrifice. Their stance was typically that any suffering the Jews endure at the hands of Germans was the responsibility of the Jews themselves, that the passage of laws restricting Jewish participation in public life was in fact an effort to protect Jews from the righteous indignation of an injured populace: <br />
<br />
“One cannot make sense of this situation without understanding the significance of the racial or Jewish Question,” Goebbels declared in his speech at the first Nuremberg rally following Hitler’s takeover, “….The National Socialist government also cannot ignore it. Our laws suffer hard and often unjustified criticism abroad, above all from International Jewry itself. But one should not forget that dealing with the Jewish Question through legal means was the best approach. Or should the government have followed the principles of democracy and majority rule and let the people themselves solve the problem?” <ref>Nuremberg Speech, Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.html.</ref> <br />
<br />
Six years later, Hitler declared: ".. if the international Jewish financiers in and outside [[Europe]] should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" <ref>Adolf Hitler, Reichstag Speech, January 30,1939, http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-threat.htm</ref><br />
<br />
Following the Reichstag fire, Jews were frequently singled out for abuse along with the Communists and Social Democrats who were being rounded up. For the first three months that year, most of the abuse Jewish Germans faced was brutal but still of a relatively informal nature, cases of brownshirted rowdies vandalizing Jewish homes and attacking Jews on the street while the authorities looked away. This changed on April 1, 1933, with the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Shop front windows were painted with the word “Jude” and SA men were stationed at the doors to warn people away, or to take note of those who defied the boycott and went in. From then on, Jews within the Reich faced a steady erosion of legal rights. <br />
<br />
On April 7, all Jewish Civil servants were forcibly “retired.“ On April 11, Jews were legally deemed a separate class in Germany with a decree defining as a “non Aryan” "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith." By the end of that year, Jews were excluded from the Reich Chamber of culture, could not act as newspaper editors and could not own land. By the end of the following year, Jews could not participate in the German Labor Front or national health insurance, and could not get legal qualifications. By 1938, Jews could not serve in the military, could not teach Germans or work as accountants and dentists, and were denied tax deductions and child allowances. They could not marry “Aryans.” They could not display the German flag. <ref>History Place Holocaust Timeline http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html</ref><br />
Until 1941 there had been plans to "cleanse" Germany of Jews by gathering them together and expelling them from the Reich. One plan had as its goal the transfer of Germany's Jews to Madagascar. A contingent of Jews had even been moved to southern France in preparation. However, wartime conditions and the presence of millions of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, and other occupied areas in Eastern Europe gradually led to the adoption of another plan: the systematic extermination of all Jews who came under German control. Techniques that had been developed for the regime's euthanasia program came to be used against Jews. Discussions in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference on the outskirts of Berlin led to the improved organization and coordination of the program of genocide.<br />
<br />
Following that conference, the killing became organized. Jewish populations within the Reich were separated from the general population into horribly overcrowded ghettos, 365 of which were set up in Poland, the [[Soviet Union]], the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. The most famous of these were the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/ghettos.html.</ref> Those ghetto residents who did not die from malnutrition or disease were eventually “deported” to concentration and extermination camps. Extermination camps, which existed primarily for the execution of inmates, included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibór. The primary method of killing in these camps was through poison gas, though beatings, hangings, and lethal injection were also used. In addition, the Nazis used ''Einsatzgruppen'', mobile killing squads operating in the Soviet Union who would typically round up Jews in Nazi occupied areas, herd them into remote areas, and shoot them en masse. These were discontinued in 1942 in lieu of the death camps. <ref>http://www.fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/timeline/camps.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It is currently estimated that roughly 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Third Reich, along with roughly 5 million victims that included homosexuals, Communists, Roma, Sinti, and political opponents of the regime. The methodical murder of Jews did not actually end until 1945, when the camps were liberated by Allied Troops.<br />
[[File:Ike_at_Ordruf.jpg|250px|right|thumb| Nazi concentration camp]]<br />
==Defeat==<br />
In June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces invaded France, driving the Germans back and liberating Paris by August. A German counteroffensive in the Ardennes began in late December 1944 was beaten back after heavy fighting in what became known as the "Battle of the Bulge". Soviet troops, meanwhile, advanced from the east. Western forces reached the Rhine River in March 1945; simultaneously, Soviet armies overran most of Czechoslovakia and pressed on toward Berlin. Although faced with certain defeat, Hitler insisted that every German city, every village, and "every square meter" be defended or left behind as "scorched earth." The Western Allies and the Soviet forces made their first contact, in Saxony, on April 27. Three days later, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Berlin fell to the Soviet forces on May 2; on May 7, the Third Reich surrendered unconditionally. It is estimated that about 55 million people died in the European theater during World War II. About 8 million of these dead were German.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
* [[Adolf Hitler]]<br />
* [[Nazi Party]]<br />
* [[World War II]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
<br />
*[http://www.hitler.org/writings/last_testament/ My political testament.] ADOLF HITLER.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[category: European History]]<br />
[[Category:World War II]]<br />
[[Category:German History]]<br />
[[Category:Holocaust]]<br />
[[Category:Political Parties]]<br />
[[Category:Fascist States]]<br />
[[Category:Nazis]]<br />
[[Category:Anti-Semitism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Transgenderism&diff=1083674Transgenderism2014-04-19T02:25:11Z<p>CGL: /* Famous Patients */</p>
<hr />
<div>The idea of '''sex change''' is based on the notion that a person of one [[gender]] can be born "trapped" in an opposite-gender body. The theory plays havoc with traditional ideas of [[masculinity]] and [[femininity]]. <br />
<br />
It has been embraced primarily by advocates of the 1960s [[sexual revolution]] such as [[homosexual rights]] activists, but rejected by the [[Roman Catholic Church]].<ref>"The key point is that the (transsexual) surgical operation is so superficial and external that it does not change the personality. If the person was male, he remains male. If she was female, she remains female." [http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/CatholicTSDecision.html] </ref><br />
<br />
[[Transgender]]ed patients seek to undergo surgical [[sex change operation]]s (also known as [[gender reassignment surgery]]) to change their external appearance to to that of the gender with which they [[identify]]. Patients often undergo [[psychotherapy]], [[hormone treatment]], and facial surgery as well. In the United States, a patient must undergo counseling before being approved for the surgery. Patients in the US are also required to have two letters of recommendation from certified psychiatrists, and must have lived a year acting as the gender that they identify with. <ref>http://www.wpath.org/publications_standards.cfm</ref> Patients sometimes choose to have the surgery done abroad in places like [[Thailand]] for three reasons: 1. It is often less expensive for the patient, 2. The patient may be able to bypass some legal restrictions, 3. The surgeons in Thailand have a reputation of being particularly skilled in this area. <ref>http://www.bangkokcompanies.com/Surgery/thailandsurgery_sex_change_surgery.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It should be noted that hormone therapy and removing and adding body parts does not change the genetic makeup of an individual. On the genetic level, individuals who started as men are still men no matter what appearance they choose and women who started as women are still women after surgery as well.<br />
<br />
==Legality==<br />
<br />
Different states have different laws regarding the status of people who have had sex change operations. Generally, their birth certificates are reissued with their new legal [[gender]]. Since they are not required to divorce before surgery, this could lead to de-facto [[same sex marriage]] if they stay with their spouse. The country of [[Brazil]] offers free sex change operations becouse they are considered a constitutional right.<ref>http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20323334/ns/health-health_care/t/brazil-provide-free-sex-change-operations/#.U1HYG8fw9Ea</ref><br />
<br />
==Opposition==<br />
<br />
[[J. Michael Bailey]] wrote a book which disagrees with the "born trapped" theory. <br />
*In his book, he argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women. <ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html?ex=1345348800&en=0c1176374e251f82&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss</ref> <br />
<br />
Dr. Bailey has come under tremendous social and administrative pressure from partisans who disagree with his scientific views. This pressure has focused primarily upon objections to the ''implications'' of his theory, rather than objections to his ''empirical evidence''. Rather than try to refute his empirical findings, "[[transgender]] activists worked to try to ruin Bailey professionally and personally." <ref>http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
According to the [[Vatican]],<br />
* people who have undergone a sex-change operation cannot enter into a valid marriage, either because they would be marrying someone of the same sex in the eyes of the church or because their mental state casts doubt on their ability to make and uphold their marriage vows. <ref>http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/CatholicTSDecision.html</ref><br />
<br />
==Famous Patients==<br />
<br />
*Christine (born George) Jorgensen: An American [[World War II]] veteran, George became Christine in a 1952 operation. This was the first widely publicized sex change surgery.<ref>[http://www.christinejorgensen.org/ Christine Jorgensen site]</ref><br />
*[[Walter Carlos]], 1967<br />
*Jan (born James) Morris: A British [[World War II]] veteran, reporter, and father, Morris underwent sex change surgery in 1972.<ref>[http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/profile/profile_jan_morris.shtml Jan Morris: A Profile]</ref><br />
*Renée Richards (born Richard Raskind): An American eye surgeon and tennis player. Richards made waves in 1976, when she entered amateur [[tennis]] competitions as a woman.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/garden/01renee.html The Lady Regrets]</ref><br />
*Chaz (born Chasity) Bono: Child of [[Sonny and Cher]]. Underwent irreversible gender surgery in 2009, and legally became a man when the Los Angeles County Superior Court approved his name and gender change on 6 May 2010.<ref>http://www.nndb.com/people/209/000108882/</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[Category:biology]]<br />
[[Category:psychology]]<br />
[[Category:political Terms]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Transgenderism&diff=1083667Transgenderism2014-04-19T02:12:52Z<p>CGL: /* Famous Patients */</p>
<hr />
<div>The idea of '''sex change''' is based on the notion that a person of one [[gender]] can be born "trapped" in an opposite-gender body. The theory plays havoc with traditional ideas of [[masculinity]] and [[femininity]]. <br />
<br />
It has been embraced primarily by advocates of the 1960s [[sexual revolution]] such as [[homosexual rights]] activists, but rejected by the [[Roman Catholic Church]].<ref>"The key point is that the (transsexual) surgical operation is so superficial and external that it does not change the personality. If the person was male, he remains male. If she was female, she remains female." [http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/CatholicTSDecision.html] </ref><br />
<br />
[[Transgender]]ed patients seek to undergo surgical [[sex change operation]]s (also known as [[gender reassignment surgery]]) to change their external appearance to to that of the gender with which they [[identify]]. Patients often undergo [[psychotherapy]], [[hormone treatment]], and facial surgery as well. In the United States, a patient must undergo counseling before being approved for the surgery. Patients in the US are also required to have two letters of recommendation from certified psychiatrists, and must have lived a year acting as the gender that they identify with. <ref>http://www.wpath.org/publications_standards.cfm</ref> Patients sometimes choose to have the surgery done abroad in places like [[Thailand]] for three reasons: 1. It is often less expensive for the patient, 2. The patient may be able to bypass some legal restrictions, 3. The surgeons in Thailand have a reputation of being particularly skilled in this area. <ref>http://www.bangkokcompanies.com/Surgery/thailandsurgery_sex_change_surgery.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It should be noted that hormone therapy and removing and adding body parts does not change the genetic makeup of an individual. On the genetic level, individuals who started as men are still men no matter what appearance they choose and women who started as women are still women after surgery as well.<br />
<br />
==Legality==<br />
<br />
Different states have different laws regarding the status of people who have had sex change operations. Generally, their birth certificates are reissued with their new legal [[gender]]. Since they are not required to divorce before surgery, this could lead to de-facto [[same sex marriage]] if they stay with their spouse. The country of [[Brazil]] offers free sex change operations becouse they are considered a constitutional right.<ref>http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20323334/ns/health-health_care/t/brazil-provide-free-sex-change-operations/#.U1HYG8fw9Ea</ref><br />
<br />
==Opposition==<br />
<br />
[[J. Michael Bailey]] wrote a book which disagrees with the "born trapped" theory. <br />
*In his book, he argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women. <ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html?ex=1345348800&en=0c1176374e251f82&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss</ref> <br />
<br />
Dr. Bailey has come under tremendous social and administrative pressure from partisans who disagree with his scientific views. This pressure has focused primarily upon objections to the ''implications'' of his theory, rather than objections to his ''empirical evidence''. Rather than try to refute his empirical findings, "[[transgender]] activists worked to try to ruin Bailey professionally and personally." <ref>http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
According to the [[Vatican]],<br />
* people who have undergone a sex-change operation cannot enter into a valid marriage, either because they would be marrying someone of the same sex in the eyes of the church or because their mental state casts doubt on their ability to make and uphold their marriage vows. <ref>http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/CatholicTSDecision.html</ref><br />
<br />
==Famous Patients==<br />
<br />
*Christine (born George) Jorgensen: An American [[World War II]] veteran, George became Christine in a 1952 operation. This was the first widely publicized sex change surgery.<ref>[http://www.christinejorgensen.org/ Christine Jorgensen site]</ref><br />
*[[Walter Carlos]], 1967<br />
*Jan (born James) Morris: A British [[World War II]] veteran, reporter, and father, Morris underwent sex change surgery in 1972.<ref>[http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/profile/profile_jan_morris.shtml Jan Morris: A Profile]</ref><br />
*Renée Richards (born Richard Raskind): An American eye surgeon and tennis player. Richards made waves in 1976, when she entered amateur [[tennis]] competitions as a woman.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/garden/01renee.html The Lady Regrets]</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[Category:biology]]<br />
[[Category:psychology]]<br />
[[Category:political Terms]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Transgenderism&diff=1083663Transgenderism2014-04-19T02:00:46Z<p>CGL: /* Legality */</p>
<hr />
<div>The idea of '''sex change''' is based on the notion that a person of one [[gender]] can be born "trapped" in an opposite-gender body. The theory plays havoc with traditional ideas of [[masculinity]] and [[femininity]]. <br />
<br />
It has been embraced primarily by advocates of the 1960s [[sexual revolution]] such as [[homosexual rights]] activists, but rejected by the [[Roman Catholic Church]].<ref>"The key point is that the (transsexual) surgical operation is so superficial and external that it does not change the personality. If the person was male, he remains male. If she was female, she remains female." [http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/CatholicTSDecision.html] </ref><br />
<br />
[[Transgender]]ed patients seek to undergo surgical [[sex change operation]]s (also known as [[gender reassignment surgery]]) to change their external appearance to to that of the gender with which they [[identify]]. Patients often undergo [[psychotherapy]], [[hormone treatment]], and facial surgery as well. In the United States, a patient must undergo counseling before being approved for the surgery. Patients in the US are also required to have two letters of recommendation from certified psychiatrists, and must have lived a year acting as the gender that they identify with. <ref>http://www.wpath.org/publications_standards.cfm</ref> Patients sometimes choose to have the surgery done abroad in places like [[Thailand]] for three reasons: 1. It is often less expensive for the patient, 2. The patient may be able to bypass some legal restrictions, 3. The surgeons in Thailand have a reputation of being particularly skilled in this area. <ref>http://www.bangkokcompanies.com/Surgery/thailandsurgery_sex_change_surgery.htm</ref><br />
<br />
It should be noted that hormone therapy and removing and adding body parts does not change the genetic makeup of an individual. On the genetic level, individuals who started as men are still men no matter what appearance they choose and women who started as women are still women after surgery as well.<br />
<br />
==Legality==<br />
<br />
Different states have different laws regarding the status of people who have had sex change operations. Generally, their birth certificates are reissued with their new legal [[gender]]. Since they are not required to divorce before surgery, this could lead to de-facto [[same sex marriage]] if they stay with their spouse. The country of [[Brazil]] offers free sex change operations becouse they are considered a constitutional right.<ref>http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20323334/ns/health-health_care/t/brazil-provide-free-sex-change-operations/#.U1HYG8fw9Ea</ref><br />
<br />
==Opposition==<br />
<br />
[[J. Michael Bailey]] wrote a book which disagrees with the "born trapped" theory. <br />
*In his book, he argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women. <ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html?ex=1345348800&en=0c1176374e251f82&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss</ref> <br />
<br />
Dr. Bailey has come under tremendous social and administrative pressure from partisans who disagree with his scientific views. This pressure has focused primarily upon objections to the ''implications'' of his theory, rather than objections to his ''empirical evidence''. Rather than try to refute his empirical findings, "[[transgender]] activists worked to try to ruin Bailey professionally and personally." <ref>http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
According to the [[Vatican]],<br />
* people who have undergone a sex-change operation cannot enter into a valid marriage, either because they would be marrying someone of the same sex in the eyes of the church or because their mental state casts doubt on their ability to make and uphold their marriage vows. <ref>http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/CatholicTSDecision.html</ref><br />
<br />
==Famous Patients==<br />
<br />
*Christine (born George) Jorgensen: An American [[World War II]] veteran, George became Christine in a 1952 operation. This was the first widely publicized sex change surgery.<ref>[http://www.christinejorgensen.org/ Christine Jorgensen site]</ref><br />
*[[Walter Carlos]], 1967<br />
*Jan (born James) Morris: A British [[World War II]] veteran, reporter, and father, Morris underwent sex change surgery in 1972.<ref>[http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/profile/profile_jan_morris.shtml Jan Morris: A Profile]</ref><br />
*Dr. Rene Richards (born Richard Raskin): An American doctor and tennis player. Richards made waves in 1976, when she entered amateur [[tennis]] competitions as a woman.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/garden/01renee.html The Lady Regrets]</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[Category:biology]]<br />
[[Category:psychology]]<br />
[[Category:political Terms]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Hillary_Rodham_Clinton&diff=1083615Hillary Rodham Clinton2014-04-18T21:34:11Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Move|Hillary Clinton}}<br />
{{Officeholder<br />
|name=Hillary Rodham Clinton<br />
|image=Hillary-6.jpg<br />
|party=[[Democrat]]<br />
|spouse=[[Bill Clinton]]<br />
|religion=[[Methodist]]<br />
|offices=<br />
{{Officeholder/secretary (cabinet)<br />
|of=State<br />
|state=United States<br />
|number=67th<br />
|deputy=n<br />
|governor=<br />
|president=[[Barack Hussein Obama]]<br />
|terms=January 21, 2009-January 30, 2013<br />
|preceded=[[Condoleezza Rice]]<br />
|former=n<br />
|succeeded=[[John Forbes Kerry]]<br />
}}<br />
{{Officeholder/senator<br />
|state=New York<br />
|terms=January 3, 2001 – January 21, 2009<br />
|preceded=[[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]]<br />
|former=y<br />
|succeeded=[[Kirsten Gillibrand]]<br />
}}<br />
}}<br />
'''Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton''' (b. 1947) was the 67th [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State of the United States]]. From 2001 to 2008 she was a [[United States Senate|Senator]] from [[New York]], and from 1993 to 2001 was [[First Lady]] of the United States while her husband [[Bill Clinton]] was president. Hillary Clinton resigned from her job as [[Obama]]'s [[Secretary of State]] after her incompetence led to the deaths of four Americans during the Islamic terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in [[Benghazi]].<ref>http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/09/senator-lindsey-graham-hillary-clinton-testify-benghazi-subpoena/2147869/</ref><br />
<br />
She is a [[pro-abortion]] advocate, supports the death penalty, has yet to embrace same sex marriage publicly but does support civil unions, and supports federal funding for embryotic stem-cell research.<br />
<br />
Hillary Clinton has practiced an "open marriage" in the nearly four decade relationship with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=foWUM2R1K0wC&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq=barbara+olson%22open+marriage%22&source=bl&ots=08qLt6ftjN&sig=njP7QlpBV08LenTCyo4KVx3JBEQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=htMZT4-UC-7CsQKitZTjCw&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false Barbara Olsen, ''Hell to Pay''], p.211.</ref><ref>[http://search.opinionarchives.com/Summary/AmericanSpectator/V27I45P32-1.htm ''Love and Hate in Arkansas], ''The American Spectator, Daniel Wattenberg, April 1994.</ref><br />
<br />
==Early life==<br />
She was born October 26, 1947, in Chicago, [[Illinois]] to a middle class family. Her father Hugh Rodham operated a small business. He was born into a coal mining family in Pennsylvania, graduated from Penn State University, voted Republican and was known as a martinet. Hillary grew up in Park Ridge, an upscale suburb of Chicago along with two older brothers. Hillary attended Maine East High School, where she was involved in many extracurricular activities, was active in the Methodist church, and worked for Republican campaigns as a Goldwater Girl. As a tenth-grader, she heard the Rev. [[Martin Luther King]] speak in person. In the eleventh grade, she was class vice-president. She attended Wellesley College, an elite woman's college near Boston and was elected class president in 1968. <br />
<br />
===Goldwater Girl===<br />
Speaking at Selma, [[Alabama]]'s First Baptist Church on the 42nd anniversary of the "bloody Sunday" freedom march Hillary Clinton declared: "As a young girl I had the great privilege of hearing [[Martin Luther King|Dr. King]] speak in Chicago. The year was 1963....[Dr. King] called on us, he challenged us that evening to stay awake during the great revolution that the [[civil rights]] pioneers were waging on behalf of a more perfect union." In her memoirs Hillary Clinton described herself in 1964 as "an active Young Republican" and "a [[Barry Goldwater|Goldwater]] girl, right down to my cowgirl outfit." Columnist [[Robert Novak]] observed, "As a politically attuned honor student, she must have known that Goldwater was one of only six Republican senators who joined [[Solid South|Southern Democratic]] [[segregation]]ists opposing the historic [[Voting Rights Act|voting rights act of 1964]] inspired by King."<ref>[http://www.townhall.com/columnists/RobertDNovak/2007/03/12/hillary,_king_and_goldwater Hillary, King and Goldwater], by Robert D. Novak, [[Townhall.com]], March 12, 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
===College===<br />
Starting college as a Republican activist, she became a liberal by her senior year. During the summer of 1968, she participated (as a Republican) in Wellesley's Washington internship Program. where she worked as an intern in the office of [[Melvin Laird]], then congressman from Wisconsin, and attended the Republican convention in Miami as a [[Nelson Rockefeller]] supporter (he lost the nomination to [[Richard Nixon]]). She was the commencement speaker at her graduation from Wellesley in 1969, during which she argued forcefully against the war in Vietnam and said, "And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible." In her speech, she also acknowledged the influence of her roomate and friend Eleanor D. Acheson in helping Hillary become the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver its commencement address.<ref name="WesleyHillary">{{Cite web<br />
|title=Wellesley College 1969 Student Commencement Speech |url=http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Commencement/1969/053169hillary.html<br />
|publisher=Wellesley College<br />
|date=31 May 1969 |accessdate=30 June 2011<br />
}}</ref> Ms. Acheson, a lawyer and lesbian lobbyst,.<ref name="wcaddr"><br />
{{cite web<br />
|title=Changes under way in Task Force Public Policy & Government Affairs Department |url=http://www.thetaskforce.org/Update/2006/34_06_1219/index.htm<br />
|publisher=National Gay and Lesbian Task Force<br />
|date=19 December 2006<br />
|accessdate=30 June 2011 }}</ref> - the granddaughter of President [[Harry Truman|Harry Truman’s]] secretary of state Dean Acheson - is credited for having introduced the young Hillary to political circles.<br />
A photo and the report of her Wellesley commencement speech were featured in ''Life Magazine''.<br />
<br />
==Early Career==<br />
In 1969, she attended Yale law school, where she was one of only 27 women among 235 law students. On May 7, 1970, she addressed the League of Women Voters in Washington, a sign of her growing prominence. Always active in campus politics, she ended up becoming something of a communications facilitator, as she had been at Wellesley, between potentially radical student elements and the college administration during the era of extreme student unrest in 1970. She was written up on hometown and New England newspapers, and was interviewed on Irv Kupcinet's nationally syndicated TV talk show from Chicago. That summer, she worked in Washington for Marian Wright Edelman's Washington Research Project, where she conducted research on migrant children's health and education difficulties, especially in the South. Her subsequent studies at Yale were concentrated on how the law affected children. At Yale in 1971, she met Bill Clinton, her future husband, also a law student at Yale.<br />
<br />
She graduated from Yale Law School (JD 1973) a year later than necessary, having remained an extra year to be near Bill. As a staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund, she specialized in children's advocacy law. She married Bill on October 11, 1975; daughter Chelsea was born in 1980. <br />
<br />
===Arkansas===<br />
As her husband built a political career in [[Arkansas]] as governor, she was a partner in the locally prestigious Rose Law Firm, 1976-1992. Nationally she continued her legal advocacy for children and chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, which played a pioneering role in raising awareness of issues like sexual harassment and equal pay.<br />
<br />
During the 1970s and '80s, the Clintons invested in the [[Whitewater]] Development Corporation which later became the subject of a federal investigation, prosecutions and convictions. Jim and Susan McDougal, and then-Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker were convicted of multiple counts of financial fraud, even though President Clinton testified for four hours for the defense.<ref>Once upon a Time in Arkansas, [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/arkansas/docs/clintondepo.html Transcript of Clinton's Sworn Deposition], PBS.</ref><br />
<br />
On the evening Bill Clinton lost his bid for a Congressional seat in 1974, Hillary is reported to have cursed out a Jewish aide using nasty words. <ref>Jerry Oppenheimer, ''State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton'' (2000_ cites three witnesses to the incident. </ref><br />
<br />
===Legal Services Corporation===<br />
Hillary Clinton was appointed by President [[Jimmy Carter]] to head the controversial [[Public defender|Legal Services Corporation]] (LSC) in 1978 and remained on the Board until 1983. <ref>[http://www.nlpc.org/view.asp?action=viewArticle&aid=225 Thwarting the Will of Congress: How the Legal Services Corporation Evaded, Diluted, and Ignored Reform], Testimony of Kenneth F. Boehm before the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, House Judiciary Committee, February 28, 2002. </ref><br />
Under Hillary Clinton's leadership, the LSC began moving away from its legislated task of providing poor people with free lawyers and began an [[activist]] agenda to influence [[public policy]] through [[class action]] lawsuits. One case involved bringing lawsuits to force New York's Transit Authority to hire [[heroin]] addicts. The LSC also violated its own rules by organizing political campaigns against a state referendum and against [[Ronald Reagan]]. <ref>Michael Barone , [http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michael/barone070899.asp ''Taking Hillary seriously], ''Jewish World Review'', July 8, 1999. </ref><br />
<br />
Clinton failed the District of Columbia [[Bar Exam]] in the 1970s.<ref>[http://mediamatters.org/items/200706010006 On Today, Bernstein omitted key fact in purported disclosure of Clinton's D.C. bar exam failure: It's not news], ''[[MediaMatters]]'' June 1, 2007. Retrieved from MediaMatters.org October 4, 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
== 1992 Presidential campaign ==<br />
===Alleged civil rights violations===<br />
''The Hill'' magazine reported Hillary Clinton may have been involved in [[civil rights]] violations by monitoring illegal wiretaps and domestic spying on political opponents during the 1992 camapaign.<ref>[http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-targeting-clinton-on-phone-call-snooping-2007-10-16.html GOP targeting Clinton on phone-call snooping], By Alexander Bolton, ''The Hill'', October 16, 2007.</ref> After the revelations came to light in a book entitled, ''Her Way'' [http://www.amazon.com/Her-Way-Ambitions-Hillary-Clinton/dp/0316017426] by Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at the ''[[New York Times]]'', and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30 years as an investigative reporter at the paper, a [[Republican]] official remarked,<br />
{{Cquote|it is rather unbelievable that [Hillary] Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by [[terrorist]]s as they plot and plan to kill us.<ref>[http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-targeting-clinton-on-phone-call-snooping-2007-10-16.html GOP targeting Clinton on phone-call snooping], By Alexander Bolton, ''The Hill'', October 16, 2007.</ref> }}<br />
<br />
== First Lady ==<br />
<br />
During [[Bill Clinton]]'s presidency, Hillary initially played an important role. Immediately after his [[inauguration]] in 1993, she led a task force to create a national health care system. The secrecy of the Task Force was at issue in court cases which resulted in disclosures to comply with the law.<br />
<br />
Her friend [[Vince Foster]] supervised the defense of the litigation, but died under mysterious circumstances at the height of the controversy; the death was ruled a suicide by the U.S Park Service. The Task Force proposals lacked public support and support from the Democrats in Congress, and came to nothing but an embarrassment for the Clinton presidency. <br />
<br />
Subsequently, the Republicans won a landslide victory in 1994, taking over both Houses of Congress.<br />
<br />
===Healthcare task force scandals ===<br />
:''Main article: [[Clinton health care plan]]''<br />
Hillary was asked by her husband to play a central role in secretly crafting a plan to overhaul Health Care. Joe Klein. author of ''Primary Colors'', the fawning rendition of the phenomena of Clintonism on the 1992 campaign trail remarked,<br />
{{Cquote |Bill Clinton really believed that if anybody was going to come up with the answer to the most vexing public policy problem out there, it was going to be Hillary. It was one of the stupidest political decisions that Bill Clinton ever made.<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/clinton-transcript/ Program Transcript, Clinton, WGBH American Experience, PBS.]</ref>}}<br />
Democrats were divided, and conservatives counterattacked. The Democratically controlled Congress refused to even vote on it, given its unpopularity and having to publicly take a stand in support of the Clintons before the 1994 Midterm Elections. <br />
<br />
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), along with several other groups, filed a lawsuit over closed-door meetings related to the HillaryCare. The AAPS sued to gain access to the list of members of the task force which the Clinton administration had kept secret from the public.<ref>[http://nlpc.org/government-integrity-project?page=74 National Legal Policy Center, Government Integrity Project]</ref> On June 14, 1993 the ''Washington Times'' reported Hillary's task force records were being shredded.<br />
<br />
Along with the failed tasks force's membership sealed from the public, so was its budget, accounting, and spending authority. Hillary's task force was given a budget of $100,000. In secret, it spent almost $14 million.<ref>[http://gao.justia.com/department-of-justice/1995/3/cost-of-health-care-task-force-related-activities-t-ggd-95-114/ Cost of Health Care Task Force Related Activities]. GAO Report. Gao ID: T-GGD-95-114. March 14, 1995.</ref> <br />
<br />
The long-term impact was an embarrassment to Hillary, especially in her 2008 presidential campaign.<br />
<br />
===Removal of documents from Vince Foster's office===<br />
After the death of White House staffer Vince Foster, 20 year Secret Service veteran Henry O' Neill testified before Congress he observed as Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Margaret Williams, carry boxes of papers out of Foster's office and up to the White House residence quarters on First Lady Hillary Clinton's instructions. The documents related to the Clinton's blind trust and White House real estate investments. Under oath, Hillary Clinton denied issuing the instructions or receiving the documents. The documents were now considered evidence in the investigation of the death of Vince Foster.<br />
<br />
Two years later, some of the documents were retrieved from the private White House quarters. FBI investigators determined Hillary Clinton's fingerprints were on the documents.<ref>http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?r104:./temp/~r104dYXUst</ref><br />
<br />
===Conspiracy theories and enemies list===<br />
[[File:Hillary-5.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hillary made a pointed reference to "a vast right-wing conspiracy" as being responsible for her husbands infidelity and the myriad scandals which have plagued the Clintons since their early days in Arkansas.]]<br />
:''Main article: [[Vast right wing conspiracy theory]]<br />
Hillary Clinton branded opponents of the Administration and critics of the Clinton's scandalous lifestyles as "a vast right-wing conspiracy." White House staffers made up an enemies list of persons and organizations who subsequently endured IRS audits and harassment. <ref>Larry Klayman, WorldNetDaily 7/9/99. [http://www.alamo-girl.com/0311.htm]</ref><br />
<br />
===Reaction to infidelity and criticizing opponents===<br />
Although Hillary Clinton told CBS's Steve Kroft in an interview on ''60 Minutes'' to address her husband's infidelity, Clinton emphatically stated, <br />
{{Cquote|I'm not sitting here – some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. <ref>[http://www.angelfire.com/wa/starreport/60min.html Transcript ''60 Minutes'' interview].</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Clinton likewise mocked stay-at-home-moms for baking cookies while she was employed at a "high powered" law firm making more money than her husband. She was lauded by liberal media and pundits as "a strong women."<br />
<br />
In the end, when confronted with the infidelity of her husband, she blamed "a vast right-wing conspiracy" and stood by her man.<br />
<blockquote><br />
'Why didn’t you leave the White House when you found out about the cheating of your husband?'<br />
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381198/Libya-war-2011-Aisha-Gaddafi-taunts-Obama-Hillary-Clinton.html#ixzz1Q2ALmYp2 Gaddafi's daughter Aisha Gaddafi.]<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
===Accusations of stolen gifts===<br />
When the Clintons left the White House, they were accused of taking furniture that belonged not to them, but to the White House and the American people. Clinton spokespeople claimed that the movers "inadvertently" packed the wrong items. Most of the articles were quietly returned. <ref>"Clinton Shipped Furniture Year Ago," Washington Post, February 10, 2001.</ref><br />
<br />
== U.S. Senate ==<br />
[[Image:070917graveconcern-x.gif|right|thumb|400px]]<br />
In 2000, Clinton ran for the New York Senate seat vacated by the [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] Senator [[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]]. Backed by the White House, she obtained the Democratic nomination for this Senate seat, and then won easily against Republican Rick Lazio (who entered the race when [[Rudy Giuliani]] withdrew). Clinton was a high visibility show horse, working to develop a base in upstate regions. She initiated no major legislation.<ref>[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_7_54/ai_84454903 Hillary Clinton's spending of taxpayer money], ''[[National Review]], April 22, 2002.</ref> Clinton is said to have belonged to a conservative prayer group with the purpose of "bringing Jesus back to Capitol Hill."<ref>http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html</ref> A few of her collaborators in the group include Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan) and Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa).<br />
<br />
In preparation for her Senate bid, President Clinton offered clemency to members of the [[Armed Forces of National Liberation]] (FALN) [[terrorist]] group <ref>[http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/92199CoddlingTerrorists.pdf U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee] testimony available at http://www.senate.gov/~judiciary/wl91599.htm, ''The Tampa Tribune'', S.J.Res. 33 (passed 95-2).</ref> to curry favor with [[radical]] [[Puerto Rican]] voters among the New York electorate.<ref>[http://www.jonathanpollard.org/senate.htm FALN Clemency and NY Senate Race], (2000). Retrieved from http://www.jonathanpollard.org September 20,2007.</ref> The FALN bombed Fraunces Tavern in [[Manhattan]], killing four people in 1975. Over a six-year period, the group claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings that took six lives and injured some 130 people.<ref>[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/puertorico/sep4.htm Clinton Pardons Terror], ''New York Post'', August 13, 1999. retrieved from http://www.latinamericanstudies.org September 14, 2007.</ref> <br />
<br />
===FEC fined campaign for failing to accurately report $721,895 in contributions===<br />
<br />
In January 2006 Hillary Clinton's New York Senate 2000 campaign was fined $35,000 for failing to accurately report $721,895 in contributions. <ref>[http://www.fec.gov/press/press2006/20060126mur.html Federal Elections Commission] Press Release, January 26, 2006. </ref> <br />
<br />
===Saddam's weapons of mass destruction===<br />
[[File:Hillary-4.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton's views on Iraq were highly regarded, including accounting for Saddam's WMD. ]]<br />
Speaking on [[Saddam Hussein]]'s possession of [[weapons of mass destruction]] (WMD), Hillary invoked her experience in the Clinton White House:,<br />
{{Cquote|I have to say that this is something that I have followed for a decade. If he [Saddam] were serious about disarming, he would have been much more forthcoming. There may be progress, we may be destroying his missiles, there is no accounting for the [[Weapons of mass destruction|chemical and biological stocks]].<ref>[http://www.archive.org/details/HillaryClintonsviewsongoingtowarSaddamandWMDs Hillary Clinton's views on going to war, Saddam, and WMD]</ref>}}<br />
<br />
Hillary Clinton further described the situation after weapons inspectors we're expelled during the time when America had two in the position of presidential leadership, "for the price of one."<ref>[http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2007/11/02/two_for_the_price_of_one Two For the Price of One], By Charles Krauthammer, November 2, 2007.</ref><br />
{{Cquote|In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his [[nuclear]] program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to [[terrorist]]s, including [[al Qaeda]] members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.<ref>[http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6390 Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), October 10, 2002]. Retrieved from Zmag.org December 4, 2007.</ref>}}<br />
<br />
===Failure to reform earmarks===<br />
The noted newspaper which covers legislative affairs, ''The Hill'', reported Hillary Clinton received more [[earmark]]s for Congressional [[pork barrel]] projects than only one other United States Senator. Reforming the earmark process had been among the Democrats top priorities in the [[110th Congress]], up until the time Democrats voted to rescind the rules aimed at reform that were passed in the first 100 hours of the new Congress in January. Ethics reform and the earmark process is widely attributed as the cause why Republicans lost control of both Houses of Congress after several members had been caught up in ethical scandals. ''The Hill'' reported Sen. Clinton received 26 earmarks worth about $148.4 million total, much going to [[The Pentagon|Pentagon]] contractors. <ref>[http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/clinton-can-boast-wealth-of-earmarks-2007-06-13.html Clinton can boast wealth of earmarks], By Roxana Tiron and Ilan Wurman, ''The Hill'', June 13, 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
===Voted against raising the minimum wage===<br />
<br />
After voting to send troops to Iraq Hillary Clinton voted against funding the troops in Iraq. In May of 2007 Clinton voted against raising the minimum wage. <ref>[http://www.vote-smart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=12952&can_id=55463 Senate Concurrence on HR 2206] Title 8 Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, Record Vote Number 181, 05/24/2007. [http://www.vote-smart.org/issue_keyvote_member.php?cs_id=12952]</ref><br />
<br />
== 2008 Presidential campaign ==<br />
[[File:Aufzumsieg.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Hillary as the universally acclaimed presidential frontrunner and titular head of the Democratic party in 2007.]]<br />
She ran for the [[United States Presidential Election, 2008 - Primaries|2008 Democratic presidential candidacy]], winning more primaries than any woman in history. On June 7th, 2008 she conceded defeat to [[Barack Obama]] after a closely challenged campaign, although she did not release her delegates until the convention itself. <br />
<br />
===Attacks on Barack Obama===<br />
A pro-Hillary website, [http://www.stop-obama.org/ stop-obama.org], which billed itself as, " a multiracial team of Democrats dedicated to critaclly think about BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA...will challenge the Obama image through scrutiny and analysis. We will ask tough questions about Obama’s past, present, his associations, and identity."<ref>http://www.stop-obama.org/?page_id=23</ref> The group stated, <br />
{{quotebox|Obama had the misfortune of rich grandparents who lavishly spent their time and money on him, pampering him with attention and prep-school. Far from thanks, Obama grew resentful, and instead of softening his drive to “Rule the World,” only increased it. As his relatives and colleagues witness, it would come to define his life.<ref>http://www.stop-obama.org/?p=48</ref>}}<br />
Hillary regularly relied upon the so-called "opposition research"<ref>[http://www.jeffkuhner.com/printer.php?q=jk-7895-phpgzkqyx-&page=articles Distortions and lies at The New York Times], Jeffrey T. Kuhner, Jan. 30-Feb. 5, 2007. www.insightmag.com </ref> of the same sources from the group to attack and denigrate the person, character, identity, and motives of Barack Obama.<ref>http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=92143</ref><ref>http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=5300</ref><br />
<br />
===Promises made, promises broken=== <br />
In late August 2007 Senator [[Bill Nelson]] and other members of Florida's Congressional delegation protested the Democratic National Committee's scheme<ref>[http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FL_DEMOCRATIC_PRIMARY_FLOL-?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME Fla. Democrats warn of voting rights probe if state sanctioned], By Rasha Madkour, Associated Press, Aug 23, 2007. Retrieved from ''St. Petersburg Times'' August 24, 2007.</ref> to deprive Floridians of equal voting rights protection<ref>[http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FL_DEMOCRATIC_PRIMARY_FLOL-?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME Fla. Democrats warn of voting rights probe if state sanctioned], By Rasha Madkour, Associated Press, Aug 23, 2007. Retrieved from ''St. Petersburg Times'' August 24, 2007.</ref> in selection of delegates to the 2008 DNC Presidential nominating convention. A letter sent to DNC Chairman [[Howard Dean]], threatened legal action "to determine whether this could violate any state or [[federal law]]s governing and protecting individual [[Voting Rights Act|voting rights]].... It always has been a priority of our party to protect the rights of every eligible American to vote...We would hope the DNC will continue to honor this right."<ref>[http://www.nelsonforsenate.com/feature/dean/ Letter from Florida Congressional Democrats to DNC Chairman Howard Dean], August 22, 2007. Retrieved from nelsonforsenate.com/feature/dean/ September 13, 2007.</ref> The move prompted Hillary Clinton to pledge not to campaign in Florida.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/us/politics/02dems.html?ex=1346472000&en=d7f7216c6188da2e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink Clinton, Obama and Edwards Join Pledge to Avoid Defiant States], By Jeff Zeeleny, ''New York Times'', September 2, 2007.</ref> A week later she was campaigning in Florida.<ref>[http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2007/09/11/news/iowa/c07662f8adc84f9a8625735300091c7f.txt Candidates have events in Florida despite pledge], By Charlotte Eby, ''Sioux City Journal'', September 11, 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
===Abuse of Mother Teresa's image and reputation===<br />
Hillary Clinton was chastised by a [[Catholic]] Advocacy group for using an image of [[Mother Teresa]] in a campaign ad. Clinton continues to support abortion. <ref>[http://www.fidelis.org/gw3/articles-news/articles.php?CMSArticleID=1456&CMSCategoryID=10 Fidelis Covered by Catholic News Agency on Mother Teresa Video Controversy], ''Catholic News Agency,'' 05-18-2007.</ref> The U.S. Catholic-based advocacy group Fidelis, an organization working with people of faith to defend the [[sanctity of life]], [[traditional marriage]], and [[Religious freedom|religious liberty]] rights, called for Hillary Clinton to remove the image of Mother Teresa from their campaign video. In a press release the group declared the video, narrated by her Bill Clinton,<br />
{{Cquote|is wholly inappropriate, disrespectful and disturbing ...using an image of blessed Mother Teresa as a political tool, especially given their [[radical]]ly different views on abortion...Mother Teresa tirelessly fought to protect unborn children, while Hillary Clinton staunchly supports [[abortion]] on demand in all nine months of pregnancy, including [[partial birth abortion]] and [[taxpayer funding of abortion]]}}<br />
<br />
When the image of Hillary and Mother Teresa appears in the video the former president is heard saying “Hillary, in effect, was the face of America … in India;” the video then cuts to a clip of the former first lady addressing the 1995 Beijing Conference where an effort was made to declare abortion a fundamental “human right.”<br />
<br />
===Nixon's legacy===<br />
Barbara Olson in her 1990 book ''Hell to Pay'' <ref>[http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0895262746/102-6782111-3076127?SubscriptionId=11NRD61HE570TCSR99R2]</ref> made a convincing case that the former Goldwater girl, raised in a Republican home, while working for the staff of the House Judiciary Committee preparing impeachment Articles against [[President Nixon]], studied Nixon very closely. Olson and others have now commented how Hillary Clinton built her political career by learning to think and act as Nixon did, and modeling herself after him. These writers cite instance after instance of such behavior. <ref>[http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45138 Hillary's Secret War], The plan to silence Internet journalists, Joseph Farah, ''WorldNetDaily.com'', July 6, 2005.</ref> When Democratic competitor [[Barack Obama]] made a public statement vowing not to use [[nuclear weapons]], Hillary Clinton shot back, <br />
{{Cquote|I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons}} reflecting Nixon's thoughts in ''The Real War'' :<br />
{{Cquote|[[Eisenhower]] said... "You should never let the enemy know what you will do, but it's more important that you never let the enemy know what you will not do." }}<br />
Nixon referred to it as "the Madman theory,"<br />
{{Cquote|... statements that appear to rule out the use of force, while perhaps meant to be unprovocative, will in fact provoke an antagonist to push for more. ...we should not make statements that we will never launch a preemptive strike. Whether or not we would ever exercise that option, we should always leave open the possibility that in extreme circumstances we might. <ref>[http://nobsnews.blogspot.com/1996/10/real-war.html#hole_card ''The Real War''], Richard Nixon, Warner Books, May 1980, pgs. 253 - 260.</ref>}}<br />
<br />
===Alleged embellishment of career events===<br />
[[Peggy Noonan]] observed Hillary Clinton's distortions of her record on the campaign trail:<br />
{{quotebox|She is having the worst case of [[cognitive dissonance]] in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. ... But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop NAFTA. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie ''Wag the Dog,'' with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration. <ref>http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html</ref>}}<br />
<br />
===PolitiFact Awards===<br />
Hillary received a "Pants on Fire" award from [[PolitiFact]] for saying Obama "basically threatened to bomb Pakistan."<ref> http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/375/ Et tu, Clinton?</ref><br />
Hillary received a second "Pants on Fire" award from [[PolitiFact]] for this false statement to a Washington, D.C. crowd on March 17th, 2008. {{cquote| I remember landing under sniper fire.<ref> http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/411/ Video shows tarmac welcome, no snipers</ref>}}<br />
<br />
==Secretary of State==<br />
After [[Barack Obama]] won the election, Hillary was widely speculated to be offered a role in the upcoming Obama Administration. On 1 December 2008 Obama announced that he was nominating Hillary to become his [[Secretary of State]], succeeding [[Condoleezza Rice]] in January 2009. Hillary touted her role as "Tough Smart Foreign Policy." It was later revealed by Mrs. Biden that Joe was first offered the Secretary of State position, an unintended swipe at Hillary. She would criticize the White House for delaying a key appointment to her staff saying, "White House vetting process as a "nightmare," "frustrating beyond words" and "ridiculous."<br />
<br />
[[Mark Rudd]] of [[Progressives for Obama]] said of the appointment, "the mere mention of the names Hillary Clinton and [[Lawrence Summers]] alone conjure up a litany of horrendous [[right-wing]]ers appointed to top level positions.... On foreign policy and the wars and the use of the military there will be no change at all. That's what keeping Gates at the Pentagon and Clinton at State..." <ref>http://www.markrudd.com/?organizing-and-activism-now/lets-get-smart-about-obama-nov-2008.html</ref><br />
<br />
In July 2009, Bill Clinton trtavelled to [[North Korea]] to attempt to negotiate for the release of Americans held hostage. She was asked by a Congolese university student what her husband thought of international relations. She responded annoyed, "My husband is not secretary of state, I am," and "I am not going to be channeling my husband." Diplomats laughed when Clinton took umbrage at a Congolese questioner whom she took to be asking her husband's opinion, but it later surfaced that the question had been mistranslated.<br />
<br />
In addition, a U.S. senator flew to Burma to bargain for the release of yet another American. Also, envoys of the reclusive North Korean regime have come to the U.S. for a meeting privately with New Mexico Gov. [[Bill Richardson]]. All this had America wondering if Hillary has been marginalized in her Obama Administration role.<br />
<br />
While Hillary was Sec. of State, her department covered up sexual assaults <ref>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57588456/state-department-memo-reveals-possible-cover-ups-halted-investigations/</ref> and pedophilia by her employees <ref>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57588456/state-department-memo-reveals-possible-cover-ups-halted-investigations/</ref>. Hillary has a long history of supporting individuals accused of sexual assault, including her husband, Bill Clinton, after he was accused of rape by [[Juanita Broaddrick]] <ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KZ8ICvutc0</ref>. Broaddrick complained publicly about Hillary's pro-sexual assault viewpoint. <ref>http://www.apfn.org/apfn/Juanita.htm</ref><br />
<br />
===Foreign Policy===<br />
====Libyan War and the Benghazi attack====<br />
:''See also [[Libyan War]] and [[Benghazi attack]]''<br />
[[File:Hillary-3.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Upon hearing the news of Gaddafi's murder, Sec. Clinton joked, "We Came, We Saw, He Died."]]<br />
Obama Takes Hard Line With Libya After Shift by Clinton: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East. She criticized the foreign minister of the [[United Arab Emirates]] for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya. She was the driving force behind the United States military action in Libya (It is said on March 14 she met in Paris with members of the Libyan [[jihad]]is and [[Bernard Henri Levy]]). Mrs. Clinton was one of a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention. Within hours, Mrs. Clinton and the aides had convinced Obama that the United States had to act, and the president ordered up military plans, which Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hand-delivered to the White House the next day. On Thursday (March 17), during an hour-and-a -half meeting, Obama signed off on using American pilots to join Europeans and jihadists in military strikes against the Libyan government... The president had a caveat, though. The American involvement in military action in Libya should be limited — no ground troops — and finite. “Days, not weeks,” a senior White House official recalled him saying. [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html?_r=2&hp]<br />
<br />
On March 17, in Tunisia, Hillary said: ''"Gaddafi must go," calling him "a ruthless dictator that has no conscience and will destroy anyone or anything in his way." "If Gaddafi does not go, he will just make trouble," she said. "That is just his nature. There are some creatures that are like that."'' [http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/17/hillary-clinton-in-tunisia-need-plan-for-economic-development/] <br />
<br />
In joining Ms. Susan Rice and Ms. Samantha Power, Mrs. Clinton made an unusual break with Secretary of Defense [[Robert Gates]], who, along with the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and the counterterrorism chief, [[John O. Brennan]], had urged caution. Libya was not vital to American national security interests, the men argued, and Mr. Brennan worried that the Libyan rebels remained largely unknown to American officials, and could have ties to Al Qaeda. [[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html?_r=2&hp]]<br />
<br />
Hillary stated:<br />
{{cquote|We are currently doing everything we can to bomb, strafe and use missiles to carry the rebels into power in Libya. We want them to win. We just don’t know who they are.” Hillary Rodham Clinton. [http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/06/23/hillary-clinton-to-libya-skeptics-whose-side-are-you-on/]}}<br />
<br />
The president fully articulated American foreign policy toward Libya as formulated by Hillary Clinton: "Left unchecked... a humanitarian crisis would ensue.... The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun."<ref>http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fas.org%2Fsgp%2Fcrs%2Fnatsec%2FR41725.pdf&ei=kJkNUeedJ43DiwLCm4H4DQ&usg=AFQjCNHhRCTBkk8zUd7wMWao9DKaab8bww&sig2=8SrhE1X08403SM783aYujg&bvm=bv.41867550,d.cGE Congressional Research Service report].</ref> Nonetheless, after being captured on October 20, 2011 by forces backed by Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration, Gaddafi was first brutally sodomized, murdered, and his lifeless body paraded through the streets.<ref>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20123348-503544/clinton-on-qaddafi-we-came-we-saw-he-died/</ref><br />
<br />
On September 11, 2012, the anniversary of the [[9/11 terror attacks]], Islamist terrorists attacked the American embassy and killed four people. In testimony before Congress on January the 23th, 2013 Clinton was asked why the [[Obama administration]] deliberately put out false information about the attack just prior to the [[Presidential Election of 2012]], Clinton screamed at Senators, "WHAT DIFFERENCE AT THIS POINT DOES IT MAKE?".<ref>http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/23/senator-calls-for-top-to-bottom-review-state-department-ahead-clinton-testimony/</ref><br />
<br />
====Mali & Algeria====<br />
Hillary Clinton further testified in the wake of the Benghazi murders that occurred under her stewardship, that weapons and fighters equipped by the Obama administration made their way into [[Mali]] and [[Algeria]]:<br />
{{cquote|There is no doubt that the Algerian terrorists had weapons from Libya. There is no doubt that the Malian remnants of AQIM ([[Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb]]) have weapons from Libya.<ref>[http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-says-militants-used-weapons-libya-algeria-attack-154222664.html Clinton says militants used weapons from Libya in Algeria attack,] Reuters, Jan 23, 2013.]</ref>}}<br />
Two more Americans were killed, along with 35 others, after being taken hostage by rebel jihadists in Mali shortly after the Libyan upheaval.<ref>[http://world.time.com/2013/01/21/algeria-37-foreigner-hostages-killed-in-attack/ Algeria: 37 Foreigner Hostages Killed in Attack], Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2013. ''TIME'' magazine.</ref><br />
<br />
President [[Vladimir Putin]] of Russia observed, "Upheaval in Libya, accompanied by the uncontrolled proliferation of arms, contributed to the deterioration of the situation in Mali. Terrorist attacks in Algeria that took away the lives of innocent people – including those from foreign countries – became the consequences of such tragic developments."<ref>[http://rt.com/news/putin-libya-mali-algeria-704/ Putin links Algeria attack, Mali unrest to Libyan upheaval], January 25, 2013. rt.com</ref><br />
<br />
====Middle East====<br />
[[File:Hillary Clinton Shimon Peres Jesusalem 2009.jpg|thumb|Israel's President Shimon Peres kisses U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as he gives her flowers after their meeting in Jerusalem March 3, 2009.]]<br />
In November 2009 before George Mitchell's awkward removal as Middle East emissary, Clinton finally took a foreign policy initiative in the highly sensitive Palestine-Israeli peace process. However, she offended the Palestinians by praising Israel for offering to curb its settlement-building program in the [[West Bank]]. <ref>[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/01/palestinians-accuse-clinton-undermining-peace-talks-shift-settlements/ Palestinians Accuse Clinton of Undermining Peace Talks With Shift on Settlements, FoxNews, November 1, 2009]</ref> The Palestinians accused her of undermining progress toward Mideast peace talks(the Palestinians want to see all settlements dismantled). To try and make amends and smooth over Palestinians, she issued a new statement saying the US wants [[Israel]] settlement halt forever, “We do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity and we have a very firm belief that ending all settlement activity, current and future, would be preferable.” <ref>[http://www.jewishjournal.com/israel/article/in_cairo_clinton_clarifies_settlement_position_20091104/ "In Cairo, Clinton clarifies settlement position," ''Jewish Journal'', November 4, 2009]</ref> <br />
<br />
Once again, Clinton's failure as Secretary of State came into question as [[John Kerry]] planned a visit to [[Iran]], which Iran rejected. <ref>[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126161465189603571.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_us Kerry Floats Plan to Visit Tehran, Wall Street Journal. December 24, 2009]</ref> Kerry was named as the replacement of Hillary Clinton after President Obama's embarrassing failure to garner support fort Amb. Susan Rice's nomination.<ref>[http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20091022_Kerry_plays_key_role_for_the_president.html Kerry plays key role for the president, Philly.com, October 22, 2009]</ref><br />
<br />
====Africa====<br />
Clinton went to Africa to demonstrate the administration is giving Africa a higher priority than usual. Clinton has long been outspoken on causes like development, health, poverty, and gender violence. Her first stop was [[Kenya]], where the U.S. policy is to stabilize the political situation which has been on the brink of civil war. Also important is economic development, with a continentwide economic conference. Under Bill Clinton the "African Growth and Opportunity Act" expanded the number of tariff-free goods sub-Saharan countries could export to the United States. Kenya is an economic engine in eastern Africa, and needs encouragement to seek economic growth and leadership rather than risk an ethnic civil war. <br />
<br />
[[South Africa]] is the superpower on the continent, but relations were strained with the U.S. under the country's erratic former president, Thabo Mbeki. He for example, fought against American effort to stamp out AIDS, suggesting the disease was a Western conspiracy. The new president, Jacob Zuma, is an unknown quantity. South Africa is in its first recession in more than a decade. With riots on the streets over his failure to deliver on promises to the country's poor, Zuma may hope to capitalize on improved relations with the United States. That bodes well for Clinton.One of the biggest splits was over Zimbabwe, where Bush wanted Mbeki to take a more pro-active role, while Mbeki wanted the United States to stay out of his tyranny. <br />
[[Angola]] is now the top oil exporter in Africa, with the usual corrupt pattern of concentrated oil wealth, wobbly, and a 48% unemployment rate. American oil companies are active and the U.S. is providing business and military support. American support for Angola causes resentment in the rest of Africa, where critics attack the American friendship with President José Eduardo Dos Santos, who has held power for more than 30 years. President Bush's oft-stated concern for human rights and democracy in Angola was seen by African nationalists as little more than a pretence.<br />
<blockquote><br />
Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, embarked on an official African trip that took her to Zambia, Tanzania and Ethiopia.<br />
In a press conference in Lusaka, Clinton is reported to have warned her host continent about ‘new colonialism' in Africa from external actors and investors interested only in extracting Africa's natural resources... Clinton did not mention [[China]] by name, but as her officials later confirmed to reporters, she wanted to stress that African countries should beware of the Chinese and hold their investors to high standards.[http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13585:interpreting-clintons-new-colonialism&catid=39:opinion&Itemid=132]<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
====East Asia====<br />
[[File:021910 dalailama13 slideshow 604x500.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Hillary Clinton negotiated the debt deal with China that piled $2 trillion unto the [[national debt]]; to mollify Chinese Communists concerns about granting [[Tibet]] the honor and dignity due a head of state, here the [[Dalai Lama]] is walked past piles of garbage after meeting with President Obama in the [[Oval Office]] <ref>http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/18/obama.dalailama/index.html ''CNN''</ref>]]<br />
Clinton's first foreign visit in early 2009 was to [[China]] to convince them to purchase trillions in [[U.S. Treasury]] debt to finance President Obama and the Democrats [[stimulus]] programs and the [[federal deficit]].<ref>[http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.42a44b0f5d9cf5c9762e80574e79a3d5.831&show_article=1 Clinton wraps Asia trip by asking China to buy US debt,] Briebart, Feb 22 2009.</ref> Clinton told Chinese leaders the [[Obama administration]] considered [[human rights]] secondary to economic wellbeing.<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/4735087/Hillary-Clinton-Chinese-human-rights-secondary-to-economic-survival.html Hillary Clinton: Chinese human rights secondary to economic survival,] Richard Spencer, ''London Telegraph,'' 20 Feb 2009.</ref> <br />
<br />
The [[Dalai Lama]] was made [[Tibet]]an head of state in 1950, the same year that China invaded and occupied Tibet.<ref>[http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/02/18/analysis.china.dalai.lama/index.html Analysis: Why the Dalai Lama angers China,] Jaime FlorCruz, CNN Beijing Bureau Chief, February 18, 2010.</ref> [[CNN]] reports the Chinese find it "unacceptable when they see the Dalai Lama treated as a VIP, or even akin to a head of state." <ref>Ibid.</ref><br />
<br />
After the Dalai Lama met with President Obama in February, 2010 he was unceremoniously escorted through a side door that trash is regularly carried out to a photo op with awaiting cameras.<br />
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In [[Japan]], she met publicly with Yukio Hatoyama, the former opposition leader, who won a landslide election in Sept, 2009. The question was over whether the new government would continue to follow American foreign policy regarding economic affairs, [[North Korea]]'s development of [[nuclear weapons]],<ref>[http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=20448 Appeasing North Korea: the Clinton Legacy,] Ben Johnson, January 03, 2003. FrontPageMagazine.com</ref> and the issue of 47,000 troops American troops stationed there. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in his election campaign vowed to review a 2006 agreement to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Base from an urban to a coastal part of the southern island of Okinawa. The base has angered residents because of aircraft noise and friction with U.S. servicemen; while in opposition, Hatoyama suggested it could be moved off the island altogether, a move the United States under Bush strongly opposed.<br />
<br />
====South America====<br />
Hillary's trip to [[Argentina]] became controversial as she meddled into a touchy subject by attempting to force [[Britain]] to accept talks on the future of the [[Falkland Islands]]. This action will undoubtedly strain relationships between the U.S., the U.K. and Argentina. Residents of the Falklands were outraged. <ref>[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7047309.ece Argentina celebrates diplomatic coup as Hillary Clinton calls for talks over Falklands, Timesonline.uk, March , 2010]</ref><br />
===Wikipedia===<br />
On the issue of the controversial, biased online encyclopedia, [[Wikipedia]], Clinton sent a message of congratulations that was read at the opening session of the Wikimania 2012 conference in Washington, DC.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/07/17/wikimania-2012-swan-song/|title=Wikimania 2012 swan song|accessdate=February 19, 2012}}</ref><br />
<br />
==See also==<br />
*[[Bill Clinton]]<br />
*[[Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee]]<br />
*[[Freedom of Choice Act]]<br />
*[[Previous Breaking News/Hillary Clinton|Articles about '''Hillary Clinton''' from previous "Breaking News"]]<br />
*[[Charles Schumer]]<br />
*[[Abbottabad raid]]<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<br />
{{reflist|2}}<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
*[http://www.thenation.com/doc/19990809/kaminer Hillary's No Liberal], Wendy Kaminer, ''The Nation'', July 22, 1999 (August 9, 1999 issue).<br />
*[http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13585:interpreting-clintons-new-colonialism&catid=39:opinion&Itemid=132 Interpreting Clinton’s ‘new colonialism’.]<br />
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifZK6SVlQ1Y Hillary Clinton Admits the U.S. Government Created al-Qaeda.] Video YouTube.<br />
<br />
{{Liberalism}}<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clinton, Hillary Rodham}}<br />
[[Category:Illinois]]<br />
[[Category:Arkansas]]<br />
[[Category:New York]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Democratic Party]]<br />
[[Category:First Ladies]]<br />
[[Category:Clinton administration]]<br />
[[Category:Former United States Senators]]<br />
[[Category:2008 Presidential Candidates]]<br />
[[Category:Obama Cabinet]]<br />
[[Category: United States Secretaries of State]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Bill_Clinton&diff=1083614Bill Clinton2014-04-18T21:33:11Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Officeholder<br />
|name=William Jefferson Clinton<br />
|image=William Clinton by Knox.jpg<br />
|party=Democratic<br />
|spouse=[[Hillary Rodham Clinton]]<br />
|religion=[[Baptist]]<br />
|offices=<br />
{{Officeholder/president<br />
|country=the United States<br />
|number=42nd<br />
|terms=January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001<br />
|vp=[[Al Gore]]<br />
|preceded=[[George H. W. Bush]]<br />
|former=y<br />
|succeeded=[[George W. Bush]]<br />
}}<br />
{{Officeholder/governor<br />
|number=40th and 42nd<br />
|state=Arkansas<br />
|terms=January 9, 1979 – January 19, 1981; January 11, 1983 – December 12, 1992<br />
|preceded=[[Joe Purcell]] (first term)<br/>[[Frank D. White]] (second term)<br />
|former=y<br />
|succeeded=[[Frank D. White]] (first term)<br/>[[Jim Guy Tucker]] (second term)<br />
}}<br />
{{Officeholder/attorneygeneral<br />
|jurisdiction=Arkansas<br />
|number=50th<br />
|governor=[[David Pryor]]<br />
|deputy=n<br />
|terms=January 3, 1977 – January 9, 1979<br />
|preceded=[[Jim Guy Tucker]]<br />
|former=y<br />
|succeeded=[[Steve Clark]]<br />
}}<br />
}}<br />
'''William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton''' (born '''William Jefferson Blythe III''', August 19, 1946), was the 42th president of the United States, elected twice with [[Plurality| pluralities]] in 1992 and 1996. Previously he served as governor of Arkansas. In the post-[[Cold War]] era his administration was characterized by reduced defence spending which produced a budget surplus, lower [[interest rate]]s and excessive stock and real estate and bubbles. <br />
<br />
Clinton was [[impeach]]ed by the [[United States House of Representatives]] for [[obstruction of justice]] and [[perjury]], while the Senate failed to convict along party lines. Clinton later was found in contempt by a federal judge for lying under oath and subsequently barred from ever practising law again. <br />
<br />
Clinton and his wife, First Lady [[Hillary Rodham Clinton]], are credited with making commonplace the [[politics of demonization]] in modern American political discourse. He served out his term despite legislative defeats, repeated scandal (he was notorious for his [[sexist]] improprieties) and impeachment.<ref> Whittington (1997)</ref> <br />
<br />
After leaving the White House, he became a well-paid speaker in [[liberal]] circles. His wife, Hillary Clinton, was elected to the Senate from New York in 2000 and 2006, and in 2009 became the third female Secretary of State. Clinton was the major fundraiser and campaigner for his wife, but failed to win the African American vote to neutralize Hillary's main opponent, [[Barack Obama]] in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries.<br />
<br />
== Early Life ==<br />
Clinton was born in Hope,<ref> [[Mike Huckabee]] was born in Hope in 1955, but did not know Clinton.</ref> Arkansas, a month after his father William Jefferson Blythe II, a salesman, was killed in an auto accident. He was raised by his maternal grandparents until age 4, when his mother Virginia Kelly (1923-1994), a nurse, married Roger Clinton (1909-1967), a car dealer. Roger was an alcoholic and violent; the marriage was tempestuous, including a divorce and a remarriage in 1962. A life-long Southern Baptist, Clinton graduated from the Hot Springs public high school in 1964. He attended Georgetown University in Washington D.C., where he became active in Democratic politics and won prestigious Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University in England. He was a bit player in the anti-Vietnam war movement, and managed to stall the draft until he received a high lottery number, an evasion that became controversial in his first presidential campaign. He attended Yale Law School (JD 1973). A hail fellow well met, Clinton developed a vast network of friends. He met [[Hillary Clinton]] at Yale; they married in 1975 and had one daughter, [[Chelsea Clinton]], born in 1980.<br />
<br />
== Arkansas Attorney General and Governor ==<br />
After returning to Arkansas as a law professor at the university, Clinton was elected state Attorney General in 1976. In 1978, he was elected Governor of Arkansas, becoming the youngest governor in the country at age 32 . Though defeated in 1980, Clinton won back the governorship in 1982 and held it until becoming President in 1992.<br />
<br />
===Civil Rights violations===<br />
In December 1989 a three-judge district federal court held Bill Clinton's state-wide legislative reapportionment plan violated Section 2 of the [[Voting Rights Act|Voting Rights Act of 1965]], 42 U.S.C. 1973. 1990 the [[Supreme Court]] of the United States found in the case of ''Clinton vs Jeffers'' <ref>Findings of the Supreme Court of the United States in [http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/briefs/1990/sg900402.txt Clinton vs Jeffers] No. 90-394 (1990) on appeal 730 F. Supp. 196, 198-201 (ED Ark. 1989) (three-judge court), aff'd, No. 89-2008 (Jan. 7, 1991).</ref> the former Arkansas Governor and [[Democratic]] president had violated the Voting Rights Act. The Justices findings were,<br />
{{Cquote|Bill Clinton does not dispute here -- that "violations of the [[Fourteenth amendment|fourteenth]] or [[fifteenth amendment]] justifying equitable relief have occurred in Arkansas."<br />
<br />
In May 1990, the district court turned to those claims, holding that "the State of Arkansas has committed a number of constitutional violations of the voting rights of black citizens." J.S. App. A5. In particular, the court determined that the "State has systematically and deliberately enacted new majority-vote requirements for municipal offices, in an effort to frustrate black political success in elections traditionally requiring only a plurality to win." In 1990...Devotion to majority rule for local offices lay dormant as long as the plurality system produced white office-holders. But whenever black candidates used this system successfully -- and victory by a plurality has been virtually their only chance of success in at-large elections in majority-white cities – the response was swift and certain. Laws were passed in an attempt to close off this avenue of black political victory.}}<br />
<br />
The court concluded <br />
{{Cquote|This series of laws represents a systematic and deliberate attempt to reduce black political opportunity. Such an attempt is plainly unconstitutional. It replaces a system in which blacks could and did succeed, with one in which they almost certainly cannot. The inference of [[bigotry|racial motivation]] is inescapable.}}<br />
<br />
===Arkansas scandals===<br />
Clinton was involved in several scandals while Governor of Arkansas. He converted governmental resources for personal use by having Arkansas state policemen arrange and stand guard during his extramarital rendezvous with women.<ref>Thomas C. Reeves, ''[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n14_v10/ai_14988880 Why Troopergate matters to voters]'', ''Insight on the News,'' April 4, 1994.</ref><br />
<br />
His close personal business partnerships with James and Susan McDougall in a failed Savings and Loan business venture led to investigation of the [[Whitewater]] affair. Several of the people involved with the sale of land prior to the Clinton presidency were indicted, but prosecutors never charged either Clintons with a crime.<br />
<br />
===Democratic Leadership Council===<br />
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) formed in early 1985 to formulate a moderate Democratic agenda. With Al From as executive director and Georgia Senator Sam Nunn as chairman, DLC comprised mostly Southern Democratic congressmen. They sought to rebuild the party's image after a series of defeats by Reagan and Bush. They wanted to assure voters that the moderate-conservative wing of the party was alive and well, and that [[progressive]] policy initiatives may be marketable to mainstream America. After the Democrats 1988 defeat, From asked Clinton in March 1990 to become the first DLC Chair from outside Washington. He and Clinton recruited state and local officials from around the country for the DLC, trying out talking points for [[New_spending#New_vs_old_spending_authority|new spending authority]] initiatives developed by an affiliated think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Proposals that found their way into Clinton's 1992 platform included:<br />
* Apprenticeship programs for non-college-bound skilled workers <br />
* A program of national service for college students (with student loan forgiveness)<br />
* A ROTC-style program to train new police officers in colleges<br />
* An enhanced Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor <br />
* Government-subsidized individual savings accounts for Social Security.<br />
<br />
The two DLC manifestos and Clinton's 1991 "New Covenant" speech accounted for more than 60% of the spending promises in the 1992 Democratic platform. <ref> Borrelli, 432-35</ref> Clinton campaigned as a "New Democrat," with an appeal to southerners and moderates that included demands for welfare reform and support for the death penalty.<br />
<br />
==1992 Presidential election==<br />
:''Main article:'' [[United States presidential election, 1992]]<br />
After the surge of support for the war policy of President [[George H.W. Bush]] pushed his popularity to the 90% level, most prominent Democrats decided to wait out the 1992 election. Clinton's main rival, Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, called Clinton "pander bear" who "will say anything, do anything to get votes."<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/07/us/the-1992-campaign-democrats-saying-clinton-is-cynical-tsongas-goes-on-the-attack.html THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Democrats; Saying Clinton Is Cynical, Tsongas Goes on the Attack,] By RICHARD L. BERKE, ''New York Times'', March 07, 1992. </ref> Appalled by the tone and direction of the campaign, billionaire [[Ross Perot]] entered the race, ran on a balanced budget, and briefly led the polls. Both Bush and Perot proved poor campaigners, as Clinton and his running mate [[Al Gore]] promised a more responsive government. Republicans tried to use the character issue, questioning his failure to serve in the [[Vietnam War]] and stories of his illegal drug use in college days. But Bush was handicapped by a bad economy, and was wounded badly among moderates and conservatives for breaking a promise to not raise taxes. Clinton hammered away at the economy--"It's the economy, stupid!" explained his campaign manager. Clinton and Gore ran as "new Democrats", promising to cut middle class taxes, increase [[direct spending]], end welfare cash payments "as we know it", and support capital punishment. Clinton won the electoral college decisively, and outpolled Bush 43% to 37%, with 19% for Perot.<br />
<br />
Clinton thus entered Washington with a Democratic Congress and a vague agenda. As the first President born after [[World War II]], Clinton represented the "baby-boom" generation.<br />
<br />
==1993-1997, U.S. Presidency==<br />
:''Main article:'' [[Clinton administration]] <br />
Clinton was hailed by liberals and the media for his intellect. Alan Greenspan, who served six presidents in a long career said of Clinton after their first meeting, "for sheer intelligence, Bill Clinton was on a par with [[Richard Nixon]]."<ref>[Alan Greenspan, ''The Age of Turbulence'', Penguin Press, 2007, p. 144.]</ref><br />
===Community Reinvestment Act===<br />
:''Main article:'' [[Community Reinvestment Act]]<br />
One of President Clinton's early acts was an overhaul of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). In 1995 the implementing regulations were strengthened by focusing government regulators' attention on a financial institutions' performance in doling out credit within specified communities. Clinton's changes to the CRA<ref>{{cite web<br />
|title=Clinton Administration Further Liberalizes the Community Reinvestment Act <br />
|url=http://clinton6.nara.gov/1993/12/1993-12-08-briefing-by-bentsen-and-rubin.text.html<br />
|publisher=The White House }}</ref> substantially increased the amount of home loans to unqualified low-income borrowers and, for the first time, allowed the [[securitization]] of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages.<ref>{{cite web |title=Congress Tries To Fix What It Broke<br />
|url=http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=306544845091102<br />
|date=2008-09-17<br />
|publisher=''[[Investor's Business Daily]]''}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Ride out Wall Street's hurricane - The real reasons we're in this mess – and how to clean it up<br />
|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0917/p09s01-coop.html<br />
|first=Mark |last=Skousen<br />
|date=2008-09-17|publisher=''[[Christian Science Monitor]]''<br />
}}</ref><ref>{{cite web<br />
|title=FIRST UNION CAPITAL MARKETS CORP., BEAR, STEARNS & CO. PRICE SECURITIES OFFERING BACKED BY AFFORDABLE MORTGAGES <br />
|url=http://www.wachovia.com/inside/page/textonly/0,,134_307%5E306,00.html<br />
|publisher=First Union Corporation (wachovia)}}</ref><br />
<br />
Howard Husock wrote:<ref>[http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_1_the_trillion_dollar.html The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities], Howard Husock, ''City Journal'', Winter 2000</ref> "The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act into ...a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion ... the evaluation process allowed advocacy groups a chance to express their views on individual banks" to receive a favourable CRA rating. These community groups worked out individual agreements and commitments from the Fannie Mae-backed lenders. A radical group called ACORN Housing "has a $760 million commitment from the Bank of New York; the Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America has a $3-billion agreement with the Bank of America; a coalition of groups headed by New Jersey Citizen Action has a five-year, $13-billion agreement with First Union Corporation," among a host of others.<br />
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Clinton told Jim Lehrer in an interview on the PBS Newshour,<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTZIB6Sika4 Bill Clinton,] PBS Newshour, January 21, 1998. youtube </ref> January 21, 1998,<br />
{{Cquote|The Community Reinvestment Act was set up to say to the bank regulators: Look, you guys go in and look at these banks and tell them, you got to take some of your money<ref>(sic) a bank does not invest its own money, it lends out depositors money under the [[prudent man rule]]; President Clinton obviously was in error in this gross misstatement or distortion of fundamental facts regarding the responsibilities of people entrusted to make judgements in handling other peoples money. </ref> and invest it in inner cities and neighborhoods, and with people who otherwise would not get it so they have a chance to build homes, to build businesses, to create jobs, to build neighborhoods. In the 20-year history of the Community Investment Act, 85 percent-plus the money loaned out under it to poor inner city neighborhoods has been loaned in the five years since I've been President.}}<br />
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The threat of civil action caused many mortgage lenders to make what otherwise would be considered risky loans. For example, the lead attorney for [[ACORN]] Housing, [[Barack Hussein Obama]], sued Citibank in 1995 to force them into making [[Subprime loan|subprime mortgage]]s to unqualified minority borrowers. Obama alleged that, although his clients had been denied mortgages "because of delinquent credit obligations and adverse credit," they were really victims of institutional racism. The suit was brought about by the Community Reinvestment Act, so called "affirmative action mortgage lending." The plaintiffs won $60,000, Obama and two other attorneys were paid $950,000 <ref>[http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/03/community-reinvestment-act-mortgages-housing-opinions-contributors-peter-schweizer.html A Poisonous Cocktail: Expanding the Community Reinvestment Act], Peter Schweizer, ''Forbes'', 10.05.09. ''Selma S. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank'',</ref><br />
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===Mexican Peso bailout===<br />
[[Image:ClintonPresident.jpg|right|thumb|275px|Bill Clinton's Presidential cabinet]]<br />
Clinton refered to the Mexican [[bailout]] in his memoirs as, "one of the biggest crisis of my first term", and quotes Tom Friedman of the ''New York Times'' saying it was the "least popular, least understood, most important foreign policy decision of the Clinton presidency."<ref>''My Life'', Bill Clinton, Knopf, 2004, pp. 641-645. </ref> It was the brainchild of Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin and chief economic adviser [[Larry Summers]] who later served President Barack Obama in the same position. Clinton claims it took him 10 minutes to decide on the $20 billion bailout. Polls showed 79% of the American people opposed it, with little support in Congress.<br />
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Critics cite the modern bailout culture of the [[Recession of 2008]] as originating with Clinton's Mexican bailout. It was allegedly designed to help Mexico using $20 billion from the U.S. Treasury Department's [[Exchange Stabilization Fund]] by [[Executive Order]]. Congress did not authorize it. And it was done, not for the Mexican banks sake, but for the big [[Wall Street]] banks, Citibank, Bankers Trust, and others that were over-exposed to risk for bad loans they made in Mexico. PBS's [[Bill Moyers]] calls it "[[Crony capitalism]]", "and so the idea got started that Washington would be there with a prop, with a bailout, with a helping hand." <ref>[http://billmoyers.com/episode/crony-capitalism/ Crony Capitalism,] Moyers and Company, PBS, January 20, 2012. </ref><br />
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=== National Homeownership Strategy ===<br />
Bill Clinton addressed a letter to HUD Secretary [[Henry Cisneros]] on November 3, 1994. In it he instructed Cisneros to <br />
{{Cquote|dramatically increase homeownership in our nation over the next six years. I request that you report back to me within six months, with a concrete strategy involving the private and public sectors, and all levels of government, that builds on the base of the more than 1.5 million additional families who have been able to buy their own homes...to ensure that families currently underrepresented among homeowners - particularly minority families, young families, and [[low-income]] families - can partake of the American Dream."<ref>[http://economy.typepad.com/the_economy/2011/10/rate-watch-795-the-national-homeownership-strategy-october-7-2011by-dick-lepre-dickleprerpm-mtgcom-wwwloanminecom.html The National Homeownership Strategy,] Dick LePre, October 7, 2011. See also [http://www.globalurban.org/housing_us.htm globalurban.org]</ref>}}<br />
On June 5 1995, Clinton and Cisneros<ref>Cisneros, along with DNC Chairman Christopher Dodd and cabinet Secretary Donna Shalala, was implicated in the Countrywide Mortgage lending scandal for receiving special favors and treatment while in office.</ref> unveiled one hundred things the Clinton administration planned to do to "increase home ownership to two-thirds of the population"<ref> ''My Life'', Bill Clinton, Knopf, 2004, p. 658; [http://confoundedinterest.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/nhsdream2.pdf The National Homeownership Strategy,] U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, May 1995. </ref> in the United States.<br />
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Clinton's plan spoke approvingly of a "no-down payment 100 Percent Mortgage Financing Program" used by one of the "Strategy partners".<ref>National Homeownership Strategy, US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, May 1995, pp. 4-7.</ref> Where down payments could not be eliminated, the plan called for use of "a second, unsecured, interest-free loan to cover the down payment and other costs."<ref>National Homeownership Strategy, US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, May 1995, pp. 4-14, 4-17.</ref> The administration praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for their efforts to promote lending flexibility: "In recent years many mortgagees have increased underwriting flexibility. This increased flexibility is due, at least in part to … [[liberal]]ized affordable housing underwriting criteria established by secondary market investors such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."<ref>National Homeownership Strategy, US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, May 1995,pp. 4-13</ref> To illustrate the desirable flexibility the Strategy cited a program that "allows for nontraditional employment histories, employment histories with gaps, short-term employment, and frequent job changes."<ref>National Homeownership Strategy, US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, May 1995, pp. 4-14.</ref><br />
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=== Budget and tax increases ===<br />
Clinton's first priority while coming into office was a $60 billion [[stimulus]] package largely viewed as a payoff to big city mayors for Get-Out-The-Vote efforts. He also sent Congress a proposal to reduce the deficit in eleven years. However, the country's real problem was that about half of government spending goes to [[nondiscretionary entitlement]] programs such as [[social security]] and [[medicare]]. Refusing to control domestic spending, he increased taxes on ordinary consumers for gasoline, heating oil, and natural gas, breaking his campaign pledge not to raise taxes.<ref>Clinton repeatedly mocked incumbent President George H.W. Bush on the campaign trail for breaking his pledge to "read my lips, no new taxes."</ref> On Aug. 10, 1993, the largest tax increase in history was signed into law, raising taxes by almost $280 billion over five years.<ref>J.D. Foster, Ph.D. [http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/03/tax-cuts-not-the-clinton-tax-hike-produced-the-1990s-boom#_ftn1 Tax Cuts, Not the Clinton Tax Hike, Produced the 1990s Boom], ''The Heritage Foundation'', March 4, 2008.</ref> Instead of middle-class tax relief, President Clinton chose to include in his $241 billion tax plan higher federal gasoline taxes, tax hikes on Social Security recipients, and steep income tax hikes on small business owners.<ref> ''The President's Forgotten Middle Class,'' Joint Economic Committee, Majority Staff, 3/22/96.</ref> Conservatives blocked some proposals, such a new $71 billion [[BTU energy tax]] that would have cost the typical family nearly $500 per year.<br />
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===Tax increases on the elderly===<br />
In 1993 President Clinton sought to increase taxes on [[Social Security]] benefits of the elderly and disabled.<ref>http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/seniorsd.txt</ref> The final version of the bill passed by the [[Democrat]]ically controlled Congress increased taxes on beneficiaries from the first 50% to 85%<ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20040408115747/www.ssa.gov/OACT/HOP/hopi.htm</ref> of benefits (or "annuity payments" as they were originally called). [[Vice President]] [[Al Gore]] cast the deciding tie-breaker vote in the Senate to make the tax increase law. The Clinton-Gore tax increase on Social Security benefits imposed a 70% [[income tax]] rate on a retired couple making as little as $22,000 per year.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=vLg4iJR0J9kC&pg=PA16593&lpg=PA16593&dq=Vice+President+Gore+cast+the+tie-breaking+vote%2Bsocial+security&source=bl&ots=-ImIDX6fHa&sig=ttWVUNAIVsLQoEg1ZhCntHB_02Y&hl=en&ei=dobVTMr9HoOglAe0iuX9CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Vice%20President%20Gore%20cast%20the%20tie-breaking%20vote%2Bsocial%20security&f=false Congressional Record, Comments by Rep. Christopher Cox,] July 27, 2000.</ref><br />
===DNC Fundraising===<br />
In 1994 Clinton invited his longtime golfing buddy, Sen. [[Christopher Dodd]], to serve as chairman of the [[Democratic National Committee]] (DNC) and its chief fundraiser. Dodd also occupied the position of ranking Democrat, and later chairman of the Senate Banking Committee tasked with oversight of the nation's banks and financial institutions. Dodd left the DNC in 1997, after accusations that he mishandled charges that a top DNC fundraiser had collected millions in illegal donations.<ref>[http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/christopher-j-dodd/gIQAmFfM9O_topic.html Christopher J. Dodd,] ''The Washington Post''. </ref><br />
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===Dirty tricks and blackmail===<br />
FBI special agent Gary Aldrich reported, James Carville and former Clinton adviser, now [[ABC News]] anchor [[George Stephanopoulos]] confirmed, after the Gingrich revolution of 1994 the Clinton administration ran a dirt-digging operation out of the Office of the White House Chief of Staff. "They hired upwards of 36 lawyers to staff the operation to handle 40 different cases," Aldrich, on White House duty at the time, said. "Once it became known that they had such an operation, then the blackmail itself took place." Carville and Stephanopoulos stated publicly there would be a "scorched-earth policy", and that everyone who had "skeletons in their closet" would be exposed.<ref>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_23_16/ai_62896460/</ref> [[CNN]] has reported private divorce papers of Newt Gingrich were indeed removed from what was alleged sealed storage at the Carroll County, Georgia courthouse, "when he (Gingrich) became the center of attention." The documents were later made public by CNN.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/26/politics/gingrich-divorce-file/index.html</ref><br />
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In 1995 President Clinton and Congressional Republicans fought a bitter battle over the new federal [[budget]]. Clinton vetoed the Republican's efforts to move toward a balanced budget, claiming that it cut social programs. Speaker Gingrich believed that Clinton would back down and approve the budget. If not, the entire government would shut down because of lack of funds. Clinton allowed just that, and by doing so gained political capital by successfully blaming that shut down on Republicans. Clinton always opposed a balanced budget until it was reality.<ref>[http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-bill-clinton-didnt-balance-budget No, Bill Clinton Didn’t Balance the Budget,] By Stephen Moore, October 8, 1998. Cato Institute. </ref><br />
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===Don't ask don't tell ===<br />
:''Main article'' : [[Don't Ask, Don't Tell]]<br />
Shortly after being inauguarated, Clinton signed an executive order establishing the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" rule. Congress later passed legislation that was veru similar. In 2010, the law was found [[unconstitutional]] in federal court after a suit brought by [[Log Cabin Republicans]], a homosexual rights and advocacy organization.<ref>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39089475/ns/us_news-life/</ref><br />
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=== Failed healthcare takeover ===<br />
:''Main article:'' [[Clinton health care plan of 1993]]<br />
After ignoring the controversial issue on the campaign stump, one of his first acts in 1993 was a call for an immense overhaul of the nation's medical care system. The Clintons proposed a plan using regional insurance purchasing agencies along with tax subsidies and transfer payments to implement universal coverage. He and his advisers believed the plan would be acceptable to employers and larger insurance companies, but the plan was opposed by popular sentiment and a well-financed campaign. The pla put immense burdens on small business employers, which feared they could not afford it. The insurance industry, doctor organizations, and medical professionals also opposed it. Republicans argued that it was too costly and imposed too great a burden on government. Congressional Democrats were divided on the issue. Faced with public opposition and a two year national debate, the Clinton plan failed without the Democratic Congress even going on record to a vote.<br />
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Skocpol (1996) suggests the major mistake may have been in emphasizing the cost-reducing aspect of the plan, not realizing that Americans were willing to pay for a government program that would provide generous benefits to them. The fear that Clinton's proposals would lead to the sort of health care rationing prevalent in Canada and other countries further troubled the voters. Starr (1997) notes that Clinton sought to achieve liberal ends of universal coverage through the conservative means of managed competition among private health plans, with a backup cap on the rate of growth in average insurance premiums. This approach had a political as well as policy rationale. It was meant to be the basis of an alliance that could include conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans and thereby achieve the majorities necessary for congressional passage. But what we saw as compromise, they did not -- especially as the very locus of the political center shifted to the right during the debate. Health care reform that seemed "inevitable" to many serious observers at the start became unthinkable by the end. Polls showed strong initial support, but he never secured passage in either house of Congress and Republican victory in the 1994 elections doomed his plans.<br />
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== 1994 Midterm elections ==<br />
Clinton's popularity had slipped by 1994 and the GOP, under [[Newt Gingrich]] launched a national midterm campaign based on a Republican "Contract with America. The centerpiece of the proposals was a [[balanced budget]], along with lower taxes, welfare reform, tougher anti-crime laws, term limits for Congress, and revised rules in Congress. Clinton responded by calling it "extreme".<ref>Prior to the 9/11 attacks, [[mainstream media]] outlets routinely used the terms "extremist" and "terrorist" interchangeably, and were only too willing to oblige demonizing Republicans and Republican ideas as "extremist". </ref><br />
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In the elections of 1994, the Democrats lost 54 seats in the House of Representatives, and 8 seats in the Senate (followed by two defections after the election), giving the Republicans a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1954. The Republicans also had a net gain of 12 governors' seats in that election. <br />
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Analysts have suggested many causes for the drastic change in political sentiment in the country between 1992 and 1994; among the causes suggested were voter disgust at Congressional scandals mainly implicating Democrats, voter distrust of Clinton after the presentation and defeat of the Clinton health care reform proposal--dubbed "Hillarycare"; the nationalization of the election by Gingrich's "Contract with America", and more skilled framing of issues by the Republicans in 1994.<br />
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In their first 100 days the House passed most items of the Contract with America. Eventually seven of ten items became law, with the term limits failing. Some GOP members voluntarily adhered to the term limit pledge.<br />
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==1996 Presidential election==<br />
:''Main article:'' [[United States presidential election, 1996]]<br />
[[File:ECON1994.jpg|thumb|390px]]<br />
After the Republicans took control of Congress by the time of the 1996 reelection campaign the economy had improved. [[Unemployment]] and inflation was low, American wages increased, crime rates fell, and the number of people on welfare declined. The [[Republican Party]] nominated Senate Majority Leader [[Robert Dole]]. Ross Perot ran again, this time on the Reform Party, but his day was past. Clinton won reelection with 49% of the popular vote. His personal victory had limited coattails, with Republicans retaining a clear majority in the Senate and a narrow majority in the House. It also marked the first time since 1926 and 1928 that the Republican Party carried the House in two consecutive elections.<ref>http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/bostonherald/access/17342942.html?dids=17342942:17342942&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Nov+11%2C+1996&author=Don+Fedr&pub=Boston+Herald&desc=A+night+to+cheer+for+conservatives&pqatl=google</ref><br />
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==1997-2001, U.S. Presidency==<br />
With the [[Cold War]] over, government borrowing and interest rates were much lower, and after the [[Republicans]] won control of Congress the budget was not only balanced but a surplus was produced for the first time in memory. The reasons include reduction in defense spending after the Cold War (from 5% of GDP to 3%), a revenue burst from the [[dot-com bubble]] (the short-lived overexpansion of high tech), restraints on spending imposed by [[Newt Gingrich]] and the GOP Congress, and the fruition of Reagan era tax cuts for business research and development in the consumer electronics (computer and cell phone) industry.<br />
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=== Impeachment ===<br />
Shortly after taking office in 1993, Clinton had been sued by a woman alleging sexual harassment during his tenure as Governor of Arkansas. Clinton had studiously avoided being called to testify in the civil case during his first term by gaining postponements. Upon re-election, a federal judge ordered the accuser could finally exercise her rights and have her day in court, and the case should proceed.<br />
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In testimony under oath, Clinton committed perjury. A special prosecutor, looking into a host of [[corruption]] allegations dating back to Arkansas, was instructed to pursue the matter. <br />
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Clinton made history by becoming the first U.S. president to testify in front of a grand jury in an investigation of his own possibly [[criminal]] conduct. In an address to the nation, he admitted to having misled the public and a Federal Court over keys elements of testimony. <br />
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Clinton was impeached by the U.S. House for perjury. He was tried in the Senate for two counts: "perjury" and "obstruction of justice".<ref>The House turned down two other counts: "abuse of power" as well as another count of "perjury" in connection with the Paula Jones case.</ref> Although a majority of 55 Senators voted to convict, 45 voting against gained his acquittal, a two thirds majority necessary to remove him from office. <br />
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David Gergen, former White House Communications Director for both Presidents Reagan and Clinton, summarized the hurt of the President's misconduct:<br />
{{Cquote|The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them....when you have gone over the line, you won't bring others into it...You don't foul the nest."<ref>[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/quinn110298.htm In Washington, That Letdown Feeling], By Sally Quinn, ''The Washington Post'', November 2, 1998, Page E01</ref>}}<br />
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Clinton lost his law license because he had committed ethical violations for lying in federal court. It was during this scandal that Clinton famously stated: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is".<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/21/newsid_2525000/2525339.stm</ref><br />
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===Repeal of Glass-Steagall Act===<br />
President Clinton signed into law the Financial Modernization Act of 1999 in November of the same year. The Act repealed parts of the [[Great Depression|Depression era]] Glass-Steagall Act. In signing President Clinton remarked, "It is true that the Glass-Steagall law is no longer appropriate for the economy in which we live."<ref>[http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/ls241.aspx STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON AT THE SIGNING OF THE FINANCIAL MODERNIZATION BILL,] 11/12/1999, [[U.S. Department of the Treasury]] Press Center.</ref>The Glass-Steagall Act strictly regulated Bank Holding Companies (BHCs) and the types of assets banks could hold as part of their capitalization. The formal repeal allowed for large banks, such as Goldman Sachs, to form newly created [[Financial Holding Companies]] (FHCs) and merge with insurers and other financial institutions with potentially riskier liabilities. By 2008, the result of the repeal of Glass-Steagall was "too big to fail" behemoths like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. The repeal of Glass-Steagall is considered one of the larger contributing factors to the [[Financial crisis of 2008]].<ref>[http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/27/repeal-of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financial-crisis Repeal of Glass-Steagall Caused the Financial Crisis,] By James Rickards, USNews, August 27, 2012.</ref><br />
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The repeal of Glass-Steagall also was recognition of other changes that had taken place, such as the [[Federal Reserve]]s' revision of Regulation Y in 1997, making it easier for Bank Holding Companies with a satisfactory [[Community Reinvestment Act]] (CRA) rating to receive quicker approval for new acquisitions and engage in other activities. University of Texas-Dallas economist Stan Liebowitz noted, “Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges from the [[Justice Department]].<ref>''[http://www.economist.com/node/10837333 The Economist,]'' Mar. 20, 2008.</ref> [[Alice Rivlin]], Clinton's Budget Director whom he later appointed to the Federal Reserve, said it would make the banking system "operate better as a result."<ref>[http://www.frbsf.org/publications/community/investments/cra97-3/regy.html Regulation Y Revised - Changes to the Federal Reserve Application Process,] Community Investments, Volume 9; No. 3; Summer 1997, By Mike Johnson, Applications Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.</ref><br />
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When Citibank sought federal approval for a merger with Travelers Group, it was only OK'd by the Clinton administration after it promised to provide $115 billion for Community Reinvestment Act "anti-redling" loans. Promises made by other financial institutions added up to $600 billion between 1993 and 1998, according to a 2000 Treasury Department report.<ref>[Subprime Bubble,] ''Investors Business Daily'', 09/04/2012. </ref><br />
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===Fannie Mae securitization of subprime mortgages===<br />
[[Fannie_Mae#Franklin_Raines_era|Franklin Raines]], Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae, was appointed by Clinton as Director of the the [[Office of Management and Budget]] (OMB) in 1996; in 1999, he returned to Fannie Mae as CEO. One of his first acts was to lower Fannie Mae's underwriting guidelines and begin purchasing subprime mortgages implementing Clinton's National Homeownership Strategy under the Community Reinvestment Act.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae-eases-credit-to-aid-mortgage-lending.html Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending,] Steven A. Holmes, ''New York Times'', September 30, 1999.</ref> Raines was named (along with Bill Clinton) by ''[[Time magazine]]'' on it's list of ''25 People to Blame for the [[Financial Crisis of 2008]]''.<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877335,00.html The good intentions, bad managers and greed : behind the meltdown, Blameworthy : Frank Raines], ''Time magazine''. </ref><br />
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Clinton hired [[Peter Orszag]] as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy in 1997; as concern grew over Raines management of Fannie Mae, Raines hired Orszag to reassure investor's fears about the safety of Fannie Mae's purchase of subprime mortgages. Orszag made the fantastic claim that Fannie Mae's risk of [[insolvency]] was 1 in 500,000, and more likely 1 in 3 million. After Fannie Mae really did collapse, Barack Obama then made Orzsag his Budget Director.<br />
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When Raines took the appointment at Fannie Mae, Clinton replaced his services with [[Jack Lew]], who worked in the Clinton White House throughout all eight years. Upon leaving the White House Lew secured a job at Citibank as Chief Operations Officer on Robert Rubins recommendation. Lew received $1 million in salary and a $950,000 bonus - after it failed and was bailed out in 2009.<ref>[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/jack-lew-rubin-citigroup_n_2458142.html Jack Lew's Robert Rubin Connection Is A Bad Sign For Financial Reform,] Mark Gongloff, ''Huffington Post'', 01/11/2013. </ref> From there Barack Obama re-hired him as Budget Director to replace Orszag, promoted him to Chief of Staff, and later Secretary of the Treasury.<ref>Lew was point man on Obama's [[Budget_sequester#2013_Obama_sequester|budget sequester]] where he misled the press and public on the origins and nature of the deal.</ref><br />
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===Kyoto Protocols and carbon emissions===<br />
:''Main article:'' [[Enron scandal]]<br />
In July 1997, Enron CEO Ken Lay met with President Bill Clinton and Vice President [[Al Gore]] in the [[Oval Office]]. Enron had begun a pattern of [[soft money]] donations to Democrats and the Clinton White House years earlier. Clinton, Lay, and Gore discussed approval of the [[Kyoto protocol]]s on carbon emissions.<ref>[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2002/jan/16/20020116-034901-2826r/#ixzz2OnPBZwzl Enron gave cash to Democrats, sought pact help,] ''The Washington Times'', January 16, 2002. </ref> Clinton asked Lay for his views "in advance of a climate treaty to be negotiated at an international conference." Clinton agreed to support Lay's proposal for a carbon emissions trading exchange<ref>As did Barack Obama. [http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/25/obama-years-ago-helped-fund-carbon-program-pushing-congress/ Obama Years Ago Helped Fund Carbon Program He Is Now Pushing Through Congress,] By Ed Barnes, March 25, 2009. FoxNews.com </ref> which Enron hoped to profit from hugely, while American consumers would pay steep price increases for electricity and natural gas. Enron also asked for and received from Clinton's Export-Import Bank a $300 million loan to build a power plant in India; four days later Enron donated $100,000 to the Clinton-Gore campaign.<br />
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The Republican Senate rejected the Kyoto treaty by a 95-to-0 vote on August 15, 1997.<br />
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===Long-Term Capital Management===<br />
:''Main article'': [[Long-Term Capital Management]]<br />
Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) was a hedge fund headed for bankruptcy in 1998 when a [[bailout]] arranged at the highest levels of the [[Clinton Administration]] saved it and its partners from ruin. Two years later it shut down. <br />
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[[Robert Rubin]], whom Bill Clinton appointed Secretary of the Treasury in 1993, previously worked at [[Goldman Sachs]] for 26 years. Goldman was a major investor in LTCM, as were many top executives at other leading investment banks and foreign banks. LTCM was a hedge fund that exploited emerging capital markets in foreign nations without any regard for the havoc that its speculations caused there.<ref>The Hong Kong government blamed hedge funds like LTCM for disrupting its capital markets.</ref> LTCM controlled contracts involving $160 billion at its peak, and it placed large short-term bets on securities issued by foreign governments.<br />
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When the bailout was arranged, LTCM's personal investors received $405 million at the taxpayers expense, which was $155 million more than another private offer, plus a guarantee that an additional $3.65 billion would remain in LTCM for three years. This sweetheart deal enabled the discredited management to remain in place indefinitely and recoup hundreds of millions of dollars. Details of the deal were kept secret.<br />
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Rubin resigned from the administration in 1999 to head up another one of the nation's largest banks, [[Citigroup]]. Under Rubin's leadership Citigroup got $45 billion of [[TARP]] bailout funds, $301 billion of loan guarantees, and an additional $13.4 billion subsidy under the government’s "too-big-to-fail" policy. After driving Citigroup into financial collapse, Rubin was paid $115 million to leave the company.<ref>[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/03/01/jack_lew_and_citigroup_how_the_corrupt_rich_get_richer_with_cronyism_117227.html#ixzz2P5cIL0Vf Jack Lew and Citigroup: How the Corrupt Rich Get Richer with Cronyism,] By Daniel Mitchell, March 1, 2013. realclearpolitics.com </ref><br />
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===Rahm Emanuel and Freddie Mac===<br />
President Clinton brought Rahm Emanuel into the White House in 1993 as part of his original staff, first serving as Assistant to the President for Political Affairs, and then Senior Adviser to the President for Policy and Strategy. 1998 Clinton appointed Emanuel to the Board of the [[government sponsored entity]] Freddie Mac.<ref>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122610420534009957.html</ref><ref>[http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6201900&page=1 Emanuel Was Director Of Freddie Mac During Scandal], ABC News, November 7, 2008.</ref> While on the board during the Clinton administration, Freddie Mac misreported its net income by 30.5 percent, and again in 2001 by 23.9 percent and in 2002 by 42.9 percent, defrauding investors according to the SEC. Freddie Mac's failure is regarded as one of the precipitating events of the [[Financial_Crisis_of_2008#2008_crises| Financial Crisis of 2008]]. <br />
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Emanuel later is reported to have sold up to $250,000 of Freddie Mac stock in an insider trading deal only days before the stock dropped by 10 percent — and weeks before it was publicly revealed that the entity was under criminal investigation for inflating earnings.<ref> http://www.businessinsider.com/book-rahm-emanuel-dumped-tons-of-freddie-mac-stock-days-before-it-collapsed-2011-11#ixzz2MnesKpxI </ref> In 2009 Emanuel became President Obama's Chief of Staff.<br />
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=== Foreign Policy ===<br />
Critics of Clinton argued that he lacked a knowledge of [[world]] affairs. In his 1992 speech at the Democrat National Convention, he devoted one minute to foreign policy issues in an oration that lasted an hour. <ref>The Presidents by David Maraniss, Pg. 626</ref> Clinton entered office after the U.S. won the [[Cold War]], and the U.S. was the only superpower. There were no major foreign crisis during his presidency. His foreign policy was based on five principles: 1) strong alliances with Europe and Asia, 2) positive relations with former adversaries, 3) a global perspective on local conflicts, 4) the adaptation of national security priorities to incorporate technological advances, and 5) effective economic integration.<ref>Samuel R. Berger, "A Foreign Policy for the Global Age," ''Foreign Affairs'' 2000 79(6): 22-39. 0015-7120 </ref> <br />
<br />
Butfoy (2006) argues that in the 1990s the "revolution in military affairs" (RMA), which produced "smart" weapons like cruise missiles, came of age. This apparently transformed how America viewed the relationship between force and international relations. It looked as though technology was framing foreign policy. In particular, smart weapons enabled Clinton to combine risk minimization with an expanded security agenda. However, we should be wary of ascribing technological determinism to the conflicts of the 1990s dominated by Washington's flexing of its strategic superiority, such as its bombing of Belgrade. As shown by comparison with US strategy after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Washington's stance in the 1990s was shaped by linkages between technology and specific political circumstances. As these circumstances changed, so did the RMA's place in US efforts to shape world order.<br />
<br />
====North Korean nukes====<br />
From 1985 to 1992, N. Korea "bought time" for its nuclear weapons program by entering into a series of international diplomatic agreements under which it promised to "deweaponize" its reactors and halt further production of plutonium. By Clinton's second, however, N. Korea had violated the terms of most of the non-proliferation agreements and withdrew from the rest. <br />
<br />
Clinton forged an agreement with Kim Il-sung that the North would temporarily halt its signed on Oct. 21, 1994 known as the "Agreed Framework."<ref>http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aankorea.htm</ref><br />
<br />
In addition to the oil supplied under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea continued to the United States and other countries for free, unconditional food aid while eschewing any real reform of its [[Stalin]]ist agricultural system. <ref>http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/91-141.htm</ref><br />
<br />
By 2000, the United States contribution of food and other forms of humanitarian aid to North Korea had amounted to over $61 million.<br />
<br />
==== Al-Qaeda and terrorism ====<br />
The Arab terrorist group [[al-Qaeda]] conducted a World Trade Center bombing in 1993, simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in [[Kenya]] and [[Tanzania]] in 1998, and the attack on the [[USS Cole]] in 2000. Clinton bombed al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan in response, but meanwhile 19 terrorists were plotting an even more ghastly attack on America which took place on September 11, 2001, eight months after Clinton left office.<br />
<br />
====Human Rights====<br />
Supporters of human rights faulted Clinton’s ideological transition from [[Wilsonianism| Wilsonian idealism]] to [[Realist|realism]], especially regarding China and Bosnia. They gave high marks for his efforts at pushing peace negotiations in Haiti and the Middle East, the use of economic sanctions against North Korea, India, and Pakistan, and his efforts to get a chemical weapons convention. However, they give low marks in terms of human rights for inaction on the genocide in Rwanda and the Russian repression of secessionist Chechnya.<br />
<br />
===Pardons controversy===<br />
====FALN terrorists====<br />
On August 11, 1999, President Clinton offered clemency to members of the [[Armed Forces of National Liberation]] (FALN) [[terrorist]] group. <ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20070703053819/http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/92199CoddlingTerrorists.pdf U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee] testimony available at http://www.senate.gov/~judiciary/wl91599.htm, ''The Tampa Tribune'', S.J.Res. 33 (passed 95-2).</ref> On January 24, 1975 the FALN bombed Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan killing four people. Over a six-year period, the group claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings that took six lives and injured some 130 people.<ref>[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/puertorico/sep4.htm Clinton Pardons Terror], ''New York Post'', August 13, 1999. retrieve from http://www.latinamericanstudies.org September 14, 2007.</ref> Deputy Attorney General [[Eric Holder]] was credited with with an "unconscionable" effort to circumvent the standard pardon process, not consulting with the [[U.S. Department of Justice]]'s pardon attorney and keeping deliberations hidden from the district U.S. attorney and investigative agencies. <br />
====Weather Underground====<br />
[[Weather Underground]] [[terrorists]] [[Linda Evans]] and Susan Rosenberg also received pardons.<ref>[http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmM1OGM4OGRiNTI5NTIzOTFkMDAwMTJiNGFlYWFiZGI= ''Confirming Fears''], Editorial, National Review Online, November 19, 2008.</ref><br />
====Henry Cisneros====<br />
In 1995 Cisneros was indicted on 18 counts of [[conspiracy]], false statements and obstruction of justice. He was pardoned by Bill Clinton in January 2001.<br />
====Campaign contributors====<br />
Marc Rich and his wife Penny, who contributed $450,000 to Bill Clinton's campaigns, were granted last minute pardons for violating U.S. tax laws. Former President Jimmy Carter publicly called it "disgraceful".<ref>[http://hillbuzz.org/who-is-funding-the-purchase-of-the-35-million-beachfront-hawaiian-estate-for-barack-and-michelle-obama-to-move-into-come-january-2013-2013 Hillbuzz]. </ref> Eric Holder, who later served as Barack Obama's Attorney General, arranged the pardons.<ref>[http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/16/holder.confirmation/ CNN].</ref><br />
<br />
== Post-Presidency ==<br />
Clinton has spent much of time since leaving office working for charitable causes such as support and fund-raising for the victims of AIDS and the Asian tsunami. In the case of the Indian Ocean tsunami, he teamed with former president [[George H.W. Bush]] to raise money for relief efforts.<br />
<br />
Bill Clinton's wife, [[Hillary_Rodham_Clinton|Hillary Clinton]], was elected Senator to New York in 2000. She was reelected in 2006. She made a failed bid for the [[2008_Presidential_Election#Declared_Democratic_Party_Candidates|Democratic presidential nomination in 2008]]. <br />
<br />
Clinton has been criticized by both liberals and conservatives for his actions in his wife's presidential campaign. ''Time'' called him "his wife's attack dog". <ref>http://media.www.tuftsdaily.com/media/storage/paper856/news/2008/01/28/OpEd/Editorial.On.The.Campaign.Trail.Bill.Clinton.Should.Keep.His.Mouth.Shut-3171498.shtml</ref> Although he had signed up most black leaders to support Hillary, the great majority of Black voters went for Obama. Clinton was accused of racism by implying that many voters chose [[Obama]] for reasons of race, rather than policy, saying that he succeeding in some regions for the same reason [[Jesse Jackson]] did.<br />
<br />
After Obama refused to give Hillary the Vice Presidential nomination, both Clintons loyally campaigned for Obama. Obama easily defeated Senator [[John McCain]], and named Hillary Secretary of State. Bill Clinton has maintained a low profile in 2009.<br />
<br />
==Legacy==<br />
Of the $1.6 million Clinton earned in salary<ref>http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/wjclinton.html</ref> as President for 8 years, Clinton agreed to pay $850,000,<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/jones111498.htm</ref> or more than 53% in a legal settlement with [[Paula Jones]] to satisfy claims for damages to her reputation.<br />
<br />
Every President since [[William Howard Taft]] in 1910 has served as Honorary President of the [[Boy Scouts of America]] during his term in office. In 2000 it was reported the Boy Scouts national office revoked the title afforded to Bill Clinton after thousands of complaints. Numerous Eagle Scouts returned their certificates of achievement bearing Clinton's signature and requested a replacement without it.<ref>[http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=13204 Eagle Scouts drop Clinton signature], ''WorldNetCaily.com, August 24, 2000.</ref><br />
<br />
==Bibliography==<br />
<br />
===Basic reading===<br />
* Berman, William C. ''From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency'' (2001) 160pp, useful summary and interpretation <br />
* Campbell, Colin, and Bert A. Rockman, eds. ''The Clinton Legacy'' 348 pp [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=58143940 online edition]<br />
* Clinton, Bill. ''My Life''. (2004). ISBN 0-375-41457-6. [http://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Bill-Clinton/dp/140003003X/ref=sr_1_8/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464316&sr=8-8 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Felsenthal, Carol. ''Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House'' (2008) 386 pages<br />
* Gillon, Steve. '' The pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the rivalry that defined a generation'' (2008) 342 pages, by a leading historian; [http://books.google.com/books?id=d-U2IzI2r5YC&pg=PA78&dq=intitle:clinton&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=2007&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=30&as_brr=0 excerpt and text search] <br />
* Hamilton, Nigel. ''Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency'' (2007) covers 1993-96, 766pp [http://books.google.com/books?id=Ky8fzAmUIvAC&pg=PA203&dq=intitle:clinton&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=2007&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=30&as_brr=0 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Harris, John F. ''The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House'' (2005) ISBN 0-375-50847-3, the best coverage of the presidency [http://www.amazon.com/Survivor-Bill-Clinton-White-House/dp/0375760849/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464409&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Hyland, William G. ''Clinton's World: Remaking American Foreign Policy'' (1999) ISBN 0-275-96396-9 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=14147621 online edition]<br />
* Klein, Joe. ''The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton'' (2003) by leading journalist [http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,490843,00.html online excerpt and search]; [http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Misunderstood-Presidency-Bill-Clinton/dp/0767914120/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464449&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Levy, Peter. ''Encyclopedia of the Clinton Presidency'' (2002), 400pp; 230 well-balanced articles<br />
* Maraniss, David, ''First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton'' (1996) ISBN 0-684-81890-6. Biography to 1991. [http://www.amazon.com/First-His-Class-Biography-Clinton/dp/0684818906/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464484&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Posner, Richard A. ''An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton'' (1999) ISBN 0-674-00080-3 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=77420690 online edition]<br />
* Schantz, Harvey L. ''Politics in an Era of Divided Government: Elections and Governance in the Second Clinton Administration'' (2001) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102246366 online edition]<br />
* Schier, Steven E. ''The Postmodern Presidency: Bill Clinton's Legacy in U.S. Politics'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Postmodern-Presidency-Clintons-Politics-Political/dp/082294135X/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464518&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
<br />
<br />
===Biographical and Presidential===<br />
* Barber, Benjamin. '' The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House'' (2008) 336 pages [http://books.google.com/books?id=zwywJroh6PoC&pg=PA11&dq=intitle:clinton&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=2007&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=30&as_brr=0 excerpt and text search] <br />
* Berman, William C. ''From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency'' (2001) 160pp, useful summary and interpretation <br />
* Campbell, Colin, and Bert A. Rockman, eds. ''The Clinton Legacy'' 348 pp [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=58143940 online edition]<br />
* Congressional Quarterly. ''Congress and the Nation 1993-1997: A Review of Government and Politics: 103rd and 104th Congresses'' (1998); ''Congress and the Nation 1997-2001: A Review of Government and Politics: 105th and 106th Congresses'' (2002). Highly detailed nonpartisan coverage (1200 pp each) of all political issues, including presidency<br />
* Gillon, Steve. '' The pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the rivalry that defined a generation'' (2008) 342 pages, by a leading historian; [http://books.google.com/books?id=d-U2IzI2r5YC&pg=PA78&dq=intitle:clinton&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=2007&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=30&as_brr=0 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Hamilton, Nigel. ''Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency'' (2007) covers 1993-96, 766pp [http://books.google.com/books?id=Ky8fzAmUIvAC&pg=PA203&dq=intitle:clinton&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=2007&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=30&as_brr=0 excerpt and text search]* Harris, John F. ''The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House'' (2005) ISBN 0-375-50847-3, the best coverage of the presidency [http://www.amazon.com/Survivor-Bill-Clinton-White-House/dp/0375760849/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464409&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Klein, Joe. ''The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton'' (2003) by leading journalist [http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,490843,00.html online excerpt and search]; [http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Misunderstood-Presidency-Bill-Clinton/dp/0767914120/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464449&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Levy, Peter. ''Encyclopedia of the Clinton Presidency'' (2002), 400pp; 230 well-balanced articles<br />
* Schantz, Harvey L. ''Politics in an Era of Divided Government: Elections and Governance in the Second Clinton Administration'' (2001) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102246366 online edition]<br />
* Schier, Steven E. ''The Postmodern Presidency: Bill Clinton's Legacy in U.S. Politics'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Postmodern-Presidency-Clintons-Politics-Political/dp/082294135X/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464518&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
<br />
===Clinton to 1992===<br />
* Abbott, Philip. "A 'Long and Winding Road': Bill Clinton and the 1960s," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9.1 (2006) 1-20 in Project Muse<br />
* Borrelli, Stephen A. "Finding the Third Way: Bill Clinton, the DLC, and the Democratic Platform of 1992," ''Journal of Policy History'' Vol. 13#4 (2001), pp. 429-462 in Project Muse<br />
* Goldman, Peter L. et al, ''Quest for the Presidency, 1992'' (1994) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=11169230 online edition]<br />
* Maraniss, David, ''First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton'' (1996) ISBN 0-684-81890-6. Biography to 1991. [http://www.amazon.com/First-His-Class-Biography-Clinton/dp/0684818906/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464484&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
<br />
===Foreign Policy===<br />
* Butfoy, Andrew. "The Rise and Fall of Missile Diplomacy? President Clinton and the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' in Retrospect." ''Australian Journal of Politics and History'' 2006 52(1): 98-114. Issn: 0004-9522 Fulltext: in Ebsco [http://www.questia.com/read/5014679475 online complete editon]<br />
* Cohen, Warren I. ''America's Failing Empire: U.S. Foreign Relations since the Cold War.'' 2005. 204 pp. <br />
* Davis; John. "The Evolution of American Grand Strategy and the War on Terrorism: Clinton and Bush Perspectives" ''White House Studies'', Vol. 3, 2003<br />
* Hendrickson, Ryan C. ''The Clinton Wars: The Constitution, Congress, and War Powers'' (2002)<br />
* Hyland, William G. ''Clinton's World: Remaking American Foreign Policy'' (1999) ISBN 0-275-96396-9 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=14147621 online edition]<br />
* Jewett, Aubrey W. and Marc D. Turetzky. "Stability and Change in President Clinton's Foreign Policy Beliefs, 1993-96" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 28, 1998 [http://www.questia.com/read/5001392338 online edition]<br />
* Livingston, C. Don, Kenneth A. Wink; "The Passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the U.S. House of Representatives: Presidential Leadership or Presidential Luck?" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 27, 1997 [http://www.questia.com/read/5000429192 online edition]<br />
* Maclean, George A. ''Clinton's Foreign Policy in Russia: From Deterrence and Isolation to Democratization and Engagement'' (2006) [http://www.amazon.com/Clintons-Foreign-Policy-Russia-Democratization/dp/0754649016/ref=sr_1_5/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464518&sr=8-5 excerpt and text search] <br />
<br />
===Domestic Policy===<br />
* Edwards; George C. "Bill Clinton and His Crisis of Governance" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly,'' Vol. 28, 1998 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=5001393468 in Questia]<br />
* Fisher; Patrick. "Clinton's Greatest Legislative Achievement? the Success of the 1993 Budget Reconciliation Bill" ''White House Studies'', Vol. 1, 2001 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=5002437663 in Questia]<br />
* Greenspan, Alan. ''The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World'' (2007), memoir by head of Federal Reserve [http://www.amazon.com/Age-Turbulence-Adventures-New-World/dp/0143114166/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260097183&sr=1-1xcerpt and text search] <br />
* Harris, John F. ''The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House''. (2005) covers the major policy issues [http://www.amazon.com/Survivor-Bill-Clinton-White-House/dp/0375760849/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260097075&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Lanoue, David J. and Craig F. Emmert; "Voting in the Glare of the Spotlight: Representatives' Votes on the Impeachment of President Clinton" ''Polity'', Vol. 32, 1999<br />
* Needham, Catherine. "Brand Leaders: Clinton, Blair and the Limitations of the Permanent Campaign." ''Political Studies'' 2005 53(2): 343-361. Issn: 0032-3217 Fulltext: in Ebsco <br />
* Nie; Martin A. "'It's the Environment, Stupid!': Clinton and the Environment" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 27, 1997 [http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5001516576 online edition]<br />
* Patterson, James T. ''Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore'' (2005) [http://www.amazon.com/Restless-Giant-United-Watergate-History/dp/019512216X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195117012&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Poveda; Tony G. "Clinton, Crime, and the Justice Department" ''Social Justice'', Vol. 21, 1994 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=5000301618 online edition]<br />
* Renshon; Stanley A. ''The Clinton Presidency: Campaigning, Governing, and the Psychology of Leadership'' Westview Press, 1995<br />
* Schantz, Harvey L. ''Politics in an Era of Divided Government: Elections and Governance in the Second Clinton Administration'' (2001) ISBN 0-8153-3583-0<br />
* Stiglitz, Joseph E. ''The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade'' (2004) economic history; [http://www.amazon.com/Roaring-Nineties-History-Worlds-Prosperous/dp/0393326187/ref=sr_1_6/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464518&sr=8-6 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Wattenberg; Martin P. "The Democrats' Decline in the House during the Clinton Presidency: An Analysis of Partisan Swings" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 29, 1999 [http://www.questia.com/read/5001303783 online edition]<br />
<br />
===Polls, campaign, images, character, scandals===<br />
* Blaney, Joseph R. and William L. Benoit. ''The Clinton Scandals and the Politics of Image Restoration,'' (2001) [http://www.amazon.com/Scandals-Politics-Restoration-Political-Communication/dp/0275971066/ref=sr_1_4/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194471793&sr=8-4 excerpt and text search] [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101159621 online edition]<br />
* Borrelli, Stephen A. "Finding the Third Way: Bill Clinton, the DLC, and the Democratic Platform of 1992," ''Journal of Policy History'' Vol. 13, #4 (2001), pp. 429-462 in [[Project Muse]]<br />
* Cohen; Jeffrey E. "The Polls: Change and Stability in Public Assessments of Personal Traits, Bill Clinton, 1993-99" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 31, 2001<br />
* Cronin, Thomas E. and Michael A. Genovese; "President Clinton and Character Questions" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' Vol. 28, 1998<br />
* Denton Jr. Robert E. ''The 1992 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective,'' (1994) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=104563698 online edition]<br />
* Denton Jr. Robert E. ''The 1996 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective,'' (1998) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=26288597 online edition]<br />
* Denton Jr. Robert E. and Rachel L. Holloway, eds. ''The Clinton Presidency: Images, Issues, and Communication Strategies, 1996 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=24374540 online edition]<br />
* Denton Jr. Robert E. and Rachel L. Holloway, eds. ''Images, Scandal, and Communication Strategies of the Clinton Presidency'' (2003) [http://www.amazon.com/Scandal-Communication-Strategies-Presidency-Presidential/dp/0275971767/ref=sr_1_4/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464518&sr=8-4 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Glad; Betty. "Evaluating Presidential Character" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 28, 1998 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=5001393536 online edition]<br />
* Maurer; Paul J. "Media Feeding Frenzies: Press Behavior during Two Clinton Scandals" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly,'' Vol. 29, 1999 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=5001239881 online edition]<br />
* O'Connor; Brendon. "Policies, Principles, and Polls: Bill Clinton's Third Way Welfare Politics 1992-1996" ''The Australian Journal of Politics and History'', Vol. 48, 2002<br />
* Posner, Richard A. ''An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton'' (1999) ISBN 0-674-00080-3 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=77420690 online edition]<br />
* Renshon, Stanley A. "The Polls: The Public's Response to the Clinton Scandals, Part 1: Inconsistent Theories, Contradictory Evidence" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 32, 2002 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000773179 online edition]<br />
* Renshon; Stanley A. '' The Clinton Presidency: Campaigning, Governing, and the Psychology of Leadership'' (1995) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=9961027 online edition]<br />
* Starr, Kenneth. ''The Starr Report: The Findings of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr on President Clinton and the Lewinsky Affair'' (1998) ISBN 1-891620-24-X<br />
* Whittington, Keith E. "The Rhetorical Presidency, Presidential Authority and President Clinton," ''Perspectives on Political Science,'' Vol. 26, 1997 <br />
* Waldman, Michael. ''POTUS Speaks: Finding the Words That Defined the Clinton Presidency'' (2000) ISBN 0-7432-0020-9<br />
* Wattier; Mark J. "The Clinton Factor: The Effects of Clinton's Personal Image in 2000 Presidential Primaries and in the General Election" ''White House Studies'', Vol. 4, 2004<br />
* Weisberg, Herbert F., and Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier. ''Reelection 1996: How Americans Voted,'' 1999 [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=62235822 online edition]<br />
<br />
===Health reform===<br />
* Blendon, R. J., M. Brodie, and J. Benson. "What Happened to Americans' Support of the Clinton Plan?" ''Health Affairs'' 1995. 14(2):7-23. [http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/14/2/7?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=brodie&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=10&resourcetype=HWCIT online edition], analysis of poll data<br />
* Fox, Daniel M. "A Lost Cause: Bill Clinton's Campaign for National Health Insurance, and: The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security," ''Bulletin of the History of Medicine'' vol. 73, # 2, Summer 1999, pp. 367-369 in [[Project Muse]]<br />
* Laham, Nicholas, ''A Lost Cause: Bill Clinton's Campaign for National Health Insurance'' (1996) [http://www.questia.com/library/book/a-lost-cause-bill-clintons-campaign-for-national-health-insurance-by-nicholas-laham.jsp online edition]<br />
* Rushefsky, Mark E. and Kant Patel. ''Politics, Power & Policy Making: The Case of Health Care Reform in the 1990s'' (1998) [http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Power-Policy-Making-Health/dp/1563249561/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260096806&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Skocpol, Theda. ''Boomerang: Clinton's Health Security Effort and the Turn Against Government in U.S. Politics,'' (1996) [http://www.amazon.com/Boomerang-Health-Reform-Against-Government/dp/039331572X/ref=sr_1_2/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194472221&sr=8-2 excerpt and text search]<br />
<br />
==Primary sources==<br />
* [http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/publications/ERP/ Council of Economic Advisors, ''Economic Report of the President'' (annual 1947- )], complete series online; important analysis of current trends and policies, plus statistical tables<br />
*Clinton, William jfeerson. ''Conversations: William Jefferson Clinton: from Hope to Harlem'' ed. by Janis F. Kearney (2006) 402 pages; [http://books.google.com/books?id=EVdrKWADFnsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=intitle:clinton&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=2006&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=30&as_brr=0 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Starr, Kenneth. ''The Starr Report: The Findings of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr on President Clinton and the Lewinsky Affair'' (1998) ISBN 1-891620-24-X [http://books.google.com/books?id=NxWTTbiij0wC&dq=inauthor:Starr+inauthor:Kenneth&num=30&as_brr=0 excerpt and text search]<br />
===Memoirs===<br />
* Clinton, Bill. ''My Life''. (2004). ISBN 0-375-41457-6. [http://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Bill-Clinton/dp/140003003X/ref=sr_1_8/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194464316&sr=8-8 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Blumenthal, Sidney. ''The Clinton Wars''. (2003). ISBN 0-374-12502-3 [http://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Wars-Sidney-Blumenthal/dp/0374125023/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194472136&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
* Greenspan, Alan. ''The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World'' (2007), memoir by head of Federal Reserve<br />
* Stephanopoulos, George. ''All Too Human: A Political Education'' (1998) ISBN 0-316-92919-0 [http://www.amazon.com/All-too-Human-George-Stephanopoulos/dp/0316930164/ref=sr_1_1/103-4827826-5463040?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194472067&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
{{reflist|2}}<br />
<br />
{{USPresidents}}<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clinton, Bill}}<br />
[[Category:Presidents of the United States]]<br />
[[Category:Clinton administration]]<br />
[[Category:Arkansas Governors]]<br />
[[Category:Democratic Governors]]<br />
[[Category:Corruption]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Reagan Era]]<br />
[[Category:Democratic Party]]<br />
[[Category:Former Governors]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Chelsea_Manning&diff=1083613Chelsea Manning2014-04-18T21:29:18Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Move|Chelsea Manning}}<br />
'''Bradley Edward Manning''' (or '''Chelsea Elizabeth Manning''', according to his wishes.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref>) is a United States Army soldier who was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted in a [[court-martial]] for releasing vast amounts of classified documents to [[WikiLeaks]]. Manning is being held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, [[Virginia]], charged with "transferring classified data" and "delivering national defense information to an unauthorised source", and "aiding the enemy".<ref name="FoxNews">[http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/29/who-pfc-bradley-manning#ixzz19diL6EX5]</ref> Manning is [[homosexual|gay]], and there is speculation that his homosexuality motivated him to leak classified information.<ref name="FoxNews" /> In August 2013 Manning announced he wanted to live as a woman.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref><br />
<br />
The Australian hacker and founder of the controversial website [[WikiLeaks]], [[Julian Assange]], considers him an unparalleled hero. <br />
<br />
== Data Leak ==<br />
Manning was assigned to an unit based near [[Baghdad]], Iraq. He had access to databases used by the United States government to store classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, and journalist, informed the FBI that Manning had confided during online IRC chats that he had downloaded material from the confidential databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material leaked included videos of American airstrikes, and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public. Much of it was published subsequently by [[WikiLeaks]] or its media partners between April and November 2010.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
<br />
*[[Chinese Cyberterrorism]]<br />
*[[Edward J. Snowden]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manning, Bradley}}<br />
[[Category:Computers]]<br />
[[Category:Criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Homosexuals]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Lunatics]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Chelsea_Manning&diff=1083612Chelsea Manning2014-04-18T21:28:37Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Move|Chelsea E. Manning}}<br />
'''Bradley Edward Manning''' (or '''Chelsea Elizabeth Manning''', according to his wishes.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref>) is a United States Army soldier who was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted in a [[court-martial]] for releasing vast amounts of classified documents to [[WikiLeaks]]. Manning is being held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, [[Virginia]], charged with "transferring classified data" and "delivering national defense information to an unauthorised source", and "aiding the enemy".<ref name="FoxNews">[http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/29/who-pfc-bradley-manning#ixzz19diL6EX5]</ref> Manning is [[homosexual|gay]], and there is speculation that his homosexuality motivated him to leak classified information.<ref name="FoxNews" /> In August 2013 Manning announced he wanted to live as a woman.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref><br />
<br />
The Australian hacker and founder of the controversial website [[WikiLeaks]], [[Julian Assange]], considers him an unparalleled hero. <br />
<br />
== Data Leak ==<br />
Manning was assigned to an unit based near [[Baghdad]], Iraq. He had access to databases used by the United States government to store classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, and journalist, informed the FBI that Manning had confided during online IRC chats that he had downloaded material from the confidential databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material leaked included videos of American airstrikes, and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public. Much of it was published subsequently by [[WikiLeaks]] or its media partners between April and November 2010.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
<br />
*[[Chinese Cyberterrorism]]<br />
*[[Edward J. Snowden]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manning, Bradley}}<br />
[[Category:Computers]]<br />
[[Category:Criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Homosexuals]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Lunatics]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=John_Michael_Bailey&diff=1083611John Michael Bailey2014-04-18T21:27:37Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Move|J. Michael Bailey}}<br />
'''John Michael Bailey''' is a [[psychologist]] and [[scientist]] who conducts academic research on [[homosexuality]] and [[transexualism]]. He is best known for his [[twin studies]] on [[homosexual]]s. <ref>J. Michael Bailey is the Chairman of the Psychology Department at Northwestern University and an internationally recognized expert on the origins of human sexual orientation. His studies of twins have been widely cited in the scientific literature and are mentioned in virtually all introductory psychology textbooks. [http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10530] </ref><br />
<br />
Bailey has come under fire for his argument that "male-to-female [[sex change]]s are motivated primarily by erotic interests and not by the problem of having the [[gender identity]] common to one sex in the body of the other." <ref>http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
==Notes==<br />
<br />
<References/><br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, J. Michael}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Scientists]]<br />
[[Category:Academics]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=John_Michael_Bailey&diff=1083610John Michael Bailey2014-04-18T21:26:39Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''John Michael Bailey''' is a [[psychologist]] and [[scientist]] who conducts academic research on [[homosexuality]] and [[transexualism]]. He is best known for his [[twin studies]] on [[homosexual]]s. <ref>J. Michael Bailey is the Chairman of the Psychology Department at Northwestern University and an internationally recognized expert on the origins of human sexual orientation. His studies of twins have been widely cited in the scientific literature and are mentioned in virtually all introductory psychology textbooks. [http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10530] </ref><br />
<br />
Bailey has come under fire for his argument that "male-to-female [[sex change]]s are motivated primarily by erotic interests and not by the problem of having the [[gender identity]] common to one sex in the body of the other." <ref>http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdf</ref><br />
<br />
==Notes==<br />
<br />
<References/><br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, J. Michael}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Scientists]]<br />
[[Category:Academics]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Chelsea_Manning&diff=1083608Chelsea Manning2014-04-18T21:25:14Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Move|Chelsea Manning}}<br />
'''Bradley Edward Manning''' (or '''Chelsea Elizabeth Manning''', according to his wishes.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref>) is a United States Army soldier who was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted in a [[court-martial]] for releasing vast amounts of classified documents to [[WikiLeaks]]. Manning is being held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, [[Virginia]], charged with "transferring classified data" and "delivering national defense information to an unauthorised source", and "aiding the enemy".<ref name="FoxNews">[http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/29/who-pfc-bradley-manning#ixzz19diL6EX5]</ref> Manning is [[homosexual|gay]], and there is speculation that his homosexuality motivated him to leak classified information.<ref name="FoxNews" /> In August 2013 Manning announced he wanted to live as a woman.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref><br />
<br />
The Australian hacker and founder of the controversial website [[WikiLeaks]], [[Julian Assange]], considers him an unparalleled hero. <br />
<br />
== Data Leak ==<br />
Manning was assigned to an unit based near [[Baghdad]], Iraq. He had access to databases used by the United States government to store classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, and journalist, informed the FBI that Manning had confided during online IRC chats that he had downloaded material from the confidential databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material leaked included videos of American airstrikes, and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public. Much of it was published subsequently by [[WikiLeaks]] or its media partners between April and November 2010.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
<br />
*[[Chinese Cyberterrorism]]<br />
*[[Edward J. Snowden]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manning, Bradley}}<br />
[[Category:Computers]]<br />
[[Category:Criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Homosexuals]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Lunatics]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Chelsea_Manning&diff=1083607Chelsea Manning2014-04-18T21:24:12Z<p>CGL: He has legally changed his name.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Move|Chelsea Manning}}<br />
'''Bradley Edward Manning''' (or '''Chelsea Elizabeth Manning''', according to his wishes.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref>) is a United States Army soldier who was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted in a [[court-martial]] for releasing vast amounts of classified documents to [[WikiLeaks]] Manning is being held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, [[Virginia]], charged with "transferring classified data" and "delivering national defense information to an unauthorised source", and "aiding the enemy".<ref name="FoxNews">[http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/29/who-pfc-bradley-manning#ixzz19diL6EX5]</ref> Manning is [[homosexual|gay]], and there is speculation that his homosexuality motivated him to leak classified information.<ref name="FoxNews" /> In August 2013 Manning announced he wanted to live as a woman.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref><br />
<br />
The Australian hacker and founder of the controversial website [[WikiLeaks]], [[Julian Assange]], considers him an unparalleled hero. <br />
<br />
== Data Leak ==<br />
Manning was assigned to an unit based near [[Baghdad]], Iraq. He had access to databases used by the United States government to store classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, and journalist, informed the FBI that Manning had confided during online IRC chats that he had downloaded material from the confidential databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material leaked included videos of American airstrikes, and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public. Much of it was published subsequently by [[WikiLeaks]] or its media partners between April and November 2010.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
<br />
*[[Chinese Cyberterrorism]]<br />
*[[Edward J. Snowden]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manning, Bradley}}<br />
[[Category:Computers]]<br />
[[Category:Criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Homosexuals]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Lunatics]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Walter_Carlos&diff=1083558Walter Carlos2014-04-18T15:06:18Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''Wendy Carlos''' (born '''Walter Carlos'''; November 14, 1939) is a leading proponent of [[synthesized music]], traditional and newly-composed, especially for a series of recordings of [[J.S. Bach]] and other [[Baroque]] composers: ''Switched On Bach'' (1968), ''The Well-Tempered Synthesizer'', (1969), and others. Carlos's albums popularized the music of Bach, [[Claudio Monteverdi]], [[Domenico Scarlatti]], and others and introduced electronic synthesizers to the general public in a way that was enthusiastically received.<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
*[http://www.wendycarlos.com/ Official Website]<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carlos, Walter}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Musicians]]<br />
[[Category:Composers]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Walter_Carlos&diff=1083557Walter Carlos2014-04-18T14:54:23Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''Wendy Carlos''' (born '''Walter Carlos'''; November 14, 1939) is a leading proponent of [[synthesized music]], traditional and newly-composed, especially for a series of recordings of [[J.S. Bach]] and other [[Baroque]] composers: ''Switched On Bach'' (1968), ''The Well-Tempered Synthesizer'', (1969), and others. Carlos's albums popularized the music of Bach, [[Claudio Monteverdi]], [[Domenico Scarlatti]], and others and introduced electronic synthesizers to the general public in a way that was enthusiastically received.<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
*[http://www.wendycarlos.com/ Official Website]<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carlos, W}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Musicians]]<br />
[[Category:Composers]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Walter_Carlos&diff=1083556Walter Carlos2014-04-18T14:53:03Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''Walter/Wendy Carlos''' (born Nov. 13, 1949) is a leading proponent of [[synthesized music]], traditional and newly-composed, especially for a series of recordings of [[J.S. Bach]] and other [[Baroque]] composers: ''Switched On Bach'' (1968), ''The Well-Tempered Synthesizer'', (1969), and others. Carlos's albums popularized the music of Bach, [[Claudio Monteverdi]], [[Domenico Scarlatti]], and others and introduced electronic synthesizers to the general public in a way that was enthusiastically received.<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
*[http://www.wendycarlos.com/ Official Website]<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carlos, W}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Musicians]]<br />
[[Category:Composers]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Ellen_DeGeneres&diff=1077283Ellen DeGeneres2014-02-18T22:00:52Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''Ellen DeGeneres''' is an American actress, stand-up comedian, and host of the syndicated talk show ''The Ellen DeGeneres Show''. She first reached success with her own sitcom called ''These Friends of Mine'', later renamed ''Ellen'' (1994-98).<br />
The ABC show had difficulty finding a formula to bring in a large audience, having frequent cast changes. While not a ratings hit, it did do well enough to be renewed for four seasons.<br />
<br />
Ellen made her [[homosexuality]] public on ''The [[Oprah Winfrey]] Show'' in February 1997, surprising few people. The resulting media attention highlighting this event (including being put on the front cover of ''[[Time magazine|Time]]'' magazine) caused a stir. Subsequently her character on the sitcom came out of the closet in April of that same year, admitting she was gay to her therapist (portrayed by Oprah Winfrey). After a great deal of media attention highlighting the outing episode, entitled "The Puppy Episode," the showing was the highest-rated episode of the sitcom. But the bounce proved to be short lived. The show became a constant weekly refrain of lesbian themes and viewers stopped watching rather quickly. Even Chastity Bono, the media director of the [[Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation]] criticized the show for going over the top on the gay issue.<ref>http://www.planetout.com/entertainment/news/?sernum=544</ref> After the ratings rapidly declined, the show was canceled.<br />
<br />
DeGeneres later returned to the stand-up comedy circuit. She had another stab at a sitcom on network television in 2001, ''The Ellen Show''. By this time DeGeneres diversified away from a constant gay theme, but the show failed to catch on with viewers and was canceled in its first season. She would later re-establish herself as a successful talk show host starting in 2003 with ''The Ellen DeGeneres Show''. Her talk show is still on the air. In 2007 she hosted the 79th [[Academy Awards]]. She replaces [[Paula Abdul]] in the current season of [[American Idol]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<br />
<References/><br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:DeGeneres, Ellen}}<br />
[[Category:Actresses]]<br />
[[Category:Comedians]]<br />
[[Category:Homosexuals]]<br />
[[Category:Talk Show Hosts]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Julian_Assange&diff=1076921Julian Assange2014-02-15T04:00:36Z<p>CGL: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:Julian Assange.jpg|right|240px]]<br />
'''Julian Assange''' (1971 - ) is an [[Australian]] hacker and activist, best known as the founder of the controversial liberal website [[Wikileaks]], a repository of leaked government documents. Assange actively tries to undermine various western governments, especially that of the United States, by releasing classified material via his website. He studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne. He wrote Strobe, the first free and open-source port scanner, and contributed to the book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier.<ref>http://www.ted.com/speakers/julian_assange.html</ref><br />
<br />
Prior to WikiLeaks, Assange was involved with an organization of computer hackers and was arrested for his involvement with the group in 1991. After the arrest, he became an independent programmer. Most of the software he produced was designed to keep whistleblowers and dissidents anonymous.<br />
<br />
As of November 18, 2010, there is a warrant out for his arrest in [[Sweden]]. Assange was previously investigated for rape, but the charges were ultimately dropped. However, there is an international warrant for Assange, as he is wanted for questioning in Sweden in relation to a rape investigation. On June 19, 2012, [[Ricardo Patiño]], the [[Ecuador]]ian foreign minister, announced that Assange had applied for [[political asylum]] and that the Ecuadorian government was analysing his request. At that time, Assange was in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.<ref name="Ecuador">{{cite news| url=http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/Julian-Assange-embajada-Ecuador-Londres_0_721727907.html|title=Julian Assange pide asilo político en embajada de Ecuador en Londres | work=El Comercio | language=es|accessdate=September 17, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/9342856/Julian-Assange-WikiLeaks-founder-seeks-political-asylum-from-Ecuador.html | work=Daily Telegraph | first=Andrew | last=Hough | title=Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder seeks political asylum from Ecuador | location=London | date=19 June 2012}}</ref> On August 16, Patiño announced that the Ecuadorian government was granting Assange political asylum.<ref name="asylumgranted">[http://www.mmrree.gob.ec/2012/com042.asp Declaración del Gobierno de la República del Ecuador sobre la solicitud de asilo de Julian Assange] (Spanish)</ref> It is not clear how, if ever, Assange will be able to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy grounds.<br />
<br />
His [[anarchy|anarchistic]] hope is that faith in government will decline and individuals will take on more personal responsibilities for their lives.<ref>http://pubrecord.org/world/8634/thoughts-about-julian-assange-wikileaks/</ref> It is not clear how exposing classified documents of democratic countries will encourage people to become more responsible for their lives. He also implied in a piece for the guardian newspaper that his sympathies lay towards Latin American liberation struggles, and that he grew up believing in [[Marxism]]-[[Leninism]].<ref>http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/09/cryptography-weapon-fight-empire-states-julian-assange%23start-of-comments</ref><ref>http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/07/10/Assange-Snowden-Greenwald-Strangely-Silent-On-Ecuador-s-Sweeping-New-Media-Laws</ref> Assange is a admirer of [[Rand Paul]].<ref>http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/19/julian-assange-loves-rand-paul-and-his-very-principled-positions.html</ref><br />
<br />
Assange has a 20-year-old son in Australia.<br />
== Political reaction==<br />
On November 30, 2010, [[Sarah Palin]] called for Assange to be pursued "with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8171269/Sarah-Palin-hunt-WikiLeaks-founder-like-al-Qaeda-and-Taliban-leaders.html |title=Sarah Palin: hunt WikiLeaks founder like al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders |publisher=Telegraph.co.uk |date= |accessdate=September 17, 2012}}</ref><br />
<br />
On December 1, 2010, [[Mike Huckabee]] said those behind the leak of the cables should be executed.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/us-embassy-cables-executed-mike-huckabee US embassy cables culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee], The Guardian, December 1, 2010, Haroon Sidiqqui. "Mike Huckabee said, 'Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty'"</ref><br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
<br />
*[[Bradley Manning]]<br />
*[[Edward J. Snowden]]<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Assange, Julian}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Computers]]<br />
[[Category:Criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Espionage]]<br />
[[Category:Marxism]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=The_Wachowski_Brothers&diff=1076920The Wachowski Brothers2014-02-15T03:46:41Z<p>CGL: Redirected page to The Wachowskis</p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[The Wachowskis]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Chelsea_Manning&diff=1076918Chelsea Manning2014-02-15T03:41:13Z<p>CGL: /* See also */</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Bradley Edward Manning''' (or '''Chelsea Elizabeth Manning''', according to his wishes.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref>) is a United States Army soldier who was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted in a [[court-martial]] for releasing vast amounts of classified documents to [[WikiLeaks]] Manning is being held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, [[Virginia]], charged with "transferring classified data" and "delivering national defense information to an unauthorised source", and "aiding the enemy".<ref name="FoxNews">[http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/29/who-pfc-bradley-manning#ixzz19diL6EX5]</ref> Manning is [[homosexual|gay]], and there is speculation that his homosexuality motivated him to leak classified information.<ref name="FoxNews" /> In August 2013 Manning announced he wanted to live as a woman.<ref>http://townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/2013/08/23/bradley-mannings-new-crusade-n1671409</ref><br />
<br />
The Australian hacker and founder of the controversial website [[WikiLeaks]], [[Julian Assange]], considers him an unparalleled hero. <br />
<br />
== Data Leak ==<br />
Manning was assigned to an unit based near [[Baghdad]], Iraq. He had access to databases used by the United States government to store classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, and journalist, informed the FBI that Manning had confided during online IRC chats that he had downloaded material from the confidential databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material leaked included videos of American airstrikes, and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public. Much of it was published subsequently by [[WikiLeaks]] or its media partners between April and November 2010.<br />
<br />
== See also ==<br />
<br />
*[[Chinese Cyberterrorism]]<br />
*[[Edward J. Snowden]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manning, Bradley}}<br />
[[Category:Computers]]<br />
[[Category:Criminals]]<br />
[[Category:Homosexuals]]<br />
[[Category:Liberals]]<br />
[[Category:Lunatics]]</div>CGLhttps://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Edward_J._Snowden&diff=1076917Edward J. Snowden2014-02-15T03:39:54Z<p>CGL: </p>
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<div>[[File:Snowden HK.jpg|thumb|250px|Hong Kong Rally to Support Snowden, Garden Road, Central, [[Hong Kong]], June 15, 2013.]]<br />
'''Edward J. Snowden''' (Born June 21, 1983) is an American [[IT]] specialist and a former employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton (a contractor for the [[National Security Agency]]). In June 2013 Snowden embarrassed [[Barack Obama]] by revealing the mass [[domestic surveillance]] program known as "[[PRISM]],". This is an internet snooping program run by the National Security Agency, as constituted by former [[George W. Bush|President George W. Bush]]. He explained to shocked Americans that the National Security Agency had in effect built a dossier on every man, woman and child in the [[United States of America]], and probably beyond borders,<br />
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The revelations made Snowden Obama's nemesis, and Obama has neglected most other issues, notably the downfall of the [[Muslim Brotherhood]] government in [[Egypt]] in his pursuit of the young man. At one point, Obama had [[Evo Morales]], the prime minister of [[Bolivia]] detained in an inept attempt to intercept Snowden. <br />
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Snowden is a [[video game]] player.<ref>http://www.viralread.com/2013/06/15/who-is-edward-snowden-background-on-nsa-leaker-emerges/</ref><br />
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Snowden told the British left wing newspaper [[The Guardian]]:<br />
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* "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."<ref> [http://www.humanevents.com/2013/06/10/meet-the-nsa-leaker/ Meet the NSA leaker], ''[[Human Events]]''</ref><br />
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The liberal ''Washington Post'' quotes him as saying:<br />
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* "Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest."<ref> [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/intelligence-leaders-push-back-on-leakers-media/2013/06/09/fff80160-d122-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html Edward Snowden comes forward as source of NSA leaks], ''Washington Post''</ref><br />
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After leaking the information in question, Snowden stayed in Hong Kong for a while; he then left China and went to Russia en route to seeking asylum in [[Ecuador]]. Snowden was apparently travelling on a passport that had been revoked. <ref>[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/23/obama-administration-confirms-talking-to-hong-kong-about-snowden/ "US revokes NSA leaker Edward Snowden's passport, as he reportedly seeks asylum in Ecuador," Fox News, 23 June 2013]</ref> The [[Wikileaks]] organization has helped Snowden to stay ahead of Obama's grasp. <ref>[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/23/with-wikileaks-help-nsa-leaker-snowden-seeks-asylum-in-ecuador-via-moscow/ "With WikiLeaks' Help, NSA Leaker Snowden Seeks Asylum In Ecuador Via Moscow," Forbes, 23 June 2013]</ref> The president of Ecuador [[Rafael Correa]] explained that Snowden cannot go to Ecuador.<ref>http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2013/06/30/ecuador-president-says-snowden-cannot-leave-moscow/</ref><br />
As of July 6, 2013, Nicaraguan President [[Daniel Ortega]] and Venezuelan President [[Nicolas Maduro]] had offered asylum to Snowden.<ref>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23201774/</ref><br />
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Snowden is a [[Libertarianism|Libertarian]].<ref>http://www.salon.com/2013/06/10/edward_snowden_a_libertarian_hero/</ref><br />
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==Political reaction==<br />
[[File:Snowden hero.jpg|thumb|Activist in New York's Union Square, June 10, 2013.]]<br />
[[John Boehner]] called Snowden a "traitor" who committed a "giant violation of the law" that put Americans at risk.<ref> [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/11/boehner-describes-nsa-leaker-traitor/#ixzz2WBqMieaD Boehner describes NSA leaker as 'traitor']</ref> Numerous other high ranking officials have hawkishly demanded his extradition from the [[People's Republic of China]]. From China, however, reactions have been supportive, with calls by politicians, and various civil liberties organizations, to implore [[Beijing]] to block extradition attempts, on grounds of national security.<br />
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While many blasted Snowden, Republican Senator [[Rand Paul]] of Kentucky, a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and one of the chamber's most conservative members, said, "it's going to be an open question how this young man is judged."<br />
"If he goes to an independent third country like Iceland and if he refuses to talk to any sort of formal government about this, I think there's a chance that he'll be seen as an advocate of privacy." [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-security-washingtonbre95m08u-20130623,0,2374212.story]<br />
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==Notes==<br />
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==See also==<br />
*[[Bradley Manning]]<br />
*[[Julian Assange]]<br />
*[[Warrantless domestic surveillance]]<br />
*[[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]]<br />
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==External links==<br />
*[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/edward-snowden-is-no-traitor/ Edward Snowden Is No Traitor]<br />
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Snowden, Edward J.}}<br />
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[[Category:Espionage]]</div>CGL