...To what extent did Hitler create a totalitarian state in Germany between 1933 and 1939? How would you define a totalitarian state? Well many would argue that it was a political system where the state, usually under one organisation, recognises no limits to its authority and strives to control every aspect of public and private life. This was what Hitler wanted for Germany under the control of the Nazi party. From 1933 to 1939 Hitler tried to control every aspect of Germany and its people. To create a totalitarian state Hitler would have to insure that one party and one party only controlled Germany. He would also have to ensure that he could keep the economy, the opposition, the media, the army and the police fully under his control. This essay will closely examine if he achieved this or not. Carl Freidrichs, a German historian believes that to have a totalitarian state all of these features are needed. In other words for a country to be a totalitarian state then the following features were essential. These included: suppression of all sources of opposition, total control of the media, total control of all groups in society, the total control of education, total control of the economy and finally total control of all civil life. If these things could be controlled then Hitler would have indeed created a totalitarian state. Firstly Hitler would have to crush all opposition to ensure that he could create his totalitarian state. Although Hitler had quickly established...
Words: 2135 - Pages: 9
...that employs the principles and methods of fascism, especially the one established by Mussolini in Italy. Benito Mussolini: Benito Mussolini served as Italy’s 40th Prime Minister from 1922 until 1943. He is considered a central figure in the creation of Fascism and was both an influence on and close ally of Adolf Hitler during World War II. In 1943, Mussolini was replaced as Prime Minister and served as the head of the Italian Social Republic until his execution by Italian partisans in 1945. Adolf Hitler: Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. Hitler was responsible for starting World War II and for killing more than 11 million people during the Holocaust. He was know as the Führer of the Third Reich. As dictator of Germany, Hitler wanted to increase and strengthen the German army as well as expand Germany's territory. Although these things broke the terms of the Versailles Treaty, the treaty that officially ended World War I, other countries allowed him to do so. Since the terms of the Versailles Treaty had been harsh, other countries found it easier to be lenient than risk another bloody European war. When the Nazis attacked Poland World War II began. Nazism: "Nazi" is an abbreviation for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), known in English as the German National Socialist Workers Party, as it existed under the control of Adolf Hitler from 1920 until the end of World War II. The party was held together primarily...
Words: 2000 - Pages: 8
...1. TO WHAT EXTENT WAS THE RISE TO POWER OF HITLER AND THE THIRD REICH, THE RESULT OF PREVIOUS POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS? Introduction Paragraph: Hitler was able to become Germany’s chancellor in 1933 and after 6 months he was already able to establish a dictatorship. It is surprising how such an abominable personage was able to gain total control over Germany, which had been able to become a democratic republic. As Kershaw stated, “the future of Weimar looked promising. And without the onset of the world economic crisis from 1929 it might have remained so”. Thesis: The rise to power of Hitler and the Third Reich was to a large extent the result of previous political and economic problems, such as Germany’s authoritarian origins, the minimum support the Weimar Republic had, WWI and the Great Depression. Body Paragraph 1 – Political and social structure of German authoritarian origins Germany had always favored nationalism, militarism, and anti-Semitism; all emotions in the German people that went back to Germany’s roots and history. Before the Third Reich and the Weimar Republic, Germany lived a prosperous period known as the Second Reich, during which they became a great empire due to the authoritarian traditions and the military success. This is a view extremely supported by the “structuralists”, who believe that Nazism and Hitler were simply products of German history and that they were forces that still dominated...
Words: 3288 - Pages: 14
...Max Kiehne The Body Prof. Gordon Nazi Aesthetics The regime of the Nazi party had an explicitly approved form of art. Unlike the other totalitarian regimes of the era, the approved forms of art were firmly integrated into their iconography and ideology, and excluded any other art movement, including those that were popular at the time. These approved forms of art held a limited number of themes, which were repeated as often as necessary, in order to portray the values the Nazis deemed relevant to their cause. These values were, of course, fundamentally nationalistic, and those themes approved by the government were meant to glorify not only the Aryan race, but specifically the German nation. The Harvest: The painting Out To Harvest, by Oskar Martin-Amorbach, is a typical, governmentally approved, work of Nazi art. It depicts a family of farmers going out to harvest on what seems to be a summer day in a typical German countryside. It shows three generations of that family, a young boy at about 4-5 years of age, his mother, and what appear to be his father, grandfather, and a young woman who might be his older sister or aunt. As it’s title implies they are going out to harvest, for they are carrying scythes and rakes for harvesting and a small handheld basket, presumably holding their lunch for the day. In the background is portrayed a typical German landscape, rolling hills as far as they eye could see, symbolizing the Nazis’ slogan of Blood and Soil. Farm Life:...
Words: 1308 - Pages: 6
...Foreign Policy” chapter from the previously mentioned book, we will discuss the author’s opinion on the main character, regarding historical facts. Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in Austria. When younger he was already considered as being a resentful, discontented and of unstable temperament child. He was deeply hostile towards his authoritarian father, and strongly attached to his mother. Later on, he went to Vienna where he acquired his first education in politics and that was when his brutal, violent side and his concerns with the ‘purity of blood’ started to arise. In 1919, Hitler joined a political party created and developed during the post-World War I era – the Nazi party. It was anti-Marxist and was opposed to the democratic post-war government (Weimar Republic) and the Treaty of Versailles; and it promoted extreme Nationalism as...
Words: 1624 - Pages: 7
...read. (Wachsmann) German soldiers fed Jews false hope, thinking that the harder they worked the closer freedom would be when in reality freedom could only come with death. The world changed forever when an estimated 20,946,000 people died due to the world war ignited by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. The Third Reich was the name for Nazi Germany under Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) when it was a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is a political system where the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever necessary. (Dictionary) Soldiers were killed in battle, Civilians in cross fire, and by starvation but nothing compares to the systematic execution and elimination demonstrated by the Third Reich sponsored death camps. Before the organized concentration camps that are well known throughout the world to have killed a countless number of people there were camps built in the early 1930’s when the Nazi’s first came into power. Earlier camps were temporary and were set up to confine, interrogate, torture, and weaken the Nazis' political opponents under the control of the Gestapo. The camps built later by The Reich between 1939 and 1942 were used to hold large groups of prisoners without trial including Jews, gypsies, Slavs, and prisoners of war. They were built killing centers for efficient means of mass murder unlike concentration camps which served as detention and labor centers. Millions of...
Words: 2592 - Pages: 11
...Lauren Chapman March 11, 2015 HIST 342 Book review Doctors under Hitler by Michael H. Kater The book Doctors under Hitler by Michael H. Kater, offers a lot more than its title suggests. Kater exposes us to a numerical image of the nazification of the German medical community through social, economic, and political views. He guides us through the years before and after Hitler’s regime with chapters full of statistical data, graphs, and tables demonstrating what it was like to be a doctor during this time. When preparing to read this book, I expected to read about a collection of twisted doctors under Hitler’s rule, performing atrocious “medical” experiments. Although this was discussed, the book detailed more on the entire medical profession under Hitler, and its primary focus being on the fortune and fate of physicians as one of the most significant specialized groups under the Nazi party. Kater states that, “doctors became Nazified earlier and more thoroughly than members of other professional groups and worked hardest to serve the regime (4).” Kater makes his thesis known within the first few pages of the book, saying that “physicians become Nazified more thoroughly and much sooner than any other profession, and as Nazi’s they did more in the service of the nefarious regime than any of their extra professional peers (4-5). He breaks this statement down into chapters, filled with sections of information regarding the organizational and socioeconomic setting of doctors...
Words: 1888 - Pages: 8
...state that is ruled by a single person that controls the state by dictatorship. It is achieved by controlling what the public think and do. This kind of government was used by the Soviet Union, Italy, and Germany. Also, they control the state’s economy which is a command economy rather than a demand economy. Command economy is a kind of economy that controls how much was made and where it goes by the government. Demand economy is what the people choose and how much is made, the law of supply and demand which is also known as the free market. The Great Depression contributed to totalitarianism and the rise of dictatorships such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. After the Great War, the world economy went down. This caused...
Words: 835 - Pages: 4
...(Rogasky 20). Over a period of a few years the Nazi Party received enough votes so the government had to take it seriously and offer it power. Many believed Hitler and the Nazi Party was like any other political party, so on January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany (Nelson, English.illinois.edu). Shortly after Hitler assumed the role as chancellor, the wheels began churning to begin a terrible tragedy. This tragedy, known as “The Holocaust”, targeted a variety of people. The Nazis persecuted anyone who dared to oppose them as well as the disabled, African Americans, Gypsies, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses; they reserved their strong hatred for the Jews. Many people cannot grasp how such a tragic phenomenon, like “The Holocaust”, could occur. In order for one to truly understand the Holocaust, one must understand how Hitler rose to power and killed so many people in such little time. Within a year and a half, Hitler and the Nazis Party had taken absolute power of Germany. It became possible to arrest opponents of the regime and lock them up with no charge filed, no warrant and no real evidence. The first concentration camp Dachau was opened in March 1933 to hold all the prisoners (Wood 42). In August 1933 Hitler declared himself both president and chancellor of the Third Reich and commander-in-chief of the military (Nelson, English.illinois.edu). Hitler now had totalitarian dictatorial power. In 1935 German Congress passes the Nuremburg Laws which redefine...
Words: 1251 - Pages: 6
...quite new and things started moving more quickly technologically. That wasn’t the only thing to be on the rise new soci-economical factors were starting to pop up around Europe at the time to replace old monarchies and hereditary kingship. Things were no different in 19th century Eastern Europe. Germany a new contender on the world stage was making her first appearance. Skip forth fifty years into Nazi Germany and there a whole different picture defines the people of Germany. This essay looks to determine the differences between imperial Germany against that of Nazi Germany. First looking upon how the government was lead differently. Then how the expansion/unification was conducted. Finally looking into how they dealt with people under their authority. The systems of government at the different times in German history were quite estranged from each other. The government of the two times held very polarized views when it came to socialism. On one had at the time of Otto van Bismarck was against fascism as explained by this quote “the anti socialist law that Bismarck passed…banned socialist meetings and publications” on the other hand Nazi Germany had the socialist democratic party as their main party during the years of Hitler, the socialist party was something that Bismarck worried about because of its fascist aspects. Secondly was the way the country went about trying to expand their boundaries. While Bismarck used less than popular political tactics to fire up German patriotism...
Words: 1168 - Pages: 5
...known architect of the final solution and third most important man of the Reich after Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. Heidrich’s brutality and ruthlessness, gave him the title of the ‘butcher of Prague’. He introduced martial law to the country as soon as he arrived in Prague on the 27th of September 1941 and ordered the arrest of prime minister and minister of traffic Alois Eliáš and Jiří Havelka. For several reasons, the Czech government in exile, with the assistance of the allies orchestrated what came to be known as operation anthropoid. The main mission was the assassination of Reinhard Heidrich, which was planned by Special Group D of the ministry of defense (responsible for the training of Czechoslovak soldiers, in intelligence and sabotage...
Words: 857 - Pages: 4
...Bailey Q. Elwood 4-15-10 PLS 240 Educators and Their Influence on German Youth Leading Up to the Holocaust Teaching is a profession that is very influential. I.L. Kandel describes how education is an instrument of social control and he was right. When Adolf Hitler came into the power of Germany the entire educational system tried to transform the youth into non-Aryan hating, militaristic, strong, and very obedient members of the Nazi society. If a government can control the educational system, it can most likely control society a lot more easily. However, some of the nationalistic views that many of the main Nazis had were brought to them during World War I in the classroom. Many classrooms celebrated the military aspect of war and they celebrated and taught nationalism for Germany. Classrooms did not really do that until the war. It was after the loss in World War I that the attitudes perpetuated by the enormous let down where teachers helped with the Nazi effort and taught the essentials to the Nazi party. Teachers did not do much to fight the Nazi effort and even though not all of them directly participated in the Holocaust, they did breed a nation of young extreme German nationalists whose ideals perpetuated the event. Extreme nationalism was a very popular topic for classrooms during and after World War I, which played a contribution to some of the main Nazis during the Nazi era. A large percentage of the Nazi base was born between 1900 and 1908 including...
Words: 4047 - Pages: 17
...The Nuremberg Trials by R. D. A student essay from Dr. Elliot Neaman's History 210 class (historical methods - fall 1996) © Elliot Neaman / PHDN Reproduction interdite par quelque moyen que ce soit / no reproduction allowed ________________________________________ The Nuremberg Trials took place during the immediate aftermath of World War II. They were the first trials in history to indict an entire regime for aggressive war crimes. These crimes included invading other nations, violating the Treaty of Versailles and most significantly, "crimes against humanity". These crimes were what later became known as the Holocaust, in which millions of innocent victims were deported, enslaved and systematically executed. The victims were primarily Jewish however many other victims suffered at the hands of the Nazis such as: Poles, Gypsies, the handicapped and the elderly. The Nuremberg Charter "defined war crimes as violations of the laws or customs of war"(Rosenbaum p, 30). Including killing of hostages, ill-treatment of civilians, use of forced labor and looting of public and private property and racial persecution. The International Military Tribunal, the prosecutors consisting of lawyers and judges from the United States, France, England and the Soviet Union had countless evidence of these crimes committed by the Nazis, however to serve justice to every individual for their inhumane actions was impossible. The Nuremberg Trials prosecuted twenty one defendants (all of whom were...
Words: 5476 - Pages: 22
...Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare. While the term propaganda has acquired a strongly negative connotation by association with its most manipulative and nationalistic examples, propaganda in its original sense is neutral. It may also be construed to refer to uses which are generally held to be somewhat benign or inoffensive, such as public health recommendations, signs encouraging citizens to participate in a census or election, or messages encouraging persons to report crimes to the police, among others. Propaganda was not invented by the Americans. It began with the Roman Catholic Committee for the Propagation of the Faith, an order of the church which was established by a papal bull in 1622. (Baran & Davis, 2013). Throughout the beginning of the twentieth century, the meaning of propaganda was debated as to whether or not it was a good or bad form of communication that could be corrupted...
Words: 1235 - Pages: 5
...Century: German-Jews had won greater acceptance in that they made very important contributions to the intellectual, financial, educational and cultural life of the nation. * During WW1, 100 000 Jewish soldiers died during the conflict. * In the Weimar Republic, Jews enjoyed equal rights with all other Germans and some even rose to high positions in the civil service and the government. * Late 19th Century: Jews represented a challenge to the concept of the nationalism, especially when there was a development of the Volkisch movement. * Bt the start of the 20th Century, ideology of the racially pure was being embraced by all, and the Jews were not part of it. * German Historian Heinrich von Treitschke in the 1880’s said that ‘The Jews are our misfortune’ — A quote which was quickly adapted by the Nazis in the 1930s * Hitlers hatred of the Jews was at the heart of his view of the world — an ‘obsession’ that never waned * In Hitlers view, civilisation and nations decline when they failed to maintain the purity of their race. * Fundamental duty of government in Hitler’s mind was to preserve the racial purity of the state. In this way, it...
Words: 3042 - Pages: 13
