Third Reich

One calls IIIe Reich the German State directed by Adolf Hitler when he had arrived at the capacity and had monopolized it.

Hitler was chief of the Parti national-Socialist of the German workers, known by the initial ones its German name , NSDAP ( Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ). The word Nazisme (in German Nationalsozialismus ) is a Acronyme representing the doctrines defined by Hitler and the political regime which it directed; it is drawn from letters of the name of these doctrines, become name of the party: Na tionalso' zi' ali' smus .

This mode lasted twelve years, of the nomination of Hitler as chancellor the January 30th 1933 with the unconditional surrender of Reich overcome the May 8th 1945, followed arrest the May 23rd of the last German government of Karl Dönitz. The Propagande intended IIIe Reich or “Reich Large-German” ( Großdeutschland ) to last “thousand years”. However, the Weimar Republic was never formally repealed by the Nazis.

Police state and of Totalitarian type, resting above all on the “Charismatic capacity ” absolute exerted by its Führer Adolf Hitler, IIIe Reich is responsible for the release of the Second world war in Europe, during which it perpetrated, enter other crimes of mass, the genocide of the Jews (Shoah) and of the Tziganes.

Destruction of the democracy and introduction of the mode

Although having obtained only one third of the voices to the free elections of 1932, and although Hitler was beaten with presidential by Paul von Hindenburg, NSDAP arrives at the capacity when its Führer is called with the Chancellery the January 30th 1933.

Many industrialists and men of the right, brought together around Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, thus thought of raising the mortgage Nazi and of making use of Hitler to bring back the order in Germany in crisis, before separating some as soon as there would not need more him. In fact, the Hitler government comprises only two Nazis: Hermann Göring, charges some in particular with the Prussia, and Wilhelm Frick inside.

However far from leaving instrumentaliser by the conservatives, Hitler manages in a few months to put Germany at the step ( Gleichschaltung ). The dismantling of the Weimar Republic to the profit of the Dictature Nazi allows the proclamation of IIIe Reich as of the March 15th 1933, at the time of an imposing ceremony of propaganda held with Potsdam, on the tomb of Frederic II of Prussia.

“Put at the step” and repression

See also: Gleichschaltung, Night of the Long Knives

As of, Hitler makes dissolve the Reichstag by Hindenburg. During the electoral campaign, SA and the S, militia of the Nazi party, receive capacities of auxiliaries of the police force. The meetings of KPD, SPD and the opposition parties are marked by many deaths. Opponents are already maltreated or tortured.

In the night of the 27 to the February 28th occurs enigmatic the Incendie of the Reichstag. According to the current historians, such Ian Kershaw, the Nazis were useful themselves about it, but did not cause it themselves as it traditionally was supposed. Seizing the occasion, Hitler makes adopt by Hindenburg a “decree for the protection of the German people” which suspend all the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. Another decree institutes the Schutzhaft or “detention of preventive protection”, which makes it possible to arrest and imprison without any control nor limit of time.

Terror accelerates. In two weeks, Göring thus makes stop: 10000 Communists in Prussia, of which the chief of the KPD, Ernst Thälmann, the March 3rd. In April, close to: 30000 arrests take place in only Prussia. At the summer, Bavaria counts: 4000 internees, Saxony: 4500. Between 1933 and 1939, a total of: 150000 with: 200000 people are interned, and between: 7000 and: 9000 are killed by the violence of State. Hundreds of thousands of others will have to flee Germany.

Many figures of the literary left and scientists exile themselves, like Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht and Albert Einstein as of the February 28th 1933. Others are thrown in prison like pacifist the Karl von Ossietsky. The Nazis condemn the Jewish “degenerated Art” and “sciences”, and destroy or disperse many works of the artistic Avant-gardes.

The first provisional Concentration camps appear, where tributary Communist militants and social democrats. As of the March 20th 1933, Heinrich Himmler opens the first permanent camp with Dachau, close to Munich. It will be followed into 1937 of Buchenwald, and into 1939 of Ravensbrück for the women.

March 5th, 1933, the Nazis obtain 44% of the voices to the legislative elections. In all the Länder of Germany, the Nazis seize by the force the local levers the capacity. March 23rd, 1933, Hitler is made vote the full powerss for four years. May 2nd, the trade unions are dissolved and their seized goods. The workmen are enlisted in the organization Corporatiste Deutsche Arbeitsfront or Face of German Work (DAF). May 10th, the Minister for Propaganda Joseph Goebbels governs Berlin at one night of Autodafé during which thousands of “bad books” of Jewish authors, Marxist, democrats or psychoanalysts are flarings shovel-mixes as a public by students Nazis; the same medieval scene is held in the other big cities. The political parties are scuttled or joined. July 14th, a law makes NSDAP the sole party in Germany. The young Germans are obligatorily embrigadés in the Jeunesses hitlériennes ( Hitlerjugend ), only youth movement authorized starting from February 1st 1936.

SA of Ernst Röhm require that the “revolution main road-Socialist” take a turn more anticapitalist and dream to take the control of the army. Hitler makes massacre a hundred of their chiefs the June 30th 1934 during the Nuit of the Long Knives. IIIe Reich is directed consequently towards a “State S” (Eugen Kogon).

The Nazis also liquidate on this occasion several tens of various personalities, thus the Doctor Klausener, directing catholic Action.

After the death of Paul von Hindenburg the August 2nd 1934, Hitler is at the same time chancellor and Head of the State. It is surrounded by a Culte of the intense personality which celebrates it like the Messianic saver of Germany, and makes lend an oath of fidelity to its own person, in particular by the soldiers. The Führeprinzip becomes the base of any authority.

Néo-pagan movement and Antichrétien, the Nazism tries to subject the Église S, and some of its leaders such Martin Bormann dream even of éradiquer the Christianisme in the long run. The capacity thus causes a scission within the German Protestants, by the setting-up of the Church known as of the “German Christians”, which professes without reserves the racism and the worship of Führer. It fights also the confessing Church of the resistant pastors Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, off-set.

In 1933, the powerful catholic party, the Zentrum, had been scuttled in exchange of the signature of a Concordat between Reich and the the Vatican. But in 1937, the pope Pie XI denounces in the encyclical MIT brennender Sorge the repeated violations of the legal settlement, the annoyances against men of the church, the racism of State and the idolatry surrounding Reich and his chief. Its text is interdict of reading and diffusion in Germany and its specimens in circulation destroyed by Gestapo. However, as a whole, “the German Churches did not activate all their potential of resistance” (Jacques Sémelin), and the successor of Magpie XI, Pie XII, old nuncio in Germany, will avoid during the war denouncing the atrocities Nazis, in particular by fear of attracting reprisals on the German Church which he knows well.

In spring 1938, Hitler accentuates the prevalence Nazi in the mode. It évince the chiefs of staff von Fritsch and von Blomberg and subjects the Wehrmacht while placing at its servile head the Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel. The conservative Konstantin Von Neurath is replaced by the Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop with the Foreign affairs, and Göring takes in hand the economy Autarcique with depend on Dr. Schacht.

Eugénisme and political racists

See also: Political racists of Third Reich, Eugénisme under the Nazism

As of February 1933, persecution Antisémite breaks out. A law makes it possible Hitler to make revoke: 2000 senior officials and 700 Jewish academics. The boycott of the Jewish stores is launched on April 1st by SA. Jews are humiliated in public, of the mixed couples walked in the streets with signs insulting around the neck. The Jewish contribution to the German culture is denied: the music of Mendelssohn or Meyerbeer is prohibited, and poem of Heinrich Heine, the Lorelei celebrates it, does not have officially more author. The Laws of Nuremberg, in 1935, withdraw the German citizenship with the Jews and prohibit any mixed marriage. The list of the prohibited trades lengthens without end, any daily life normal their is made impossible. However, if several tens of thousands of Jews are exiled, much persist in remaining in spite of the brimades. The pogrom of the Night of crystal, the November 9th 1938, announces their physical elimination like their systematic spoliation (Aryanisation). As from 1941, they must carry a yellow star, then are off-set in the Ghettos of Poland and the Camps of dead the.

Only are temporarily saved the Mischlinge (mongrel), or the Jews married to “Aryan” Allemandes, such Victor Klemperer. In 1943, in full Berlin, the joint ones of Jews will express in the Rosenstrasse to prevent the deportation of their husbands.

In July 1933, the mode adopts a law on the sterilization forced, in conformity with its objective “to purify the Aryan race”. Tens of thousands of people are victims. It concerns especially the mentally ills, but also Gypsies, or of the Blacks: in 1937, Hitler orders to sterilize the 400 newborns in the years 1920 French black soldiers and German women. Thousands of women Tziganes do not survive sterilization.

The Homosexual , hated by the mode, are condemned to sterilization or the deportation in camp under the terms of the Paragraphe 175 of the penal code: one counts: 25000 condemned in two years (J.M. Argelès).

The Franc-maçonnerie is put out the law and its members pursued by a special section of the police machinery.

The Pilot of Jéhovah, conscientious objectors, refuse by principle the military service and work in the industry of war, just like safety Nazi and any sign of allegiance to the idolatry surrounding the Führer. Close to: 6000 of them are locked up in concentration camp.

The opinion and Nazism: adhesions and reserves

Whereas the Gestapo only has: 6000 men in 1938, and only: 32000 in 1944, any opposition organized to the Nazism practically disappeared after 1934. The political police could not thus have as much effectiveness without the assistance of many informers, mouchardant to regulate own accounts, by fear or ideological adhesion. It is not rare either that children, subjected to the intense enrollment of the Jeunesses hitlériennes, end up denouncing their parents.

Rare groups made up of the German Resistance to the emergent Nazism again starting from 1938. They are very insulated, especially when after the entry in war, the resistant ones to Hitler are assimilated by the opinion to traitors to their country. What brings the German historians to the concept of a “resistance without the people”.

As a whole, the German company was quickly put up with the Nazi regime since it put an end to political instability and economic, and undertook to tear the Diktat of the treaty of Versailles. The social achievements of the mode, the imposing ceremonies of propaganda as at the time of the Congresses of NSDAP to Nuremberg, the fear, the indifference or conformism involved many Germans to yield to “fascination Nazisme” (Peter Reichel).

Approximately 11 million German citizens adhered to the NSDAP, of which many careerists and opportunist, are a considerable share of the adult population. Some: 100000 Germans, according to Annette Wieviorka, took to share actively with the Génocide Jews. The historian of the Wehrmacht Omer Bartov ( the Army of Hitler , 1999) showed that a good portion of the German combatants had integrated the speech Nazi, and that number of them were, with their officers and their generals, hardly less compromised than the S in slaughters in the East.

The British historian Paul Johnson ( a History of the Jews , 1986) stresses that the Autrichiens, integrated into Large Reich in 1938, are surreprésentés in the higher authorities of the mode (in addition to Hitler itself, one can quote Adolf Eichmann, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Arthur Seyss-Inquart or Hans Rauter) and that they in proportion took part much more in the Shoah than the Germans. A third of the killers of the Einsatzgruppen was thus Austrian, just like four of the six commanders of principal the Death camps and 40% of the guards of the camps. On: 5090 war criminals listed by Yugoslavia in 1945, one counts: 2499 Austrians.

German historiography distinguishes since Martin Broszat the resistance organized to the Nazism ( Widerstand ) and of the civil forms of dissidence ( Resistenz ), without ambition of dispute political, but showing a certain reserve towards the official enrollment and the ideology.

For example, of the groups of young people (the Edelweiss ) met in full war to listen to the music swing proscribed by the mode, and adopted a clothing and a hairstyle which defied the moral Ordre official. Many Allemandes faced official prohibitions of the love affairs with the Western or Slavic foreign workers. Hundreds of Germans were carried out to have listened to BBC, or to have uttered words scorning or skeptics against the mode and on the exit of the war. Some discreetly tried to come to assistance of Jews, or at least had the courage of gestures and words of sympathy. Others managed never not to make safety Nazi. In catholic Bavaria, a trend of opinion prevented the néo-pagan mode from withdrawing the crucifixes of the classes.

Mgr Clement von Galen, bishop of Münster, relayed a wave of indignation against the Euthanasie of the mentally handicapped persons, protested in pulpit against this one, and thus obtained the theoretical official stop of the aktion T4 (August 1941). In the years 1930, the Churches also often resisted the interferences of the mode and the annoyances of its agents. But their hierarchies made carry their refusal only on material and denominational points, and were always defended “to make of the policy”. The Churches as such condemned neither the wars of aggression, neither the racial policy, nor the crimes against humanity in the occupied countries, whose echoes however arrived to Germany.

The nature of the capacity under IIIe Reich

A Totalitarianism

Hitler forever formally abolished the constitution of Weimar and worried little about elaborate legal constructions. But it has from the start removed all the legal guarantees protecting the German citizens against the absolute power from police repression and racial or ideological persecutions.

From 1933, all the parties, trade unions, youth movements or associations not-Nazis were dissolved or absorbed, the exiled opponents or envoys in Concentration camps, the Churches exposed to annoyances, the regional autonomies removed with the profit of the first centralized State which Germany knew, population subjected to the narrow monitoring of the Gestapo, certainly relayed by a multitude of informers. Justice pareillement was pareillement subjected to the mode, sinisterly celebrates Tribunal of the People ( Volksgerichtshof ) of Roland Freisler having pronounced thousands of death sentences during parodies of justice not trying even to respect elementary appearances. More: 30000 condemned to death were guillotines or hung under IIIe Reich, often for simple words of hostility or dissatisfaction. It was not rare that Gestapo stops discharged people or having finished their sorrow, and off-sets them with its own way.

German historiography thus characterizes traditionally IIIe Reich like a “state of not-right” ( Unrecht Staat ). In June 1934, celebrates it lawyer Carl Schmitt, thinker of “the state of exception”, approves the massacre of SA at the time of the Nuit of the Long Knives and theorizes publicly that the simple word of Führer through law, and that it takes precedence over the right.

Interpretations intentionnalist and functionalist

The German historical school known as of the “Intentionnalistes” insists on the primacy of Hitler in the operation of the mode. The form extrème of personal capacity and Culte of the personality around Führer would not be comprehensible without its “capacity Charismatique”. This important concept is borrowed from the sociologist max Weber: Hitler is considered and is regarded sincerely as invested of a providential mission.

Without the ideology ( Weltanschauung , or vision of the world) terribly coherent which animated Hitler and its faithful, the mode Nazi would not have taken the route of the war and the extermination of mass, nor in the disavowal of the legal and administrative rules elementary governing the modern States. For example, without its Charismatic capacity of a new kind, Hitler could not have authorized the massive Euthanasie handicapped people by some simple words on headed notepaper of the chancellery (T4 operation, September 3rd 1939), and even less to start the Shoah without writing only one written order. No executant of the genocide of the Jews never asked, precisely, to see a written order: the simple word of Führersbefehl (order of Führer) was sufficient to make conceal any question.

As showed it the rival school of the “Fonctionnalistes” (led by Martin Broszat), IIIe Reich forever distinct between the primacy of the capacity of the sole party and that of the capacity of the State, from where ceaseless competitions of competence between the double hierarchies of NSDAP and the government of Reich. Especially, the State Nazi seems a singular tangle of competitor capacities to comparable legitimacies. It is the principle of the “ Polycratie ” (Martin Broszat).

However, between these rival groups, Hitler section seldom and decides little. Very little bureaucratic, working in an irregular way (except in the control of military operations), the Führer, “weak” or “lazy” dictator according to Mr. Broszat, leaves each one free be claimed of him, and waits only that one walks in the direction of his will.

Consequently, showed its biographer Ian Kershaw, whose work makes the synthesis of the assets of the schools Intentionnalistes and Fonctionnnalistes, each individual, each clan, each bureaucracy, each made group of the higher bid and tries to be the first to carry out the Nazis projects fixed in their broad outlines by Adolf Hitler. It is the case in particular in the field of the persecution Antisémite, which packs and passes thus gradually from the simple persecution to the massacre then to the industrial Génocide. What explains why IIIe Reich obeys structurally the law of the “cumulative toughening”, and that the system cannot in no case to be stabilized.

This “charismatic capacity” also explains why many Germans spontaneously went to the front of Führer. Thus, in 1933, the organizations of students organize themselves the autos-da-fe of books honnis by the mode, while the parties and the trade unions are joined the chancellor and scuttle themselves after having excluded the Jews and the opponents with the Nazism. Germany is given largely to Führer in which she recognizes her dreams and her ambitions, more than this last does not seize her. According to Kershaw, Führer is the man who makes possible the cherished plans of long time at the “base”: without it needing to give of precise natures, its simple presence with the capacity authorizes for example many the Antisémites of Germany to start boycotts and Pogrom S, or the doctors of extreme-right-hand side to practice the pseudo-medical experiments and the operations of euthanasia whose idea preexisted to 1933.

What explains also, always according to Ian Kershaw and the majority of the functionalist ones, the tendency of the mode to the “self-destruction” ( Selbstzerstörung ). IIIe Reich, return to “feudal anarchy” ( Kershaw ) breaks up into a chaotic multitude of rival strongholds. Thus in 1943, whereas the existence of Reich is in danger after the Bataille of Stalingrad, all the leader apparatuses of IIIe Reich dispute during months to know if it is necessary to prohibit the horse-races, without slicing. The mode substitutes for the modern rational institutions the bond of personal allegiance, of man with man, with Führer. However, no leader Nazi has the charisma of Hitler. The worship of this last exists as of the origins of the Nazism and is consubstantial with the movement then with the mode. Each one draws its legitimacy only from its degree of proximity with Führer. So in the absence of any successor (“In all modesty, I am irreplaceable”, matter of Hitler to its generals brought back by Hannah Arendt), the dictatorship of Hitler does not have any future and cannot survive to him (Kershaw). The death of IIIe Reich and that of its dictator besides practically merged.

Definition

The inspiration of the denomination “IIIe Reich” deserves detailed developments insofar as it has implications, wanted by Hitler, until in the French history.

The German word Reich means “field”, “empire”. It is used in words such as Königreich “kingdom” or “field of a king” ( König ), Frankreich “France” or “empire of the Francs”, or Österreich “Austria” or “worsens of the East” ( Ost ).

“Ier Reich”

Denomination “IE Reich” refers initially to the Saint Germanic Roman Empire which would be, a posteriori , “Ier Reich”. In German, Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation , “Roman Holy roman Empire of (in) German nation”: the French translation “official” upon the departure history was and remains connoted politically to cut down the antique-European Roman range by the Titulature.

Napoleon I {{er}}, in 1806, had not been able to abolish this empire since the emperor François II had preceded it in “depositing the imperial title”; to dissolve the empire, Napoleon should initially “have raised the title”, which had had to appear politically inconceivable, and the things had remained about it there. This empire, because of the conservatory act of François II, always remains in an uninterrupted way in international law like subject of right, certainly currently deprived of bodies, according to the constant Jurisprudence of the Constitutional court of current Germany with Karlsruhe.

“IIe Reich”

The denomination “IIe Reich” refers to the German Empire in the second place proclaimed in 1871 in the Galerie of the Ices of Versailles (Guillaume I {{er}} and Otto von Bismarck), which would be “IIe Reich” but whose official heading was, however, Deutsches Reich , “German Empire”, well far from titulature of above mentioned Saint Worsens Roman, and of the range of this one, in any case in its original version in languages German or Latin, which only are authoritative in this respect.

Validity of the term

The denomination “IIIe Reich” was thus purely political, of propaganda, and completely stripped of legal basis - more still, in formal legal contradiction with the conservatory act of François II: the jurisprudence of the Constitutional court of the current Germany, noting the uninterrupted continuity of the legal personality of the Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation without dispute on behalf of any current chancellery, has as a range nothing of any species of legitimacy of titulature even of the later mode, thus brought back in fact and right purely and simply to its character hitlérien.

Arts and culture under Reich hitlérien

The arrival of Hitler to the capacity brutally marks the end of the cultural golden age which the Weimar Republic for Germany had represented. Indeed, of many autos-da-fe take place, especially books of authors Jewish, communist, etc Ainsi all the books of Marx, Einstein and famous authors at that time finish flarings in public place. The culture is directed: Hitler sets up a single newspaper, that of the Nazi party, chooses the films which pass to the cinema… Propaganda passes by these means of communication; the purpose of all is to propose the party.

Proscriptions, exiles, rallyings

Many artists, writers and scientists must flee from the start the Nazi Germany because of their Jewish origins, and/or their pacifist political convictions, of left, antinazies, or of nature avant-gardist of their Article.

One can quote among them the writers Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich Mann, like Bertold Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Erich Maria Remarque, Kurt Tucholsky, or Lion Feuchtwanger, Walter Benjamin, Arthur Koestler. The same applies to the Berliner directors max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator. Are also in particular proscribed the philosophers Husserl, Hannah Arendt or Wilhelm Reich, the théologienne Edith Stein (Jewish converted and religious Carmelite nun, gazée in 1942 with Auschwitz), the painter of avant-garde Paul Klee, the architect Walter Gropius, the physicist and mathematician Albert Einstein. In 1938, the annexation of Austria obliges the old founder of the Psychanalyse, Sigmund Freud, to leave for London - its whole family will be exterminated. The writer Viennese Stefan Zweig, who has to flee the Austrian Nazis since 1934, commits suicide in 1942.

Some artists however probed by Goebbels make choice leave by act resistance to the mode, thus the scenario writer Fritz Lang or the actress Marlene Dietrich.

A certain number of artists and writers remained in Germany see themselves prohibiting to paint or write, and are placed under police surveillance.

The Jews are excluded from the press, the cinema, the entertainment world. Works of Jewish authors cannot be played or interpreted any more, and Goebbels will have to intervene against certain fanatics of its own party who wished to prohibit Mozart because freemason.

The spectacular auto-da-fe of the prohibited books, the May 10th 1933, made it possible many commentators to recall celebrates it sentence of Heinrich Heine: “where books will be burned, one will burn men”. In 1937, a “exposure of degenerated Art” very visited furrows Germany to turn in derision works of the most famous artists of avant-garde, taxed with Jewish and cosmopolitan “cultural Bolchevism” or “gribouillages” by Hitler. Many of these works are then dispersed or destroyed by the Nazis.

A number considerable of spirits adopt more or less durably however the mode hitlérien. The philosopher Martin Heidegger takes his chart with NSDAP and accepts a few months the functions of vice-chancellor with Freiburg. The theorist of the right Carl Schmitt becomes the lawyer official Nazi. Number of musicians and interpreters maintain the very cordial relations with the mode and its more top-ranking executives, acceptor or requesting the official orders: thus the type-setters Carl Orff and Richard Strauss, the professional singer Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, or leaders Wilhelm Furtwangler and Herbert von Karajan.

See also List of the type-setters persecuted during the Nazism.

The Official art Nazi

Since 1933, Goebbels imposes the creation of the Reichskulturkammer , organization Corporatiste of the trades of the culture. No one cannot publish or compose if he is not member.

The ceremonies Nazis recover particularly the music of Richard Wagner and that of Anton Bruckner, favorite of Führer. A " art nazi" conform to the guns esthetic and ideological of the capacity appears through works of Arno Breker in sculpture, of Leni Riefenstahl with the cinema or of Albert Speer, confidant of Hitler, in architecture. Often raising of monumental propaganda, like the stage intended for the Olympic Games of Berlin (1936), these works with the very neo-classic style also often develop the exaltation of body " sains" , virile and " aryens".

Führer entrusted to Albert Speer the pharaonic project (and abortive) of rebuilding of the capital Berlin. This one would have to take the name of Germania and to cover monuments Néo-classiques with disproportionate gigantism: the cupola of the new Reichstag would have been 13 times larger than that of St-Pierre of Rome, the triumphal avenue twice broader than the Fields-Elysées and the triumphal Arch could have contained in its opening the Parisian Triumphal arch (40 m in height). The biographer of Speer, Joachim Fest, detects through these megalomaniac projects a " structure of mort" ( Albert Speer , Perrin, 2001). In full war, Hitler will be delighted that the devastations of the allied bombardments facilitate for the post-war period its imposing projects of radical reconstuction of Berlin, Hamburg or Linz.

Economy under Third Reich

Economic situation and social on arrival of Hitler to the capacity

The Grande depression of 1929 had resulted in an important rise of the Chômage in the developed countries. In Germany, there were approximately 3.500.000 unemployed in 1930.

Robert Ley, adhering Nazi party as of 1923, and elected appointed with the Reichstag in 1932, was in charge of the elimination of the Syndicat S, which were replaced by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront in 1933, organization of the type Corporatiste. Bound to the DAF, the Kraft durch Freude (Force by the Joy) was charged to offer to the popular classes narrowly framed leisures of mass. It offered for example to thousands of workmen of cruisings at sea Baltique on its two steamers.

At the same time anticapitalist and antimarxist, and concerned to join the working class, the Nazi regime wanted like all Fascisme to try out a third way between liberalism and collectivism. The State Nazi intervened thus largely in the economy. It followed a policy of great work (rise of the highway network), launched an ambitious programme of social housing, repair of the working canteens, or leisures of mass. In 1936, Hitler made design by Ferdinand Porsche the first Volkswagen or " convey peuple" , supposed being accessible to the most modest Germans - actually, little will be built under IIIe Reich, their factories of assembly being quickly assigned to the construction of tanks. But also, the mode imposed planning and strict a Autarcie, obliging the industrialists and the private individuals to replace by Ersatz of less quality the prohibited products of importation.

Right from the start, the economy of Third Reich was directed towards the remilitarization of Germany, then the preparation of the Guerre. This policy was based as of 1933 - 1934 on a series of economic laws which supported the complete reorganization of industry, then was accentuated starting from 1936 with the launching of the Plan Four Years entrusted to Hermann Göring. This one constituted the Almighty trust of the Hermann-Göring Reichswerke, become very quickly one of the largest companies of Germany then, after the setting under supervision of industries of the countries conquered, one of largest of the world.

The development of the industry of the armament was largely facilitated by the Technologie of the Mécanographie and the Perforated card Hollerith, provided by the Dehomag. The methods of accounting, which made it possible to know with precision the nature of the work carried out by the workmen, directed industrialization in this direction.

Starting from 1941, the Staff S ratified the programme of exploitation of forced workers and prisoners of war, under extreme conditions for known as “the workers”. Very frequently, this work was besides simply a manner “economically effective” to liquidate the enemies of the mode by maximizing their economic utility. Literally, one killed them with the task. The camp Auschwitz-Birkenau is only one example among others.

The companies IG Farben, Krupp Ag, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen took part all in this system, but also of the foreign companies, such Fordwerke, subsidiary German of the group Ford, and Opel, subsidiary of the group General Motors. Henry Ford in particular took an active part in the constitution of the arsenal of the Wehrmacht before the entry in war of the Germany, and accepted in 1939, the same year as Mussolini, greatest decoration that Hitler could decree with a foreigner, the Grande Cross about the Germanic Eagle.

Evolution of unemployment during IIIe Reich

Adolf Hitler had solved the problem of the Chômage by a economy of full employment but for a significant proportion in the armament and by the Xénophobie. There were 3.500.000 unemployed in 1930, whereas there was not more that 200.000 in 1938 (either 17,5 times less).

In comparison with the the United States or the England, these figures are very flattering, on paper. But, in addition to the Over-indebtedness of the State which the policy of militarization and full employment implied, it should be added that:

This performance connects was obtained by means of measurements more and more attentatoires with freedoms. Thus, the June 22nd 1938, an ordinance opened the right for the authorities to requisition labor for a precise task. September 1st 1939, it is the end of any freedom as regards choice of an employment. The militarization of the working class had been outlined as of before the war. The Ligne Siegfried ( Westwall or “wall of the west”) was built by means of the requisition of 400 000 workmen (June 22nd, 1938).

Losing social categories

To that, the fact is added that the Indice of the wages (100 in 1932) had fallen down to 97 in 1938. In 1937, the level of the wages was about that of 1929. The purchasing power of the working class is lower in 1939 than that of 1933. As from June 1938, the wages are fixed of authority.

The peasants, many to have voted for the Nazis, do not transfer the rural migration to stop (it tended even to accelerate) nor their situation to really improve. The small shopkeepers and craftsmen threatened by economic modernization, and who had provided big battalions to SA, pareillement were also pareillement floués: in the name of economic efficiency and by concern of preparing the war, the Nazis legally encouraged the concentration of the small companies, of which more than 400.000 disappeared between 1933 and 1939 ( Atlas of IIIe Reich , coll Autrement).

Lastly, because of the design which the Nazis had of the woman (3 K: Kirche, Kinder, Küche in French “church, children, kitchen”), those were confined little by little with their traditional role. (At least if their racial characteristics allowed them: until in 1945, 200.000 women were Stérilisées). As of 1933, the women are pushed out of the public office, cannot be directors in teaching more, do not have more the right to be lawyers, nor judges. The workers are pushed towards agriculture. The unmarried workers of less than 25 years were thus forced to make one year in the fields. 1,3 million additional women were employed in agriculture between 1933 and 1939. The policy with respect to the women was softened however a little with the approach of the war. (Source: Alfred Wahl, Germany of 1918 to 1945 , COp cit. )

Expansionism Nazi

Ideological bases

The justification of the expansionism Nazi is already in Mein Kampf (1924). The Nazi regime claims Fascisme, defined by Mussolini like a mode Militariste and anti-pacifist. It nourishes the worship of the Virilité and the warlike Violence, and lives in the permanent memory of the experiment of the Great War. Lastly, Hitler viol constantly the Treated of Versailles, imposed on the Germany in 1919. Scorning the international institutions (IIIe Reich leaves SDN as of October 1933), posing the primacy of the force on the right, it treats the international treaties concluded in " rags of papier". From the Hitler start starts to openly ridicule the treaty of Versailles, from which there does not remain large any more thing since 1938-1939.

The Nazi project partly takes again the old topics of the Pangermanisme. According to Hitler, the reunification of “German blood” is a moral requirement, even if this community appeared harmful on the economic plan. He thus asserts territories which were German before the First World War, and calls upon the community of blood and culture to annex the Austria initially, then the Sudètes in 1938. As from 1939, Adolf Eichmann is also charged with " rapatrier" German minorities dispersed since centuries through all the Central and Eastern Europe.

But to the desire to gather all the Germans the idea is added that the Aryan ones, " Race of Seigneurs" ( Herrenvolk ) would require for a vital Espace ( Lebensraum ) to survive, and that this one, potentially unlimited, must be conquered by the force in the East ( Drang nach Osten ). Regarding the Slavic as a lower race (of the “submen”, Untermenschen ), the project Nazi ambitionne thus to conquer Eastern Europe and to reduce its populations in slavery. Czechoslovakia, young democracy sheltering a German population, is the first country dismantled by the Germans. The Poland, which shelters a broad Jewish population, is particularly aimed by Third Reich.

Towards the war

The Führer prepares the German company with the war. In the Youths hitlériennes, organizations obligatory (as from 1936) for the teenagers, the physical and moral drive must train new men, courageous until the extreme and able to kill without testing least pity. Equipped in uniforms, young German learns how to be faithful to Hitler. The economy is militarized and turned towards the production of weapons. Hitler takes itself the command of the army in 1938. The Nazi regime violates with clauses of the treaty of Versailles. In 1936, it remilitarizes the the Rhineland. In 1938, it joins together Austria and Germany by the Anschluss. After the Agreements of Munich, the the United Kingdom and the France let Hitler seize the Sudètes.

The two countries are put in front of the accomplished fact when the Bohemia-Moravie, Memel and Dantzig are annexed in 1939.

Reactions of the democracies

At the end of the Years 1930, the European democracies are in a difficult situation. The Great Crisis of 1929 is not entirely solved. The Pacifisme is extrèmement powerful in the public opinions. The specificity of the Nazism is seldom perceived, and much persist in a long time seeing in Hitler a German nationalist like the others. SDN does not have reality capacity and the the United States are isolationist.

Most of Europe east to the authoritative hands of dictatorships (Spain, Portugal, Austria…) fascists (Italy) or Communists (the USSR). The Germany concluded a series from alliances which reinforces it: Axis Rome-Berlin then Pact of Steel with the Italy, finally, in August 1939, Pact germano-Soviet with the the USSR. Franco, that Hitler actively helped to arrive at the capacity during the Spanish Civil war by the sending of the Légion Condor, is the moral ally of Reich. The States of Balkans, which concluded from the trade agreements of Clearing with Reich, are under the economic influence even diplomatic of Berlin. Belgium and Holland fold up themselves in sensitive to the cold neutralities. The France and the the United Kingdom are insulated and live in the spectrum of the Great War.

In spite of the alliance which links them with the Czechoslovakia, the France and the the USSR take care well not to intervene when Hitler declares its intention to attach the Sudètes. The Accords of Munich of 1938 mark the ultimate attempt at conciliation of the democracies in front of the territorial claims Nazis: they let Hitler seize the Sudètes in October 1938.

At that time, much of partisans of " the appaisement" with the Nazi Germany believe that Hitler will stick to demolishing the provisions more humiliating of the treaty of Versailles and with the traditional pangermanists projects. For British the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the annexation of Austria is not like " a business between Allemands" , and Czechoslovakia " a small country of which we do not know almost rien". But the March 15th 1939, Reich seizes Prague and destroys the Czechoslovakian State, absorbent thus Slavic populations and by no means allemandes. The Western opinions rock, the governments understand that IIIe Reich nourishes unlimited hegemonic ambitions.

When the German armed penetrate in Poland, they cannot move back any more and must declare the war. However, the democracies will not enter to Germany, whereas they could have benefitted from the division of the German army during the countryside of Poland.

Reich in war

Assessment of plunderings, crimes of mass and destruction under IIIe Reich

Put at the plundering of the conquered countries: in 1942,40% of the Treasury of Reich is made financial tributes taken on overcome. France of the ml Pétain thus had to pay 400 million F. per day of " expenses of occupation" , of what to actually maintain an army of more than 10 million men (J.P. Azéma). The Germans were not subjected to rationing at the end of 1944 thanks to the massive agricultural levies in the occupied countries, condemned to the deprivations, with the food shortage even with the famine (Greece, the USSR). Many Germans accepted also skins of the Aryanisation (spoliation of the Jewish goods) carried out on the territory of Reich or abroad. Hermann Göring and Alfred Rosenberg concealed with large scales the artistic treasures of occupied Europe, Jewish collections at the head, filling for hundreds of trains of chief-to works and objects of Article

In the same way, to compensate for the mobilization of million workmen on the face of the east, the gauleiter Fritz Sauckel transferred from force 8 million civil workers in Germany, without counting the million prisoners of war put at work: according to Ulrich Herbert ( Hitler' S foreign workers , Cambridge, 1997), half of agricultural employment and one the third of the industrial employment of IIIe Reich were assumed by foreign workers in 1944. The Gestapo narrowly supervised the latter, subjected to multiple disrciminations. Thus the Polish and Soviet workmen were to carry a badge " P" or " Ost" quite visible on the chest; they generally touched miserable wages corresponding hardly at least physiological essential; they did not have the right to take the tram or to go up to bicycle, nor to enter a German church; the sexual relationships with Allemande were punished of died for the man, and the woman humiliated in public then off-set in camp the police force regularly practiced raids which led of them tens of thousands in concentration camp to the least deviating gesture.

Germanisation forced territories annexed to IIIe Reich during the war, thus the Alsace-Moselle, Luxembourg, part of Poland. Tens of thousands of In spite of us, enlisted by the constraint in the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, perished on the face of the East.

Of the hundreds of thousands of European children " germanisables" were torn off with their families and were transferred in the Lebensborn opened by Martin Bormann. In these hearths, genuine " stud farm for SS" , it was also a question of studying the improvement of the " race aryenne".

Euthanasia of 150.000 handicapped German, especially between 1939 and 1941. The technicians Nazis of " the aktion T4" were then assigned to the massive gazage of the Jews in the Death camps.

Extermination of 50.000 members of the Polish elites by the S as from 1939 - aristocrats, soldiers, priests. The colleges, the universities, the seminars were closed, as well as the theaters. The acknowledged goal was to transform the Polish into people of " under-hommes". Three million catholic Poles, as many Jewish Poles was exterminated by the Nazis (20% of the total population).

Extermination of more than 3 million Prisoner of war Soviet in camps in Germany. The historian of the Wehrmacht Omer Bartov estimates that in the USSR even, 600.000 other prisoners were assassinated by the German troops, and 1.400.000 others deliberately let die of hunger. The " decree of the commissaires" (May 1941), prepared as of before the aggression of the USSR, ordered to shoot all the captured communist police chiefs.

Starvation deliberated on the town of Leningrad besieged, which made 700.000 dead (1941-1944). Hitler had prohibited that one removes attack the city which had seen being born the Bolchevisme haï. A commission of experts installation by Göring to plan the future methodical exploitation of the USSR had concluded as of May 1941 that " our projects should result in the death of approximately 10 million personnes".

Massacre many Hostages through occupied Europe (Chateaubriant, Mount-Valérien, Pits Ardéatines); destruction and massacre of whole villages (Oradour, Lidice, Marzabotto); systematic use of the Torture and the shootings of mass against the resistant ones, suspects and civilians; inauguration of the terrorist bombardments on the civil populations (Guernica, Rotterdam, Coventry). The Insurrection of Warsaw, crushed by Himmler, was punished by the destruction of the city with 90% and made 200.000 dead.

1.500.000 resistant, persecuted, common rights, Pilot of Jéhovah, Homosexual, or Juifs of all Europe were subjected to the extermination by the forced labor in the Concentration camps of Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, Dora, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, etc and their hundreds of kommandos dispersed through all the territory of Reich. The ill treatments of the Kapo, the summary executions, the Malnutrition, the will of the S to completely dehumanize their victims before reducing them in ashes made these camps a hell of a seldom equalized cruelty. 40% of the French deportees did not survive their stay in camp

pseudo-medical Experiments perpetrated on prisoners of the Concentration camps by the doctors Nazis such Carl Clauberg or Josef Mengele. With Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, Reich made study on human guinea-pigs a program of massive sterilization of the Slavic women.

Extermination of approximately a third of the European Gypsies (Henriette Asséo) during the Porajmos.

Genocide of 5,5 million Jews (Shoah). Between 1941 and the 1945 Nazis made perished the three quarters of the Jews of occupied Europe. The Génocide was practiced according to industrial and bureaucratic methods without precedent in the human history; it was as the first time as a genocide aimed at eliminating to the last child or old man disarmed people, dependant on no State, dispersed on a whole continent, occupying any disputed territory, and not representing any military or political threat if not in the imagination of the torturers. This genocide was operated by the hunger in the Ghettos of Poland (where many German and Austrian Jews were also off-set, prelude to their extermination), by balls on the face of the East by the mobile units of slaughter of the Einsatzgruppen, by the forced labor in the Concentration camps, or in the Gas chambers of the Death camps.

the only and extermination concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau saw perishing a million Jews between 1942 and the end of 1944. The other centers of setting to death were Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, Maïdanek, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were gauzes as of their arrival. Crematoriums then made disappear any trace from the victims. The Nazis recovered their luggage and their clothing, but also the chevelures and gold the teeth of the corpses, and made soap starting from ashes.

Consequences of the war wanted by IIIe Reich, the bombardments and the street battles in the cities of IIIe Reich brought the destruction of many German cities to more than 50,75 or 90%. Thus Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne or Breslau. A considerable share of the artistic inheritance was lost (Jörg Friedrich, the Fire. Germany under the bombs , 2004).

" Legacy politique" and memory

The final defeat of IIIe Reich leaves Germany in ruins and as an independent State until in 1949 makes it disappear, and as country unified until in 1990. Three million German soldiers died the face and to 500.000 civilians under the bombs. 8 million Germans present since centuries is driven out Central European countries and Eastern in reprisals with the exactions of IIIe Reich. The current territory of the the Federal Republic of Germany is lower by a quarter than that of Reich of 1914.

After their capture, the 16 plus still alive top-ranking executives of IIIe Reich answer their acts the Procès of Nuremberg in 1946, which also declares Criminal organization several pillars of the mode: NSDAP, the S, the Gestapo and the cabinet of Reich. Several Nazis chiefs committed suicide, such Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Ley. Others, in escape, will be tracked and found, such Adolf Eichmann, considered and hung in Jerusalem in 1962. Others are free deaths after being taken refuge in South America (Josef Mengele) or Arab world. The Denazification imposed on Germany after 1945, as well as a series of lawsuit and revocations, prevented very many servants of IIIe Reich from making good administrative, economic careers or policies after the war, without being never worried, even when very compromised. Just like the Russians, the Americans recycled agents gestapists, such Klaus Barbie, entered with the service of the CIA compromised, or scientists such Wernher von Braun.

According to François Pipe cleaner ( past of an illusion , Gallimard, 1995), Hitler division with Stalin the unhappy privilege to have broken the historical continuity of its country; in addition, the " catastrophe allemande" (Friedrich Meinecke) did not occur not in a country postponed with traditionally brutal manners. Cruelty Nazi reached the capacity legally, in one of the most developed countries and most cultivated world, famous for its abundance of philosophers, artists and scientists. Consequently the question of the " culpabilité" of the German people in the advent of IIIe Reich and its degree of adhesion to its acts ( Schuldfrage ) did not cease haunting the national conscience since the end of the war. It weighed a long time heavily on the image of Germany and the Germans abroad, and on his place in Europe and in the world. During the Cold war, FRG and GDR returned the charge to be the continuators of IIIe Reich. Personalities like the philosopher Martin Heidegger or the leader Herbert von Karajan trailed all their life like a ball to have adhered to the Nazi party and to be itself shown unable to be explained clearly on their adhesion in IIIe Reich.

In spite of this very heavy last, some nostalgic, as well as the Néo-Nazis or the Négationnistes, praise the " still today; grandeur" of IIIe Reich, claiming for example that " the Procès of Nuremberg is that of the white man, the Gas chambers never existed, they are very right exits of the néant". These individuals, sometimes related with the movement Skinhead Nazi, ultra-minority and are hardly médiatisés, and these are especially the violent escapades which clarify them, as in England with the Paki bashing , or in certain platforms of supporters of Football known as extremists.

Because of new width of its crimes, IIIe Reich is unanimously recognized today like one of the blackest episodes and more traumatisants of the history of Germany and that of humanity. Its emblems and its apology are prohibited in the majority of the Western countries. Some also adopted laws against the deniers of its Crimes against humanity, as in France. Without equivalents even in the Stalinist USSR, its " violence congénitale" (Philippe Burrin), its racist ideology, its dehumanizing practices, its expansionist and genocidary wills, and especially amply established radical specificity Shoah, make conspicuous commonly IIIe Reich like an intrinsically criminal mode. It poses of this fact to historiography but also to the universal conscience of the anguishes and the interrogations never completely solved.

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