History of Germany

This article gives an overview of the History of Germany. The Holy Roman Empire, dating from the 8th century AD until 1806, was the first German Reich, or empire, a term sometimes used to describe the German historical epochs. At its largest extent, the territory of the empire included what is now Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, eastern France, the Low Countries, and parts of northern and central Italy. After the mid 15th century, it was known as the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation". The German Empire of 1871–1918 was often known as the second Reich to indicate its descent from the medieval empire. By the same reasoning, Adolf Hitler referred to Nazi Germany (1933–1945) as the Third Reich.

Third Reich

Main articles: Nazi Germany, Holocaust, World War II

Related Topics:
Nazi Germany - Holocaust - World War II

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Nazi revolution

In order to secure a majority for his NSDAP in the Reichstag, Hitler called for new elections. On the evening of 27 February 1933, a fire was laid in the Reichstag building. Hitler was swift to paint an alleged Communist uprising on the wall, and convinced President Hindenburg to sign the so-called Emergency Decree for the Protection of the People and the State. This decree, which would remain in force until 1945, repealed important basic rights of the Weimar constitution.

Related Topics:
Hitler - Fire

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Thousands of Communists and Socialists were arrested and brought into concentration camps, where they were at the mercy of the Gestapo, the newly established secret police force.

Related Topics:
Concentration camps - Gestapo

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Despite the terror and propaganda, the national elections of March 5th failed to bring the majority for the NSDAP that Hitler had hoped for. Together with the German National People's Party (DNVP), however, he was able to form a majority government. With false promises, Hitler succeeded in convincing a required two-thirds of Parliament to pass an enabling law that gave his government full legislative power. Only the Social Democrats voted against the law. The enabling law formed the basis for the dissolution of the Länder; the trade unions and all political parties other than the National Socialist (Nazi) Party were suppressed. A centralised totalitarian state was established, no longer based on the rule of law. Germany left the League of Nations.

Related Topics:
German National People's Party - Länder - National Socialist (Nazi) Party - League of Nations

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But many leaders of the Nazi SA were disappointed. The chief of staff of the SA, Ernst Röhm, was pressing for the SA to be incorporated into the Wehrmacht under his supreme command. Hitler felt threatened by these plans. On the weekend of June 30, 1934, he gave order to the SS to seize Röhm and his lieutenants, and to execute them without trial.

Related Topics:
SA - Ernst Röhm - Wehrmacht - SS

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The SS became an independent organisation under the command of the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. He would become the supervisor of the Gestapo and of the concentration camps, soon also of the ordinary police. Hitler also established the Waffen-SS as a separate troop.

Related Topics:
Heinrich Himmler - Waffen-SS

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The regime showed particular hostility towards the Jews. In September 1935, the Reichstag passed the so-called Nuremberg race laws directed against Jewish citizens. Jews lost their German citizenship, and were banned from marrying Germans. About 500,000 individuals were affected by the new rules.

Related Topics:
Jew - Nuremberg race laws

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Hitler re-established the German air force and re-introduced universal military service. The open rearmament was in flagrant breach of the Treaty of Versailles. However, neither the United Kingdom, nor France and Italy, went beyond issuing notes of protest.

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In 1936 German troops marched into the demilitarised Rhineland. In this case, the Treaty of Locarno would have obliged the United Kingdom to intervene in favour of France. But despite protests by the French government, Britain chose to do nothing about it. The coup strengthened Hitler's standing in Germany. His reputation was going to increase further with the Olympic Games, which were held in the same year in Berlin and in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and which proved a great propagandistic success for the regime.

Related Topics:
Treaty of Locarno - Olympic Games - Garmisch-Partenkirchen

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Expansion and defeat

After establishing the "Rome-Berlin axis" with Mussolini, and signing the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan - which was joined by Italy a year later, in 1937 - Hitler felt able to take the offensive in foreign policy. On 12 March1938, German troops marched into Austria, where an attempted Nazi coup had been unsuccessful in 1934. When Hitler entered Vienna, he was greeted by loud cheers. Four weeks later, 99% of Austrians voted in favour of the annexation (Anschluss) of their country to Germany. Hitler thereby fulfilled the old idea of a German Reich with the inclusion of Austria - the "greater German" solution that Bismarck had shunned when, in 1871, he united the German lands under Prussian leadership. Although the annexation denounced the Treaty of Saint-Germain, which expressedly forbade the unification of Austria with Germany, the western powers once again merely protested.

Related Topics:
Mussolini - Anti-Comintern Pact - Japan - Italy - Austria - Vienna - Anschluss - Treaty of Saint-Germain

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After Austria, Hitler turned to Czechoslovakia, where the 3.5 million-strong Sudeten German minority was demanding equal rights and self-government. At the Munich Conference of September 1938, Hitler, the Italian leader Benito Mussolini, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier agreed upon the cession of Sudeten territory to Germany by the Czechoslovaks. Hitler thereupon declared that all of Germany's territorial claims had been fulfilled. But hardly six months after the Munich Agreement, in March 1939, Hitler used the smoldering quarrel between Slowaks and Czechs as a pretext for taking over the rest of Czechoslovakia as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In the same month, he secured the return of Memel from Lithuania to Germany. British Prime Minister Chamberlain was forced to acknowledge that his policy of appeasement towards Hitler had failed.

Related Topics:
Czechoslovakia - Sudeten - Munich Conference - Neville Chamberlain - Édouard Daladier - Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia - Policy of appeasement

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In six years, the Nazi regime prepared the country for World War II. The Nazi leadership attempted to remove or subjugate the Jewish population in Nazi Germany and later in the occupied countries through forced deportation and, ultimately, genocide now known as the Holocaust. A similar policy applied to the Roma and Sinti in the Porajmos.

Related Topics:
World War II - Genocide - The Holocaust - Roma and Sinti - Porajmos

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After annexing the Sudeten border country of Czechoslovakia (October 1938), and taking over the rest of the Czech lands as a protectorate (March 1939), Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939 invaded Poland.

Related Topics:
Sudeten - Czechoslovakia - 1938 - 1939 - Poland

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By 1945, Germany and its Axis partners (Italy and Japan) were defeated – chiefly by the united forces of USA, Britain and the Soviet Union. Much of Europe lay in ruins, tens of millions of people had been killed, most of them civilians, as the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and many millions of people in the conquered territories. World War II resulted in the destruction of Germany's political and economic infrastructures, led to its division, considerable loss of territory in the East and left a humiliating legacy.

Related Topics:
1945 - Axis - Italy - Japan - USA - Britain - Soviet Union - Europe

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