unit 1

• Joseph Goebbels: Clever and highly educated man. In charge of propaganda and helped to create Hitler's image and the party message
• Hanüchtimmier: Leader of the SS - the Nazis elite guard. These were fanatical Nazis who ran the concentration camps.
• Ruddph Hess: Deputy Leader of the Party. Third in power to Hitlera
• • Ernst Rohm: Leader of the SA. The SA were known as the brownshirts and were the Nazis private army that helped to bring them to power.
• • Hermann Goring: Second in power to Hitler. He formed the Gestapo - the Nazi secret police
• Nazi Ideas:

  • Scrap the Treaty of Versailles!

  Destroy Marxism and Communism

  And-Semitism: subdue the Jews who are to blame for Germany's problems

  • Aryan supremacy: Northern Europeans are the Ubermensch (super-humans)

  • Lebensraum (living space): Germany should take over Eastern Europe for itself

  • Nationalism: an extreme form of patriotism

  • Strong central government and education: everyone taught to think the same based on Nazi ideas
• Reichstag Fire: working alone, young communist Marinus Van der Lubbe was tried

  with the crime. However, the Nazis convinced lots of the German public that it was a wider communist plot to take over Germany.
• • Reichstag Fire decree: Hitler persuaded Hindenburg and the country that civil liberties needed to be suspended to deal with the communist threat. 4000. communists were arrested.
• • Intimidation: Terror, repression and propaganda used on a mass scale before the March election.
• • March Election: the Nazis win but fail to gain an outright majority (288 out of 647 seats)
• • Enabling Act: Key law passed giving Hitler the power to pass laws without the consent of the Reichstag: SA soldiers intimidated politicians from other parties to pass it.
• • Gleichschaltung: Germany was 'brought into line'. Civil servants were replaced with Nazi supporters, anti-Semitism was promoted, books that opposed Nazi ideas were burnt and widespread terror was used to arrest and imprison opponents.
• • Removing opposition: Trade Union leaders were arrested, left-wing newspapers were shut down, other party leaders were imprisoned and new parties were banned from forming.
• Achieving total power

  1. Local Government Act: Germany is made a centralised state as local power is reduced

  2. People's Court: A new separate court is developed to deal with 'political offences'. This could be anything from slow workers to treason plotters.

  3. The Night of the Long Knives: Over 80 leading members of the SA/ plus other political rivals were murdered by the Nazis without trial, the SA was merged into the army. Hitler insisted he was 'supreme judge of the German people' and opponents realised what could happen to them

  4. Death of President Hindenburg: Hindenburg dies August 1934 and the power of the President is merged with the Chancellor under a new title, Fuhrer, meaning leader.
• Adolf Hitler was a leader of the national socialist german workers party (Nazi) since 1921.