In 1919 the German war machine was shattered and broken, laid waste by the extreme conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. Just 20 years later Nazi Germany had the most powerful armed forces in the world.The Story of the Third Reich explores the momentous events of these years. From Hitler's rise to power in the early thirties to fall in 1945.
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The Story of the Third Reich. Video hosted on Youtube. The Nazi rise to power brought an end to the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary democracy established in Germany after World War I. Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi state (also referred to as the Third Reich) quickly became a regime in which Germans enjoyed no guaranteed basic rights. After a suspicious fire in the Reichstag (the German Parliament), on February 28, 1933, the government issued a decree which suspended constitutional civil rights and created a state of emergency in which official decrees could be enacted without parliamentary confirmation. Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the colloquial English names for Germany when it was under the regime of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), which established a totalitarian dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945. As in the two preceding eras, German Empire and Weimar Republic, the state was officially called the Deutsches Reich (German Reich). In 1943, Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich) became the official name.
The state was a major European power from the 1930s to the mid-1940s. Its historical significance lies mainly in its responsibility for escalating political tensions in Europe by its expansionist foreign policy which resulted in World War II, its occupation of most of Europe during the war, and its commission of large-scale crimes against humanity, such as the persecution and mass-murder of millions of Jews, minorities, and dissidents in the genocide known as the Holocaust. The state came to an end in 1945, after the Allied Powers succeeded in seizing German-occupied territories in Europe and in occupying Germany itself.
In 1935, Germany was bounded on the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Lithuania, The Free City of Danzig, Poland and Czechoslovakia; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Saarland, which joined in 1935. These borders changed after the state annexed Austria, the Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia and Memel, and after subsequent expansion during World War II.
The name Third Reich (Drittes Reich in German) invoked a historical reference to the Holy Roman Empire (the First Reich, which was dissolved during the Napoleonic Wars) of the Middle Ages and the German Empire (the Second Reich, which was dissolved after the Allied victory in World War I).
The Third Reich arose in the wake of the loss of land, the heavy reparations, and the perceived national embarrassment imposed through the Treaty of Versailles which ended World War I. Following civil unrest, the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s, the counter-traditionalism of the Weimar period, and the rise of communism in Germany, many voters began turning their support towards the Nazi Party with its promises of strong government, civil peace, radical changes to economic policy and restoration of national pride. The National Socialist party promised cultural renewal based on traditionalism, and it proposed military rearmament in opposition to the Treaty of Versailles; the party claimed that in the Treaty of Versailles and the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic, Germany's national pride had been lost. The Nazis also endorsed the Dolchstoßlegende ("Stab in the back legend") which figured prominently in their propaganda as it did in propaganda of most other nationalist-leaning parties in Germany.
From 1925 to the 1930s, the German government evolved from a democracy to a de facto conservative-nationalist authoritarian state under President and war hero Paul von Hindenburg. The natural ally of the foundation of an authoritarian state had been the German National People's Party (DNVP or "the Nationalists"), but increasingly, after 1929, more radical and younger-generation nationalists were attracted to the revolutionary nature of the National Socialist party, to challenge the rising support for communism as the German economy floundered. By 1932, the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag. Hindenburg was reluctant to give any substantial power to Hitler, but worked out an alliance between the Nazis and the DNVP which would allow him to develop an authoritarian state. Hitler consistently demanded to be appointed chancellor in order for Hindenburg to receive any Nazi Party support of his administration.
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