"TITTER YE NOT".

******************************

I just saw 2 Nazi's in a car,

Doing 88 miles per a hour.

They are Probably going

Back to the Führer.

******************************

I set up an internet page for Chinese Nazis.

So far it's got Tree Reich's on Facebook.

******************************

Hitler and Göring are

standing on top of Berlin’s

radio tower. Hitler says he

wants to do something to

cheer up the people of Berlin.

“Why don’t you just jump?”

says Göring

******************************

I recently started working in a shop selling Nazi German

Memorabilia.

The boss said to me,

"Remember, the customer is always the extreme right."

******************************

NAZISM
ON THE RISE

ANTI NAZI V NECK
TEE-SHIRT

ANTI NAZI SWASTIKA MERCHANDISE

ADOLF HITLER ON A

RAMPAGE

ADOLF HITLERS

PERSONAL STANDARD

1/1

Nazi Germany or the Third Reich (German: Drittes Reich) was the

period in the history of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a

dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi

Party (NSDAP). Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life.

Nazi Germany ceased to exist after the Allied Forces defeated Germany in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe.

Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, on 30th January 1933.

The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all political opposition and consolidate its power Hindenburg died on the 2nd of August. In 1934, Hitler became the dictator of Germany by merging the powers of office of the Chancellery and the Presidency. A national referendum on the 19th of 1934 confirmed Hitler as Germany's sole Führer (leader). All power was centralised in Hitler's hands, and his word became above all laws.

The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but a collection of actions struggling for power, and Hitler's. In the and

During the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy. Public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahns (high-speed highways). Their turn to economic stability boosted the regime's popularity.

Racism, especially anti-Semitism, was a central feature of their regime. The Germanic peoples (the Nordic race) were considered he purest of the Aryan race, and were therefore the master race. Millions of Jews and others deemed undesirable were persecuted and murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitler's rule was ruthlessly suppressed.

Members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned. Education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service.

Career and education opportunities for women were curtailed. Recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made ef rallies, and Hitler's hypnotising oratory to control public opinion. The government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others.

National Socialist German
Workers Party

ANL Anti Nazi League

00:00 / 00:45

Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands, threatening war if they were not met. It seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939, launching World War II in Europe. In an alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe in 1940 and threatened Great Britain. Reichs kommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland.

Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned and murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. The implementation of the regime's racial policies culminated in the mass murder of Jews and other minorities in the Holocaust. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide turned against the Third Reich, and it suffered major military defeats in 1943. Large-scale bombing of Germany escalated in 1944, and the Nazis retreated from Eastern and Southern Europe.

Following the Allied invasion of France, Germany was conquered by the Soviets from the east and the other Allied powers from the west, and surrendered within a year. Hitler's refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war. The victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich (German Reich) from

1933 to 1943, and Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich) from 1943

to 1945. The name Deutsches Reich is usually translated into English as

"German Empire" or "German Reich". Modern Germans refer to the period as

Zeit des National sozialismus (National Socialist period), National

sozialistische Gewaltherrschaft (National Socialist tyranny), or simply as das

Dritte Reich (the Third Reich).

Common English terms are "Nazi Germany" and "Third Reich". The latter,

adopted by Nazi propaganda, was first used in a 1923 book by Arthur Moeller

van den Bruck. The book counted the Holy Roman Empire (962- 1806) as the

first Reich and the German Empire (1871- 1918) as the second. The Nazis

used it to legitimize their regime as a successor state. After they seized power,

Nazi propaganda retroactively referred to the Weimar Republic as the Zwischenreich ("Interim Reich").

Beginning in the 1980s, German linguistic critics have questioned the uncritical adoption of the expression " Third Reich ". In 1984, German jurist Walter Mallmann wrote that in the "conceptual history of political, constitutional, and legal thought," the term is

"indefensible". In 1989, Dieter Gunst further noted that referring to the Hitler regime as the Third Reich not only a "positive revaluation of National Socialism" but also a misrepresentation of history, adding that Hitler did not found a state or any "particular Reich". The German economy suffered severe setbacks after the end of World War I, because of the reparations payments required under the

Treaty of Versailles. The government printed money to make the payments and to repay the country's war debt; the resulting hyperinflation led to inflated prices for consumer goods, economic chaos, and food riots. When the government failed to make the reparations payments in January 1923, French troops occupied German industrial areas along the Ruhr. Widespread civil unrest followed.

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) was the

renamed successor of the German Workers' Party founded in

1919, one of several far right political parties active in Germany at

the time. The party platform included removal of the Weimar

Republic, rejection of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, radical

antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism. They promised a strong central

government, increased Lebensraum (living space) for Germanic

people, the formation of a national community based on race, and

racial cleansing via the active suppression of Jews, who would be

stripped of their citizenship and civil rights. The Nazis proposed

national and cultural renewal based upon the

Völkisch movement.

When the stock market in the United States crashed on the 24th

In October 1929, the impact in Germany was dire. Millions were

thrown out of work, and several major banks collapsed. Hitler and

The NSDAP was prepared to take advantage of the emergency to gain support for their party. They promised to strengthen the economy and provide jobs. Many voters decided the NSDAP was capable of restoring order, quelling civil unrest, and improving Germany's international reputation. After the federal election of 1932, the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag, holding 230 seats with 37.4 percent of the popular vote.

Although the Nazis won the greatest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, they did not have a majority, so Hitler led a short-lived coalition government formed by the NSDAP and the German National People's Party. Under pressure from politicians, industrialists, and the business community, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on the 30th of January 1933.

This event is known as the Machtergreifung (seizure of power). In the following months, the NSDAP used a process termed

Gleichschaltung (coordination) was to rapidly bring all aspects of life under the control of the party. All civilian organisations, including agricultural groups, volunteer organisations, and sports clubs, had their leadership replaced with Nazi sympathisers or party members. By June 1933, virtually the only organisations not in the control of the NSDAP were the army and the churches. On the night of the

27th of February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire; Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist, was found guilty of starting the blaze. Hitler proclaimed that the arson marked the start of a communist uprising. Violent suppression of communists by the

Sturmabteilung (SA) was undertaken all over the country, and four thousand members of the Communist Party of Germany were arrested. The Reichstag Fire Decree, imposed on the 28th February 1933, rescinded most German civil liberties, including rights of assembly and freedom of the press. The decree also allowed the police to detain people indefinitely without charges or a court order. The legislation was accompanied by a propaganda blitz that led to public support for the measure.

ANOTHER BRAIN WASHING RALLY

In March 1933, the Enabling Act, an amendment to the Weimar Constitution, was passed in the Reichstag by a vote of 444 to 94. This amendment allowed Hitler and his cabinet to pass laws, even laws that violated the constitution, without the consent of the president or the Reichstag. As the bill required a two-thirds majority to pass, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to keep several Social Democratic deputies from attending; the Communists had already been banned. On the 10th of May the government seized the assets of the Social Democrats they were banned in June. The remaining political parties were dissolved, and on the 14th of July 1933, Germany became a de facto single-party state. The founding of new parties was made illegal. Further elections in November 1933, 1936, and 1938 were entirely Nazi controlled and saw only the Nazis and a small number of independents elected. The regional state parliaments and the Reichsrat (federal upper house) were abolished in January 1934.

The Nazi regime abolished the symbols of the Weimar Republic, including the black,

red, and gold tricolour flag, and adopted reworked imperial symbolism. The previous imperial black, white, and red tricolour was restored as one of Germany's two official flags; the second was the swastika flag of the NSDAP, which became the sole national flag in 1935. The NSDAP anthem "Horst Wess Lied" became the second national anthem.

In this period, Germany still needed a direct economic solution; millions were unemployed, and the balance of trade deficit was daunting. Hitler knew that reviving this was vital. In 1934, using deficit spending, public works projects were undertaken. A total of 1.7 million Germans were put to work on the projects in 1934 alone. Average wages both per hour and per week began to rise. The demands of the SA for more political and military power caused anxiety among military, industrial, and political leaders. In response, Hitler purged the leadership in the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from the 30th of June to the 2nd of July 1934. Hitler targeted Ernst Röhm

and other SA leaders, along with a number of Hitler's political adversaries (such as Gregor Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher), who were rounded up, arrested, and shot. On the 2nd of

In August 1934, President von Hindenburg died. The previous day, The

cabinet had enacted the "Law Concerning the Highest State Office of the

Reich", which stated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of The

president would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the

chancellor.

National flag of German and
marine jack of Germany (1935–45)

Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government. He was

formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor).

Germany was now a totalitarian state with Hitler at its head. As head of

state, Hitler became Supreme Commander of the armed forces. The new

law altered the traditional loyalty oath of servicemen so that they affirmed

loyalty to Hitler rather than the office of the supreme commander or the

state.On the 19th of August, the merger of the presidency with the

chancellorship was approved by 90 per cent of the electorate in a

plebiscite.

Most Germans were relieved that the conflicts and street fighting of the Weimar Republic had ended. They were deluged with

propaganda orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, who promised peace and plenty for al in a united, Marxist-free country without the constraints of the Versailles Treaty. The first Nazi concentration camp, initially for political prisoners, was opened at Dachau in 1933. Hundreds of camps of varying size and function were created by the end of the war.

Upon seizing power, the Nazis took repressive measures against their political opposition and

rapidly began the comprehensive marginalisation of persons they considered socially undesirable,

deemed Untermenschen (subhumans). Under the guise of combating the Communist threat, the

National Socialists secured immense power. Above all, their campaign against Jews living in

Germany gained momentum.

Beginning in April 1933, scores of measures defining the status of Jews and their rights were

instituted at the regional and national levels. Initiatives and legal mandates against the Jews

reached their culmination with the establishment of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, stripping them

of their basic rights. The Nazis would take from the Jews their wealth, their right to intermarry with

non Jews, and their right to occupy many fields of labour (such as practising law, medicine, or

working as educators). They eventually declared them undesirable to remain among German

citizens and society, which over time dehumanised the Jews; arguably, these actions desensitised

Germans to the extent that it resulted in the Holocaust. Ethnic Germans who refused to ostracise

Jews or who showed any signs of resistance to Nazi propaganda were placed under surveillance

by the Gestapo. When arrested, they had their rights removed or were sent to concentration

camps.

Everyone and everything was monitored in Nazi Germany. Inaugurating and legitimising power for

The Nazis were thus accomplished by their initial revolutionary activities, then through the

improvisation and manipulation of the legal mechanisms available, through the use of police

powers by the Nazi Party (which allowed them to include and exclude from society whomever they

chose), and finally by the expansion of authority for all state and federal institutions. As early as

In February 1933, Hitler announced that rearmament must be undertaken, albeit clandestinely, at

First, to do so was in violation of the Versailles Treaty. A year later he told his military leaders that 1942 was the target date for going to war in the east. He pulled Germany out of the League of Nations in 1933, claiming its disarmament clauses were unfair, as they applied only to Germany. The Saarland, which had been placed under League of Nations supervision for 15 years at the end of World War I, voted in January 1935 to become part of Germany. In March 1935, Hitler announced that the Reichswehr would be increased to 550,000 men and that he was creating an air force. Britain agreed that the Germans would be allowed to build a naval fleet with the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement on the 18th of June 1935.

Mein Kampf "My Struggle"
is an autobiographical
manifesto by Adolf Hitler.

When the Italian invasion of Ethiopia led to only mild protests by the British and French governments, on the 7th of March 1936, Hitler ordered the Reichswehr to march 3,000 troops into the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland in violation of the Versailles Treaty; an additional 30,000 troops were on standby. As the territory was part of Germany, the British and French governments did not feel that attempting to enforce the treaty was worth the risk of war. In the single-party election held on the 29th of March, the NSDAP received 98.9 percent support. In 1936, Hitler signed an Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan and a non-aggression agreement with Fascist Italy of Benito Mussolini, who was soon referring to a "Rome-Berlin Axis".

Hitler sent air and armoured units to assist General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, which broke out in July 1936. The Soviet Union sent a smaller force to assist the Republican government. Franco's Nationalists were victorious in 1939 and became an informal ally of Nazi Germany.

In February 1938, Hitler emphasised to Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg the need for Germany to secure its frontiers.

Schuschnigg scheduled a plebiscite regarding Austrian independence for the 13th of March, but Hitler demanded that it be cancelled. On the 11th of March, Hitler sent an ultimatum to Schuschnigg demanding that he hand over all power to the Austrian NSDAP or face an invasion. The Wehrmacht entered Austria the next day, to be greeted with great enthusiasm by the populace.

The Republic of Czechoslovakia was home to a substantial minority of Germans, who lived mostly in the Sudetenland. Under pressure from separatist groups within the Sudeten German Party, the Czechoslovak government offered economic concessions to the region. Hitler decided to incorporate not just the Sudetenland but the whole of Czechoslovakia into the Reich. The Nazis undertook a propaganda campaign to try to drum up support for an invasion. Top leaders of the armed forces were not in favour of the plan, as Germany was not yet ready for war.

The crisis led to war preparations by the British, Czechoslovakia, and France (Czechoslovakia's ally). Attempting to avoid war, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain arranged a series of meetings, the result of which was the Munich Agreement, signed on the 29th of September 1938. The Czechoslovak government was forced to accept the Sudetenland annexation into Germany.

Chamberlain was greeted with cheers when he landed in London, bringing, he said, "peace for our time."

Germany's war in the East was based on Hitler's longstanding view that Jews were the great enemy of the German people and that Lebensraum was needed for Germany's expansion. Hitler focused his attention on Eastern Europe, aiming to defeat Poland, the Soviet Union and remove or kill the resident Jews and Slavs in the process. After the occupation of Poland, all Jews living in the General Government were confined to ghettos, and those who were physically fit were required to perform compulsory labour. In 1941 Hitler decided to destroy the Polish nation completely. He planned that within 10 to 20 years the section of Poland under German occupation would be cleared of ethnic Poles and resettled by German colonists. About 3.8 to 4 million Poles would remain as slaves,

part of a slave labour force of 14 million the Nazis intended to create using citizens of conquered nations in the East.

The Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to Siberia, for use as slave labour or to be murdered. To determine who should be killed, Himmler created the Volksliste, a system of

classification of people deemed to be of German blood. He ordered that those of Germanic descent who refused to be classified as ethnic Germans should be deported to concentration camps, have their children taken away, or be assigned to forced labour. The plan also included the kidnapping of children deemed to have Aryan Nordic traits, who were presumed to be of German descent. The goal was to implement a General plan Ost after the conquest of the Soviet Union, but when the invasion failed, Hitler had to consider other options. One suggestion was a mass forced deportation of Jews to Poland, Palestine, or Madagascar.

Somewhere around the time of the failed offensive against Moscow in December 1941, Hitler resolved that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated immediately. Plans for the total eradication of the Jewish population of Europe—eleven million people—were formalised at the Wannsee Conference on the 20th of January 1942. Some would be worked to death and the rest would be killed in the implementation of Die Endlösung der Judenfrage (the Final Solution of the Jewish question). Initially the victims were killed with gas vans or by Einsatzgruppen firing squads, but these methods proved impracticable for an operation of this scale. By 1941, killing centres at Auschwitz concentration camp, Sobibor, Treblinka, and other Nazi extermination camps replaced Einsatzgruppen as the primary method of mass killing. The total number of Jews murdered during the war is estimated at 5.5 to six million people, including over a million children. Twelve million people were put into forced labour.

German citizens (despite much of the later denial) had access to information about what was happening, as soldiers returning from the occupied territories would report on what they had seen and done. Evans states that most German citizens disapproved of the genocide . Some Polish citizens tried to rescue or hide the remaining Jews, and members of the Polish underground got word to their government in exile in London as to what was happening.

In addition to eliminating Jews, the Nazis also planned to reduce the population of the conquered territories by 30 million people through starvation in an action called the Hunger Plan . Food supplies would be diverted to the German army and German civilians. Cities would be razed and the land allowed to return to forest or resettled by German colonists. Together, the Hunger Plan and General plan Ost would have led to the starvation of 80 million people in the Soviet Union. These partially fulfilled plans resulted in the democidal deaths of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war.

holocaust photo children behind barbed wire

HOLOCAUST PHOTO: JEWISH CHILDREN
LOOK OUT FROM BEHIND A WALL OF BARBED WIRE.

Nazi Germany had a strong anti tobacco movement. Pioneering research by Franz H. Müller in 1939 demonstrated a causal link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer. The Reich Health Office took measures to try to limit smoking, including producing lectures and pamphlets. Smoking was banned in many workplaces, on trains, and among on duty members of the military. Government agencies also worked to control other carcinogenic substances such as asbestos and pesticides. As part of a general public health campaign, water supplies were cleaned up, lead and mercury were removed from consumer products, and women were urged to undergo regular screenings for breast cancer.

Government run health care insurance plans were available, but Jews were denied coverage starting in 1933. That same year, Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat government insured patients. In 1937 Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat non Jewish patients, and in 1938 their right to practice medicine was removed entirely.

Medical experiments, many of them unscientific, were performed on concentration camp inmates beginning in 1941. The most notorious doctor to perform medical experiments was SS Hauptsturmführer Dr Josef Mengele, camp doctor at Auschwitz. Many of his victims died or were intentionally killed. Concentration camp inmates were made available for purchase by pharmaceutical companies for drug testing and other experiments.

Women were a cornerstone of Nazi social policy. The Nazis opposed the feminist movement, claiming that it was the creation of Jewish intellectuals, and instead advocated a patriarchal society in which the German woman would recognise that her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home." Soon after the seizure of power, feminist groups were shut

down or incorporated into the National Socialist Women's League. This organisation coordinated groups throughout the country to promote motherhood and household activities. Courses were offered on child rearing, sewing, and cooking. The League published the NS Frauen Warte, the only NSDAP approved women's magazine in Nazi Germany. Despite some propaganda aspects, it was predominantly an ordinary woman's magazine.

Women were encouraged to leave the workforce, and the creation of large families by racially suitable women was promoted through a propaganda campaign. Women received a bronze award known as the Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter (Cross of Honour of the German Mother) for giving birth to four children, silver for six, and gold for eight or more. Large families received subsidies to help with their utilities, school fees, and household expenses. Though the measures led to increases in the birth rate, the number of families having four or more children declined by five per cent between 1935 and 1940.

Removing women from the workforce did not have the intended effect of freeing up jobs for men. Women were for the most part employed as domestic servants, weavers, or in the food and drink industries jobs that were not of interest to men. Nazi philosophy prevented large numbers of women from being hired to work in munitions factories in the build-up to the war, so foreign labourers were brought in. After the war started, slave labourers were extensively used. In January 1943 Hitler signed a decree requiring all women under the age of fifty to report for work assignments to help the war effort. Thereafter, women were funnelled into agricultural and industrial jobs. By September 1944, 14.9 million women were working in munitions production.

The Nazi regime discouraged women from seeking higher education. Nazi leaders held conservative views about women and endorsed the idea that rational and theoretical work was alien to a woman's nature since they were considered inherently emotional and instinctive as such, engaging in academics and careerism would only "divert them from motherhood." The number of women allowed to enrol in universities dropped drastically, as a law passed in April 1933 limited the number of females admitted to university to ten per cent of the number of male attendees. Female enrolment in secondary schools dropped from 437,000 in 1926 to 205,000 in 1937. The number of women enrolled in postsecondary schools dropped from 128,000 in 1933 to 51,000 in 1938. However, with the requirement that men be enlisted into the armed forces during the war, women comprised half of the enrolment in the post-secondary system by 1944.

nazi propaganda photo mother with children

Nazi propaganda photo:
A mother, her daughters and her
son in the uniform of the Hitler
youth. Magazine "SS Leitheft
February 1943.

During the German occupation of Poland, 2.7 million ethnic Poles were killed by the Nazis.

Polish civilians were subject to forced labour in German industry, internment, wholesale

expulsions to make way for German colonists and mass executions. The German authorities

engaged in a systematic effort to destroy Polish culture and national identity. During operation

AB-Aktion, many university professors and members of the Polish intelligentsia were

arrested and executed, or transported to concentration camps. During the war, Poland lost 39

to 45 per cent of its physicians and dentists, 26 to 57 percent of its lawyers, 15 to 30 percent

of its teachers, 30 to 40 per cent of its scientists and university professors, and 18 to 28

percent of its clergy. Further, 43 percent of Poland's educational and research institutions and

14 percent of its museums had been destroyed.

During the war between June 1941 and January 1942, the Nazis killed an estimated 2.8

million Soviet prisoners of war. Many starved to death while being held in open-air pens at

Auschwitz and elsewhere. The Soviet Union lost 27 million people during the war; less than

nine million of these were combat deaths. One in four Soviets were killed or wounded.

Antisemitic legislation passed in 1933 led to the removal all of Jewish teachers, professors,

and officials from the education system. Most teachers were required to belong to the

Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund (National Socialist Teachers League; NSLB), and

university professors were required to join the National Socialist German Lecturers. Teachers

had to take an oath of loyalty and obedience to Hitler, and those who failed to show sufficient

conformity to party ideals were often reported by students or fellow teachers and dismissed.

Lack of funding for salaries led to many teachers leaving the profession. The average class

size increased from 37 in 1927 to 43 in 1938 due to the resulting teacher shortage. Frequent

and often contradictory directives were issued by Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick,

Bernhard Rust of the Reichserziehungsministerium (Ministry of Education), and various other agencies regarding content of lessons and acceptable textbooks for use in primary and secondary schools. Books deemed unacceptable to the regime were removed from school libraries.

Women were expected to be strong, healthy, and vital. The sturdy peasant womanwho worked the land and bore strong children was considered ideal, and athletic women were praised for being tanned from working outdoors. Organisations were created for the indoctrination of Nazi values. From the 25th of March 1939, membership in the Hitler Youth became compulsory for all children over the age of ten.

The Jungmädelbund (Young Girls League) section of the Hitler Youth was for girls age 10 to 14, and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM; League of German Girls) was for young women age 14 to 18. The BDM's activities focused on physical education, with activities such as running, long jumping, somersaulting, tightrope walking, marching, and swimming.

The Nazi regime promoted a liberal code of conduct regarding sexual matters, and was sympathetic to women who bore children out of wedlock. Promiscuity increased as the war progressed, with unmarried soldiers often intimately involved with several women simultaneously. The same was the case for married women, who liaised with soldiers, civilians, or slave labourers. Sex was sometimes used as a commodity to obtain, for example, better work from a foreign labourer. Pamphlets enjoined German women to avoid sexual relations with foreign workers as a danger to their blood.

With Hitler's approval, Himmler intended that the new society of the Nazi regime should de stigmatise illegitimate births, particularly of children fathered by members of the SS, who were vetted for racial purity. His hope was that each SS family would have between four and six children. The Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) association, founded by Himmler in 1935, created a series of maternity homes where single mothers could be accommodated during their pregnancies. Both parents were examined for racial suitability before acceptance. The resulting children were often adopted into SS families. The homes were also made available to the wives of SS and NSDAP members, who quickly filled over half the available spots.

Existing laws banning abortion except for medical reasons were strictly enforced by the Nazi regime. The number of abortions declined from 35,000 per year at the start of the 1930s to fewer than 2,000 per year at the end of the decade. In 1935 a law was passed allowing abortions for eugenics reasons.

Nazi society had elements supportive of animal rights, and many people were fond of zoos and wildlife. The government took several measures to ensure the protection of animals and the environment. In 1933, the Nazis enacted a stringent animal protection law that had an impact on what was allowed for medical research. But the law was only loosely enforced. In spite of a ban on vivisection, the Ministry of the Interior readily handed out permits for experiments on animals.

The Reich Forestry Office, under Göring, enforced regulations that required foresters to plant a wide variety of trees to ensure suitable habitat for wildlife. A new Reich Animal Protection Act became law in 1933. The regime enacted the Reich Nature Protection Act in 1935 to protect the natural landscape from excessive economic development. The act allowed for the expropriation of privately owned land to create nature preserves and aided in long range planning. Perfunctory efforts were made to curb air pollution, but little enforcement of existing legislation was undertaken once the war began.

Poll: 31% of Americans would refuse to hide Jews from Nazis.

Homosexuals

In Nazi Germany

The regime promoted the concept of Volksgemeinschaft, a national German ethnic community. The goal was to build a classless society based on racial purity and the perceived need to prepare for warfare, conquest, and a struggle against Marxism. The German Labour Front founded the Kraft durch Freude (KdF; Strength Through Joy) organisation in 1933. In addition to taking control of tens of thousands of previously privately run recreational clubs, it offered highly regimented holidays and entertainment experiences such as cruises, vacation destinations, and concerts.

The Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture) was organised under the control of the Propaganda Ministry in September 1933. Sub chambers were set up to control various aspects of cultural life, such as films, radio, newspapers, fine arts, music, theatre, and literature. All members of these professions were required to join their respective organisation. Jews and people considered politically unreliable were prevented from working in the arts, and many emigrated. Books and scripts had to be approved by the Propaganda Ministry prior to publication. Standards deteriorated as the regime sought to use cultural outlets exclusively as propaganda media. Radio became very popular in Germany during the 1930s, with over 70 per cent of households owning a receiver by 1939, more than any other country. Radio station staffs were purged of leftists and others deemed undesirable by July 1933.

Propaganda and speeches were typical radio fare immediately after the seizure of power, but as time went on Goebbels insisted that more music be played so that people would not turn to foreign broadcasters for entertainment. As with other media, newspapers were controlled by the state, with the Reich Press Chamber shutting down or buying newspapers and publishing houses. By 1939 over two-thirds of the newspapers and magazines were directly owned by the Propaganda Ministry.

The NSDAP daily newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter (Ethnic Observer), was edited by Alfred Rosenberg, author of The Myth of the Twentieth Century, a book of racial theories espousing Nordic superiority. Goebbels controlled the wire services and insisted that all newspapers in Germany should only publish content favourable to the regime. His propaganda ministry issued two dozen directives every week on exactly what news should be published and what angles to use; the typical newspaper followed the directives very closely. Newspaper readership plummeted, partly because of the decreased quality of the content, and partly because of the surge in popularity of radio.

Authors of books left the country in droves, and some wrote material highly critical of the regime while in exile. Goebbels

recommended that the remaining authors should concentrate on books themed on Germanic myths and the concept of blood and soil. By the end of 1933 over a thousand books, most of them by Jewish authors or featuring Jewish characters, had been banned by the Nazi regime.

Hitler took a personal interest in architecture, and worked closely with state architects Paul Troost and Albert Speer to create public buildings in a neoclassical style based on Roman architecture. Speer constructed imposing structures such as the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg and a new Reich Chancellery building in Berlin. Hitler's plans for rebuilding Berlin included a gigantic dome based on the Pantheon in Rome and a triumphal arch more than double the height of the Arc de Triumph in Paris. Neither of these structures were ever built.

Hitler felt that abstract, Dadaist, expressionist, and modern art were decadent,

an opinion that became the basis for policy. Many art museum directors lost

their posts in 1933 and were replaced by party members. Some 6,500 modern

works of art were removed from museums and replaced with works chosen by

a Nazi jury. Exhibitions of the rejected pieces, under titles such as "Decadence

in Art", were launched in sixteen different cities by 1935. The Degenerate Art

Exhibition, organised by Goebbels, ran in Munich from July to November 1937.

The exhibition proved wildly popular, attracting over two million visitors.

Composer Richard Strauss was appointed president of the Reichs

musikkammer (Reich Music Chamber) on its founding in November 1933. As

was the case with other art forms, the Nazis ostracised musicians who were not

deemed racially acceptable, and for the most part did not approve of music that

was too modern or atonal. Jazz music was singled out as being especially

inappropriate, and foreign musicians of this genre left the country or were

expelled. Hitler favoured the music of Richard Wagner, especially pieces based

on Germanic myths and heroic stories, and attended the Bayreuth Festival each

year from 1933. Movies were popular in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, with

admissions of over a billion people in 1942, 1943, and 1944. By 1934 German regulations restricting currency exports made it impossible for American filmmakers to take their profits back to America, so the major film studios closed their German branches. Exports of German films plummeted, as their heavily anti semitic content made them impossible to show in other countries. The two largest film companies, Universum Film AG and Tobis, were purchased by the Propaganda Ministry, which by 1939 was producing most German films. The productions were not always overtly propagandistic, but generally had a political subtext and followed party lines regarding themes and content. Scripts were pre-censored.

Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935), documenting the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, and Olympia (1938), covering the 1936 Summer Olympics, pioneered techniques of camera movement and editing that influenced later films. New techniques such as telephoto lenses and cameras mounted on tracks were employed. Both films remain controversial, as their aesthetic merit is inseparable from their propagandising of national socialist ideals.

The england team give the nazi salute in 1938

The England team give the Nazi salute in May 1938. England won the game 6-3.

The Allied powers organised war crimes trials, beginning with the Nuremberg trials, held from November 1945 to October 1946, of 23 top Nazi officials. They were charged with four counts conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in violation of international laws governing warfare. All but three of the defendants were found guilty; twelve were sentenced to death. The victorious Allies outlawed the NSDAP and its subsidiary organisations. The display or use of Nazi symbolism such as flags, swastikas, or greetings, is illegal in Germany and Austria.

Nazi ideology and the actions taken by the regime are almost universally regarded as gravely immoral. Hitler, Nazism, and the Holocaust have become symbols of evil in the modern world. Interest in Nazi Germany continues in the media and the academic world. Historian Sir Richard J. Evans remarks that the era "exerts an almost universal appeal because its murderous racism stands as a warning to the whole of humanity."

The Nazi era continues to inform how Germans view themselves and their country. Virtually every family suffered losses during the war or has a story to tell. For many years Germans kept quiet about their experiences and felt a sense of communal guilt, even if they were not directly involved in war crimes. Once study of Nazi Germany was introduced into

the school curriculum starting in the 1970s, people began researching the

experiences of family members. Study of the era and a willingness to critically

examine its mistakes has led to the development of a strong democracy in today's

Germany, but with lingering undercurrents of anti semitism and neo Nazi thought.

Volkswagen was originally created in 1937 by the German Labour Front (Deutsche

Arbeitsfront). In the early 1930s, the German auto industry was still largely composed

of luxury models, and the average German could rarely afford anything more than a

motorcycle. As a result, only one German out of 50 owned a car. Seeking a potential

new market, some car makers began independent "peoples' car" projects the

Mercedes 170H, Adler AutoBahn, Steyr 55, and Hanomag 1.3L, among others.

In 1933, with many of the above projects still in development or early stages of

production, Adolf Hitler got involved, demanding the production of a basic vehicle

capable of transporting two adults and three children at 100 km/h (62 mph). Hitler wanted his German citizens to have the same access to a caras the Americans. The "People's Car" would be available to citizens of the Third Reich through a savings plan at 990 Reich's mark (US $396 in 1930s dollars) about the price of a small motorcycle (the average income being around 32 RM a week). Despite heavy lobbying in favour of one of the existing projects, it soon became apparent that private industry could not turn out a car for only 990 RM. Thus Hitler chose to sponsor an all new, state owned factory using Ferdinand Porsche's design (with some of Hitler's design constraints, including an air cooled engine so nothing could freeze). The intention was that ordinary Germans would buy the car by means of a savings scheme ("Fünf Mark die Woche musst du sparen, willst du im eigenen Wagen fahren" "Five marks a week you must put aside, if you want to drive your own car"), which around 336,000 people eventually paid into. The savings of these 336,000 people were seized by the Russians in 1945 when they captured Berlin. However, the entire project was financially unsound, and only the corruption and lack of accountability of the Nazi regime made it possible.

Prototypes of the car called the "KdF Wagen" (German:

Kraft durch Freude "strength through joy"), appeared from 1936 onwards (the first cars had been produced in Stuttgart). The car already had its distinctive round shape and air cooled, flat-four, rear-mounted engine. The VW car was just one of many KdF programs which included things such as tours and outings. The prefix Volks

("People's") was not just applied to cars, but also to other products in Germany; "Volksempfänger" radio receiver for instance. On 28 May 1937, the Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH (sometimes abbreviated to Gezuvor) was established by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront. It was later renamed "Volkswagenwerk GmbH" on the 16th of September 1938. Erwin Komenda, the longstanding Auto Union chief designer, part of Ferdinand Porsche's hand picked team, developed the car body of the prototype, which was recognizably the Beetle known today. It was one of the first to be evolved with the aid of a wind tunnel, in use in Germany since the early 1920s. The cars were put through many rigorous tests, and achieved a record-breaking million miles of testing before being

deemed finished.

The building of the new factory started on the 26th of May 1938 in the new town of KdF Stadt (modern day Wolfsburg), which had been purpose built for the factory workers. This factory had only produced a handful of cars by the time war started in 1939. None were

actually delivered to any holder of the completed saving stamp books, though one Type 1 Cabriolet was presented to Hitler on the 20th of April 1939 (his 50th birthday).

War meant production changed to military vehicles, the Type 82 Kübelwagon ("Bucket car") utility vehicle (VW's most common wartime model), and the amphibious Schwimmwagen which were used to equip the German forces. As was common with much of the production in Nazi Germany during the war, slave labor was utilized in the Volkswagen plant. The company would admit in 1998 that it used 15,000 slaves during the war effort. German historians estimated that 80% of Volkswagen's wartime workforce was slave labor. Many of the slaves were reported to have been supplied from the concentration camps upon request from plant managers. A lawsuit was filed in 1998 by survivors for restitution for the forced labour. Volkswagen would set up a voluntary restitution fund.

The company owes its post war existence largely to one man, British Army officer Major Ivan Hirst, REME. In April 1945, KdF Stadt, and its heavily bombed factory were captured by the Americans, and subsequently handed over to the British, within whose occupation zone the town and factory fell into. The factories were placed under the control of Oldham born Hirst. At first, the plan was to use it for military vehicle maintenance, and possibly dismantled and shipped to Britain. Since it had been used for military production, and had been in Hirst's words a "political animal" rather than a commercial enterprise technically making it liable for destruction under the terms of the Potsdam Agreement the equipment was in time intended to be salvaged as war reparations (Allied dismantling policy changed in late 1946 to mid 1947, although heavy industry continued to be dismantled until 1951.) Hirst painted one of the factory's cars green and demonstrated it to British Army headquarters. Short of light transport, in September 1945 the British Army was persuaded to place a vital order for 20,000. The first few hundred cars went to personnel from the occupying forces, and to the German Post Office.

Some British Service personnel were allowed to take their Beetles back to the United Kingdom when they were demobilised, and one of the very first Beetles brought back in that way (UK registration number JLT 420) is still owned by Peter Colborne Baber, the son of the original proprietor of the UK's first official Volkswagen Importer, Colborne Garages of Ripley, Surrey.

FERDINAND PORSCHE
AND ADOLF HITLERS
VOLKSWAGON BEETLE

The Anti Nazi League (ANL) was an organisation set up in 1977 on the initiative of the Socialist Workers Party with sponsorship from some of the UK trade unions and the endorsement of a list of prominent people to oppose the rise of far right groups in the United Kingdom. It was wound down in 1981.

It was relaunched in 1992, but merged into Unite Against Fascism in 2003. Most of the ANL's leafleting and other campaigns in the 1970s were in opposition to far right groups which it claimed were not just racist but fascist, such as the National Front, an organisation led by John Tyndall who had a long history of involvement with openly fascist and Nazi groups. The ANL also campaigned against the British Movement which was a

more openly Hitlerite group of People.

The ANL was linked to Rock Against Racism in the 1970s, which

ran two giant carnivals in 1978 involving bands such as The Clash,

Stiff Little Fingers, Steel Pulse, Misty in Roots, X-Ray Spex and

Tom Robinson Band, attended by 80,000 and then 100,000

supporters.

In April 1979, an ANL member, Blair Peach, was killed following a

demonstration at Southall against a National Front election

meeting. Police had sealed off the area around Southall Town Hall, and communist demonstrators trying to make their way there were blocked. In the ensuing confrontation, more than 40 people (including 21 police) were injured, and 300 were arrested. Bricks were allegedly hurled at police, who described the rioting as the most violent they had handled in London. Peach was among the demonstrators. During an incident in a side street 100 yards from the town hall, he was seriously injured and collapsed after being struck on the head, allegedly by an unauthorised weapon used by a member of the police Special Patrol Group. Peach died later in hospital.