nazi germany essay background

Nazi Germany

The story of Nazi Germany has fascinated and appalled millions of people. The Nazis were a group of radical nationalists who formed their own political party in 1919. Led by Adolf Hitler , a former corporal who had served in World War I, the Nazi Party remained small and ineffectual for most of the 1920s. The onset of the Great Depression and its traumatic impact on Germany, however, saw Hitler and the Nazis attract popular support. The Nazis presented themselves as a new political option for the beleaguered and desperate German people. There was little new about Hitler and the Nazis, however. Most of their obsessions – state power, authoritarian rule, fanatical nationalism, social Darwinism, racial purity and military rearmament leading to war – were ideas of the past, not the future .

By 1930 the Nazis had become the largest party in the German Reichstag (parliament). This support contributed to the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor in January 1933. Hitler and his followers held power for barely a dozen years, however, their impact on Germany was profound. Within a couple of years, the Nazis had killed off the organs of democracy and created a one-party totalitarian state . The lives of millions of Germans were changed, some for the better, many for the worse. Women were ordered back into the home and excluded from politics and the workplace. Children were indoctrinated with the ideas and values of Nazism. Schools and workplaces were transformed to fulfil Nazi objectives. Weak or disruptive social or racial groups – from Jews to the mentally ill – were excluded or eliminated. The Nazis revived the galloping militarism that steered Germany into World War I two decades earlier. Finally, in the late 1930s, Hitler set about expanding German territory, a policy that triggered the deadliest war in human history.

Alpha History’s Nazi Germany website is a comprehensive textbook-quality resource for studying the rise of the Nazis and Germany between 1933 and 1939. It contains hundreds of different primary and secondary sources, including detailed topic summaries and documents . Our website also contains reference material such as timelines , glossaries , a ‘who’s who’ and information on historiography . Students can also test their knowledge and recall with a range of online activities, including quizzes , crosswords and wordsearches . Primary sources aside, all content at Alpha History is written by qualified and experienced teachers, authors and historians.

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 7, 2024 | Original: November 9, 2009

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers’ Party, the group promoted German pride and anti-Semitism, and expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I. Hitler joined the party the year it was founded and became its leader in 1921. In 1933, he became chancellor of Germany and his Nazi government soon assumed dictatorial powers. After Germany’s defeat in World War II, the Nazi Party was outlawed and many of its officials were convicted of war crimes related to the Holocaust.

Nazi Party Origins

In 1919, army veteran Adolf Hitler , frustrated by Germany’s defeat in World War I —which had left the nation economically depressed and politically unstable—joined a fledgling political organization called the German Workers’ Party.

Founded earlier that same year by a small group of men including locksmith Anton Drexler and journalist Karl Harrer, the party promoted German nationalism and anti-Semitism, and felt that the Treaty of Versailles , the peace settlement that ended the war, was extremely unjust to Germany by burdening it with reparations it could never pay.

Hitler soon emerged as a charismatic public speaker and began attracting new members with speeches blaming Jews and Marxists for Germany’s problems and espousing extreme nationalism and the concept of an Aryan “master race.” In July 1921, he assumed leadership of the organization , which by then had been renamed the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ (abbreviated to Nazi) Party.

Did you know? Sales of Hitler's political autobiography “Mein Kampf,” sometimes referred to as the bible of the Nazi Party, made him a millionaire. From 1933 to 1945, free copies were given to every newlywed German couple. But after World War II, the publication of “Mein Kampf” in Germany became illegal.

Through the 1920s, Hitler gave speech after speech in which he stated that unemployment, rampant inflation, hunger and economic stagnation in postwar Germany would continue until there was a total revolution in German life. Most problems could be solved, he explained, if communists and Jews were driven from the nation. His fiery speeches swelled the ranks of the Nazi Party, especially among young, economically disadvantaged Germans.

Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich also joined the Nazis, including Ernst Röhm , the man responsible for recruiting the Sturmabteilung (SA) “strong arm” squads that Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch

In 1923, Hitler and his followers staged the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a failed takeover of the government in Bavaria, a state in southern Germany. Hitler had hoped that the “putsch,” or coup d’etat, would spark a larger revolution against the national government.

In the aftermath of the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years in prison but spent less than a year behind bars (during which time he dictated the first volume of Mein Kampf , or My Struggle, his political autobiography).

The publicity surrounding the Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler’s subsequent trial turned him into a national figure. After his release from prison, he set about rebuilding the Nazi Party and attempting to gain power through the election process.

Nazi Rise to Power

In 1929, Germany’s Weimar Republic entered a period of severe economic depression and widespread unemployment. The Nazis capitalized on the situation by criticizing the ruling government and began to win elections. In the July 1932 elections, they captured 230 out of 608 seats in the “ Reichstag ,” or German parliament.

In January 1933, Hitler was appointed German chancellor and his Nazi government soon came to control every aspect of German life. Under Nazi rule, all other political parties were banned.

In 1933, after coming to power, the Nazis established the Dachau concentration camp in Germany to detain political prisoners. Dachau evolved into a death camp where countless thousands of Jews died from malnutrition, disease and overwork—or were executed.

In addition to Jews, the camp’s prisoners included members of other groups Hitler considered unfit for the new Germany, including artists, intellectuals, Roma , the physically and mentally handicapped and homosexuals.

Nazi Foreign Policy

Once Hitler gained control of the government, he directed Nazi Germany’s foreign policy toward undoing the Treaty of Versailles and restoring Germany’s standing in the world. He railed against the treaty’s redrawn map of Europe and argued it denied Germany—Europe’s most populous state—“living space” for its growing population.

Although the Treaty of Versailles was explicitly based on the principle of the self-determination of peoples, he pointed out that it had separated Germans from Germans by creating such new postwar states as Austria and Czechoslovakia, where many Germans lived.

Germany Invades Poland

From the mid- to late 1930s, Hitler undermined the postwar international order step by step. He withdrew Germany from the League of Nations in 1933, rebuilt German armed forces beyond what was permitted by the Treaty of Versailles, reoccupied the German Rhineland in 1936, annexed Austria in 1938 and invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 .

When Nazi Germany moved toward Poland, Great Britain and France countered further aggression by guaranteeing Polish security. Nevertheless, Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. Six years of Nazi Party foreign policy had ignited World War II .

Nazis Fight to Dominate Europe

After conquering Poland, Hitler focused on defeating Britain and France. As the war expanded, the Nazi Party formed alliances with Japan and Italy in the Tripartite Pact of 1940, and honored its 1939 Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact with the Soviet Union until 1941, when Germany launched a massive blitzkrieg invasion of the Soviet Union.

In the brutal fighting that followed, Nazi troops tried to realize the long-held goal of crushing the world’s major communist power. After the United States entered the war in 1941, Germany found itself fighting in North Africa, Italy, France, the Balkans and a counterattacking Soviet Union.

At the beginning of the war in 1939, Hitler and his Nazi Party were fighting to dominate Europe; five years later they were fighting to survive.

The Holocaust

When Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933, they instituted a series of measures aimed at persecuting Germany’s Jewish citizens. By late 1938, Jews were banned from most public places in Germany.

During the war, the Nazis’ anti-Jewish campaigns increased in scale and ferocity. In the invasion and occupation of Poland, German troops shot thousands of Polish Jews, confined many to ghettoes where they starved to death and began sending others to death camps in various parts of Poland, where they were either killed immediately or forced into slave labor.

Holocaust Photos Reveal Horrors of Nazi Concentration Camps

Allied troops entering former Nazi territory at the close of World War II confronted heartbreaking scenes of unthinkable atrocities.

Auschwitz Survivors Recall Harrowing and Heroic Moments From the Death Camps

Estimates suggest that Nazis murdered 85 percent of the people at Auschwitz. Here are the stories of three who survived.

Horrors of Auschwitz: The Numbers Behind WWII’s Deadliest Concentration Camp

How many were killed, how many children were sent to the site and the numbers of people who attempted to escape are among the facts that reveal the scale of crimes committed at Auschwitz.

In 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Nazi death squads machine-gunned tens of thousands of Jews in the western regions of Soviet Russia.

In early 1942, at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin, the Nazi Party decided on the last phase of what it called the “ Final Solution ” of the “Jewish problem” and spelled out plans for the systematic murder of all European Jews in the Holocaust .

In 1942 and 1943, Jews in the western occupied countries including France and Belgium were deported by the thousands to the death camps mushrooming across Europe. In Poland, huge death camps such as Auschwitz began operating with ruthless efficiency.

The murder of Jews, communists, homosexuals, political prisoners and other people in German-occupied lands stopped only in last months of the war, as the German armies were retreating toward Berlin. By the time Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, some 6 million Jews had been killed.

Denazification

After the war ended in 1945, the Allies occupied Germany, outlawed the Nazi Party and worked to purge its influence from every aspect of German life. The party’s swastika flag quickly became a symbol of evil in modern postwar culture.

Although Hitler killed himself before he could be brought to justice, a number of Nazi officials were convicted of war crimes in the Nuremberg trials , which took place in Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945 to 1949.

The Nazi Party. Holocaust Encyclopedia . The Rise of the Nazi Party. College of Education, University of South Florida . Rise of the Nazi Party. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust .

HISTORY Vault: Third Reich: The Rise

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What was Nazi Germany?

Nazi Germany was the totalitarian regime that ran Germany, countries and regions annexed by Germany, and countries occupied by Germany during World War II, between January 30, 1933, when  Adolf Hitler  was named Chancellor of Germany, and May 8, 1945, when Germany surrendered to the Allied troops led by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union.

One of the central aspects of  Nazi Germany  was its racist ideology, especially its virulent antisemitism, based on the concept that the German, or Aryan, race was superior to all others, and that the presence of Jews and certain other groups such as the Roma and Sinti, polluted and threatened German society. In its efforts to “purify” German society, it also persecuted thousands on the basis of their  sexuality or physical and mental disabilities .

Totalitarian: seeking to control every aspect of the population’s existence according to ideological principles.

Antisemitism: hatred of Jews. Efforts to define this remain controversial but the definition and examples devised by the *International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance* are widely used by governments and other organisations

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Nazi Germany (1933-1945)

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Introduction

Bibliography, party and state, policing the reich, racism and biopolitics, economy and consumer politics, gender, youth, and sexuality, arts and culture, science, technology, and nature, military, foreign policy, and war, the holocaust, survival, resistance and rescue, transnational connections, book burnings across germany (1933), germany: territorial expansion (1935-1939), administrative structure under national socialism (1941), europe at the beginning of december 1941, concentration and extermination camps and major “euthanasia” centers, forced laborers by national origin (1944), europe in april 1944, jewish victims of the holocaust by country, sept. 1, 1939–⁠may 7, 1945, estimated fatalities during the second world war by country (1939-1945).

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reflections on the Holocaust

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Introduction

One of history’s darkest chapters, the Holocaust was the systematic killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II (1939–45). The list below provides links to a selection of articles about the Holocaust. It is divided into five sections: Background , Hitler and the Nazis , the Holocaust , Resistance , and Responses .

• anti-Semitism
• Weimar Republic
• Germany: Dictatorship Under Hitler
• rise of Fascism in Germany
• Franz von Papen
• Reichstag fire
• Nürnberg (Nuremberg) Laws
• Kristallnacht

Hitler and the Nazis

• Adolf Hitler
• Klaus Barbie
• Martin Bormann
• Adolf Eichmann
• Joseph Goebbels
• Hermann Göring
• Rudolf Hess
• Reinhard Heydrich
• Heinrich Himmler
• Josef Mengele
• Alfred Rosenberg
• Albert Speer
• Julius Streicher

The Holocaust

• concentration camp
• Mordecai Anielewicz
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Martin Niemöller
• Oskar Schindler
• Carl von Ossietzky
• Raoul Wallenberg
• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• Yitzhak Zuckerman
• Nürnberg (Nuremberg) trials
• literature of the Holocaust
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Art Spiegelman
• Elie Wiesel
• Simon Wiesenthal

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Why was Adolf Hitler significant?

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Adolf Hitler

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Hitler was of great historical importance—a term that does not imply a positive judgment—because his actions changed the course of the world. He was responsible for starting World War II , which resulted in the deaths of more than 50 million people. It also led to the extension of the Soviet Union ’s power in eastern, central, and Balkan Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve control in China , and marked the decisive shift of power away from western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union. In addition, Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust , the state-sponsored killing of six million Jews and millions of others.

Hitler’s rise to power traces to 1919, when he joined the German Workers’ Party that became the Nazi Party . With his oratorical skills and use of propaganda, he soon became its leader. Hitler gained popularity nationwide by exploiting unrest during the Great Depression , and in 1932 he placed second in the presidential race. Hitler’s various maneuvers resulted in the winner, Paul von Hindenburg , appointing him chancellor in January 1933. The following month the Reichstag fire occurred, and it provided an excuse for a decree overriding all guarantees of freedom. Then on March 23 the Enabling Act was passed, giving full powers to Hitler. When Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, the chancellorship and the presidency were merged, and Hitler secured his position as Führer (“leader”).

Hitler had an overriding ambition for territorial expansion, which was largely driven by his desire to reunify the German peoples and his pursuit of Lebensraum , “living space” that would enable Germans to become economically self-sufficient and militarily secure. Such goals were greeted with support by many within Germany who resented the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles , which had ended World War I . Through various means he was able to annex Austria and Czechoslovakia with little resistance in 1938–39. Then on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland , which had been guaranteed French and British military support should such an event occur. Two days later both countries declared war on Germany, launching World War II .

A key figure of Hitler’s inner circle was Joseph Goebbels , minister of propaganda and a fervent follower whom Hitler selected to succeed him as chancellor. However, Goebbels only held the post for one day before committing suicide. Also notable were Hermann Göring , who was a leader of the Nazi Party and one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state in Germany; Heinrich Himmler , who was second in power to Hitler; Joachim von Ribbentrop , foreign minister and chief negotiator of various treaties; Martin Bormann , who was one of Hitler’s closest lieutenants; and Walther Funk , an economist who served as president of the Reichsbank.

As Soviet troops entered the heart of Berlin , Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, in his underground bunker. Although there is some speculation about the manner of his death, it is widely believed that he shot himself. Eva Braun , whom he had recently married, also took her own life. According to his wishes, both bodies were burned and buried. Almost immediately, however, conspiracy theories began. The Soviets initially claimed that they were unable to confirm Hitler’s death and later spread rumors that he was alive. According to subsequent reports, however, the Soviets recovered his burnt remains, which were identified through dental records. Hitler’s body was secretly buried before being exhumed and cremated, with the ashes scattered in 1970.

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Adolf Hitler (born April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn , Austria—died April 30, 1945, Berlin , Germany) was the leader of the Nazi Party (from 1920/21) and chancellor ( Kanzler ) and Führer of Germany (1933–45). His worldview revolved around two concepts: territorial expansion and racial supremacy . Those themes informed his decision to invade Poland , which marked the start of World War II , as well as the systematic killing of six million Jews and millions of others during the Holocaust.

Hitler’s father, Alois (born 1837), was illegitimate . For a time he bore his mother’s name, Schicklgruber, but by 1876 he had established his family claim to the surname Hitler. Adolf never used any other surname.

After his father’s retirement from the state customs service, Adolf Hitler spent most of his childhood in Linz , the capital of Upper Austria . It remained his favourite city throughout his life, and he expressed his wish to be buried there. Alois Hitler died in 1903 but left an adequate pension and savings to support his wife and children. Although Hitler feared and disliked his father, he was a devoted son to his mother, who died after much suffering in 1907. With a mixed record as a student, Hitler never advanced beyond a secondary education . After leaving school, he visited Vienna , then returned to Linz, where he dreamed of becoming an artist. Later, he used the small allowance he continued to draw to maintain himself in Vienna. He wished to study art, for which he had some faculties , but he twice failed to secure entry to the Academy of Fine Arts. For some years he lived a lonely and isolated life, earning a precarious livelihood by painting postcards and advertisements and drifting from one municipal hostel to another. Hitler already showed traits that characterized his later life: loneliness and secretiveness, a bohemian mode of everyday existence, and hatred of cosmopolitanism and of the multinational character of Vienna.

In 1913 Hitler moved to Munich . Screened for Austrian military service in February 1914, he was classified as unfit because of inadequate physical vigour; but when World War I broke out, he petitioned Bavarian King Louis III to be allowed to serve, and one day after submitting that request, he was notified that he would be permitted to join the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. After some eight weeks of training, Hitler was deployed in October 1914 to Belgium , where he participated in the First Battle of Ypres . He served throughout the war, was wounded in October 1916, and was gassed two years later near Ypres . He was hospitalized when the conflict ended. During the war, he was continuously in the front line as a headquarters runner; his bravery in action was rewarded with the Iron Cross , Second Class, in December 1914, and the Iron Cross, First Class (a rare decoration for a corporal), in August 1918. He greeted the war with enthusiasm, as a great relief from the frustration and aimlessness of civilian life. He found discipline and comradeship satisfying and was confirmed in his belief in the heroic virtues of war .

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Nazi Germany 1933-1939: Early Stages of Persecution

How Hitler laid the groundwork for genocide.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was named chancellor , the most powerful position in the German government, by the aged President Hindenburg, who hoped Hitler could lead the nation out of its grave political and economic crisis. Hitler was the leader of the right-wing National Socialist German Workers Party (called “the Nazi Party” for short). It was, by 1933, one of the strongest parties in Germany, even though — reflecting the country’s multiparty system — the Nazis had won only a plurality of 33 percent of the votes in the 1932 elections to the German parliament (Reichstag).

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Dismantling Germany’s Democracy

Once in power, Hitler moved quickly to end German democracy. He convinced his cabinet to invoke emergency clauses of the constitution that permitted the suspension of individual freedoms of press, speech, and assembly. Special security forces — the Gestapo, the Storm Troopers (SA), and the SS — murdered or arrested leaders of opposition political parties (Communists, socialists, and liberals). The Enabling Act of March 23, 1933 — forced through the Reichstag already purged of many political opponents –gave dictatorial powers to Hitler.

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READ: Jewish Reactions to the Enabling Act (March 24, 1933)

Also in 1933, the Nazis began to put into practice their racial ideology. The Nazis believed that the Germans were “racially superior” and that there was a struggle for survival between them and inferior races. They saw Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and the handicapped as a serious biological threat to the purity of the “German (Aryan) Race,” what they called the master race.

Jews, who numbered about 525,000 in Germany (less than one percent of the total population in 1933) were the principal target of Nazi hatred. The Nazis identified Jews as a race and defined this race as “inferior.” They also spewed hate-mongering propaganda that unfairly blamed Jews for Germany’s economic depression and the country’s defeat in World War I (1914-1918).

Nuremberg Laws, Property Seizures and Kristallnacht

In 1933, new German laws forced Jews out of their civil service jobs, university and law court positions, and other areas of public life. In April 1933, laws proclaimed at Nuremberg made Jews second-class citizens. These Nuremberg Laws defined Jews, not by their religion or by how they wanted to identify themselves, but by the religious affiliation of their grandparents. Between 1937 and 1939, new anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews further and made daily life very difficult for them. Jews could not attend public schools; go to theaters, cinema, or vacation resorts; or reside or even walk in certain sections of German cities.

Also between 1937 and 1939, Jews increasingly were forced from Germany’s economic life. The Nazis either seized Jewish businesses and properties outright or forced Jews to sell them at bargain prices. In November 1938, the Nazis organized a riot (pogrom), known as Kristallnacht (the “Night of Broken Glass”). This attack against German and Austrian Jews included the physical destruction of synagogues and Jewish-owned stores, the arrest of Jewish men, the vandalization of homes, and the murder of individuals.

Non-Jewish Targets of Persecution

Although Jews were the main target of Nazi hatred, the Nazis persecuted other groups they viewed as racially or genetically “inferior.” Nazi racial ideology was buttressed by scientists who advocated “selective breeding” (eugenics) to “improve” the human race. Laws passed between 1933 and 1935 aimed to reduce the future number of genetic “inferiors” through involuntary sterilization programs: 320,000 to 350,000 individuals judged physically or mentally handicapped were subjected to surgical or radiation procedures so they could not have children. Supporters of sterilization also argued that the handicapped burdened the community with the costs of their care. Many of Germany’s 30,000 Roma (Gypsies) were also eventually sterilized and prohibited, along with Blacks, from intermarrying with Germans. About 500 children of mixed African-German backgrounds were also sterilized. New laws combined traditional prejudices with the racism of the Nazis, which defined Roma by “race” and as “criminal and asocial.”

Another consequence of Hitler’s ruthless dictatorship in the 1930s was the arrest of political opponents and trade unionists and others whom the Nazis labeled “undesirables” and “enemies of the state.” Some 5,000 to 15,000 homosexuals were imprisoned in concentration camps; under the 1935 Nazi-revised criminal code, the mere denunciation of a man as “homosexual” could result in arrest, trial, and conviction. Jehovah’s Witnesses, who numbered at least 25,000 in Germany, were banned as an organization as early as April 1933, because the beliefs of this religious group prohibited them from swearing any oath to the state or serving in the German military. Their literature was confiscated, and they lost their jobs, unemployment benefits, pensions, and all social welfare benefits. Many Witnesses were sent to prisons and concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and their children were sent to juvenile detention homes and orphanages.

Refugees With No Place to Go

Between 1933 and 1936, thousand of people, mostly political prisoners, were imprisoned in concentrations camps, while several thousand German Roma were confined in special municipal camps. The first systematic round-up of German and Austrian Jews occurred after Kristallnacht, when approximately 30,000 Jewish men were deported to Dachau and other concentration camps, and several hundred Jewish women were sent to local jails. The wave of arrests in 1938 also included several thousand German and Austrian Roma.

Between 1933 and 1939, about half of the German-Jewish population and more than two-thirds of Austrian Jews (1938-1939) fled Nazi persecution. They emigrated mainly to the United States, Palestine , elsewhere in Europe (where many would be later trapped by Nazi conquests during the war), Latin America, and Japanese-occupied Shanghai (which required no visas for entry). Jews who remained under Nazi rule were either unwilling to uproot themselves or unable to obtain visas, sponsors in host countries, or funds for emigration. Most foreign countries, including the United States , Canada, Britain, and France, were unwilling to admit very large numbers of refugees.

Reprinted courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum .

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Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933-1939

“That was the heart of the problem of German Jewry: it was so much a part of German society that the Nazi blow hit it from within. It didn’t come from without, as for the Polish Jews, who were occupied. No one occupied Germany.”

Walter Zwi Bacharach

During the 1920s and 1930s Europe saw the outbreak of an aggressive and antisemitic nationalism that made racial and social claims and which saw the Jews as an inferior and dangerous race. It sought to limit Jewish economic activity and distance Jews from public life in their countries. With Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany this racial antisemitism became the official ideology and policy of the German regime. In 1938 an organized campaign took place that included destroying synagogues, mass arrests, destruction and looting of Jewish-owned businesses, and official registration of Jewish property in preparation for eventual confiscation. In addition to Jews, other groups who were deemed enemies of the Reich, such as the Roma and Sinti , homosexuals and the mentally ill, were also persecuted.

Antisemitism

Rise of the Nazis and Beginning of Persecution

Non-Jewish Victims of Persecution in Germany

1938 – “The Fateful Year”

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The Impact of Nazi Propaganda: Visual Essay

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Propaganda was one of the most important tools the Nazis used to shape the beliefs and attitudes of the German public. Through posters, film, radio, museum exhibits, and other media, they bombarded the German public with messages designed to build support for and gain acceptance of their vision for the future of Germany. The gallery of images below exhibits several examples of Nazi propaganda, and the introduction that follows explores the history of propaganda and how the Nazis sought to use it to further their goals.

Examples of Nazi Propaganda

Nazi national welfare program.

This 1934 propaganda poster in support of the national welfare program reads: “National health, national community, child protection, protection of mothers, care for travelers, are the tasks of the NS-Welfare Service. Join now!”

Nazi Recruitment Propaganda

This mid-1930s poster says, “The NSDAP [Nazi Party] protects the people. Your fellow comrades need your advice and help, so join the local party organization.

Hitler Youth Propaganda

This 1935 poster promotes the Hitler Youth by stating: “Youth serves the Führer! All ten-year-olds into the Hitler Youth.”

Nazi Propaganda Newspaper

An issue of the antisemitic propaganda newspaper  Der Stürmer  (The Attacker) is posted on the sidewalk in Worms, Germany, in 1935. The headline above the case says, "The Jews Are Our Misfortune."

Triumph of the Will Propaganda Film

Leni Riefenstahl's documentary-style film glorified Hitler and the Nazi Party. It was shot at the 1934 Nazi Party congress and rally in Nuremberg.

Propaganda Portrait of Hitler

This portrait,  The Standard Bearer , was painted by artist Hubert Lanzinger and displayed in the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich in 1937.

The Eternal Jew

This 1938 poster advertises a popular antisemitic traveling exhibit called  Der Ewige Jude  (The Eternal Jew).

Antisemitic Display at Der Ewige Jude

Women examining a display at the  Der Ewige Jude  (The Eternal Jew) exhibition in the Reichstag building in November 1938.

Antisemitic Children's Book

From the 1938 antisemitic children’s book  The Poisonous Mushroom . The boy is drawing a nose on the chalkboard, and the caption reads: “The Jewish nose is crooked at its tip. It looks like a 6.”

The Definition and History of Propaganda

Propaganda is information that is intended to persuade an audience to accept a particular idea or cause, often by using biased material or by stirring up emotions. This was one of the most powerful tools the Nazis used to consolidate their power and create a German “national community” in the mid-1930s.

Hitler and Goebbels did not invent propaganda. The word itself was coined by the Catholic Church to describe its efforts to discredit Protestant teachings in the 1600s. Over the years, almost every nation has used propaganda to unite its people in wartime. Both sides spread propaganda during World War I, for example.

How the Nazis Used Propaganda

The Nazis were notable for making propaganda a key element of government even before Germany went to war again. One of Hitler’s first acts as chancellor was to establish the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, demonstrating his belief that controlling information was as important as controlling the military and the economy. He appointed Joseph Goebbels as director. Through the ministry, Goebbels was able to penetrate virtually every form of German media, from newspapers, film, radio, posters, and rallies to museum exhibits and school textbooks, with Nazi propaganda. 

Whether or not propaganda was truthful or tasteful was irrelevant to the Nazis. Goebbels wrote in his diary, "no one can say your propaganda is too rough, too mean; these are not criteria by which it may be characterized. It ought not be decent nor ought it be gentle or soft or humble; it ought to lead to success." 1 Hitler wrote in  Mein Kampf  that to achieve its purpose, propaganda must "be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away."

Some Nazi propaganda used positive images to glorify the government’s leaders and its various activities, projecting a glowing vision of the “national community.” Nazi propaganda could also be ugly and negative, creating fear and loathing by portraying the regime’s “enemies” as dangerous and even sub-human. The Nazis’ distribution of antisemitic films, newspaper cartoons, and even children’s books aroused centuries-old prejudices against Jews and also presented new ideas about the racial impurity of Jews. The newspaper  Der Stürmer  (The Attacker), published by Nazi Party member Julius Streicher, was a key outlet for antisemitic propaganda. 

This visual essay includes a selection of Nazi propaganda images, both “positive” and “negative.” It focuses on posters that Germans would have seen in newspapers like  Der Stürmer  and passed in the streets, in workplaces, and in schools. Some of these posters were advertisements for traveling exhibits—on topics like “The Eternal Jew” or the evils of communism—that were themselves examples of propaganda. 

Connection Questions

• As you explore the images in this visual essay, consider what each image is trying to communicate to the viewer. Who is the audience for this message? How is the message conveyed?
• Do you notice any themes or patterns in this group of propaganda images? How do the ideas in these images connect to what you have already learned about Nazi ideology? How do they extend your thinking about Nazi ideas? 
• Based on the images you analyze, how do you think the Nazis used propaganda to define the identities of individuals and groups? What groups and individuals did Nazi propaganda glorify? What stereotypes did it promote? 
• Why was propaganda so important to Nazi leadership? How do you think Nazi propaganda influenced the attitudes and actions of Germans in the 1930s?
• Some scholars caution that there are limits to the power of propaganda; they think it succeeds not because it persuades the public to believe an entirely new set of ideas but because it expresses beliefs people already hold. Scholar Daniel Goldhagen writes: “No man, [no] Hitler, no matter how powerful he is, can move people against their hopes and desires. Hitler, as powerful a figure as he was, as charismatic as he was, could never have accomplished this [the Holocaust] had there not been tens of thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands of ordinary Germans who were willing to help him.” 2  Do you agree? Would people have rejected Nazi propaganda if they did not already share, to some extent, the beliefs it communicated? 
• Can you think of examples of propaganda in society today? How do you think this propaganda influences the attitudes and actions of people today? Is there a difference between the impact of propaganda in a democracy that has a free press and an open marketplace of ideas and the impact of propaganda in a dictatorship with fewer non-governmental sources of information? 
• 1 Quoted in Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 90.
• 2 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, interview with Richard Heffner, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Part I,” The Open Mind (TV program), PBS, July 9, 1996.

How to Cite This Reading

Facing History & Ourselves, “ The Impact of Nazi Propaganda: Visual Essay ”, last updated February 5, 2024.

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Nazi Racism: An Overview

Racism fueled Nazi ideology and policies. The Nazis viewed the world as being divided up into competing inferior and superior races, each struggling for survival and dominance. They believed the Jews were not a religious denomination, but a dangerous non-European “race.” Nazi racism would produce murder on an unprecedented scale.

Racists believe that innate, inherited characteristics biologically determine human behavior. In the early twentieth-century, such views on race were widely accepted in many parts of the world. In fact, race is not biologically based, it is a cultural classification of groups.

According to Nazi theories of race, Germans and other Europeans had perceived superior physical and mental traits. They considered European peoples to be “Aryans,” descended from the ancient Indo-Europeans who settled throughout the European continent as well as in Iran and India.

Racial antisemitism is the prejudice against or hatred of Jews based on false scientific theories. This aspect of racism was always an integral part of Nazism.

Racists are people who believe that innate, inherited characteristics biologically determine human behavior.

The doctrine of racism asserts that blood determines national-ethnic identity. Within a racist framework, the value of a human being is not determined by his or her individuality, but instead by membership in a so-called "racial collective nation." Many intellectuals, including scientists, have lent pseudoscientific support to racist thinking. Nineteenth century racist thinkers, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, exerted a significant influence on many in Adolf Hitler's generation.

Racism, including racial antisemitism (prejudice against or hatred of Jews based on false biological theories), was always an integral part of German National Socialism (Nazism).

An antisemitic illustration from a Nazi film strip. The caption, translated from German, states: "As an alien race Jews had no civil rights in the middle ages. They had to reside in a restricted section of town, in a ghetto." Place and date uncertain.

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The Nazis perceived all of human history as the history of a biologically determined struggle among people of different races. The Nazis held that political movements such as Marxism, communism, pacifism, and internationalism were anti-nationalist and reflected a dangerous, racially based Jewish intellectualism.

In 1931, the SS ( Schutzstaffel ; the elite guard of the Nazi state) established a Race and Settlement Office to conduct race "research" and to determine the suitability of potential spouses for members of the SS. After the Nazis came to power, they passed the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935, which codified a supposedly biological definition of Jewishness.

The elder of two daughters born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Helene was raised as a Catholic in Vienna. Her father died in action during World War I when Helene was just 5 years old, and her mother remarried when Helene was 15. Known affectionately as Helly, Helene loved to swim and go to the opera. After finishing her secondary education she entered law school.

1933-39: At 19 Helene first showed signs of mental illness. Her condition worsened during 1934, and by 1935 she had to give up her law studies and her job as a legal secretary. After losing her trusted fox terrier, Lydi, she suffered a major breakdown. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and was placed in Vienna's Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital. Two years later, in March 1938, the Germans annexed Austria to Germany.

1940: Helene was confined in Steinhof and was not allowed home even though her condition had improved. Her parents were led to believe that she would soon be released. Instead, Helene's mother was informed in August that Helene had been transferred to a hospital in Niedernhart, just across the border in Bavaria. In fact, Helene was transferred to a converted prison in Brandenburg, Germany, where she was undressed, subjected to a physical examination, and then led into a shower room.

Helene was one of 9,772 persons gassed that year in the Brandenburg " euthanasia " center. She was officially listed as dying in her room of "acute schizophrenic excitement."

Nazi racists viewed the mentally and physically ill as blemishes upon the genetic landscape of the so-called master race and, when they reproduced, as a biological danger to the purity of the Aryan race. After careful planning and data collection during the last six months of 1939, German physicians began to murder disabled residents of institutions throughout Germany in an operation that they euphemistically called "euthanasia".

According to Nazi theories of race, Germans and other northern Europeans were "Aryans," a superior race. During World War II, Nazi physicians conducted bogus medical experiments seeking to identify physical evidence of Aryan superiority and non-Aryan inferiority. Despite killing countless non-Aryan prisoners in the course of these experiments, the Nazis could not find any evidence for their theories of biological racial differences among human beings.

Once in power, the Nazis implemented racial laws and policies that deprived Jews, Black people, and Roma (Gypsies) of their rights. During World War II , the Nazi leadership set about what they referred to as an "ethnic housecleaning" in the occupied Eastern territories of Poland and the Soviet Union. This policy included the murder and annihilation of so-called enemy "races," including the genocide of European Jews and the destruction of the leadership of the Slavic peoples.

Nazi racism produced murder on an unprecedented scale.

Critical Thinking Questions

• Despite overwhelming scientific data to the contrary, many people still believe in the superiority of certain races. Why might individuals hold onto a belief that has been discredited?
• How can racism keep a party or political group in power?
• What information do racists use to justify their beliefs? Jewish people are not a racial group, and yet the Nazis and others believed Jews were a racial, existential threat. How can radical beliefs, like these, be challenged and countered?
• How can knowledge of the events in Germany and Europe before the Nazis came to power help citizens today respond to threats of genocide and mass atrocity in the world?

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