50 Fun Facts About Nazi Germany

Who appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933?

The elderly president acted reluctantly under pressure from politicians and industrialists; the Nazis called the day the Machtergreifung, or seizure of power.

'Third Reich' cast Nazi Germany as heir to the Kaiser's Germany and which earlier realm?

The phrase came from Arthur Moeller van den Bruck's 1923 book Das Dritte Reich; the Nazis also spoke of a Thousand-Year Reich, which lasted twelve.

What was the Nazi Party's share of the federal vote in 1928, before the Depression?

By 1930, with millions unemployed, it had jumped to 18.3% and second place in the Reichstag.

Hitler's failed 1923 coup in Munich is known as what?

Inspired by Mussolini's March on Rome, he marched about 600 SA men on the Bürgerbräukeller alongside General Ludendorff.

Which book did Hitler write while imprisoned after the 1923 putsch?

Volume one appeared in 1925 and volume two in 1926, about 750 pages in all; SS member No. 2 Emil Maurice helped transcribe it.

A Dutch communist was convicted of setting fire to which building on 27 February 1933?

Marinus van der Lubbe was blamed, and the next day's Reichstag Fire Decree rescinded most civil liberties and allowed indefinite detention.

By what vote did the German parliament pass the Enabling Act on 23 March 1933?

It let Hitler's cabinet pass laws without parliament or president; SA intimidation and the fire decree kept opponents away to secure the two-thirds majority.

On what date did Germany formally become a one-party state?

The Law Against the Formation of Parties made the Nazi Party the sole legal party after the Social Democrats and Nationalists had been crushed.

Which SA chief of staff was arrested and shot in the Night of the Long Knives?

Up to 200 people died in the 1934 purge, carried out by the SS and Gestapo; Strasser and former chancellor Schleicher were also killed.

After Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, what happened to the office of Reich President?

Hitler became Führer und Reichskanzler, and soldiers and civil servants were made to swear personal oaths of obedience to him.

Which Deputy Führer's office had to approve all legislation proposed by cabinet ministers?

He could also veto senior civil-service appointments before his bizarre solo flight to Scotland in 1941.

Who ran the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda?

His ministry promised peace and plenty in a Marxist-free Germany free of the Versailles constraints.

How many members did the SS have by 1938 under Heinrich Himmler?

It began as a small bodyguard unit inside the SA; Himmler had led it since 1929 and its military arm became the Waffen-SS.

Which economist devised the Mefo bills used to finance rearmament through deficit spending from 1933?

When the promissory notes were presented, the Reichsbank simply printed money; unemployment then stood at 30 per cent.

How many new jobs did public works projects create in 1934 alone?

Six million people had been unemployed; the Autobahn network was the showpiece project.

How many troops did Hitler send into the demilitarised Rhineland on 7 March 1936?

He used the Franco-Soviet treaty as a pretext; Britain and France judged the breach of Versailles not worth a war.

Which Olympic tradition was invented for the 1936 Berlin Games?

They were also the first televised Games; Jesse Owens won four golds while Germany topped the table with 101 medals.

Which filmmaker made Triumph of the Will and Olympia?

Her films documented the 1934 party rally and the 1936 Olympics and pioneered tracking-camera and telephoto techniques.

Which banner became Germany's sole national flag in September 1935?

The Weimar tricolour had been abolished in 1933, and the party's Horst Wessel Song became a second national anthem.

The 1935 laws that stripped German Jews of basic rights are named after which city?

They banned intermarriage and barred Jews from professions such as law, medicine and education.

The shooting of diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris in November 1938 was the pretext for which pogrom?

SA members destroyed synagogues and Jewish property across Germany and at least 91 German Jews were murdered in the Night of Broken Glass.

How many modern artworks were removed from German museums under the Nazi campaign against 'degenerate' art?

The 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich showed 650 confiscated works as a warning, opposite the Great German Art Exhibition.

From March 1939 membership of the Hitler Youth became compulsory for children over what age?

Girls joined the Jungmädelbund and then the League of German Girls; education stressed racial biology and fitness for service.

How many children earned a mother the gold Cross of Honour of the German Mother?

Bronze went for four children and silver for six, alongside subsidies for large families.

Which designer drew up the KdF-Wagen, the 'Strength Through Joy' people's car?

A prototype was shown in Berlin in February 1939, but the factory switched to military vehicles and no buyer received one until after the war.

Which architect built the party rally grounds and the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin?

His plans for Berlin included a dome modelled on the Pantheon and an arch twice the height of the Arc de Triomphe; neither was built.

Which country did Germany annex in the Anschluss of 1938?

Its foreign-exchange reserves and weapons stockpiles were shipped to Germany, and the Reichswerke Hermann Göring took over its steel and coal.

Which British prime minister signed the Munich Agreement and promised 'peace for our time'?

Signed on 29 September 1938, it forced Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland; he was cheered on landing in London.

Which German foreign minister negotiated the August 1939 non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union?

Secret protocols divided Poland and the Baltic states between the two powers; he was later hanged by the Allies.

Which Free City did Germany capture on 1 September 1939 as it invaded Poland?

Britain and France declared war two days later, and the Soviets attacked Poland from the east on 17 September.

What was the German name for the tactic of quick coordinated assaults that avoided enemy strong points?

Artillery, then bombing and strafing, then tanks, then infantry; the economy could not have sustained a long war of attrition.

On what date did France surrender to Germany in 1940?

Luxembourg and the Netherlands had fallen quickly and the British and French were evacuated at Dunkirk before the collapse.

Action T4 was a programme of systematic murder targeting whom?

Gas chambers and gas vans using carbon monoxide were in use by early 1940, methods later transferred to the death camps.

Which SS official called the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942?

Held in a Berlin suburb, it coordinated government departments in implementing the murder of Europe's Jews, whom the Nazis counted at eleven million.

How many Romani people were deported to Auschwitz, of whom 19,000 died?

Himmler ordered their deportation from Germany in December 1942 with few exceptions.

Which German field marshal's Afrika Korps was defeated in Egypt by Montgomery's forces?

After Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943, the Germans had lost most of their eastern gains by year's end.

Which German army officer planted the briefcase bomb in the 20 July 1944 plot?

Also called Operation Valkyrie, it failed partly because of where the briefcase ended up; reprisals brought 7,000 arrests and more than 4,900 executions.

How many people were executed in the reprisals after the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt?

The Ardennes Offensive that December was Germany's last major attack in the west.

On what date did Hitler and Eva Braun kill themselves in the Führerbunker?

Soviet troops were within two blocks of the Reich Chancellery; Berlin surrendered to General Chuikov two days later.

Which Grand Admiral succeeded Hitler as Reich President?

His government lasted only days before Germany capitulated in May 1945.

How many top Nazi officials were tried at the main Allied war-crimes trial of 1945–46?

All but three were convicted and twelve sentenced to death; twelve further trials dealt with 184 more defendants.

Whose 1939 German research showed a causal link between smoking and lung cancer?

Smoking was banned in many workplaces, on trains and among on-duty troops, and asbestos was also targeted.

On 1 April 1933 Hitler declared a national boycott of what?

Six days later the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service forced non-Aryan civil servants and lawyers out.

Which Nazi ideologue planned to replace church Bibles and crosses with Mein Kampf?

He considered Catholicism among the Nazis' chief enemies and was hanged in 1946.

On which date did the Battle of Berlin end with the city's surrender to Soviet forces?

General Helmuth Weidling gave up the capital to Vasily Chuikov after sixteen days of fighting.

What did the Nazis call the eastern 'living space' they intended to seize for Germanic settlement?

The 1920 party platform combined it with rejection of Versailles, antisemitism and anti-Bolshevism.

Which Nazi plans for the occupied East after the 1941 Soviet invasion envisaged mass starvation and colonisation?

They were part of what the regime itself treated as a war of extermination in Eastern Europe.

Whom did Hitler name Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan on 18 October 1936?

By 1935 military spending already made up 73 percent of government purchases of goods and services.

In which year did Germany regain the Saarland through a referendum?

The Saar had been a French protectorate under the Treaty of Versailles; Austria followed in the Anschluss of 1938.

Roughly how many death sentences did the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) hand down between 1934 and 1945?

The court was created in 1934 specifically to handle political cases.