Concerned American
en.m.wikipedia.org
Germany (1933–1945)
Nazism
The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, espoused a form of fascism that incorporated fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and the use of eugenics into its creed. Its extreme nationalism originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist Völkisch movement which had been a prominent aspect of German nationalism since the late 19th century, and it was strongly influenced by the Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged after Germany's defeat in World War I, from which came the party's underlying "cult of violence". Nazism subscribed to pseudo-scientific theories of a racial hierarchy and social Darwinism, identifying the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race.
On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, the head of government, by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, the head of State. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all sources of political opposition and it also began to consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the offices and powers of the Chancellery and the Presidency. Genocide and mass murder became hallmarks of the regime.
Starting in 1939, hundreds of thousands of German citizens with mental or physical disabilities were murdered in hospitals and asylums. Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads accompanied the German armed forces inside the occupied territories and conducted the mass killings of millions of Jews and other Holocaust victims. After 1941, millions of others were imprisoned, worked to death, or murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. This genocide is known as the Holocaust.
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