Totalitarianism

Question 1

What is this ? contrast totalitarianism with conservative authoritarianism ?

Answer 1

Conservative dictatorships suppress political parties and dissent but don’t have activist statism. They don’t promote a revolutionary new ideology but favor the church and old wealthy or aristocratic elites. In contrast, Stalin’s USSR was a very activist state, which suppressed all dissent but also indoctrinated people in a new world view and sought to replace all vestiges of the past like the church with it.
Stalin rapidly modernized the USSR and built up big armies but was basically defensive. Hitler’s germany and Mussolini’s Italy were already modern and sought to be conquerors.

Totalitarian regimes control all aspects of life. There is no such thing as pluralism or mobilization in the regime. There are only 2 sorts of regimes so far: communism under Stalin, and Fascist under Hitler, not Mussolini.
All aspects of life: therefore, controlling culture, economy, education, family, friends, and morals/beliefs.
Communism: They have this Utopian Ideology that they follow to make things right. They look toward the future rather than the past.
While Fascist/Nazis: they look toward the “glorious” past until the scapegoats: in this case the jews, messed things up
and also, Nazis built on an ideology that agrarian race is superior, all other races are inferior!

Authoritarian regimes: there is some sort of pluralism, but there can only be one sort of pluralism, if there is political pluralism, then there can’t be social pluralism and vice versa. There can also be a little bit of mobilization, yet they can’t protest against gov’t or the law

Question 2

What were the Tools of Dictatorship?

Answer 2

Right-wing totalitarian regimes (particularly the Nazis) have arisen in relatively advanced societies, relying on the support of traditional economic elites to attain power. In contrast, left-wing totalitarian regimes have arisen in relatively undeveloped countries through the unleashing of revolutionary violence and terror. Such violence and terror are also the primary tools of right-wing totalitarian regimes to maintain compliance with authority.

Propaganda is very important and effective tool in the formation and development of a dictatorship. A dictatorship is a form of government where the ruler has absolute power. An example of a dictator was the malicious Hitler who used modern technology to terrorize humanity. Much like Hitler, Mustapha Mond and his society used the system of totalitarianism (dictatorship) to control the civilized people in Brave New World.

Question 3

What was Russia Like?

Answer 3

True or not, such a rumor made the rounds in Moscow and the issueof Novy Mir in which it appeared was confiscated by the authorities. Pilnyak was arrested in late October 1937 and accused of being a Japanese spy. This seemed a plausible charge for he had visited Japan, but it was used to remove him as an inconvenient critic of the regime. He was shot in April 1938, one of many Soviet writers and poets who perished in Stalin’s Great Terror of 1938-39.

The moment Lenin stepped into power, he knew what he wanted. All along, ever since the start, Lenin had wanted a Proletariat Revolution, which had been acheived, and then a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, in which he would rule on their behalf. His government would have complete power and the people would not have any opportunity to decide if they wished to be controlled by other parties. Marx had said in his writings that this was necessary to put down all opposition and put Communist reforms into place.

All political parties had been banned and party committees were set up all over to govern Russia. The most important committee was the Central Committee, made up of 3 sub-committees called the Orgburo, the Politburo and the Secretariat. When Lenin promised that a Consituent Assembly would be formed, he fulfilled his promise by holding elections immediately. However, it met only once and was disbanded shortly after.

The Bolsheviks had a secret police known as the Cheka. A Polish-born Communist by the name of Felix Dzerzhinsky was appointed the head of the Cheka. Their job was similar to that of the Okhrana, to hunt down opponents and critics of the Bolsheviks. These people were arrested, jailed, tortured and killed. The Cheka attacked many groups, including the Liberals, the Mensheviks and the SRs.

Question 4

What was Italy like?

Answer 4

The new state of Italy was far from being a great success in the years before 1914; the strain of the First World War on her precarious economy and the bitter disappointment at her treatment by the Versailles Treaty caused growing discontent. Between 1919 and 1922 there were five different governments, all of which were incapable of taking decisive action that the situation demanded. In 1919 Benito Mussolini founded the Fascist party which won 35 seats in the 1921 elections. At the same time there seemed to be a real danger of a left-wing seizure of power; in an atmosphere of strikes and riots, the fascists staged a ‘March on Rome’ which culminated in King Emmanuel III inviting Mussolini to form a government in October 1922. Mussolini remained in effective power until July 1943.

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism – born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision – the alternative of life or death….

Question 5

What was Nazi Germany like ?

Answer 5

Nazi Germany, also known as the Third Reich, is the common name for Germany during the period from 1933 to 1945, when its government was controlled by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP; Nazi Party). Under Hitler’s rule, Germany was transformed from a republic into a dictatorship using the process of Gleichschaltung (coordination). The country was a totalitarian state after August 1934. Nazi Germany ceased to exist after the Allied Forces defeated the Wehrmacht in May 1945, thus ending World War II in Europe.[1]
On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler’s appointment began the process of systematic elimination of all political opposition and consolidation of power, resulting in Hitler becoming the sole leader of Germany. On 2 August 1934, upon the death of President Hindenburg, Hitler became the dictator of Germany with the merger of the powers and offices of the Chancellery with the Presidency of the Weimar Republic. This legislation was affirmed by a national referendum vote on 19 August 1934. Through this legislation and referendum Hitler became the sole leader, Führer (“leader”), of Germany.[2] The state idolized Hitler as its leader, centralizing all power in his hands. Historians have emphasized the hypnotic effect of Hitler’s rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes on small groups.

Kessel writes, “Overwhelmingly … Germans speak with mystification of Hitler’s ‘hypnotic’ appeal…“[3] Under the Führerprinzip (leader principle), the Führer’s word was above all other laws. Top officials reported to Hitler and followed his policies, but they had considerable autonomy in deciding how those policies would be applied. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power and gain favor with the Führer.[4] In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazi government restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy of free-market and central-planning practices.[5] Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of high speed highways (Autobahns). The return to economic stability gave the regime enormous popularity. All opposition to Hitler’s rule was ruthlessly suppressed, with the leadership killed, imprisoned or in exile.
Racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of Nazi Germany in terms of ideology, propaganda and daily practice. The Gestapo (secret state police) and SS under Heinrich Himmler destroyed the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition, and persecuted and murdered Jews and other “undesirables.” According to a 19th century anthropological theory, the Germanic peoples—who were also referred to as the Nordic race—were the purest representation of the Aryan race, and were therefore the master race. Education focused on racial biology, population policy, and physical fitness. Membership in the Hitler Youth organization became compulsory. The number of women enrolled in post-secondary education plummeted, and career opportunities were curtailed. Calling women’s rights a “product of the Jewish intellect,” the Nazis practiced what they called “emancipation from emancipation.”[6] Entertainment and tourism were organized via the Strength Through Joy program. The government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific forms of art and discouraging or banning others. The Nazis mounted the infamous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition in 1937.[7] Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, and Hitler’s hypnotizing oratory to control public opinion.[8] The 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage.
Germany made increasingly aggressive demands, threatening war if they were not met. Britain and France responded with appeasement, hoping Hitler would finally be satisfied.[9] Austria was annexed in 1938, and the Sudetenland was taken via the Munich Agreement in 1938, with the rest of Czechoslovakia taken over in 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939, starting World War II. In alliance with Benito Mussolini’s Italy, Germany conquered France and most of Europe by 1940, and threatened its remaining major foe: Great Britain. Reich Commissariats took brutal control of conquered areas, and a German administration termed the General Government was established in Poland. Concentration camps, established as early as 1933, were used to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime. The number of camps quadrupled between 1939 and 1942 to 300+, as slave laborers from across Europe, Jews, political prisoners, criminals, homosexuals, gypsies, Christians, the mentally ill and others were imprisoned. The system that began as an instrument of political oppression 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 in the major military defeats of the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk in 1943. The Soviet counter-attacks became the largest land battles in history. Large-scale systematic bombing of all major German cities, rail lines and oil plants escalated in 1944, shutting down the Luftwaffe (German Air Force). Germany was overrun in 1945 by the Soviets from the east and the Allies from the west. The victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials.

In an attempt to resolve their persistent shortage of oil, the Germans launched Fall Blau (Case Blue), an offensive aimed against the Caucasian oilfields, in the summer of 1942.[91] The Soviets launched a counteroffensive on 19 November, codenamed Operation Uranus, designed to encircle the German armies and trap them in Stalingrad; this goal was accomplished on 23 November.[92] Reichsminister of Aviation Göring assured Hitler that the trapped 6th Army could be adequately supplied by air, but due to poor weather, a lack of aircraft, and mechanical difficulties, this turned out not to be the case.[93] Hitler’s refusal to allow a retreat led to the deaths of 200,000 German and Romanian soldiers; of those who surrendered on 31 January 1943, only 6,000 survivors returned to Germany at the end of the war.[94] After the failure of the German offensive at the Battle of Kursk, Soviet forces continued to push the invaders westward. By the end of 1943 the Germans had lost most of their territorial gains in the east.[95]

German Tiger I tanks near Orel, July 1943
In Egypt, Field Marshal Rommel’s Afrika Korps were defeated by British forces under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery in October 1942.[96] Allied forces landed in Sicily in July 1943 and in Italy in September.[97] In July 1943 Mussolini was imprisoned by his own Grand Council after a series of purges alienated his already disillusioned administration. Soon Italian soldiers began surrendering en masse, and Italy surrendered to the the allies and changed sides on 8 September 1943. Mussolini was freed on 12 September by an SS commando unit and installed as leader of a small puppet regime in an area of northern Italy under German control.[98] After his capture by partisans in April 1945 he and his girlfriend Clara Petacci were shot and their corpses desecrated. These events influenced Hitler’s decision to commit suicide at the last to avoid a similar fate.[99]
Meanwhile, the strength of the American and British bomber fleets had increased. Based in Britain, they began operations against German targets. The first thousand-bomber raid was staged on Cologne on 30 May 1942.[100] The American P-51 Mustang, with a range of 1,800 miles (2,900 km), began to accompany the bombers in large numbers to and from the target areas in early 1944. From that point onwards, the Luftwaffe began to suffer casualties in aircrews it could not sufficiently replace. By targeting oil refineries and rail communications, Allied bombers crippled the German war effort by late 1944.[101]
On 6 June 1944, American, British and Canadian forces established the western front with the D-Day landings in Normandy, France.[102] On 20 July 1944, Hitler narrowly survived a bomb attack at Wolf’s Lair at Rastenburg.[103] Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals, resulting in 7,000 arrests and the execution of more than 4,900 people.[104] The failed Ardennes Offensive (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was the last major German campaign of the war. Soviet forces entered Germany on 27 January.[105]

With the issuance of the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 and later creation of the Allied Control Council, the four Allied powers temporarily assumed governance of Germany.[135] At the Potsdam Conference in August 1945, the Allies made arrangements for the Allied occupation and denazification of the country. Germany was split into four zones, each occupied by one of the Allied powers, who drew reparations from their zone. Since most of the industrial areas were in the western zones, the Soviet Union was transferred additional reparations.[136] The Allied Control Council disestablished Prussia on 20 May 1947 with Law No. 46.[137] Aid to Germany began arriving from the United States under the Marshall Plan in 1948.[138] The occupation lasted until 1949, when the countries of East Germany and West Germany were created. Germany finalised her border with Poland by signing the Treaty of Warsaw (1970).[139] Germany remained divided until 1990, when the Allies renounced all claims to German territory with the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, under which Germany also renounced claims to territories lost during World War II.[140]

The SA and SS
 To secure their ability to create a totalitarian state, the NSDAP's paramilitary force, the Sturmabteilung (SA) or "Storm Detachment" used acts of violence against leftists, communists, democrats, Jews and other opposition or minority groups. The SA "storm troopers" violently clashed with the Communist Party of Germany (German Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands – KPD) which created a climate of lawlessness and fear. In the cities, people were anxious over punishment or even death, if they displayed opposition to the Nazis. Given the frustrations of the people (after World War I and during the Great Depression) it was easy for the SA to attract large numbers of alienated (and unemployed) youth and working-class people for the party.

The Holocaust
Main article: The Holocaust

A Jewish woman protects a child with her body as Einsatzgruppen soldiers aim their rifles, Ukraine, 1942
Germany’s war in the East was based on Hitler’s long-standing view that the Jews were the great enemy of the German people and that Lebensraum was needed for the expansion of Germany. He focused on Eastern Europe for this expansion, aiming to defeat Poland and the Soviet Union and on removing or killing the Jews and Slavs, who were viewed as being inferior to the Aryan master race and part of the Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy.[146][147] 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 was to be cleared of ethnic Poles and resettled by German colonists.[215] Ukraine’s “chornozem” (“black earth”) soil was considered particularly desirable zone for colonization.[216] About 14 million people would be allowed remain, but were to be treated as slaves.[147]
The Generalplan Ost (“General Plan for the East”) called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to West Siberia, for use as slave labour or to be murdered.[217] In order to determine who should be killed, Himmler created the Volksliste, a classification of people deemed of German blood. Those to be spared included ethnic Germans who had collaborated with Germany before the war, but also those who considered themselves German but had been neutral; those who were partially “Polonized” but “Germanizable”; and Germans who were of Polish nationality.[218] Himmler ordered that those 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.[219][220] The plan also included the kidnapping of Eastern European children by Nazi Germany.[221] The goal was to implement this plan after the conquest of the Soviet Union, but when this failed, Hitler moved the plans forward.[217][222]

A teenage boy views his murdered family shortly before his own death. Zboriv, Ukraine, 5 July 1941
The Nazis considered several solutions to the “Jewish Question”. One method was a mass forced deportation of Jews. Adolf Eichmann suggested that Jews be forced to emigrate to Palestine.[223] Franz Rademacher made the proposal that Jews be deported to Madagascar; this proposal was supported by Himmler and was discussed by Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, but was dismissed as impractical in 1942.[223]
At the outset of World War II, the German authority in the General Government in occupied Poland ordered that all Jews face compulsory labour and that those who were physically incapable such as women and children were to be confined to ghettos.[223] The idea of continuing deportations to occupied Poland was rejected by Hans Frank, Governer of the General Government of occupied Poland. He refused to accept any more deportations of Jews into the territory, which already contained large numbers of Jews.[223]

Senator Alben W. Barkley, a member of the US Congressional Nazi Crimes committee visiting Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after its liberation
Plans for the total eradication of the Jewish population of Europe—eleven million people—were formalised at the Wannsee Conference, held on 20 January 1942. Some would be worked to death, and the rest would be killed in the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish question (Die Endlösung der Judenfrage).[224] Initially the victims were killed with gas vans or by firing squad, but these methods proved impracticable for an operation of this scale.[225] By 1941, killing centres at Auschwitz concentration camp, Sobibor, Treblinka, and other Nazi extermination camps replaced Einsatzgruppen (task forces; mobile death squads) as the primary method of mass killing.[226]
The total number of Jews murdered during the war is estimated at 5.5 to six million people,[120] including over a million Jewish children.[121] A sizeable number of Romani people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles and other Slavs, Soviet prisoners of war, people with mental and/or physical disabilities, homosexuals, and members of the political and religious opposition were also massacred.[227] Twelve million people were put into forced labour.[181] In the 1960s the term “the Holocaust” came into general use to describe this genocide in English.[227] It is called the Shoah in Hebrew.
In addition to eliminating the 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. The cities would be razed and the land allowed to return to forest or resettled by German colonists.[228] Together, the Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost would have led to the starvation of 80 million people in the Soviet Union.[229]
[edit]Persecution of other groups
Further information: Nazi eugenics
Under the provisions of a sterilisation law promulgated 14 July 1933, the Nazi regime carried out the compulsory sterilization of over 400,000 individuals labelled as having hereditary defects.[230] More than half the people sterilised under this law were those considered “mentally deficient”, which included not only people who scored poorly on intelligence tests, but those who deviated from expected standards of behaviour regarding thrift, sexual behaviour, and cleanliness. Mentally and physically ill people were also targeted. The majority of the victims came from disadvantaged groups such as prostitutes, the poor, the homeless, and criminals.[231]
Main article: Porajmos

Romani people are deported from Asperg, 20 May 1940
Like the Jews, the Romani people (also known as Gypsies) were subjected to persecution from the early days of the regime. As a non-Aryan race, they were forbidden to marry people of German extraction. Romani were shipped to concentration camps starting in 1935 and were killed in large numbers.[148][149] Other groups persecuted and killed included homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, social misfits, and political enemies.[149]
From September to December 1939 the Einsatzgruppen and others took part in Action T4, a programme of systematic murder of the physically and mentally handicapped and patients in psychiatric hospitals undertaken by the Nazi regime. Action T4 mainly took place from 1939 to 1941, but continued until the end of the war. Initially the victims were shot by the Einsatzgruppen and others, but gas chambers were put into use by the end of 1941.[232]
Between June 1941 and January 1942, the Nazis killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet prisoners of war.[233] Many starved to death while being held in open-air pens at Auschwitz and elsewhere.[234]
[edit]Role of women and family
Further information: Women in the Third Reich
Women in the Third Reich were a cornerstone of Nazi social policy. The Nazis opposed the feminist movement, claiming that it had a left-wing agenda (comparable to Communism) and was bad for both women and men. The Nazi regime advocated a patriarchal society in which German women would recognize the “world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home.”[235] Hitler claimed that women taking vital jobs away from men during the Great Depression was economically bad for families in that women were paid only 66 percent of what men earned.[235] Simultaneously with calling for women to leave work outside the home, the regime called for women to be actively supportive of the state regarding women’s affairs. In 1933, Hitler appointed Gertrud Scholtz-Klink as the leader of the National Socialist Women’s League, which instructed women that their primary role in society was to bear children and that women should be subservient to men, once saying “the mission of woman is to minister in the home and in her profession to the needs of life from the first to last moment of man’s existence.”.[235] The expectation even applied to Aryan women married to Jewish men—a necessary ingredient in the 1943 Rosenstrasse protest in which 1800 German women (joined by 4200 relatives) obliged the Nazi state to release their Jewish husbands. This position was so strongly held as to make it extremely difficult to recruit women for war jobs during World War II.[236]

Young women of the BDM practising gymnastics in 1941
The Nazi regime discouraged women from seeking higher education in secondary schools, universities and colleges. The number of women allowed to enroll in universities dropped drastically under the Nazi regime, which shrank from approximately 128,000 women being enrolled in 1933 to 51,000 in 1938. Female enrollment in secondary schools dropped from 437,000 in 1926 to 205,000 in 1937. However with the requirement of men to be enlisted into the German armed forces during the war, women made up half of the enrollment in the education system by 1944.[237]
On the other hand, the women were expected to be strong, healthy, and vital; a photograph subtitled “Future Mothers” showed teenage girls dressed for sport and bearing javelins.[238] A sturdy peasant woman, who worked the land and bore strong children, was an ideal, contributing to praise for athletic women tanned by outdoor work.[239]
Organizations were made for the indoctrination of Nazi values to German women. Such organizations included the Jungmädel (“Young Girls”) section of the Hitler Youth for girls from the age 10 to 14, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM, “German Girls’ League”) for young women from 14 to 18, and the NS-Frauenschaft, a woman’s organization.
The NS-Frauenschaft put out the NS-Frauen-Warte, the only approved women’s magazine in Nazi Germany.[240] Despite its propaganda aspects, it was predominantly a woman’s magazine,[241] even including sewing patterns.[242]
The BDM’s activities encompassed physical education, including running, the long jump, somersaulting, tightrope walking, rout-marching, and swimming.[243] Das deutsche Mädel was less adventure-oriented than the boy’s Der Pimpf,[244] but far more emphasis was laid on strong and active German women than in NS-Frauen-Warte.[241] Also, before entering any occupation or advanced studies, the girls, like the boys in Hitler Youth, had to complete a year of land service.[245]
Despite the somewhat official restrictions, some women forged highly visible, as well as officially praised, achievements, such as the aviatrix Hanna Reitsch and film director Leni Riefenstahl.
On the issue of sexual affairs regarding women, Biddiscombe argues the Nazis differed greatly from the restrictive stances on women’s role in society. The Nazi regime promoted a liberal code of conduct as regards sexual matters, and were sympathetic to women bearing children out of wedlock.[246] The collapse of 19th century morals in Germany accelerated during the Third Reich, partly due to the Nazis, and greatly due to the effects of the war. Promiscuity increased greatly as the war progressed, with unmarried soldiers often involved intimately with several women simultaneously. Married women were often involved in multiple affairs simultaneously, with soldiers, civilians or slave labourers. “Some farm wives in Württemberg had already begun using sex as a commodity, employing carnal favours as a means of getting a full day’s work from foreign labourers.”[246] Nevertheless, publicly, Nazi propaganda opposed adultery and upheld the sanctity of marriage.[247] Several films shot in this era altered their source material so that the woman, rather than the man, would suffer death for sexual transgressions, reflecting whose fault it was held to be.[248] When attempts were made to destigmatize illegitimate births, Lebensborn homes were presented to the public as being for married women.[249] Overtly anti-marriage statements, such as Himmler’s statements regarding the care of the illegitimate children of dead soldiers, were greeted with protests.[250] Ilsa McKee noted that the lectures of Hitler Youth and the BDM on the need to produce more children produced several illegitimate children, which neither the mothers nor the possible fathers regarded as problematic.[251]
Marriage or sexual relations between a person considered “Aryan” and one that was not were classified as Rassenschande and were forbidden and under penalty (Aryans found guilty could face incarceration in a concentration camp, while non-Aryans could face the death penalty). Pamphlets enjoined all German women to avoid sexual intercourse with all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their blood.[252]
Abortion was heavily penalized in Nazi Germany unless on the grounds of “racial health”: from 1943 abortionists faced the death penalty.[253] Display of contraceptives was not allowed, and Hitler himself described contraception as “violation of nature, a degradation of womanhood, motherhood and love.”[254]
Another component of the Nazi programme of creating racial purity was the Lebensborn, or “Fountain of Life” program founded in 1935. The program was aimed at encouraging German soldiers—mainly SS—to reproduce. This included offering SS families support services (including the adoption of racially pure children into suitable SS families) and accommodating racially valuable women, pregnant with mainly SS men’s children, in care homes in Germany and throughout Occupied Europe.[citation needed]
[edit]Environmentalism

Hermann Göring was an animal lover and conservationist.[255]
In 1935, the regime enacted the “Reich Nature Protection Act”. While not a purely Nazi piece of legislation, as parts of its influences pre-dated the Nazi rise to power, it nevertheless reflected Nazi ideology. The concept of the Dauerwald (best translated as the “perpetual forest”) which included concepts such as forest management and protection was promoted and efforts were also made to curb air pollution.[256][257]
In practice, the enacted laws and policies met resistance from various ministries that sought to undermine them, and from the priority that the war-effort took to environmental protection.
[edit]Animal protection policy
Main article: Animal welfare in Nazi Germany
The Nazis had elements which were supportive of animal rights, zoos and wildlife,[258] and took several measures to ensure their protection.[259] In 1933 the government enacted a stringent animal-protection law.[260][261] Many NSDAP leaders, including Hitler and Göring, were supporters of animal protection. Several Nazis were environmentalists (notably Rudolf Hess), and species protection and animal welfare were significant issues in the regime.[262] Himmler made efforts to ban the hunting of animals.[263] Göring was an animal lover and conservationist.[264] The current animal welfare laws in Germany are adapted from laws introduced by the National Socialist regime.[265]
Although enacting various laws for animal protection, there was a lack of enforcement. According to Pfugers Archiv für die Gesamte Physiologie (Pfugers Archive for the Total Physiology), a science journal at that time, there were many animal experiments during the Nazi regime.[266] The Nazi regime disbanded several unofficial organizations advocating environmentalism and animal protection, such as the Friends of Nature.[267]
[edit]Culture

Main articles: Art of the Third Reich and List of authors banned during the Third Reich
The regime promoted the concept of a national German community or Volksgemeinschaft.[268] To aid the fostering of a feeling of community, the German people’s labour and entertainment experiences—from festivals, to vacation trips, and traveling cinemas—were all made a part of the “Strength Through Joy” (Kraft durch Freude, KdF) program. Also crucial to the building of loyalty and comradeship was the implementation of the National Labour Service and the Hitler Youth Organization, with compulsory membership.

Congress Hall at the Nazi party rally grounds, Nuremberg, as seen in 2009
The regime sought to restore traditional values in German culture. The art and culture that came to define the Weimar Republic years was repressed. The visual arts were strictly monitored and traditional, focusing on exemplifying Germanic themes, racial purity, militarism, heroism, power, strength, and obedience. Modern abstract art and avant-garde art was removed from museums and put on special display as “degenerate art”, where it was to be ridiculed. In one notable example, on 31 March 1937, huge crowds stood in line to view a special display of “degenerate art” in Munich. Art forms considered to be degenerate included Dada, Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Impressionism, New Objectivity, and Surrealism. Literature written by Jewish, other non-Aryans, homosexual or authors opposed to the Nazis was destroyed by the regime. The most infamous destruction of literature was the book burnings by German students in 1933.
Despite the official attempt to forge a pure Germanic culture, one major area of the arts, architecture, under Hitler’s personal guidance, was neoclassical, a style based on architecture of ancient Rome.[269] This style stood out in stark contrast and opposition to newer, more liberal, and more popular architecture styles of the time such as Art Deco. Various Roman buildings were examined by state architect Albert Speer for architectural designs for state buildings. Speer constructed huge and imposing structures such as in the NSDAP rally grounds in Nuremberg and the new Reich Chancellery building in Berlin. One design that was pursued, but never built, was a gigantic version of the Pantheon in Rome, called the Volkshalle to be the semi-religious centre of Nazism in a renamed Berlin called Germania, which was to be the “world capital” (Welthauptstadt). Also to be constructed was a Triumphal arch, several times larger than that found in Paris, which was also based upon a classical styling. Many of the designs for Germania were impractical to construct because of their size and the marshy soil underneath Berlin; later the materials that were to be used for construction were diverted to the war effort.
[edit]Cinema and media
Main articles: Cinema of Germany, List of German films 1933–1945, Nazism and cinema, Panorama (German wartime newsreel), and Propagandaministerium
The majority of German films of the period were intended principally as works of entertainment. The import of foreign films was legally restricted after 1936, and the German industry, which was effectively nationalised in 1937, had to make up for the missing foreign films (above all American productions). Entertainment also became increasingly important in the later years of World War II when the cinema provided a distraction from Allied bombing and a string of German defeats.

Leni Riefenstahl (behind cameraman) at the 1936 Summer Olympics
In both 1943 and 1944 cinema admissions in Germany exceeded a billion,[270] and the biggest box office hits of the war years were Die große Liebe (1942) and Wunschkonzert (1941), which both combine elements of the musical, wartime romance and patriotic propaganda, Frauen sind doch bessere Diplomaten (1941), a comic musical which was one of the earliest German films in colour, and Wiener Blut (1942), the adaptation of a Johann Strauß comic operetta. The importance of the cinema as a tool of the state, both for its propaganda value and its ability to keep the populace entertained, can be seen in the filming history of Veit Harlan’s Kolberg (1945), the most expensive film of the era, for the shooting of which tens of thousands of soldiers were diverted from their military positions to appear as extras.[271]
Despite the emigration of many film-makers and the political restrictions, the German film industry was not without technical and aesthetic innovations, the introduction of Agfacolor film production being a notable example. Technical and aesthetic achievement could also be turned to the specific ends of the Greater German Reich, most spectacularly in the work of Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), documenting the Nuremberg Rally (1934), and Olympia (1938), documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, pioneered techniques of camera movement and editing that have influenced many later films. Both films, particularly Triumph of the Will, remain highly controversial, as their aesthetic merit is inseparable from their propagandizing of Nationalsocialism ideals.[271] Irreplaceable artists deemed fitting the National socialist ideals such as Marika Rokk and Johannes Heesters were placed on the Gottbegnadeten list by Goebbels during the war.[272]
[edit]Sports
Sports played a central role in the Nazi goal of building strong young athletes to create the “perfect” race and help build Germany into a sports power. The political symbolism of masses of virile near-naked bodies occupying public spaces fit easily into the propaganda system, as typified by the 1938 film about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, “Olympia”.[273]
Established in 1934, the “Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen” (known by the acronyms NSRL or NSRBL) was the umbrella organization for sports during the Third Reich. Two major displays of Nazi German art and culture were at the 1936 Summer Olympics and at the German pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. The 1936 Olympics was meant to display to the world the Aryan superiority of Germany to other nations. German athletes were carefully chosen not only for strength but for Aryan appearance.[274]
[edit]Legacy

Defendants in the dock at the Nuremberg Trials
The Allied powers organised war crimes trials, beginning with a trial of 23 key Nazi officials, held from November 1945 to October 1946. 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.[275] All but three of the defendants were found guilty; twelve were sentenced to death.[276] The victorious Allies outlawed the NSDAP and its subsidiary organisations. The display or use of Nazi symbols such as flags, swastikas, or greetings is illegal in Germany and Austria.[277][278]
Hitler, Nazism, and (by the 1960s) the Holocaust became symbols of evil in the modern world.[279] For the 21st century, Newman and Erber (2002) reported, “The Nazis have become one of the most widely recognized images of modern evil. Throughout most of the world today, the concept of evil can readily be evoked by displaying almost any cue reminiscent of Nazism, such as the swastika, the name of any of the principal Nazis, or their garb or affectations….”[280] There is a high level of historical interest in the popular media as well as in academic world. Evans says it, “exerts an almost universal appeal because its murderous racism stands as a warning to the whole of humanity.”[281]
The end of Nazi Germany also saw the rise in unpopularity of related aggressive manifestations of nationalism in Germany such as Pan-Germanism and the Völkisch movement which had previously been a significant source of political ideas in Germany, and in other parts of Europe, before World War II. Those that remain are largely fringe movements.[citation needed]