On 6 June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces established a front in France with the  D-Day  landings in  Normandy . [ 136 ]  On  20 July 1944 , Hitler survived an assassination attempt. [ 137 ]  He ordered brutal reprisals, resulting in 7,000 arrests and the execution of more than 4,900 people. [ 138 ]  The failed  Ardennes Offensive  (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was the last major German offensive on the western front, and Soviet forces entered Germany on 27 January. [ 139 ]  Hitler's refusal to admit defeat and his insistence that the war be fought to the last man led to unnecessary death and destruction in the war's closing months. [ 140 ]  Through his Justice Minister  Otto Georg Thierack , Hitler ordered that anyone who was not prepared to fight should be court-martialed, and thousands of people were executed. [ 141 ]  In many areas, people surrendered to the approaching Allies in spite of exhortations of local leaders to continue to fight. Hitler ordered the destruction of transport, bridges, industries, and other infrastructure—a  scorched earth  decree—but Armaments Minister  Albert Speer  prevented this order from being fully carried out. [ 140 ]


During the  Battle of Berlin  (16 April – 2 May 1945), Hitler and his staff lived in the underground  Führerbunker  while the Red Army approached. [ 142 ]  On 30 April, when Soviet troops were within two blocks of the  Reich Chancellery , Hitler and his wife  Eva Braun   committed suicide . [ 143 ]  On 2 May, General  Helmuth Weidling  unconditionally surrendered Berlin to Soviet General  Vasily Chuikov . [ 144 ]  Hitler was succeeded by Grand Admiral  Karl Dönitz  as Reich President and Goebbels as Reich Chancellor. [ 145 ]  Goebbels and his wife  Magda  committed suicide the next day after murdering their  six children . [ 146 ]  Between 4 and 8 May 1945, most of the remaining German armed forces unconditionally surrendered. The  German Instrument of Surrender  was signed 8 May, marking the end of the Nazi regime and the  end of World War II in Europe . [ 147 ]


Popular support for Hitler almost completely disappeared as the war drew to a close. [ 148 ]  Suicide rates in Germany increased, particularly in areas where the Red Army was advancing. Among soldiers and party personnel, suicide was often deemed an honourable and heroic alternative to surrender. First-hand accounts and propaganda about the uncivilised behaviour of the advancing Soviet troops caused panic among civilians on the Eastern Front, especially women, who feared being raped. [ 149 ]  More than a thousand people (out of a population of around 16,000)  committed suicide in Demmin  around 1 May 1945 as the 65th Army of  2nd Belorussian Front  first broke into a distillery and then rampaged through the town, committing mass rapes, arbitrarily executing civilians, and setting fire to buildings. High numbers of suicides took place in many other locations, including  Neubrandenburg  (600 dead),  Stolp in Pommern  (1,000 dead), [ 150 ]  and Berlin, where at least 7,057 people committed suicide in 1945. [ 151 ]


Estimates of the total German war dead range from 5.5 to 6.9 million persons. [ 152 ]  A study by German historian  Rüdiger Overmans  puts the number of German military dead and missing at 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany's 1937 borders. [ 153 ]   Richard Overy  estimated in 2014 that about 353,000 civilians were killed in Allied air raids. [ 154 ]  Other civilian deaths include 300,000 Germans (including Jews) who were victims of Nazi political, racial, and religious persecution [ 155 ]  and 200,000 who were murdered in the  Nazi euthanasia program . [ 156 ]  Political courts called  Sondergerichte  sentenced some 12,000 members of the  German resistance  to death, and civil courts sentenced an additional 40,000 Germans. [ 157 ]   Mass rapes of German women  also took place. [ 158 ]


As a result of their defeat in World War I and the resulting Treaty of Versailles, Germany lost  Alsace-Lorraine ,  Northern Schleswig , and  Memel . The  Saarland  became  a protectorate  of France under the condition that its residents would later decide by referendum which country to join, and Poland became a separate nation and was given access to the sea by the creation of the  Polish Corridor , which separated Prussia from the rest of Germany, while  Danzig was made a free city . [ 159 ]


Germany regained control of the Saarland through a referendum held in 1935 and annexed Austria in the  Anschluss  of 1938. [ 160 ]  The Munich Agreement of 1938 gave Germany control of the Sudetenland, and they seized the remainder of Czechoslovakia six months later. [ 71 ]   Under threat  of invasion by sea, Lithuania surrendered the Memel district in March 1939. [ 161 ]


Between 1939 and 1941, German forces  invaded Poland ,  Denmark ,  Norway ,  France ,  Luxembourg ,  the Netherlands ,  Belgium ,  Yugoslavia ,  Greece , and  the Soviet Union . [ 100 ]  Germany  annexed parts of northern Yugoslavia  in April 1941, [ 113 ] [ 114 ]  while Mussolini ceded  Trieste ,  South Tyrol , and  Istria  to Germany in 1943. [ 162 ]


Some of the conquered territories were incorporated into Germany as part of Hitler's long-term goal of creating a  Greater Germanic Reich . Several areas, such as Alsace-Lorraine, were placed under the authority of an adjacent  Gau  (regional district). The  Reichskommissariate  (Reich Commissariats), quasi-colonial regimes, were established in some occupied countries. Areas placed under German administration included the  Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ,  Reichskommissariat Ostland  (encompassing the Baltic states and Belarus), and  Reichskommissariat Ukraine . Conquered areas of Belgium and France were placed under control of the  Military Administration in Belgium and Northern France . [ 163 ]  Belgian  Eupen-Malmedy , which had been part of Germany until 1919, was annexed. Part of Poland was incorporated into the Reich, and the  General Government  was established in occupied central Poland. [ 164 ]  The governments of Denmark, Norway ( Reichskommissariat Norwegen ), and the Netherlands ( Reichskommissariat Niederlande ) were placed under civilian administrations staffed largely by natives. [ 163 ] [ o ]  Hitler intended to eventually incorporate many of these areas into the Reich. [ 165 ]  Germany occupied the  Italian protectorate of Albania  and the  Italian governorate of Montenegro  in 1943 [ 166 ]  and installed  a puppet government  in  occupied Serbia  in 1941. [ 167 ]


The Nazis were a far-right  fascist  political party which arose during the social and financial upheavals that occurred following the end of World War I. [ 168 ]  The Party remained small and marginalised, receiving 2.6% of the federal vote in 1928, prior to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. [ 169 ]  By 1930 the Party won 18.3% of the federal vote, making it the Reichstag's second largest political party. [ 170 ]  While in prison after the failed  Beer Hall Putsch  of 1923, Hitler wrote  Mein Kampf , which laid out his plan for transforming German society into one based on race. [ 171 ]  Nazi ideology brought together elements of antisemitism,  racial hygiene , and  eugenics , and combined them with  pan-Germanism  and territorial expansionism with the goal of obtaining more  Lebensraum  for the Germanic people. [ 172 ]


The regime attempted to obtain this new territory by attacking Poland and the Soviet Union, intending to mass-murder or deport the Jews and  Slavs  living there, who it viewed as being inferior to the Aryan  master race  and part of a  Jewish-Bolshevik  conspiracy. [ 173 ] [ 174 ]  The Nazi regime believed that only Germany could defeat the forces of Bolshevism and save humanity from world domination by  International Jewry . [ 175 ]  Other people deemed  life unworthy of life  by the Nazis included the mentally and physically disabled,  Romani people ,  homosexuals ,  Jehovah's Witnesses , and social misfits. [ 176 ] [ 177 ]  Additionally,  Freemasons  were  heavily monitored and persecuted . [ 178 ]


Influenced by the  Völkisch  movement , the regime was against cultural  modernism  and supported the development of an extensive military at the expense of intellectualism. [ 14 ] [ 179 ]  Creativity and art were stifled, except where they could serve as propaganda media. [ 180 ]  The party used symbols such as the  Blood Flag  and rituals such as the  Nazi Party rallies  to foster unity and bolster the regime's popularity. [ 181 ]


Hitler ruled Germany autocratically by asserting the  Führerprinzip  ("leader principle"), which called for absolute obedience by all subordinates. He viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself—the infallible leader—at the apex. Party rank was not determined by elections, and positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank. [ 182 ]  The party used propaganda to develop a  cult of personality  around Hitler. [ 183 ]  Historians such as Kershaw emphasise the psychological impact of Hitler's skill as an orator. [ 184 ]  Roger Gill states: "His moving speeches captured the minds and hearts of a vast number of the German people: he virtually hypnotized his audiences". [ 185 ]


While top officials reported to Hitler and followed his policies, they had considerable autonomy. [ 186 ]  He expected officials to "work towards the Führer" – to take the initiative in promoting policies and actions in line with party goals and Hitler's wishes, without his involvement in day-to-day decision-making. [ 187 ]  The government was a disorganised collection of factions led by the party elite, who struggled to amass power and gain the Führer's favour. [ 188 ]  Hitler's leadership style was to give contradictory orders to his subordinates and to place them in positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped. [ 189 ]  In this way he fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power. [ 190 ]


Successive  Reichsstatthalter  decrees between 1933 and 1935 abolished the existing  Länder  ( constituent states ) of Germany and replaced them with new  administrative divisions , the  Gaue , governed by Nazi leaders ( Gauleiters ). [ 191 ]  The change was never fully implemented, as the Länder were still used as administrative divisions for some government departments such as education. This led to a bureaucratic tangle of overlapping jurisdictions and responsibilities typical of the administrative style of the Nazi regime. [ 192 ]


Jewish civil servants lost their jobs in 1933, except for those who had seen military service in World War I. Members of the Party or party supporters were appointed in their place. [ 193 ]  As part of the process of  Gleichschaltung , the Reich Local Government Law of 1935 abolished local elections, and mayors were appointed by the Ministry of the Interior. [ 194 ]


In August 1934, civil servants and members of the military were required to swear an oath of unconditional obedience to Hitler. These laws became the basis of the  Führerprinzip , the concept that Hitler's word overrode all existing laws. [ 195 ]  Any acts that were sanctioned by Hitler—even murder—thus became legal. [ 196 ]  All legislation proposed by cabinet ministers had to be approved by the office of  Deputy Führer   Rudolf Hess , who could also veto top civil service appointments. [ 197 ]


Most of the judicial system and legal codes of the Weimar Republic remained in place to deal with non-political crimes. [ 198 ]  The courts issued and carried out far more death sentences than before the Nazis took power. [ 198 ]  People who were convicted of three or more offences—even petty ones—could be deemed habitual offenders and jailed indefinitely. [ 199 ]  People such as prostitutes and pickpockets were judged to be inherently criminal and a threat to the community. Thousands were arrested and confined indefinitely without trial. [ 200 ]


A new type of court, the  Volksgerichtshof  ("People's Court"), was established in 1934 to deal with political cases. [ 201 ]  This court handed out over 5,000 death sentences until its dissolution in 1945. [ 202 ]  The death penalty could be issued for offences such as being a communist, printing seditious leaflets, or even making jokes about Hitler or other officials. [ 203 ]  The Gestapo was in charge of investigative policing to enforce Nazi ideology as they located and confined political offenders, Jews, and others deemed undesirable. [ 204 ]  Political offenders who were released from prison were often immediately re-arrested by the Gestapo and confined in a concentration camp. [ 205 ]


The Nazis used propaganda to promulgate the concept of  Rassenschande  ("race defilement") to justify the need for racial laws. [ 206 ]  In September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. These laws initially prohibited sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and Jews and were later extended to include "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring". [ 207 ]  The law also forbade the employment of German women under the age of 45 as domestic servants in Jewish households. [ 208 ]  The Reich Citizenship Law stated that only those of "German or related blood" could be citizens. [ 209 ]  Thus Jews and other non-Aryans were stripped of their German citizenship. The law also permitted the Nazis to deny citizenship to anyone who was not supportive enough of the regime. [ 209 ]  A supplementary decree issued in November defined as Jewish anyone with three Jewish grandparents, or two grandparents if the Jewish faith was followed. [ 210 ]


The unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945 were called the  Wehrmacht  (defence force). This included the  Heer  (army),  Kriegsmarine  (navy), and the  Luftwaffe  (air force). From 2 August 1934, members of the armed forces were required to pledge an oath of unconditional obedience to Hitler personally. In contrast to the previous oath, which required allegiance to the constitution of the country and its lawful establishments, this new oath required members of the military to obey Hitler even if they were being ordered to do something illegal. [ 211 ]  Hitler decreed that the army would have to tolerate and even offer logistical support to the  Einsatzgruppen —the mobile death squads responsible for millions of murders in Eastern Europe—when it was tactically possible to do so. [ 212 ]   Wehrmacht  troops also participated directly in  the Holocaust  by shooting civilians or committing genocide under the guise of anti-partisan operations. [ 213 ]  The party line was that the Jews were the instigators of the partisan struggle and therefore needed to be eliminated. [ 214 ]  On 8 July 1941, Heydrich announced that all Jews in the eastern conquered territories were to be regarded as partisans and gave the order for all male Jews between the ages of 15 and 45 to be shot. [ 215 ]  By August, this was extended to include the entire Jewish population. [ 216 ]


In spite of efforts to prepare the country militarily, the economy could not sustain a lengthy war of attrition. A strategy was developed based on the tactic of  Blitzkrieg  ("lightning war"), which involved using quick coordinated assaults that avoided enemy strong points. Attacks began with artillery bombardment, followed by bombing and strafing runs. Next the tanks would attack and finally the infantry would move in to secure the captured area. [ 217 ]  Victories continued through mid-1940, but the failure to defeat Britain was the first major turning point in the war. The decision to attack the Soviet Union and the decisive defeat at Stalingrad led to the retreat of the German armies and the eventual loss of the war. [ 218 ]  The total number of soldiers who served in the  Wehrmacht  from 1935 to 1945 was around 18.2 million, of whom 5.3 million died. [ 153 ]


The  Sturmabteilung  (SA; Storm Detachment), or Brownshirts, founded in 1921, was the first paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party; their initial assignment was to protect Nazi leaders at rallies and assemblies. [ 219 ]  They also took part in street battles against the forces of rival political parties and violent actions against Jews and others. [ 220 ]  Under  Ernst Röhm 's leadership the SA grew by 1934 to over half a million members—4.5 million including reserves—at a time when the regular army was still limited to 100,000 men by the Versailles Treaty. [ 221 ]


Röhm hoped to assume command of the army and absorb it into the ranks of the SA. [ 222 ]  Hindenburg and Defence Minister  Werner von Blomberg  threatened to impose martial law if the activities of the SA were not curtailed. [ 223 ]  Therefore, less than a year and a half after seizing power, Hitler ordered the deaths of the SA leadership, including Rohm. After the purge of 1934, the SA was no longer a major force. [ 40 ]


Initially a small bodyguard unit under the auspices of the SA, the  Schutzstaffel  (SS; Protection Squadron) grew to become one of the largest and most powerful groups in Nazi Germany. [ 224 ]  Led by  Reichsführer-SS  Heinrich Himmler from 1929, the SS had over a quarter million members by 1938. [ 225 ]  Himmler initially envisioned the SS as being an elite group of guards, Hitler's last line of defence. [ 226 ]  The  Waffen-SS , the military branch of the SS, evolved into a second army. It was dependent on the regular army for heavy weaponry and equipment, and most units were under tactical control of the  High Command of the Armed Forces  (OKW). [ 227 ] [ 228 ]  By the end of 1942, the stringent selection and racial requirements that had initially been in place were no longer followed. With recruitment and conscription based only on expansion, by 1943 the Waffen-SS could not longer claim to be an elite fighting force. [ 229 ]


SS formations committed many war crimes against civilians and allied servicemen. [ 230 ]  From 1935 onward, the SS spearheaded the persecution of Jews, who were rounded up into ghettos and concentration camps. [ 231 ]  With the outbreak of World War II, the SS  Einsatzgruppen  units followed the army into Poland and the Soviet Union, where from 1941 to 1945 they murdered more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews. [ 232 ]  A third of the  Einsatzgruppen  members were recruited from  Waffen-SS  personnel. [ 233 ] [ 234 ]  The  SS-Totenkopfverbände  (death's head units) ran the concentration camps and  extermination camps , where millions more were murdered. [ 235 ] [ 236 ]  Up to 60,000 Waffen-SS men served in the camps. [ 237 ]


In 1931, Himmler organised an SS intelligence service which became known as the  Sicherheitsdienst  (SD; Security Service) under his deputy, Heydrich. [ 238 ]  This organisation was tasked with locating and arresting communists and other political opponents. [ 239 ] [ 240 ]  Himmler established the beginnings of a parallel economy under the auspices of the SS Economy and Administration Head Office. This holding company owned housing corporations, factories, and publishing houses. [ 241 ] [ 242 ]


The most pressing economic matter the Nazis initially faced was the 30 per cent national unemployment rate. [ 243 ]  Economist  Hjalmar Schacht , President of the  Reichsbank  and Minister of Economics, created a scheme for deficit financing in May 1933. Capital projects were paid for with the issuance of promissory notes called  Mefo bills . When the notes were presented for payment, the Reichsbank printed money. Hitler and his economic team expected that the upcoming territorial expansion would provide the means of repaying the soaring national debt. [ 244 ]  Schacht's administration achieved a rapid decline in the unemployment rate, the largest of any country during the Great Depression. [ 243 ]  Economic recovery was uneven, with reduced hours of work and erratic availability of necessities, leading to disenchantment with the regime as early as 1934. [ 245 ]


In October 1933, the  Junkers Aircraft Works  was expropriated. In concert with other aircraft manufacturers and under the direction of Aviation Minister Göring, production was ramped up. From a workforce of 3,200 people producing 100 units per year in 1932, the industry grew to employ a quarter of a million workers manufacturing over 10,000 technically advanced aircraft annually less than ten years later. [ 246 ]


An elaborate bureaucracy was created to regulate imports of raw materials and finished goods with the intention of eliminating foreign competition in the German marketplace and improving the nation's  balance of payments . The Nazis encouraged the development of synthetic replacements for materials such as oil and textiles. [ 247 ]  As the market was experiencing a glut and prices for petroleum were low, in 1933 the Nazi government made a profit-sharing agreement with  IG Farben , guaranteeing them a 5 per cent return on capital invested in their synthetic oil plant at  Leuna . Any profits in excess of that amount would be turned over to the Reich. By 1936, Farben regretted making the deal, as excess profits were by then being generated. [ 248 ]  In another attempt to secure an adequate wartime supply of petroleum, Germany intimidated  Romania  into signing a trade agreement in March 1939. [ 249 ]


Major public works projects financed with deficit spending included the construction of a network of  Autobahnen  and providing funding for programmes initiated by the previous government for housing and agricultural improvements. [ 250 ]  To stimulate the construction industry, credit was offered to private businesses and subsidies were made available for home purchases and repairs. [ 251 ]  On the condition that the wife would leave the workforce, a loan of up to 1,000 Reichsmarks could be accessed by young couples of Aryan descent who intended to marry, and the amount that had to be repaid was reduced by 25 per cent for each child born. [ 252 ]  The caveat that the woman had to remain unemployed outside the home was dropped by 1937 due to a shortage of skilled labourers. [ 253 ]


Envisioning widespread car ownership as part of the new Germany, Hitler arranged for designer  Ferdinand Porsche  to draw up plans for the  KdF-wagen  ( Strength Through Joy  car), intended to be an automobile that everyone could afford. A prototype was displayed at the  International Motor Show  in Berlin on 17 February 1939. With the outbreak of World War II, the factory was converted to produce military vehicles. None were sold until after the war, when the vehicle was renamed the  Volkswagen  (people's car). [ 254 ]


Six million people were unemployed when the Nazis took power in 1933 and by 1937 there were fewer than a million. [ 255 ]  This was in part due to the removal of women from the workforce. [ 256 ]  Real wages dropped by 25 per cent between 1933 and 1938. [ 243 ]  After the dissolution of the trade unions in May 1933, their funds were seized and their leadership arrested, [ 257 ]  including those who attempted to co-operate with the Nazis. [ 32 ]  A new organisation, the  German Labour Front , was created and placed under Nazi Party functionary  Robert Ley . [ 257 ]  Many unemployed people were forcibly drafted into this organisation, where they were given uniforms and tools and put to work. As a result, unemployed people disappeared from the streets, contributing to the perception that the Nazis were improving economic conditions. [ 258 ]  The average work week was 43 hours in 1933; by 1939 this increased to 47 hours. [ 259 ]


By early 1934, the focus shifted towards rearmament. By 1935, military expenditures accounted for 73 per cent of the government's purchases of goods and services. [ 260 ]  On 18 October 1936, Hitler named Göring as  Plenipotentiary  of the Four Year Plan, intended to speed up rearmament. [ 261 ]  In addition to calling for the rapid construction of steel mills, synthetic rubber plants, and other factories, Göring instituted  wage and price controls  and restricted the issuance of  stock dividends . [ 243 ]  Large expenditures were made on rearmament in spite of growing deficits. [ 262 ]  Plans unveiled in late 1938 for massive increases to the navy and air force were impossible to fulfil, as Germany lacked the finances and material resources to build the planned units, as well as the necessary fuel required to keep them running. [ 263 ]  With the introduction of compulsory military service in 1935, the  Reichswehr , which had been limited to 100,000 by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, expanded to 750,000 on active service at the start of World War II, with a million more in the reserve. [ 264 ]  By January 1939, unemployment was down to 301,800 and it dropped to only 77,500 by September. [ 265 ]


The Nazi war economy was a  mixed economy  that combined a free market with central planning. Historian  Richard Overy  describes it as being somewhere in between the  command economy of the Soviet Union  and the  capitalist system of the United States . [ 266 ]


In 1942, after the death of Armaments Minister  Fritz Todt , Hitler appointed Albert Speer as his replacement. [ 267 ]  Wartime rationing of consumer goods led to an increase in personal savings, funds which were in turn lent to the government to support the war effort. [ 268 ]  By 1944, the war was consuming 75 per cent of Germany's  gross domestic product , compared to 60 per cent in the Soviet Union and 55 per cent in Britain. [ 269 ]  Speer improved production by centralising planning and control, reducing production of consumer goods, and  using forced labour and slavery . [ 270 ] [ 271 ]  The wartime economy eventually relied heavily upon the large-scale employment of  slave labour . Germany imported and enslaved some 12 million people from 20 European countries to work in factories and on farms. Approximately 75 per cent were Eastern European. [ 272 ]  Many were casualties of Allied bombing, as they received poor air raid protection. Poor living conditions led to high rates of sickness, injury, and death, as well as sabotage and criminal activity. [ 273 ]  The wartime economy also relied upon large-scale robbery, initially through the state seizing the property of Jewish citizens and later by plundering the resources of occupied territories. [ 274 ]


Foreign workers  brought into Germany were put into four classifications: guest workers, military internees, civilian workers, and Eastern workers. Each group was subject to different regulations. The Nazis issued a ban on sexual relations between Germans and foreign workers. [ 275 ] [ 276 ]


By 1944, over a half million women served as auxiliaries in the German armed forces. [ 277 ]  The number of women in paid employment only increased by 271,000 (1.8 per cent) from 1939 to 1944. [ 278 ]  As the production of consumer goods had been cut back, women left those industries for employment in the war economy. They also took jobs formerly held by men, especially on farms and in family-owned shops. [ 279 ]


Very heavy  strategic bombing  by the Allies  targeted refineries producing synthetic oil and gasoline , as well as the German transportation system, especially rail yards and canals. [ 280 ]  The armaments industry began to break down by September 1944. By November, fuel coal was no longer reaching its destinations and the production of new armaments was no longer possible. [ 281 ]  Overy argues that the bombing strained the German war economy and forced it to divert up to one-fourth of its manpower and industry into anti-aircraft resources, which very likely shortened the war. [ 282 ]


Racism and  antisemitism  were basic tenets of the Nazi Party and the Nazi regime. Nazi Germany's racial policy was based on their belief in the existence of a superior  master race . The Nazis postulated the existence of a racial conflict between the  Aryan  master race and inferior races, particularly Jews, who were viewed as a mixed race that had infiltrated society and were responsible for the exploitation and repression of the Aryan race. [ 283 ]


Discrimination against Jews began immediately after the seizure of power. Following a month-long series of attacks by members of the SA on Jewish businesses and synagogues, on 1 April 1933 Hitler declared a  national boycott of Jewish businesses . [ 284 ]  The  Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service  passed on 7 April forced all non-Aryan civil servants to retire from the legal profession and civil service. [ 285 ]  Similar legislation soon deprived other Jewish professionals of their right to practise, and on 11 April a decree was promulgated that stated anyone who had even one Jewish parent or grandparent was considered non-Aryan. [ 286 ]  As part of the drive to remove Jewish influence from cultural life, members of the  National Socialist German Students' League  removed from libraries any books considered un-German, and a nationwide  book burning  was held on 10 May. [ 287 ]


The regime used violence and economic pressure to encourage Jews to leave the country voluntarily. [ 288 ]  Jewish businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise, and deprived of access to government contracts. Citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks. [ 289 ]  Many towns posted signs forbidding entry to Jews. [ 290 ]


On 7 November 1938 a young Jewish man,  Herschel Grynszpan , shot and killed  Ernst vom Rath , a legation secretary at the German embassy in Paris, to protest his family's treatment in Germany. This incident provided the pretext for a  pogrom  the Nazis incited against the Jews two days later. Members of the SA damaged or destroyed synagogues and Jewish property throughout Germany. At least 91 German Jews were murdered during this pogrom, later called  Kristallnacht , the Night of Broken Glass. [ 291 ] [ 292 ]  Further restrictions were imposed on Jews in the coming months – they were forbidden to own businesses or work in retail shops, drive cars, go to the cinema, visit the library, or own weapons, and Jewish pupils were removed from schools. The Jewish community was fined one billion marks to pay for the damage caused by  Kristallnacht  and told that any insurance settlements would be confiscated. [ 293 ]  By 1939, around 250,000 of Germany's 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Argentina, Great Britain, Palestine, and other countries. [ 294 ] [ 295 ]  Many chose to stay in continental Europe. Emigrants to Palestine were allowed to transfer property there under the terms of the  Haavara Agreement , but those moving to other countries had to leave virtually all their property behind, and it was seized by the government. [ 295 ]


Like the Jews, the  Romani  were subjected to persecution from the early days of the regime. The Romani were forbidden to marry people of German extraction. They were shipped to concentration camps starting in 1935 and many were murdered. [ 176 ] [ 177 ]  Following the invasion of Poland, 2,500 Roma and  Sinti  people were deported from Germany to the General Government, where they were imprisoned in labour camps. The survivors were likely exterminated at  Bełżec ,  Sobibor , or  Treblinka . A further 5,000 Sinti and Austrian Lalleri people were deported to the  Łódź Ghetto  in late 1941, where half were estimated to have died. The Romani survivors of the ghetto were subsequently moved to the  Chełmno extermination camp  in early 1942. [ 296 ]


The Nazis intended on deporting all Romani people from Germany, and confined them to  Zigeunerlager  (Gypsy camps) for this purpose. Himmler ordered their deportation from Germany in December 1942, with few exceptions. A total of 23,000 Romani were deported to  Auschwitz concentration camp , of whom 19,000 died. Outside of Germany, the Romani people were regularly used for forced labour, though many were murdered outright. In the Baltic states and the Soviet Union, 30,000 Romani were murdered by the SS, the German Army, and  Einsatzgruppen . In  occupied Serbia , 1,000 to 12,000 Romani were murdered, while nearly all 25,000 Romani living in the  Independent State of Croatia  were murdered. The estimates at end of the war put the total number of Romani victims at around 220,000, which equalled approximately 25 per cent of the Romani population in Europe. [ 296 ]


Action T4 was a programme of systematic murder of the physically and mentally handicapped and patients in psychiatric hospitals that took place mainly from 1939 to 1941, and continued until the end of the war. Initially the victims were shot by the  Einsatzgruppen  and others;  gas chambers  and  gas vans  using  carbon monoxide  were used by early 1940. [ 297 ] [ 298 ]  Under the  Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring , enacted on 14 July 1933, over 400,000 individuals underwent  compulsory sterilisation . [ 299 ]  Over half 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. Most of the victims came from disadvantaged groups such as prostitutes, the poor, the homeless, and criminals. [ 300 ]  Other groups persecuted and murdered included Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, social misfits, and  members of the political and religious opposition . [ 177 ] [ 301 ]


Germany's war in the East  was based on Hitler's long-standing view that Jews were the great enemy of the German people and that  Lebensraum  was needed for Germany's expansion. Hitler focused his attention on Eastern Europe, aiming to conquer Poland and the Soviet Union. [ 173 ] [ 174 ]  Hitler's belief in the racial inferiority of  Russians , as well as  Slavs  in general, had convinced him that a German conquest of Russia was inevitable. [ 302 ]  After the occupation of Poland in 1939, all Jews living in the General Government were confined to  ghettos , and those who were physically fit were required to perform compulsory labour. [ 303 ]  In 1941 Hitler decided to destroy the Polish nation completely; within 15 to 20 years the General Government was to be  cleared of ethnic Poles  and resettled by German colonists. [ 304 ]  About 3.8 to 4 million Poles would remain as slaves, [ 305 ]  part of a slave labour force of 14 million the Nazis intended to create using citizens of conquered nations. [ 174 ] [ 306 ]


To determine who should be killed, Himmler created the  Volksliste , a system of classification of people deemed to be of German blood. [ 307 ]  He ordered that those of Germanic descent who refused to be classified as ethnic Germans should be deported to concentration camps, have their children taken away, or be assigned to forced labour. [ 308 ] [ 309 ]  The plan also included the  kidnapping of children  deemed to have Aryan- Nordic  traits, who were presumed to be of German descent. [ 310 ]  The goal was to implement  Generalplan Ost  after the conquest of the Soviet Union, but when the invasion failed Hitler had to consider other options. [ 311 ] [ 312 ]  One suggestion was a mass forced deportation of Jews to Poland, Palestine, or Madagascar. [ 303 ]


In addition, the Nazis planned to reduce the population of the conquered territories by 30 million people through starvation in an action called the  Hunger Plan . Food supplies would be diverted to the German army and German civilians. Cities would be razed and the land allowed to return to forest or resettled by German colonists. [ 313 ]  Together, the Hunger Plan and  Generalplan Ost  would have led to the starvation of 80 million people in the Soviet Union. [ 314 ]  These partially fulfilled plans resulted in the  democidal  deaths of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and  prisoners of war  (POWs) throughout the USSR and elsewhere in Europe. [ 315 ]  During the course of the war, the  Soviet Union lost a total of 27 million people ; less than nine million of these were combat deaths. [ 316 ]  One in four of the Soviet population were killed or wounded. [ 317 ]


Around the time of the failed offensive against Moscow in December 1941,  Hitler resolved  that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated immediately. [ 318 ]  While the murder of Jewish civilians had been ongoing in the occupied territories of Poland and the Soviet Union, plans for the total eradication of the Jewish population of Europe—eleven million people—were formalised at the  Wannsee Conference  on 20 January 1942. Some would be  worked to death  and the rest would be murdered in the implementation of the  Final Solution to the Jewish Question . [ 319 ]  Initially the victims were murdered by  Einsatzgruppen  firing squads, then by  stationary gas chambers  or by  gas vans , but these methods proved impractical for an operation of this scale. [ 320 ] [ 321 ]  By 1942 extermination camps equipped with gas chambers were established at  Auschwitz ,  Chełmno , Sobibor, Treblinka, and elsewhere. [ 322 ]  The total number of Jews murdered is estimated at 5.5 to six million, [ 236 ]  including over a million children. [ 323 ]


The Allies received information about the murders from the  Polish government-in-exile  and Polish leadership in Warsaw, based mostly on intelligence from the  Polish underground . [ 324 ] [ 325 ]  German citizens had access to information about what was happening, as soldiers returning from the occupied territories reported on what they had seen and done. [ 326 ]  Historian  Richard J. Evans  states that most German citizens disapproved of the genocide. [ 327 ] [ p ]


Poles were viewed by Nazis as subhuman non-Aryans, and during the German  occupation of Poland  2.7 million ethnic Poles died. [ 328 ]  Polish civilians were subject to forced labour in German industry,  internment ,  wholesale expulsions  to make way for German colonists, and mass executions. The German authorities engaged in a systematic  effort to destroy Polish culture  and national identity. During operation  AB-Aktion , many university professors and members of the Polish intelligentsia were arrested, transported to concentration camps, or executed. During the war, Poland lost an estimated 39 to 45 per cent of its physicians and dentists, 26 to 57 per cent of its lawyers, 15 to 30 per cent of its teachers, 30 to 40 per cent of its scientists and university professors, and 18 to 28 per cent of its clergy. [ 329 ]


The Nazis captured 5.75 million Soviet prisoners of war, more than they took from all the other Allied powers combined. Of these, they killed an estimated 3.3 million, [ 330 ]  with 2.8 million of them being killed between June 1941 and January 1942. [ 331 ]  Many POWs starved to death or resorted to cannibalism while being held in open-air pens at Auschwitz and elsewhere. [ 332 ]


From 1942 onward, Soviet POWs were viewed as a source of forced labour, and received better treatment so they could work. [ 333 ]  By December 1944, 750,000 Soviet POWs were working, including in German armaments factories (in violation of the  Hague  and  Geneva conventions ), mines, and farms. [ 334 ]


Antisemitic legislation passed in 1933 led to the removal of all Jewish teachers, professors, and officials from the education system. Most teachers were required to belong to the  Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund  (NSLB; National Socialist Teachers League) and university professors were required to join the  National Socialist German Lecturers . [ 335 ] [ 336 ]  Teachers had to take an oath of loyalty and obedience to Hitler, and those who failed to show sufficient conformity to party ideals were often reported by students or fellow teachers and dismissed. [ 337 ] [ 338 ]  Lack of funding for salaries led to many teachers leaving the profession. The average class size increased from 37 in 1927 to 43 in 1938 due to the resulting teacher shortage. [ 339 ]


Frequent and often contradictory directives were issued by Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick,  Bernhard Rust  of the  Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture , and other agencies regarding content of lessons and acceptable textbooks for use in primary and secondary schools. [ 340 ]  Books deemed unacceptable to the regime were removed from school libraries. [ 341 ]  Indoctrination in Nazi ideology was made compulsory in January 1934. [ 341 ]  Students selected as future members of the party elite were indoctrinated from the age of 12 at  Adolf Hitler Schools  for primary education and  National Political Institutes of Education  for secondary education. Detailed indoctrination of future holders of elite military rank was undertaken at  Order Castles . [ 342 ]


Primary and secondary education focused on racial biology, population policy, culture, geography, and physical fitness. [ 343 ]  The curriculum in most subjects, including biology, geography, and even arithmetic, was altered to change the focus to race. [ 344 ]  Military education became the central component of physical education, and education in physics was oriented toward subjects with military applications, such as ballistics and aerodynamics. [ 345 ] [ 346 ]  Students were required to watch all films prepared by the school division of the  Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . [ 341 ]


At universities, appointments to top posts were the subject of power struggles between the education ministry, the university boards, and the National Socialist German Students' League. [ 347 ]  In spite of pressure from the League and various government ministries, most university professors did not make changes to their lectures or syllabus during the Nazi period. [ 348 ]  This was especially true of universities located in predominantly Catholic regions. [ 349 ]  Enrolment at German universities declined from 104,000 students in 1931 to 41,000 in 1939, but enrolment in medical schools rose sharply as Jewish doctors had been forced to leave the profession, so medical graduates had good job prospects. [ 350 ]  From 1934, university students were required to attend frequent and time-consuming military training sessions run by the SA. [ 351 ]  First-year students also had to serve six months in a labour camp for the  Reich Labour Service ; an additional ten weeks service were required of second-year students. [ 352 ]


Women were a cornerstone of Nazi social policy. The Nazis opposed the feminist movement, claiming that it was the creation of Jewish intellectuals, instead advocating a  patriarchal  society in which the German woman would recognise that her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home". [ 256 ]  Feminist groups were shut down or incorporated into the  National Socialist Women's League , which coordinated groups throughout the country to promote motherhood and household activities. Courses were offered on childrearing, sewing, and cooking. Prominent feminists, including  Anita Augspurg ,  Lida Gustava Heymann , and  Helene Stöcker , felt forced to live in exile. [ 353 ]  The League published the  NS-Frauen-Warte , the only Nazi-approved women's magazine in Nazi Germany; [ 354 ]  despite some propaganda aspects, it was predominantly an ordinary woman's magazine. [ 355 ]


Women were encouraged to leave the workforce, and the creation of large families by racially suitable women was promoted through propaganda campaigns. Women received a bronze award—known as the  Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter  (Cross of Honour of the German Mother)—for giving birth to four children, silver for six, and gold for eight or more. [ 353 ]  Large families received subsidies to help with expenses. Though the measures led to increases in the birth rate, the number of families having four or more children declined by five per cent between 1935 and 1940. [ 356 ]  Removing women from the workforce did not have the intended effect of freeing up jobs for men, as women were for the most part employed as domestic servants, weavers, or in the food and drink industries—jobs that were not of interest to men. [ 357 ]  Nazi philosophy prevented large numbers of women from being hired to work in munitions factories in the build-up to the war, so foreign labourers were brought in. After the war started, slave labourers were extensively used. [ 358 ]  In January 1943, Hitler signed a decree requiring all women under the age of fifty to report for work assignments to help the war effort. [ 359 ]  Thereafter women were funnelled into agricultural and industrial jobs, and by September 1944 14.9 million women were working in munitions production. [ 360 ]


Nazi leaders endorsed the idea that rational and theoretical work was alien to a woman's nature, and as such discouraged women from seeking higher education. [ 361 ]  A law passed in April 1933 limited the number of women admitted to university to ten per cent of the number of men. [ 362 ]  This resulted in female enrolment in secondary schools dropping from 437,000 in 1926 to 205,000 in 1937. The number of women enrolled in post-secondary schools dropped from 128,000 in 1933 to 51,000 in 1938. However, with the requirement that men be enlisted into the armed forces during the war, women comprised half of the enrolment in the post-secondary system by 1944. [ 363 ]


Women were expected to be strong, healthy, and vital. [ 364 ]  The sturdy peasant woman who  worked the land  and bore strong children was considered ideal, and women were praised for being athletic and tanned from working outdoors. [ 365 ]  Organisations were created for the indoctrination of Nazi values. From 25 March 1939 membership in the  Hitler Youth  was made compulsory for all children over the age of ten. [ 366 ]  The  Jungmädelbund  (Young Girls League) section of the Hitler Youth was for girls age 10 to 14, and the  Bund Deutscher Mädel  (BDM; League of German Girls) for young women age 14 to 18. The BDM's activities focused on physical education. [ 367 ]


The Nazi regime promoted a liberal code of conduct regarding sexual matters and was sympathetic to women who bore children out of wedlock. [ 368 ]  Promiscuity increased as the war progressed, with unmarried soldiers often intimately involved with several women simultaneously. Soldiers' wives were frequently involved in extramarital relationships. Sex was sometimes used as a commodity to obtain better work from a foreign labourer. [ 369 ]  Pamphlets enjoined German women to avoid sexual relations with foreign workers as a danger to their blood. [ 370 ]


With Hitler's approval, Himmler intended that the new society of the Nazi regime should destigmatise illegitimate births, particularly of children fathered by members of the SS, who were vetted for racial purity. [ 371 ]  His hope was that each SS family would have between four and six children. [ 371 ]  The  Lebensborn  (Fountain of Life) association, founded by Himmler in 1935, created a series of maternity homes to accommodate single mothers during their pregnancies. [ 372 ]  Both parents were examined for racial suitability before acceptance. [ 372 ]  The resulting children were often adopted into SS families. [ 372 ]  The homes were also made available to the wives of SS and Nazi Party members, who quickly filled over half the available spots. [ 373 ]


Existing laws banning abortion except for medical reasons were strictly enforced by the Nazi regime. The number of abortions declined from 35,000 per year at the start of the 1930s to fewer than 2,000 per year at the end of the decade, though in 1935 a law was passed allowing abortions for eugenics reasons. [ 374 ]


Nazi Germany had a strong  anti-tobacco movement , as pioneering research by Franz H. Müller in 1939 demonstrated a causal link between smoking and lung cancer. [ 375 ]  The Reich Health Office took measures to try to limit smoking, including producing lectures and pamphlets. [ 376 ]  Smoking was banned in many workplaces, on trains, and among on-duty members of the military. [ 377 ]  Government agencies also worked to control other carcinogenic substances such as asbestos and pesticides. [ 378 ]  As part of a general public health campaign, water supplies were cleaned up, lead and mercury were removed from consumer products, and women were urged to undergo regular screenings for breast cancer. [ 379 ]


Government-run health care insurance plans were available, but Jews were denied coverage starting in 1933. That same year, Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat government-insured patients. In 1937, Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat non-Jewish patients, and in 1938 their right to practice medicine was removed entirely. [ 380 ]


Medical experiments, many of them  pseudoscientific , were performed on concentration camp inmates beginning in 1941. [ 381 ]  The most notorious doctor to perform medical experiments was SS- Hauptsturmführer   Josef Mengele , camp doctor at Auschwitz. [ 382 ]  Many of his victims died. [ 383 ]  Concentration camp inmates were made available for purchase by pharmaceutical companies for drug testing and other experiments. [ 384 ]


Nazi society had elements supportive of  animal rights  and many people were fond of zoos and wildlife. [ 385 ]  The government took several measures to ensure the protection of animals and the environment. In 1933, the Nazis enacted a stringent animal-protection law that affected what was allowed for medical research. [ 386 ]  The law was only loosely enforced, and in spite of a ban on  vivisection , the Ministry of the Interior readily handed out permits for experiments on animals. [ 387 ]


The  Reich Forestry Office  under Göring enforced regulations that required foresters to plant a variety of trees to ensure suitable habitat for wildlife, and a new Reich Animal Protection Act became law in 1933. [ 388 ]  The regime enacted the Reich Nature Protection Act in 1935 to protect the natural landscape from excessive economic development. It allowed for the expropriation of privately owned land to create nature preserves and aided in long-range planning. [ 389 ]  Perfunctory efforts were made to curb air pollution, but little enforcement was undertaken once the war began. [ 390 ]


When the Nazis seized power in 1933, roughly 67 per cent of the population of Germany was  Protestant , 33 per cent was  Roman Catholic , while  Jews  made up less than 1 per cent. [ 391 ] [ 392 ]  According to the 1939 census, taken following the annexation of Austria, 54 per cent of the population considered themselves Protestant, 40 per cent Roman Catholic, 3.5 per cent  Gottgläubig  (God-believing; a Nazi religious movement) and 1.5 per cent  nonreligious . [ 1 ]  Nazi Germany extensively employed Christian imagery and instituted a variety of new Christian celebrations, such as a massive celebration marking the 1200th anniversary of the birth of Frankish emperor  Charlemagne , who  Christianized neighbouring continental Germanic peoples  by force. [ 393 ]  Nazi propaganda stylised Hitler as a  Christ -like  messiah , a "figure of redemption according to the Christian model", "who would liberate the world from the Antichrist". [ 394 ]


Under the  Gleichschaltung  process, Hitler attempted to create a  unified   Protestant Reich Church  from Germany's 28 existing Protestant  state churches . [ 395 ]  Pro-Nazi  Ludwig Müller  was installed as Reich Bishop and the pro-Nazi pressure group  German Christians  gained control of the new church. [ 396 ]  They objected to the  Old Testament  because of its Jewish origins and demanded that converted Jews be barred from their church. [ 397 ]  Pastor  Martin Niemöller  responded with the formation of the  Confessing Church , from which some clergymen opposed the Nazi regime. [ 398 ]  When in 1935 the Confessing Church synod protested the Nazi policy on religion, 700 of their pastors were arrested. [ 399 ]  Müller resigned and Hitler appointed  Hanns Kerrl  as Minister for Church Affairs to continue efforts to control Protestantism. [ 400 ]  In 1936, a Confessing Church envoy protested to Hitler against the religious persecutions and human rights abuses. [ 399 ]  Hundreds more pastors were arrested. [ 400 ]  The church continued to resist and by early 1937 Hitler abandoned his hope of uniting the Protestant churches. [ 399 ]  Niemöller was arrested on 1 July 1937 and spent most of the next seven years in  Sachsenhausen concentration camp  and Dachau. [ 401 ]  Theological universities were closed and pastors and theologians of other Protestant denominations were also arrested. [ 399 ]


Persecution of the  Catholic Church in Germany  followed the Nazi takeover. [ 403 ]  Hitler moved quickly to eliminate  political Catholicism , rounding up functionaries of the Catholic-aligned  Bavarian People's Party  and  Catholic Centre Party , which along with all other non-Nazi political parties ceased to exist by July. [ 404 ]  The  Reichskonkordat  (Reich Concordat) treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1933, amid continuing harassment of the church in Germany. [ 299 ]  The treaty required the regime to honour the independence of Catholic institutions and prohibited clergy from involvement in politics. [ 405 ]  Hitler routinely disregarded the Concordat, closing all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious. [ 406 ]  Clergy, nuns and lay leaders were targeted, with thousands of arrests over the ensuing years, often on trumped-up charges of currency smuggling or immorality. [ 407 ]  Several Catholic leaders were targeted in the 1934  Night of the Long Knives  assassinations. [ 408 ] [ 409 ]  Most Catholic youth groups refused to dissolve themselves and Hitler Youth leader  Baldur von Schirach  encouraged members to attack Catholic boys in the streets. [ 410 ]  Propaganda campaigns claimed the church was corrupt, restrictions were placed on public meetings and Catholic publications faced censorship. Catholic schools were required to reduce religious instruction and crucifixes were removed from state buildings. [ 411 ]


Pope Pius XI  had the  " Mit brennender Sorge "  ("With Burning Concern") encyclical smuggled into Germany for  Passion Sunday  1937 and read from every pulpit as it denounced the systematic hostility of the regime toward the church. [ 407 ] [ 412 ]  In response, Goebbels renewed the regime's crackdown and propaganda against Catholics. Enrolment in denominational schools dropped sharply and by 1939 all such schools were disbanded or converted to public facilities. [ 413 ]  Later Catholic protests included the 22 March 1942 pastoral letter by the German bishops on "The Struggle against Christianity and the Church". [ 414 ]  About 30 per cent of Catholic priests were disciplined by police during the Nazi era. [ 415 ] [ 416 ]  A vast security network spied on clergy and priests were frequently denounced, arrested or sent to concentration camps – many to the dedicated  clergy barracks  at Dachau. [ 417 ]  In the  areas of Poland annexed in 1939 , the Nazis instigated a  brutal suppression  and systematic dismantling of the Catholic Church. [ 418 ] [ 419 ]


Alfred Rosenberg , head of the  Nazi Party Office of Foreign Affairs  and Hitler's appointed cultural and educational leader for Nazi Germany, considered Catholicism to be among the Nazis' chief enemies. He planned the "extermination of the foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany", and for the  Bible  and  Christian cross  to be replaced in all churches, cathedrals, and chapels with copies of  Mein Kampf  and the swastika. Other sects of Christianity were also targeted, with Chief of the  Nazi Party Chancellery   Martin Bormann  publicly proclaiming in 1941, "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." [ 420 ]


If the experience of the Third Reich teaches us anything, it is that a love of great music, great art and great literature does not provide people with any kind of moral or political immunization against violence, atrocity, or subservience to dictatorship.


The regime promoted the concept of  Volksgemeinschaft , a national German ethnic community. The goal was to build a classless society based on racial purity and the perceived need to prepare for warfare, conquest and a struggle against Marxism. [ 421 ] [ 422 ]  The German Labour Front founded the  Kraft durch Freude  (KdF; Strength Through Joy) organisation in 1933. As well as taking control of tens of thousands of privately run recreational clubs, it offered highly regimented holidays and entertainment such as cruises, vacation destinations and concerts. [ 423 ] [ 424 ]


The  Reichskulturkammer  (Reich Chamber of Culture) was organised under the control of the Propaganda Ministry in September 1933. Sub-chambers were set up to control aspects of cultural life such as film, radio, newspapers, fine arts, music, theatre and literature. Members of these professions were required to join their respective organisation. Jews and people considered politically unreliable were prevented from working in the arts, and many emigrated. Books and scripts had to be approved by the Propaganda Ministry prior to publication. Standards deteriorated as the regime sought to use cultural outlets exclusively as propaganda. [ 425 ]


Radio became popular in Germany during the 1930s; over 70 per cent of households owned a receiver by 1939, more than any other country. By July 1933, radio station staffs were purged of leftists and others deemed undesirable. [ 426 ]  Propaganda and speeches were typical radio fare immediately after the seizure of power, but as time went on Goebbels insisted that more music be played so that listeners would not turn to foreign broadcasters for entertainment. [ 427 ]


Newspapers, like other media, were controlled by the state; the Reich Press Chamber shut down or bought newspapers and publishing houses. By 1939, over two-thirds of the newspapers and magazines were directly owned by the Propaganda Ministry. [ 429 ]  The Nazi Party daily newspaper, the  Völkischer Beobachter  ("Ethnic Observer"), was edited by Rosenberg, who also wrote  The Myth of the Twentieth Century , a book of racial theories espousing Nordic superiority. [ 430 ]  Goebbels controlled the wire services and insisted that all newspapers in Germany only publish content favourable to the regime. Under Goebbels, the Propaganda Ministry issued two dozen directives every week on exactly what news should be published and what angles to use; the typical newspaper followed the directives closely, especially regarding what to omit. [ 431 ]  Newspaper readership plummeted, partly because of the decreased quality of the content and partly because of the surge in popularity of radio. [ 432 ]  Propaganda became less effective towards the end of the war, as people were able to obtain information outside of official channels. [ 433 ]


Many authors left the country and some wrote material critical of the regime while in exile. Goebbels recommended that the remaining authors concentrate on books themed on Germanic myths and the concept of  blood and soil . By the end of 1933, over a thousand books—most of them by Jewish authors or featuring Jewish characters—had been banned by the Nazi regime. [ 434 ]   Nazi book burnings  took place; nineteen such events were held on the night of 10 May 1933. [ 428 ]  Tens of thousands of books from dozens of figures, including  Albert Einstein ,  Sigmund Freud ,  Helen Keller ,  Alfred Kerr ,  Marcel Proust ,  Erich Maria Remarque ,  Upton Sinclair ,  Jakob Wassermann ,  H. G. Wells , and  Émile Zola  were publicly burned. Pacifist works, and literature espousing liberal, democratic values were targeted for destruction, as well as any writings supporting the Weimar Republic or those written by Jewish authors. [ 435 ]


Hitler took a personal interest in architecture and worked closely with state architects  Paul Troost  and  Albert Speer  to create public buildings in a  neoclassical  style based on  Roman architecture . [ 436 ] [ 437 ]  Speer constructed imposing structures such as the  Nazi party rally grounds  in  Nuremberg  and a new  Reich Chancellery  building in Berlin. [ 438 ]  Hitler's plans for rebuilding Berlin included a gigantic dome based on the  Pantheon  in Rome and a  triumphal arch  more than double the height of the  Arc de Triomphe  in Paris. Neither structure was built. [ 439 ]


Hitler's belief that  abstract ,  Dadaist ,  expressionist  and  modern art  were decadent became the basis for policy. [ 440 ]  Many art museum directors lost their posts in 1933 and were replaced by party members. [ 441 ]  Some 6,500 modern works of art were removed from museums and replaced with works chosen by a Nazi jury. [ 442 ]  Exhibitions of the rejected pieces, under titles such as "Decadence in Art", were launched in sixteen different cities by 1935. The  Degenerate Art Exhibition , organised by Goebbels, ran in Munich from July to November 1937. The exhibition proved wildly popular, attracting over two million visitors. [ 443 ]


Composer  Richard Strauss  was appointed president of the  Reichsmusikkammer  (Reich Music Chamber) on its founding in November 1933. [ 444 ]  As was the case with other art forms, the Nazis ostracised musicians who were deemed racially unacceptable and for the most part disapproved of music that was too modern or  atonal . [ 445 ]   Jazz  was considered especially inappropriate and foreign jazz musicians left the country or were expelled. [ 446 ]  Hitler favoured the music of  Richard Wagner , especially pieces based on Germanic myths and heroic stories, and attended the  Bayreuth Festival  each year from 1933 to 1942. [ 447 ]


Movies were popular in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, with admissions of over a billion people in 1942, 1943, and 1944. [ 448 ] [ 449 ]  By 1934, German regulations restricting currency exports made it impossible for US film makers to take their profits back to America, so the major film studios closed their German branches. Exports of German films plummeted, as their antisemitic content made them impossible to show in other countries. The two largest film companies,  Universum Film AG  and  Tobis , were purchased by the Propaganda Ministry, which by 1939 was producing most German films. The productions were not always overtly propagandistic, but generally had a political subtext and followed party lines regarding themes and content. Scripts were pre-censored. [ 450 ]


Leni Riefenstahl 's  Triumph of the Will  (1935)—documenting the 1934 Nuremberg Rally—and  Olympia  (1938)—covering the  1936 Summer Olympics —pioneered techniques of camera movement and editing that influenced later films. New techniques such as telephoto lenses and cameras mounted on tracks were employed. Both films remain controversial, as their aesthetic merit is inseparable from their propagandising of Nazi ideals. [ 451 ] [ 452 ]


The Allied powers organised war crimes trials, beginning with the  Nuremberg trials , held from November 1945 to October 1946, of 23 top Nazi officials. They were charged with conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace,  war crimes  and  crimes against humanity . [ 453 ]  All but three were found guilty and twelve were sentenced to death. [ 454 ]  Twelve  subsequent Nuremberg trials  of 184 defendants were held between 1946 and 1949. [ 453 ]  Between 1946 and 1949, the Allies investigated 3,887 cases, of which 489 were brought to trial. The result was convictions of 1,426 people; 297 of these were sentenced to death and 279 to life in prison, with the remainder receiving lesser sentences. About 65 per cent of the death sentences were carried out. [ 455 ]  Poland was more active than other nations in investigating war crimes, for example prosecuting 673 of the total 789 Auschwitz staff brought to trial. [ 456 ]


The political programme espoused by Hitler and the Nazis brought about a world war, leaving behind a devastated and impoverished Europe. Germany itself suffered wholesale destruction, characterised as  Stunde Null  (Zero Hour). [ 457 ]  The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in the history of warfare. [ 458 ]  As a result, Nazi ideology and the actions taken by the regime are almost universally regarded as gravely immoral. [ 459 ]  Historians, philosophers, and politicians often use the word " evil " to describe Hitler and the Nazi regime. [ 460 ]  Interest in Nazi Germany continues in the media and the academic world. While Evans remarks that the era "exerts an almost universal appeal because its murderous racism stands as a warning to the whole of humanity", [ 461 ]  young neo-Nazis enjoy the shock value that Nazi symbols or slogans provide. [ 462 ]  The display or use of  Nazi symbolism  is illegal in Germany and Austria. [ 463 ]


Nazi Germany was succeeded by three states:  West Germany  (the Federal Republic of Germany or "FRG"),  East Germany  (the German Democratic Republic or "GDR"), and  Austria . [ 464 ]
The process of denazification initiated by the Allies was only partially successful, as the need for experts in such fields as medicine and engineering was too great. However, expression of Nazi views was frowned upon, and those who expressed such views were frequently dismissed from their jobs. [ 465 ]  From the immediate post-war period through the 1950s, Germans kept quiet about their wartime experiences and felt a sense of communal guilt, even if they were not directly involved in war crimes. [ 466 ]


The trial of  Adolf Eichmann  in 1961 and the broadcast of the television miniseries  Holocaust  in 1978 brought the process of  Vergangenheitsbewältigung  (coping with the past) to the forefront for many Germans. [ 462 ] [ 466 ]  Once study of Nazi Germany was introduced into the school  curriculum  starting in the 1970s, people began researching the experiences of their family members. Study of the era and a willingness to critically examine its mistakes has led to the development of a strong democracy in Germany, but with lingering undercurrents of antisemitism and  neo-Nazi  thought. [ 466 ]


In 2017, a  Körber Foundation  survey found that just 47 per cent of 14 to 16-year-olds polled knew what  Auschwitz  was. [ 467 ] [ 468 ]  The journalist  Alan Posener  attributed the country's "growing historical amnesia" in part to a failure by German film and television to reflect the country's history accurately. [ 469 ]


52°31′N   13°22′E  /  52.52°N 13.37°E  /  52.52; 13.37


The  nonidentity problem  (also called the  paradox of future individuals ) [ 1 ]  in  population ethics  is the problem that an act may still be wrong even if it is not wrong  for  anyone. More precisely, the nonidentity problem is the inability to simultaneously hold the following beliefs: (1) a  person-affecting view ; (2) bringing someone into existence whose life is worth living, albeit flawed, is not "bad for" that person; (3) some acts of bringing someone into existence are wrong even if they are not bad  for  someone. [ 2 ]   Rivka Weinberg  has used the nonidentity problem to study the ethics of  reproduction . [ 3 ]


This article about  ethics  is a  stub . You can help Wikipedia by  expanding it .


Propaganda in the  Soviet Union  was the practice of state-directed communication aimed at promoting  class conflict ,  proletarian internationalism , the goals of the  Communist Party of the Soviet Union , and the party itself.


The main  Soviet censorship  body,  Glavlit , was employed not only to eliminate any undesirable printed materials but also "to ensure that the correct ideological spin was put on every published item." [ 1 ]  After the death of  Joseph Stalin , punitive measures were replaced by  punitive psychiatry , prison, denial of work, and loss of citizenship.


According to historian  Peter Kenez , "the Russian socialists have contributed nothing to the theoretical discussion of the techniques of mass persuasion. ... The  Bolsheviks  never looked for and did not find devilishly clever methods to influence people's minds, to brainwash them." Kenez says this lack of interest "followed from their notion of propaganda. They thought of propaganda as part of education." [ 2 ]  In a study published in 1958, business administration professor Raymond Bauer concluded: "Ironically, psychology and the other social sciences have been employed  least  in the Soviet Union for precisely those purposes for which Americans popularly think psychology would be used in a totalitarian state—political propaganda and the control of human behavior." [ 3 ]


An important goal of Soviet propaganda was to create a  New Soviet man . Schools and Communist youth organizations such as the  Young Pioneers  and  Komsomol  served to remove children from the " petit-bourgeois " family and  indoctrinate  the next generation into the " collective  way of life".  The idea that the upbringing of children was the concern of their parents was explicitly rejected. [ 4 ]
One schooling theorist stated:


We must make the young into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists... We must rescue children from the harmful influence of the family... We must nationalize them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools... To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet state – that is our task. [ 5 ]


Those born after the  Russian Revolution  were explicitly told that they were to build a utopia of brotherhood and justice, and to not be like their parents, but completely Red. [ 6 ]  "Lenin's corners", "political shrines for the display of propaganda about the god-like founder of the Soviet state", were established in all schools. [ 5 ]  Schools conducted marches, songs, and pledges of allegiance to Soviet leadership.  One of the purposes was to instill in children the idea that they are involved in the  world revolution , which is more important than any family ties.  Pavlik Morozov , who denounced his father to the secret police  NKVD , was promoted as a great positive example despite its fabrication. [ 5 ]


Teachers in economic and social sciences were particularly responsible for inculcating "unshakable"  Marxist–Leninist  views. [ 7 ]  All teachers were prone to strictly follow the plan for educating children approved by the top for reasons of safety, which could cause serious problems dealing with social events that, having just happened, were not included in the plan. [ 8 ]   Children of "socially alien" elements were often the target of abuse or expelled, in the name of  class struggle . [ 9 ]  Early in the regime, many teachers were drawn into Soviet plans for schooling because of a passion for literacy and numeracy, which the Soviets were attempting to spread. [ 10 ]


The  Young Pioneers  were an important factor in the indoctrination of children. [ 11 ]  They were taught to be truthful and uncompromising and to fight the enemies of socialism. [ 12 ]   By the 1930s, this indoctrination completely dominated the Young Pioneers. [ 13 ]


The radio was put to good use, especially to reach the illiterate;  radio receivers  were put in communal locations, where the peasants would have to come to hear the news, such as changes to  rationing , and received propaganda broadcasts with it; some of these locations were also used for posters. [ 14 ]


During World War II, radio was used to propagandize Germany;  German POWs  would be brought on to speak and assure their relatives they were alive, with propaganda being inserted between the announcement that a soldier would speak and when he actually did, in the time allowed for his family to gather. [ 15 ]


Wall posters were widely used in the early days, often depicting the  Red Army 's triumphs for the benefit of the illiterate. [ 14 ]  Throughout the 1920s, this was continued. [ 16 ]


This continued in  World War II , still for the benefit of the less literate, with bold, simple designs. [ 17 ]


Films were heavily propagandist, although they were pioneers in the documentary field ( Roman Karmen ,  Dziga Vertov ). [ 14 ]  When war appeared inevitable, dramas, such as  Alexander Nevsky  (1938) were written to prepare the population; these were withdrawn after the  Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , but returned to circulation after the war began. [ 18 ]


Films were shown in theaters and from  propaganda trains . [ 19 ]  During the war  newsreels  were shown in  subway stations  so that the poor were not excluded by an inability to pay. [ 20 ]  Films were also shot with stories of partisan activity, and of the suffering inflicted by the Nazis, such as  Girl No. 217 , depicting a Russian girl enslaved by an inhuman German family. [ 20 ]


An institution during World War II was the propaganda train, fitted with presses and portable cinemas, staffed with lecturers. [ 20 ]  In the  Civil War  the Soviets sent out both "agitation trains" ( Russian :  агитпоезд ) and " agitation steamboats  [ ru ] " ( Russian :  агитпароход ) to inform, entertain, and propagandize. [ 21 ] [ 22 ]


Meetings with speakers were also used.  Despite their dullness, many people found they created solidarity, and made them feel important and that they were being kept up to date on news. [ 23 ]


Lectures were habitually used to instruct in the proper way of every corner of life. [ 24 ]


Joseph Stalin's  lectures on  Leninism  were instrumental in establishing that the Party was the cornerstone of the  October Revolution , a policy  Lenin  acted on but did not write of theoretically. [ 25 ]


Art, whether literature, visual art, or performing art, was used for the purpose of propaganda. [ 26 ]  Furthermore, it should show one clear and unambiguous meaning. [ 27 ]  Long before Stalin imposed complete restraint, a cultural bureaucracy was growing up that regarded art's highest form and purpose as propaganda and began to restrain it to fit that role. [ 28 ]   Cultural activities were constrained by censorship and a monopoly of cultural institutions. [ 29 ]


Imagery frequently drew on  heroic realism . [ 30 ]   The Soviet pavilion for the  Paris World Fair  was surmounted by  Vera Mukhina 's a monumental sculpture,  Worker and Kolkhoz Woman , in heroic mold. [ 31 ]  This reflected a call for heroic and romantic art, which reflected the ideal rather than the realistic. [ 32 ]   Art was filled with health and happiness; paintings teemed with busy industrial and agricultural scenes, and sculptures depicted workers, sentries, and schoolchildren. [ 33 ]


In 1937, the Industry of Socialism was intended as a major exhibit of socialist art, but difficulties with pain and the problem of " enemies of the people " appearing in scene required reworking, and sixteen months later, the censors finally approved enough for an exhibition. [ 34 ]


In 1917, coming out of underground movements, the Soviets prepared to begin publishing  Pravda . [ 35 ]


The very first law the Soviets passed on assuming power was to suppress newspapers that opposed them. [ 29 ]  This had to be repealed and replaced with a milder measure, [ 36 ]  but by 1918, Lenin had liquidated the independent press, including journals stemming from the 18th century. [ 37 ]


From 1930 to 1941, as well as briefly in 1949, the propaganda journal  USSR in Construction  was circulated. It was published in  Russian ,  French ,  English ,  German , and, from 1938,  Spanish . The self-proclaimed purpose of the magazine was to "reflect in photography the whole scope and variety of the construction work now going on the USSR". [ 38 ]  The issues were aimed primarily at an international audience, especially Western left-wing intellectuals and businessmen, and were quite popular during its early publications, with subscribers including  George Bernard Shaw ,  H. G. Wells ,  John Galsworthy , and  Romain Rolland . [ 38 ]


Illiteracy was regarded as a grave danger, excluding the illiterate from political discussion. [ 39 ]  In part this was because the people could not be reached by Party journals. [ 40 ]


Immediately after the revolution, books were treated with less severity than newspapers, but the nationalizing of  printing presses  and  publishing houses  brought them under control. [ 41 ]  In the  Stalinist  era,  libraries  were purged, sometimes so extremely that works by Lenin were removed. [ 42 ]


In 1922, the deportation of writers and scholars warned that no deviation was permitted, and pre-publication censorship was reinstated. [ 43 ]  Due to a lack of Bolshevist authors, many "fellow travelers" were tolerated, but money only came as long as they toe the party line. [ 44 ]


During the Stalinist  Great Purges , textbooks were often so frequently revised that students had to do without them. [ 45 ]


The revolutionary theater was used to inspire support for the regime and hatred of its enemies, particularly  agitprop theater , noted for its cardboard characters of perfect virtue and complete evil, and its coarse ridicule. [ 46 ]   Petrushka  was a popular figure, often used to defend rich peasants and attack  kulaks . [ 47 ]


Many Soviet works depicted the development of a "positive hero" as requiring intellectualism and hard discipline. [ 48 ]   He was not driven by crude impulses of nature but by conscious self-mastery. [ 49 ]   The selfless new man was willing to sacrifice not only his life but his self-respect and his sensitivity for the good of others. [ 50 ]   Equality and sacrifice were touted as the ideal appropriate for the "socialist way of life." [ 51 ]
Work required exertion and austerity, to show the new man triumphing over his base instincts. [ 52 ]   Alexey Stakhanov 's record-breaking day in mining coal caused him to be set forth as the exemplar of the "new man" and to inspire  Stakhanovite movements . [ 53 ]   The movement inspired much pressure to increase production, on both workers and managers, with critics labeled " wreckers ". [ 54 ]


This reflected a change from early days, with emphasis on the "little man" among the anonymous labors, to favoring the "hero of labor" in the end of the  First Five-Year Plan , with writers explicitly told to produce heroization. [ 55 ]   While these heroes had to stem from the people, they were set apart by their heroic deeds. [ 55 ]   Stakhanov himself was well suited for this role, not only a worker but for his good looks like many poster hero and as a family man. [ 55 ]  The hardships of the First Five-Year Plan were put forth in romanticized accounts. [ 56 ]  In 1937–38, young heroes who accomplished great feats appeared on the front page of  Pravda  more often than Stalin himself. [ 57 ]


Later, during the purges, claims were made that criminals had been "reforged" by their work on the  White Sea/Baltic Canal ; salvation through labor appeared in  Nikolai Pogodin 's  The Aristocrats  as well as many articles. [ 58 ]


This could also be a new woman;  Pravda  described the Soviet woman as someone who had and could never have existed before. [ 55 ]   Female  Stakhanovites  were rarer than male, but a quarter of all trade-union women were designated as "norm-breaking." [ 31 ]  For the Paris World Fair,  Vera Mukhina  depicted a monumental sculpture,  Worker and Kolkhoz Woman , dressed in work clothing, pressing forward with his hammer and her sickle crossed. [ 31 ]   Pro-natalist policies encouraging women to have many children were justified by the selfishness inherent in limiting the next generation of "new men." [ 59 ]  "Mother-heroines" received medals for ten or more children. [ 60 ]


Stakhanovites were also used as propaganda figures so heavily that some workers complained that they were skipping work. [ 61 ]


The fabricated murder of  Pavlik Morozov  was widely exploited in propaganda to urge on children the duty of informing on even their parents to the new state. [ 62 ]


The class enemy was a pervasive feature of Soviet propaganda. [ 63 ]  With the  Civil War , the newly formed army moved to massacre large numbers of  kulaks  and otherwise promulgate a short lived " reign of terror " to terrify the masses into obedience. [ 64 ]


Lenin proclaimed that they were exterminating the  bourgeoisie  as a class, a position reinforced by the many actions against landlords, well-off peasants, banks, factories, and private shops. [ 65 ]  Stalin warned, often, that with the struggle to build a socialist society, the class struggle would sharpen as class enemies grew more desperate. [ 66 ]  During the Stalinist era, all opposition leaders were routinely described as traitors and agents of foreign,  imperialist  powers. [ 67 ]


The Five-Year Plan intensified the class struggle with many attacks on  kulaks , and when it was found that many peasant opponents were not rich enough to qualify, they were declared "sub-kulaks." [ 68 ]   "Kulaks and other class-alien enemies" were often cited as the reason for failures on collective farms. [ 69 ]   Throughout the First and Second Five-Year Plans, kulaks, wreckers, saboteurs and nationalists were attacked, leading up to the  Great Terror . [ 70 ]   Those who profited from public property were "enemies of the people." [ 71 ]   By the late 1930s, all "enemies" were lumped together in art as supporters of historical idiocy. [ 72 ]  Newspapers reported even on the trial of children as young as ten for counterrevolutionary and fascist behavior. [ 73 ]   During the  Holodomor , the starving peasants were denounced as saboteurs, all the more dangerous in that their gentle and inoffensive appearance made them appear innocent; the deaths were only proof that peasants hated socialism so much they were willing to sacrifice their families and risk their lives to fight it. [ 74 ]


Stalin, denouncing  White  counter-revolutionaries,  Trotskyists , wreckers, and others, particularly aimed his attention at the Communist  old guard . [ 75 ]  The very improbability of the charges was cited as evidence, since more plausible charges could have been invented. [ 76 ]


These enemies were rounded up for the  gulags , which propaganda proclaimed to be " corrective labor camps " to such an extent that even people who saw the starvation and slave labor believed the propaganda rather than their eyes. [ 77 ]


During World War II, entire nationalities, such as the  Volga Germans , were branded traitors. [ 78 ]


Stalin himself informed  Sergei Eisenstein  that his film  Ivan the Terrible  was flawed because it did not show the necessity of terror in Ivan's persecution of the nobility. [ 79 ]


Propaganda can start a large movement or revolution, but only if the masses rally behind one another to make the images produced by propaganda a reality. Good propaganda must instill hope, faith, and certainty. It must bring solidarity among the population. It must stave off demoralization, hopelessness, and resignation. [ 80 ]


A common theme was the creation of a new, utopian society, depicted in posters and newsreels, which inspired an enthusiasm in many people. [ 81 ]   Much propaganda was dedicated to a new community, as exemplified in the use of " comrade ." [ 82 ]  This new society was to be  classless . [ 83 ]   Distinctions were to be based on function, not class, and all possessed the equal duty to work. [ 84 ]   During the 1930s discussion of the new  constitution , one speaker proclaimed that there were, in fact, no classes in the USSR, [ 85 ]  and newspapers effused over how the dreams of the  working class  were coming true for the luckiest people in the world. [ 86 ]   One admission that there were classes – workers, peasants, and working  intelligentsia  – dismissed it as unimportant, as these new classes had no need to conflict. [ 87 ]


Military metaphors were used frequently for this creation, as in 1929, where the collectivization of agriculture was officially termed a "full-scale socialist offensive on all fronts." [ 88 ]   The Second Five-Year Plan saw a slowdown of the Socialist Offensive, this against a propaganda background of trumpeting the USSR's triumphs on "the battlefield of building socialism." [ 89 ]


In Stalinist times, this was often portrayed as a "great family", with Stalin as the great father. [ 88 ]


Happiness was mandatory; in a novel where a horse was described as moving "slowly", the censor objected, asking why it was not moving speedily, being happy like the rest of the collective farm workers. [ 90 ]


Kohlkhoznye Rebiata  published bombastic reports from the collective farms of their children. [ 91 ]   When hot breakfasts were provided for schoolchildren, particularly in city schools, the program was announced with great fanfare. [ 91 ]


Since communist society was the highest and most progressive form of society, it was ethically superior to all others, and "moral" and "immoral" were determined by whether things helped or hindered its development. [ 92 ]   Tsarist law was overtly abolished, and while judges could use it, they were to be guided by "revolutionary consciousness". [ 93 ]   Under the pressure of the need for law, more and more was implemented; Stalin justified this in propaganda as the law would "wither away" best when its authority was raised to the highest, through its contradictions. [ 94 ]


When the draft of the new constitution led people to believe that private property would be returned and that workers could leave  collective farms , speakers were sent out to "clarify" the matter. [ 95 ]


Stalin bluntly declared the Bolshevists must close the Tsar-induced fifty- or a hundred-year gap with  Western countries  in ten years, or "socialism would be destroyed". [ 96 ]   In support of the Five-Year Plan, he declared being an industrial laggard had caused Russia's historical defeats. [ 97 ]   Newspapers reported  overproduction  of quotas, even though many had not occurred, and where they did, the goods were often shoddy. [ 98 ]


During the 1930s, the development of the USSR was just about the only theme of art, literature and film. [ 99 ]   The heroes of  Arctic exploration  were glorified. [ 99 ]   The twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution was honored with a five volume work glorifying the accomplishments of socialism and (in the last volume) "scientifically based fantasies" of the future, raising such questions as whether the whole world or only Europe would be socialist in twenty years. [ 100 ]


Even while a majority of the population was still rural, the USSR was proclaimed "a mighty industrial power." [ 101 ]   USSR in Construction  glorified the  Moscow-Volga Canal , with only the briefest mention of the slave labor that had built it. [ 102 ]


In 1939, a rationing plan was considered but not implemented because it would undermine the propaganda of improving care for the people, whose lives grew better and more cheerful every year. [ 103 ]


During World War II, the slogans were altered from overcoming backwardness to overcoming the "fascist beast" but continued focus on production. [ 104 ]   The slogan proclaimed "Everything for the Front!" [ 105 ]   Teams of Young Communists were used as shocktroops to shame workers into higher production as well as spread socialist propaganda. [ 106 ]


In the 1950s, Khrushchev repeatedly boasted that the USSR would soon surpass the West in material well-being. [ 107 ]   Other Soviet officials agreed that the USSR would soon show its superiority because capitalism was like a dead herring – shining as it rotted. [ 108 ]


Subsequently, the USSR was referred to as "developed socialism." [ 109 ]


This led to a great emphasis on education. [ 110 ]


The first post-mortem attack on Stalin was the publication of articles in  Pravda  proclaiming that the masses made history and the error of a "cult of the individual." [ 111 ]


A common motif in propaganda was that the Soviet Union was peace-loving. [ 112 ]


Many warnings were made of the necessity of keeping out of any imperialistic war, as the breakdown of capitalism would make capitalist countries more desperate. [ 113 ]


The  Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact  was presented as a peace measure. [ 114 ]


Even before the Bolshevists seized power, Lenin proclaimed in speeches that the Revolution was the vanguard of a worldwide revolution, both international and socialist. [ 115 ]   The workers were informed they were the vanguard of world socialism; the slogan "Workers of the world, unite!" was constantly repeated. [ 116 ] [ 117 ]


Lenin founded the organization  Comintern  to propagate Communism internationally. [ 118 ]  Stalin proceeded to use it to promote Communism throughout the world for the benefit of the USSR. [ 119 ]  When this topic was a difficulty dealing with the  Allies  in  World War II , Comintern was dissolved. [ 118 ]  Similarly, " The Internationale " was dropped as the national anthem in favor of the " Hymn of the Soviet Union ". [ 120 ]


Japanese prisoners of war  were intensively propagandized before their release in 1949, to act as Soviet agents. [ 121 ]


While Lenin was uncomfortable with the  personality cult  that sprung up about him, the party exploited it during the  Russian Civil War  and officially enshrined it after his death. [ 122 ]  As early as 1918, a biography of Lenin was written, and busts were produced. [ 123 ]  With his death, his  embalmed body was displayed  (to imitate  beliefs that the bodies of saints did not decay ), and picture books of his life were produced in mass quantities. [ 124 ]


Stalin presented himself as a simple man of the people, but distinct from everyday politics by his unique role as leader. [ 125 ]  His clothing was carefully selected to cement this image. [ 126 ]  Propaganda presented him as Lenin's heir, exaggerating their relationship, until the  Stalin cult  drained out the Lenin cult – an effect shown in posters, where at first Lenin would be the dominating figure over Stalin, but as time went on became first only equal, and then smaller and more ghostly, until he was reduced to the byline on the book Stalin was depicted reading. [ 127 ]   This occurred despite the historical accounts describing Stalin as insignificant, or even a "gray blur", in the early Revolution. [ 128 ]  From the late 1920s until it was debunked in the 1960s, he was presented as the chief military leader of the civil war. [ 129 ]   Stalingrad  was renamed for him on the claim that he had single-handedly, and against orders, saved it in the civil war. [ 130 ]


He often figured as the great father of the "great family" that was the new Soviet Union. [ 88 ]   Regulations on how exactly to portray Stalin's image and write of his life were carefully promulgated. [ 131 ]   Inconvenient facts, such as his having wanted to cooperate with the Tsarist government on his return for exile, were purged from his biography. [ 132 ]


His work for the Soviet Union was praised in paeans to the "light in the Kremlin window." [ 52 ]   Marx ,  Engels , Lenin, and above all Stalin appeared frequently in art. [ 30 ]


Discussions of the proposed constitution in the 1930s included effusive thanks to "Comrade Stalin." [ 86 ]  Engineering projects such as canals were described as having been decreed personally by Stalin. [ 133 ]   Young Pioneers  were enjoined to struggle for "the cause of Lenin and Stalin". [ 11 ]   During the purges, he increased his appearances in public, having his photograph taken with children,  airmen , and  Stakhanovites , being hailed as the source of the "happy life," and according to  Pravda , riding the subway with common workers. [ 134 ]


The propaganda was effectual. [ 135 ]   Many young people hard at work at construction idolized Stalin. [ 126 ]   Many people chose to believe that the charges made at the purges were true rather than believing that Stalin had betrayed the revolution. [ 135 ]


During  World War II , this personality cult was certainly instrumental in inspiring a deep level of commitment from the masses of the Soviet Union, whether on the battlefield or in industrial production. [ 136 ]    Stalin made a fleeting visit to the front so that propagandists could claim that he had risked his life with the frontline soldiers. [ 137 ]   The cult was, however, toned down until approaching victory was near. [ 138 ]  As it became clear that the Soviet Union would eventually win the war, Stalin ensured that propaganda always mentioned his leadership of the war; the victorious generals were sidelined and never allowed to develop into political rivals.


Soon after his death, attacks, first veiled and then open, were made on the "cult of the individual" arguing that history was made by the masses. [ 111 ]


Nikita Khrushchev , though leading the attacks on the cult, nevertheless sought out publicity, and his photograph frequently appeared in the newspapers. [ 139 ]


As Stalin drew power to himself,  Leon Trotsky  was pictured in an anti-personality cult. It began with the assertion that he had not joined the Bolshevists until late, after the planning of the October Revolution was done. [ 140 ]


Historical falsification  of political events such as the October Revolution and the Brest-Litovsk Treaty became a distinctive element of Stalin's regime. A notable example is the 1938 publication,  History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) , [ 141 ]  in which the history of the governing party was significantly altered and revised including the importance of the leading figures during the Bolshevik revolution. Retrospectively, Lenin's primary associates such as Zinoviev, Trotsky, Radek and Bukharin were presented as "vacillating", "opportunists" and "foreign spies" whereas Stalin is depicted as the chief discipline during this revolution. However, in reality, Stalin was considered a relatively unknown figure with secondary importance at the time of the event. [ 142 ]


In his book,  The Stalin School of Falsification , Leon Trotsky cited a range of historical documents such as party speeches, meeting  minutes , and suppressed texts such as  Lenin's Testament . [ 143 ]  He argued that the Stalinist faction routinely distorted political events, forged a theoretical basis for irreconcilable concepts such as the notion of "Socialism in One Country" and misrepresented the views of opponents through an array of employed historians alongside economists to justify policy manoeuvering and safeguarding its own set of material interests. [ 144 ]


Some historians believe that an important goal of Soviet propaganda was "to justify  political repressions  of entire  social groups  which  Marxism  considered antagonistic to the class of  proletariat ", [ 145 ] [ failed verification ]  as in  decossackization  or  dekulakization  campaigns. [ 146 ] [ 5 ]   Richard Pipes  wrote: "a major purpose of Soviet propaganda was arousing violent political emotions against the regime's enemies." [ 147 ]


The most effective means to achieve this objective "was the denial of the victim's humanity through the process of  dehumanization ", "the reduction of real or imaginary enemy to a zoological state". [ 148 ]  In particular,  Vladimir Lenin  called to exterminate enemies "as harmful insects", "lice" and "bloodsuckers". [ 145 ] : 750


According to writer and propagandist  Maksim Gorky ,


Class hatred should be cultivated by an organic revulsion as far as the enemy is concerned. Enemies must be seen as inferior. I believe quite profoundly that the enemy is our inferior, and is a degenerate not only in the physical plane but also in the moral sense. [ 145 ]


State prosecutor  Andrey Vyshinsky  frequently demonized  "enemies"  during Stalin's  show trials : [ 149 ]


Shoot these rabid dogs. Death to this gang who hide their ferocious teeth, their eagle claws, from the people! Down with that vulture  Trotsky , from whose mouth a bloody venom drips, putrefying the great ideals of Marxism!... Down with these abject animals! Let's put an end once and for all to these miserable hybrids of foxes and pigs, these stinking corpses! Let's exterminate the mad dogs of  capitalism , who want to tear to pieces the flower of our new Soviet nation! Let's push the bestial hatred they bear our leaders back down their own throats!


Early in the revolution, atheistic propaganda was pushed in an attempt to obliterate religion. [ 18 ]  Regarding religion more as a class enemy, a cause of hate, than a contender for people's minds, the government abolished the prerogatives of the  Russian Orthodox Church  and targeted them with ridicule. [ 150 ]  This included lurid anti-religious processions and newspaper articles that backfired badly, shocking the deeply religious population. [ 151 ]  It was stopped and replaced by lectures and other more intellectual methods. [ 112 ]  The  Society of the Godless  organized for such purposes, and the magazines  Bezbozhnik  ( The Godless ) and  Bezbozhnik u Stanka  ( The Godless in the Workplace ) promulgated atheistic propaganda. [ 152 ]  Atheistic education was regarded as a central task of Soviet schools. [ 153 ]  The attempt to liquidate illiteracy was hindered by attempts to combine it with atheistic education, which caused peasants to stay away and which was eventually reduced. [ 154 ]


In 1929, all forms of religious education were banned as religious propaganda, and the right to anti-religious propaganda was explicitly affirmed, whereupon the League of the Godless became the League of the Militant Godless. [ 155 ]


A "Godless Five-Year Plan" was proclaimed, purportedly at the instigation of the masses. [ 156 ]  Christian virtues such as humility and meekness were ridiculed in the press, with self-discipline, loyalty to the party, confidence in the future, and hatred of class enemies being recommended instead. [ 157 ]  Anti-religious propaganda in Russia led to a reduction in the public demonstrations of religion. [ 158 ]


Much anti-religious efforts were dedicated to promoting  science  in its place. [ 159 ]  In the debunking of a  miracle  – a  Madonna  weeping tears of blood, which was shown to be  rust  contaminating water by pouring multicolored waters into the statue – was offered to the watching peasants as proof of science, resulting in the crowd killing two of the scientists. [ 160 ]


They also tried to overthrow the evangelical image of  Jesus . The literature of the USSR in the 1920s, following the tradition of the demythologization of Jesus, created in the works  David Strauss ,  Ernest Renan ,  Friedrich Nietzsche  and  Charles Binet-Sanglé , put forward two main themes –  Jesus' mental illness  and his deception. It was only at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s that the Soviet Union's propaganda won the  mythological option , namely the denial of the existence of Jesus. [ 161 ]


A " Living Church " movement despised Russian Orthodoxy's hierarchy and preached that socialism was the modern form of Christianity;  Trotsky  urged their encouragement to split Orthodoxy. [ 162 ]


During World War II, this effort was rolled back;  Pravda  capitalized the word "God" for the first time, as religious attendance was actually encouraged. [ 163 ]  Much of this was for foreign consumption, where it was widely disbelieved, with President  Franklin D. Roosevelt  condemning both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as atheistic regimes which did not permit  freedom of conscience . [ 164 ]  This rollback may have occurred due to the ineffectiveness of the Soviets' anti-religious effort. [ 158 ]