Facism: Characteristics and Origins

• Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)
• March on Rome in 1922

• Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
• Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) Director of the SS (Schutzstaffel), Hitler's private army
• Herman Göring (1893-1945) Minister of Interior
• Joseph Goebles (1897-1945) Minister of Propaganda

• Wiemar Republic (1919-1933)
• Hitler appointed Chancellor, January 30, 1933
• Enabling Act of March 1933 gave Hitler emergency powers that provided a basis for a legal dictatorship
• Gleichschaltung or "Coordination" was the term used by Hitler and the National Socialists to described the subordination and control over the state apparatus, communications, labor unions, local governments, and so forth. In other words, a revolution from above to bring about a dictatorial regime.
• Nuremburg Laws in 1935 abolished German citizenship for Jews
• 1938
  • September: The "Anschlus": Germany annexes Austria (March).
  • Czechoslovak crisis and Munich conference lead to German annexation of Sudetenland.
  • November 9-10, Kristallnacht marks the beginning of violent persecution of German Jews
• August 23, 1939. Hitler and Stalin sign a non-agression pact, making it possible for Hitler to seize parts of Poland and Eastern Europe with the threat of a two-front war--France and Britain in the west; the USSR in the east. Stalin got eastern parts of Poland as well as assurances to Stalin about the eventual annexation of the Baltic states--Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland.
• September 1939, Germany invades Poland and the war is declared against Germany by Britain and France

   

Mein Kampf (1924) Selections, by Adolf Hitler

Speech at the Nuremburg Party Rally of 1936

Nazi Posters

• Hitler and the Volkswagen
• Nazi posters before 1933
• Nazi poster 1933-1945
• Continuity or Change in Art and Propaganda
  

Nazi Sculpture: The Glorification of the Male Body