The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

Hitler was Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, leader of the Nazi Party, and totalitarian dictator whose territorial aggression in Europe precipitated World War II. His racial ideas provided the foundation and justification for the Nazi reign of terror known as the New Order, which included the mass murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust.

Born April 20, 1889, at Braunau-am-Inn on the Austro-Bavarian border, young Hitler came of age during the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which he grew to detest, in part because of its ethnic mixture and in part because it prevented the unification of all German-speaking peoples. Hitler spent his early twenties languishing in Vienna, the Austro-Hungarian capital, where he developed an intense hatred of Jews, whom he denounced as poisoners of the German “master race.” As far as anyone can tell from the surviving evidence, young Hitler never bothered to earn a living except at very irregular intervals. In World War I, he rose to the rank of corporal and served with apparent distinction. Germany’s defeat sent him into a deep despair. After the war, he became the seventh member of the fledgling National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi), in which he quickly ascended to a leadership role. After the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hitler spent nine months in prison, where he dictated Mein Kampf (1925), an autobiography and political screed that would serve as the ideological blueprint for the Third Reich.

After a quiet period in the late 1920s, Hitler and the Nazis surged to the forefront of German national politics during the Great Depression. After repeated successes in the Weimar Republic’s Reichstag elections, Hitler challenged the venerable incumbent President Paul von Hindenburg and finished second in the balloting. Thanks to a series of intrigues designed to neutralize the insurgent Nazis by bringing them into the government—a move that backfired in spectacular fashion—Hindenburg agreed to appoint Hitler Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. After taking office, Hitler moved quickly to secure the support of the Army and eradicate all political dissent. He governed with emergency powers ceded by a pliant Reichstag. Following Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Hitler combined the presidency and chancellorship into a single office. He also began to implement the ugliest parts of Mein Kampf, highlighted by the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, which, among other things, deprived Jews of German citizenship.

To secure Lebensraum (“living space”) for the German people, and to avenge Germany’s defeat in World War I, Hitler in the mid-1930s began to rearm in secret. His aggressive foreign policy included the 1936 occupation of the Rhineland demilitarized zone. He forged close relations with Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist dictator who invaded Ethiopia that same year. In public, Hitler spoke only of peace. In private, as he told his generals on November 5, 1937, he planned to make war on his neighbors. Hitler’s native Austria fell to the Nazi dictator in the March 1938 Anschluss. After the September 1938 Munich Agreement, a capitulation of the Western democracies led by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Hitler’s armies moved into the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland. By the spring of 1939, the Nazis had occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s forces invaded Poland, which began World War II. After the victory in Poland, Hitler informed his generals a) that he planned to attack in the West as soon as possible, and b) after securing victory in the West he would turn against the Soviet Union. In the meantime, before moving against France, Hitler in early 1940 ordered an invasion of Denmark and Norway. Then, after conquering Belgium and Holland and knocking France out of the war in a matter of weeks, Hitler ordered his top commanders to prepare for an invasion of Britain, an invasion that never materialized thanks to the failure of the German air force in the Battle of Britain. In 1941, Hitler ordered his troops into the Balkans and then, on June 22, 1941, attacked the Soviet Union by launching the largest invasion in human history, Operation Barbarossa.

During World War II, Hitler assumed personal command of all German armed forces. While this resulted in a handful of good decisions, Hitler’s command of the armies on the whole produced an unmitigated disaster. Hitler’s order to stand and fight in front of Moscow rather than retreat probably prevented a total rout and the destruction of his armies in the East. Every other major decision, however—his order to halt the panzers’ advance on Dunkirk; his determination to punish Yugoslavia; his obsession with capturing Stalingrad—proved costly.

Hitler survived an assassination attempt on July 20, 1944. He died by suicide in a bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on April 30, 1945.

Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda from the beginning to the end of the Third Reich, Goebbels carried out the day-to-day business of controlling information and manipulating German public opinion. An easily influenced intellectual who had earned a PhD at the age of 24, Goebbels first embraced socialism and then, in the mid-1920s, fell under Hitler’s spell and joined the Nazis. Goebbels also kept a diary that serves as an important source for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

In the hours immediately following the failed assassination attempt against Hitler at Rastenberg on July 20, 1944, Goebbels took decisive action to preserve Nazi authority in Berlin. On May 1, 1945, Goebbels followed the Fuehrer to his death. After poisoning his six children, Goebbels ordered that he and his wife be shot to death rather than surrender to the Soviets.

Arrogant, unintelligent, and one of the few high officials in the Third Reich whose association with the Nazis did not date to the Party’s early days, Ribbentrop nonetheless rose to the position of Foreign Minister. In that role, he conducted all of the negotiations that preceded Hitler’s many acts of aggression, including the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which Ribbentrop signed in Moscow. Because The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich features evidence drawn from mountains of captured German Foreign Office records, Ribbentrop figures prominently in the book’s narrative.

After the war, Ribbentrop was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg and executed on October 16, 1946.

A pilot in World War I, and a veteran of the Nazi Party from its formative years, Goering ascended to a position of leadership in the Party perhaps second only to Hitler. Goering commanded the Luftwaffe during World War II and rose to the rank of Field Marshal. A man of insatiable appetites, Goering used the plunder of Germany’s conquest victims to amass an enormous personal fortune.

After the war, Goering was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg and sentenced to death. He swallowed poison two hours before his scheduled execution.

A chicken farmer and, like most Nazis, someone with a mediocre intelligence, Himmler in 1929 assumed command of the SS, a small-but-fanatical organization that served as Hitler’s bodyguard but eventually would grow into the enforcement arm of the Nazi Party and its Fuehrer. Under Himmler’s direction, the SS terrorized the German people into submission, oversaw the Nazi secret police (Gestapo), and operated concentration camps. Himmler’s SS also carried out the atrocities of the New Order, including the Holocaust. Special detachments of the SS Einsatzgruppen carried out the mass murder of Jews in the extermination camps and elsewhere.

Shortly after the war, Himmler died by suicide by swallowing poison while in British custody.

A “young man of diabolical cast,” Heydrich headed the SS Security Service and the Gestapo, its secret police. More than any other individual Nazi, Heydrich was responsible for organizing and executing the terror of the New Order, including the “Final Solution” that resulted in the Holocaust.

Heydrich died on June 4, 1942, from wounds suffered during an assassination attempt carried out by two Czech freedom fighters near Prague.

An original member of the Nazi Party, Roehm commanded the SA, a group of Nazi street thugs who terrorized political opponents. Shirer describes Roehm as a “tough, ruthless, driving man—albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual” (38).

To satisfy the Army, Hitler ordered Roehm murdered during the Blood Purge of June 30, 1934.

Field Marshal Keitel served as Chief of Armed Forces High Command (OKW) under Hitler. Shirer describes Keitel as “an arrogant and ambitious man, though of feeble mind and moral character,” who served the Fuehrer throughout the war.

After the war, Keitel was tried and convicted by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. He was executed on October 16, 1946.

General Jodl served as Chief of Operations of the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW) under Hitler. Jodl kept a diary that served as an important source for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Much like Field Marshal Keitel, Jodl served Hitler without objection to the end of the war.

After the war, Jodl was tried and convicted by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. He was executed on October 16, 1946.

A World War I veteran, Hess joined the Nazi Party in 1920 and “became a close friend, a devoted follower, and secretary of the leader” (48). During World War II, Hess made a notorious solo flight to Britain in an effort to persuade British officials that they must seek a negotiated peace with Germany. Apparently, Hess was sincere—he thought he could please the Fuehrer by knocking Britain out of the war—but the strange episode prompted officials on both sides to conclude that Hess had a mental health crisis.

After the war, Hess was convicted at Nuremberg and sentenced to life in prison.

In Nazi circles, Rosenberg passed for an intellectual, though Shirer describes him as “an utterly muddled man” (49). Born in Estonia, Rosenberg graduated from the University of Moscow in 1917 and immediately gravitated toward Bolshevism. He joined the Nazi Party in 1919 and later became editor of a Nazi newspaper. Rosenberg helped persuade Hitler to launch the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.

After the war, Rosenberg was convicted at Nuremberg and executed by hanging.

A “depraved sadist,” a “famous fornicator,” and a “noted pornographist,” Streicher published Der Stuermer, a weekly periodical that “thrived on lurid tales of Jewish sexual crimes” and “ritual murders” (50). Among all leading Nazis, Streicher ranks as perhaps the most virulent antisemite.

After the war, Streicher was convicted at Nuremberg and executed by hanging.

An Austrian Nazi, Seyss-Inquart collaborated with officials in Berlin to surrender his country to Hitler. On March 11, 1938, the day of the Anschluss, Seyss-Inquart spent hours on the phone with high-ranking Nazis, including Hermann Goering, in hopes of orchestrating a bloodless coup that would topple the Austrian regime, put an end to Austrian independence, and incorporate Austria into the Third Reich.

After the war, Seyss-Inquart was convicted at Nuremberg and executed by hanging.

An Englishman by birth, Chamberlain was one of the intellectual and spiritual founders of Nazism. Chamberlain wrote Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899), which argued that Germans constituted the world’s “master race”; that Jesus himself was probably an Aryan rather than a Jew; and that Germany was destined to rule the world.

Chamberlain’s argument impressed Kaiser Wilhelm II, last of the Hohenzollern monarchs, but it was Hitler who most impressed Chamberlain. “You have mighty things to do,” an aging Chamberlain wrote to Hitler in 1923. Chamberlain died on January 11, 1927, convinced that Hitler would lead Germany to greatness and world domination.

Chief of the Army General Staff, Beck emerged in 1938 as the leader of an anti-Hitler conspiracy. Like most German generals who opposed Hitler, at least in the conspiracy’s early days, Beck objected to Hitler not on moral grounds but from a belief that the Fuehrer would lead Germany to its destruction in an unwinnable war. Shirer describes Beck as a “sensitive, intelligent, decent but indecisive” man who later “would base his struggle against the Nazi dictator on broad grounds” (366).

Beck was executed in Berlin on July 20, 1944, the day of the failed assassination attempt against Hitler.

Upon General Ludwig Beck’s resignation in August 1938, Halder became Chief of the Army General Staff, a position in which he served until 1942. This brought him into regular contact with high Nazi officials, including Hitler. Halder kept a diary that served as a major source for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Like Beck, Halder joined the anti-Hitler conspirators. Before the Munich Agreement pulled the rug out from under the German conspirators by giving Hitler what he wanted without war, Halder led a plot to remove the Fuehrer by force.

Halder was arrested following the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt and placed in solitary confinement at a concentration camp. He was liberated by American troops on May 4, 1945.

An anti-Hitler conspirator, Tresckow served as chief of staff of the Second Army on the Eastern Front. After the Allied landing at Normandy on June 6, 1944, some conspirators wondered if they had lost their chance to dispose of Hitler and prevent Germany’s final destruction. Stauffenberg and others wrote to Tresckow for advice. Tresckow’s reply stands as one of the most principled and resolute statements ever written by any of the conspirators:

The assassination must be attempted at any cost. Even if it should fail, the attempt to seize power in the capital must be undertaken. We must prove to the world and to future generations that the men of the German Resistance Movement dared to take the decisive step and to hazard their lives upon it. Compared with this object, nothing else matters (1043).

After the failed assassination attempt, Tresckow died by suicide, which he staged as an attack in an attempt to protect fellow conspirators and his family, though the ruse was only temporarily successful.

A chief of staff at the General Army Office, Stauffenberg carried the bomb, concealed in a briefcase, which detonated inside Hitler’s headquarters on July 20, 1944. A man of “astonishing gifts” and a comparatively liberal mind, Stauffenberg joined the conspiracy because he detested the Nazi regime. Due to his convictions, as well as his dynamic personal qualities, Stauffenberg emerged as leader of the conspiracy. He personally carried out the assassination attempt because he occupied a position inside the Army that required him to brief the Fuehrer on occasion, so he alone among the conspirators could get close to Hitler without raising suspicion.

Hours after the attempted assassination, Stauffenberg returned to Berlin, but the conspiracy failed. Hitler survived, and Nazi officials maintained control of the capital. Stauffenberg and several other conspirators died by firing squad. His last words were “Long live our sacred Germany!” (1068).

Commander of the Afrika Korps, a “dashing” and “resourceful tank officer,” and hero of the North African Campaign, the “Desert Fox” might have been the most famous German military figure in the world (827). In the spring of 1941, Rommel’s forces won a string of victories that left the British in a precarious position. Hitler, however, failed to provide adequate support in North Africa, and in 1942 Rommel suffered a severe defeat at El Alamein, which ended the German initiative in North Africa.

Rommel later lent his support to the anti-Hitler conspirators in Germany. After the failed assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, rather than alert the German public to Rommel’s role in the conspiracy and thus deprive the regime of its war hero, Hitler quietly allowed Rommel to die by suicide.

Mayor of Leipzig, Goerdler was among the earliest and perhaps the most committed of the civilian anti-Hitler conspirators. Goerdler “broke with the Nazis in 1936 over their antisemitism and their frenzied rearmament,” and thereafter he “went to work with heart and soul in opposition to Hitler” (372).

On February 2, 1945, Goerdler was executed for his role in the conspiracy.

Prime Minister of Great Britain until May 10, 1940, Chamberlain stands as perhaps the most prominent non-Nazi in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Chamberlain orchestrated the Munich Agreement of 1938, an infamous act of appeasement that ceded Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Hitler. In fact, Chamberlain has come down through history as the embodiment of the fear and complacency that gripped both Britain and France on the eve of World War II. Only after Hitler violated the Munich Agreement by occupying all of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 did Chamberlain stiffen in his approach to the Nazi dictator. In May 1939, Chamberlain guaranteed Poland against Nazi aggression, and in September the British government made good on that guarantee by declaring war on Nazi Germany.

Chamberlain died in November 1940, having lived long enough to see German bombs falling on British soil. Winston Churchill eulogized Chamberlain as a man of peace deceived by Hitler’s wickedness.

Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II, Churchill was the only major public figure in either Britain or France who from the birth of the Third Reich recognized the gravity of the threat Hitler posed to world peace. Churchill succeeded Neville Chamberlain as prime minister on May 10, 1940, the day Hitler launched his attack on the West. In late-May and early-June 1940, Churchill oversaw the Dunkirk evacuation. Later that year, Churchill guided Britain through a period of extreme danger, when German bombs terrorized British cities from the skies and the threat of German invasion loomed. Throughout the war, Churchill embodied the British determination to resist Nazi tyranny at all costs.

Fascist dictator of Italy, Mussolini allied with Hitler during World War II. Mussolini appears as a strange figure in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. On one hand, surviving evidence shows that Mussolini had many qualms about Hitler’s wars, not about their morality but about their timing. Italy, he repeatedly told Hitler, was not ready to fight a large European war. When Italian forces did see combat, as they did in Greece during the 1940-41 campaign, they often performed poorly. Mussolini, therefore, appears more as a nervous and reluctant sidekick than a powerful dictator and equal partner. Hitler, meanwhile, notwithstanding Mussolini’s vacillations, always went out of his way to give the Italian dictator whatever material support and assurances he needed.

Italian King Victor Emmanuel ordered Mussolini arrested and imprisoned on July 25, 1943, but Nazi forces rescued the former dictator and placed him at the head of an Italian puppet state. On April 28, 1945, two days before Hitler’s death by suicide, Mussolini and his mistress were captured and executed, their bodies strung up and displayed in Milan the entirety of the next day.

Italian Foreign Minister, and Mussolini’s son-in-law, Ciano engaged in frequent negotiations with both Ribbentrop and Hitler. In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Ciano is important for two reasons. First, he was wary of the Nazis, and he communicated his wariness to Mussolini. Second, and more important, Ciano kept a diary that served as an important source for the book.

Following Mussolini’s rescue by forces loyal to Hitler, Ciano was executed in Verona on January 11, 1944.