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Soon after Hitler came to power, debates began outside Germany about taking part in Olympics hosted by the Nazi regime. Learn more about calls to boycott the Games.
Headquarters of the Nazi Gestapo (secret state police) and of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). Berlin, Germany, date uncertain.
Martin Niemöller was a prominent Protestant pastor in Germany who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler. His postwar words, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…” continue to be used in popular culture and public...
Hermann Göring held many positions of power and leadership within the Nazi state. Learn about key dates in the life of Hermann Göring.
February 23, 1930. On this date, Nazi stormtrooper Horst Wessel dies after being shot and becomes a martyr in Nazi propaganda.
On April 1, 1933—less than 3 months after rising to power—the Nazis staged a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses. The boycott signaled the start of the Nazi movement to exclude Jews from all aspects of German soci...
On February 27, 1933, the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down due to arson. The...
Thousands of Nazi criminals were never arrested. Learn more about the postwar efforts to bring Nazi perpetrators to justice.
Key dates in the life of Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office, the SS and police agency most directly concerned with implementing Final Solution.
The 1936 Olympics in Berlin were the first to employ the torch relay, an Olympic ritual. The Nazi regime used the Olympics to present the false image of a peaceful Germany.
Members of a German Zionist youth group learn farming techniques in preparation for their new lives in Palestine. Many Jewish youths in Nazi Germany participated in similar programs, hoping to escape persecution by leaving the country.
Karl-Heinz Kusserow, a Jehovah's witness who was imprisoned by the Nazis because of his beliefs. He was a prisoner in the Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps in Germany.
At Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), a Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda exhibition, a case features "typical Jewish external features." Munich, Germany, November 1937.
Police search members of the SA (Sturmabteilung) for weapons as they gather for a rally. This photo was taken during the years of the Weimar Republic, before the Nazi rise to power. Germany, 1929–1932.
One of three children, Leo grew up in the small town of Hochneukirch, 20 miles northwest of Cologne. As an adult, Leo entered his father's cigar manufacturing business, "Isak Falkenstein and Sons." Leo and his wife, Bertha, lived in a house next to Leo's parents. Leo and Bertha had six children whom they raised in the Jewish faith. 1933-39: Leo and Bertha's daughter Johanna has brought her two girls to live with them for a while here in Hochneukirch. Johanna's husband, Carl, has been having trouble…
The Ministries Case was Case #11 of 12 Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings against leading German industrialists, military figures, SS perpetrators, and others.
November 22, 1930. On this date, Nazis attack a leftwing group at a dance hall in Berlin.
The International Military Tribunal charged 24 defendants representing a cross-section of German diplomatic, economic, political, and military leadership.
Poster: "We Women Are Voting Slate 2 National Socialists." German women were an important voting bloc. The Nazis made a concerted effort to appeal to women, as exemplified by this 1932 election poster. The Nazis had to repackage their messages to de-emphasize military aims. Hitler consciously modeled some Nazi propaganda appeals to German women on speeches delivered by Benito Mussolini in Fascist Italy, who also had to calm the fears of Italian war widows after World War I. Nazi propagandists attempted to…
A mass marriage of 50 couples in Berlin. All of the couples belonged to the Nazi Party. Berlin, Germany, July 2, 1933.
The Kusserow family home in Bad Lippspringe. The family, Jehovah's Witnesses, kept religious materials in the trunk of the car and distributed them from it as well. The Kusserow family was active in their region distributing religious literature and teaching Bible study classes in their home. Their house was conveniently situated for fellow Witnesses along the tram route connecting the cities of Paderborn and Detmold. For the first three years after the Nazis came to power, the Kusserows endured moderate…
In 1945, the power and influence of the SS in Nazi Germany started to decline. Learn more about the subsequent disintegration and postwar trials.
Signs excluding Jews, such as the sign shown here, were posted in public places (including parks, theaters, movie houses, and restaurants) throughout Nazi Germany. This sign states in German: "Jews are not wanted here."
A chart of prisoner markings used in German concentration camps. Dachau, Germany, ca. 1938–1942. Beginning in 1937–1938, the SS created a system of marking prisoners in concentration camps. Sewn onto uniforms, the color-coded badges identified the reason for an individual’s incarceration, with some variation among camps. The Nazis used this chart illustrating prisoner markings in the Dachau concentration camp.
The Buchenwald camp was one of the largest concentration camps. The Nazis built it in 1937 in a wooded area northwest of Weimar in central Germany. US forces liberated the Buchenwald camp on April 11, 1945. When US troops entered the camp, they found more than 20,000 prisoners. This footage shows scenes that US cameramen filmed in the camp, survivors, and the arrival of Red Cross trucks.
Poster for the antisemitic museum exhibition Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) characterizes Jews as Marxists, moneylenders, and enslavers. Munich, Germany, November 8, 1937. Nazi propagandists also created a film of the same name.
German citizens stand outside the decorated Hotel Dreesen, where Neville Chamberlain and Hitler held their second meeting on the Sudetenland and German demands for Czech territory. Nazi flags and the Union Jack fly from the building. Bad Godesberg, Germany, September 22, 1938.
Horst Wessel leads his SA formation through the streets of Nuremberg during the fourth Nazi Party Congress in August 1929.
Adolf Hitler established himself as absolute Führer, or leader, of the Nazi Party by 1921. Learn more about Hitler in the years 1919-1924.
From a window in the Reich Chancellery, German president Paul von Hindenburg watches a Nazi torchlight parade in honor of Adolf Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor. Berlin, Germany, January 30, 1933.
Entrance to the Ploetzensee prison. At Ploetzensee, the Nazis executed hundreds of Germans for opposition to Hitler, including many of the participants in the July 20, 1944, plot to kill Hitler. Berlin, Germany, postwar.
Battalions of Nazi street fighters salute Adolf Hitler during an SA parade through Dortmund. Germany, 1933.
The Wannsee Protocol documents the 1942 Wannsee Conference participants and indicates their agreement to collaborate on a continental scale in the Final Solution.
Heinrich Himmler was Reich Leader of the SS and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. He was instrumental to coordinating the "Final Solution," the plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe.
Learn more about the 1936 German Supreme Court decision on the Nuremberg Race Laws.
The Hadamar psychiatric hospital was used as a euthanasia killing center from January until August 1941. Nazi doctors gassed about 10,000 German patients there. Although systematic gassings ended in September 1941, the killing of patients continued through the end of the war. In this footage, American soldiers supervise the exhumation of the cemetery at Hadamar and begin the interrogation of Dr. Adolf Wahlmann and Karl Wilig, who participated in the killings.
On the day of the vote on the so-called Enabling Act, the Nazi leadership sent SS troops into the makeshift Reichstag building, formerly the Kroll Opera, to intimidate other political parties. Berlin, Germany, March 23, 1933. The Enabling Act allowed the Reich government to issue laws without the consent of Germany’s parliament, laying the foundation for the complete Nazification of German society. The full name of the law was the “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich.”
A runner begins the torch relay (the first "Olympia Fackel-Staffel-Lauf") in Oympia, Greece., ca. July 1936. The 1936 Games were the first to employ the torch run. Each of 3,422 torch bearers ran one kilometer (0.6 miles) along the route of the torch relay from the site of the ancient Olympics in Olympia, Greece, to Berlin. Former German Olympian Carl Diem modeled the relay after one that had been run in Athens in 80 B.C. It perfectly suited Nazi propagandists, who used torchlit parades and rallies to…
Each cookbook or recipe in the Museum’s collection tells a story. Learn more about the significance of these documents during the Holocaust.
August 19, 1934. On this date, Hitler abolished the office of President and declares himself as Führer, thus becoming the absolute dictator of Germany.
View an animated map showing key events in the history of the Dachau concentration camp, which was established by the Nazi regime in 1933.
Policemen stand outside the shuttered Eldorado nightclub, long frequented by Berlin's gay and lesbian community. The Nazi government quickly closed the establishment down and pasted pro-Nazi election posters on the building. Berlin, Germany, March 5, 1933. Learn more about this photograph.
July 22, 1932. On this date, Adolf Hitler delivered a campaign speech promising salvation for Germany.
Born at the beginning of World War I, Wilhelm was patriotically named after Germany's emperor, Wilhelm II. The eldest son, Wilhelm was raised a Lutheran, but after the war his parents became Jehovah's Witnesses and raised their children according to their faith. After 1931, their home in the rustic town of Bad Lippspringe became known as a center of Jehovah's Witness activity. 1933-39: The Kusserows were under close scrutiny by the Nazi police because Witnesses believed that their highest loyalty was to…
When Wolfgang was an infant, his parents became Jehovah's Witnesses. His father moved the family to the small Westphalian town of Bad Lippspringe when Wolfgang was 9. Their home became the headquarters of a new Jehovah's Witness congregation. Wolfgang and his ten brothers and sisters grew up studying the Bible daily. 1933-39: The Kusserows were under close scrutiny by the Nazi secret police because of their religion. As a Jehovah's Witness, Wolfgang believed that his highest allegiance was to God and His…
Adolf Hitler poses with his cabinet shortly after assuming power as chancellor of Germany. Hitler is flanked by Joseph Goebbels (left) and Hermann Göring (right). Berlin, Germany, 1933.
The 1936 Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin. For two weeks, Adolf Hitler camouflaged his antisemitic and expansionist agenda while hosting the games. Hoping to impress the many foreign visitors who were in Germany for the games, Hitler authorized a brief relaxation in anti-Jewish activities (including the removal of signs barring Jews from public places). The games were a resounding propaganda success for the Nazis. They presented foreign spectators with the image of a peaceful and tolerant Germany.…
Fritz was one of three sons born to a Jewish family in the university city of Goettingen, where the Rosenbergs had lived since the 1600s. His father owned a linen factory. Fritz worked as a salesman there, and later he and his brothers inherited the business. In 1913 Fritz married Else Herz. By the early 1920s they had two sons and a daughter. 1933-39: In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany. A year later the Rosenbergs' factory was seized and three Nazis came to the family's home. An officer set a gun…
Soviet soldiers in the Soviet occupation zone of Berlin following the defeat of Nazi Germany. Berlin, Germany, after May 9, 1945.
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