History UsefulNotes / NaziGermany

* It is perhaps unique among history's most infamous dictatorships in that beyond even Hitler himself, most of the senior figures of the regime have become memetic figures in their own right: UsefulNotes/HermannGoring is the FatBastard and MilesGloriosus, Rudolf Hess is the CloudCuckoolander, UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler is the FourEyesZeroSoul chief of the death camps, UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich is the blonde-haired {{Sociopath}} and SocialClimber, Joseph Goebbels has become a by-word for PropagandaMachine, Joachim von Ribbentrop is the AssInAmbassador and (fake) NaziNobleman, Wilhelm Keitel is the spineless YesMan, etc. One would be hard-pressed to name a lot of members of Stalin's or Mao's or Pol Pot's inner circles beyond perhaps UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev ([[YoungFutureFamousPeople admittedly, less so for his record under Stalin and more because he later became Premier himself]]) and Lavrentiy Beria (whom Stalin semi-jokingly called "our Himmler" to Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta).

[[index]]

'''See WorksSetInWorldWarII and WorksSetInWorldWarII/WorksAboutTheHolocaust for the works set between 1939 and 1945.'''

** UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg -- The famous zeppelin, which famously crashed in a horrific scene that showed the dangers of working with hydrogen on such aircrafts.

** Creator/LeniRiefenstahl -- Prominent filmmaker, made some famous documentaries for propaganda purposes.

** UsefulNotes/{{Abwehr}} -- The army's Intelligence Service.
** UsefulNotes/TheGestapo -- The Nazi state's infamous SecretPolice.

*** UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel -- A famous military figure of the era.

** UsefulNotes/KarlDonitz -- Supreme Commander of the U-Boat Force, later became Grand Admiral of the ''Kriegsmarine'' and ultimately Hitler's brief successor as President (while Goebbels then Ludwig von Krosigk as Chancellor).

** UsefulNotes/JosephGoebbels -- The Nazi regime's Minister of Propaganda.

** UsefulNotes/KarlDonitz -- Supreme Commander of the U-Boat Force, later became Grand Admiral of the ''Kriegsmarine'' and ultimately Hitler's successor.

Nazi Germany is the name commonly used to refer to the German nation when it was ruled by UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and the National Socialist or Nazi party in the years 1933-1945. It is also known as the '''Third Reich'''.[[note]]Hitler styled "his" new Germany as the "1000-year Reich", for which he got a lot of mockery after the war when it turned out to last only twelve years - although its crimes were so horrible and mass scale that it may well be remembered for over 1000 years.[[/note]] (the First being the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire,[[note]]Which actually kinda-sorta did make it to 1,000 years, although you have to twist the definition of the HRE to include Charlemagne (crowned "Emperor of the Romans" in 800) even though the first "Holy Roman Emperor" was Otto I (crowned in 962), and forget that the HRE spent the last 300 years or so of its existence as a powerless shell ("[[Creator/{{Voltaire}} neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire]]") kept around as a trophy by the Austrian monarchs.[[/note]] and the Second being UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany). The Nazis did not actually change the ''official'' name of the country until 1942; for ten of their twelve years in power, it remained simply '''Deutsches Reich''' (literally, "German Realm"), as it had been since 1871. In 1942, it was officially renamed '''Großdeutsches Reich''' (literally, "Greater German Realm"), to reflect their large territorial gains and the "unification" of the German-speaking lands, and to [[CallBack hark back]] to the ''Großdeutsche Lösung'' ("Greater German Solution") to the "[[UsefulNotes/AllTheLittleGermanies German Question]]". Therefore, the names "Nazi Germany" and "Third Reich" are conventions for historians, not official denominations[[note]]When a Modern German talks about the 1933-1945 period, he or she may often call it ''Zeit des Nationalsozialismus'' or ''Nazizeit'' - "time of national-socialism" "time of the Nazis" among many, many other names or "[[TheScottishTrope You know who]]" kind of descriptions[[/note]].

* It is perhaps unique among history's most infamous dictatorships in that beyond even Hitler himself, most of the senior figures of the regime have become memetic figures in their own right: UsefulNotes/HermannGoring is the FatBastard and MilesGloriosus, UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler is the FourEyesZeroSoul chief of the death camps, UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich is the blonde-haired {{Sociopath}} and SocialClimber, Joseph Goebbels has become a by-word for PropagandaMachine, Joachim von Ribbentrop is the AssInAmbassador and (fake) NaziNobleman, Wilhelm Keitel is the spineless YesMan, etc. One would be hard-pressed to name a lot of members of Stalin's or Mao's or Pol Pot's inner circles beyond perhaps UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev ([[YoungFutureFamousPeople admittedly, less so for his record under Stalin and more because he later became Premier himself]]) and Lavrentiy Beria (whom Stalin semi-jokingly called "our Himmler" to Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta).

* The '''{{Reichstropen}}''' page regroups the tropes that refer to/originated in Nazi Germany.
* Subjects related to Nazi Germany:[[index]]
** UsefulNotes/{{Abwehr}} -- The army's Intelligence Service.
** UsefulNotes/TheGestapo -- The Nazi state's infamous SecretPolice.

** UsefulNotes/HermannGoring -- The ''de facto'' second-in-command of the Nazi regime, and the head of the ''Luftwaffe''.
** UsefulNotes/WilliHerold -- A young German soldier who carried out a massacre of deserters from his own country.

** UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg -- The famous zeppelin, which famously crashed in a horrific scene that showed the dangers of working with hydrogen on such aircrafts.
** UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler -- Head of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS), the regime's StateSec, and one of the architects of the Holocaust.
** UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler -- The Nazi regime's leader and central figure.
** UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust -- Nazi Germany's infamous campaign of industrialized murder during World War II. The prosecution of it gave prominence to the word "genocide".

** UsefulNotes/NazisWithGnarlyWeapons -- The armed forces of the Nazi state, comprising both the ''Wehrmacht'' (the general armed forces) and the ''Schutzstaffel'' (the Nazi StateSec).

** UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel -- A famous military figure of the era.
** UsefulNotes/WorldWarII -- The war Nazi Germany started in Europe, fought and lost.[[/index]]

* ''The Pink Swastika'' by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. Dismissed as pseudo-history by most historians for invoking GodwinsLaw as part of an overall homophobic agenda, this book alleges that the Nazi Party was run by a homosexual elite and that their [[TestosteronePoisoning "super-manliness"]] drove the militarism of the Third Reich. To begin with, most of the major Nazis were heterosexual men, including Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, and Heydrich--all of whom had documented marriages, relationships, or affairs with women exclusively. The only major one who was inarguably a homosexual, Ernst Röhm, was executed in 1934. The Nazis persecuted homosexuals to a far greater degree than during the Weimar Republic, with thousands ending up in concentration camps.

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[[AC:Live-Action TV ]]

Many works that are set during TheGreatDepression, the GenteelInterbellumSetting or very early World War II for Western UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} but do not take place in Germany will nonetheless refer to it one way or another, usually through newspapers or the radio or by having the protagonist go to a movie theater that screens {{Newsreel}}s from Europe (real life footage from Nuremberg rallies and Hitler's rousing pre-war speeches, usually).

[[AC:Film]]

** UsefulNotes/JosefMengele -- A physician responsible for unethical and inhumane experimentation on Auschwitz inmates.

Many works that are set during TheGreatDepression, the GenteelInterbellumSetting or very early World War II but do not take place in Germany will nonetheless refer to it one way or another, usually through newspapers or the radio or by having the protagonist go to a movie theater that screens {{Newsreel}}s from Europe (real life footage from Nuremberg rallies and Hitler's rousing pre-war speeches, usually).

** Hitler, despite having brown hair, was among the many Germans regarded as Nordic. He possessed the characteristic features laid out in Hans Gunthers' ''The Racial Elements of European History'' (Hitler's favorite racial text after Madison Grant's ''The Passing of the Great Race''), including a long, angular face, tall stature, light eyes (blue), light skin, and straight hair. Notably, the Nazis did ''not'' regard all of Germany as being Nordic, just majority-Nordic.[[note]]From the Hitler Youth handbook (''Vom deutschen Volk und seinem Lebensraum''): "the principal ingredient of our people is the Nordic race (55%). That is not to say that half our people are pure Nordics. All of the aforementioned races appear in mixtures in all parts of our fatherland. The circumstance, however, that the great part of our people is of Nordic descent justifies us taking a Nordic standpoint when evaluating our character and spirit, bodily structure, and physical beauty."[[/note]] The only well-known Nazi who fit 100% of the Nordic description was UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich, who was super tall (even by modern standards), had platinum blond hair, blue eyes, a long and narrow face, and was a champion athlete and renowned violinist. However, according to Himmler's doctor, Felix Kersten, [[{{Irony}} Heydrich was half Jewish]] (although this is far from proven). Goering fit the description as well, but years of hedonism and morphine addiction took away from this and instead caused his stereotype of being an [[FatIdiot obese idiot]].

Many works that are set during TheGreatDepression, the GenteelInterbellumSetting or very early World War II but do not take place in Germany will nonetheless refer to it one way or another. Usually through newspapers or the radio or by having the protagonist go to a movie theater that screens {{Newsreel}}s from Europe (real life footage from Nuremberg rallies and Hitler's rousing pre-war speeches, usually).

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nazigermany.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300: ''[[Film/TheProducers "Watch out, Europe! We're going on tour!"]]'']]

* It is perhaps unique among history's most infamous dictatorships in that beyond even Hitler himself, most of the senior figures of the regime have become memetic figures in their own right: UsefulNotes/HermannGoring is the FatBastard and MilesGloriosus, UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler is the FourEyesZeroSoul chief of the death camps, UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich is the blonde-haired {{Sociopath}} and SocialClimber, Joseph Goebbels has become a by-word for PropagandaMachine, Joachim von Ribbentrop is the AssInAmbassador and (fake) NaziNobleman, Wilhelm Keitel is the spineless YesMan, etc. One would be hard-pressed to name a lot of members of Stalin's or Mao's or Pol Pot's inner circles beyond perhaps UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev ([[YoungFutureFamousPeople admittedly, less so for his record under Stalin and more since he later became Premier himself]]) and Lavrentiy Beria (whom Stalin semi-jokingly called "our Himmler" to Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta).

* It is perhaps unique among history's most infamous dictatorships in that beyond even Hitler himself, most of the senior figures of the regime have become memetic figures in their own right: UsefulNotes/HermannGoring is the FatBastard and MilesGloriosus, UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler is the FourEyesZeroSoul chief of the death camps, UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich is the blonde-haired {{Sociopath}} and SocialClimber, Joseph Goebbels has become a by-word for PropagandaMachine, Joachim von Ribbentrop is the AssInAmbassador and (fake) NaziNobleman, Wilhelm Keitel is the spineless YesMan, etc. One would be hard-pressed to name a lot of members of Stalin's or Mao's or Pol Pot's inner circles beyond perhaps UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev (since he later became Premier himself) and Lavrentiy Beria (whom Stalin semi-jokingly called "our Himmler" to Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta).

* It is perhaps unique among history's most infamous dictatorships in that beyond even Hitler himself, most of the senior figures of the regime have become memetic figures in their own right: UsefulNotes/HermannGoring is the FatBastard and MilesGloriosus, UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler is the FourEyesZeroSoul chief of the death camps, UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich is the blonde-haired {{Sociopath}} and SocialClimber, Joseph Goebbels has become a by-word for PropagandaMachine, Joachim von Ribbentrop is the AssInAmbassador and (fake) NaziNobleman, Wilhelm Keitel is the spineless YesMan, etc. One would be hard-pressed to name a lot of members of Stalin's or Mao's or Pol Pot's inner circles beyond perhaps UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev (since he later became Premier himself) and Lavrentiy Beria (whom Stalin semi-jokingly called "our Himmler" to Franklin D. Roosevelt).

* It is perhaps unique among history's most infamous dictatorships in that beyond even Hitler himself, most of the senior figures of the regime have become memetic figures in their own right: UsefulNotes/HermannGoring is the FatBastard and MilesGloriosus, UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler is the FourEyesZeroSoul chief of the death camps, UsefulNotes/ReinhardHeydrich is the blonde-haired {{Sociopath}} and SocialClimber, Joseph Goebbels has become a by-word for PropagandaMachine, Joachim von Ribbentrop is the AssInAmbassador and (fake) NaziNobleman, Wilhelm Keitel is the spineless YesMan, etc. One would be hard-pressed to name a lot of members of Stalin's or Mao's or Pol Pot's inner circles beyond perhaps UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev (since he later became Premier himself) and Lavrentiy Beria (whom Stalin semi-jokingly called "our Himmler" to Franklin D. Roosevelt).