Germany

A ballot-box 'revolution' made Hitler Chancellor of Germany. But political violence was the stock-in-trade consolidating Nazi power piecemeal throughout 1933 against disorganised opponents.

Not all young Germans were enthusiasts for Hitler Youth ideas - and some actively opposed them.

'I have been ostracised by my native country.... I am boycotted by my adopted country'. During the two world wars Germans in Britain found themselves to be enemy aliens, victims of suspicion and prejudice in a country which had been their refuge from a hostile homeland.

Bob Scribner looks at contemporary views of the Protestant reformer, Martin Luther.

How the life of 16th-Century Reformer Martin Luther contributed to the future of Germany, even the rise of Fascism, as Thomas A. Brady, Jr. discusses...

In 1945, Europe was devastated by the effects of the Second World War. The determination to reconstruct Europe was forged both from the disaster of war and from dreams of the creation of a stabilised and more equitable peace.

Ian Kershaw wonders whether there was one single path of German history leading inexorably to Nazism.

W.A. Coupe argues that German cartoonists ridiculed Hitler as a Chaplinesque little man, so it was easy not to take him seriously – until it was too late.

Fifty years ago this month, Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor of Germany by the aging President Hindenburg. How were the Nazis able to 'seize power' in this way? Jeremy Noakes begins our special feature by explaining their success.

In the inter-war years, football was a popular sport which drew huge crowds of spectators. The totalitarian regimes of Germany and Italy, argues Peter J. Beck, were not slow to realise the propaganda, potential of their nations' sporting successes – and soon Britain recognised the value of sport to its own national image.