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What Angela Merkel did for Germany and her moves in economy to environmental sustainablilty    

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What Angela Merkel did for Germany and her moves in economy to environmental sustainablilty    

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German elections: How Angela Merkel changed her country

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Young people have never known another leader, and many worry for the future as old certainties shift.

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A list of achievements of Angela Merkel  

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A list of achievements of Angela Merkel  

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Angela Merkel is a German politician who dominated the political landscape of Germany and Europe as the Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A pragmatic, visionary and articulate leader, Merkel also steered the affairs of her party, the Christian Democrat Union (CDU), for almost two decades.

Owing to her contributions to her nation and the globe at large, Angela Merkel - a former quantum chemist - was often regarded as one of the most powerful persons and respected leaders in the world. Commonly called the "Chancellor of the Free World", Merkel comes in at number three on the list of longest-serving chancellor in the history of Germany.

In late 2021, Merkel was succeeded by Olaf Scholz, a former Vice Chancellor of Germany under Merkel and First Mayor of Hamburg (2011-2018).

Below World History Edu takes a look at 10 incredible achievements of Angela Merkel.

Quick Facts about Angela Merkel

Born - Angela Dorothea Merkel

Birth Day and Place - July 17, 1954, Hamburg, West Germany

Mother - Herlind Kasner

Father - Horst Kasner

Sibling - Irene Kasner, Marcus Kasner

Education: Leipzig University (1973 to 1978); German Academy of Sciences, Berlin.

Spouse - Joachim Sauer (1977 - 1982), Ulrich Merkel (married in 1998)

Political Party - Christian Democratic Union (CDU) (1990-), Democratic Awakening (1989 - 1990)

Public Offices: Chancellor of Germany (2005 - 2021), Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (2000 - 2018), General Secretary of the Christian Democratic Union (1998 - 2000), Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (1994-1998), Minister for Women and Youth (1991 - 1994), Member of Bundestag (1990-)

Ideology: Liberalism and individualism, Free Trade

Awards: Presidential Medal of Freedom (2013), Indira Gandhi Prize (2013), Charlemagne Prize (2008), Grand Cross 1 st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2008)

Major Achievements of Angela Merkel

The following contains the ten major achievements of German Chancellor Angela Merkel:

She was a dedicated Research Scientist in Quantum Chemistry

Growing up in East Germany, Merkel favored mathematics and Russian. She graduated from University of Leipzig (formerly Karl Marx University) with flying colors (Abitur grade 1.0). In 1986, she completed her doctorate thesis on quantum chemistry and proceeded to take up a research position at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Adlershof.

Her dedication to research earned her quite a lot of praises. She is credited with the publication of number of critically acclaimed papers. However, Merkel quickly became disillusioned with the significantly slow-paced scientific environment in East Germany. Realizing how far back she was compared to her counterparts in West Germany, Merkel made a decision to swap her lab for the political arena.

Spokesperson for the Pre-unification caretaker government

The year 1989 was a significant year for East Germans as it ushered a series of changes in the country - the Revolutions of 1989 which culminated in the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

With the two Germanys poised to re-unite, Merkel seized the opportunity and joined a newly-established party known as the Democratic Awakening ( Demokratischer Aufbruch) in February 1990. She went on to serve as the deputy spokesperson for the pre-unification caretaker government of East Berlin, impressing the head of the government, Lothar de Maizière.

Her party the Democratic Awakening eventually merged with the East German Christian Democratic Union. That party later merge with their sister party in West German - the Christian Democratic Union. Amidst all that Merkel continued to bid her time, learning the ins and outs of new political landscape.
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She has been a member of the Bundestag since 1990

In December, 1990, Germany witnessed the first federal election post reunification. Buoyed on by the brilliant work she did earlier in the Democratic Awakening, Merkel contested and won a seat in the Bundestag (Germany's lower house). She was elected to represent Stralsund-Nordvorpommern-Rügen (in north Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). And since then, Merkel has not lost a single re-election bid, making her one of the longest-serving members of the Bundestag.

In addition to being a member of the lower house, Merkel was the deputy chairman of the CDU. She replaced Maizière in December 1991.

Minister for Women and Youth

Post-reunification election allowed for the creation of the Conservative Alliance For Germany, which was made up of a coalition of German Social Union (DSU) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). A rising star in this coalition, Merkel was appointed into a junior cabinet position - Minister for Women and Youth. Her appointment came in January 1990. In that position, she quickly formed a very good working relationship with Chancellor Helmut Kohl, even acting as his protégé. To many people, she was nicknamed "Kohls Mädchen" ("Kohl's girl").

Minister for the Environment and Nuclear Safety

Her big break in politics came in 1994 when she was appointed Minister of the Environment and Nuclear Safety. The increased role made her become more visible in German politics. She was tagged by many, including her mentor Chancellor Kohl, as young and energetic politician with very bright future.

Secretary-General of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany

Even though her party (CDU) suffered a poor showing in the 1998 elections, Merkel's meteoric rise in German politics continued throughout the decade.

Chancellor Kohl's defeat at the hands of Gerhard Schröder and the Social Democratic Party of Germany meant that Merkel became the obvious candidate to lead her party during those opposition years. Kohl stepped down.

In 1998, Merkel was appointed to the second most important position in the party - the Secretary-General of the CDU. Thus she became the first woman to hold the secretary-general of CDU in the party's history.

As Secretary-General, Merkel's hard work paid off as she helped the CDU wrestle control back from the SPD in six state elections in 1999.

First female leader of the CDU

In a very strange turn of events, Merkel was catapulted to the leadership of the CDU following the CDU funding scandal of 1999. Many top leaders of the party were forced to step down so that the party could make rebrand itself. The likes of Wolfgang Schäuble and former Chancellor Kohl were jettisoned out of the helms of the party. In April, 2000, Merkel was elected leader of the CDU, replacing Schäuble.

She not only became the first woman to occupy that position, but she was also the first non-Catholic (considering her Protestant background). At the time, her election flew against CDU traditions, considering the fact that CDU is predominantly conservative and a male-dominated, catholic-aligned party.

Leader of the Opposition in parliament

Between 2002 and 2005, Angela Merkel was a potent opposition in the German Bundestag. She united her party and prepared them to take back the chancellorship of German in the coming election.

She also pushed for many political and economic reforms. Her most notable reform came in labor laws, which saw the number of weekly work hours go up. Many of the reforms she championed was to make Germany an efficient and very competitive country in the global market.

She also supported stronger transatlantic corporation with Germany's North American partners.

First Female Chancellor of Germany

Throughout the years in opposition, very few people gave her a chance of one day becoming Chancellor of Germany, which had never been occupied by a woman. However, Merkel proved everyone wrong.

With the 2005 elections drawing close, Merkel's CDU formed closer ties with their sister party the CSU. The alliance elected Merkel to spearhead their challenge against incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the SPD. Her party's themes of unemployment reduction and a competitive Germany attracted a lot of voters to her side.

At the polls, Merkel's alliance of CDU and CSU secured 35.2% as against SPD's 34.2%. After a tense political exchanges (as neither parties conceded defeat), Merkel went on to win. She negotiated with the SPD and formed a grand coalition (of CDU, CSU, and SPD) that saw her elected as the Chancellor of Germany. The cabinet positions were split 50-50 between SPD and CDU/CSU.

At the time ( November 22, 2005) of becoming Chancellor of Germany, Merkel made history by being the first female to hold the job. At the age of 51, she was also the youngest person to become Chancellor of the country. Prior to Merkel no East German had held the job before.

Third longest-serving Chancellor of Germany

Angela Merkel's four consecutive terms in office as Chancellor means that she currently sits as the third longest-serving Chancellor in the history of Germany. She comes in behind Prince Otto von Bismarck and Helmut Kohl.

Her performance at the 2009 federal election was very convincing, as she was able to lead her party to victory. She formed a CDU-Free Democratic Party (FDP) coalition and was re-elected for the second time to serve as Chancellor.

In the 2013 election, Merkel again secured majority. Buoyed on by falling unemployment, the CDU/CSU performed very well at the polls. Merkel was easily re-elected for the third time as Chancellor of Germany.

Although the 2017 election did not go as expected, Merkel was still able to form a grand coalition with the SPD. The coalition elected Merkel to lead Germany again - a staggering fourth time in a row.

Handled the Euro-zone debt crisis and prevented Europe from disintegrating

Generally regarded by many as the de facto leader of the European Union (EU), Merkel consistently showed strong and decisive leadership when it comes to keeping Europe ticking. This was evident during the Euro-zone debt crisis. Beginning around the latter part of 2009, EU countries such as Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Cyprus struggled to refinance their debts. Such defaults could have jeopardized the stability of the Euro (EU's common currency) and ultimately ruin Europe's economy in general. Merkel pushed for greater austerity and increased oversight to halt the crisis. She

Showed immense leadership during the Immigration Crisis of 2015

Angela Merkel's chancellorship saw Germany take a very liberal approach when it came to immigration. The chancellor rose up to challenge and expertly managed the influx of over 1 million refugees fleeing war-torn Syria and other neighboring Middle East countries. And although she came under immense criticism from many alt-right and radical groups in Germany, Merkel stood her ground and processed hundreds of thousand asylum applications.

She consistently called for her fellow European Union countries to show more solidarity and unity amidst the immigration crisis. This feat of hers increased her reputation across the globe, making her stand out as the "Leader of the Free World".

Responded effectively to the Covid-19 Pandemic

2020 was a year that saw the world brought to its knees by the highly contagious novel Corona virus. Where as many Western countries struggled to keep the death rates from skyrocketing, Merkel remained calm and kept the virus from wreaking havoc in Germany. Compared to other developed countries, Germany's response to the pandemic received very positive appraisal.

Other noteworthy achievements of Angela Merkel and her foreign relations policies:

Chancellor Merkel was heavily involved during the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 and the Berlin Declaration of 2007.

For her strong values and commitment to democracy and sound governance, Merkel was awarded our nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2011. She received the honor from former US President Barack Obama.

Amgela Merkel rolled out a host of economic and social reforms both at home and abroad.

Successfully made Germany more competitive globally.

Globally, Angela Merkel was seen as a calm voice of reasoning - an analytical leader when it comes to foreign relations.

Merkel secured a number of historic deals with Asian countries such as China, India, and Myanmar to boost political and economic corporation.

She has campaigned for green and renewable energy.

Her term of office saw a much more improved relations with Russia.

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Angela Merkel: 10 Remarkable Achievements - World History Edu

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Angela Merkel is a German politician who dominated the political landscape of Germany and Europe as the Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A pragmatic, visionary and articulate leader, Merkel also steered the affairs of her party, the Christian Democrat Union (CDU), for almost two decades.

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list of Chancellors to confirm and fact check many other sources  (number of year each chancellor served and their political party) 

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list of Chancellors to confirm and fact check many other sources  (number of year each chancellor served and their political party) 

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The chancellor of Germany is the political leader of Germany and the head of the federal government. The office holder is responsible for selecting all other members of the government and chairing cabinet meetings.

The office was created in the North German Confederation in 1867, when Otto von Bismarck became the first chancellor. With the unification of Germany and establishment of the German Empire in 1871, the Confederation evolved into a German nation-state and its leader became known as the chancellor of Germany. Originally, the chancellor was only responsible to the emperor. This changed with the constitutional reform in 1918, when the Parliament was given the right to dismiss the chancellor. Under the 1919 Weimar Constitution the chancellors were appointed by the directly elected president, but were responsible to Parliament. The constitution was set aside during the 1933-1945 Nazi dictatorship. During Allied occupation, no independent German government and no chancellor existed; and the office was not reconstituted in East Germany, thus the head of government of East Germany was chairman of the Council of Ministers. The 1949 Basic Law made the chancellor the most important office in West Germany, while diminishing the role of the president.

North German Confederation (1867-1871)

Federal Chancellor of the North German Confederation

The North German Confederation came into existence after the falling apart of the German Confederation, itself caused by Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The chancellor was appointed by the Prussian king.

Portrait

Name
(Birth-Death)

Term of office

Political Party

Took office

Left office

Time in office

Count
Otto von Bismarck
(1815-1898)

1 July
1867

21 March
1871

3 years, 263 days

Non-partisan

German Reich (1871-1945)

German Empire (1871-1918)

Imperial Chancellor of the German Empire

The German Empire was born out of the North German Confederation as result of the Franco-Prussian War (1870). The newly created emperor named the chancellor to serve at his pleasure.

Weimar Republic (1918-1933)

Chancellor of the German Reich

On 9 November 1918, Chancellor Max von Baden handed over his office to Friedrich Ebert. Ebert continued to serve as head of government during the three months between the end of the German Empire in November 1918 and the first gathering of the National Assembly in February 1919 as Chairman of the Council of the People's Deputies, until 29 December 1918 together with USPD Leader Hugo Haase.

The Weimar Constitution of 1919 set the framework for the Weimar Republic. The chancellors were often dependent on support from the president.

Nazi Germany (1933-1945)

Chancellor of the German Reich

Adolf Hitler's Machtergreifung (seizure of power) marked the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Nazi Germany. Hitler reigned as dictator and consolidated all power to himself.

Political parties

Federal Republic of Germany (1949-present)

Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Germany

In 1949, two separate German states were established: the Federal Republic of Germany (known as West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (known as East Germany). The list below gives the chancellors of West Germany; the government of East Germany was headed by the chairman of the Council of Ministers. In 1990, East Germany was dissolved as it merged with West Germany; Germany was reunified. It retained the name of the Federal Republic of Germany.

References

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List of chancellors of Germany - Wikipedia

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The chancellor of Germany is the political leader of Germany and the head of the federal government. The office holder is responsible for selecting all other members of the government and chairing cabinet meetings. The office was created in the North German Confederation in 1867, when Otto von Bismarck became the first chancellor.

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Biography of Angela Merkel and her political career as well as her achievements as a leader

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Biography of Angela Merkel and her political career as well as her achievements as a leader

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Table of Contents

Where was Angela Merkel educated?

What did Angela Merkel accomplish?

What did Angela Merkel do to help the world?

Angela Merkel, née Angela Dorothea Kasner, (born July 17, 1954, Hamburg, West Germany), German politician who served as chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She was the first woman to hold that office and the second longest-serving chancellor in German history.

Early life

Merkel's parents, Horst and Herlind Kasner, met in Hamburg, where her father was a theology student and her mother was a teacher of Latin and English. After completing his education, her father accepted a pastorate in Quitzow, Brandenburg, and the family relocated to East Germany (German Democratic Republic) just weeks after Merkel's birth. In 1957 they moved again to Templin, where Merkel finished high school in 1973. Later that year she went to Leipzig to study physics at Karl Marx University (now the University of Leipzig). There she met her first husband, fellow physics student Ulrich Merkel, and the two were married in 1977. After earning her diploma in 1978, she worked as a member of the academic faculty at the Central Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. In 1982 Merkel and her husband divorced, though she kept his last name. She was awarded a doctorate for her thesis on quantum chemistry in 1986.

As was the case for most children growing up in the German Democratic Republic, Merkel participated in the state's youth organizations. She was a member of the Young Pioneers (from 1962) and the Free German Youth (from 1968). Her involvement with the Free German Youth has led to controversy, as some of her former colleagues from the Central Institute of Physical Chemistry claimed that she was active as a secretary for agitation and propaganda at the institute, though Merkel maintained that she was responsible for cultural affairs (e.g., procuring theatre tickets). Merkel was not nor did she apply to be a member of the Socialist Unity Party, and when approached by personnel of the Ministry for State Security ( Stasi) to become an informant, she refused.

Political career

Learn about the first free parliamentary elections in East Germany, which resulted in the election of Lothar de Maizière as the first democratically elected prime minister of East Germany, 1990

Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz See all videos for this article

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Merkel joined the newly founded Democratic Awakening and in February 1990 became the party's press spokesperson. That month the party joined the conservative Alliance for Germany, a coalition with the German Social Union (DSU) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Several days prior to East Germany's first and only free election in March 1990, it was revealed that Democratic Awakening's chairman, Wolfgang Schnur, had been working as a Stasi informant for years. Although the news shook Alliance supporters, the coalition was victorious, and Democratic Awakening became part of the government, despite having won a mere 0.9 percent of the votes. Merkel became deputy spokesperson of the government of Lothar de Maizière (CDU). She joined the CDU in August 1990; that party merged with its western counterpart on October 1, the day before the reunification of Germany.

In the first postreunification election, in December 1990, Merkel won a seat in the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) representing Stralsund-Rügen-Grimmen. She was appointed minister for women and youth by Chancellor Helmut Kohl in January 1991. Kohl's choice of the young female political newcomer from East Germany appealed to several demographics and earned Merkel the nickname "Kohls Mädchen" ("Kohl's girl"). Maizière, who had become the CDU's deputy chairman after the eastern and western parties merged, resigned from his position on September 6, 1991, because of accusations of having worked for the Stasi. Merkel was elected to replace him in December of the same year. After the 1994 election Merkel became minister of environment, conservation, and reactor safety, and she presided over the first United Nations Climate Conference in Berlin in March-April 1995. In September 1998 the CDU was ousted by Gerhard Schröder and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Merkel was elected secretary-general of the CDU on November 7. She married her longtime companion, chemistry professor Joachim Sauer, on December 30 of that year.

In late 1999 a finance scandal hit the CDU, and Kohl was implicated in the acceptance and use of illegal campaign contributions. In an open letter published on December 22, Merkel, Kohl's former protégée, called upon the party to make a fresh start without its honorary chairman. Merkel's stance greatly increased her visibility and popularity with the German public, although it upset Kohl loyalists. On April 10, 2000, Merkel was elected head of the CDU, becoming the first woman and the first non- Catholic to lead the party. As CDU leader, Merkel faced the lingering effects of the finance scandal and a divided party. Although Merkel had hoped to stand as a candidate for chancellor in the 2002 election, a majority of her party expressed a preference for Edmund Stoiber of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's sister party in Bavaria. After the CDU-CSU narrowly lost the election, Merkel became leader of the opposition.

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Angela Merkel | Biography, Education, Political Career, Successor, & Facts

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Angela Merkel, née Angela Dorothea Kasner, (born July 17, 1954, Hamburg, West Germany), German politician who served as chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She was the first woman to hold that office and the second longest-serving chancellor in German history.

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A simple summary of Hitler's views on the Sudetenland and his motivation for invading neighboring countries 

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A simple summary of Hitler's views on the Sudetenland and his motivation for invading neighboring countries 

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In 1938, Adolf Hitler began to support the demands of Germans living in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia who were seeking closer ties with Germany. The Nazi leader delivers a speech revealing Germany's desire to unite the two countries.

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In 1938, Adolf Hitler began to support the demands of Germans living in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia who were seeking closer ties with Germany. The Nazi leader delivers a speech revealing Germany's desire to unite the two countries.

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The detailed biography of Adolf Hitler and his rise to power and the events that led to his dictatorship and the events that followed

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The detailed biography of Adolf Hitler and his rise to power and the events that led to his dictatorship and the events that followed

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Early Life

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a small Austrian town near the Austro-German frontier. After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

Not wanting to follow in his father's footsteps as a civil servant, he began struggling in secondary school and eventually dropped out. Alois died in 1903, and Adolf pursued his dream of being an artist, though he was rejected from Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts.

After his mother, Klara, died in 1908, Hitler moved to Vienna, where he pieced together a living painting scenery and monuments and selling the images. Lonely, isolated and a voracious reader, Hitler became interested in politics during his years in Vienna, and developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

Military Career of Adolf Hitler

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, in the German state of Bavaria. When World War I broke out the following summer, he successfully petitioned the Bavarian king to be allowed to volunteer in a reserve infantry regiment.

Deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, Hitler served throughout the Great War and won two decorations for bravery, including the rare Iron Cross First Class, which he wore to the end of his life.

Hitler was wounded twice during the conflict: He was hit in the leg during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and temporarily blinded by a British gas attack near Ypres in 1918. A month later, he was recuperating in a hospital at Pasewalk, northeast of Berlin, when news arrived of the armistice and Germany's defeat in World War I.

Like many Germans, Hitler came to believe the country's devastating defeat could be attributed not to the Allies, but to insufficiently patriotic "traitors" at home-a myth that would undermine the post-war Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler's rise.

Nazi Party

After Hitler returned to Munich in late 1918, he joined the small German Workers' Party, which aimed to unite the interests of the working class with a strong German nationalism. His skilled oratory and charismatic energy helped propel him in the party's ranks, and in 1920 he left the army and took charge of its propaganda efforts.

In one of Hitler's strokes of propaganda genius, the newly renamed National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party, adopted a version of the swastika-an ancient sacred symbol of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism -as its emblem. Printed in a white circle on a red background, Hitler's swastika would take on terrifying symbolic power in the years to come.

By the end of 1921, Hitler led the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty. Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich would join the Nazis, notably Ernst Röhm, who recruited the "strong arm" squads-known as the Sturmabteilung (SA)-which Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch

On the evening of November 8, 1923, members of the SA and others forced their way into a large beer hall where another right-wing leader was addressing the crowd. Wielding a revolver, Hitler proclaimed the beginning of a national revolution and led marchers to the center of Munich, where they got into a gun battle with police.

Hitler fled quickly, but he and other rebel leaders were later arrested. Even though it failed spectacularly, the Beer Hall Putsch established Hitler as a national figure, and (in the eyes of many) a hero of right-wing nationalism.

'Mein Kampf'

Tried for treason, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but would serve only nine months in the relative comfort of Landsberg Castle. During this period, he began to dictate the book that would become " Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"), the first volume of which was published in 1925.

In it, Hitler expanded on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic views he had begun to develop in Vienna in his early twenties, and laid out plans for the Germany-and the world-he sought to create when he came to power.

Hitler would finish the second volume of "Mein Kampf" after his release, while relaxing in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden. It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler's rise it became Germany's best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there.

Hitler's second book, "The Zweites Buch," was written in 1928 and contained his thoughts on foreign policy. It was not published in his lifetime due to the poor initial sales of "Mein Kampf." The first English translations of "The Zweites Buch" did not appear until 1962 and was published under the title "Hitler's Secret Book."

Obsessed with race and the idea of ethnic "purity," Hitler saw a natural order that placed the so-called "Aryan race" at the top.

For him, the unity of the Volk (the German people) would find its truest incarnation not in democratic or parliamentary government, but in one supreme leader, or Führer.

"Mein Kampf" also addressed the need for Lebensraum (or living space): In order to fulfill its destiny, Germany should take over lands to the east that were now occupied by "inferior" Slavic peoples-including Austria, the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), Poland and Russia.

The Schutzstaffel (SS)

By the time Hitler left prison, economic recovery had restored some popular support for the Weimar Republic, and support for right-wing causes like Nazism appeared to be waning.

Over the next few years, Hitler laid low and worked on reorganizing and reshaping the Nazi Party. He established the Hitler Youth to organize youngsters, and created the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a more reliable alternative to the SA.

Members of the SS wore black uniforms and swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. (After 1929, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS would develop from a group of some 200 men into a force that would dominate Germany and terrorize the rest of occupied Europe during World War II.)

Eva Braun

Hitler spent much of his time at Berchtesgaden during these years, and his half-sister, Angela Raubal, and her two daughters often joined him. After Hitler became infatuated with his beautiful blonde niece, Geli Raubal, his possessive jealousy apparently led her to commit suicide in 1931.

Devastated by the loss, Hitler would consider Geli the only true love affair of his life. He soon began a long relationship with Eva Braun, a shop assistant from Munich, but refused to marry her.

The worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 again threatened the stability of the Weimar Republic. Determined to achieve political power in order to affect his revolution, Hitler built up Nazi support among German conservatives, including army, business and industrial leaders.

The Third Reich

In 1932, Hitler ran against the war hero Paul von Hindenburg for president, and received 36.8 percent of the vote. With the government in chaos, three successive chancellors failed to maintain control, and in late January 1933 Hindenburg named the 43-year-old Hitler as chancellor, capping the stunning rise of an unlikely leader.

January 30, 1933 marked the birth of the Third Reich, or as the Nazis called it, the "Thousand-Year Reich" (after Hitler's boast that it would endure for a millennium).

Reichstag Fire

Though the Nazis never attained more than 37 percent of the vote at the height of their popularity in 1932, Hitler was able to grab absolute power in Germany largely due to divisions and inaction among the majority who opposed Nazism.

After a devastating fire at Germany's parliament building, the Reichstag, in February 1933-possibly the work of a Dutch communist, though later evidence suggested Nazis set the Reichstag fire themselves-Hitler had an excuse to step up the political oppression and violence against his opponents.

On March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving full powers to Hitler and celebrating the union of National Socialism with the old German establishment (i.e., Hindenburg).

That July, the government passed a law stating that the Nazi Party "constitutes the only political party in Germany," and within months all non-Nazi parties, trade unions and other organizations had ceased to exist.

His autocratic power now secure within Germany, Hitler turned his eyes toward the rest of Europe.

In 1933, Germany was diplomatically isolated, with a weak military and hostile neighbors (France and Poland). In a famous speech in May 1933, Hitler struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, claiming Germany supported disarmament and peace.

But behind this appeasement strategy, the domination and expansion of the Volk remained Hitler's overriding aim.

By early the following year, he had withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations and begun to militarize the nation in anticipation of his plans for territorial conquest.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 29, 1934, the infamous Night of the Long Knives, Hitler had Röhm, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and hundreds of other problematic members of his own party murdered, in particular troublesome members of the SA.

When the 86-year-old Hindenburg died on August 2, military leaders agreed to combine the presidency and chancellorship into one position, meaning Hitler would command all the armed forces of the Reich.

Persecution of Jews

On September 15, 1935, passage of the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship, and barred them from marrying or having relations with persons of "German or related blood."

Though the Nazis attempted to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to placate the international community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics (in which German-Jewish athletes were not allowed to compete), additional decrees over the next few years disenfranchised Jews and took away their political and civil rights.

In addition to its pervasive anti-Semitism, Hitler's government also sought to establish the cultural dominance of Nazism by burning books, forcing newspapers out of business, using radio and movies for propaganda purposes and forcing teachers throughout Germany's educational system to join the party.

Much of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other targets occurred at the hands of the Geheime Staatspolizei (GESTAPO), or Secret State Police, an arm of the SS that expanded during this period.

Outbreak of World War II

In March 1936, against the advice of his generals, Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine.

Over the next two years, Germany concluded alliances with Italy and Japan, annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia-all essentially without resistance from Great Britain, France or the rest of the international community.

Once he confirmed the alliance with Italy in the so-called "Pact of Steel" in May 1939, Hitler then signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. On September 1, 1939, Nazi troops invaded Poland, finally prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

Blitzkrieg

After ordering the occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, Hitler adopted a plan proposed by one of his generals to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. The blitzkrieg ("lightning war") attack began on May 10; Holland quickly surrendered, followed by Belgium.

German troops made it all the way to the English Channel, forcing British and French forces to evacuate en masse from Dunkirk in late May. On June 22, France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany.

Hitler had hoped to force Britain to seek peace as well, but when that failed he went ahead with his attacks on that country, followed by an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany's alliance with Japan demanded that Hitler declare war on the United States as well.

At that point in the conflict, Hitler shifted his central strategy to focus on breaking the alliance of his main opponents (Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union) by forcing one of them to make peace with him.

Concentration Camps

Beginning in 1933, the SS had operated a network of concentration camps, including a notorious camp at Dachau, near Munich, to hold Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland.

In addition to forced labor and mass execution, certain Jews at Auschwitz were targeted as the subjects of horrific medical experiments carried out by eugenicist Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death." Mengele's experiments focused on twins and exposed 3,000 child prisoners to disease, disfigurement and torture under the guise of medical research.

Though the Nazis also imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma (gypsies) and the disabled, above all they targeted Jews-some 6 million of whom were killed in German-occupied Europe by war's end.

End of World War II

With defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad, as well as the landing of U.S. troops in North Africa by the end of 1942, the tide of the war turned against Germany.

As the conflict continued, Hitler became increasingly unwell, isolated and dependent on medications administered by his personal physician.

Several attempts were made on his life, including one that came close to succeeding in July 1944, when Col. Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that exploded during a conference at Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia.

Within a few months of the successful Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces.

But after January 1945, he holed up in a bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. With Soviet forces closing in, Hitler made plans for a last-ditch resistance before finally abandoning that plan.

How Did Adolf Hitler Die?

At midnight on the night of April 28-29, Hitler married Eva Braun in the Berlin bunker. After dictating his political testament, Hitler shot himself in his suite on April 30; Braun took poison. Their bodies were burned according to Hitler's instructions.

With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, 1945, bringing the war in Europe to a close.

In the end, Hitler's planned "Thousand-Year Reich" lasted just over 12 years, but wreaked unfathomable destruction and devastation during that time, forever transforming the history of Germany, Europe and the world.

Sources

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
iWonder - Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster, BBC.
The Holocaust: A Learning Site for Students, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Adolf Hiter: Rise to Power, Impact & Death

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Adolf Hitler was leader of the Nazi Party who rose to become dictator of Germany. Hitler used his power to orchestrate the deaths of 6 million Jews and millions of others during World War II.

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Hitler's Rise to power, his motivations, his prejudice views against Jews and the effects of the nazi party to the nation.  

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Hitler's Rise to power, his motivations, his prejudice views against Jews and the effects of the nazi party to the nation.  

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Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 - April 30, 1945) was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945. Upon achieving power, Hitler smashed the nation's democratic institutions and transformed Germany into a war state intent on conquering Europe for the benefit of the so-called Aryan race. His invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, triggered the European phase of World War II. During the course of the war, Nazi military forces rounded up and executed 11 million victims they deemed inferior or undesirable-"life unworthy of life"-among them Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Hitler had supreme authority as führer (leader or guide), but could not have risen to power or committed such atrocities on his own. He had the active support of the powerful German officer class and of millions of everyday citizens who voted for the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party and hailed him as a national savior in gigantic stadium rallies.

How were Hitler and the Nazis possible? How did such odious characters take and hold power in a country that was a world pacesetter in literature, art, architecture, and science, a nation that had a democratic government and a free press in the 1920s?

Hitler rose to power through the Nazi Party, an organization he forged after returning as a wounded veteran from the annihilating trench warfare of World War I. He and other patriotic Germans were outraged and humiliated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which the Allies compelled the new German government, the Weimar Republic, to accept along with an obligation to pay $33 billion in war reparations. Germany also had to give up its prized overseas colonies and surrender valued parcels of home territory to France and Poland. The German army was radically downsized and the nation forbidden to have submarines or an air force. "We shall squeeze the German lemon until the pips squeak!" explained one British official.

Paying the crushing reparations destabilized the economy, producing ruinous, runaway inflation. By September 1923, four billion German marks had the equal value of one American dollar. Consumers needed a wheelbarrow to carry enough paper money to buy a loaf of bread.

Hitler, a mesmerizing public speaker, addressed political meetings in Munich calling for a new German order to replace what he saw as an incompetent and inefficient democratic regime. This New Order was distinguished by an authoritarian political system based on a leadership structure in which authority flowed downward from a supreme national leader.

In the new Germany, all citizens would unselfishly serve the state, or Volk; democracy would be abolished; and individual rights sacrificed for the good of the führer state. The ultimate aim of the Nazi Party was to seize power through Germany's parliamentary system, install Hitler as dictator, and create a community of racially pure Germans loyal to their führer, who would lead them in a campaign of racial cleansing and world conquest.

Hitler blamed the Weimar Republic's weakness on the influence of Germany's Jewish and communist minorities, who he claimed were trying to take over the country. "There are only two possibilities," he told a Munich audience in 1922. "Either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew." The young Hitler saw history as a process of racial struggle, with the strongest race-the Aryan race-ultimately prevailing by force of arms. "Mankind has grown great in eternal war," Hitler wrote. "It would decay in eternal peace."

Jews represented everything the Nazis found repugnant: finance capitalism (controlled, the Nazis believed, by powerful Jewish financiers), international communism (Karl Marx was a German Jew, and the leadership of the German Communist Party was heavily Jewish), and modernist cultural movements like psychoanalysis and swing music.

Nazi Party foreign policy aimed to rid Europe of Jews and other "inferior" peoples, absorb pure-blooded Aryans into a greatly expanded Germany-a "Third Reich"-and wage unrelenting war on the Slavic "hordes" of Russia, considered by Hitler to be Untermenschen (subhuman).

Once conquered, the Soviet Union would be ruled by the German master race, which would exterminate or subdue millions of Slavs to create lebensraum (living space) for their own farms and communities. In a conquered and racially cleansed Russia, they would work on model farms and factories connected to the homeland by new highways, called autobahns.

Hitler was the ideologue as well as the chief organizer of the Nazi Party. By 1921, the party had a newspaper, an official flag, and a private army-the Sturmabteilung SA (storm troopers)-made up largely of unemployed and disenchanted WWI veterans. By 1923, the SA had grown to 15,000 men and had access to hidden stores of weapons. That year, Hitler and WWI hero General Erich Ludendorff attempted to overthrow the elected regional government of Bavaria in a coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

The regular army crushed the rebellion and Hitler spent a year in prison-in loose confinement. In Landsberg Prison, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of his political autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The book brought together, in inflamed language, the racialist and expansionist ideas he had been propagating in his popular beer-hall harangues.

By 1932, the Nazis were the largest political party in the Reichstag. In January of the following year, with no other leader able to command sufficient support to govern, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of Germany. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in the Reichstag building in Berlin, and authorities arrested a young Dutch communist who confessed to starting it.

Hitler used this episode to convince President Hindenburg to declare an emergency decree suspending many civil liberties throughout Germany, including freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and the right to hold public assemblies. The police were authorized to detain citizens without cause, and the authority usually exercised by regional governments became subject to control by Hitler's national regime.

Almost immediately, Hitler began dismantling Germany's democratic institutions and imprisoning or murdering his chief opponents. When Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler took the titles of führer, chancellor, and commander in chief of the army. He expanded the army tremendously, reintroduced conscription, and began developing a new air force-all violations of the Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler's military spending and ambitious public-works programs, including building a German autobahn, helped restore prosperity. His regime also suppressed the Communist Party and purged his own paramilitary storm troopers, whose violent street demonstrations alienated the German middle class.

This bloodletting-called the "Night of the Long Knives"-was hugely popular and welcomed by the middle class as a blow struck for law and order. In fact, many Germans went along with the full range of Hitler's policies, convinced that they would ultimately be advantageous for the country.

In 1938, Hitler began his long-promised expansion of national boundaries to incorporate ethnic Germans. He colluded with Austrian Nazis to orchestrate the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria to Germany. And in Hitler's most brazenly aggressive act yet, Czechoslovakia was forced to surrender the Sudetenland, a mountainous border region populated predominantly by ethnic Germans.

The Czechs looked to Great Britain and France for help, but hoping to avoid war-they had been bled white in World War I-these nations chose a policy of appeasement. At a conclave held at Munich in September 1938, representatives of Great Britain and France compelled Czech leaders to cede the Sudetenland in return for Hitler's pledge not to seek additional territory. The following year, the German army swallowed up the remainder of Czechoslovakia.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, one of the signers of the Munich pact, had taken Hitler at his word. Returning to Britain with this agreement in hand, he proudly announced that he had achieved "peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time."

A year later, German troops stormed into Poland.

Learn More

After being released from prison, Hitler vowed to work within the parliamentary system to avoid a repeat of the Beer Hall Putsch setback. In the 1920s, however, the Nazi Party was still a fringe group of ultraextremists with little political power. It received only 2.6 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections of 1928.

But the worldwide economic depression and the rising power of labor unions and communists convinced increasing numbers of Germans to turn to the Nazi Party. The Nazis fed on bank failures and unemployment-proof, Hitler said, of the ineffectiveness of democratic government. Hitler pledged to restore prosperity, create civil order (by crushing industrial strikes and street demonstrations by communists and socialists), eliminate the influence of Jewish financiers, and make the fatherland once again a world power.

For Allied leaders, 1942 was a year of incredible danger and anxiety in the Battle of the Atlantic.

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How Did Adolf Hitler Happen? | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 - April 30, 1945) was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945.

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How Hitler became a dictator and his motivations and how people of germany were feeling the time.

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How Hitler became a dictator and his motivations and how people of germany were feeling the time.

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How did Hitler rise to power? - Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard

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Information about Hitler and his past, upbringing, his career, and his contribution to World War II

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Information about Hitler and his past, upbringing, his career, and his contribution to World War II

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Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany's defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May-June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers' Party in Munich (September 1919). In 1920 he was put in charge of the party's propaganda and left the army to devote himself to improving his position within the party, which in that year was renamed the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ( Nazi). Conditions were ripe for the development of such a party. Resentment at the loss of the war and the severity of the peace terms added to the economic woes and brought widespread discontent. This was especially sharp in Bavaria, due to its traditional separatism and the region's popular dislike of the republican government in Berlin. In March 1920 a coup d'état by a few army officers attempted in vain to establish a right-wing government.

Munich was a gathering place for dissatisfied former servicemen and members of the Freikorps, which had been organized in 1918-19 from units of the German army that were unwilling to return to civilian life, and for political plotters against the republic. Many of these joined the Nazi Party. Foremost among them was Ernst Röhm, a staff member of the district army command, who had joined the German Workers' Party before Hitler and who was of great help in furthering Hitler's rise within the party. It was he who recruited the "strong arm" squads used by Hitler to protect party meetings, to attack socialists and communists, and to exploit violence for the impression of strength it gave. In 1921 these squads were formally organized under Röhm into a private party army, the SA (Sturmabteilung). Röhm was also able to secure protection from the Bavarian government, which depended on the local army command for the maintenance of order and which tacitly accepted some of his terrorist tactics.

Conditions were favourable for the growth of the small party, and Hitler was sufficiently astute to take full advantage of them. When he joined the party, he found it ineffective, committed to a program of nationalist and socialist ideas but uncertain of its aims and divided in its leadership. He accepted its program but regarded it as a means to an end. His propaganda and his personal ambition caused friction with the other leaders of the party. Hitler countered their attempts to curb him by threatening resignation, and because the future of the party depended on his power to organize publicity and to acquire funds, his opponents relented. In July 1921 he became their leader with almost unlimited powers. From the first he set out to create a mass movement, whose mystique and power would be sufficient to bind its members in loyalty to him. He engaged in unrelenting propaganda through the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter ("Popular Observer," acquired in 1920), and through meetings whose audiences soon grew from a handful to thousands. With his charismatic personality and dynamic leadership, he attracted a devoted cadre of Nazi leaders, men whose names today live in infamy-Johann Dietrich Eckart (who acted as a mentor for Hitler), Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Julius Streicher.

The climax of this rapid growth of the Nazi Party in Bavaria came in an attempt to seize power in the Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch of November 1923, when Hitler and General Erich Ludendorff tried to take advantage of the prevailing confusion and opposition to the Weimar Republic to force the leaders of the Bavarian government and the local army commander to proclaim a national revolution. In the melee that resulted, the police and the army fired at the advancing marchers, killing a few of them. Hitler was injured, and four policemen were killed. Placed on trial for treason, he characteristically took advantage of the immense publicity afforded to him. He also drew a vital lesson from the Putsch-that the movement must achieve power by legal means. He was sentenced to prison for five years but served only nine months, and those in relative comfort at Landsberg castle. Hitler used the time to dictate the first volume of , his political autobiography as well as a compendium of his multitudinous ideas.

Hitler's ideas included inequality among races, nations, and individuals as part of an unchangeable natural order that exalted the " Aryan race" as the creative element of mankind. According to Hitler, the natural unit of mankind was the Volk ("the people"), of which the German people was the greatest. Moreover, he believed that the state existed to serve the Volk-a mission that to him the Weimar German Republic betrayed. All morality and truth were judged by this criterion: whether it was in accordance with the interest and preservation of the Volk. Parliamentary democratic government stood doubly condemned. It assumed the equality of individuals that for Hitler did not exist and supposed that what was in the interests of the Volk could be decided by parliamentary procedures. Instead, Hitler argued that the unity of the Volk would find its incarnation in the Führer, endowed with perfect authority. Below the Führer the party was drawn from the Volk and was in turn its safeguard.

The greatest enemy of Nazism was not, in Hitler's view, liberal democracy in Germany, which was already on the verge of collapse. It was the rival Weltanschauung, Marxism (which for him embraced social democracy as well as communism), with its insistence on internationalism and economic conflict. Beyond Marxism he believed the greatest enemy of all to be the Jew, who was for Hitler the incarnation of evil. There is debate among historians as to when anti-Semitism became Hitler's deepest and strongest conviction. As early as 1919 he wrote, "Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition. Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether." In Mein Kampf, he described the Jew as the "destroyer of culture," "a parasite within the nation," and "a menace."

During Hitler's absence in prison, the Nazi Party languished as the result of internal dissension. After his release, Hitler faced difficulties that had not existed before 1923. Economic stability had been achieved by a currency reform and the Dawes Plan had scaled back Germany's World War I reparations. The republic seemed to have become more respectable. Hitler was forbidden to make speeches, first in Bavaria, then in many other German states (these prohibitions remained in force until 1927-28). Nevertheless, the party grew slowly in numbers, and in 1926 Hitler successfully established his position within it against Gregor Strasser, whose followers were primarily in northern Germany.

The advent of the Depression in 1929, however, led to a new period of political instability. In 1930 Hitler made an alliance with the Nationalist Alfred Hugenberg in a campaign against the Young Plan, a second renegotiation of Germany's war reparation payments. With the help of Hugenberg's newspapers, Hitler was able for the first time to reach a nationwide audience. The alliance also enabled him to seek support from many of the magnates of business and industry who controlled political funds and were anxious to use them to establish a strong right-wing, antisocialist government. The subsidies Hitler received from the industrialists placed his party on a secure financial footing and enabled him to make effective his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed, based on the proclamation of his faith that Germany would awaken from its sufferings to reassert its natural greatness. Hitler's dealings with Hugenberg and the industrialists exemplify his skill in using those who sought to use him. But his most important achievement was the establishment of a truly national party (with its voters and followers drawn from different classes and religious groups), unique in Germany at the time.

Unremitting propaganda, set against the failure of the government to improve conditions during the Depression, produced a steadily mounting electoral strength for the Nazis. The party became the second largest in the country, rising from 2.6 percent of the vote in the national election of 1928 to more than 18 percent in September 1930. In 1932 Hitler opposed Hindenburg in the presidential election, capturing 36.8 percent of the votes on the second ballot. Finding himself in a strong position by virtue of his unprecedented mass following, he entered into a series of intrigues with conservatives such as Franz von Papen, Otto Meissner, and President Hindenburg's son, Oskar. The fear of communism and the rejection of the Social Democrats bound them together. In spite of a decline in the Nazi Party's votes in November 1932, Hitler insisted that the chancellorship was the only office he would accept. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg offered him the chancellorship of Germany. His cabinet included few Nazis at that point.

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Adolf Hitler - Nazi Leader, WW2, Germany

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Adolf Hitler - Adolf Hitler - Nazi Leader, WW2, Germany: Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany's defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May-June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers' Party in Munich (September 1919).

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More information on the time period of the Third Reich talks about: the end of the Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, the rise of totalitarian, the nazi, and the start of world war 2  

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More information on the time period of the Third Reich talks about: the end of the Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, the rise of totalitarian, the nazi, and the start of world war 2  

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Third Reich, official Nazi designation for the regime in Germany from January 1933 to May 1945, as the presumed successor of the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806; First Reich) and the German Empire (1871-1918; Second Reich). Learn more about the history and significance of the Third Reich in this article.

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Shows the policies Gustav came up with to protect Germany and help the country rebound.  

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Shows the policies Gustav came up with to protect Germany and help the country rebound.  

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Quick Summary of Gustav Stresemann and his political career  

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Quick Summary of Gustav Stresemann and his political career  

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Gustav Stresemann's life, upbringing, political careers and legacy.  

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Gustav Stresemann's life, upbringing, political careers and legacy.  

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Gustav Stresemann, (born May 10, 1878, Berlin, Germany-died October 3, 1929, Berlin), chancellor (1923) and foreign minister (1923, 1924-29) of the Weimar Republic, largely responsible for restoring Germany's international status after World War I. With French foreign minister Aristide Briand, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1926 for his policy of reconciliation and negotiation.

Youth and education

Stresemann was the son of Ernst Stresemann, a Berlin innkeeper and beer distributor. He was the only one of five children able to attend high school and university. From early childhood he displayed a strong "inclination toward solitude," as he put it as a student, as well as a tendency to be melancholy and to daydream. At school he displayed an unusual gift for history, especially modern history. He was especially interested in the lives of great personalities, particularly Napoleon and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, both of whom fascinated him throughout his life and inspired several of his literary studies.

Stresemann, attending the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig from 1897 to 1900, first studied literature and history but changed to economics, probably to improve his professional prospects rather than in recognition of his practical gifts. While a student he belonged to a relatively progressive fraternity and retained a lifelong attachment to the sentimental glories of student life. In 1900 he received his doctorate with a dissertation entitled "The Growth of the Berlin Bottled-Beer Industry." The subject of his study, based on his knowledge of his father's business and dealing with the decline of a sector of small business as a result of competition from giant industry, was characteristic of his origins as well as of his point of view. It was used against him in future political struggles by right-wing opposition.

As a liberal Prussian Protestant, Stresemann became a typical representative of the chauvinistic spirit prevailing in imperial Germany. He believed in the spiritual, military, and economic superiority of the German Empire, and his political idealism manifested itself in a sentimental enthusiasm for the heroic liberalism of the revolutions of 1848, as well as in a romantic style of speech.

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Political rise

After completing his studies, Stresemann began his professional career in a trade association. Unusually rapid success in commerce gave him a springboard into politics. As an administrative assistant in the German Chocolate Makers' Association from 1901 to 1904, he gained a reputation as an accomplished organizer and negotiator. By 1902 he had founded the Saxon Manufacturers' Association, and as its legal representative until 1911, he occupied an important position in economic life at the age of 25.

His wife, whom he married in 1903, was the sister of a fraternity brother and the daughter of the Berlin industrialist Adolf Kleefeld. Of Jewish extraction, Stresemann's charming and elegant wife played a leading role in Berlin society of the 1920s. They had two sons.

After initially sympathizing with the ideas of the Protestant social reformer Friedrich Naumann and collaborating with his National Social Union, Stresemann joined the National Liberal Party in 1903. Strongly represented in Saxony at the time, the party became Stresemann's political home. Often involved in conflicts over his support of social-welfare measures with the right wing of his party (which was dominated by representatives of heavy industry), he attracted general notice at his first appearance at a party congress in 1906.

As a Dresden city councillor from 1906 to 1912 and editor of the Dresden magazine Sächsische Industrie ("Saxon Industry"), Stresemann became a well-known writer on economics and an expert on municipal affairs. Recognizing the importance of the press in influencing public opinion, he took advantage of it to support his aims.

He was elected in 1907 to the Reichstag (parliament) as a National Liberal from the Annaberg district in the Saxon metal-mining country, thus gaining a foothold in national politics. At 28 he was the youngest deputy in the Reichstag. The party chairman, Ernst Bassermann, helped to advance his political career, and Stresemann was soon considered Bassermann's "crown prince." Stresemann was primarily interested in economic policy both as a journalist and a deputy. He energetically defended the interests of the commercial middle class, but his advocacy of extended social-welfare legislation embroiled him in a conflict with the representatives of his party's right wing, which in 1912 prevented his reelection to the National Liberal Party executive committee. After losing his seat in the new Reichstag elections in the same year, he traveled with other business leaders to the United States to study economic conditions.

By this time Stresemann, who had moved to Berlin, was one of the best-known leaders of German economic life. He occupied leading positions in a number of trade associations, including the German-American Economic Association, established at his suggestion. Stresemann's many offices brought him financial independence. He was known for his organizational gifts, knew how to handle people, and was aware of the power he wielded. As a member of the pan-German Deutscher Kolonialverein (German Colonial League) and an advocate of a strong naval construction program, he supported the imperialist goals of German policy carried out under the aegis of Alfred von Tirpitz and Bernhard, Fürst (prince) von Bülow. Tirpitz had served as state secretary of the Imperial Naval Office, in which post he created the German battle fleet, and Bülow was chancellor of Germany (1900-1909).

born

May 10, 1878
Berlin, Germany

died

October 3, 1929 (aged 51)
Berlin, Germany

title / office

political affiliation

role in

awards and honors

founder of

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Gustav Stresemann | chancellor of Germany

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Gustav Stresemann, chancellor (1923) and foreign minister (1923, 1924-29) of the Weimar Republic, largely responsible for restoring Germany's international status after World War I. With French foreign minister Aristide Briand, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1926 for his policy of

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Simple summary of Otto Von Bismarck's career and life. 

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Simple summary of Otto Von Bismarck's career and life. 

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Bismarck was responsible for transforming a collection of small German states into the German empire, and was its first chancellor.

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was born into an aristocratic family at Schönhausen, northwest of Berlin, on 1 April 1815. He attended a prestigious school in Berlin followed by the University of Göttingen. He then entered the Prussian civil service but was bored by his job and in 1838 resigned. For nearly a decade, he helped his father manage the family estates.

In 1847, Bismarck married Johanna von Puttkamer, who provided him with stability. It was a year of significant change in his life, when he also embraced the Christian tradition of Lutheranism, and began his political career in the Prussian legislature, where he gained a reputation as an ultra-conservative royalist. In 1851, King Frederick Wilhelm IV appointed Bismarck as Prussian representative to the German Confederation. He then served as ambassador to Russia and France. In 1862, he returned to Prussia and was appointed prime minister by the new king, Wilhelm I.

Bismarck was now determined to unite the German states into a single empire, with Prussia at its core. With Austrian support, he used the expanded Prussian army to capture the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark. He then escalated a quarrel with Austria and its German allies over the administration of these provinces into a war, in which Prussia was the victor. Prussia then annexed further territory in Germany.

Unable to persuade the southern German states to join with his North German Confederation, he provoked hostilities with France as a way of uniting the German states together. The German victory in the Franco-Prussian War won over the southern German states, and in 1871 they agreed to join a German empire. Wilhelm I of Prussia became emperor.

As 'chancellor' of the new Germany, Bismarck concentrated on building a powerful state with a unified national identity. One of his targets was the Catholic Church, which he believed had too much influence, particularly in southern Germany. He also worked to prevent the spread of socialism, partly by introducing health insurance and pensions.

Abroad, Bismarck aimed to make the German empire the most powerful in Europe. In 1879, he negotiated an alliance with Austria-Hungary to counteract France and Russia. Italy later joined the alliance. To avoid alienating Britain, Bismarck arranged the two Mediterranean Agreements of 1887, designed to preserve the status quo against a Russian threat.

In 1890, Bismarck resigned after disagreeing with the new emperor, Wilhelm II. He retired to his estate near Hamburg and died there on 30 July 1898.

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Bismarck was responsible for transforming a collection of small German states into the German empire, and was its first chancellor. Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was born into an aristocratic family at Schönhausen, northwest of Berlin, on 1 April 1815. He attended a prestigious school in Berlin followed by the University of Göttingen.

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More on Otto Von Bismarck's Career as a prime minister and chancellor 

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More on Otto Von Bismarck's Career as a prime minister and chancellor 

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Contents

1. Otto von Bismarck: Early Years

2. Otto von Bismarck: The Iron Chancellor

3. Otto von Bismarck: Kulturkampf, Welfare State, Empire

4. Otto von Bismarck: Final Years and Legacy

Germany became a modern, unified nation under the leadership of the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who between 1862 and 1890 effectively ruled first Prussia and then all of Germany. A master strategist, Bismarck initiated decisive wars with Denmark, Austria and France to unite 39 independent German states under Prussian leadership. Although an arch-conservative, Bismarck introduced progressive reforms-including universal male suffrage and the establishment of the first welfare state-in order to achieve his goals. He manipulated European rivalries to make Germany a world power, but in doing so laid the groundwork for both World Wars.

Otto von Bismarck: Early Years

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was born April 1, 1815, at his family's estate in the Prussian heartland west of Berlin. His father was a fifth-generation Junker (a Prussian landowning noble), and his mother came from a family of successful academics and government ministers. Throughout his life Bismarck would emphasize his rural Junker roots, underplaying his considerable intellect and cosmopolitan outlook.

Did you know? Although German leader Otto von Bismarck wore a general's uniform in public for much of his later life (and successfully prosecuted three wars as chancellor), his only prior military service was a brief, unwilling stint in a reserve unit.

Bismarck was educated in Berlin and after university took a series of minor diplomatic posts before retiring, at age 24, to run his family's estate at Kneiphof. In 1847 he married and was sent to Berlin as a delegate to the new Prussian parliament, where he emerged as a reactionary voice against the liberal, anti-autocratic Revolutions of 1848.

From 1851 to 1862 Bismarck served a series of ambassadorships-at the German Confederation in Frankfurt, in St. Petersburg and in Paris-that gave him valuable insight into the vulnerabilities of Europe's great powers.

Otto von Bismarck: The Iron Chancellor

William I became Prussia's king in 1861 and a year later appointed Bismarck as his chief minister. Though technically deferring to William, in reality Bismarck was in charge, manipulating the king with his intellect and the occasional tantrum while using royal decrees to circumvent the power of elected officials.

In 1864 Bismarck began the series of wars that would establish Prussian power in Europe. He attacked Denmark to gain the German-speaking territories of Schleswig-Holstein and two years later provoked Emperor Franz-Josef I into starting the Austro-Prussian War (1866), which ended in a swift defeat for the aging Austrian empire. At the time, Bismarck wisely declined to levy a war indemnity against the Austrians.

Bismarck was less circumspect in his conduct of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). Seeing the opportunity to unify Germany's loose confederations against an outside enemy, Bismarck stirred political tensions between France and Prussia, famously editing a telegram from William I to make both countries feel insulted by the other. The French declared war, but the Prussians and their German allies won handily. Prussia levied an indemnity, annexed the French border provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and crowned William emperor of a unified Germany (the Second Reich) in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles-a tremendous insult to the French.

Otto von Bismarck: Kulturkampf, Welfare State, Empire

With Germany unified, William I and Bismarck turned to entrenching their domestic power. For much of the 1870s Bismarck pursued a Kulturkampf (cultural struggle) against Catholics, who made up 36 percent of Germany's population, by placing parochial schools under state control and expelling the Jesuits. In 1878 Bismarck relented, allying with the Catholics against the growing socialist threat.

In the 1880s Bismarck set aside his conservative impulses to counter the socialists by creating Europe's first modern welfare state, establishing national healthcare (1883), accident insurance (1884) and old age pensions (1889). Bismarck also hosted the 1885 Berlin Conference that ended the "Scramble for Africa," dividing the continent between the European powers and establishing German colonies in Cameroon, Togoland and East and Southwest Africa.

Otto von Bismarck: Final Years and Legacy

William I died in 1888 and was succeeded by his son Frederick III and then his grandson William II, both of whom Bismarck found difficult to control. In 1890 the new king forced Bismarck out. William II was left in control of a flourishing unified state but was ill-equipped to maintain Bismarck's carefully manipulated balance of international rivalries. Respected and honored by the time of his death eight years later, Bismarck quickly became a quasi-mythic figure invoked by political leaders calling for strong German leadership-or for war.

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Otto von Bismarck: Early Years Otto von Bismarck: The Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck: Kulturkampf, Welfare State, Empire Otto von Bismarck: Final Years and Legacy Germany became a modern, unified nation under the leadership of the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who between 1862 and 1890 effectively ruled first Prussia and then all of Germany.

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This Source shows the history of the German Empire, how the german empire became to be and the end of the time period (WWI)

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This Source shows the history of the German Empire, how the german empire became to be and the end of the time period (WWI)

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German Empire | Facts, History, Flag, & Map

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The German Empire was founded in 1871, after three successful wars by the North German state of Prussia. Prussia remained the dominant force in the nation until the empire's demise at the end of another war in 1918. Learn more about the history and significance of the German Empire in this article.

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the imperialism of Germany (in continents like Africa and parts of Europe)

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the imperialism of Germany (in continents like Africa and parts of Europe)

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Germany and the Desire for Colonies

Despite German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck's opposition to overseas colonies, pressure from the German people to establish colonies for international prestige led to a significant empire during the Scramble for Africa.

Learning Objectives

Analyze Germany's efforts to obtain more influence in various areas of the globe

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Prior to German unification in 1871, most of the focus of German foreign policy was on issues internal to the state and its European neighbors.

This pragmatic attitude was mainly supported by the leading political figure of the time, Otto Von Bismarck, a major force behind unification.

Bismarck disliked colonialism but reluctantly built an overseas empire when it was demanded by both elite and mass opinion.

The attitude toward colonialism shifted again during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who espoused a Weltpolitik foreign policy that emphasized aggressive diplomacy, the acquisition of overseas colonies, and the development of a large navy.

The rise of German imperialism and colonialism coincided with the latter stages of the " Scramble for Africa " during which enterprising German individuals, rather than government entities, competed with other already established colonies and colonialist entrepreneurs.

German colonies comprised territory that makes up 22 countries today, mostly in Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda.

Germany lost control of its colonial empire at the beginning of World War I when its colonies were seized by its enemies in the first weeks of the war.

Key Terms

Weltpolitik: The foreign policy adopted by the Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in 1891, which marked a decisive break with former "Realpolitik." The aim was to transform Germany into a global power through aggressive diplomacy, the acquisition of overseas colonies, and the development of a large navy.

Otto von Bismarck: A conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890. In the 1860s, he engineered a series of wars that unified the German states, significantly and deliberately excluding Austria, into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership. With that accomplished by 1871, he skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany's position in a Europe which, despite many disputes and war scares, remained at peace.

The German colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies, and territories of the German Empire. Short-lived attempts of colonization by individual German states occurred in preceding centuries, but crucial colonial efforts only began in 1884 with the Scramble for Africa. Germany lost control when World War I began and its colonies were seized by its enemies in the first weeks of the war. However. some military units held out longer: German South-West Africa surrendered in 1915, Kamerun in 1916, and German East Africa only in 1918 by war's end. Germany's colonial empire was officially confiscated with the Treaty of Versailles after Germany's defeat in the war, and the various units became League of Nations mandates under the supervision (but not ownership) of one of the victorious powers.

Ambivalence Toward Colonialism

Until their 1871 unification, the German states had not concentrated on the development of a navy, and this essentially had precluded German participation in earlier imperialist scrambles for remote colonial territory - the so-called "place in the sun." Germany seemed destined to play catch-up. The German states prior to 1870 retained separate political structures and goals, and German foreign policy up to and including the age of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck concentrated on resolving the "German question" in Europe and securing German interests on the continent.

Many Germans in the late 19th century viewed colonial acquisitions as a true indication of nationhood. Public opinion eventually arrived at an understanding that prestigious African and Pacific colonies went hand-in-hand with dreams of a world-class navy. Both aspirations would become reality, nurtured by a press replete with Kolonialfreunde (supporters of colonial acquisitions) and a myriad of geographical associations and colonial societies. Bismarck and many deputies in the Reichstag had no interest in colonial conquests merely to acquire square miles of territory.

In essence, Bismarck's colonial motives were obscure as he had said repeatedly "... I am no man for colonies." However, in 1884 he consented to the acquisition of colonies by the German Empire to protect trade, safeguard raw materials and export markets, and take opportunities for capital investment, among other reasons. In the very next year Bismarck shed personal involvement when he, according to Edward Crankshaw, "abandoned his colonial drive as suddenly and casually as he had started it" as if he had committed an error in judgment that could confuse the substance of his more significant policies. Bismarck even tried to give German South-West Africa away to the British.

In 1891, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany made a decisive break with former " Realpolitik" of Bismarck and established " Weltpolitik" ("world policy"). The aim of Weltpolitik was to transform Germany into a global power through aggressive diplomacy, the acquisition of overseas colonies, and the development of a large navy. The origins of the policy can be traced to a Reichstag debate in December 1897 during which German Foreign Secretary Bernhard von Bülow stated, "in one word: We wish to throw no one into the shade, but we demand our own place in the sun."

Acquisition of Colonies

The rise of German imperialism and colonialism coincided with the latter stages of the "Scramble for Africa" during which enterprising German individuals, rather than government entities, competed with other already established colonies and colonialist entrepreneurs. With the Germans joining the race for the last uncharted territories in Africa and the Pacific that had not yet been carved up, competition for colonies involved major European nations and several lesser powers.

The German effort included the first commercial enterprises in the 1850s and 1860s in West Africa, East Africa, the Samoan Islands, and the unexplored north-east quarter of New Guinea with adjacent islands. German traders and merchants began to establish themselves in the African Cameroon delta and the mainland coast across from Zanzibar. At Apia and the settlements Finschhafen, Simpsonhafen and the islands Neu-Pommern and Neu-Mecklenburg, trading companies newly fortified with credit began expansion into coastal landholding. Large African inland acquisitions followed, mostly to the detriment of native inhabitants. All in all, German colonies comprised territory that makes up 22 countries today, mostly in Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda.

As Bismarck was converted to the colonial idea by 1884, he favored "chartered company" land management rather than establishment of colonial government due to financial considerations. Although temperate zone cultivation flourished, the demise and often failure of tropical low-land enterprises contributed to changing Bismarck's view. He reluctantly acquiesced to pleas for help to deal with revolts and armed hostilities by often powerful rulers whose lucrative slaving activities seemed at risk. German native military forces initially engaged in dozens of punitive expeditions to apprehend and punish freedom fighters, at times with British assistance.

Bismarck's successor in 1890, Leo von Caprivi, was willing to maintain the colonial burden of what already existed, but opposed new ventures. Others who followed, especially Bernhard von Bülow as foreign minister and chancellor, sanctioned the acquisition of the Pacific Ocean colonies and provided substantial treasury assistance to existing protectorates to employ administrators, commercial agents, surveyors, local "peacekeepers," and tax collectors. Kaiser Wilhelm II understood and lamented his nation's position as colonial followers rather than leaders. In an interview with Cecil Rhodes in March 1899 he stated the alleged dilemma clearly: "Germany has begun her colonial enterprise very late, and was, therefore, at the disadvantage of finding all the desirable places already occupied."

According to historian William Roger Louis, in the years before the outbreak of the World War, British colonial officers viewed the Germans as deficient in "colonial aptitude," but "whose colonial administration was nevertheless superior to those of the other European states." Anglo-German colonial issues in the decade before 1914 were minor, and both the British and German empires took conciliatory attitudes. Once war was declared in late July 1914 Britain and its allies promptly moved against the colonies, the public was informed that German colonies were a threat. The British position that Germany was a uniquely brutal and cruel colonial power originated during the war. By 1916, only in remote jungle regions in East Africa did the German forces hold out.

Germany and the Herero

The Herero and Nama genocide was a campaign of racial extermination and collective punishment that the German Empire undertook in German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) against the Herero and Nama people, considered one of the first genocides of the 20th century.

Learning Objectives

Assess the argument for classifying the persecution against the Herero as a genocide

Key Takeaways

Key Points

During the Scramble for Africa, South-West Africa was claimed by Germany in August 1884.

German colonists arriving in the following years occupied large areas of land, ignoring claims by the Herero and other natives.

There was continual resistance by the natives, most notably in 1903 when some of the Herero tribes rose in revolt and about 60 German settlers were killed.

In October 1904, General Lothar von Trotha issued orders to kill every male Herero and drive the women and children into the desert; when the order was lifted at the end of 1904, prisoners were herded into concentration camps and given as slave labor to German businesses; many died of overwork and malnutrition.

It took until 1908 to re-establish German authority over the territory; by that time tens of thousands of Africans (estimates range from 34,000 to 110,000) had been either killed or died of thirst while fleeing.

In 1985, the United Nations ' Whitaker Report classified the aftermath as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South-West Africa, and therefore one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the 20th century. In 2004, the German government recognized and apologized for the events

Key Terms

Herero: An ethnic group inhabiting parts of Southern Africa. The majority reside in Namibia, with the remainder found in Botswana and Angola. During the German colonial empire, the German colonists committed genocide against these people.

Eugen Fischer: A German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics, and a member of the Nazi Party. He served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, and as rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin. His ideas informed the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and served to justify the Nazi Party's attitudes of racial superiority. Adolf Hitler read his work while imprisoned in 1923 and used his eugenical notions to support the ideal of a pure Aryan society in his manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).

German South-West Africa: A colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915. It was 1.5 times the size of the mainland German Empire in Europe at the time. The colony had a population of around 2,600 Germans, numerous indigenous rebellions, and a widespread genocide of the indigenous peoples.

Colonization and Conflict

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Herero migrated to what is today Namibia from the east and established themselves as herdsmen. In the beginning of the 19th century, the Nama from South Africa, who already possessed some firearms, entered the land and were followed by white merchants and German missionaries. At first, the Nama began displacing the Herero, leading to bitter warfare between the two groups that lasted the greater part of the 19th century. Later, the Nama and Herero entered a period of cultural exchange.

During the late 19th century, the first Europeans arrived to permanently settle the land. Primarily in Damaraland, German settlers acquired land from the Herero to establish farms. In 1883, merchant Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz entered into a contract with the native elders. The exchange later became the basis of German colonial rule. The territory became a German colony under the name of German South-West Africa.

Soon after, conflicts between the German colonists and the Herero herdsmen began. These were frequently disputes about access to land and water, but also the legal discrimination against the native population by the white immigrants.

Between 1893 and 1903, the Herero and Nama people's land and cattle were progressively making their way into the hands of the German colonists. The Herero and Nama resisted expropriation over the years, but were disorganized and the Germans defeated them with ease. In 1903, the Herero people learned that they were to be placed in reservations, leaving more room for colonists to own land and prosper. In 1904, the Herero and Nama began a large rebellion that lasted until 1907, ending with the near destruction of the Herero people.

Genocide Against the Herero and Nama People

According to some historians, "The war against the Herero and Nama was the first in which German imperialism resorted to methods of genocide." Roughly 80,000 Herero lived in German South-West Africa at the beginning of Germany's colonial rule over the area, while after their revolt was defeated, they numbered approximately 15,000. In a period of four years, 1904-1907, approximately 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama people perished.

The first phase of the genocide was characterized by widespread death from starvation and dehydration due to the prevention of the retreating Herero from leaving the Namib Desert by German forces. Once defeated, thousands of Herero and Nama were imprisoned in concentration camps, where the majority died of disease, abuse, and exhaustion.

During the Herero genocide Eugen Fischer, a German scientist, came to the concentration camps to conduct medical experiments on race, using children of Herero people and mulatto children of Herero women and German men as test subjects. Together with Theodor Mollison he also experimented upon Herero prisoners. Those experiments included sterilization and injection of smallpox, typhus, and tuberculosis. The numerous mixed offspring upset the German colonial administration, which was concerned with maintaining "racial purity." Eugen Fischer studied 310 mixed-race children, calling them "bastards" of "lesser racial quality." Fischer also subjected them to numerous racial tests such as head and body measurements and eye and hair examinations. In conclusion of his studies he advocated genocide of alleged "inferior races" stating that "whoever thinks thoroughly the notion of race, can not arrive at a different conclusion." Fischer's torment of the children was part of a wider history of abusing Africans for experiments, and echoed earlier actions by German anthropologists who stole skeletons and bodies from African graveyards and took them to Europe for research or sale.

In 1985, the United Nations' Whitaker Report classified the aftermath as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South-West Africa, and therefore one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the 20th century. In 2004, the German government recognized and apologized for the events, but ruled out financial compensation for the victims' descendants. In July 2015, the German government and the speaker of the Bundestag officially called the events a "genocide" and "part of a race war." However it has refused to consider reparations.

In recent years scholars have debated the "continuity thesis" that links German colonialist brutalities to the treatment of Jews, Poles, and Russians during World War II. Some historians argue that Germany's role in Africa gave rise to an emphasis on racial superiority at home, which in turn was used by the Nazis. Other scholars, however, are skeptical and challenge the continuity thesis.

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Despite German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck's opposition to overseas colonies, pressure from the German people to establish colonies for international prestige led to a significant empire during the Scramble for Africa.

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Shows the list of the chancellor and the years they served and some interesting facts

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Shows the list of the chancellor and the years they served and some interesting facts

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This list is comprised of German Chancellors and Presidents. The Chancellor is the head of the government. Germany was unified in 1871, with the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck becoming the first Chancellor.

The President is the official head of state. The office was established in 1919 during the Weimar Republic and re-established in 1949 in West Germany.

In German the Chancellor was originally called Reichskanzler meaning "imperial chancellor". Since 1949 the title is Bundeskanzler meaning "federal chancellor" (the first female chancellor, Angela Merkel, has the title Bundeskanzlerin). Likewise, the President was originally Reichspräsident and then Bundespräsident after 1949.

Name

Years

Type

Other Names

Chlodwig of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst

1894-1900

chancellor

(Carl, Viktor)

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This list is comprised of German Chancellors and Presidents. The Chancellor is the head of the government. Germany was unified in 1871, with the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck becoming the first Chancellor. The President is the official head of state. The office was established in 1919 during the Weimar Republic and re-established in 1949 in West Germany.