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Communism in Germany began with the founding of the Communist Party in 1918 and became dominant in East Germany after World War II, lasting until German reunification in 1990.
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The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews and millions of other targeted groups by Nazi Germany
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Adolf Hitler was the authoritarian leader of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, responsible for initiating World War II and orchestrating the Holocaust.Adolf Hitler was the authoritarian leader of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, responsible for initiating World War II and orchestrating the Holocaust.
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The Reichstag Fire occurred on February 27, 1933, when Germany’s parliament building was set ablaze in Berlin; the Nazis blamed communists and used the event to justify emergency powers that helped dismantle democratic institutions.
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Nazi camps, including concentration and extermination camps, were facilities where millions of people—primarily Jews—were imprisoned, forced into labor, tortured, and systematically murdered as part of the regime’s genocidal policies.
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The major Nazi book burning was when university students across Germany, encouraged by Nazi propaganda, publicly burned thousands of books deemed "un-German," targeting works by Jewish, communist, and liberal authors.
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The Nuremberg Race Laws, enacted in 1935, were antisemitic statutes in Nazi Germany that stripped Jews of citizenship and prohibited marriage or relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans.
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Life under Nazism was marked by intense propaganda, strict social control, suppression of dissent, and widespread persecution—especially of Jews and other marginalized groups—within a totalitarian regime that demanded absolute loyalty to Hitler.
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Jesse Owens was the standout athlete of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, held from August 1 to August 16, where he won four gold medals in the 100m, 200m, long jump, and 4×100m relay. As an African-American competing in Nazi Germany, Owens defied Adolf Hitler’s racial ideology by dominating the Games and becoming an international symbol of athletic excellence and human dignity2.
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Kristallnacht, or the "Night of Broken Glass," is when Nazi forces and civilians violently attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany, killing dozens and arresting thousands.
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Nazi ghettos were overcrowded, enclosed districts where Jews were forcibly confined, isolated from the general population, and subjected to starvation, disease, and brutal living conditions before eventual deportation to concentration camps.