Germany

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

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

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

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

Hugh Rank is intrigued but bewildered by an exhibition on the rise of Prussia, held in a Berlin still coming to terms with its legacy.

Ian Kershaw on an English translation of a German history of Nazi government

More witches were executed in the German-speaking territories than in any other part of Europe. Why was the German witch-hunt so assiduously and successfully prosecuted?

In his article last month in our series, 'Makers of the Twentieth Century', Jeremy Noakes evaluated Hitler's contribution to the creation of Nazi Germany and the outbreak of the Second World War. Now Dr. Noakes turns his attention to those who voted for the Nazis: from whom did the party of Hitler draw its support and what did it offer to the disillusioned German people?

Hitler's contribution to the history of the twentieth century has been one of destruction. The war he started in 1939, argues Jeremy Noakes, was to recast the pattern of our world irreparably.