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The NSDAP was the main political force in [[Nazi Germany]] from the fall of the [[Weimar Republic]] in 1933 until the end of [[World War II]] in [[1945]], when it was declared illegal and its leaders were arrested and convicted of crimes against humanity at the [[Nuremberg Trials]]. The beliefs and practices of the Nazi Party gave rise to a significantly new political [[ideology]], commonly known as "[[Nazism]]".
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==Party history==
===Origins===
[[Image:Nazi eagle swastika.jpg|right|framed|Nazi ''Hoheitsadler'': Eagle on ''[[Hakenkreuz]]'' symbol]]
[[Image:naziswastika.png|left|100px|thumb|The Nazi [[swastika]] symbol]]
In the beginning of [[1918]], a party called the ''Freier Ausschuss für einen deutschen Arbeiterfrieden'' (Free Committee for a German Workers' Peace) was created in [[Bremen (city)|Bremen]], Germany. (6) [[Anton Drexler]], locksmith and poet, formed a branch of this league on [[March 7]], [[1918]], in Munich. In [[1919]], Drexler, with [[Gottfried Feder]], [[Dietrich Eckart]] and [[Karl Harrer]], changed its name to the '''''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''''' ('''German Workers' Party''', abbreviated '''DAP'''). This party was the formal forerunner of the NSDAP, and became one of many [[völkisch movement|''völkisch'' movements]] that existed in Germany after its defeat in [[World War I]]. In order to investigate the DAP, German army intelligence sent a young corporal, [[Adolf Hitler]], to monitor party activities. However, he was impressed by what he saw, and he joined as Member Number 555, although Hitler later claimed to be "Party Member number 7" to make it look like he was a founder. He was, in actual fact, only the 55th member of the DAP but the party began its membership totals from 500 in order to appear larger. He was in fact the 7th member of the DAP's central committee. At this early stage, Hitler brought up the idea of renaming the party, and he proposed the name "Social Revolutionary Party" (4). However, [[Rudolf Jung]] insisted that the party should follow the pattern of Austria's ''[[Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei]]''. As a consequence, the DAP was shortly renamed the NSDAP on February 24, [[1920]].
Other early members of the Nazi Party include [[Rudolf Buttmann]], director general of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library), and [[Hermann Esser]], editor of the ''[[Völkischer Beobachter]]''.
===Struggle for power===
Adolf Hitler became Nazi Party chairman on [[July 29]], [[1921]], and at once began a program where the Nazi Party became a radical and revolutionary organization. The ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'' (storm troopers) was founded under [[Hans Ulrich Klintzsch]] that same year and began a policy of expanding the Nazi Party by way of fear, intimidation, and violent attacks on other political parties.
In these early years, the Nazi Party was confined mainly to the city of [[Munich]] in [[Bavaria]]. Splinter Nazi groups did exist elsewhere in Germany; however, the programs and agendas were such that, even among the Nazis, such extra-Bavarian Nazi groups were considered separate from the main Nazi Party as a whole.
Disaster presented itself in [[1923]] when the Nazi Party attempted to seize control of the Bavarian government in the so-called "[[Beer Hall Putsch]]". The two-day revolution was crushed by Munich authorities, and several Nazis were killed in the process. Hitler and his top Nazi advisors were tried and convicted of treason. Sentences ranged from 12 to 18 months, with Hitler serving his term at [[Landsberg]] prison. During this period, from 1923 to 1925, the Nazi Party ceased to exist. However, Hitler spent the time writing ''[[Mein Kampf]]'', detailing how he would accomplish a political comeback once he was released from prison.
===Reborn Nazi Party===
[[Image:ah_angeklagte.jpg|350px|thumb|right|Early leaders of the Nazi Party (left to right): Heinz Pernet, Friedrich Weber, Wilhelm Frick, Hermann Kriebel, Erich Ludendorff, Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Brückner, Ernst Röhm, Robert Wagner]]
Upon Adolf Hitler's release from prison in 1925, the NSDAP was refounded, with Hitler taking Party membership number 1. That same year, the ''[[Schutzstaffel]]'' (SS) was founded. The evolution of the party, during this era, is an integral part of the decline of the [[Weimar Timeline|Weimar State]].
The second Nazi Party saw [[Gottfried Feder]] as economic theoretician. [[Rudolf Jung]] supplied the reborn Nazi Party with a ready-made ideology that he carried with him from [[Czechoslovakia]]. It was a [[National Socialist Program|25-point program]]. Hitler added his ideas about foreign policy, and [[Julius Streicher]] added his more virulent [[anti-Semitism|anti-Semitic]] views.
Between 1925 and 1929, the Nazis competed poorly in elections. In the election of [[1930]], however, the Nazis (propelled by Germany's economic problems in the incipient [[Great Depression]]) increased their vote dramatically, becoming the second-largest party in the [[Reichstag (institution)|''Reichstag'']]. The NSDAP continued to improve its position in the years thereafter, despite a brief ban in [[1932]] of the [[Sturmabteilung|SA]] (the party's private army). In the elections of 1932 the party reached a total of 13.75 million votes and so became the largest voting bloc in the Reichstag.
===Seizure of Power===
The Nazis never won an electoral majority on their own, but Hitler was appointed [[Chancellor of Germany|Chancellor]] of a coalition government by [[President of Germany|President]] [[Paul von Hindenburg]] in [[January]] [[1933]]. His coalition partners were the right-wing Nationalists led by [[Alfred Hugenberg]], the press baron, and his [[Vice-Chancellor of Germany|Vice-Chancellor]] was the ex-[[Centre Party (Germany)|Centre Party]] politician and former Chancellor [[Franz von Papen]].
On [[February 27]], [[1933]], the Reichstag parliament building was set on fire. This [[Reichstag fire]] was promptly blamed on a Communist conspiracy, and used as an excuse by the Nazis to close the [[Communist Party of Germany]]'s offices, ban its press and arrest its leaders. Furthermore, Hitler convinced the ageing and [[senile]] President von Hindenburg to sign the [[Reichstag Fire Decree]], suspending most of the [[human rights]] provided for by the 1919 [[Weimar constitution|constitution]] of the [[Weimar Republic]]. A further decree enabled for preventative detention of all the Communist deputies, amongst many thousands of others.
[[Image:Adolf-Hitler-7.jpg|thumb|right|265px|Nazi leader [[Adolf Hitler]] at a parade.]]
Since the new government lacked a majority in parliament, Hitler held a [[Reichstag (institution)|Reichtstag]] election in March of 1933. The Nazis obtained 43.9%; with their right-wing Nationalist [[DNVP]] allies included, they controlled a simple parliamentary 51.8% majority coalition.
A decisive step on Hitler's way to becoming dictator was the so called "[[Enabling Act]]",
which granted the cabinet - and in fact Hitler - legislative powers. However, since the Enabling Act allowed for deviations from the constitution, a two thirds majority was required. Hitler needed the votes of the [[Centre Party (Germany)|Centre Party]] and after promising certain guarantees to the Centre's chairman [[Ludwig Kaas]], the party voted in favour of the [[Enabling Act]]. The Centre Party's thirty-one votes added to the fragmented middle-class parties and the right-wing Nationalists (DNVP) and gave Hitler the right to rule by his own decree and to further suspend many civil liberties.
In five clauses the Enabling Act gave the government power to change the Constitution, the cabinet to enact laws without legislative approval, the Chancellor to draft legislation, the Cabinet to enact foreign treaties abroad, and a renewal every four years dependent on the continuation of the government. The only left-wing party remaining in the Reichstag, the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany]], valiantly protested the Act from being passed. As the Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House, patrolled and harangued by brown-shirted SA men, the Enabling Act passed and, as punishment for their dissent, the Social Democrats became the second party banned by the Nazis (on [[22 June]]) following the move of their leadership to [[Prague]].
After all parties were either banned or pressed into dissolving themselves, the Nazi government banned the formation of new parties on [[July 14]], [[1933]], turning Germany into a one-party state. This was part of the ''[[Gleichschaltung]]''. Hitler kept the Reichstag as a pulpit with the [[Reichsrat]] (upper house of the German parliment) controlled by Nazi appointees who quickly voted the Enabling Act and then dissolved the Reichsrat as a legislative body. The legislative bodies of the German states soon followed in the same manner, with the German federal government taking over most state and local legislative powers.
Hitler also tried to incorporate the Churches into his new regime. On [[March 23]], [[1933]] he had called them "most important factors" for the maintenance of German well-being. In regard to the [[Roman Catholic Church]], he proposed the [[Reichskonkordat]] between Germany and the [[Pope|Holy See]], that was signed in July. In regard to the Protestant Church, he used church elections to push the Nazi-inspired "German Christians" to power. This however provoked the internal opposition of the "[[Confessing Church]]".
[[Image:1936NurembergRally.jpg|thumb|350px|The Nazi party's 1936 [[Nuremberg rallies|Nuremberg Rally]] was its largest.]]
===Consolidation of power===
Between 1934 and 1939, the Nazi Party began a series of measures to merge the Nazi Party and the German government into one entity. It was also during this time that Nazi racial views were transferred to legal practice with Germany becoming an anti-Semitic and [[racialist]] state after the passing of the [[Nuremberg Laws]] in 1935.
Hitler’s first act to merge the Nazi party and German government was upon the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in August of [[1934]]. Three hours before Hindenburg died, Hitler's government passed a law to take effect on Hindenburg's death which prescribed that the office of President would be merged with that of the Chancellor and that Hitler would henceforth be the Führer und Reichkanzler of Germany. By this action, Hitler made himself Head of State, Head of Government and Chairman of the Nazi party combined into one single office.
In the mid 1930s, the Nazi Party appointed and staffed nearly the entire German government with Nazi Party officials. In addition, the SS had by 1936 become the state police service controlling all aspects of law enforcement and political enforcement. By the time World War II began in 1939, there was virtually no distinction between the Nazi Party and the Government of Germany with the latter two being considered one and the same.
The original act which made Hitler dictator of Germany, the Enabling Act, was renewed in 1937 and then in 1941 for an indefinite term. Even as late as 1944, however, there were those in Germany who believed that the Nazis were simply a political party who were currently in power but could be voted out of office when and if the German people so chose. On paper, at least, Hitler’s dictatorship was not to last forever and some Germans saw the Enabling Act as temporary only until World War II was over at which time Germany would again become a democratic country with a Presidency and Chancellorship split into two separate offices once again (this is what in fact happened when Hitler killed himself in 1945). Most likely, however, had Germany triumphed in World War II Hitler would have become dictator for life.
===Post World War II Nazi Party===
The Nazi Party ceased to exist in May 1945 when Law Number 2 of the [[Allied Control Council]] declared the Nazi party disbanded and the Nazi party, itself, illegal. Since that time, several “successor groups” have claimed to be continuations of the Nazi party but only one was actually ever declared to be so by German and Allied authorities.
The [[National Democratic Party of Germany]] (NPD) was founded November 28, [[1964]] as a political party of [[West Germany]]. The NPD advocated a program nearly identical to old Nazi ideals and began combining various [[Neo-Nazi]] groups under its authority. This, in combination with a leadership of former Nazis from the Hitler era, became very alarming to the [[West German]] government and the allied occupation forces still technically in charge of Germany. Efforts were made in the 1960s to have the NPD declared a direct successor to the Nazi Party and disbanded under West German law, however the Party survived to a large enough extent that it still maintains a presence in German politics to this day.
The only other successor Nazi group, noticed as extremely dangerous by government officials, was the [[American Nazi Party]] under the leadership of [[George Lincoln Rockwell]]. The American Nazi Party reached its height in the 1960s with many U.S. law enforcement leaders stating that the party was becoming as dangerous, if not more so, than the original Nazi Party had in the 1920s and early 30s. As American free speech did not allow for the disbanding of political parties, the American Nazi party was allowed to continue its existence but lost most of its membership and finances after the death of George Rockwell.
In the [[21st century]] there are no organizations which are seriously recognized as continuations of Hitler’s Nazi party. Most such groups are scattered, disorganized, and so full of [[Anti-Semitism]] and [[white supremacist]] rhetoric that average citizens look upon such organizations as little more than hate groups.
==Nazi Party Structure==
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