After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 by Paul von Hindenburg, the President of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Party began to eliminate political opposition and consolidate power.

Financed by deficit spending, the regime undertook extensive public works projects, including the Autobahnen (motorways) and a massive secret rearmament program, forming the Wehrmacht (armed forces).

Jews, Romani people, Slavs, homosexuals, liberals, socialists, communists, other political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, those who refused to work, and other "undesirables" were imprisoned, deported, or murdered.

Nazi Propaganda Ministry disseminated films, antisemitic canards, and organized mass rallies; fostering a pervasive cult of personality around Adolf Hitler to influence public opinion.

After the initial success of German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Nazi Germany attempted to implement the Generalplan Ost and Hunger Plan, as part of its war of extermination in Eastern Europe.

The government printed money to make the payments and to repay the country's war debt, but the resulting hyperinflation led to inflated prices, economic chaos, and food riots.

[12] They promised a strong central government, increased Lebensraum ("living space") for Germanic peoples, formation of a national community based on race, and racial cleansing via the active suppression of Jews, who would be stripped of their citizenship and civil rights.

[24] As the bill required a two-thirds majority to pass, the Nazis used intimidation tactics as well as the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to keep several Social Democratic deputies from attending, and the Communists had already been banned.

[32] The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed in April, removed from their jobs all teachers, professors, judges, magistrates, and government officials who were Jewish or whose commitment to the party was suspect.

On 17 May 1933, Hitler gave a speech before the Reichstag outlining his desire for world peace and accepted an offer from American President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military disarmament, provided the other nations of Europe did the same.

[56] In 1934, Hitler told his military leaders that rearmament needed to be complete by 1942, as by then the German people would require more living space and resources, so Germany would have to start a war of conquest to obtain more territory.

[115] In addition to Hitler's stated purpose of acquiring Lebensraum, this large-scale offensive—codenamed Operation Barbarossa—was intended to destroy the Soviet Union and seize its natural resources for subsequent aggression against the Western powers.

[171] Nazi ideology brought together elements of antisemitism, racial hygiene, and eugenics, and combined them with pan-Germanism and territorial expansionism with the goal of obtaining more Lebensraum for the Germanic people.

[172] The regime attempted to obtain this new territory by attacking Poland and the Soviet Union, intending to mass-murder or deport the Jews and Slavs living there, who it viewed as being inferior to the Aryan master race and part of a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy.

[246] An elaborate bureaucracy was created to regulate imports of raw materials and finished goods with the intention of eliminating foreign competition in the German marketplace and improving the nation's balance of payments.

[247] As the market was experiencing a glut and prices for petroleum were low, in 1933 the Nazi government made a profit-sharing agreement with IG Farben, guaranteeing them a 5 per cent return on capital invested in their synthetic oil plant at Leuna.

[249] Major public works projects financed with deficit spending included the construction of a network of Autobahnen and providing funding for programmes initiated by the previous government for housing and agricultural improvements.

[251] On the condition that the wife would leave the workforce, a loan of up to 1,000 Reichsmarks could be accessed by young couples of Aryan descent who intended to marry, and the amount that had to be repaid was reduced by 25 per cent for each child born.

[261] In addition to calling for the rapid construction of steel mills, synthetic rubber plants, and other factories, Göring instituted wage and price controls and restricted the issuance of stock dividends.

[279] Very heavy strategic bombing by the Allies targeted refineries producing synthetic oil and gasoline, as well as the German transportation system, especially rail yards and canals.

[290] On 7 November 1938 a young Jewish man, Herschel Grynszpan, shot and killed Ernst vom Rath, a legation secretary at the German embassy in Paris, to protest his family's treatment in Germany.

[339] Frequent and often contradictory directives were issued by Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Bernhard Rust of the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture, and other agencies regarding content of lessons and acceptable textbooks for use in primary and secondary schools.

The Nazis opposed the feminist movement, claiming that it was the creation of Jewish intellectuals, instead advocating a patriarchal society in which the German woman would recognise that her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home".

[378] As part of a general public health campaign, water supplies were cleaned up, lead and mercury were removed from consumer products, and women were urged to undergo regular screenings for breast cancer.

[411] Pope Pius XI had the "Mit brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Concern") encyclical smuggled into Germany for Passion Sunday 1937 and read from every pulpit as it denounced the systematic hostility of the regime toward the church.

As well as taking control of tens of thousands of privately run recreational clubs, it offered highly regimented holidays and entertainment such as cruises, vacation destinations and concerts.

[426] Propaganda and speeches were typical radio fare immediately after the seizure of power, but as time went on Goebbels insisted that more music be played so that listeners would not turn to foreign broadcasters for entertainment.

[428] Tens of thousands of books from dozens of figures, including Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Helen Keller, Alfred Kerr, Marcel Proust, Erich Maria Remarque, Upton Sinclair, Jakob Wassermann, H. G. Wells, and Émile Zola were publicly burned.

[438] Hitler's plans for rebuilding Berlin included a gigantic dome based on the Pantheon in Rome and a triumphal arch more than double the height of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

While Evans remarks that the era "exerts an almost universal appeal because its murderous racism stands as a warning to the whole of humanity",[461] young neo-Nazis enjoy the shock value that Nazi symbols or slogans provide.