THE THIRD REICH – the history of National Socialism

Johanna Wolf was the oldest of the secretaries and effectively served as their leader—the "chief" among them. She worked for Hitler from 1933 until 1945, with only a few interruptions caused mainly by illness. Relatively little reliable information survives concerning Wolf's childhood and youth. Nevertheless, surviving memoirs and archival sources portray a conservative, religious, a...

During the Second World War, Hanna participated in testing numerous revolutionary German weapons. She helped solve the stability problems of the V-1 rocket (“Vergeltungswaffe,” meaning “retaliation weapon”). Since early rockets had serious guidance issues, a manually controllable version was built, and Hanna was chosen as test pilot. She successfully carried out the flight, and thanks to the data...

Henriette Hoffmann was born on February 2, 1913, in Munich. Her father, Heinrich Hoffmann, was the official photographer of the Nazi Party; her mother, Therese “Nelly” Baumann, was a singer and actress. Her childhood unfolded in Schwabing, an artistic district that during the Weimar years was one of the centers of avant-garde life and political radicalism. The family soon became part of Hitler’s i...

The Mitford family had existed since the Middle Ages, long without any particular significance. It was only in the 1930s that the Mitford brothers and sisters entered the headlines, becoming notorious for their scandalous political views. Each sister drifted in a different direction: one became a National Socialist and an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler. That was Unity , who formed a close relation...

Hitler and Eva Braun met in 1929, when she was only 17 years old and Hitler already 40. He immediately noticed her. Hitler especially sought the company of very young women; he invited them to dinners, took them to the theater and opera, creating the impression of a chivalrous gentleman. After the death of Geli Raubal in 1931, Eva Braun took over the role of Hitler’s secret companion and lover in...

Ilse Pröhl came from a national-conservative family. She was one of the three daughters of Friedrich Pröhl , a wealthy Hanoverian physician, and his wife Elsa , née Meineke. Her father was killed during the Kapp Putsch . In March 1920, the Freikorps unit known as the Ehrhardt Brigade with swastikas on their helmets , the uprising or coup d etat led by nationalist politician Wolfgang Kapp and Gener...

Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph Goebbels, mother of six children, one of Hitler’s closest confidantes — and the woman who ultimately chose death together with her children in the Führerbunker. “She was the First Lady of the Third Reich — unofficially, but without a doubt within the Nazi propaganda machine — while others might have given that title to Emmy Göring, the second wife of Hermann Göring.”...

Helene Bechstein was not merely the wife of a rich industrialist in the first half of the 20th century, but one of the early and highly influential supporters of the Nazi movement, who, through her personal relationship, had a significant impact on Adolf Hitler’s life and political career. Several historians have pointed out that Helene’s role went far beyond mere financial support: she was the on...

During the First World War, many women volunteered to provide clothing, hand-knitted socks, food, and cigarettes for soldiers at the front. Hoffmann volunteered and was assigned to a soldier named Adolf Hitler . This relationship is documented in postcards and letters, proving that she corresponded regularly with Hitler as early as 1914. Hitler wrote in pencil: “Dear Madam Director! After the fier...

The philosopher Hannah Arendt spoke of the “growing admiration of the good and wealthy classes for the underworld” in the 19th century. She noted that “this wealthy class gradually yielded to every moral question and began to favor anarchic cynicism.” In simpler terms, an immoral lifestyle and the underworld became fashionable. This also characterized the fin de siècle period at the end of the 19t...

Contrary to the claim that he was a man of absolute self-confidence, we know of numerous documented cases in which he displayed the exact opposite behavior. At such times he acted surprisingly helpless, even submissive, as in the 1920s when he met aristocrats and influential people. But even when he was already in power, for example in encounters with Hindenburg or even Marshal Pétain, his body la...

Thus says Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer, who was a witness from the very beginning and accompanied Hitler. In his analysis of Hitler and the regime in the work Im Angesicht des Galgens ( In the Face of the Gallows ), Hans Frank recounts how, as a student, he went from one political event to another, and how Hitler’s speeches stood out far above the rest. It was not so much the content that...

However, in 1924 a crucial turning point came. After the failed Beer Hall Putsch and the trial in Munich, Hitler was imprisoned in the Landsberg fortress. There, behind the prison walls, his self-perception was transformed. According to numerous testimonies, including that of his close associate Rudolf Hess, it was in Landsberg that Hitler ceased to be just an agitator and became something more: “...

Karl Brandt and his wife Anni were as the Albert Speer and his wife members of Hitler's inner circle in Berchtesgaden, where Hitler maintained his private residence known as the Berghof. This highly exclusive group functioned as Hitler's de facto family circle. As members of this inner circle, the Brandts had a residence near the Berghof and spent a lot of time there when Hitler was presen...

Dr. Eduard Bloch was a humble yet compassionate physician practicing in Linz, Austria, during Adolf Hitler’s youth. As the family doctor to the Hitlers, Bloch cared for young Adolf and his siblings, notably providing dedicated care during the illness of Hitler’s beloved mother, Klara. Despite the turbulent times and Hitler’s later infamy, Dr. Bloch—who was Jewish—was remembered by Hitler with unus...

The first important biographer is Konrad Heiden, who wrote a biography while Hitler was still alive. It was the first comprehensive and critical work that a German author was able to write without censorship, as he fled into exile immediately after the Nazis came to power in 1933. As a Social Democratic journalist, he had been writing about the Munich right-wing extremist political scene since his...

We're trying to shed light on the undoubtedly most important figure of National Socialism. It's not hard to guess that it's about Adolf Hitler we are talking about. My approach will be as follows: first, I'll look at who told us something about Hitler and what their theses were. It sounds dry, but I'm trying to find a compromise between science and entertainment, which is my motto in general, whil...

Here we will discuss Houston Stewart Chamberlain's work "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, 1899". A raging stream that brings together demonic hatred from all directions. The confusion of thoughts seems to lead to the idea of ​​destruction a sort of "delenda" a la Carthage or Jerusalem, to eliminate and exterminate or breed out the Semitic element or even worse, today's, as he calls it, t...

We come to the final part of our three-part series on the life of the pioneer and spiritual father of National Socialism as described by Goebbels and Rosenberg, both perhaps the most important figures when the question comes up what National Socialism actually is. In the first two parts, we discussed his disordered childhood, without parents, without a permanent residence, but financially secure. ...

Second part of the biography of the spiritual father of the National Socialist movement.  That's how the propaganda minister of the Third Reich Joseph Goebbels called him. We see him step by step becoming german, first through his tutor Otto Kuntze, then he studied in Switzerland met german intellectuals, then his first trips to Germany and finally moving to Dresden, where he was finally treated f...

Houston Stewart Chamberlain: A Life Driven by Demons, Compulsions, Fear, Between Mania and Burnout. An English nobleman who wants nothing more than to become a German. His books became the ideological basis of the völkisch movement and racist anti-Semitism in 20th-century Germany, moreover, Chamberlain is provocatively described as the architect of the Holocaust. But despite this, he is a great un...

We address the questions of why Hitler was interested in Richard Wagner. Was he an anti-Semite or just a harmless follower? Who was inspired by Richard Wagner? We address the questions of why Hitler was interested in Richard Wagner. Was Richard Wagner an anti-Semite or just a harmless follower? Who was inspired by Richard Wagner? Hitler considered himself the main character of the Wagner opera Rie...

Today we will focus specifically on the so-called Bayreuth circle and the Wagner family around the composer Richard Wagner. It is a study of the soil from which the seeds of National Socialism, as Hitler himself called this movement in its early stages, could have grown. The Bayreuth Circle or Wagner Circle may have played a more important role in the ethnic nationalist movement than one might thi...

We talk about whether Hitler can be compared to Napoleon? What do they have in common, what are their differences? What about Hitler´s obsession with Napoleon's Defeat? Our website Our facebook page

What did Hitler think about ancient Rome and Christianity? We bring quotes from Hitler's private conversations. ⁠The podcast website⁠ ⁠The Facebook page of the podcast