Alleah

Written by Alleah

Modified & Updated: 08 Sep 2023

Sherman Smith

Reviewed by Sherman Smith

Nazi party facts

There is no denying that when we hear Adolf Hitler and Nazi, we envision terror and mass murder. It’s perfectly understandable as they brought a dark phase into our history. If you come across most of the accounts in books and reports, Hitler’s minions were a band of cruel and delusional warmongers. In these Nazi Party facts, you will discover more about the people behind these deeds – how they came about and what terrible effect they left behind.

  1. The Nazi Party came into power in March 1933 and lasted until 1945.
  2. Before it became known as the Nazi Party, Anton Drexler founded it as the German Workers’ Party in 1919.
  3. Hitler formulated a 25-point program basis for the Nazi Party.
  4. The Nazi Party grew to 180,000 members in 1929.
  5. On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appoints the Nazi Party’s leader as Chancellor of Germany.
  1. Adolf Hitler was able to take over the Nazi Party and rename it as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
  2. The program of the Nazi party called for the expansion of German territories and abandonment of the Versailles treaty.
  3. Under Hitler’s leadership, the Nazi Party grew its base in Bavaria.
  4. When Hindenburg died in 1934. Hitler took the leader title or “Führer” in the Nazi Party.
  5. The Nazi Party took control of all social, cultural, and social activities in Germany.
  6. The “Aryan Master Race” is what the Nazi party calls the true Germanic people.
  7. To preserve the race, the Nazis and the Nazi Party plans to exterminate not only the Jews and other Slavs but also those with mental and physical disabilities.
  8. The Nazi Party aimed to unite Germans who were “racially desirable” and exclude those who were inferior.
  9. Homosexuals and other political opponents were also hot targets for the Nazi Party.
  10. The Nazi Party was a way for German workers to hate communism.
  1. The effects of Germany’s Great Depression brought the nationwide importance of the Nazi Party.
  2. Membership in the Nazi Party became mandatory for all bureaucrats and civil servants.
  3.  After the end of World War II, Nazi party members suffered conviction and banishment.
  4. When the Nazi Party was in power, murders and persecution of 6 million Jews took place.
  5. Time Magazine named the Nazi Party leader, Adolf Hitler, as the “Person of the Year” in 1938.
Table of Contents

The Nazi Party follows Nazism.

To understand fully all these Nazi Party facts, it’s important to understand its roots. Nazism is officially known as National Socialism. It was the main practice and ideology of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany. It’s a fascist or dictatorial power that does not honor any parliamentary system and liberal democracy. This ideology includes following scientific racism, anti-communism, and eugenics in their creed.

A member of the Nazi Party is a Nazi.

Nazi is an original and informal term for a member of the Nazi Party. It’s actually an abbreviation of “Nationalsozialisten”. Most of the members of the party adapted and embraced the Nazi as a colloquial name for themselves. Before their rise in power, the Nazis means a clumsy person or backward peasant.

nazism
Source: Pixabay

The Nazi Party was responsible for the Holocaust.

In a nutshell, Holocaust was the mass murder of millions of Jews, people with mental and physical disabilities, and queer people. It was also the murder of those that the regime persecuted. It was a way for the Germans to cleanse their land for those who were not “pure Aryans”. Holocaust comes from the word “holokauston” in Greek which translates to sacrifice by fire.

Jews started suffering when the Nazi Party came into power.

Contrary to common belief, the Jew killings did not only start in 1941. It goes way back to 1933 when Hilter rose to power in Germany. Persecution was only intensified from 1941 until 1945, but Jew suffering was already happening before that.

The Nazi Party gave an order for Jews to wear a star.

In 1939, Hitler’s regime forced the Jews to wear a yellow star in all of their clothing. This is to make sure that the Germans could identify Jews everywhere. It’s to also make the Jews an easy target. The yellow Star of David pin isolated the Jews from society as well. Definitely one of those unbelievable Nazi Party facts.

The swastika is the Nazi Party symbol.

The principal symbol of the Nazis was the swastika. In the 1920s, it was a black swastika that was in black and became the party’s badge. It then became Nazi Germany’s co-national flag. It has three colors on it – red, black, and white. The red symbolizes the underlying movement of the party’s social thought. White as the country’s national thought, while the black swastika is a symbol of the party’s mission. Today, some countries have banned the use of any Nazi symbols and badges. You cannot use it other than for educational purposes as it’s a criminal offense to do so.

Flag of Nazi Germany
Image from Wikipedia

Joseph Goebbels was also with the Nazi Party.

Paul Joseph Goebbels was a Reich Minister of Propaganda and a German Nazi politician. He was the party leader’s most devoted associate and closest friend. Goebbels’ contribution revolves around antisemitism and his skills in public speaking. After Hitler’s suicide, Goebbels then committed suicide through poisoning. He and his wife first poisoned their six children and then they took their lives.

Animal cruelty did not make the Nazi Party happy.

When the regime came into power in 1933, they passed a comprehensive set of laws for animal protection. When all of these were in place, Hitler said something about animal cruelty. With the new Reich, there will be no grounds for any form of animal abuse and cruelty.

The Nazi Party leader had a Jewish chauffeur.

It’s already a known fact that during Hitler’s reign, their main objective was to free the world of Jews. However, Hilter unknowingly had a Jewish chauffeur. Emil Maurice was also his friend and personal chauffeur. When it got known to many, Heinrich Himmler was ready to target Maurice for expulsion. Hitler came to the rescue and made an exception for him and his brothers. He called them “honorary Aryans”.

Rudolf Hess was the remaining Nazi Party member in prison after the war.

Hess was a leading member of the party and was also a German politician. In 1933, Hitler appoints Hess as his Deputy Führer and he had this position until 1941. He went to trial after the war. But did not get a death sentence. He got sentenced to life imprisonment instead. Hess spent 46 years in Spandau prison and eventually died at age 93. He died because of strangling but reports only revealed it as suicide. This is one of those dark Nazi Party facts in this list.

The Nazi Party had an assault division.

Also known as the Sturmabteilung, the Storm Troopers or Brownshirts was a violent group of the Nazi Party. This was during pre-World War II in Germany. The Brownshirts gave extreme harassment and punishment to the Jewish population and the leftists in Germany. They also run several operations that are outside of the law. They are what you call vigilantes nowadays as they were independent and not part of any regular army.

nazi party
Source: Mateus Campos on Unsplash

Hitler formed the Brownshirts for the Nazi party.

In order to support and lend muscle to his Nazi party, Hitler formed the Sturmabteilung or the SA in 1912. Members of the group were mostly former soldiers that were anti-democratic and anti-leftists. Hitler used them as a private army that helps him intimidated all his opponents. According to the Military Tribunal, the brownshirts were a group of bullies during that time.

The Nazi Party also had an architect.

The party had members of all kinds of professions and that includes an architect. Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer joined the group in 1931 and was an architect by profession. He was the war production minister during World War II. With that, he became a very close ally of Hitler during that time. He went to prison after the war and got 20 years of imprisonment.

Horst Wessel was a martyr for the Nazi Party.

Horst Ludwig Georg Erich Wessel was a member of the Brownshirts or the Storm Troopers. He joined the Nazi movement in 1926 and eventually became a member of the SA. In 1930, communists killed him in his room in Berlin. Because of this, Joseph Goebbels made him a martyr sine then for the Nazi cause.

Julius Streicher was an important member of the Nazi Party.

Streicher was a member of Germany’s national legislature. He was also Franconia’s regional leader. The leadership of Streicher was important for the regime as he was the publisher and founder of Der Stürmer. It was an antisemitic newspaper and a central element for the Nazi’s propaganda. Streicher went to the Nuremberg trials after the war. He met his fate thereafter and he got the death sentence. These Nazi Party facts are proof that Hitler had a lot of help during his reign of terror.

The Nazi Party owes its theories and ideologies to Alfred Rosenberg.

Reports reveal that most of the work done by the Nazi regime was because of the ideological creeds of Alfred Ernst Rosenberg. He was a Baltic German and held important positions in the Nazi government. Among his authored creeds were the persecution of Jews, the racial theory, and the abolition of the Treaty of Versailles.

auschwitz
Source: Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

Jewish people did not have their rights after a law that the Nazi Party passed.

After releasing the Nuremberg Laws on September 15, 1935, Jewish people were no longer a part of the free public. The laws include the Law for the Protection of German Blood. This means that only “true Germans” have the right to live in the country. Since then, the Jewish people have lived a very difficult life during the reign of the Nazi regime.

The Kristallnacht was a doing of the Nazi Party.

The Night of Broken Glass or known as the Kristallnacht happened on November 9, 1938. It was when the Nazis burned and ransacked Jewish-owned businesses. The group also attacked Jews in Germany and Austria. Right after the assault and the intrusion, at least 30,000 Jews got arrested for isolation in concentration camps.

The Nazi Party built 44,000 incarceration sites.

Following the regime’s attempt to cleanse the land with Jewish people, the Nazis built several concentration camps. In the 44,000 incarceration sites, there were areas for forced labor camps, detention, and killing centers. Those in these places were faced with starvation, mass murder, and torture. Truly, it’s a dark reality in these Nazi Party facts.

auschwitz
Source: Pixabay

Millions of individuals were killed during the Nazi Party's power.

Aside from the millions of Jews that were main targets during the Holocaust, there were also groups of people included. Queer people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, those with deformities, and those with debilitating diseases also got killed. It’s a depressing truth in all these Nazi party facts.

The Nazi Party leader was a school dropout.

Adolf Hitler spent his childhood in the city of Linz in Upper Austria. His father, Alois, was a state customs official. Since he did not want to follow in the footsteps of his father as a civil servant, Hitler had a hard time in school and eventually decided to drop out.

A national militia was established by the Nazi Party.

During the last and final months of World War II, the Nazis established volkssturm. It was a national militia formed on September 25, 1944, under the orders of the Führer, Adolf Hitler. Members of the militia were men of ages 16 to 60 years old who were not in any way serving the military. It was the Nazi Party’s way to overcome the military strength of their enemies through force of will.

The Nazi Party did not die out immediately after Hilter's death.

Right after the death of Hitler, Karl Dönitz became Germany’s Head of State. This was in 1945. During the Nazi era, he was a German admiral and acted as the navy’s Supreme Commander in 1943. Donitz was an important figure for the Nazis as he played an important role in naval history. When the war ended, he was sentenced to a prison sentence of 10 years for war crimes and the laws of war.

The Foreign Minister of the Nazi Party was sentenced to death.

In the Nuremberg trials, several Nazi officials and members were sentenced to either life in prison or death. Among those who were sentenced to the death penalty was Joachim von Ribbentrop. He was the Nazi’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and he was also a German politician. Hitler got him into that position because he was introduced to him as a businessman who’s knowledgeable of the world. After all, he was well-traveled. Ribbentrop was executed by the way of hanging on October 16, 1946.

The Nazi Party's parliamentary organization started as volunteers.

One of the least known Nazi Party facts is that the Schutzstaffel or the SS was the Nazi Party’s main parliamentary organization. It started as a guard unit of Nazi volunteers. They primarily provide security for the organization’s meetings in Munich. From a small formation of guards, it became one of the Nazi Party’s most powerful organizations. Their main role was to spread terror in Germany-occupied Europe as well as an agency for surveillance and security.

The main architect of the Nazi Party's holocaust was an SS official.

During the Nazi era, Reinhard Heydrich was the Holocaust’s main architect. He was a police officer and a high-ranking member of the German SS. Reinhard was also the chief officer of the Reich Main Security Office. He died after he was ambushed by Slovak and Czech soldiers.

The Nazi Party's ultimate goal was to establish a new racial order.

Officially named the German Reich in 1934 and Greater German Reich until 1945, Nazi Germany ruled under dictatorship. When Adolf Hitler came into power, his goal as well as the Nazi Party’s vision was to introduce a new racial order. They wanted to dominate Europe only by the German Master Race. Their goal was to drive the foreign policy of the Nazis and incorporate territories into German Reich.

There was a group called the "Hitler Youth" in the Nazi Party.

The Hitler Youth was an army of young and fit Germans that Adolf Hitler formed. They were trained to fight for the country. The leader of the group was Baldur von Schirach. His main responsibility was spearheading the members of the Youth as well as the deportation of Jews from Vienna, Austria to concentration camps and ghettos. Hitler Youth members were given the choice to either follow the orders of the Nazi party or to face execution.

The Nazi Party had regional leaders around Germany.

Gauleiters were the Nazi Party’s regional leader in certain branches and areas. During that time, Gauleiters were the second-highest-ranking positions next to the führer. One can only become a Gauleiter if they were directly appointed by Adolf Hitler.

Steps were made to hold the Nazi Party accountable for what they did.

After the Holocaust and the war, the world authorities did the necessary steps to hold German leaders accountable for the monstrous crimes they committed. The IMT or the International Military Tribunal looked for ways to individually charge those who were responsible for the murder of millions.

Most of the trials were in Nuremberg, Germany, and on October 18, 1945, IMT prosecutors charged 24 German Nazi party officials and members. Although these Nazi party facts could not bring back the life of all the victims, it still pays to know more about what truly happened.

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