ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses important debates about the national socialist period in German history. The legacy of Hitlers Drittes Reich resounds in Germany and beyond to this day. Nazi Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship, suggesting a system in which the totality of life was totally controlled by the Fhrer and his party. Germany was not the first nation to embark on a genocidal war against another people and has not been the last. Certain other groups, such as the Munich students who formed the Weie Rose movement and distributed leaflets around their university, were also concerned with the Nazis abandonment of moral principles. Hitler achieved his goals with breathtaking speed. He began by calling fresh Reichstag elections, hoping to secure a clear NSDAP majority. The shortcomings and contradictions within national socialisms domestic agenda arguably made it all the more essential for Germany to pursue goals of international aggrandisement at the expense of other states and races.
