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The men who led Nazi Germany

  • Deutschland Drittes Reich Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (picture-alliance/Everett Collection)

    Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)

    As Hitler's Propaganda Minister, the virulently anti-Semitic Goebbels was responsible for making sure a single, iron-clad Nazi message reached every citizen of the Third Reich. He strangled freedom of the press, controlled all media, arts, and information, and pushed Hitler to declare "Total War." He and his wife committed suicide in 1945, after poisoning their six children.

  • Hitler in Bayreuth (picture-alliance/akg-images)

    Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

    The leader of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (Nazi) developed his anti-Semitic, anti-communist and racist ideology well before coming to power as Chancellor in 1933. He undermined political institutions to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. From 1939 to 1945, he led Germany in World War II while overseeing the Holocaust. He committed suicide in April 1945.

  • Heinrich Himmler Deutschland SS (picture-alliance/dpa)

    Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)

    As leader of the Nazi paramilitary SS ("Schutzstaffel"), Himmler was one of the Nazi party members most directly responsible for the Holocaust. He also served as Chief of Police and Minister of the Interior, thereby controlling all of the Third Reich's security forces. He oversaw the construction and operations of all extermination camps, in which more than 6 million Jews were murdered.

  • German politician and wartime deputy of Adolf Hitler, during a public speech.

    Rudolf Hess (1894-1987)

    Hess joined the Nazi party in 1920 and took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, a failed Nazi attempt to gain power. While in prison, he helped Hitler write "Mein Kampf." Hess flew to Scotland in 1941 to attempt a peace negotiation, where he was arrested and held until the war's end. In 1946, he stood trial in Nuremberg and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died.

  • Adolf Eichmann (AP/dapd)

    Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962)

    Alongside Himmler, Eichmann was one of the chief organizers of the Holocaust. As an SS Lieutenant colonel, he managed the mass deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe. After Germany's defeat, Eichmann fled to Austria and then to Argentina, where he was captured by the Israeli Mossad in 1960. Tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was executed in 1962.

  • Hermann Göring hält eine Rede (Three Lions/Getty Images)

    Hermann Göring (1893-1946)

    A participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Göring became the second-most powerful man in Germany once the Nazis took power. He founded the Gestapo, the Secret State Police, and served as Luftwaffe commander until just before the war's end, though he increasingly lost favor with Hitler. Göring was sentenced to death at Nuremberg but committed suicide the night before it was enacted.


The German National Socialist Workers' party profoundly affected the course of 20th-century world history with their ideology, propaganda and crimes. Who were the key leaders of the movement?

  • Date 30.01.2017
  • Author Cristina Burack