Fritz Tobias
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Fritz Tobias
Fritz Tobias (3 October 1912 – 1 January 2011) was a German writer, government official and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. He was ''Ministerialrat'' in the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior and was then in the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Lower Saxony. In the 1960s, he became known by his statements to the Reichstag fire. An "amateur historian", Tobias had taken the trouble to explore the history of the events in Berlin on 27 February 1933. According to his findings the Nazis were not guilty and the historically-significant arson would have been the action of Marinus van der Lubbe alone. Most historians agree that Tobias was correct. Early life and career Tobias grew up in Berlin as the son of a Social Democratic porcelain painter. In 1926, Tobias moved to Hanover. In April 1940, Tobias was drafted for military service. He took part in the Second World War until 1945, and he claimed to have suffered several injuries, most recently ...
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Social Democratic Party Of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the party's leader since the 2019 leadership election together with Lars Klingbeil, who joined her in December 2021. After Olaf Scholz was elected chancellor in 2021 the SPD became the leading party of the federal government, which the SPD formed with the Greens and the Free Democratic Party, after the 2021 federal election. The SPD is a member of 11 of the 16 German state governments and is a leading partner in seven of them. The SPD was established in 1863. It was one of the earliest Marxist-influenced parties in the world. From the 1890s through the early 20th century, the SPD was Europe's largest Marxist party, and the most popular political party in Germany. During the First World War, the party split between a pro-war mainstream ...
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Denazification
Denazification (german: link=yes, Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by removing those who had been Nazi Party or SS members from positions of power and influence, by disbanding or rendering impotent the organizations associated with Nazism, and by trying prominent Nazis for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials of 1946. The program of denazification was launched after the end of the war and was solidified by the Potsdam Agreement in August 1945. The term ''denazification'' was first coined as a legal term in 1943 by the U.S. Pentagon, intended to be applied in a narrow sense with reference to the post-war German legal system. However, it later took on a broader meaning. In late 1945 and early 1946, the emergence of the Cold War and the economic importance of Germany caused the United States in particular to lose ...
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Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany, but he resigned in 1938 after becoming disillusioned with Stalinism. Having moved to Britain in 1940, he published his novel ''Darkness at Noon'', an anti-totalitarian work that gained him international fame. Over the next 43 years, Koestler espoused many political causes and wrote novels, memoirs, biographies, and numerous essays. In 1949, Koestler began secretly working with a British Cold War anti-communist propaganda department known as the Information Research Department (IRD), which would republish and distribute many of his works, and also fund his activities. In 1968, he was awarded the Sonning Prize "for [his] outstanding contribution to European culture". In 1972 he was made a Order of the Briti ...
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Oberfohren Memorandum
Allegedly authored in spring 1933 by German national-conservative politician Ernst Oberfohren, the Oberfohren Memorandum advocated that the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933, had been planned by Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels and carried out by a group of Nazi officers. Although rejected as a fabrication by the Nazis, its origins remained mainly unclear until the end of World War II. From 1959 to 1962 author Fritz Tobias published his research in Der Spiegel magazine and in his work ''The Reichstag Fire: Legend and Truth'', asserting that the document was a forgery, produced and circulated in 1933 by German Communist journalist émigrés in France. Overview The memorandum was named after Ernst Oberfohren, chairman of the German National People's Party (''German: Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP'') faction in the Reichstag. The ''DNVP'' was an alliance of nationalists, reactionary monarchists and antisemites supported by the Pan-German League, that constituted the ...
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The Brown Book Of The Reichstag Fire And Hitler Terror
''The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror'' (German: ''Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitlerterror'') is a book published in Paris, France in August 1933 and written by an anti-fascist group including German communist Willi Munzenberg, Hans Siemsen and Gustav Regler. It put forth the theory that Nazis were behind the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933. According to Munoz Molina, Antonio Muñoz. Sepharad: A Novel . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition it was one of the best selling books of all time. The book's cover was designed by John Heartfield. The book was published in English in Great Britain in September 1933 with a foreword by Dudley Aman, 1st Baron Marley. References External links Staging Antifascism: The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror by Anson Rabinbach The Reichstag Fire Trial, 1933-2008: The Production of Law and HistoryThe Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the ReichstagA HathiTrust HathiTrust Di ...
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Reichstag Fire Decree
The Reichstag Fire Decree (german: Reichstagsbrandverordnung) is the common name of the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State (german: Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat) issued by German President Paul von Hindenburg on the advice of Chancellor Adolf Hitler on 28 February 1933 in immediate response to the Reichstag fire. The decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. With Nazis in powerful positions in the German government, the decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and to suppress publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause. The decree is considered by historians as one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany. Background Hitler had been appointed Chancellor of Germany only four weeks previously, on 30 January 1933, when he was invited by President von Hindenburg to lead a ...
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Der Spiegel
''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner, a British army officer, and Rudolf Augstein, a former Wehrmacht radio operator who was recognized in 2000 by the International Press Institute as one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes. Typically, the magazine has a content to advertising ratio of 2:1. ''Der Spiegel'' is known in German-speaking countries mostly for its investigative journalism. It has played a key role in uncovering many political scandals such as the ''Spiegel'' affair in 1962 and the Flick affair in the 1980s. According to ''The Economist'', ''Der Spiegel'' is one of continental Europe's most influential magazines. The news website by the same name was launched in 1994 under the name ''Spiegel Online'' with an independent editorial staff. Today, the content is ...
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Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence in support of the UK's national security. SIS is one of the British intelligence agencies and the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service ("C") is directly accountable to the Foreign Secretary. Formed in 1909 as the foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau, the section grew greatly during the First World War officially adopting its current name around 1920. The name "MI6" (meaning Military Intelligence, Section 6) originated as a convenient label during the Second World War, when SIS was known by many names. It is still commonly used today. The existence of SIS was not officially acknowledged until 1994. That year the Intelligence Services Act 1994 (ISA) was introduced to Parliament, to place the organisation on a statutory footin ...
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Geheime Feldpolizei
The ''Geheime Feldpolizei'', short: ''GFP'' (), , was the secret military police of the German Wehrmacht until the end of the Second World War (1945). Its units carried out plain-clothed security work in the field - such as counter-espionage, counter-sabotage, detection of treasonable activities, counter-propaganda, protecting military installations and the provision of assistance to the German Army in courts-martial investigations. GFP personnel, who were also classed as ''Abwehrpolizei'', operated as an executive branch of German military intelligence, detecting resistance activity in Germany and in occupied France. They were also known to carry out torture and executions of prisoners. Formation The need for a secret military police developed after the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 and the occupation of Bohemia in 1939. Although SS ''Einsatzgruppen'' units originally under the command of the '' Sicherheitspolizei'' (Security Police; SiPo) had been used du ...
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Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ' federated as the Federal Republic of Germany. In rural areas, Northern Low Saxon and Saterland Frisian are still spoken, albeit in declining numbers. Lower Saxony borders on (from north and clockwise) the North Sea, the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, , Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Netherlands. Furthermore, the state of Bremen forms two enclaves within Lower Saxony, one being the city of Bremen, the other its seaport, Bremerhaven (which is a semi-enclave, as it has a coastline). Lower Saxony thus borders more neighbours than any other single '. The state's largest cities are state capital Hanover, Braunschweig (Brunswick), Lüneburg, Osnabrück, Oldenburg, Hildesheim, Salzgitt ...
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Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical region. Italy is also considered part of Western Europe, and shares land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and the enclaved microstates of Vatican City and San Marino. It has a territorial exclave in Switzerland, Campione. Italy covers an area of , with a population of over 60 million. It is the third-most populous member state of the European Union, the sixth-most populous country in Europe, and the tenth-largest country in the continent by land area. Italy's capital and largest city is Rome. Italy was the native place of many civilizations such as the Italic peoples and the Etruscans, while due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, the country has also historically been home ...
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Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
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