The ferocious loyalty of the Hitler Youth was the result of intense propaganda campaigns, which included several posters like the one seen here. It reads: "Youth Serves the Führer. All 10-year-olds into the Hitler Youth."

Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Soon afterwards he began to destroy the mechanisms of Weimar democracy that he used to gain power. The Nazification of Germany was underway.

Hitler's first move was to issue the February 5 "Decree for the Protection of the German People," which gave the Gestapo, a state police force, the power to suppress activities deemed harmful to the state. The Reichstag Fire of February 28, allegedly set by a Dutch communist, precipitated the passage of the sweeping decree called "For the protection of the People and the State."

Many suspected that the Nazis themselves set the fire as a pretext for a strong state response. The February 28 decree established a state of martial law that lasted until Hitler's death. Civil rights were suspended, freedom of the press was ended, the death penalty was established, and citizens could be imprisoned without trial.

Hitler was not pleased by German losses in the Olympics. Go to "More Video" to see this movie clip of Hitler's reaction when American olympic great, Jesse Owens, won the 100-meter dash.

The German people were eager to embrace a strong party, as they were tired of political strife and economic chaos. Hitler became the Führer, or leader, of the German nation. And with the passage of the Enabling Act later that month, he became the judge, jury, and executioner of the Nazi police state.

After the election, the Nazification of Germany began. Gleichschaltung was the penetration of Nazi ideology into every level of German society and the creation of a new German political culture based on Nazi nationalistic symbols, anthems, flags, and ideas. One new law allowed Nazi governors to take control of state governments, thus centralizing political control of Germany's various regions. On July 14th, the government passed the "Law against the formation of New Parties," which decreed that only the Nazi Party could exist in Germany.

The Nazis' implementation of anti-Semitic codes began early. An April 7, 1933, law purged Jews and leftists from government, creating fear in the hearts of other civil servants. This atmosphere of fear would eventually trickle down to the populace at large and tear apart families and communities.

By appearing to be tolerant and peaceful to foreign journalists and spectators during the 1936 Olympics, Hitler was able to use the Berlin games to defray criticism of his regime. Here, tens of thousands of Germans salute their Führer during the opening ceremonies.

Children, indoctrinated through Hitler Youth programs that by 1934 totaled 1.25 million young Germans, were trained to turn in family members critical of the Nazi regime. German women had voted for Hitler, but though they increasingly worked in armaments factories to support the Nazi build-up. Their roles remained, as one Nazi official put it, to "produce babies and educate them according to Nazi party doctrine."

In June 1934 the German army openly declared its loyalty to Hitler, requiring him to choose between the army and nearly 2 million Brownshirts, the thugs and foot soldiers who had followed Hitler from the early 1920s. In what has been called "the night of the long knives," over 100 Brownshirt leaders were killed in a raid led by Hitler himself. But the purge went deeper. The Nazis used the occasion to take revenge on all former enemies. Nazi concentration camps, first announced in March 1933, expanded.

The autumn of 1938 saw several countries making claims to land in Czechoslovakia. Most notably, the Munich Agreement of 1938 gave Hitler's regime the Sudetenland (in the upper left-hand corner on this map) in exchange for a promise of non-violence in the future.

Hitler's suppression of civil rights became less of a concern to Germans as the Nazi economy recovered, helped immensely by Hitler's rapid remilitarization program. The military build-up violated the Versailles Treaty, but the other world powers merely watched with nervous eyes.

The relative calm was shattered in 1938 when Hitler began to pursue his primary objectives of expanding Germany's population and 'cleansing' it of Jewish people. In March, Hitler ordered the union with Austria (Anschluss), making Austria a province of Germany. In September, at the infamous Munich Conference, Hitler persuaded English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier Edouard Daladier to allow Germany to incorporate nearly 3 million Germans living in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, which France had pledged to protect.

The suppression of opposing viewpoints that Hitler felt threatened his regime was key to the success of the Third Reich. Here, Nazi officials burn books by Jewish and communist authors.

Nazis also turned their attention to Jews. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws had already stripped Jews of their citizenship and the right to marry non-Jews. Now direct attacks began. On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi thugs assaulted German Jews and their communities. The so-called Kristallnacht (the night of the Broken Glass) attack left 91 Jews dead and 200 synagogues in flames. The 'cleansing' of Germany had begun.

Hitler had probed Europe for resistance to his foreign policies of demographic and territorial expansion and to his domestic policies of persecution. The other great powers, remembering World War I and muddling through the Great Depression, refused to act. Finding no immediate, credible threat to stop him, he prepared for war.