text:
Consequences of Nazism

Nazism and the acts of Nazi Germany affected many countries, communities, and people before, during and after World War II. Nazi Germany's attempt to exterminate several groups viewed as subhuman by Nazi ideology was eventually stopped by the combined efforts of the wartime Allies headed by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

Jewish people

Of the world's 18 million Jews in 1939, more than a third were murdered in the Holocaust. Of the three million Jews in Poland, the heartland of European Jewish culture, fewer than 60,000 survived. Most of the remaining Jews in Eastern and Central Europe became refugees, unable or unwilling to return to countries that became Soviet puppet states or countries that had betrayed them to the Nazis.

Poland
The Nazis intended to destroy the Polish nation completely. In 1941, the Nazi leadership decided that Poland was to be fully cleared of ethnic Poles within 10 to 20 years and settled by German colonists to further their policy of Lebensraum. From the beginning of the occupation, Germany's policy was to plunder and exploit Polish territory, turning it into a giant concentration camp for Poles who were to be exterminated as "Untermenschen". The policy of plunder and exploitation inflicted material losses to Polish industry, agriculture, infrastructure and cultural landmarks, with the cost of the destruction by Germans alone estimated at €525 billion or $640 billion. Remaining Polish industry was mostly destroyed, or transported to Russia by Soviet forces after the war.

The official Polish government report of war losses prepared in 1947 reported 6,028,000 war victims out of a population of 27,007,000 ethnic Poles and Jews alone. For political reasons, the report excluded the losses to the Soviet Union and the losses among Polish citizens of Ukrainian and Belarusian origin.

Poland's eastern border was significantly moved westwards to the Curzon Line. The resulting territorial loss of 188,000 km2 (formerly populated by 5.3 million ethnic Poles ) was to be compensated by the addition of 111,000 km2 of former German territory east of the Oder–Neisse line (formerly populated by 11.4 million ethnic Germans ). Kidnapping of Polish children by Germany also took place, in which children who were believed to hold German blood were taken away; around 20,000 Polish children were taken away from their parents. Out of the abducted only 10–15% returned home. Polish elites were decimated and over half of the Polish intelligentsia were murdered. Some professions lost 20–50% of their members, for example 58% of Polish lawyers, 38% of medical doctors and 28% of university workers were exterminated by the Nazis. The Polish capital Warsaw was razed by German forces and most of its old and newly acquired cities lay in ruins (e.g. Wrocław) or lost to the Soviet Union (e.g. Lwów). In addition Poland became a Soviet satellite state, remaining under a Soviet-controlled communist government until 1989. Russian troops did not withdraw from Poland until 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Central Europe
As a consequence of the war and Soviet occupation, Central European countries found themselves under the "Soviet sphere of influence" (as agreed upon at the Yalta Conference). Immediately following the war, Soviet style socialist governments were established in all of these countries and any forms of western style democracy that existed before the war were abolished. As a result of the Warsaw Pact not participating in the Marshall Plan, as well as industrial infrastructure being taken by the Soviets, economic recovery was slowed significantly.

Soviet Union
About 26 million Soviet citizens perished as a result of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, including around 10,651,000 soldiers who died in battle against Hitler's armies or died in POW camps. According to Russian historian Vadim Erlikhman, Soviet losses amounted to 26.5 million war related deaths. Millions of civilians also died from starvation, exposure, atrocities, and massacres, and a huge area of the Soviet Union from the suburbs of Moscow and the Volga River to the western border had been destroyed, depopulated, and reduced to rubble. The mass death and destruction there badly damaged the Soviet economy, society, and national psyche. The death toll included c.a. 1.5 million Soviet Jews killed by the German invaders. The mass destruction and mass murder was one of the reasons why the Soviet Union installed satellite states in Central Europe; as the government hoped to use the countries as a buffer zone against any new invasions from the West. This helped break down the wartime alliance between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted until 1989, two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Soviet culture in the 1950s was defined by results of the Great Patriotic War.

Close to 60% of the European war dead were from the Soviet Union. Military losses of 10.6 million include 7.6 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million POW dead, plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. Civilian deaths totaled 15.9 million which included 1.5 million from military actions. 7.1 million victims of Nazi genocide and reprisals; 1.8 million deported to Germany for forced labor; and 5.5 million famine and disease deaths. Additional famine deaths which totaled 1 million during 1946–47 are not included here. These losses are for the entire territory of the USSR including territories annexed in 1939–40.

To the north, the Germans reached Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) in August 1941. The city was surrounded on 8 September, beginning a 900-day siege during which about 1.2 million citizens perished.

Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans, more than 3.5 million had died while in German captivity by the end of the war. On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference, the United States and United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the USSR. The interpretation of this Agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets regardless of their wishes. Millions of Soviet POWs and forced laborers transported to Germany are believed to have been treated as traitors, cowards and deserters on their return to the USSR (see Order No. 270). Statistical data from Soviet archives, that became available after Perestroika, attest that the overall increase of the Gulag population was minimal during 1945–46 and only 272,867 of repatriated Soviet POWs and civilians (out of 4,199,488) were imprisoned.

Belarus
Belarus lost a quarter of its pre-war population, including almost all of its intellectual elite, and 90% of its Jewish population. Following bloody encirclement battles, all of the territory of present-day Belarus was occupied by the Germans by the end of August 1941. The Nazis imposed a brutal regime, deporting some 380,000 young people for slave labour, and killing hundreds of thousands of other civilians. At least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed by the Nazis and either some or all of their inhabitants were killed (out of 9,200 settlements that were burned or otherwise destroyed in Belarus during World War II). More than 600 villages like Khatyn were burned along with their entire populations. More than 209 cities and towns (out of 270 total) were destroyed. Himmler had pronounced a plan according to which 3/4 of Belarusian population was designated for "eradication" and 1/4 of racially cleaner population (blue eyes, light hair) would be allowed to serve Germans as slaves (Ostarbeiter).

Some recent estimates raise the number of Belarusians who perished in War to "3 million 650 thousand people, unlike the former 2.2 million. In other words, not every fourth inhabitant but about 40% of the pre-war Belarusian population perished (considering the present-day borders of Belarus)." This compares to 15% of Poland's post war borders and 19% of Ukrainian population in post war border and comparing to 2% of Czechoslovakian population that perished in post war borders.

Ukraine
Estimates of population losses in Ukraine range from 7 million to 11 million. More than 700 cities and towns and 28,000 villages were destroyed.

Yugoslavia

It is estimated that 1,700,000 people were killed during World War II in Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1945. Very high losses were suffered by the Serbs who lived in Bosnia and Croatia, as well as by Jewish and Romani minorities, and losses were also high among all other non-collaborating populations. In the summer of 1941, the Serbian uprising occurred during the German invasion of the USSR. The Nazi response was the execution of 100 Serbian civilians for every German soldier who was killed and the execution of 50 Serbian civilians for every German soldier who was wounded. The Yugoslav Partisans waged a guerrilla campaign against the Axis occupiers and they also waged a civil war against the Chetniks. The Independent State of Croatia was established as a Nazi puppet-state, ruled by the fascist militia which was known as the Ustaše. During that time, the Independent State of Croatia constructed extermination camps for anti-fascists, communists, Serbs, Muslims, Romanies and Jews, one of the most infamous extermination camps was the Jasenovac concentration camp. A large number of men, women and children, mostly Serbs, were murdered in these camps.

Western Europe
Britain and France, two of the victors, were exhausted and bankrupted by the war, and Britain lost its superpower status. With Germany and Japan in ruins as well, the world was left with two dominant powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Economic and political reality in Western Europe would soon force the dismantling of the European colonial empires, especially in Africa and Asia.

One of the most important political consequences of the Nazi experience in Western Europe was the establishment of new political alliances which eventually became the European Union and an international military alliance of European countries known as NATO to counterbalance the Soviets' Warsaw Pact and until communist rule in Eastern Europe ended in the late 1980s.

The Communists emerged from the war sharing the vast prestige of the victorious Soviet armed forces, and for a while it looked as though they might take power in France, Italy and Greece. The West quickly acted to prevent this from happening, hence the Cold War.

Greece
In Greece, the German occupation (April 1941 – October 1944) destroyed the economy through war reparations, plundering of the country's resources and hyper-inflation. In addition, the Germans left most of the country's infrastructure in ruins as they withdrew in 1944. As a result of an Allied blockade and German indifference to local needs, the first winter of the occupation was marked by widespread famine in the main urban centres, with as many as 300,000 civilians dead from starvation. Although these levels of starvation were not repeated in the following years, malnourishment was common throughout the occupation. In addition, thousands more were executed by German forces as reprisals for partisan activities. As part of the Holocaust, Greece's Jewish community was almost wiped out, especially the large Sephardi community of Thessaloniki, which had earned the city the sobriquet "Mother of Israel" and had first settled there in the early 16th century at the invitation of the then-ruling Ottoman Empire. In total, at least 81% (ca. 60,000) of Greece's total pre-war Jewish population was murdered.

The bitterest and longest-lasting legacy of the German occupation was the social upheaval it wrought. The old political elites were sidelined, and the Resistance against the Axis brought to the fore the leftist National Liberation Front (EAM), arguably the country's first true mass-movement, where the Communists played a central role. In an effort to oppose its growing influence, the Germans encouraged the pre-war conservative establishment to confront it, and allowed the creation of armed units. As elsewhere in Eastern Europe, in the last year of the occupation, conditions in Greece often approximated a civil war between EAM and other powers. The rift would become permanent in December 1944, when EAM and the British-backed government clashed in Athens, and again in a fully fledged civil war from 1946 to 1949.

Germany
More than 8 million Germans, including almost 2 million civilians, died during World War II (see World War II casualties). After the end of the war in Europe additional casualties were incurred during the Allied occupation and also during the population expulsions that followed.

After the war, the German people were often viewed with contempt because they were blamed by other Europeans for Nazi crimes. Germans visiting abroad, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, attracted insults from locals, and from foreigners who may have lost their families or friends in the atrocities. Today in Europe and worldwide (particularly in countries that fought against the Axis), Germans may be scorned by elderly people who were alive to experience the atrocities committed by Nazi Germans during World War II. This resulted in a feeling of controversy for many Germans, causing numerous discussions and rows among scholars and politicians in Post-War West Germany (for example, the "Historikerstreit" [historians' argument] in the 1980s) and after Reunification. Here, the discussion was mainly about the role that the unified Germany should play in the world and in Europe. Bernard Schlink's novel The Reader concerns how post-war Germans dealt with the issue.

Following World War II, the Allies embarked on a program of denazification, but as the Cold War intensified these efforts were curtailed in the west.

Germany itself and the German economy were devastated, with great parts of most major cities destroyed by the bombings of the Allied forces, sovereignty taken away by the Allies and the territory filled with millions of refugees from the former eastern provinces which the Allies had decided were to be annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland, moving the eastern German border westwards to the Oder-Neisse line and effectively reducing Germany in size by roughly 25% (see also Potsdam Conference). The remaining parts of Germany were divided among the Allies and occupied by British (the north-west), French (the south-west), American (the south) and Soviet (the east) troops.

The expulsions of Germans from the lost areas in the east (see also Former eastern territories of Germany), the Sudetenland, and elsewhere in eastern Europe went on for several years. The number of Germans expelees totaled roughly 15,000,000. Estimates of number of deaths in connection with expulsion range from under 500,000 to 3 million.

After a short time, the Allies broke over ideological problems (Communism versus Capitalism), and thus both sides established their own spheres of influence, creating a previously non-existent division in Germany between East and West (although the division largely followed the borders of states which had existed in Germany before Bismarck's unification less than 100 years before).

A constitution for East Germany was drafted on 30 May 1949. Wilhelm Pieck, a leader of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) party (which was created by a forced merger of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the Soviet sector), was elected first President of the German Democratic Republic.

West Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), received de facto semi-sovereignty in 1949, as well as a constitution, called the Grundgesetz (Basic Law). The document was not called a Constitution officially, as at this point, it was still hoped that the two German states would be reunited in the near future.

The first free elections in West Germany were held in 1949, which were won by the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU, conservatives) by a slight margin. Konrad Adenauer, a member of the CDU, was the first Bundeskanzler (Chancellor) of West Germany.

Both German states introduced, in 1948, their own money, colloquially called West-Mark and Ost-Mark (Western Mark and Eastern Mark).

Foreign troops still remain in Germany today, for example Ramstein Air Base, but the majority of troops left following the end of the Cold War (By 1994 for Soviet troops, mandated under the terms of the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany and in the mid-1990s for Western forces). The Bush Administration in the United States in 2004 stated intentions to withdraw most of the remaining American troops out of Germany in the coming years. During the years 1950–2000 more than 10,000,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Germany.

The West German economy was by the mid-1950s rebuilt thanks to the abandonment in mid-1947 of some of the last vestiges of the Morgenthau Plan and to fewer war reparations imposed on West Germany (see also Wirtschaftswunder). After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Generals Clay and Marshall, the Truman administration realized that economic recovery in Europe could not go forward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it previously had been dependent. In July 1947, President Harry S. Truman rescinded on "national security grounds" the punitive JCS 1067, which had directed the U.S. forces of occupation in Germany to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany." It was replaced by JCS 1779, which instead stressed that "[a]n orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany."

The dismantling of factories in the western zones, for further transport to the Soviet Union as reparations, was in time halted as frictions grew between East and West. Limits were placed on permitted levels of German production in order to prevent resurgence of German militarism, part of which included severely restricting German steel production and affected the rest of the German economy very negatively (see "The industrial plans for Germany"). Dismantling of factories by France and Great Britain as reparations and for the purpose of lowering German war and economic potential under the "level of industry plans" took place (halted in 1951), but to nowhere near the scale of the dismantling and transport to the Soviet Union of factories in the eastern zone of occupation. The Eastern Bloc did not accept the Marshall Plan, denouncing it as American economic imperialism, and thus it (East Germany included) recovered much more slowly than their Western counterparts. German political and economic control of the Ruhr area was for a time under international control: the International Authority for the Ruhr (IAR) was created as part of the agreement negotiated at the London Six-Power Conference in June 1948 to establish the Federal Republic of Germany. In the end, German control of the Ruhr was restored, with the start of the Cold War and the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The ECSC led to the pooling of German coal and steel markets within a multinational community in 1951. The neighboring Saar area, containing much of Germany's remaining coal deposits, handed over by the U. S. to French economic administration as a protectorate in 1947 and did not politically return to Germany until January 1957, with economic reintegration occurring a few years later. Upper Silesia, Germany's second largest center of mining and industry, had been handed over to Poland at the Potsdam Conference.

The Allies confiscated intellectual property of great value, all German patents, both in Germany and abroad, and used them to strengthen their own industrial competitiveness by licensing them to Allied companies. Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years the U.S. pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. John Gimbel comes to the conclusion, in his book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion. During the more than two years that this policy was in place, no industrial research in Germany could take place, as any results would have been automatically available to overseas competitors who were encouraged by the occupation authorities to access all records and facilities. Meanwhile, thousands of the best German researchers were being put to work in the Soviet Union and in the U.S. (see also Operation Paperclip)

For several years following the surrender German nutritional levels were very low, resulting in very high mortality rates. Throughout all of 1945 the U.S. forces of occupation ensured that no international aid reached ethnic Germans. It was directed that all relief went to non-German displaced persons, liberated Allied POWs, and concentration camp inmates. During 1945 it was estimated that the average German civilian in the US and UK occupation zones received 1200 calories a day. Meanwhile, non-German displaced persons were receiving 2300 calories through emergency food imports and Red Cross help. In early October 1945 the UK government privately acknowledged in a cabinet meeting that German civilian adult death rates had risen to 4 times the pre-war levels and death rates amongst the German children had risen by 10 times the pre-war levels. The German Red Cross was dissolved, and the International Red Cross and the few other allowed international relief agencies were kept from helping Germans through strict controls on supplies and travel. The few agencies permitted to help Germans, such as the indigenous Caritasverband, were not allowed to use imported supplies. When the Vatican attempted to transmit food supplies from Chile to German infants the US State Department forbade it. The German food situation reached its worst during the very cold winter of 1946–1947 when German calorie intake ranged from 1,000 to 1,500 calories per day, a situation made worse by severe lack of fuel for heating. Meanwhile, the Allies were well fed, average adult calorie intake was; U.S. 3200–3300; UK 2900; U.S. Army 4000. German infant mortality rate was twice that of other nations in Western Europe until the close of 1948.

As agreed by the Allies at the Yalta conference Germans were used as forced labor as part of the reparations to be extracted to the countries ruined by Nazi aggression. By 1947 it is estimated that 4,000,000 Germans (both civilians and POWs) were being used as forced labor by the U.S., France, the UK and the Soviet Union. German prisoners were for example forced to clear minefields in France and the low countries. By December 1945 it was estimated by French authorities that 2,000 German prisoners were being killed or maimed each month in accidents. In Norway the last available casualty record, from 29 August 1945, shows that by that time a total of 275 German soldiers died while clearing mines, while 392 had been maimed. Death rates for the German civilians doing forced labor in the Soviet Union ranged between 19% and 39%, depending on category. (see also Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union).

Norman Naimark writes in The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949, that although the exact number of women and girls who were raped by members of the Red Army in the months preceding and years following the capitulation will never be known, their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, quite possibly as high as the 2,000,000 victims estimate made by Barbara Johr, in Befreier und Befreite. Many of these victims were raped repeatedly. Naimark states that not only had each victim to carry the trauma with her for the rest of her days, it inflicted a massive collective trauma on the East German nation (the German Democratic Republic). Naimark concludes "The social psychology of women and men in the soviet zone of occupation was marked by the crime of rape from the first days of occupation, through the founding of the GDR in the fall of 1949, until – one could argue – the present."

The post-war hostility shown to the German people is exemplified in the fate of the War children, sired by German soldiers with women from the local population in nations such as Norway where the children and their mothers after the war had to endure many years of abuse. In the case of Denmark the hostility felt towards all things German also showed itself in the treatment of German refugees during the years 1945 to 1949. During 1945 alone 7000 German children under the age of 5 died as a result of being denied sufficient food and denied medical attention by Danish doctors who were afraid that rendering aid to the children of the former enemy would be seen as an unpatriotic act. Many children died of easily treatable ailments. As a consequence "more German refugees died in Danish camps, "than Danes did during the entire war.""

During the Cold War, it was difficult for West Germans to visit East German relatives and friends and impossible vice versa. For East Germans, especially after the building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 and until Hungary opened up its border to the West in the late 1980s, thus allowing hundreds of thousands of vacationing East Germans to flee into Western Europe, it was only possible to get to West Germany by illegally fleeing across heavily fortified and guarded border areas.

44 years after the end of World War II, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989. The East and West parts of Germany were reunited on 3 October 1990.

Economic and social divisions between East and West Germany continue to play a major role in politics and society in Germany at present. It is likely the contrast between the generally well-off and economically diverse West and the weaker, heavy-industry reliant East will continue at least into the foreseeable future.

World politics
The war led to the discrediting and dissolution of the League of Nations and it also led to the founding of the United Nations (UN) on 24 October 1945. Like its predecessor, the UN was established in order to help prevent the outbreak of another world war and to contain or stop smaller conflicts. The principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations are a testament to the world's attitudes after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Geopolitically, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the two new dominant rivaling superpowers. Consequently, two political blocks arose, one around the US and another around the USSR. The rivalry resulted in the Cold War and led to several proxy conflicts. Briefly, before its final decline as a superpower, Great Britain also counted as a member of the "Big Three", a term used to refer to the world's major global powers (the US, USSR and Britain at the time).

International law
The effect the Nazis had on present-day international law was substantial. The United Nations Genocide Convention, a series of laws that made genocide a crime, was approved in December 1948, three years after the Nazi defeat. That same month, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also became a part of international law. The Nuremberg trials, followed by other Nazi war crimes trials, also created an unwritten rule stating that government officials who "follow orders" from leaders in committing crimes against humanity cannot use such a motive to excuse their crimes. It also had an effect through the Fourth Geneva Convention (Art 33) in making collective punishments a war crime.

Racism
After the world viewed the Nazi death camps, many Western people began to outwardly oppose ideas of racial superiority. Liberal anti-racism became a staple of many Western governments, with openly racist publications looked down upon. The move towards tolerance of different cultures in Western societies has continued to develop until the present day. Since the collapse of Nazi Germany, Western populations have been wary of racial political parties and they have actively discouraged white ethnocentrism, fearing the recurrence of a catastrophe which would be similar to the purges which were carried out in Germany by the Nazis. On the other hand, it can be argued that the conception of multiculturalism has gained importance as one of the pillars of contemporary Western society because of the same reaction. The actions of the Nazis caused an increase in anti-German sentiment.

Military
German military doctrine under the Nazi regime, characterized with some controversy as blitzkrieg, called for air strikes that softened an intended victim for attack by motorized, mechanized, and airborne forces on the schwerpunkt (focal point), followed by encirclement by motorized forces, and exploitation of the gap by conventional infantry forces. Radio communication allowed for the close coordination necessary for such attacks, and allowed for coordination of the air force. The Nazis as much broke the rules of engagement which previously governed nations at war (such violations often deemed after the war as crimes against peace) as they innovated techniques of war. Axis reverses beginning with Allied routs of overextended German forces in El Alamein and Stalingrad resulted from British and Soviet forces adopting Nazi field strategies, and as the United States became a participant in the war it adopted much the same techniques of aerial attack upon Nazi Germany, if with greater force than the Luftwaffe could ever inflict.

As Nazi Germany faced severe defeat after the Battle of Kursk and especially the cross-channel invasion it introduced cross-channel use of the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, although too late and too ineffectively to turn the war to its advantage. The German military machine was developing jet aircraft as fighters and bombers and long-range missiles, but far too late (they were only in the design and test stages) to change the outcome of the war. The victorious Allies would incorporate the early innovations of jet technology and long-distance rocket-based missiles into their armed forces, but only after the end of World War II after getting them beyond the developmental stages of design and testing.

title: Consequences of Nazism


text:
John Sanderson

Lieutenant General John Murray Sanderson, (born 4 November 1940) is a retired senior Australian Army officer and vice-regal representative. He served as Force Commander of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia from 1992 to 1993, Chief of Army from 1995 to 1998, and was the 29th Governor of Western Australia from 2000 to 2005.

Early life
Born in Geraldton, Western Australia on 4 November 1940, John Sanderson completed his secondary education at Bunbury High School in 1957 before entering the Royal Military College, Duntroon in 1958. He graduated in 1961 and was commissioned into the Royal Australian Engineers in December 1961.

Military career
After completing a Fellowship Diploma in civil engineering at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Sanderson had a series of regimental postings. These included second in command of the 10th Field Squadron and troop commander and construction officer of the 21st Construction Squadron on operational service in Sabah, Malaysia. He was promoted to captain in 1965.

Following eighteen months as a staff officer in the Office of the Engineer in Chief, he was posted as the exchange instructor at the Royal School of Military Engineering in Chattenden, United Kingdom from 1967 to 1969. He returned to Australia to command the 23rd Construction Squadron at Holsworthy Barracks, prior to taking up command of the 17th Construction Squadron in South Vietnam at the end of 1970.

Returning to Australia in late 1971, he was the senior instructor at the School of Military Engineering throughout 1972 before attending the Army Command and Staff College at Fort Queenscliff in 1973.

Sanderson was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1975 after serving for a short period as a Staff Officer at the Headquarters of Field Force Command. His initial appointment as Staff Officer Grade 1 at the Directorate of Engineers was followed by two years (1976–1978) as the Exchange Instructor at the British Army's Staff College, Camberley.

Sanderson commanded the 1st Field Engineer Regiment from 1979 to 1980, and then attended the Joint Services Command and Staff College in 1981. Sanderson was appointed as the military assistant to the Chief of the General Staff in late 1981, serving in that capacity until being promoted to colonel as director of army plans in 1983.

From June 1985 to the middle of 1986, he attended the U.S. Army War College, returning to Australia with the rank of brigadier. After a six-month period as chairman of the Army Reserve Review Committee, he assumed command of the 1st Brigade at Holsworthy.

Sanderson served as chief of staff, land command, for a brief period in 1989 and was then promoted to major general and appointed as assistant chief of defence policy. In this role he was tasked to develop and carry out major reforms to the Higher Australian Defence Force Staff, which resulted in him becoming the first assistant chief of defence force development at the end of 1989.

From October 1991, Sanderson became engaged directly in the United Nations process to bring peace to Cambodia, first as adviser to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and then from March 1992, in the rank of lieutenant general, as the commander of the 16,000-strong international military component of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

After the successful completion of the UN mission in October 1993, Sanderson returned to Australia to be appointed as the first commander, Joint Forces Australia, (now Chief of Joint Operations), and developed this role until becoming Chief of the General Staff in June 1995. This position was renamed to Chief of Army in 1997, and Sanderson continued in this position until his retirement from the army on 23 June 1998.

Governor of Western Australia
On 18 August 2000, Sanderson was sworn in as 29th governor of Western Australia.

Sanderson retired as Governor of Western Australia in June 2005 after his term of office expired, but agreed to stay on until 31 October 2005 to assist with the transition to the new governor. His successor, Ken Michael, was sworn in on 18 January 2006.

Publications

 * 1999 "Australia's role in Asia"
 * 1999 "International humanitarian law and the Balkans : the dilemma of a superpower"
 * 2005 "Ride the whirlpool : selected speeches of Lieutenant General John Sanderson AC Governor of Western Australia 2000–2005", University of Western Australia Press. (Table of Contents, Catalogue entries: NLA)
 * 2009 "The reconciliation journey"

Honours and awards

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: John Sanderson


text:
Talk:Ditransitive verb

Americanism in example?
The following sentence, would not be used in Australia.

"Let's catch us some fish"

Australians would say, "let's catch some fish", without using "us".

As written, the sentence is an Americanism.

 * Actually when I read that, I thought "Australian". :-/ Of course, I'm sure there are some American (and probably other) dialects that would use "Lets catch us some fish," but I think most Americans would just say "Lets catch some fish." —Tharenthel 14:37, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * It would be OK in my dialect of American, but marked as informal.
 * Anyway, we need to talk about ditransitive verbs in other languages too, not just English. I've run across some references in the CONLANG mailing list recently; I'll try to come up with something. --Jim Henry

 * Other languages are needed desperately indeed. And less bulleted lists. :) I'll try to do something about that too. BTW how's CONLANG these days? I haven't checked it in months... Spanish has the same thing very often; it looks just like a benefactive case meeting half-way with middle voice:

 * Nos comimos la torta. "We ate us the cake."
 * Me leí todo el libro. "I read me the whole book."

 * --Pablo D. Flores 01:57, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

 * CONLANG is not very busy now compared to what it has been at times. I've mostly been lurking.  Most of the recent threads have dealt with linguistic theory esp. re: case systems, including monotransitive/ditransitive alignment -- which is, I think, where I recently saw some references to papers about this.  That is, how do various languages align one of the arguments of a ditransitive verb with the patient argument of a monotransitive verb. --Jim Henry | Talk 15:21, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Multiple pronoun examples
The article has: ...ungrammatical when both objects are pronouns:
 * *He gave me it. (gave it to me)
 * *Jean introduced him her. (introduced her to him)

I find the first example totally acceptable, and the second jarring even without pronouns *Jean introduced Peter Susan. Is this just me? --Henrygb 00:22, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not a native speaker, so on the first example I might be just overreacting. :) I still think two pronouns in a row sound weird. On the second one, you're absolutely right. I get the impression, now, that many verbs have a preferred (or required) pattern. Maybe we should explain that idiomatic use is very common, and leave it at that. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 01:32, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

 * Both are unacceptable in my 'lect (urban Southern U.S.); we need to fix the article to say this usage varies from one dialect of English to another. --Jim Henry | Talk 15:06, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Pablo: your last revision looks good to me. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:03, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

 * The next step is internationalization. I'll see what I can contribute, tomorrow. It'd probably be better to move the English usage section to an independent article. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 02:46, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Universality of the notion
I do not think that the notion of ditransivity is universal, and that is why all the article is about English in fact (and IS Anglocentric). In many (most? nearly all?) languages, the passive transformation, if possible, can promote the direct object into subject but never the indirect object. So using the term "ditransitive" is neither correct or really in use.

For example, Jaśka dała mu książki (Jean-NOM gave him-DAT books-ACC) is the neutral Polish rendering for Jean gave the books to him. The sentence The books were given to him by Jean may be translated as Książki zostały mu dane przez Jaśkę (Books-NOM were him-DAT given by Jean) but a literal translation of He was given the books by Jean would be ungrammatical in Polish. So, I see virtually no reason to treat the Polish verb dać (or any other) as "ditransitive".

Which is more, in the Polish grammatical terminology, a verb is transitive when it can either govern an object in accusative and change it into genitive in the negative form, or it allows the passive transformation (in most cases both conditions are fullfilled). Especially, it means that any word cannot be transitive if we concern the object in dative.

I believe a similar attempt is used towards many other languages, including Latin or Greek.

I suggest to emphasize in the article that ditransivity is limited to a number of languages only, and especialy it is present in English.

--Grzegorj 10:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Are there verbs in Polish which require two object arguments, one accusative and one dative? That is, where leaving out one of those arguments would make the sentence ungrammatical, like:

 * *I gave him.

 * If so, I'd say it has ditransitive verbs. Passivization like in English is not a universal trait of ditransitives. --Jim Henry (talk) 22:58, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Just a quick question
Is both: considered ditranstive use of the verb "give"?
 * He gave Mary ten dollars. and
 * He gave ten dollars to Mary.

 * I think they're both ditransitive, since in both cases the verb has three arguments: subject and two kinds of object. --Jim Henry (talk) 22:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

And can you say that a word is transitive or intransive on it's own or just when it is used in actual sentence? -85.8.6.252 (talk) 23:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

 * In English a lot of verbs can be intransitive, transitive or ditransitive according to context, without special marking on the verb. Some other languages mark their verbs for valency, i.e. to make a transitive verb intransitive or vice versa you add a prefix or suffix or whatever; I'm not sure how/whether those languages treat ditransitive verbs differently from monotransitive verbs.  --Jim Henry (talk) 22:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Ditransitive/monotransitive alignment
We need examples of dechticaetiative or secondary languages. Esperanto is a split-P language, I think (some ditransitive verbs take their patient as direct object, like "doni", some as a prepositional indirect object, like "provizi" or "regali"), but ideally we want a natural language example of a split-P language too. --Jim Henry (talk) 22:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Are read and bake really ditransitive?
Are read and bake really ditransitive? Their prepositional forms have clear beneficiary adjuncts. I don't think there is any change in sense when they are written in the form without a preposition, so I wouldn't want to say they are semantically ditransitive. I don't know what that construction should be called, but I still think they're bad examples of ditransitive verbs. --Curiousdannii (talk) 11:48, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Other Kinds of Ditransitivity
Unless I misunderstand, this article seems to assume that the only ditransitive verbs are ones that can perform dative shift to be expressed with two bare NPs after the verb. But what about verbs such as:

-- Lomacar (talk) 08:04, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * 1) She put the keys in the drawer. (*She put the keys.)
 * 2) The lifeguard prevented the child from drowning. (*The lifeguard prevented the child.)
 * 3) Bob drove the truck to Arizona. (Both "the truck" and "to Arizona" are ommisable, but still)
 * 4) I bet Dave $50 that the Cubs would win (actually tritransitive)

 * You've doubtless heard of fake news. I put ditransitive verb into the fake linguistics bin. It's a naïve notion (coined as a term in 1963) that passes the structural linguistics test but contains a flaw in a more rigorous syntagmatic analysis. Specifically, the concept of a ditransitive verb assumes that a DV has two arguments rather than one. I'm not fond of that approach. E.g., I assert that "bet" entails only "Dave" in your "I bet Dave $50 that the Cubs would win" example. Traditional grammar would term "Dave" an indirect object, "$50" a direct object, and "that the Cubs would win" a relative clause. IMHO, those terms are just as naïve as ditransitive verb. In my lexicon, "Dave" is a dative object (i.e. a type of transitive object), "$50" is a dative object complement, and "that the Cubs would win" is an adjectival clause that characterizes the $50. They're not individualized arguments relating to bet; they're discrete sentence elements that so far haven't rated their own identifying names according to an axiomatic set theory.

 * My beef with various structural linguistic axioms is that they are paradigmatically incomplete, if not inconsistent. Sure, you can rationalize apart from the given sentence that (1) I bet Dave, (2) I bet $50, and (3) I bet that the Cubs would win, but - apart from Dave - that's not quite what the sentence itself says, syntactically speaking. I get a laugh out of linguistic theory that ignores the actual sequence of elements in the sentence. Like, the traditional grammar considers "your brother" to be a subject complement in "I am your brother." IMHO, it's ridiculous term "brother" in a way that syntactically ignores "am" as an intermediate element. In my lexicon, it's pretty straightforward: "I (subject) am (intransitive verb) your (determiner) brother (nominal stative complement). As of today, I'm quite alone (adjectival stative complement) in this view. We'll see what tomorrow brings. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 15:21, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Incomplete sentences
This article would be more helpful to me if it explained when a sentence is incomplete. I think there are other readers who would find this information useful as well. For example "you gave the impression that ...."

Is that sentence incomplete?

"You gave joe the impression that...." is clearly complete because it has both the direct object, "the impression" and the indirect object "joe". But what about the first example. Is that an incomplete sentence.

Well anyway it would be nice if this article explained when a sentence with a ditransitive lacking one of the objects is incomplete.

Thanks in advance if some expert in Grammer can explain this. It would be interesting to me and I believe other readers if the discussion included more than just English.

But please add the topic of incomplete sentences to this article. This would make it a lot better. 2601:204:F000:A00:D439:F121:9BE3:8FA9 (talk) 23:10, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ditransitive verb


text:
Talk:Kurt Schumacher

Untitled
Please keep your POV out of Public Articles. If you want to say that he had strait A's, that is fine with me, but calling someone brilliant is always POV. I do not want to resort to getting an admin to lock the page. Thank you. See http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Problem%20users#User:Adam_Carr for more information.

The phrase "brilliant student" is problematic in terms of its neutrality. I believe it expresses a judgment which is inevitably subjective. A neutral way to show that he was a brilliant student is to state what facts have led to that evaluation, e.g. instead of "He was a brilliant student", something like "He was first in his class" (or whatever). It's the same reason we don't need to write "Saddam Hussein is a bad, bad man" - in such cases, the facts speak for themselves. -- Cyan 03:20, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This debate shows an ignorance of historiographical issues among Wikipedia users. In a learned journal articles are expected to be the result of research in primary sources, and an author is required to reference and document every statement that might possible be constroversial. An encyclopaedia entry, on the other hand, is not a piece of primary research. It is an epitome, a summarisation of other people's writing. Each statement does not need to be documented. So when I say that Schimacher was a brilliant student, that does not mean that I have read his hochschule diploma. It means that I have read several biographical accounts and have summarised their accounts. This will be the case for virtually all historical writing at Wikipedia. Adam 04:51, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I would say that the debate shows an ignorance of accepted historiographical methodology (certainly I am ignorant of it). While I agree that the course you describe is sensible, and have little problem with the term "brilliant" on my own behalf, another user finds that the term is POV, and I believe he is technically correct: because it is your summary, it is subjective.

 * A simple rephrasing such as "As a student he excelled at x-y-z, but when the First World War broke out..." avoids the subjectivity problem by adding particulars, and thereby becoming closer to a claim of fact. If I say, "Khranus was a brilliant Wikipedia contributor", well, I'm entitled to my opinion, but if I say, "As a Wikipedia contributor Khranus excelled at factual accuracy and collegial attitude," my position is easily falsified.

 * I'd like this issue not to erupt into another hotspot between yourself and Alexandros, and since I perceive that he is technically correct, I am arguing his case (while hopefully still keeping my cool). Cheers, Cyan 00:52, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

"Top student" is a statement about his performance relative to other students, which is information I don't have. "Brilliant student" is a judgement made by the historians whose works I consulted, which I have repeated. I really don't see why this is worth such a fuss. Adam 05:32, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I agree and am changing it back. "Top student" indicates academic performance, while "brilliant student" does not necessarily indicate that he received high marks, just that in the judgment of someone he was, well, a brilliant student.  I do think it's important information, and I agree with your comment that "top student" doesn't convey the same information.  --Delirium 05:36, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)

I have deleted the reference to Schumacher's academic brilliance. This is a piece of information which the reader is now deprived of. The interests of readers, however, seem to take a low priority for many WP users (I was going to say "contributors" but I am not aware of any useful contribution some users have made). Defending the reference would entail another round of futile argument with Alexandros, which would serve no useful purpose since he is not open to persuasion on any point about which his mind is made up. This is a good example of one of WP's fundamental weaknesses: that the monomaniac, no matter how ignorant or even malicious, will usually win out eventually, because non-monomaniacs have better things to do than argue with them. Adam 01:05, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * 'Tweren't the resolution I was hoping for, but it is one way to defuse a situation, I suppose. Since that was one of my goals, I will chalk this up as a qualified failure. Your statement about monomaniacs is so eloquent I am going to post it on Why Wikipedia is not so great. -- Cyan 01:13, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * i like "He was considered a brilliant student, "  .  I think this works.  Alexandros 01:24, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * I will say he was a brilliant student because of your arguments;

Kurt Schumacher's Arm Injury Correction
Please see Gordon A. Craig's book, "The Germans", pg. 36. "During the 12 years of the Third Reich, he had sat almost uninterruptedly in concentration camps, as punishment for his biting anti-Nazi speeches that he had made as a member of the Reichstag in the years 1930-1933, and, when he was released he was a dying man, for a serious circulatory disease had gone unattended during his imprisonment." His arm was amputated in 1948 and the final four years of his life were rarely free of pain. Dpmurray (talk) 02:36, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Rote Kapelle
It is possible that he was in the Rote Kapelle.  scope_creep Talk  22:16, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

 * Not very likely. The Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) was the name the Nazis gave to a wide-ranging Soviet network in Western Europe whose origins went back to the mid-1930s, at a time when Schumacher was in a concentration camp. Moreover, as a concentration camp prisoners, Schumacher would not have been able to offer any information of any value to the GRU. And finally, Schumacher was a socialist of the Marxist type, albeit to achieving change via peaceful means within the democratic system, but he was also an anti-communist. The split that saw the extreme left-wing of the SPD led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg break away to form the KPD caused quite a lot of ill-feelings between the two groups that lasted for decades. All your source says that is that Oda Schottmüller, a member of the  Rote Kapelle was in a relationship with Kurt Schumacher. That is another guy. Schumacher is a common German surname and Kurt is likewise a common German boys name. The Kurt Schumacher referred to here was a sculptor who was executed by the German state in 1942, not the Social Democratic leader. The source says this Kurt Schumacher was born in 1905, which proves it is Kurt the Sculptor, not the Kurt the Social Democrat, that your source is talking about. I don't mean to sound rude, as I appreciate your good faith suggestion, but I believe you are are mistaken here --A.S. Brown (talk) 20:53, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:38, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
 * K.Schumacher.jpg

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 14:08, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * K.Schumacher.jpg

title: Talk:Kurt Schumacher


text:
Hill Valley (Back to the Future)

Hill Valley is a fictional town in California that serves as the setting of the Back to the Future trilogy and its animated spin-off series. In the trilogy, Hill Valley is seen in four different time periods – 1885, 1955, 1985, and 2015 – as well as in a dystopian alternate 1985. The films contain many sight gags, verbal innuendos and detailed set design elements, from which a detailed and consistent history of the area can be derived.

The city name "Hill Valley" is a joke, being an oxymoron. However, an early script for Back to the Future Part II mentioned that Hill Valley was named after its founder, William "Bill" Hill.

Production
For Back to the Future, the producers considered filming the town square scenes in the real city of Petaluma, California, but soon realized it would be prohibitively expensive and impractical to alter a real place to suit the different eras. Instead, filming was completed on the Universal Studios backlot, where they had more control. The town square set was called Mockingbird Square after the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, but was later known as Courthouse Square. It had been used for many films and television shows dating back to 1948's An Act of Murder, including the first 1959 episode of the sci-fi series The Twilight Zone, called "Where Is Everybody?"

The Hill Valley courthouse can be seen in the movies Bruce Almighty, Gremlins, Bye Bye Birdie, Sneakers, The Offspring's music video "Why Don't You Get a Job?", an episode of Major Dad entitled "Who's That Blonde", and an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The clock tower was a removable addition, one of many ways in which the Courthouse building has been redressed over the years to suit the needs of a production.

Many of the cars that appear in the 2015 scenes are either modified for the film or concept cars. Examples include Ford Probe, Saab EV-1, Citroën DS 21, Pontiac Banshee Concept, Pontiac Fiero and Volkswagen Beetle. Cars reused from other science fiction films include the "Star Car" from The Last Starfighter (1984) and a "Spinner" from Blade Runner (1982). Griff's car is a modified BMW 633, which was never sold in the convertible form seen in the film.

For Back to the Future Part III, Hill Valley 1885 was filmed in Sonora, California. The producers were able to use the land rent-free under an agreement to leave the set buildings on site. All buildings except the clock tower were left intact after production completed.

On November 6, 1990, an arson fire on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot destroyed much of Courthouse Square, the setting in which all the other time periods were filmed. The Courthouse survived the devastation and other facades were reconstructed. Another fire on September 6, 1997 damaged Courthouse Square. The backlot facades were rebuilt, with the exception of the facades used for Hill Valley 1885.

On February 14, 1999, a fire at Whittier High School, California, where some, mostly exterior scenes were filmed, destroyed the men's gym there. On June 1, 2008, another fire destroyed part of the rebuilt Courthouse Square backlot and damaged the clock tower.

Real-life locations
Other real-life shooting locations of Hill Valley landmarks include:
 * Doc's house in 1955 is the Gamble House in Pasadena, California. Doc's garage in 1985 was a façade set up next to a Burger King on North Victory Boulevard in Burbank, California.
 * Twin Pines/Lone Pine Mall is actually the Puente Hills Mall in Industry, California.
 * Marty's Lyon Estates house in 1985 is actually at 9303 Roslyndale Avenue, Pacoima, California.
 * The 1955 Lyon Estates field is actually along farmland between the city borders of Chino, California and Corona, California.
 * Peabody's Twin Pines Ranch is really at Golden Oak Ranch, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company and used in many Disney productions.
 * The houses of George McFly, Lorraine Baines, and Biff Tannen in 1955 are all in South Pasadena, California.
 * The train that hit the DeLorean and the Futuristic Train were parked in Port Hueneme, California.
 * John F. Kennedy Drive is actually Victory Boulevard in Burbank, California.
 * The River Road Tunnel is actually Observatory Tunnel at Griffith Park in Los Angeles. The actual tunnel is only a fraction of the length of the one depicted in Part II.
 * The Pohatchee Drive-In Theater where Marty initially travels from 1955 back to 1885 was not a real theater. It was constructed full-scale for the third film in Monument Valley, Utah (near the Arizona/Utah border) and was torn down after that portion of filming was completed.
 * Marty's race with Needles was shot on Doris Avenue in Oxnard, California.
 * Hilldale in 1985 was filmed at Doris Avenue and Oxford Drive in Oxnard, California.
 * Hilldale in 2015 was filmed at Oakhurst Street and Somerset Avenue in El Monte, California.
 * Hill Valley High School was filmed at Whittier High School in Whittier, California.

Location
According to an 1885 Central Pacific Railroad map in Back to the Future Part III, Hill Valley is located in Northern California in the Sierra Nevada. Dialogue in Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III places it in "Hill County", a fictional county in California.

Fictional history
The following information is taken directly from places and events shown or mentioned in the three films:

Early settlement
The town of Hill Valley was first settled in 1850 and incorporated in 1865. By the 1880s, it was connected by railroad to San Francisco. Construction of a new county courthouse was well underway in 1885, the setting of Back to the Future Part III, in which a new clock was dedicated for the building. The Shonash Ravine Bridge was completed in the summer of 1886, around the same time the ravine was renamed Clayton Ravine in memory of Clara Clayton, a school teacher who died from falling into the chasm. In a revised timeline where Doc Brown saved Clara's life, the town renamed it Eastwood Ravine after Marty McFly's persona when it is believed that "Clint Eastwood" fell into the ravine.

Town square
By 1955, as seen in the first two Back to the Future films, the area around the courthouse has developed into the downtown of Hill Valley. In front of the courthouse is a grass-covered town square, with stores, two movie theaters, Essex and Town, and cafés on the surrounding streets. Downtown also features a Texaco station, a Bank of America branch, and a Studebaker dealership. A key moment in the town's fictional history takes place on Saturday, November 12, 1955, at 10:04 p.m. PST, when lightning strikes the courthouse's clock tower, freezing the clock at 10:04. The clock is never repaired and becomes a local landmark, left in its non-functional state at the behest of the Hill Valley Preservation Society. In the revised timeline, the broken piece of ledge from Doc Brown's successful attempt to channel lightning from the clock tower is likewise never repaired, as can be seen when Marty returns to 1985 and in 2015, but not in the alternate 1985.

In Marty's original timeline, many of the town square businesses have moved or closed down by 1985. The new businesses which replaced them include a second-hand shop, a yoga studio, and an adult book store, and the Studebaker dealership becomes a Toyota dealership, but is still owned by the Statlers, though the Texaco station and Bank of America branch remained. The Essex movie theater now shows porno movies while the Town Theater is used for church services, and the courthouse is in a state of disrepair, and at night at least one homeless person (called "Red" by Marty) sleeps on the town square park benches.

The grassy park outside of the courthouse has been converted into a parking lot. "That was always one of the major elements of the story even in its earliest incarnation," screenwriter Bob Gale says in The Making of Back to the Future, "was to take a place and show what happens to it over a period of thirty years. What happened to everybody's home town is obviously the same thing. They built the mall out in the boonies, and killed all the business downtown, and everything changed."

By the 21st century, the downtown area has experienced a revival. The courthouse has been converted into the Courthouse Mall. Businesses have begun to move back into and around the town square and the parking lot has been replaced by a pond. The clock on top of the courthouse is still preserved at 10:04 and the mall's logo is an illustration of a lightning bolt striking the clock tower. The Town Theater/Assembly of Christ building has been converted to an art museum with a mural painted on the front side of the building above the marquee. The Texaco station remains, while the Toyota dealership is now a Pontiac dealership, though in reality General Motors discontinued the Pontiac brand in 2010 as part of its bankruptcy.

Signs that say "Welcome to Hill Valley" are seen in 1955, 1985 and 2015. Both 1955 and 2015 signs have symbols representing the Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions clubs. The 1955 sign has the logos of the YMCA, Jaycees, and Future Farmers of America while the 2015 sign has those of the Neighborhood Crime Watch eye logo and the 4-H Club clover logo. The "Welcome to Hill Valley" sign in 1985 does not contain any signage representing any clubs and mentions the name of Mayor Goldie Wilson.

In the alternate 1985, Marty is seen walking over the sign, which has been knocked down and an 'E' has been spray painted over the 'I' in HILL VALLEY making the name HELL VALLEY. This sign does not display the name of the mayor but instead the words "A Nice Place to Live" as seen in 1955. A sign referencing US Highway 395 is shown next to the Town Square in 1955.

Twin Pines Mall / Lone Pine Mall
Twin Pines Mall is a shopping center located outside Hill Valley, where Doctor Emmett Brown first tests his time machine, making his dog Einstein the first time traveler in the world. The site where the mall was filmed for the movie is actually Puente Hills Mall, located in City of Industry, California. The J.C. Penney location seen in the movie has been shut down and is now occupied by a 24 Hour Fitness center. The mall's name changed to Lone Pine Mall after Marty went back to 1985, because he accidentally destroyed one of the two baby pine trees for which it was named, as he fled an irate Old Man Peabody, whose barn the DeLorean crashed into upon arriving in 1955.

Alternate history
In Back to the Future Part II, a nightmarish alternate version of Hill Valley, dubbed 1985A by Doc, is depicted with a partial history. Due to the influence of the powerful and corrupt Biff Tannen, gambling was legalized in 1979. Tannen's toxic waste reclamation plants were built downtown, polluting the air and leading to pollution alerts to be issued. All of the local businesses in the downtown area closed or relocated and were replaced with strip clubs, porn theaters, and brothels. Tannen bought off the police. Consequently, crime increased and biker gangs settled in the city. Hill Valley's public schools burned down and the courthouse was converted into Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise Casino and Hotel.

The clock on the courthouse remains at 10:04, although despite the damage the Doc did to the tower's platform in 1955, for whatever reason, it now seems to have disappeared. Biff murdered George McFly, Marty's dad, on March 15, 1973, so that he could marry George's wife Lorraine, Marty's mom, making him a corrupt family man as well as town ruler. He helped Richard Nixon remain President of the United States until at least 1985. Biff's effect on history affected the whole world – in this version of history, the Vietnam War was still ongoing by May 1983.

According to the original script for Back to the Future Part II a partial view of the alternate 2015 was also to be depicted. By this time Biff now owns half the state of California with his influence having gained his son, Biff Jr., the seat of governor and they uphold their power and corruption with an army of large, powerful cyborg police officers, which now has its 5 star resort in what would have been the courthouse mall in 2015.

Back to the Future: The Game alternate history
Another timeline, branching off the events of Back to the Future: The Game, sees Irving "Kid" Tannen, the father of Biff Tannen and a prohibitionism era mafioso, avoid his lengthy incarceration for illegal consumption and sale of alcohol. In the alternate 1986 Biff Tannen has two brothers, and the Tannen family is a recognized crime family, ruling over Hill Valley with an iron grip.

In yet another alternate history, branching off the events of Back to the Future: The Game, in 1931 a teen Emmett Brown, fell in love with the young journalist Edna Strickland: as a result she married Emmett, convincing him to pursue sociological and political goals. She managed to win him over by keeping him interested in science, but in a manner that his scientific skills could be used to control people instead of using science to understand mysteries and for the betterment of humanity. Under "Citizen Brown"'s influence, by 1985 Hill Valley is a technological dystopia, where Emmett Brown oversees a fascist regime, controlling every single activity of his citizens, routinely brainwashed and spied over.

In this new Hill Valley, in a reversal of their usual roles, Marty McFly is a square, serious and devoted to Emmett Brown to a fault, as the "original" McFly is dismayed to discover, and Jennifer is a rebellious rocker, a wild child with an unpredictable streak. Lorraine is again a mildly obese, inebriated sad woman. George has reverted to be the loser he is in the first, original timeline, although his oppressor is big government instead of Biff. George reprises his "peeping Tom" activities as seen in Back to the Future, under the guise of monitoring security camera footage for Citizen Brown.

Biff Tannen is now one part of the Citizen Plus program, brainwashed into obedience. Hill Valley is a technologically advanced marvel, owned by a now rich and powerful Emmett Brown, with even the iconic Town Hall replaced by a huge pane with the E. Brown Industries symbol. Since in this timeline Emmett Brown never developed time-travel technology, the events of the original series never took place, and the Eastwood Ravine is still known as the Clayton Ravine, as no one saved Clara from her death.

The last attempt to fix the damages involved with the events of Back to the Future: The Game ends with even a more radical change. Edna Strickland travels under an assumed name to 1876 to act as a moral guide of the newly founded Hill Valley. After a failed confrontation with Beauregard Tannen, a Confederate soldier who built and founded the Palace Saloon, she accidentally causes a conflagration that consumes Hill Valley, turning it into a ghost town with herself as the only resident.

Again, Marty and Doc manage to restore the continuity, that now sports minor alterations: Arthur and Silvia, Marty's grandparents, prepone their marriage to 1931. It was 1936 in the original timeline. Doc Brown spends more time in 1986 and less traveling through time. Kid Tannen is now reformed, married to Edna Strickland and having a better influence over Biff.

Places
Many family businesses are passed down from generation to generation in Hill Valley. As a result, the city changes but remains similar from one generation to the next, as businesses are updated but rarely change. These recurring elements were a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers. The production designer of Back to the Future Part II, Rick Carter, is quoted in a DVD extra as saying, "The future is built on the present." Director Robert Zemeckis adds that the continuity between the different eras in Hill Valley's history is an example of the adage, "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

The following is a list of such places. When a place is not seen or mentioned in a movie, it is marked unknown. Some buildings shown in 1885 scenes are actually located further down the street in an area not shown in the first two movies.

Reception
Back to the Future has been criticized for presenting an idealized 1950s setting almost entirely populated by White people, and contrasting this with a more troubled 1985 town run by a Black mayor. In Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film, Adilifu Nama writes, "The film performs robust semiotic work around race by symbolically associating the degraded cityscape of Hill Valley with inept black leadership. Marty's personal family crisis, marked by a socially impotent father and an alcoholic mother, is mirrored in the condition of Hill Valley. Boarded-up businesses, schoolyard graffiti, and an adult-video bookstore placed in the center of town indicate that the Hill Valley of 1985 is suffering from severe economic and moral decline. Alongside these visual signifiers of socioeconomic crisis are posters of the Black mayor, Goldie Wilson, scattered throughout downtown Hill Valley."

title: Hill Valley (Back to the Future)


text:
Kurt Eisner

Kurt Eisner (14 May 1867 – 21 February 1919) was a German politician, revolutionary, journalist, and theatre critic. As a socialist journalist, he organized the socialist revolution that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria in November 1918, which led to him being described as "the symbol of the Bavarian revolution". He is used as an example of charismatic authority by Max Weber. Eisner subsequently proclaimed the People's State of Bavaria but was assassinated by far-right German nationalist Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley in Munich on 21 February 1919.

Life and career
Kurt Eisner was born in Berlin on 14 May 1867, to Emanuel Eisner and Hedwig Levenstein, both Jewish. Newspaper reports of his death identify him as being born in the Kingdom of Galicia. From 1892 to 1917 he was married to painter Elisabeth Hendrich with whom he had five children. After they divorced Eisner married Elise Belli, an editor. With her, he had two daughters.

Eisner studied philosophy, but then became a journalist in Marburg. From 1890 to 1895, he was contributing editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, during which time he wrote an article attacking Kaiser Wilhelm II, and for which he spent nine months in prison. Eisner was always an open republican as well as a Social-Democrat, joining the SPD in 1898, although for tactical reasons, German Social-Democracy, particularly in its later stages, rather cold-shouldered anything in the shape of republican propaganda as unnecessary and included in general Social-Democratic aims. Consequently, he fought actively for political democracy as well as Social-Democracy. He became editor of Vorwärts after the death of Wilhelm Liebknecht in 1900, but in 1905 was called upon to resign by a majority of the editorial board, which favored more orthodox Marxists. After that, his activities were confined in the main to Bavaria, though he toured other parts of Germany. He was chief editor of the Fränkische Tagespost in Nuremberg from 1907 to 1910, and afterward became a freelance journalist in Munich.

Eisner joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1917, at the height of World War I, and was convicted of treason in 1918 for his role in inciting a strike of munitions workers. He spent nine months in Cell 70 of Stadelheim Prison, but was released during the General Amnesty in October of that year.

After his release from prison, Eisner organized the revolution that overthrew the monarchy in Bavaria (see German Revolution). He declared Bavaria to be a free state and republic, the People's State of Bavaria, on 8 November 1918, becoming the first republican premier of Bavaria. On 23 November 1918, he leaked documents from the Bavarian plenipotentiary in Berlin during July and August 1914 that he thought proved that the war was caused by "a small horde of mad Prussian military" men as well as "allied" industrialists, capitalists, politicians, and princes. At the Berne Conference of Socialists held in Bern, Switzerland, he attacked moderate German socialists for their refusal to acknowledge Germany's part in bringing about World War I. For that speech, and for his uncompromising hostility to Prussia, he became bitterly hated by large sections of the German people.

Death and legacy
Eisner was assassinated in Munich when German nationalist Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley shot him in the back on 21 February 1919. At the time, Eisner had been on his way to present his resignation to the Bavarian parliament. His assassination resulted in the elected government of the People's State of Bavaria fleeing Munich and the establishment of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic and parliament.

Arco-Valley was tried for murder in January 1920. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment. The State Prosecutor said of him, "If the whole German youth were imbued with such a glowing enthusiasm we could face the future with confidence." He served his sentence at Landsberg Prison in cell 70, and in 1924 he was evicted from his cell to make way for Adolf Hitler. He was released in 1925, and was on probation until 1927, when he was pardoned. In June 1945, Arco-Valley was killed in a traffic accident in Salzburg, after the horse-drawn carriage which he was riding in collided with a U.S. Army vehicle.

Eisner had a very large funeral with thousands of attendants coming to mourn his death. One guest who was there was Adolf Hitler. One thing of note is that in surviving footage of Eisner's funeral, Hitler can be seen wearing a black armband to symbolize the mourning of Eisner, as well as a red armband which represented support for the socialist revolution in Munich.

When the Passau labor union tried to stage a play about Eisner at the bishopric theater in 1920, Reichswehr soldiers and high school students sabotaged it, using weapons from the military arsenal. Among other things, 11 machine guns were used. The incident, dubbed the Passau Theater Scandal, triggered media headlines and a variety of judicial procedures.

Eisner was buried in the Munich Ostfriedhof. On 1 May 1922 the Free Trades Unions of Munich (Münchner Freien Gewerkschaften) commissioned a monument dedicated to "the Dead of the Revolution". The urn containing Eisner's ashes was walled into its pedestal. Shortly after the National Socialists took power the Monument to the Revolution was destroyed: it was demolished on 22 June 1933, and the urn with Eisner's ashes was moved to the New Jewish Cemetery, where it is still buried. The monument in the Ostfriedhof was re-created after World War II by the artist Konstantin Frick as a faithful copy of the original.

In 1989, a monument was installed in the pavement at the site of Eisner's assassination. It reads, ''Kurt Eisner, der am 9. November 1918 die Bayerische Republik ausrief, nachmaliger Ministerpräsident des Volksstaates Bayern, wurde an dieser Stelle am 21. Februar 1919 ermordet'' ("Kurt Eisner, who proclaimed the Bavarian republic on 8 November 1918 – later Prime Minister of the Republic of Bavaria – was murdered here on 21 February 1919").

Works
Eisner was the author of various books and pamphlets, including:
 * Psychopathia Spiritualis (1892, "Spiritual Psychopathy")
 * Eine Junkerrevolte (1899, "A Junker revolt")
 * Wilhelm Liebknecht (1900)
 * Feste der Festlosen (1903, "Fortress of those without feasts")
 * Die Neue Zeit (1919, "The New Age")

title: Kurt Eisner


text:
Gauleiter

A Gauleiter was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a Gau or Reichsgau. Gauleiter was the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, subordinate only to Reichsleiter and to the Führer himself. The position was effectively abolished with the fall of the Nazi regime on 8 May 1945.

Origin and early years

The first use of the term Gauleiter by the Nazi Party was in 1925 around the time Adolf Hitler re-founded the Party on 27 February, after the lifting of the ban that had been imposed on it in the aftermath of the Beer Hall Putsch of 9 November 1923. The word can be singular or plural in German usage, depending on its context, and derives from the German words Gau and leiter (leader). The word Gau is an old term for a region of the German Reich (Empire). The Frankish Realm and the Holy Roman Empire were both subdivided into Gaue (the plural form of Gau) which corresponds roughly with the English word "shire." It is still in use today as a generic component in the names of some regions mainly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium. (see: Gau Legacy). In its formative years, local political activists organized the Party at the municipal level in their home areas. In effect, they were self-selected or had won out in local struggles for control. Though they were required to be approved by Hitler, this was usually a formality in these early years when he was still banned from speaking throughout most of Germany and had to rely on these home-grown leaders to organize the Party at the grass roots. In fact, it was not uncommon for local branch leaders to be selected by the Party members themselves. This was not officially prohibited by Hitler until 1929. By creating the position of Gauleiter, Hitler provided a means for him to exert more direct control over the local Party organizations. The Gauleiter was placed in charge of a specified geographical jurisdiction consisting of several Ortsgruppe (Local Groups).

The Gaue did not necessarily mirror the existing administrative or electoral divisions within the Weimar Republic. In these early years (1925-1927) it was not unusual for the local and regional organizations to be divided, dissolved, merged and renamed as the Party struggled to develop an improved organizational structure.

The number of Gaue fluctuated over the years. In 1928 there were 35 and by the end of the Nazi regime there were 43, including the non-territorial Gau Auslands-Organisation that represented Germans abroad.

The Gauleiters were appointed by Hitler (though in the earliest years Gregor Strasser had provisionally selected some in Northern Germany who still had to be confirmed in their position by Hitler). They were personally responsible to Hitler, served at his pleasure and were subject to immediate dismissal, but otherwise could not be removed without his consent. They were his personal representatives to the Gau and were, in effect, his viceroys in Party matters.

The Organization Book of the NSDAP described the Gauleiter’s relationship to Hitler in this manner:

"The Gauleiter is directly subordinate to the Führer. He is appointed by the Führer. The Gauleiter bears overall responsibility to the Führer for the sector of sovereignty entrusted to him. The rights, duties, and jurisdiction of the Gauleiter result primarily from the mission assigned by the Führer and, apart from that, from detailed directives."

Gauleiters were the regional heads of the Nazi Party's Political Organization and headed the Gauleitung (Gau Leadership) office. The responsibility and function of the Gauleiter was to ensure the authority of the Nazi Party within his area, to coordinate the activities of the Party and all its affiliated organizations, and to enlarge the influence of the Party over people and life in his Gau. However, Gauleiters did not have direct supervisory control over the Gau paramilitary personnel, such as the Sturmabteilung (SA) or the Schutzstaffel (SS). In addition, subordinate Gau officials such as the Propaganda Leader, the Agricultural Expert and others owed a dual allegiance to the Gauleiter in their particular geographic area and to the head of the affiliate organization for their specific policy area at the national level. This made the Gauleiter’s  coordination and control of all Party activities difficult and, at times, conflictive.

The authority of the Gauleiter extended down through the Party organization to all members through a strict vertical chain of command. The Gauleiter had direct authority over the Kreisleiters (County Leaders) who administered some 650 Kreise in Germany proper (913 at the height of expansion after 1941) and were established as an intermediary level between the Gauleiter and the local leaders in early 1929. These Kreisleiters in turn directed the Ortsgruppenleiters who oversaw towns or villages or part of a larger city, usually 1500 to 3000 households. Ortsgruppenleiters directed Zellenleiters (Cell Leaders) responsible for 160 to 480 households. Zellenleiters supervised the lowest local leaders, Blockleiters (Block Leaders) each of whom had charge of 40 to 60 households.

As the Party evolved its goal from revolutionary overthrow of the Weimar Republic to obtaining power through constitutional means, tactics for obtaining electoral success became paramount. In 1928, in preparation for more effectively contesting the upcoming Reichstag election, a major reorganization took place and most Gaue boundaries were adjusted to correspond with the existing Reichstag electoral constituencies, though a handful continued to be idiosyncratic. The role of the Gauleiters also evolved to become more administrative, involved in propaganda, organization and electioneering. Success was measured in terms of increased Party membership and voter turnout.

At the local level, Gauleiters often were elected as city councilors, as mayors and as deputies to the Landtags of the German States (Länder) where they headed the Nazi Party parliamentary faction. The first State to install its Gauleiter as Minister-president was Oldenburg on 16 June 1932, followed by Thuringia on 26 August 1932. Once in office, they proceeded to politicize all aspects of life within their control, and staffed civil service positions solely with candidates previously screened and approved by Party functionaries.

In July 1932, Strasser, now the Party Reichsorganisationsleiter (National Organization Leader) attempted to impose an additional centralized control over the Gauleiters. Therefore, they were subordinated to ten new officials with the title of Landesinspektor, mainly drawn from among the Gauleiter corps, each in charge of several Gaue within a larger geographic area. This intermediate level of bureaucracy limited Gauleiters' access to Hitler and they chafed under this new arrangement, which they saw as an attempt by Strasser to undermine their special relationship with Hitler.

This reorganization was short-lived and was repealed on 15 December 1932, after Strasser's resignation in a policy dispute with Hitler over whether to join in a national coalition government as a junior partner or to hold out for the Chancellorship. Hitler then reemphasized the special relationship between himself and the Gauleiters and they resumed their direct access to him.

After the Nazi seizure of power

On 30 January 1933, the Nazi Party took power and established the state of Nazi Germany. At the national government level, Hitler selected two Gauleiters to also become Reichsministers of two of the new ministries that he established: the Reich Ministry of Propaganda in March 1933 and the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture in May 1934.

As for regional governments, the Gauleiters quickly became the key agents in extending Nazi control over the German States (Länder) and Prussian provincial governments. Gauleiters soon obtained unquestioned authority in their jurisdiction. Party control over the civil administration became institutionalized when in most (but not all) cases the Gauleiter was appointed to the supreme civil administrative post in his area. Under the "Second Law on the Coordination of the States with the Reich" of 7 April 1933, the new position of Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) was created. Given broad powers, this official was charged with ensuring State compliance with the policies of the Reich central government, and was described by Hitler as a "viceroy of the Reich." Hitler staffed these posts almost exclusively with Gauleiters. Similarly, in the Prussian provinces, the Oberpräsident (High President) positions also were largely taken over by Gauleiters. Most Gauleiters thus united under their control the highest Party and governmental offices in their jurisdictions. However, since all Party Gau boundaries and State/provincial boundaries still did not necessarily coincide, this arrangement sometimes led to overlapping jurisdictions and added to the administrative conflict typical of Nazi Germany.

On 2 June 1933 Hitler created the new political rank of Reichsleiter (Reich Leader) in the Nazi Party and conferred it on 16 individuals with areas of broad national policy responsibility (e.g., propaganda, agriculture, the press, youth education). Gauleiter then became the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, just below Reichsleiter. Importantly, however, the Reichsleiters were not given direct line authority over the Gauleiters who continued to have direct access to Hitler and remained his personal agents in the Gaue. After the Anschluss with Austria (12 March 1938) and the seizure of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia (30 September 1938) the newly annexed territories were eventually organized into eight Reichsgaue and placed under the administration of Reichsstatthalters, all of whom were also the local Gauleiters. As in Germany proper, they controlled, in personal union, Party and State leadership. Several former leaders of the previously outlawed Austrian and Czechoslovak Nazi parties, in recognition of their past services, were accorded the title of Gauleiter ehrenhalber (honorary Gauleiter), which carried no Gaue assignments or responsibilities.

The Gauleiters were responsible for executing all the Party's policies, including its racial discrimination and persecution policies against the Jewish populace. One of the most infamous pogroms of the Nazi era, the Kristallnacht of 9–10 November 1938, had its origin at a meeting of the Nazi Party hierarchy in Munich commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. During the meeting, in response to the news of the assassination by a Jew of a German diplomat in Paris, Joseph Goebbels gave such an inflammatory address against the Jews that it sent the assembled Gauleiters rushing to the telephones to order punitive riots in their Gaue. On their orders, their local Political Organizations, together with SA members, unleashed an orgy of violence, arson, looting and destruction, resulting in deaths, injuries and massive property loss among Germany's Jewish population.

World War II

On the launching of World War II in Europe on 1 September 1939, fifteen Gauleiters were appointed Reich Defense Commissioners (Reichsverteidigungskommissar) one in each military district (Wehrkreis) of Germany and Austria. They were charged with organizing civil defense and mobilization activities, including air defense and evacuation. They also oversaw wartime rationing measures and efforts to control the black market. Again, due to the additional overlapping and incongruent territorial jurisdictions, this contributed to ongoing jurisdictional squabbles.

After the conquest and annexation of Polish territory in October 1939, the newly added areas were organized into two new Reichsgaue and subjected to rule by Reichsstatthalters who were also Nazi Party Gauleiters. Here they were placed in charge of a ruthless policy of Germanization and genocide.

In 1940-1941 as additional military conquests occurred, four Gauleiters were selected to concurrently administer other occupied lands not directly annexed to the Reich. Granted the title of Reichskommissar, they ruled vast swaths of territory encompassing Norway, Belgium & Northern France, Ukraine and ”Ostland”. Another six Gauleiters were named Chief of Civil Administration of areas adjacent to their Gaue in Alsace, Lorraine, Luxembourg, Lower Styria, Upper Carniola and Bezirk Bialystok.

On 16 November 1942, the jurisdiction of the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis to the Gau level, and all 42 territorial Gauleiters were appointed as Reich Defense Commissioners in their jurisdictions. They were charged with maximizing the mobilization of all internal manpower resources by registering men and women between the ages of sixteen and sixty for war-related work assignments. They were even put in charge of the construction of defensive fortifications with the use of forced labor and the civilian population. This led to further jurisdictional conflict between the military and civil authorities.

As the war progressed and the direction of the war effort consumed most of Hitler's time and attention, he became increasingly inaccessible to the Gauleiters. Almost constantly away at his military headquarters, Hitler decreed that all Party matters should be communicated to him only through Martin Bormann, who headed the Nazi Party Chancellery from May 1941 and was made “Secretary to the Führer” in April 1943. All communications between government ministries and the Gauleiters also was routed through Bormann.

In an interrogation before the Nuremberg Trials, Reichsminister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer described the difficulty Reichsministers had in dealing with the fiercely independent Gauleiters:

"[the Gauleiters’] general attitude was that they were bound only by orders coming directly from Hitler. They would accept decisions by other agencies only as long as they suited them, but if the Gauleiters disapproved they simply failed to carry them out. This applied also to directives from the Reich Ministries … [if] an order or directive did not suit a Gauleiter he would immediately declare that he was taking orders from Hitler only. Bormann, in order to strengthen this attitude, issued most of his own orders in the name of the Führer."

In October 1944, the Nazi Party mobilized a national militia, the Volkssturm. Each Gauleiter was charged with the organization, enrollment, training and leadership of the Volkssturm battalions in their jurisdiction. These units were staffed by conscripting males between the ages of 16 and 60 who were not already serving in the military. The Volkssturm comprised one of the final components of the total war effort promulgated by Goebbels in his role of Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War.

Towards the end of the war, the Gauleiters, in their capacity as Reich Defense Commissioners, were given a key role in implementing Hitler's scorched earth policy as laid out in the Nero Decree of 19 March 1945. Many Gauleiters, knowing the war was lost, refused to carry out the orders, but several of the most fanatical among them ordered the destruction of bridges, utility plants, factories, and other important infrastructure ahead of the advancing Allied troops.

Background and characteristics

Approximately 125 men held the position of Gauleiter. Many shared a common background. Most of them, particularly during the early years, were drawn from the cadre of “old fighters” that had helped Hitler forge the Party during the Kampfzeit (Time of Struggle). Most had been born in the last decade of the 19th century and came of age during World War I. They had fought in the war, and afterward many served in the paramilitary Freikorps, battling Communists and other left-wing groups. Most had at least a secondary school education and many had some higher education. Many were teachers or commercial clerks. Though advanced degrees were rare, there were some Ph.D.s, lawyers, medical doctors and a dentist among their numbers. Most were middle class, with very few from the proletarian working class. Many experienced interrupted education and careers that were not resumed because of their war service. Drawn to right wing, antisemitic and völkisch organizations, they gravitated to the Nazi Party in the immediate post-war years.

Those that were appointed in later years, particularly after the start of the Second World War, tended to be younger and better educated. Born in the first decade of the twentieth century, most were products of a later phase of the Party's development. They had some experience in the Party bureaucracy, either at the Gau level or in the Party Chancellery under Bormann, and were trained as administrators.

Though their tenure in office fluctuated, once the geographical re-organizations and personnel instability of the early years had passed, it was not unusual for Gauleiters to remain in their posts until they died. Though a small number were removed for corruption, cowardice or other malfeasance, a handful also managed to remain in office throughout the entire 20 years from 1925 to 1945. Most Gauleiters were members of one or more of the Nazi Party's paramilitary units, the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Schutzstaffel (SS) or the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) in which they usually carried the rank of Obergruppenführer.

Gauleiters comprised one-third of the Nazi Party electoral list for the parliamentary election of 1928 and were among the first 12 Nazis elected. After the Nazis came to power, Gauleiters routinely sat as deputies in the Reichstag. In addition, those whose Gaue were in Prussia were also made members of the Prussian State Council. This was a revised non-legislative advisory body established by Prussian Minister-president Hermann Göring in July 1933, and which replaced the earlier Prussian State Council, which had been the second chamber of the Prussian legislature.

Fate

Of the 43 Gauleiters serving at the end of the Nazi regime in May 1945:

In addition, many former Gauleiters who had been either removed from office or promoted to other positions also committed suicide (four), died in captivity (four), were imprisoned and released (four), or were executed (one).
 * Twelve committed suicide either before being captured or while in Allied custody.
 * Two died in battles during the final weeks of the war.
 * One was killed while escaping from Czech partisans.
 * One went missing, was presumed captured by the Soviets and eventually declared dead by a German court.
 * Eight were arrested, tried, convicted and executed as war criminals by the Nuremberg Trials, the Dachau Trials or the governments of the Allied nations.
 * Sixteen were arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned by these tribunals or special German denazification courts for war crimes or for their Nazi leadership role. One of these died in a Polish prison while serving a life sentence. The remaining fifteen served their sentences and were released.
 * Two, though arrested, escaped from Allied custody, never faced trial and managed to flee to Italy or to Argentina.
 * One went underground at the war's end, escaped to Canada and was never apprehended.

Insignia

By 1939, the entire Nazi Party paramilitary rank system had been overhauled, introducing completely new insignia consisting of pips, bars, and as many as four miniature oak leaves per collar to represent Nazi Party political rank. The Gauleiter insignia, however, was considered too well "entrenched" to change and thus was not incorporated into the new insignia system. Instead, the Gauleiter continued to wear the pre-war two oak leaf insignia, with the rank seen as existing outside of the hierarchy, senior to all other Nazi Party ranks, with the exception of Reichsleiter. Both Gauleiter and Reichsleiter insignia was modified slightly to display a more pronounced national eagle crest, and both ranks were permitted to wear special party armbands.

Gauleiter also had the right to display a special vehicle flag when traveling, as a status symbol of their position.

Relationship with other insignia

All political leaders working at the Gau level had rhomboid collar tabs with red facings (not brown), with a dark wine-red (burgundy) colored piping around the outer edges. Reich-level collar tabs had a bright crimson facing, with gold piping; Kreis level tabs had a dark chocolate brown facing, with white piping, while Ort level tabs had a light brown facing with light blue piping. The political leader collar-tab system was quite complicated and underwent four changes (complexity increasing with each change); the final (fourth) pattern as described above, was introduced around the end of 1938—by this time, with many more job positions within each level; this made the fourth pattern collar tab rank system by far the most complicated of all. The Gauleiter had authority over the district leaders (kreisleiter), who in turn directed chapter leaders (Ortsgruppenleiter). An Ortsgruppe (chapter) encompassed 1500 households—usually a city suburb or a few villages. Chapter leaders directed cell leaders (Zellenleiter), responsible for 160 to 480 households. Zellenleiter had control over the lowest local leaders, Blockleiter, each of whom had charge of one block consisting of 40 to 60 households. The cell and block leaders at the bottom of the hierarchy gave the party a strong hold on the civilian populace.

The original insignia for a Gauleiter consisted of Army-styled collar tabs, accompanied by a braided shoulder cord worn on a brown Nazi Party shirt. After 1933, the Gauleiter adopted a two oak leaf insignia worn on a brown colored collar patch. The Stellvertreter-Gauleiter (Deputy-Gauleiter) wore a single oak leaf.

Deputy Gauleiter
The positional title immediately subordinate to the Gauleiter was the Stellvertreter-Gauleiter (Deputy Gau Leader). Between 1933 and 1939, this position was an actual rank, annotated by a single oak leaf collar patch, in contrast to the two used for the Gauleiter. Due to the infighting of Nazi party politics, regulations had been introduced by 1935 to prevent a Deputy Gauleiter from succeeding his own superior, thus discouraging acts of discrediting a Gauleiter in the hopes that the Deputy would take his place.

The World War II era Nazi ranks incorporated the Stellvertreter-Gauleiter rank as a positional title, paired with a corresponding Nazi Party paramilitary rank and doing away with the previous single leaf insignia and the actual rank of Deputy Gauleiter. Accordingly, with the single leaf political insignia discontinued, the insignia of Gauleiter displayed two leaves although a single leaf insignia no longer existed.

title: Gauleiter