Germany: Did you mean...?

The First World War (1914-18) saw fighting on an unprecedented scale but also involved civilians as never before. For the first time, people hundreds of miles from the fighting front were vulnerable to air attacks. The war at sea dramatically...

Can physical education be part of a totalitarian project to control and reshape the masses? Both the leader of Fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), and the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), believed that sports could...

Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was the head of the Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) organisation. One of the most powerful individuals in Nazi Germany, Himmler built up the SS from a small paramilitary unit to a vast organisation, which included armoured...

The Sturmabteilung (SA or Storm Detachment), popularly known as the Brownshirts for their uniform, was the paramilitary arm of the German Nazi party led by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). The SA was formed in 1921 and led most famously by Ernst...

The Battle of the Frontiers of WWI (1914-18), fought between 14 and 25 August, involved a flurry of encounters between German and French, Belgian, and British armies as both sides attempted to cross borders and establish the fighting front...

Transatlantic Zeppelins carried passengers in relative luxury between Germany and New York or Rio de Janeiro during the 1920s and 1930s. The airships Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg crossed the Atlantic in two or three days, faster than contemporary...

The Moselle Valley is Germany's oldest winegrowing region. The Romans brought viticulture to this area and planted vines along the Moselle River 2000 years ago. After settling the region c. 50 BCE and establishing the city of Trier (Augusta...

The Holy Roman Empire officially lasted from 962 to 1806. It was one of Europe’s largest medieval and early modern states, but its power base was unstable and continually shifting. The Holy Roman Empire was not a unitary state, but a confederation...

The U-boat, short for Unterseeboot (undersea boat), was the name for submarines used by the German Navy during the First World War (1914-18) and Second World War (1939-45). In the two Battles of the Atlantic, U-boats sank thousands of ships...

Philip Melanchthon (l. 1497-1560) was a German scholar and theologian who provided the intellectual rationale and systematized theology for the reformed vision of Christianity of his friend Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546). He was always overshadowed...