On July 18, 1937, in a speech at the opening of the House of German Art in Munich, Hitler set the standard for the Kampfbund fur Deutsche Kultur:

During the long years in which I planned the formation of a new Reich I gave much thought to the tasks which would await us in the cultural cleansing of the people's life:  there was to be a cultural renaissance as well as political and economic reform.  I was convinced that people which have been trodden underfoot by the whole world of their day have all the greater duty consciously to asset their own value before their oppressors, and there is no prouder proof of the highest rights of a people to its own life than immortal cultural achievements.

Kapp Putsch  a conspiracy against the Weimar Repulblic by right-wing Germans.  Its leaders were the journalist Wolfgang Kapp and the military leader General Walther von Luttwitz.  In March 1920, according to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans were obliged to dismiss between 50,000 and 60,000 men from the armed forces.  Among the units to be disbanded was a naval brigade commanded by Captain hermann Ehrhardt, a leader of the Freikorps.  The brigade had played a role in suppressing the Communist brigade had played a role in suppressing the Communist repulbic set up in Bavaria.  On the evening of March 12, 1920, the Ehrhardt brigade went into action.  More than 5,000 of its members marched a dozen miles from its miliatary barracks to Berlin.  The minister of defense, Gustav Noske, had at his disposal only 2,000 men to oppose the rebels.  His top military leaders indicated that they were not anxious to defend the republic.  Gen. Hans von Seeckt informed him:  "Reichswehr does not fire on Reichswehr."

Early the next morning the Ehrhardt brigade made a triumphant entry through the Brandenburg Gate.  General von Luttwitz proclaimed a new government with Kapp as Chancellor.  The legal government escaped to the provinces, from which it denounced the atempted Putsch.  Before leaving Berlin, it called for a general strike:  "Strike, stop working, prevent the return of bloody reaction.  Not a hand must move, not a single worker must help the military dictatorship.  General strike all along the line!  Workers, unite!"  The strike was effective because without water, gas, electricity, and transportation, Berlin was paralyzed.  Five days later, Kapp announced his resignation and fled to Sweden.

Although the Kapp Putsch was a fiasco, it had important historical significance.  The immediate danger of overthrowing the republic from the right was over, but the seeds of political hatred had been sown.  Disgruntled militarists were dedicated to destroying the Weimar democracy and its "Bolshevik repulbicanism."  The men of the Ehrhardt brigade brought a new symbol from the Baltic on their helmets, the swastika.

Katyn Massacre  Mass execution of Polish military officers during World War II.  Katyn is a forest near Smolensk, a provincial city in the western Russian S.F.S.R., or Russia proper.  When Hitler and Stalin concluded their nonaggression pact just before the outbreak of the war, they divided Poland between themselves.  Soon after the beginning of the war in September 1939, Soviet forces occupied Polish territory, mostly east of the Curzon Line.  More than 240,000 Polish officers and men fell into Russian hands.  Many of them were interned in three Russian camps at Kozelak, Starobelsk, and Ostashkov.

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Polish government agreed to form a Polish army on Soviet territory.  The Polish general Wladyslaw Anders, who was delegated for this task, requested that 10,000 to 15,000 Polish prisioners of war held in the Soviet camps be transferred to his command.  Moscow informed him late in December 1941 that this could not be done because most of the Polish prisoners had escaped to Manchuria.  Only 448 officers were eventually attached to Ander's army.

Katyn fell under German control in the summer of 1941.  In April 1943 the Germans announced that they had discovered in the Katyn forest a mass grave of 4443 Polish officers and men, all of whom, they said, had been interned by the Russians before April 1940.  Soviet authorities responded that the Polish prisoners had been engaged in construction work west of Smolensk in 1941 and that they had been killed by the Germans, who had won control of the area in July 1941.

Dissatisfied with this explanation, the Polish government-in-exile on April 17, 1943, appealed for an international tribunal, specificallly the International Committee of the Red Cross, to investigate the matter and determine how the Poles had died.  The Red Cross announced from Geneva that it could do nothing without a corresponding request from the Soviet Union.  Stalin retorted that the atrocity had been committed, of course, by the Germans.  He had no intention of calling for an investigation.

The incident had international repurcussions.  The Allied war leadership wanted no internal quarrels to disturb the immediate business of destroying Hitler and the Third Reich.  Pressed by the British and Americans, the Polish government-in-exile issued a statement generally condemning aggression against Polish citizens without specifying who were the Katyn criminals.  Because this statement did not specifically exculpate the Russians, Stalin on April 25, 1943, angrily broke off relations with the Poles in London.

The Germans then instituted their own inquiry.  A German committee of experts announced that the corpses of between 13,400 and 14,900 Poles had been found in mass graves.  According to documents found on the bodies, added to a study of the age of the trees planted over the graves, the executions had taken place in early 1940, at a time when the entire district of Katyn was under Russian control.

In September 1943, the Smolensk area was reoccupied by the Russians.  Soviet authorities now set up their own inquiry on the fate of the Poles.  Their report, issued in January 1944, claimed that because of the rapid German advance it had been impossible to evacuate the three prisoner-of-war camps.  The Polish prisoners were captured, it was claimed, and systematically slaughtered by the Germans.

Later research by Polish as well as independant authorities in the West leaves little doubt that the Poles were killed by the Soviet secret police.  This conclusion is bolstered by wartime Foreign Office documents.  if the Russian report of 1944 is to be believed, nearly 15,000 Polish officers and men passed into German hadns from spring 1940 to July 1941 and later were killed by the Germans without a single prisoner escaping, reporting to Polish authorities of Russia, or joining the Polish underground.  Although the Nazi regime was rightly accused of such atrocities as the Nazi regime was rightly accused of such atrocities as Guernica and Lidice, it is absolved by most historians of blame for the Katyn massacre.  At the most it is probable that Soviet security forces, possibly at the request, recommendation, or demand of German officials, executed the officers and men in early 1940.  However, there are no documents or other solid evidence to support this view.

The crime of Katyn has never been investigated in complete detail.  It was not brought up officially at the Teheran Conference (November 28-December 1, 1943).  Great Britain and the United States, determined to ease the tension caused by the Katyn massacre, paid no attention to Polish protests on the ground that the current overriding goal was to smash the Third Reich.  The Polish-Soviet border was set at the Curzon Line, and this boundary settlement was confirmed at the Yalta Conference of February 1945.  Nor was the Katyn massacre mentioned at the Nuremberg Trial, despite its concern with the treatment of Prisoners of War.

In his history of World War II, Winston Churchill adopted an ambivalent position on the Katyn massacre.  The Soviet government, he wrote, did not take the opportunity of clearing itself of the horrible and widely believed accusation against it as well as of fastening the guilt conclusively on the Germans.  "Everyone is therefore entitled to form his own opinion."  Soviet authorities were not inclined to accept the suggestion that they remove the stain of Katyn.  On the contrary, they preferred to end all discussion of the embarassing matter.  In the Soviet Union, all mention of Katyn was removed from maps and history textbooks. The reference to Katyn in the 1953 edition of the Soviety Encyclopedia was dropped in the 1973 edition.

Keppler Circle  A group of wealthy and conservative businessman organized to help Hitler.  In the autumn of 1931, Hitler suggested to Wilhelm Keppler, a strong pro-Nazi and an affluent entrepreneur, that he bring together a group of business leaders who had proved themselves in industry and who would be willing to "advise" the Nazis in their drive for political power.  It was no necessary, he said, that the members of the circle be affiliated with the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.  The businessmen of the Keppler cirlce, who contributed to Nazi coffers, believed that Hitler would be tamed when he became Chancellor and that he could be taught the principles of a sound economy.  Expecting to use Hitler for their own purposes, they learned later to their dismay that he was skillful in using them.

Kinder, Kirche, Kuche  (Kids, Kirk, kitchen).  A slogan that originated before the Nazi era but was employed also during the Third Reich.  It was used in various other combinations, such as "Kirche, Kuche, Kinder."  The cry "Women's place is in the home!" was a populat one after Hitler became Chancellor.  From the Fuehrer down through the hierarchy, Nazi thinking on the women's question was dogmatically in favor of inequality between the sexes, as positive as the belief in differences between the races.  In this view the emancipation of women was indicative of the depravity of parliamentary democracy.  Although there were many women's organizations in the Third Reich, they were regarded as auxiliaries ranking below male groups.

Kindersegen (Blessed with Children).  Emotional term used constantly by Nazi leaders to promote the birthrate.  Although the Germans were supposed to be a people without space (see "Volk ohne Raum"), Hitler called for an ever-greater population.  The regime adopted such eugenic measures as marriage loans, child subsidies, and family allowances.  Added to the financial inducements was a strong propoganda campaign to bring about an increase in the birthrate.  The term family was limited to households with four children or more.  Those who refused to have children were denounced as worse than "deserters on the battlefield."  There were special honors for mothers who contributed children to the fatherland.

Kraft Durch Freude (Strength through Joy)  National Socialist recreational organization designed to stimulate morale among workers.  Roughly translated, Kraft durch Freude means "more strenght through more pleasure."  Set up in imitation of similar Italian organization founded by Mussolini, KdF was the carrot that was to lead the German workers to greater productivity.  It was the best-publicized program of industrial relations in the Third Reich.  Participants in a new form of mass tourism.  KdF holiday makers cruised on luxury liners and traveled by train to the Alps, Venice, Naples, and Lisbon.  There were also many tourist trips to Norway.  These vacations no only were well received by workers but also brought large profits to rural hotel owners as well as to the Reichsbahn, the state railroad system.  The KdF program also included subsidized theater performances, concerts, exhibitions, sports, hiking, folk dancing, and adult education courses.

The Kraft durch Freude organization received huge subsidies from the government (24 million marks in 1933-1934, 17 million in 1935, and 15 million in 1936).  It became a big business itslef. Within two years after KdF was organized, two ocean liners with single-class accomodations were constructed especially for its tours.  The Volkswagen, the people's automobile, was known originally as the KdF Wagen.  Large governmental subsidies went into its development.  Until this time the automobile had been considered a bourgeois status symbol, but now the average worker could pay weekly installments in order to obtain one eventually.

With its multiple functions the KdF was regarded by Nazi leaders as practical proof of benign National Socailist economic and labor policies.  Dr. Robert Ley, who was responsible for KdF activities, summarized its goal:  "The worker sees that we are serious about raising his social positiion.  He sees that it is not the so-called 'educated calles' whom we send out as representative of the new Germany, but himself, the German worker, whom we show to the world."  Ley regarded the KdF as proof that there were no longer classes in the Third Reich:  "In the years to come the worker will lose the last traces of inferiority feelings he may have inherited from the past."

Kreisau Circle  A small group of officers and professional civilians formed in 1933 to oppose Hitler and the Nazi movement.  Led by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, the circle met at the Moltke family estate in Kreisau, Silesia (now Krzyzowa, Poland).  Its members regarded Hitler as a catastrophe for the fatherland.  They agreed that it was necessary to rechristianize their country as a prelude to humanization.  Considering themselves to be "planners of the future Germany," they dedicated themselves to the task of overthrowing the Nazi regime and substituting for its philosophy a new politiical and social ethic.  In a document drafted on August 9, 1943, they issued their Basic Principles for the New Order, which outlined their objectives for a new German state.

In 1943 the Kreisau Circle had more than twenty active members, including army officers, academicians, conservatives, liberals, socialists, Catholics, and Protestants.  Although they were not Communist, the members looked to the east with sympathy for the Russian people.  Those of the group who were closely associated with the July Plot of 1944 were arrested and executed.

Kriegsschuldluge (War Guilt Lie) Term often used by Nazi speakers in denouncing Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, the provision that placed responsibility on Germany and its allies for causing all the loss and damage of World War I.  During the postwar period, every political party in Germany from right to left denounced the treaty as the Versaillesdiktat (Dictation of Versailles).  It was pointed out that Germany, as a result of the treaty, had lost its colonies, virtually all its investments abroad, 15.5 percent of its arable land, 12 percent of its livestock, nearly 10 percent of its manufacturing plants, two-fifths of its coal reserves, almost two-thirds of its iron ore, and more than half of its lead.  Germany's navy was almost wiped out, and its merchant marine was reduced from 5.7 million tons to less than 500,000 tons.  The surrender of the colonies meant the loss of access to rubber and oil supplies.  In Mein Kampf, Hitler denounced the treaty of Versailles as a monstrous injustice.  Nazi speakers followed his lead in attacking the Kriegsschuldluge as designed to destroy the German people.

Kristallnacht (Crystal Night; also called the Night of the Broken Glass) The night of November 9, 1938, when terror attacks were made on Jewish synagogues and stores.  Two days earlier, Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, had been assassinated by Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew.  In retailiation Reinhard Heydrick, chief of the SD, ordered the destruction of all Jewish places of worship in Germany and Austria.  The assault had been long prepared; the murder of Vom Rath provided an opportunity to begin the attack.  In fifteen hours 101 synagogues were destroyed by fire, and 76 were demolished.  Bands of Nazis systematically destroyed 7,500 Jewish-owned stores.  The pillage and looting went on through the night.  Streets were covered with broken glass, hence the name Kristallnacht.

Three days later Hermann Goering called a meeting of the top Nazi hierarchy at the Air Ministry to assess the damage done during the night and place responsibility for it.  Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels proposed that Jews no longer be allowed to use the public parks:  "We will give the Jews a part of the forest, where animals, which are damnably like Jews-the elk, too, has a hooked nose-can mix with them."  It was decided that the Jews would have to pay for the damage they had provoked. A fine of 1 billion marks was levied for the slaying of Vom Rath, and 6 million marks paid by insurance companies for broken windowns was to be given to state coffers.  The incident of Kristallnacht and its aftermath generated unfavorable world wide publicity for the Nazi regime.

Krupp Trial  Trial of Krupp defendants after World War II.  Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was regarded by the victorious Allies as one of the most prominent war criminals.  As head of the main armaments firm of Germany and Europe and as one of the Fuehrer's most devoted supporteers among German industrialists, the elder Krupp, aged 74 at the clost of the war, was accused of complicity in Hitler's aggression.  The Americans and French were anxious to try either the old man or his son, Alfred Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach; the Russians wanted to try either or both.  Justice Robert H. Jackson made it plain:  "The United States submits that no greater disservice to the future peace of the world would be done than to excuse theentire Krupp family from this trial."  The American military tribunal chose a medical panel which reported that the elder Krupp, suffering from senility, could not stand trial because he would be unable to understand the nature of the proceedings.  An indictment was held pending in the event that he should recover, but he never did.  Later Alfred was tried before an American court and sentenced in 1948 to twelve years' imprisonment.  he served three years and was then released.  His confiscated property was returned to him.