Nazi Germany denotes Germany under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945. Commonly called the Third Reich, it replaced parliamentary government with a one-party regime organized around Hitler’s authority, racial discrimination, and political repression. Its expansionist policies initiated World War II in Europe, while its institutions and collaborators perpetrated the Holocaust and other mass atrocities. The period conventionally extends from Hitler’s appointment as chancellor on January 30, 1933, to Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
Establishment of the dictatorship
The regime emerged from the crisis of the Weimar Republic, established after World War I. Political fragmentation, street violence, and the Great Depression weakened parliamentary government. The Nazis exploited economic insecurity and opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, becoming the largest parliamentary party in 1932 without winning an outright majority. President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor at the head of a coalition government in January 1933. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
Following the Reichstag fire, the decree of February 28, 1933, suspended basic civil liberties and enabled mass arrests of political opponents. The Enabling Act, passed in March amid intimidation and repression, permitted the government to legislate without parliamentary approval, including measures departing from the constitution. Through Gleichschaltung, or coordination, the Nazis brought regional governments, public institutions, and associations under their control. Independent trade unions were destroyed, and by July the Nazi Party was the only permitted political party. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
After Hindenburg’s death on August 2, 1934, Hitler combined presidential and chancellorial powers. The armed forces swore personal allegiance to him, consolidating a dictatorship that had dismantled democratic safeguards through legislation, coercion, and violence. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
Ideology, institutions, and social control
Nazism was a form of fascism centered on authoritarian leadership, extreme nationalism, racial hierarchy, and antisemitism. It falsely portrayed Jews as a biological enemy and presented Germans classified as “Aryan” as a superior race. Its concept of Volksgemeinschaft, or national community, excluded people defined as racial, political, or social outsiders. Expansion eastward for Lebensraum, meaning living space, connected racial ideology to conquest and population displacement. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
The leadership principle, Führerprinzip, placed Hitler above institutional restraints. The SS, police, and Gestapo enforced repression through surveillance, arrests, and detention. Concentration camps, established from 1933, initially imprisoned political opponents and subsequently held increasingly diverse groups subjected to persecution and forced labor. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
Joseph Goebbels’s propaganda ministry coordinated messages across newspapers, radio, cinema, books, and cultural production. Schools and youth organizations promoted loyalty to Hitler and Nazi racial doctrines. Propaganda supported both domestic exclusion and foreign expansion, presenting persecution as necessary protection of the national community. Opposition nevertheless existed, including communist networks, the White Rose student group, and military conspirators involved in the failed assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
Economy and labor
Economic policy increasingly served military preparation. Public employment programs and recovery from the Depression reduced unemployment, but rearmament became a decisive source of employment and industrial demand. Government controls over imports and foreign exchange directed scarce resources toward strategic priorities. (dhm.de)
The Four Year Plan, introduced in 1936 under Hermann Göring, sought to prepare Germany for war through accelerated armaments production and greater economic self-sufficiency. Private enterprises remained active but were required to accommodate state objectives. Synthetic fuel and rubber production aimed to reduce dependence on imported materials, while military priorities constrained consumer production. (dhm.de)
During the war, Germany exploited occupied territories and employed millions of foreign civilians, prisoners of war, and camp inmates as forced laborers. Conditions varied, but many workers experienced starvation, violence, dangerous work, and severe restrictions on movement. Forced labor became integral to both the camp system and the wartime economy. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
Territorial expansion and war
Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. The Munich Agreement subsequently permitted the annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland without Czechoslovak participation in the negotiations. In March 1939, German forces occupied the Czech lands, violating Hitler’s assurances that he sought no further territorial gains there. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
The invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, began the European war. Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, and much of western Europe in 1940, including France. In June 1941 it invaded the Soviet Union, opening a vast eastern campaign accompanied by mass shootings, starvation policies, and other atrocities involving military, SS, police, and collaborating forces. (ushmm.org)
Persecution and genocide
The Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 stripped Jews of Reich citizenship and prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Jews and people classified as German-blooded. Expropriation and exclusion escalated, and the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9–10, 1938, brought widespread destruction of Jewish property and mass arrests. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
During the war, persecution developed into continent-wide genocide. Deportations, ghettos, mass shootings, killing centers, and deliberate deprivation formed the machinery of the Holocaust. Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews. They also persecuted and killed millions of non-Jewish people, including Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, ethnic Poles, people with disabilities, and political opponents. Different groups faced distinct policies of imprisonment, exploitation, expulsion, or murder. (encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
Defeat and postwar proceedings
Military defeats, including the Battle of Stalingrad, and advancing Allied armies brought the regime’s collapse. Hitler died by suicide on April 30, 1945. German military surrender was signed at Reims on May 7 and confirmed in Berlin on May 8; it took effect late on May 8. (apnews.com)
Germany and Berlin were divided into four Allied occupation zones. The Nuremberg Trials prosecuted leading officials and other perpetrators. The International Military Tribunal began proceedings on November 20, 1945, addressing crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Its charter and judgments established important precedents in international law, including individual accountability for state-sponsored crimes. (ushmm.org)