Nazi Germany
Learn about Nazi Germany — the totalitarian regime under Adolf Hitler whose ideology of racial supremacy led to World War II and the Holocaust.
Nazi Germany (1933–1945) was the totalitarian state created by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party — a regime that plunged the world into the most destructive war in human history and perpetrated the Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of others.
Hitler became chancellor in January 1933 through constitutional means, then rapidly dismantled democracy. The Reichstag Fire (February 1933) provided a pretext for emergency powers. The Enabling Act gave Hitler dictatorial authority. Within months, all political parties except the Nazis were banned, trade unions dissolved, and a one-party totalitarian state established. The Nuremberg Laws (1935) stripped Jews of citizenship and banned intermarriage.
The regime's ideology was a toxic brew of extreme nationalism, racial pseudoscience, anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and militarism. Hitler's foreign policy of aggressive expansion — remilitarizing the Rhineland, annexing Austria, seizing Czechoslovakia, and finally invading Poland — led directly to World War II. The Holocaust, which escalated from persecution to mass shooting to industrialized genocide in death camps, represents the most extreme manifestation of state-organized evil in modern history.
Lessons covering this topic
Browse all lessons →The Rise of Fascism
Mussolini, Hitler, and the assault on democracy.
The Road to World War II
Appeasement, expansion, and the failure of peace.
The Global Conflict
From Blitzkrieg to the Pacific — war on every front.
The Holocaust
Genocide, resistance, and the darkest chapter of the 20th century.