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History of Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German State between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlierHoly Roman Empire and German Empire.

After Hitler was appointed Prime Minister of Germany in 1933, the Nazi Party began to eliminate political opposition and consolidate power. Power was centralised in Hitler's person, and his word became the highest law. The return to economic stability and end of mass unemployment boosted the regime's popularity. Hitler made increasingly aggressive territorial demands, seizing Austria in 1938, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and invaded Poland in 1939, launching World War II in Europe. In alliance with autocratic Italy and other Axis Powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940 and threatened Britain. But Hitler’s empire ended in May 1945, after 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, which brought an end to World War II in Europe and Hitler committed a suicide.