Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich — officially called Deutsches Reich ("German Reich") and later Großdeutsches Reich ("Greater German Reich") — refers to Germany in the years of 1933 to 1945, when it was governed by the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party), more widely known as the Nazi Party, with Adolf Hitler as elected chancellor and, from 1934, as head of state called the Führer (Leader).

The policies pursued by Nazi Germany, based on the concept of Lebensraum; "Aryan" or Nordic racial purity; anti-Semitism; revenge for the territorial losses of the German Empire; perceived loss of national pride at the Treaty of Versailles, and anti-communism directed at the Soviet Union were among the leading causes of the Second World War and the Nazi regime's systematic mass murder of millions of Jews and other minorities in the genocide known as the Holocaust or Shoah.

Under the Nazi regime, Germany from a military standpoint became the dominant nation state in Europe by the early 1940s, and after the annexation of Austria in 1938, Nazi Germany became the first united German state since the Holy Roman Empire to include Austria within its boundaries.