German Reich (1933–1945)

The German Reich, commonly known as Nazi Germany, was a right-wing fascist dictatorship ruled by the Nazi party, which existed in Europe between 1933 and 1945. It was preceded by the Weimar Republic before its dissolution with the issuance of the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933, which allowed for the then Chancellor of Germany Adolf Hitler to act outside of parliamentary control.

The Nazi government, over the course of its existence, aggressively expanded into neighboring countries, ultimately resulting in the beginning of the Second World War with the Nazi Invasion of Poland. Internally, concentration camps were set up for the forced labor, detention, and execution of Jewish and Roma people, political prisoners, communists, socialists, and trade-union activists.

A program of "involuntary euthanasia" was adopted for the state-sponsored mass murder of the disabled. This campaign of mass detention and extermination was based on pseudo-scientific racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic eugenic beliefs, which culminated in a systematic genocide commonly known as the Holocaust. The Nazi Party was destroyed at the end of World War II after the Soviet Union captured Berlin and Hitler committed suicide. The German Instrument of Surrender legally declared the surrender and dissolution of the Nazi State, which ended both the Holocaust and Second World War in Europe. The succeeding Allied occupation of Germany would result in the creation of separate West and East German states.