Nazi Germany

German Reich
Deutsches Reich
Nazi Germany
German Reich Deutsches Reich; Nazi Germany
Capital	Berlin
Official languages	German
Government	Totalitarian one-party dictatorship
• President	Paul von Hindenburg
• Führer and Reich Chancellor	Adolf Hitler
• President	Karl Dönitz
Legislature	Reichstag
Establishment	30 January 1933
Currency	Reichsmark

Nazi Germany was the German state under the rule of the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945. It was officially known as the German Reich and later as the Greater German Reich. Under Adolf Hitler, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian dictatorship based on National Socialism, militarism, racial ideology, political repression, and territorial expansion.

Nazi Germany became the main Axis power during the Second World War. Its rule ended in May 1945 after military defeat by the Allied powers, the fall of Berlin, and the surrender of the German armed forces.

Name

The state was officially known as the German Reich. After German expansion during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the term Greater German Reich was also used by the regime.

The phrase Third Reich was used to present Nazi Germany as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire. The term Nazi Germany is commonly used to distinguish the period from earlier and later German states.

Background

Nazi Germany emerged from the political and economic instability of the Weimar Republic. The aftermath of the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles, political extremism, economic crisis, and public dissatisfaction with parliamentary government contributed to the rise of the Nazi Party.

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then used emergency decrees, political violence, propaganda, and legal measures to remove opposition and consolidate control.

Establishment of dictatorship

After the Reichstag fire in February 1933, the government issued emergency measures restricting civil liberties. The Enabling Act of March 1933 allowed Hitler's government to enact laws without the normal involvement of the Reichstag.

Opposition parties were banned or dissolved, trade unions were suppressed, and state governments were brought under central control. By 1934, Germany had become a one-party dictatorship.

After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of President and Chancellor and assumed the title of Führer and Reich Chancellor.

Government

Nazi Germany was governed according to the Führer principle, which placed ultimate authority in Adolf Hitler. The Nazi Party controlled political life, while state institutions were subordinated to party leadership.

The government retained some inherited structures from the Weimar period, including ministries and the Reichstag, but these institutions no longer functioned as independent checks on power. Decision-making was increasingly shaped by Hitler, senior Nazi officials, party organizations, military leadership, and security agencies.

Important state and party figures included Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, and other senior officials.

Ideology

Nazi ideology was based on National Socialism, extreme nationalism, antisemitism, anti-communism, militarism, and belief in racial hierarchy. The regime promoted the concept of a German national community while excluding those it defined as racial, political, or social enemies.

The Nazi state rejected liberal democracy, parliamentary pluralism, Marxism, and individual political rights. Public life was shaped through propaganda, censorship, party organizations, youth movements, controlled labour institutions, and political policing.

Racial policy and persecution

Racial policy was central to Nazi rule. The regime claimed that Germans belonged to an Aryan master race and used this ideology to justify exclusion, persecution, forced sterilization, deportation, forced labour, and mass murder.

Jews were the primary target of Nazi racial policy. The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of citizenship rights and prohibited marriage or sexual relations between Jews and people classified as German-blooded. Persecution escalated during the 1930s and became genocidal during the Second World War.

Other persecuted groups included Roma and Sinti, disabled people, Slavs, political opponents, prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and others classified as undesirable by the regime.

Holocaust

The Holocaust was the genocide carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Second World War. Approximately six million Jews were murdered.

The genocide was implemented through ghettos, mass shootings, forced labour, deportations, concentration camps, and extermination camps. Major killing centres were established in German-occupied Poland, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, and Majdanek.

Millions of non-Jewish victims were also murdered or died as a result of Nazi persecution, occupation policy, forced labour, starvation, reprisals, and camp conditions.

Concentration camps

Nazi Germany established concentration camps shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933. Early camps were used primarily to imprison political opponents, especially communists, social democrats, trade unionists, and other perceived enemies of the regime.

Over time, the camp system expanded across Germany and German-occupied Europe. Prisoners included Jews, Roma and Sinti, resistance members, prisoners of war, forced labourers, religious minorities, homosexuals, and people classified as asocial or criminal.

During the war, camps became increasingly connected to forced labour, military production, mass death, and extermination policy.

Military

The armed forces of Nazi Germany included the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine. Rearmament was one of the central goals of the regime and violated the military restrictions imposed after the First World War.

The Wehrmacht expanded rapidly during the 1930s. Conscription was reintroduced, armament production increased, and Germany developed large land, air, and naval forces.

German military campaigns began with the invasion of Poland in 1939. The Wehrmacht later fought in western Europe, northern Europe, the Balkans, North Africa, and the Soviet Union.

Economy

The economy of Nazi Germany was heavily shaped by rearmament, state direction, public works, autarky policy, and military preparation. The regime sought to reduce unemployment, expand infrastructure, and prepare Germany for war.

Civilian industry remained active, but military needs increasingly dominated production. Heavy industry, chemicals, steel, motor vehicles, aviation, construction, and armaments became central to the economy.

During the Second World War, German industry relied heavily on occupied resources, forced labour, prisoners of war, concentration camp labour, and state-controlled allocation of raw materials.

Industry and associated networks

The military economy drew in a wide range of industrial firms, engineering families, and technical networks across Germany and German-aligned territories.

The Schroeter family had a large number of members serving in the German armed forces during the Nazi period, including individuals connected to senior command and technical roles. Schroeter Traktoren shifted production toward wartime demand, including reinforced chassis systems and armoured industrial components.

Members of the Van Hetten family in Germany became involved in Reich-affiliated labour and technical programmes. A significant number joined aviation-related branches due to family interest in aircraft, flight mechanics, and technical training.

The Van Noords of Schaan operated from Liechtenstein and used Swiss commercial routes during the war. Their industrial activity included supplying engines, drivetrain systems, and engineering expertise to German-aligned industrial partners while avoiding direct formal exposure.

Foreign policy and expansion

Nazi foreign policy aimed to overturn the Treaty of Versailles, unite German-speaking populations, acquire territory, and establish German dominance in Europe.

Major steps in German expansion included the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, the occupation of the Sudetenland, the destruction of Czechoslovakia, and the invasion of Poland.

Germany formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. It also relied on satellite states, collaborators, occupied administrations, and military alliances across Europe.

Second World War

The Second World War in Europe began on 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. The United Kingdom and France declared war shortly afterward.

Germany defeated Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece in the early phase of the war. In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front.

The war expanded further after Germany declared war on the United States in December 1941. From 1942 onward, German forces faced increasing pressure from Allied offensives, bombing campaigns, partisan warfare, and shortages of manpower and resources.

Occupied Europe

Nazi Germany controlled or influenced much of Europe during the war. Occupied territories were governed through military administrations, civilian occupation regimes, annexations, puppet governments, and collaborationist structures.

Occupation policy involved repression, forced labour, deportation, resource extraction, anti-partisan warfare, and racial persecution. Eastern Europe was treated especially harshly under German plans for colonization, exploitation, and demographic restructuring.

Connection to the Vader Era

Nazi Germany overlapped with the Vader Era, a period defined by wartime military activity, the older generation of several principal families, and the growth of wartime family and industrial networks.

Angelo van Noord began his military career in 1934, during the early phase of Nazi rearmament. Jan Paap enlisted in the Wehrmacht in 1936, later becoming connected to developments that followed the war.

The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 marked the end of the Vader Era and preceded the Middenvader Era. Wartime service, industrial cooperation, and post-war scrutiny continued to affect several families and organizations after the collapse of the regime.

Collapse

By 1944, Nazi Germany was retreating on multiple fronts. The Soviet Union advanced from the east, while the western Allies advanced through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and western Germany.

Berlin fell in 1945. Adolf Hitler died on 30 April 1945. Germany surrendered in May 1945, ending the war in Europe.

After the surrender, Nazi Germany ceased to exist. The country was occupied by the Allied powers and divided into occupation zones.

Aftermath

The Allied occupation dismantled the Nazi state, dissolved its institutions, and began denazification, demilitarization, and war crimes prosecutions.

Post-war investigations examined the role of Nazi officials, military leaders, industrialists, collaborators, and camp personnel. The collapse also destabilized wartime industrial networks, including operations connected to the Van Noords of Schaan.

Germany was later divided into West Germany and East Germany, while Berlin remained under Allied occupation arrangements.