Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of religious discrimination, antisemitism, graphic violence, death, antigay bias, and racism.

After World War I ended in 1918, Germany experienced political deadlock, increasing violence, and economic depression. The country had lost the war, and the Treaty of Versailles punished Germany, which made the state pay a significant amount of money and give up land (“Background: The Impact of World War I.” Holocaust Encyclopedia). This caused the German economy to collapse. Many people lost their jobs, had little food, and didn’t trust their government anymore. At the same time, the Great Depression—a major global economic downturn with high unemployment and poverty rates, significant reductions in industrial production and international trade, and bank and business failures—was causing financial problems worldwide. 

In this time of fear and confusion, some people began looking for a strong leader who promised to make Germany powerful again. One of those leaders was Adolf Hitler, who led the National Socialist German Workers Party, known as the Nazis, beginning in 1921. Following attempts to overthrow the German government, Hitler was imprisoned in 1923; this increased his fame and followers, and he used his time in prison to write Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), his autobiography and political treatise. The book outlined Hitler’s ideology for the country, which included territorial expansion, the creation of a racially “pure” state, and the elimination of European Jewish people and Germany’s perceived enemies, including communists, Roma people, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities, among others. Following his release from jail, Hitler sought political power through legal rather than violent means, and modern propaganda strategies propelled Hitler from a lesser-known extremist into a top candidate in the country’s 1932 presidential election. However, Hitler was not voted into office; in 1933, Paul von Hindenburg, president of Germany, appointed Hitler as chancellor, or the head of the German government. (“Adolf Hitler.” Holocaust Encyclopedia). This period of Nazi rule became known as the “Third Reich.” 

Soon after Hitler’s appointment, he took total control of the government and created a fascist dictatorship. The new government leadership suspended basic civil rights for Germans. This meant that people were no longer free to speak out or vote against him, and those who did were arrested or killed. Within the early months of Hitler’s chancellorship, the Nazis focused on “coordination”—a process aligning individuals and institutions with Nazi goals. Soon, German culture, the economy, education, and law were all under Nazi control. Through extensive propaganda strategies and promises including “making good on electoral promises to tear up the Versailles Treaty, restore Germany to the ranks of the Great Powers, bring the nation out of the depression, take back the streets from criminals and subversives, crush the communist threat, and open career opportunities for young professionals,” Nazi officials gained appeal among Germany’s education and professional elites and civil service elites (“Third Reich.” Holocaust Encyclopedia). Hitler adopted non-legal strategies to adopt policies and implement decisions that he deemed integral for the German race’s survival; this allowed for party agencies, state, and armed forces to operate outside the law to unilaterally achieve the Nazi regime’s ideological goals (“Third Reich”).  

The Nazis believed in creating a “pure” German race of Aryans. Anyone who didn’t fit their idea became a targeted group and was treated as an enemy. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis created at least 44,000 concentration camps, including ghettos and other incarceration sites. The first camps were established to hold those perceived as “enemies” or “subversives,” which led to the initial camp population including communists, socialists, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gay men, and “asocial” people (i.e., alcoholics, criminals, people with mental disabilities, and the poor). Concentration camps quickly expanded to include Jewish people, especially following the Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, in 1938, when the Nazis declared war against German and Austrian Jewish people. Millions of people across Europe were sent to concentration camps in Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe. The most infamous camps included Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka. The Nazi camp system served multiple goals, including exploiting captive labor to support the military and German companies, way stations in broader deportation schemes, and extermination of people through mass murder in gas chambers—referred to as the “Final Solution” (“The Nazi Concentration Camp System.” The National WWII Museum, 22 Apr. 2025). People in camps were forced to work, starved, medically experimented on, became diseased, and were systematically killed. This horrific time in history is called the Holocaust. By the end of World War II in 1945, over 11 million people had been murdered, including 6 million Jewish people.

The concentration camps were shut down when Allied Forces, which included the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and other nations, invaded Germany and the surrounding countries. They liberated concentration camps and rescued survivors. Following the war, Germany enacted the process of “denazification,” which included cleansing German society of Nazi influences and effects and re-educating Germans in democratic values. Denazification repealed Nazi laws, changed street names, removed swastikas on forms and paperwork, eliminated Nazi books from libraries, and removed National Socialist regime symbols from the public realm. This process also included ensuring 8.5 million members of the Nazi Party and millions of the German population that belonged to various Nazi organizations were excluded from important positions in society and future state institutions. Legal proceedings like the Nuremberg Trial of 1945-1946 prosecuted major Nazi war criminals (“Denazification.” Allierten Museum). The German penal code prohibits publicly denying the Holocaust, disseminating Nazi propaganda offline or online, sharing images such as swastikas, wearing a SS uniform, and making statements supporting Hitler. In 2020, Germany strengthened hate speech laws following far-right terror attacks and increasing extremist ideology within the country (Glaun, Dan. “Germany’s Laws on Late Speech, Nazi Propaganda, and Holocaust Denial: An Explainer.” PBS, 1 July 2021). These strategies are part of Germany’s ongoing attempt to prevent any future tragedies like the Holocaust and counter far-right extremism.