Europe · The modern states
Nazi Germany
1933–1945
Within months of Hitler's appointment, the Nazi regime destroyed German democracy: the Reichstag Fire Decree (February 1933), the Enabling Act (March 1933), the banning of other parties, and the "Night of the Long Knives" (1934). On Hindenburg's death Hitler merged the offices of president and chancellor as Führer.
- Existed
- 1933–1945
- Shown on the map
- 1936–1944
- Peak area
- 3.3M km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
Within months of Hitler's appointment, the Nazi regime destroyed German democracy: the Reichstag Fire Decree (February 1933), the Enabling Act (March 1933), the banning of other parties, and the "Night of the Long Knives" (1934). On Hindenburg's death Hitler merged the offices of president and chancellor as Führer. The one-party, totalitarian state (officially the Deutsches Reich, and from 1943 propagandistically the Großdeutsches Reich) built a police state around the SS and Gestapo, rearmed in violation of Versailles, and pursued aggressive expansion: the Rhineland (1936), the Anschluss with Austria and the Sudetenland via the Munich Agreement (1938), and the occupation of rump Czechoslovakia (March 1939).
Decline and legacy
The invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 — enabled by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 — began World War II in Europe. Nazi Germany conquered most of the continent by 1941, then invaded the USSR (Operation Barbarossa). The regime perpetrated the Holocaust, the systematic, industrialised murder of approximately six million European Jews — a genocide whose reality is not subject to legitimate historical debate. It also murdered millions of others: Roma (the Porajmos), disabled people (the "T4" programme), Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, political prisoners and others. Among historians, the principal scholarly debate is not whether the genocide occurred but how the decision-making unfolded — the "intentionalist" versus "functionalist" controversy over whether the extermination flowed from a long-held master plan or emerged cumulatively through the radicalising dynamics of the regime and the war. Germany surrendered unconditionally on 7–8 May 1945; Hitler had killed himself on 30 April.
Common questions
- What was Nazi Germany?
- Within months of Hitler's appointment, the Nazi regime destroyed German democracy: the Reichstag Fire Decree (February 1933), the Enabling Act (March 1933), the banning of other parties, and the "Night of the Long Knives" (1934). On Hindenburg's death Hitler merged the offices of president and chancellor as Führer.
- When did Nazi Germany exist?
- Nazi Germany existed 1933–1945. On this map it is drawn 1936–1944.
- How large was Nazi Germany?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Nazi Germany covered about 3.3 million km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
- How did Nazi Germany end?
- The invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 — enabled by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 — began World War II in Europe. Nazi Germany conquered most of the continent by 1941, then invaded the USSR (Operation Barbarossa).
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each state as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the ICTY and the 2004 Wiesel Commission for genocide and atrocity figures, and current news reporting (Reuters, AP, BBC, and others) for 2025–2026 political developments, which should be verified against live sources. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Nazi Germany en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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