NSDAP

NSDAP stands for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, commonly translated as the National Socialist German Workers' Party. It was a far-right political party in Germany from 1919 to 1945 that originated from the German Workers' Party (DAP) and was renamed NSDAP in 1920. Led by Adolf Hitler, the party fused nationalist, racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-communist ideas with a totalitarian program and hierarchical leadership.

The party emerged in the post–World War I period and gained influence in the 1920s through propaganda, paramilitary activity, and electoral organizing. After a failed coup in 1923, Hitler was imprisoned and the party rebuilt in the late 1920s. It exploited economic distress, social unrest, and disputes over the Weimar Republic to expand its support, eventually becoming the dominant force in German politics by the early 1930s.

In 1933 the NSDAP and Hitler established a dictatorship following elections and the passing of emergency measures such as the Enabling Act. The regime pursued Gleichschaltung, which aligned all institutions with Nazi leadership, suppressed political opposition, and centralized control across society. It pursued aggressive expansionist aims, rearmament, and widespread persecution of minorities.

Ideologically, the party promoted concepts of racial hierarchy, anti-Semitism, and the supposed supremacy of the Aryan race. Policy and wartime actions led to mass oppression, forced deportations, and the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews and other groups were persecuted or murdered.

With Germany's defeat in 1945, the NSDAP was banned by Allied authorities and dissolved in law. Its leaders were prosecuted in subsequent war crimes trials, and its legacy is defined by totalitarian rule, aggressive nationalism, and its central role in World War II and the Holocaust.