The period between 1933 and 1945 in Germany represents one of the darkest chapters in human history, when the nation, officially known as the German Reich until 1943 and then the Greater German Reich, fell under the absolute control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. This transformation rapidly turned Germany into a brutal dictatorship, a totalitarian state where the government infiltrated and controlled nearly every facet of its citizens' lives. This infamous era, often referred to as the Third Reich—meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire"—was presented by the Nazis as the glorious successor to the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). Despite Hitler's grandiose claim of a "Thousand Year Reich," this regime of terror lasted a mere 12 years, collapsing in May 1945 with the defeat of Germany by the Allied powers, bringing World War II in Europe to a devastating close.

The Ascent of a Dictatorship: Hitler's Rise to Power

The insidious journey towards absolute power began on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, the head of government, by the aging President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg. Almost immediately, the Nazi Party embarked on a ruthless campaign to dismantle all political opposition and consolidate its hold on the nation. The death of President Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, proved to be a pivotal moment. Hitler seized this opportunity, merging the offices and powers of the chancellery and presidency, effectively making himself the undisputed dictator of Germany. This unilateral move was subsequently "confirmed" by a national referendum held on August 19, 1934, solidifying Hitler's position as the sole Führer (leader) of Germany. From this point forward, all power was centralized in his person, his word becoming the ultimate law. The government itself was not a cohesive, cooperating body but rather a fragmented collection of factions constantly vying for power and, crucially, for Hitler's personal favor.

Economic Recovery and Militarization

Amidst the widespread despair of the Great Depression, the Nazis managed to restore a semblance of economic stability and significantly reduce mass unemployment. This apparent recovery was fueled by an aggressive strategy involving heavy military spending and a mixed economy. Through deficit spending, the regime secretly launched a massive rearmament program, rapidly forming the formidable Wehrmacht (armed forces). Concurrently, extensive public works projects were undertaken, most notably the construction of the famed Autobahnen (motorways). This return to economic stability, albeit built on a foundation of military expansion and state control, initially boosted the regime's popularity among a populace eager for relief from economic hardship.

Ideology of Hate: Racism, Persecution, and Control

At the very core of the Nazi Germany regime was a deeply ingrained and virulent ideology of racism, particularly manifest in Nazi eugenics and pervasive antisemitism. The Nazis propagated the dangerous myth that Germanic peoples constituted a "master race," the purest branch of the supposed Aryan race. With the seizure of power, discrimination and systematic persecution against Jews and Romani people began in earnest. The first concentration camps were established as early as March 1933, initially imprisoning political opponents, and later becoming holding pens for Jews and others deemed "undesirable." Liberals, socialists, and communists faced immediate brutal repression, being murdered, imprisoned, or forced into exile. Christian churches and citizens who dared to oppose Hitler's tyrannical rule were oppressed, with many leaders incarcerated. Education was perverted to indoctrinate the youth, focusing heavily on "racial biology," population policy, and rigorous fitness for military service. Opportunities for women in careers and education were severely curtailed, pushing them back into traditional roles. Even leisure and tourism were co-opted and organized through the "Strength Through Joy" (Kraft durch Freude) program, aiming to control every aspect of civilian life. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels masterfully utilized film, colossal mass rallies, and Hitler's undeniably hypnotic oratory to manipulate and control public opinion. Artistic expression was strictly policed by the government, promoting specific "acceptable" art forms while brutally banning or discouraging anything deemed "degenerate."

The Road to War: Aggression and Expansion

From the latter half of the 1930s, Nazi Germany embarked on an increasingly aggressive campaign of territorial demands, backed by explicit threats of war if these demands were not met. The Saarland, which had been under League of Nations administration, voted by plebiscite to rejoin Germany in 1935, a clear early sign of German expansionism. In 1936, Hitler brazenly sent troops into the Rhineland, a region that had been demilitarized as a result of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, directly challenging international agreements. Germany then annexed Austria in the Anschluss of 1938 and, in the same year, demanded and received the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, a move enabled by the appeasement policies of other European powers. The aggression continued in March 1939, with the proclamation of a Slovak state that became a client state of Germany, and the establishment of the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on the remaining occupied Czech lands. Shortly thereafter, Germany pressured Lithuania into ceding the Memel Territory. The stage was set for global conflict. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, an unexpected alliance, and then launched its devastating invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, marking the official beginning of World War II in Europe. By early 1941, Germany and its European allies, collectively known as the Axis powers, had gained control over a vast swathe of Europe. New German administrations and Reichskommissariats were established in these conquered territories, including the remainder of Poland, brutally exploiting their raw materials and labor to fuel the German war machine.

The Holocaust and Unspeakable Atrocities

The regime's true horror was revealed through its systematic policies of genocide, mass murder, and large-scale forced labor, which became hallmarks of its rule. Starting in 1939, hundreds of thousands of German citizens with mental or physical disabilities were murdered in hospitals and asylums as part of a "euthanasia" program. As the German armed forces advanced into occupied territories, they were accompanied by Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary death squads responsible for the immediate and wholesale slaughter of millions of Jews and other Holocaust victims. After 1941, the scale of atrocity escalated dramatically with the implementation of the "Final Solution." Millions more were imprisoned, starved, worked to death, or systematically murdered in an extensive network of Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, such as the infamous Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibór. This unspeakable, state-sponsored genocide of approximately six million Jews is forever known as the Holocaust.

The Tides Turn: The End of the Thousand-Year Reich

While the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, known as Operation Barbarossa, initially saw rapid successes, the sheer resilience of the Soviet defense and the eventual entry of the United States into the war dramatically shifted the balance. By 1943, the Wehrmacht had lost the initiative on the Eastern Front, and by late 1944, they were inexorably pushed back to Germany's pre-1939 borders. Large-scale aerial bombing campaigns against German cities intensified in 1944, devastating industrial capacity and morale. Concurrently, the Axis powers were steadily driven back across Eastern and Southern Europe. Following the decisive Allied invasion of France, Germany found itself caught in a pincer movement, conquered by the Soviet Union advancing from the east and the other Allies from the west. The nation finally capitulated in May 1945. Adolf Hitler's fanatical refusal to admit defeat resulted in catastrophic destruction of German infrastructure and countless additional war-related deaths in the conflict's desperate final months. In the aftermath, the victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification, seeking to cleanse German society of Nazi ideology, and brought many of the surviving Nazi leadership to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the historic Nuremberg trials.

Poland: A Nation Scourged by Occupation (1939-1945)

The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 is a testament to immense suffering and unimaginable loss, primarily encompassing the period from its invasion by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the conclusion of World War II. Following the German-Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland faced a dual invasion: by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and by the Soviet Union on September 17. These swift campaigns ended in early October, with Germany and the Soviet Union brutally dividing and annexing the entire country. After the Axis attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the entirety of Poland fell under German occupation, providing the perfect horrific canvas for the Nazis to advance their racial and genocidal policies across the land. Under both occupations, Polish citizens endured colossal human and material losses. Estimates from the Institute of National Remembrance indicate that approximately 5.6 million Polish citizens perished as a direct result of the German occupation, while around 150,000 died under Soviet occupation. Jewish Poles, a vibrant community, were specifically targeted by the Germans for swift and total annihilation; roughly 90 percent of Polish Jews, close to three million people, were systematically murdered as part of the Holocaust. Jews, ethnic Poles, Romani people, and prisoners of many other ethnicities were killed en masse in the notorious Nazi extermination camps located on Polish soil, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibór. Ethnic Poles themselves faced severe persecution from both Nazi German and Soviet forces. The Germans are estimated to have killed two million ethnic Poles, with future plans under the infamous Generalplan Ost to reduce the remaining majority of Poles to slave labor and annihilate those perceived as "undesirable." Beyond this, ethnic cleansing and massacres of Poles, and to a lesser extent Ukrainians, were perpetrated in western Ukraine (pre-war Polish Kresy) from 1943, with Ukrainian nationalists responsible for these atrocities.

The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Underground State

As the invasions unfolded in September 1939, Polish government officials sought refuge in Romania. However, their subsequent internment there prevented the intended continuation of a legitimate Polish government abroad. General Władysław Sikorski, a former prime minister, made his way to France, where a replacement Polish Government-in-Exile was swiftly formed. After the fall of France to the Nazis, this government bravely evacuated to Britain, continuing its fight. Polish armed forces were reconstituted and fought valiantly alongside the Western Allies in France, Britain, and various other theaters of war. Simultaneously, a powerful Resistance movement began organizing within occupied Poland itself in 1939. Its largest military component was integral to the extensive network of the Polish Underground State and became known as the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), directly guided by the Government-in-Exile through its delegation residing in Poland. Various other partisan organizations also existed, including peasant, right-wing, leftist, Jewish, and Soviet groups. Among the most tragic and desperate anti-German uprisings were the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, a heroic but ultimately doomed act of defiance by Jewish fighters, and the larger Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The latter was a massive effort by the Home Army not only to liberate Warsaw from German occupation but also crucially to prevent Poland from falling under Soviet domination.

Shifting Alliances and Poland's Post-War Fate

In a complex web of wartime diplomacy, General Sikorski, recognizing the need for cooperation with the Soviet Union after Operation Barbarossa, negotiated with Joseph Stalin in Moscow. They agreed to form a Polish army on Soviet soil, intended to fight alongside the Soviets on the Eastern Front. However, this "Anders' Army" was instead controversially evacuated to the Middle East and subsequently fought in Italy. Further attempts at Polish-Soviet cooperation tragically failed due to deep disagreements over future borders, the horrific discovery of the Katyn massacre of Polish POWs perpetrated by the Soviets, and the untimely death of General Sikorski. Subsequently, in a process that many Poles bitterly viewed as a "Western betrayal," the Polish Government-in-Exile progressively lost its recognition as a vital partner in the Allied coalition. Stalin, meanwhile, pursued a calculated strategy of facilitating the formation of a Polish government independent of, and actively in opposition to, the London-based exile government. He achieved this by empowering Polish communists, establishing organizations like the Polish Workers' Party in occupied Poland and the Union of Polish Patriots in Moscow, and forming a new Polish army in the Soviet Union to fight with Soviet forces. At the same time, Stalin skillfully co-opted the Western Allies—the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Winston Churchill—who, in terms of practical implementations, largely conceded to Stalin's vision for Poland's post-war borders and future government. The ultimate fate of Poland was tragically determined in a series of major negotiations, including the conferences in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam. In 1944, the Polish Government-in-Exile approved, and the underground in Poland undertook, unilateral political and military actions aimed at establishing an independent Polish authority. However, these efforts were ultimately thwarted by the advancing Soviets. The Polish communists established the State National Council in 1943/44 in occupied Warsaw and the Polish Committee of National Liberation in July 1944 in Lublin, following the arrival of the Soviet army. In the final territorial settlements, the Soviet Union retained the eastern half of pre-war Poland, compensating Poland by granting it the greater southern portion of the eliminated German East Prussia and shifting the country westward to the Oder-Neisse line, effectively at Germany's expense.

Frequently Asked Questions about Nazi Germany and World War II in Poland

What was Nazi Germany?

Nazi Germany refers to the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. It was officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich.

When did Adolf Hitler come to power?

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, and through a series of political maneuvers and the death of President Hindenburg, he consolidated all power to become the dictator (Führer) by August 1934.

What was the "Third Reich"?

The "Third Reich" was the name used by the Nazis to refer to their regime, implying it was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire and German Empire. Hitler envisioned it lasting a thousand years, but it only endured for 12.

How did Nazi Germany lead to World War II?

Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy of territorial expansion, including the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria (Anschluss), and the seizure of parts of Czechoslovakia. The invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, following a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, officially triggered World War II in Europe.

What was the Holocaust?

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored genocide of approximately six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. It involved mass murder, forced labor, and extermination in camps like Auschwitz.

What was the impact of World War II on Poland?

Poland suffered catastrophic human and material losses, being invaded and divided by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. It was entirely occupied by Germany after 1941, becoming a central site for the Holocaust and the systematic murder of Jews and ethnic Poles. Millions of its citizens perished, and its post-war borders were significantly altered.

What was the Polish Government-in-Exile?

The Polish Government-in-Exile was the legitimate government of Poland that fled to France and then Britain after the 1939 invasion. It directed the extensive Polish Underground State and its armed wing, the Home Army, which fiercely resisted German occupation.

What was the Warsaw Uprising?

The Warsaw Uprising was a major armed revolt by the Polish Home Army in August 1944, aiming to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It also sought to establish an independent Polish authority before the arrival of the Soviet army, but it was brutally suppressed by the Germans and ultimately failed.

How did World War II end for Germany?

Germany faced a two-front war, being pushed back by the Soviet Union from the east and the Western Allies from the west after the invasion of France. Extensive aerial bombing crippled its infrastructure, and with Hitler's refusal to surrender, the nation fought until its ultimate capitulation in May 1945. Surviving Nazi leaders were later tried for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

What was the "Western betrayal" concerning Poland?

Many Poles refer to the "Western betrayal" as the perception that the Western Allies (the US and UK) effectively conceded to Joseph Stalin's demands regarding Poland's post-war borders and government during conferences like Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam, leading to the establishment of a Soviet-backed communist government in Poland and the loss of its eastern territories to the Soviet Union.