The National Socialist German Workers

The National Socialist German Workers', commonly known in English as the Nazi Party (from the German Nazi, abbreviated from the pronunciation of Nationalsozialist[4]), was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945. It was known as the German Workers' Party (DAP) prior to a change of name in 1920.
The party's last leader, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by president Paul von Hindenburg in 1933. Hitler rapidly established a totalitarian regime known as the Third Reich.
Nazi ideology stressed the failures of laissez-faire capitalism, communism, economic liberalism, and democracy; advocated Positive Christianity; supported the "racial purity of the German people" and that of other Northwestern Europeans; and claimed itself as the protector of Germany from Jewish influence and corruption. The Nazis persecuted those they perceived as either race enemies or Lebensunwertes Leben, that is "life unworthy of living". This included Jews, Slavs, Roma, and so-called "Mischlinge" along with Communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, and others. The persecution reached its climax when the party and the German state which it controlled organized the systematic murder of approximately six million Jews and six million other people from the other targeted groups, in what has become known as the Holocaust. Hitler's desire to build a German empire through expansionist policies led to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
Origins and early existence: 1918–1923
The party grew out of smaller political groups with a nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I. In the early months of 1918, a party called the Freier Ausschuss für einen deutschen Arbeiterfrieden ("Free Committee for a German Workers' Peace") was created in Bremen, Germany. On 7 March 1918, Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist, formed a branch of this league in Munich called the Committee of Independent Workmen. Drexler was a local locksmith in...