When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they regarded Dix as a degenerate artist and had him sacked from his post as an art teacher at the Dresden Academy. He later moved to Lake Constance in the southwest of Germany. Dix's paintings "The Trench" and "War Cripples" were exhibited in the state-sponsored Munich 1937 exhibition of degenerate art, "Entartete Kunst". "War Cripples" was later burned. "The Trench" was long thought to have been destroyed too, but there are indications the work survived until at least 1940. Its later whereabouts are unknown. It may have been looted during the confusion at the end of the war. It has been called 'perhaps the most famous picture in post-war Europe ... a masterpiece of unspeakable horror.