German colonial empire
After the First World War of 1914–1918, the victorious allies divided up the German colonial empire and much of the Ottoman Empire between themselves as League of Nations mandates, grouping these territories into three classes according to how quickly it was deemed that they could prepare for independence. The empires of Russia and Austria collapsed in 1917–1918. Nazi Germany set up short-lived colonial systems ("Reichskommissariate", "Generalgouvernement") in Eastern Europe in the early 1940s.