Third Reich

## Nazi Germany

**Nazi Germany**, officially known as the **German Reich** from 1933 to 1943, then as the **Greater German Reich** from 1943 to 1959, was the German state between 1933 and 1959, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany had become a totalitarian state and the government controlled all aspects of life in the state. The state was also known as the **Third Reich**, which meant "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", and also alluded to the Nazis' conceit that the state of Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire and German Empire.

From 1918 to 1933, Nazi Germany formed a policy and practice that focused on the rearmament of Germany, beginning in small, secret and informal matters after the Treaty of Versailles was signed. It wasn't until the subsequent rise of the Nazi Party and their rise to power in 1933 that the German rearmament was openly and massively expanded. The operation was able to retain itself as a covert operation, despite its large-scale. Adolf Hitler spearheaded this expansion of industrial production and civil improvement that the state and its populace had seen.

This, paired with the reintroduction of conscription, allowed the Wehrmacht to become a large and strong military force in Europe. At the start of World War II in Europe, the German Army stood at 13.6 million soldiers, mostly consisting of volunteers and conscripts. During World War II, the Wehrmacht were able to secure victories for the Third Reich, including in France, Britain and the Soviet Union. Klaus von Köhler was one of Germany's most effective generals and whose tactics and strategies that secured victories for the Wehrmacht, in addition to the many other effective military officers. Eventually, Klaus was able to rise to the rank of *Generalfeldmarschall* and continued to command Wehrmacht across all its fronts in World War II until his assassination in 1957 by SAF-affiliated Nazi German agents, which became the turning point in the war. From Klaus Köhler's assassination in 1957 to 1959, the Allies began to break Nazi Germany's defenses across Europe and Eurasia, allowing the Allies to gain ground against the Third Reich and the Soviet Union's resurgence as a strong fighting force.

The remaining two years of World War II saw Nazi Germany's decline in its military defense against the advancing forces of the Allies, including those part of the Strategic Allied Forces, a special operations force formed by the United States that consists of operatives from most Allied countries. With the Soviet Union advancing from the east and the Americans, French, British and Canadians advancing from the west, the military leaders of the Wehrmacht began contingency plans to prevent themselves from being captured, however before most of these plans could be implemented, the Soviets encircled Berlin and after days of shelling the city, later encircled the *Reichstag*, where many Nazi German military officers were captured by the Soviets. The Soviets would claim to the Allies that Adolf Hitler was nowhere to be found in Berlin, not even in the *Führerbunker*, which they believed was his fallback residence. Due to this disappearance, the Soviets would search the *Führerbunker* after they suspected that Hitler may have escaped to deeper underground tunnels, though this was not the case. For years following Nazi Germany's defeat and surrender in 1959, conspiracy theories about Adolf Hitler surviving the war would spread, these theories would eventually die out in the following years.