Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the colloquial English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). The name Third Reich (Drittes Reich, ‘Third Reich’) refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German Empire of 1871–1918. In German, the state was known as Deutsches Reich (German Reich) until 1943, when its official name became Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich).

In 1934, Germany's borders were still determined by the Treaty of Versailles, the peace treaty between Germany and the Allied Powers at the end of World War I; to the north, the state was bounded by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east, it was divided into two and bordered Lithuania, The Free City of Danzig, Poland and Czechoslovakia; to the south, it bordered Austria and Switzerland and to the west, it touched France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Rhineland and Saarland. These borders changed after Germany regained control of the Rhineland, Saarland and the Memelland and annexed Austria, the Sudetenland and Bohemia and Moravia. Germany also expanded during World War II which began in 1939 after Germany invaded Poland and the UK and France declared war on Germany.

Under the Nazi regime, millions of Jews and others were persecuted and murdered, particularly during the Second World War, amidst the Holocaust. Despite an alliance with other nations that together formed the Axis powers, by 1945, Germany had lost the war and ceased to exist. It was occupied by the victors.

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