National Socialism (common English short form Nazism, German: Nationalsozialismus) was the ideology practiced by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany. It is a unique variety of fascism that incorporates biological racism and antisemitism. Nazism was founded out of elements of the far-right racist völkisch German nationalist movement and the violent anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary culture that fought against the uprisings of communist revolutionaries in post-World War I Germany. The ideology was developed as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Nazis' paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (SA) engaged in violent attacks upon the movement's opponents, particularly communists, Jews, and social democrats. The Nazis promoted German territorial expansionism to be Lebensraum ("living space") for German settlers.

Nazism advocated the supremacy of the claimed Aryan master race over all other races. It claimed that Jews are the greatest threat to the Aryan race. The Nazis claimed that Jews are a parasitic race that attached itself to various movements and systems to maintain its self-preservation, such as capitalism, the Enlightenment, industrialisation, liberalism, liberal democracy, Marxism, and trade unionism. To. To maintain the purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally disabled. Other groups deemed "degenerate" and "asocial" who were not targeted for immediate extermination, but received exclusionary treatment by the Nazi state, included: homosexuals, blacks, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents.

Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.

A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.