The National Socialist German Workers Party, ( , or NSDAP, commonly known as the Nazi Party), was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945. It was known as the German Workers Party (DAP) before the name was changed in 1920.

The party's leader, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler rapidly established a totalitarian regime known as the Third Reich, under which the party gained almost unlimited power. Nazi ideology stressed the racial purity of the German people and the need to destroy perceived "racial enemies." To carry out these beliefs, the party and the German state which it controlled organized the systemic murder of approximately six million Jews (in what has become known as the Holocaust), and about 5 million other people, mainly Russians, Poles and Roma. Many thousands of political enemies of the Nazi regime, along with homosexuals, people with disabilities, and religious minorities were also killed. Hitler's desire to create a territorial empire at the expense of Germany's neighbours was the principal cause of World War II, in which more than 60 million people died.