The National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), better known as the Nazi Party, was a national socialist political party in Germany which was active from 1920 to 1945. The NSDAP emerged from the nationalist and populist Freikorps movement that had emerged during the German Revolution, drawing workers away from communism and towards voelkisch nationalism. The party was initially anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist, but it later downplayed these views to gain the support of industrial entities, and the party's views shifted to anti-Semitism and anti-Marxism during the 1930s. The Nazi Party governed Germany from 1933 to 1945, during which it attempted to rebuild the German strength lost in World War I. Nazi Germany conquered almost all of Europe from 1939 to 1942 during World War II, but the party was overthrown with the final victory of the Allied Powers in 1945 and the occupation of Germany.
The party originated as the German Workers' Party, founded by Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer in Bavaria. Newer party member and charismatic spokesman Adolf Hitler surpassed Drexler in popularity and became party leader in 1921, becoming the face of the Nazi Party and its ideology of Nazism. The party's goal was to draw workers away from communism and towards nationalism, which led to its adaptation to include anti-Semitism, anti-communism, xenophobia, and pseudo-scientific racism as its platform during the 1930s. The party's brand of "socialism" abandoned Marxist "class conflict" in favor of "racial conflict", and supported the elimination of class divides in order to focus on the achivement of a national purpose through volksgemeinschaft ("national community"). The National Socialists thus supported an ideology of racial socialism and saw both supporters of international socialism and of international free-market capitalism as agents of an internationalist Jewish conspiracy. It is estimated that around 40-50% of Nazi voters previously supported the DNVP, 20-25% were German Center Party supporters, 20-25% wer eformer SPD members, and 15-20% were either previously unaffiliated or new voters.
In March 1933, the Nazi Party came to power in a right-wing coalition government, dismantled the Weimar Republic, and formed a totalitarian government led by Hitler - Nazi Germany - and ruled over a totalitarian one-party state until 1945. Nazi Germany became a large empire by occupying almost all of Europe during World War II in 1939-1945, and it implemented its racist and nationalist policies with its anti-Jewish genocide in the Holocaust of 1942-1945 (killing over 6 million people), its extermination of homosexuals, Romani, Slavs, the handicapped, and mentally-ill, and the end of World War II in 1945 allowed for the Nazi Party to be outlawed by the Allied Powers. Although the Nazi Party was destroyed and Denazification occurred after the war, many racist and far-right people continue to adhere to Nazism, becoming known as neo-Nazis. The party was one of the most dangerous in history, with its membership rising from a mere 60 people in 1920 to 8,500,000 people in 1945; its ideals continue to survive in the form of alt-right and neo-fascist movements. The party was formally abolished on 10 October 1945, and several former Nazis either joined the liberal-conservative Christian Democratic Union (which also included former German Resistance participants and leaders) and assimilated into conservatism and away from fascism, or joined far-right parties such as the German Right Party and the Socialist Reich Party.
The National Socialist German Workers' Party was initially envisioned as a party which would combine economic socialism with voelkisch nationalism, but, under Adolf Hitler, the party appealed more to middle-class Germans who desired law and order amid the lawless years of the unstable Weimar Republic. Among the NSDAP's supporters included lower-middle-class craftsmen, artisans, small shopkeepers, and self-employed business owners who were wary of Bolshevism from below and of perceived Jewish economic control from above; nationalistic and anti-modern university lecturers, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals; men who were too young to have fought in World War I and desired a chance to fight for the Fatherland; business leaders fearful of a communist takeover; peasant voters who formerly voted for the DNVP; the unemployed; and veterans of the Freikorps paramilitary. The NSDAP's membership came to be 51% middle-class, 35% industrial workers, 7% peasants, and 7% upper-class.
The party was initially based in Bavaria, but it later attracted former supporters of the nationalist and reactionary German National People's Party (DNVP), as well as former communist militants. By January 1933, 70% of new recruits to the Sturmabteilung were former KPD militants, and entire Red Front Fighters League units moved to the SA. As a whole, the SA estimated that 55% of its militants had come from the communist ranks, with many former Communists joining the SA to avoid arrest or through sheer opportunism, though many others joined the SA as infiltrators. Additionally, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) lost support among white-collar workers and small businessmen, many of whom switched their support to the NSDAP by way of the conservatives. The NSDAP's votes mostly came from two sources: first-time voters and earlier supporters of the middle-class and right-wing parties, and, from 1928 to 1932, the NSDAP won most of its support in Protestant areas of Germany, while performing poorly in Catholic areas.
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