The Third Reich was the name Hitler and the Nazi Party gave to the dictatorship
that began in 1933 and ended twelve years later with the utter destruction of Ge
rmany and Hitler's suicide. Defined by the messianic, iconic figure of the Fuhre
r, the Third Reich was one of the pivotal periods of the modern age. From small
beginnings in the 1920s, Hitler's movement came to dominate German society in th
e 1930s, bringing with it the militarization of German society, the apparatus of
state terror and a policy of violent discrimination against political opponents
, the so-called 'asocials': gypsies, homosexuals, and, above all, the Jews.
