Germany

The German Empire, proclaimed at Versailles on 18 January 1871, united the North German Confederation with the southern German kingdoms of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden under Hohenzollern Imperial leadership. It was a federal constitutional monarchy in which Prussia dominated by virtue of its size and population. Under Bismarck's chancellorship (1871–1890) it was a stabilising conservative force in Europe; after his dismissal it pursued an increasingly aggressive Weltpolitik that contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The German state under Adolf Hitler's National Socialist dictatorship from 30 January 1933 to 8 May 1945. Hitler combined the offices of President and Chancellor after Hindenburg's death in August 1934, assuming the title Führer. The regime dismantled the Weimar Republic's democratic institutions, imposed racial laws, rearmed in violation of Versailles, annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia, and launched the Second World War in September 1939. Its defining crimes were the Holocaust — the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of others — and the conduct of a racial war of annihilation on the Eastern Front. Germany surrendered unconditionally on 8 May 1945; it was divided into four occupation zones that became the Federal Republic and German Democratic Republic.

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