National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP)

The racist, antisemitic, and nationalist National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP, Nazi Party) was a radical far-right political party founded in 1920. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the NSDAP ruled Germany from 1933 until Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945.

The NSDAP platform was formulated in 1920 as a "25-point program" characterized by extreme nationalism and racist antisemitism. Not meaningfully “socialist,” Hitler and the Nazis leveraged propaganda to attract working class voters resentful of harsh economic conditions in post-World War I Germany. Nazis targeted Jews from the party’s origins in the early 1920s.

The NSDAP was formed out of the earlier German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or DAP). Following the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hitler was sentenced for treason and the NSDAP was outlawed. Its members reorganized as the National Socialist Freedom Party (Nationalsozialistische Freiheitspartei, or NSFP), which existed until Hitler reconstituted the NSDAP in February 1925, following his release from prison.

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