The Nazis unleashed a war on the world which resulted in the deaths of countless millions. During the twelve years which the Third Reich lasted, they wreaked devastation on an unprecedented scale, including the genocidal mass murder of civilians. But where did their murderous ideology come from, and how did they seize power?

Defeated in the First World War, Germany was humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles, forced to pay ruinous reparations and deprived of large tracts of land. When the fragile Weimar Republic was plunged into chaos and hyperinflation by the worldwide Great Depression, Hitler exploited fears of communism to have himself appointed Chancellor in 1933, before assuming sole executive power as Freer shortly afterwards.

Fascinating photographs reveal key events in the Nazis' rise and fall: from Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, in 1938, during which synagogues were burned, businesses wrecked and thousands of Jews sent to concentration camps, to the Blitzkrieg which quickly overran most of Europe; from the Battle of Britain in the west to the Holocaust and total war on the Eastern Front; and from the 1944 D-Day landings on the coast of Normandy to the last days of the Reich in the ruins of Ber