Hitler and his Nazi party dominated Germany for only 12 years. But during that short period they not only brought about a World War in which tens of millions of troops and civilians died, but were responsible for a cold-blooded policy of mass extermination directed against the Jews and other racial groups which the Nazis considered subhuman in which many more millions were slaughtered. When the Nazis had finally been defeated, the victorious alliance against them took the unprecedented step of putting their surviving leaders on trial at Nuremberg for ‘Crimes against Humanity’.
