where did the name nazi come from?
National Socialist Party
contradiction
 The SS and its accompanying principles represented the realization of Nazi ideology and played a crucial role in the extermination of European Jews that followed the Nazis ' rise to power . As historian Gerald Reitlinger states , while the idealism and machinery of the SS as a state within a state will all be forgotten , their acts of " ... racial transplantations , the concentration camps , the interrogation cells of the Gestapo , the medical experiments of the living , the mass reprisals , the manhunts for slave labor and the racial exterminations will be remembered forever . " 

entailment
 Common English terms are " Nazi Germany " and " Third Reich " . The latter , adopted by Nazi propaganda , was first used in a 1923 book by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck . The book counted the Holy Roman Empire ( 962 – 1806 ) as the first Reich and the German Empire ( 1871 – 1918 ) as the second . The Nazis used it to legitimize their regime as a successor state . After they seized power , Nazi propaganda retroactively referred to the Weimar Republic as the Zwischenreich ( " Interim Reich " ) . 

contradiction
 On Hitler 's behalf , Himmler formed the Einsatzgruppen and built extermination camps . As facilitator and overseer of the concentration camps , Himmler directed the killing of some six million Jews , between 200 @,@ 000 and 500 @,@ 000 Romani people , and other victims ; the total number of civilians killed by the regime is estimated at eleven to fourteen million people . Most of them were Polish and Soviet citizens . 

contradiction
 Nazi racial policies , including the notion that people who were racially inferior had no right to live , date back to the earliest days of the party ; Hitler discusses this in Mein Kampf . Somewhere around the time of the German declaration of war on the United States in December 1941 , Hitler finally resolved that the Jews of Europe were to be " exterminated " . Heydrich arranged a meeting , held on 20 January 1942 at Wannsee , a suburb of Berlin . Attended by top Nazi officials , it was used to outline the plans for the " final solution to the Jewish question " . Heydrich detailed how those Jews able to work would be worked to death ; those unable to work would be killed outright . Heydrich calculated the number of Jews to be killed at 11 million , and told the attendees that Hitler had placed Himmler in charge of the plan . 

entailment
 The term first appeared on September 20 , 1939 in a decree by the Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst chief SS @-@ Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich to all state police departments : 
