On January 30,1933, Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor, the most powerful position in the German government. Hitler was the leader of the right-winged National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi for short); by 1933 it was one strongest parties in Germany.
Once in power, Hitler moved quickly to end German democracy. He convinced his cabinet to invoke emergency clauses of the Constitution which permitted the suspension of individual freedoms of the press, speech, and assembly. Special security forces the Special State Police (the Gestapo), the Storm Troopers (S.A.), and the Security Police (S.S.) murdered or arrested leaders of opposition political parties (communists, socialists, and liberals). The Enabling Act of March 23, 1933, forced through a Reichstag already purged of many political opponents, gave dictorical powers to Hitler.
Also in 1933, the Nazis began to put into practice their racial ideology. Echoing ideas popular in Germany as well as most other western nations well before the 1930's, the Nazis believed that the Germans were "racially superior" and that there was a struggle for survival between them and "inferior races." They saw Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and the handicapped as a serious biological threat to the purity of the "German (Aryan) Race," which is what the called the master race.