World War II: Adolf Hitler issues his "Nero Decree" ordering all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities, and communications facilities in Germany to be destroyed.

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany during the Nazi period from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the start of the Second World War. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.

The Nero Decree was issued by Adolf Hitler on 19 March 1945, ordering the destruction of German infrastructure to prevent its use by Allied forces as they penetrated deep within Germany. It was officially titled Decree Concerning Demolitions in the Reich Territory and has subsequently become known as the Nero Decree, after the Roman Emperor Nero, who, according to an apocryphal story, engineered the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. The decree was deliberately disobeyed by Albert Speer shortly before the fall of the Nazi regime.

Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.