The Eternal Jew (German: Der ewige Jude) was the title of an exhibition of antisemitism displayed at the Library of the German Museum in Munich from 8 November 1937 to 31 January 1938. The displays, with photographs and caricatures, focused on antisemitic canards falsely accusing Jews of Bolshevising Nazi Germany. It was best exemplified in the exhibition poster presenting an 'eastern' Jew wearing a kaftan and holding gold coins in one hand and a whip in the other. The exhibition attracted 412,300 visitors, over 5,000 per day.The content was polemical and grossly misleading, being based on Nazi propaganda rather than on truthful or factual material. Other canards promoted by the exhibition included the myths of Jewish wealth and avoidance of work, false allegations of Jewish criminality and other blatant racial stereotypes. It was designed to support their Nazi antisemitic doctrines with caricatures of alleged Jewish physiognomy and looks, and examples of famous Jews such as Albert Einstein and other well-known scientists, authors and intellectuals, such as the mistaken inclusion of Charlie Chaplin.

The exhibition was sponsored by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, and who held well-known extreme antisemitic opinions. He had a long history of rabid antisemitism before the Nazis gained power in 1933, and he organized a boycott of Jewish shops in the same year, as well as notorious book burnings of Jewish authors among many others. He initiated the destruction of numerous synagogues during Kristallnacht in November 1938, and as a result of which many Jews were killed by Nazi mobs, or deported by the thousands to Nazi concentration camps. Nazi antisemitism ended with the Holocaust and the murder of about 270,000 Jews in ghettos, Nazi concentration camps and Nazi death camps, mainly but not exclusively in eastern Europe. The Nazis had, at the time of the exhibition, already removed citizen rights from German Jews, and imposed very strict racist laws against Jews marrying so-called "Aryans" under the Nuremberg Laws as well as denying Jews the right to work in many professions, such as the law, medicine and teaching. Many had been evicted from their homes as Berlin was being developed by Albert Speer and most would be evacuated to the east and murdered there. After World War II began in September 1939, such antisemitic policies were extended to occupied countries, and indeed developed much further by killing squads (or Einsatzgruppen) in Poland for example, who targeted Jews specifically.

After the exhibition ended in Munich, it was displayed in Vienna from 2 August until 23 October 1938 and subsequently in Berlin from 12 November 1938 until 31 January 1939.

Nazism ( NA(H)T-see-iz-əm), the common name in English for National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus, German: [natsi̯oˈnaːlzotsi̯aˌlɪsmʊs] (listen)), is the ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP; or National Socialist German Workers' Party in English) in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism. The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. It incorporates fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and the use of eugenics into its creed. Its extreme nationalism originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist neopagan Völkisch movement which had been a prominent aspect of German nationalism since the late 19th century, and it was strongly influenced by the Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged after Germany's defeat in World War I, from which came the party's underlying "cult of violence". Nazism subscribed to pseudo-scientific theories of a racial hierarchy and social Darwinism, identifying the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race. It aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous German society based on racial purity which represented a people's community (Volksgemeinschaft). The Nazis aimed to unite all Germans living in historically German territory, as well as gain additional lands for German expansion under the doctrine of Lebensraum and exclude those whom they deemed either Community Aliens or "inferior" races.

The term "National Socialism" arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, as an alternative to both Marxist international socialism and free-market capitalism. Nazism rejected the Marxist concepts of class conflict and universal equality, opposed cosmopolitan internationalism, and sought to convince all parts of the new German society to subordinate their personal interests to the "common good", accepting political interests as the main priority of economic organisation, which tended to match the general outlook of collectivism or communitarianism rather than economic socialism. The Nazi Party's precursor, the pan-German nationalist and antisemitic German Workers' Party (DAP), was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party to attract workers away from left-wing parties such as the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Communists (KPD), and Adolf Hitler assumed control of the organisation. The National Socialist Program, or "25 Points", was adopted in 1920 and called for a united Greater Germany that would deny citizenship to Jews or those of Jewish descent, while also supporting land reform and the nationalisation of some industries. In Mein Kampf, literally "My Struggle", published in 1925–1926, Hitler outlined the antisemitism and anti-communism at the heart of his political philosophy as well as his disdain for representative democracy and his belief in Germany's right to territorial expansion.The Nazi Party won the greatest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, making them the largest party in the legislature by far, albeit still short of an outright majority. Because none of the parties were willing or able to put together a coalition government, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933 by President Paul von Hindenburg through the support and connivance of traditional conservative nationalists who believed that they could control him and his party. With the use of emergency presidential decrees by Hindenburg and a change in the Weimar Constitution which allowed the Cabinet to rule by direct decree, bypassing both Hindenburg and the Reichstag, the Nazis soon established a one-party state.

The Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schutzstaffel (SS) functioned as the paramilitary organisations of the Nazi Party. Using the SS for the task, Hitler purged the party's more socially and economically radical factions in the mid-1934 Night of the Long Knives, including the leadership of the SA. After the death of President Hindenburg, political power was concentrated in Hitler's hands and he became Germany's head of state as well as the head of the government, with the title of Führer, meaning "leader". From that point, Hitler was effectively the dictator of Nazi Germany – also known as the Third Reich – under which Jews, political opponents and other "undesirable" elements were marginalised, imprisoned or murdered. During World War II, many millions of people—including around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe—were eventually exterminated in a genocide which became known as the Holocaust. Following Germany's defeat in World War II and the discovery of the full extent of the Holocaust, Nazi ideology became universally disgraced. It is widely regarded as immoral and evil, with only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, describing themselves as followers of National Socialism.