The National Socialist German Workers' Party (, abbreviated NSDAP), commonly referred to in English as the Nazi Party , was a political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that practised Nazism. Its predecessor, the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany. The party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although such aspects were later downplayed in order to gain the support of industrial entities, and in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.