When Chancellor Konrad Adenauer requested to reintroduce the song as the national anthem of West Germany in 1952, he made it very clear that only the third verse would be sung. It begins with "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit / Für das deutsche Vaterland," which translates to "Unity and justice and freedom / for the German fatherland."
That's why the Allies prohibited the public singing of the "Lied der Deutschen" after they vanquished Nazi Germany to bring World War II to an end in 1945. When Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, the Nazi regime misused the first verse - "Deutschland über alles" - to emphasize what they saw as Germany's superiority to all other nations. In 1922, the "Lied der Deutschen," still in its entirety at the time, was officially declared the national anthem of the Weimar Republic.
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