The Allied Control Council - a cooperative governing authority for Germany comprising the United States, Britain, France, and the USSR - abolished and permanently prohibited the Nazi Party on October 10, 1945. But the Allied Control Council didn't officially exist until the end of August 1945 and didn't promulgate any "laws" with binding force throughout Germany until September 20. ("Law No. 2" banned the Nazi Party.)

Prior to that point, each of the Allies had the power to make their own rules within their own zones of occupation, though they had committed themselves in principle to the joint government of occupied Germany as early as the Moscow Conference of October 1943. Each power had their own approach to the process of "denazification," of which the prohibition of the Party itself was an essential part. In the spring of 1945, for example, President Truman issued JSC 1067, a directive to Eisenhower regarding U.S. policy in the American zone of occupation, which required that Eisenhower "assure the prompt effectuation" of "[a] Proclamation dissolving the Nazi Party, its formations, affiliated associations and supervised organizations."