The 1919 constitution of the Weimar Republic did provide for the possibility of creating a national police force, should the necessity arise, but it was only in the Nazi era that state police forces were unified under central control and a national police force created (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA). The police became a tool of the centralized state and the Nazi party. Following the defeat of 1945, Germany was divided; in 1949 the three western zones were turned into the West Germany , the Soviet zone became East Germany.