Expressionism first appeared in northern Europe a few years before the First World War, and developed across the whole of Europe until the mid-1920s, when the Nazi regime banned it in Germany, and later in the occupied territories, on the grounds that it was "degenerate art". Expressionism is the projection of a subjectivity that tends to distort reality in order to inspire an emotional response in the viewer. Representations are often based on distressing visions, distorting and stylising reality to achieve the greatest expressive intensity.