Colonia Dignidad was an isolated colony established in post-World War II Chile by emigrant Germans which became notorious for the internment, torture, and murder of dissidents during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s while under the leadership of German emigrant preacher Paul Schäfer. Colonia Dignidad has been described as a "state within a state".

German Chileans are Chileans descended from German immigrants, about 30,000 of whom arrived in Chile between 1846 and 1914. Most of these were from Bavaria, Baden and the Rhineland, and also from Bohemia in present-day Czech Republic, which were traditionally Catholic. A smaller number of Lutherans immigrated to Chile following the failed revolutions of 1848.