Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) is an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP); National Socialist German Workers Party).

He is chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945.

Hitler is at the center of Nazi Germany, the Second World War in Europe, and the Holocaust.

Hitler is a decorated veteran of the First World War.

He joins the German Workers' Party (precursor of the NSDAP) in 1919, and becomes leader of the NSDAP in 1921.

In 1923, he attempts a coup in Munich to seize power.

The failed coup results in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he writes his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).

After his release in 1924, Hitler gains popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, anti-Jewish sentiments, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda.

Hitler frequently denounces international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy.

Hitler's Nazi Party becomes the largest democratically elected party in the German Reichstag, leading to his appointment as chancellor in 1933.

Following fresh elections won by his coalition, the Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, which begins the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of National Socialism.

Hitler aims to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he sees as the injustice of the post-Great War international order dominated by Britain and France.

His first six years in power result in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the denunciation of restrictions imposed on Germany after the Great War, and the annexation of territories that are home to millions of ethnic Germans, actions which give him significant popular support.

Hitler actively seeks Lebensraum ("living space") for the German people.

His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the primary cause of the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe.

He directs large-scale rearmament and on September 1, 1939, invades Poland, resulting in British and French declarations of war on Germany.

In June 1941, Hitler orders an invasion of the Soviet Union.

By the end of 1941 German forces and their European allies occupy most of Europe and North Africa.

Failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forces Germany onto the defensive and it suffers a series of escalating defeats, partly because of Hitler's countless military blunders.

In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler marries his longtime lover, Eva Braun.

On April 30, 1945, less than two days later, the two commit suicide to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses are burned.

Under Hitler's leadership and racially motivated ideology, the regime is widely considered responsible for the genocide of at least 5.5 million Jews, and millions of other victims whom he and his followers deemed racially inferior.

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