Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was
an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party
(German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP);
National Socialist German Workers Party). He was chancellor of Germany
from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und
Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. He was at the centre of the founding
of Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers'
Party (precursor of the NSDAP) in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP
in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall
Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment,
during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After
his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the
Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and
anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his
appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic
into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the
totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish
a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.Hitler's foreign and domestic policies had the goal of seizing Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germanic people. He directed the rearmament of Germany and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939, resulting in the outbreak of World War II in
