Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was a statesman and chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, ruling with absolute power. As head of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party), he founded the Third Reich by doing away with the Weimar Republic. Hitler also created the SS (SchutzStaffel), which was an elite unit of armed men that served as his personal body guard. He was also a World War I infantry soldier and recipient of the Iron Cross. Before rising to power, he wrote 'Mein Kampf'.
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, to Alois Hitler, a custom official, and Klara Pölzl, in Braunau, Austria. As a young man, he was a watercolor painter in Vienna, painting urban and countryside landscapes. However, he was unable to make a living out of it. In 1913, he moved to Munich. During World War I, he was a corporal in the German Army. From 1919, he was one of the leading members of the so-called National Socialist German Workers’ Party, becoming its head in 1921. On November 8 and 9, 1923, together with General Erich von Ludendorff, Hitler attempted a coup d’état in Munich. However, he failed to seize the power of Bavaria and he was sent to prison, where he wrote 'Mein Kampf', in which he expressed his political and philosophical ideas.
In the struggle for power, Adolf Hitler made use of unrestrained demagogy, provocation, blackmail, and even murder. Hitler and his henchmen were financed by German businessmen as he carried out political propaganda under the banner of a struggle against the Versailles Treaty of 1919. He succeeded in kindling chauvinism in the country and engendering massive support for themselves among the population. On January 30, 1933, President P. von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor. After Hindenburg’s death, Hitler concentrated all legislative and executive power in his own hands, merging the posts of president and chancellor in August 1934.
On March 12, 1938, Hitler annexed Austria, and, on October 1, that year, he invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1939, Hitler signed the “Pact of Steel” with Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), and the two countries became known as the Axis nations; Japan would join the Axis in 1940. Finally, Great Britain and France decided that if Hitler carried out his threatened invasion of Poland, they would go to war with Germany. Nevertheless, on September 1, 1939, the Führer launched Fall Weiss, which was the German invasion of Poland. As a result, Britain and France soon declared war on Germany.
During World War II, Hitler was the leader and one of the principal organizers of the massive extermination of innocent civilians and prisoners of war and of the monstrous atrocities committed by the fascists in German-occupied countries and especially in the temporarily seized territories of the USSR. In 1945, amid the defeat of fascist Germany, the disintegration of the fascist state, and the entry of Soviet troops into Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in the bunker of the Berlin imperial chancellery on April 30, 1945.
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