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Adolf Hitler

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 30, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s  Nazi Party , was one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century. After serving with the German military in World War I , Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting during the Weimar Republic to rise through the ranks of the Nazi Party.

In a series of ruthless and violent actions—including the Reichstag Fire and the Night of Long Knives—Hitler took absolute power in Germany by 1933. Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of  World War II , and by 1941, Nazi forces had used “blitzkrieg” military tactics to occupy much of Europe. Hitler’s virulent  anti-Semitism  and obsessive pursuit of Aryan supremacy fueled the murder of some 6 million Jews, along with other victims of the  Holocaust . After the tide of war turned against him, Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker in April 1945.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a small Austrian town near the Austro-German frontier. After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

Not wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps as a civil servant, he began struggling in secondary school and eventually dropped out. Alois died in 1903, and Adolf pursued his dream of being an artist, though he was rejected from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.

After his mother, Klara, died in 1908, Hitler moved to Vienna, where he pieced together a living painting scenery and monuments and selling the images. Lonely, isolated and a voracious reader, Hitler became interested in politics during his years in Vienna, and developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

Military Career of Adolf Hitler

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, in the German state of Bavaria. When World War I broke out the following summer, he successfully petitioned the Bavarian king to be allowed to volunteer in a reserve infantry regiment.

Deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, Hitler served throughout the Great War and won two decorations for bravery, including the rare Iron Cross First Class, which he wore to the end of his life.

Hitler was wounded twice during the conflict: He was hit in the leg during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and temporarily blinded by a British gas attack near Ypres in 1918. A month later, he was recuperating in a hospital at Pasewalk, northeast of Berlin, when news arrived of the armistice and Germany’s defeat in World War I .

Like many Germans, Hitler came to believe the country’s devastating defeat could be attributed not to the Allies, but to insufficiently patriotic “traitors” at home—a myth that would undermine the post-war Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler’s rise.

After Hitler returned to Munich in late 1918, he joined the small German Workers’ Party, which aimed to unite the interests of the working class with a strong German nationalism. His skilled oratory and charismatic energy helped propel him in the party’s ranks, and in 1920 he left the army and took charge of its propaganda efforts.

In one of Hitler’s strokes of propaganda genius, the newly renamed National Socialist German Workers Party, or  Nazi Party , adopted a version of the swastika—an ancient sacred symbol of  Hinduism , Jainism and Buddhism —as its emblem. Printed in a white circle on a red background, Hitler’s swastika would take on terrifying symbolic power in the years to come.

By the end of 1921, Hitler led the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty . Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich would join the Nazis, notably Ernst Röhm, who recruited the “strong arm” squads—known as the Sturmabteilung (SA)—which Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch 

On the evening of November 8, 1923, members of the SA and others forced their way into a large beer hall where another right-wing leader was addressing the crowd. Wielding a revolver, Hitler proclaimed the beginning of a national revolution and led marchers to the center of Munich, where they got into a gun battle with police.

Hitler fled quickly, but he and other rebel leaders were later arrested. Even though it failed spectacularly, the Beer Hall Putsch established Hitler as a national figure , and (in the eyes of many) a hero of right-wing nationalism.

'Mein Kampf' 

Tried for treason, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but would serve only nine months in the relative comfort of Landsberg Castle. During this period, he began to dictate the book that would become " Mein Kampf " (“My Struggle”), the first volume of which was published in 1925.

In it, Hitler expanded on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic views he had begun to develop in Vienna in his early twenties, and laid out plans for the Germany—and the world—he sought to create when he came to power.

Hitler would finish the second volume of "Mein Kampf" after his release, while relaxing in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden. It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler’s rise it became Germany’s best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there.

Hitler’s second book, “The Zweites Buch,” was written in 1928 and contained his thoughts on foreign policy. It was not published in his lifetime due to the poor initial sales of “Mein Kampf.” The first English translations of “The Zweites Buch” did not appear until 1962 and was published under the title “Hitler's Secret Book.” 

Obsessed with race and the idea of ethnic “purity,” Hitler saw a natural order that placed the so-called “Aryan race” at the top.

For him, the unity of the Volk (the German people) would find its truest incarnation not in democratic or parliamentary government, but in one supreme leader, or Führer.

" Mein Kampf " also addressed the need for Lebensraum (or living space): In order to fulfill its destiny, Germany should take over lands to the east that were now occupied by “inferior” Slavic peoples—including Austria, the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), Poland and Russia.

The Schutzstaffel (SS) 

By the time Hitler left prison, economic recovery had restored some popular support for the Weimar Republic, and support for right-wing causes like Nazism appeared to be waning.

Over the next few years, Hitler laid low and worked on reorganizing and reshaping the Nazi Party. He established the Hitler Youth  to organize youngsters, and created the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a more reliable alternative to the SA.

Members of the SS wore black uniforms and swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. (After 1929, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler , the SS would develop from a group of some 200 men into a force that would dominate Germany and terrorize the rest of occupied Europe during World War II .)

Hitler spent much of his time at Berchtesgaden during these years, and his half-sister, Angela Raubal, and her two daughters often joined him. After Hitler became infatuated with his beautiful blonde niece, Geli Raubal, his possessive jealousy apparently led her to commit suicide in 1931.

Devastated by the loss, Hitler would consider Geli the only true love affair of his life. He soon began a long relationship with Eva Braun , a shop assistant from Munich, but refused to marry her.

The worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 again threatened the stability of the Weimar Republic. Determined to achieve political power in order to affect his revolution, Hitler built up Nazi support among German conservatives, including army, business and industrial leaders.

The Third Reich

In 1932, Hitler ran against the war hero Paul von Hindenburg for president, and received 36.8 percent of the vote. With the government in chaos, three successive chancellors failed to maintain control, and in late January 1933 Hindenburg named the 43-year-old Hitler as chancellor, capping the stunning rise of an unlikely leader.

January 30, 1933 marked the birth of the Third Reich, or as the Nazis called it, the “Thousand-Year Reich” (after Hitler’s boast that it would endure for a millennium).

HISTORY Vault: Third Reich: The Rise

Rare and never-before-seen amateur films offer a unique perspective on the rise of Nazi Germany from Germans who experienced it. How were millions of people so vulnerable to fascism?

Reichstag Fire 

Though the Nazis never attained more than 37 percent of the vote at the height of their popularity in 1932, Hitler was able to grab absolute power in Germany largely due to divisions and inaction among the majority who opposed Nazism.

After a devastating fire at Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, in February 1933—possibly the work of a Dutch communist, though later evidence suggested Nazis set the  Reichstag fire  themselves—Hitler had an excuse to step up the political oppression and violence against his opponents.

On March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving full powers to Hitler and celebrating the union of National Socialism with the old German establishment (i.e., Hindenburg ).

That July, the government passed a law stating that the Nazi Party “constitutes the only political party in Germany,” and within months all non-Nazi parties, trade unions and other organizations had ceased to exist.

His autocratic power now secure within Germany, Hitler turned his eyes toward the rest of Europe.

In 1933, Germany was diplomatically isolated, with a weak military and hostile neighbors (France and Poland). In a famous speech in May 1933, Hitler struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, claiming Germany supported disarmament and peace.

But behind this appeasement strategy, the domination and expansion of the Volk remained Hitler’s overriding aim.

By early the following year, he had withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations and begun to militarize the nation in anticipation of his plans for territorial conquest.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 29, 1934, the infamous Night of the Long Knives , Hitler had Röhm, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and hundreds of other problematic members of his own party murdered, in particular troublesome members of the SA.

When the 86-year-old Hindenburg died on August 2, military leaders agreed to combine the presidency and chancellorship into one position, meaning Hitler would command all the armed forces of the Reich.

Persecution of Jews

On September 15, 1935, passage of the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship, and barred them from marrying or having relations with persons of “German or related blood.”

Though the Nazis attempted to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to placate the international community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics (in which German-Jewish athletes were not allowed to compete), additional decrees over the next few years disenfranchised Jews and took away their political and civil rights.

In addition to its pervasive anti-Semitism, Hitler’s government also sought to establish the cultural dominance of Nazism by burning books, forcing newspapers out of business, using radio and movies for propaganda purposes and forcing teachers throughout Germany’s educational system to join the party.

Much of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other targets occurred at the hands of the Geheime Staatspolizei (GESTAPO), or Secret State Police, an arm of the SS that expanded during this period.

Outbreak of World War II

In March 1936, against the advice of his generals, Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine.

Over the next two years, Germany concluded alliances with Italy and Japan, annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia—all essentially without resistance from Great Britain, France or the rest of the international community.

Once he confirmed the alliance with Italy in the so-called “Pact of Steel” in May 1939, Hitler then signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union . On September 1, 1939, Nazi troops invaded Poland, finally prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

Blitzkrieg 

After ordering the occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, Hitler adopted a plan proposed by one of his generals to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. The blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) attack began on May 10; Holland quickly surrendered, followed by Belgium.

German troops made it all the way to the English Channel, forcing British and French forces to evacuate en masse from Dunkirk in late May. On June 22, France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany.

Hitler had hoped to force Britain to seek peace as well, but when that failed he went ahead with his attacks on that country, followed by an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany’s alliance with Japan demanded that Hitler declare war on the United States as well.

At that point in the conflict, Hitler shifted his central strategy to focus on breaking the alliance of his main opponents (Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union) by forcing one of them to make peace with him.

Concentration Camps

Beginning in 1933, the SS had operated a network of concentration camps, including a notorious camp at Dachau , near Munich, to hold Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz -Birkenau in occupied Poland.

In addition to forced labor and mass execution, certain Jews at Auschwitz were targeted as the subjects of horrific medical experiments carried out by eugenicist Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death.” Mengele’s experiments focused on twins and exposed 3,000 child prisoners to disease, disfigurement and torture under the guise of medical research.

Though the Nazis also imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma (gypsies) and the disabled, above all they targeted Jews—some 6 million of whom were killed in German-occupied Europe by war’s end.

End of World War II

With defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad , as well as the landing of U.S. troops in North Africa by the end of 1942, the tide of the war turned against Germany.

As the conflict continued, Hitler became increasingly unwell, isolated and dependent on medications administered by his personal physician.

Several attempts were made on his life, including one that came close to succeeding in July 1944, when Col. Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that exploded during a conference at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia.

Within a few months of the successful Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces.

But after January 1945, he holed up in a bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. With Soviet forces closing in, Hitler made plans for a last-ditch resistance before finally abandoning that plan.

How Did Adolf Hitler Die?

At midnight on the night of April 28-29, Hitler married Eva Braun in the Berlin bunker. After dictating his political testament,  Hitler shot himself  in his suite on April 30; Braun took poison. Their bodies were burned according to Hitler’s instructions.

With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, 1945, bringing the war in Europe to a close.

In the end, Hitler’s planned “Thousand-Year Reich” lasted just over 12 years, but wreaked unfathomable destruction and devastation during that time, forever transforming the history of Germany, Europe and the world.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich iWonder – Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster, BBC . The Holocaust : A Learning Site for Students, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum .

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Your guide to Adolf Hitler: key facts about the Nazi dictator

He's one of the most well known – but reviled – figures in history. But how much do you know about German dictator Adolf Hitler? Here's everything you need to know about the Nazi leader, from his rise to power to the truth about his death in Berlin in 1945...

• Rachel Dinning
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Adolf Hitler is one of the most well-known – and despised – figures in history. He was the chief architect of the Second World War , following his rise to power as the leader of the Nazi Party in the 1920s. His anti-Semitic policies lead to the deaths of more than six million Jews during the Holocaust, cementing his reputation as one of the most infamous men in history.

Here's your guide to the German dictator – from his early life growing up in Austria to his rise to power and eventual death during the Second World War...

Hitler: key facts

Born: Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria.

Died: Hitler died by suicide in a Berlin bunker, age 56, on 30 April 1945

Known for: Being the leader of the the Nazi Party and initiating the Second World War. Adolf Hitler replaced Anton Drexler as party chairman of the Nazi Party in July 1921, and soon after he acquired the title führer (“leader”). He was chancellor of Germany from 30 January, 1933, and Führer and chancellor combined from 2 August 1934. His rise to power led to the Second World War and the deaths of more than six million Jews in the Holocaust.

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Family: Adolf Hitler was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler (1837–1903) and his third wife, Klara (1860–1907). His full siblings are: Gustav, Ida, Otto, Edmund and Paula, but he also had two half-siblings – Alois Jr and Angela – from his father’s previous marriages. Alois, who was illegitimate, bore his mother’s name Schicklgruber for some time, but by 1876 had established his family claim to the surname 'Hitler'. Adolf Hitler himself never used any other surname.

Early childhood: Most of Hitler’s childhood was spent in Linz, Austria. He had a difficult relationship with his father, with many of their arguments focusing on Hitler’s refusal to behave at school. However he was very fond of his mother, who died in 1907.

Education: Hitler had a mixed education and has generally been considered a mediocre student by many historians. Although his father wished for his son to follow a career in his own footsteps, at a customs office, Hitler had other ideas. Tensions rose when Alois sent Hitler to the Realschule (a type of secondary school) in Linz in September 1900 and Hitler performed poorly. Hitler later suggested that this was an intentional act on his behalf: he deliberately performed badly to show his father that he should be allowed to pursue his dream of becoming an artist.

The narrative doesn't entirely hold up if you consider that, following Alois’s death in January 1903, Hitler’s educational performance deteriorated even more. He went on to study at another school in Steyr, where he had to retake his final exams before leaving without any intentions to take his education any further.

Are we more fascinated with Hitler than any other dictator?

Hitler has been memorialised in countless books, tv shows and films. so why are we fascinated with the nazi dictator, was hitler a good painter.

While leaders including Winston Churchill and George W Bush took up painting as a post-politics hobby, a young Adolf Hitler paid the bills as a jobbing artist from 1910–14. He focused mainly on postcards and advertisements – and earned enough to sustain a living, moving around hostels in Vienna.

He was, however, technically mediocre. He failed the examination for the General School of Painting at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts, partly down to his struggle to capture the human form. The second time he applied, his sample drawings were considered of such poor quality that he was not even admitted to the entrance examination.

Some might argue that Hitler's art was also oddly pedestrian in a radical era of Picasso and Van Gogh. As a voracious reader of history and mythology, and with a mind bubbling over with political thoughts, it’s somewhat surprising that this angry outsider painted bland postcard scenes of buildings and landscapes.

• When Hitler took cocaine

If painting was not his forte, Hitler's real strength could be found in his oratory skills. "He was, of course, a masterly demagogue – the basis of his early dominance within the Nazi Party," explains Professor Kershaw. "More than any other contemporary German politician, he spoke in a language that gave voice to the anger and prejudice of his audience."

He was also, Kershaw notes, very widely read: "His excellent memory enabled him to recall information on many subjects. This impressed not only those around him and others who were already susceptible to his message."

What did Hitler do during World War One?

Although Adolf Hitler was in his mid-20s at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he initially tried to avoid conscription. Then, when made to enlist, he failed the medical. He still ended up in uniform, joining the Bavarian (part of the German) army instead.

Hitler served in this army at the First Battle of Ypres . According to Hitler, his regiment of 3,600 was reduced to 611 during the battle and he was one of only 42 survivors from his 250-strong company. One of his roles was that of a trench runner . He was also wounded at the Somme and was twice awarded the Iron Cross for bravery, once on the recommendation of a Jewish comrade.

Then, on the night of 13–14 October 1918, Corporal Hitler got caught in a mustard gas attack by the British. He spent the rest of the war recovering from temporary blindness, learning of Germany’s surrender in a military hospital, although there is some suggestion that this story was made up by Hitler and that he was in fact being treated for 'hysterical amblyopia', a psychiatric disorder known as 'hysterical blindness'. It was during this time, Hitler later claimed in his political manifesto Mein Kampf (first published in 1925), that “the idea came to me that I would liberate Germany, that I would make it great”.

When did Hitler first become involved with politics?

Hitler first emerged on the political scene in the German city of Munich in late 1919 as a speaker for the right-wing German Workers’ Party (DAP). The DAP changed its name to NSDAP ( Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ) in February 1920, before Hitler officially took over as party chairman in July 1921. The party, which Hitler felt lacked direction, was also referred to as ‘Hitler’s Nazi Party’ at this time, however Hitler himself was not really known outside of Bavaria until much later.

• The dark charisma of Adolf Hitler

During the early 1920s, Hitler purposefully maintained a degree of mystery around himself. He refused to let unofficial photographers take his picture, instead opting to employ his own personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, who produced a series of bestselling books of pictures that portrayed the Nazi leader as an aloof intellectual. "They aimed to show Hitler as a man of the people and, at the same time, the political philosopher of genius in lofty isolation, among the mountains that surrounded his Alpine retreat near the town of Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, as he pondered Germany’s future and bore the entire burden of responsibility on his shoulders," explains Professor Kershaw. The creation of the 'Hitler mystery' was a masterful move of PR, utilised at a time when other politicians did not pay too much attention to such tactics.

How did Hitler rise to power?

Hitler’s first official grasp for power took place in November 1923. He and his supporters attempted to seize political power in Munich, as a prelude to a takeover in Berlin. Around 2,000 Nazis took part in the violent daytime coup, which became known as the Munich Beer Hall Putsch .

What happened during the Beer Hall Putsch?

When the coup collapsed, Hitler was arrested and charged with treason. The subsequent trial was a complex affair – as historian Roger Moorhouse explains: "Hitler probably should have been sent for trial to the constitutional court at Leipzig, but Munich’s political establishment was keen to keep the matter ‘in house’, for fear of giving oxygen to the rumours of official complicity with the Nazis. So, with a tame, sympathetic judge – Georg Neithardt – presiding, the trial opened in the Munich infantry school on 26 February.

"Those hoping for Hitler’s political demise were to be disappointed. He expertly played the court, assisted by Neithardt, and so reached a much wider audience than he had ever reached before. By the end of the trial, he had a national following for the first time, and had emerged as the undisputed leader of the German radical right."

• Hitler’s millionaire backers: how Germany’s elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis

Hitler served just nine months of his five-year prison sentence at Landsberg Prison. Following his release, he was forbidden from making public speeches but continued speaking to private audiences and gained a reputation as a formidable orator. By the 1930s he had cultivated an elaborate public profile, selling a “novel vision” to his followers and the wider German public. “Hitler was offering national redemption, a ‘new Germany’, a ‘new man’, a ‘new Jerusalem’,” says Moorhouse.

The Nazi party gradually grew in numbers throughout the late 1920s – and by July 1932, they had transformed from a small, revolutionary party to the largest elected party in the Reichstag (German parliament). They did this primarily through the use of effective propaganda, with support from the from the Sturmabteilung (SA), otherwise known as the Brownshirts, a paramilitary wing of the NSDAP.

Rise to dictator

Once Hitler had established himself as a key player in the German political scene of the 1930s, consolidation of his power as a dictator happened rather quickly. He achieved this with a “twin-track approach”, according to historian Richard J Evans.

The first track involved convincing the right-wing government that Hitler should rule Germany by decree. This was agreed by conservatives who were largely motivated by a desire to crush the Communist Party. “In November 1932, the Social Democrats and Communists together had more votes and seats than the Nazis, but they were also deadly enemies of each other and couldn’t get their act together to stop the Nazis. Hitler used legal or quasi-legal powers of the government, particularly the president’s power to rule by decree in a state of emergency,” explains Evans.

• Listen | Historian Frank McDonough discusses the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany, covering the period from the start of the Third Reich to the early months of World War Two

On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag was persuaded by Hitler – through a mixture of threats and inducements – to vote for an Enabling Law that meant that the cabinet (Hitler and the ministers) had the power to issue legislation without reference to the president or to the Reichstag, thereby giving them dictatorial powers.

The second track involved “mass, brutal violence” on the streets. During this time, between 100,000–200,000 people were put into concentration camps or ‘roughed up’ and released on condition of not engaging in politics.

Read more about how Hitler rose to power

Where did Hitler get his ideas?

According to historian Richard J Evans, Hitler drew his political ideas from a variety of sources: “from a version of Social Darwinism that saw society and international relations as a sort of struggle of races for the survival of the fittest; from Arthur de Gobineau, a French theorist who invented the pseudoscientific idea of race theory; from Russian émigrés from the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, who brought with them the idea that Bolshevism and communism were creations of the Jewish race; from a certain amount of what's called ‘geopolitics’, which was invented by an American.”

Why did Hitler hate the Jews?

Anti-Semitism was at the heart of Nazi ideology, but what inspired Hitler’s hatred of the Jews and prompted the creation of a system that ultimately led to the systematic rounding up and killing of some six million people?

Hitler obviously did not invent modern anti-Semitism, which has roots in the Middle Ages . By the 13th century, for example, rules enacted across Europe obliged Jews to wear an identifying badge to distinguish them from non-Jews’. And in medieval Europe specifically, anti-Jewish hostility was exemplified by the concept of ‘the blood libel’, the accusation that Jews were murdering Christian children as part of their Passover rituals.

Although we don’t know how early Hitler formed his opinions of Jewish people, he himself states that he felt anti-Jewish while working as a painter in Vienna – a city with a large Jewish population – before the First World War. “For me this was a time of the greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through,” he writes in Mein Kampf . “I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-Semite.” Some historians have since suggested that Hitler created this narrative of himself as an early anti-Semite retrospectively – and Mein Kampf should certainly be understood in the context of its purpose as propaganda. Perhaps rather curiously, one of Hitler most loyal patrons while he lived in Vienna as a young artist was a Jew called Samuel Morgenstern.

• Your guide to the Holocaust

What is clearer is that Hitler’s anti-Semitism intensified following Germany’s defeat during the First World War, in which he served as an ordinary soldier on the western front and was decorated for bravery. The defeat had come as a shock to many Germans, who believed that they had been on course to win following the Spring Offensive and victory over Russia in 1918. Following the Allied victory, harsh penalties were imposed on Germany including the loss of certain territories and reparations were demanded, through the Treaty of Versailles .

Like many of his contemporaries, Hitler decided that the reason Germany lost the war was the weak will of the Kaiser, who was deposed in 1918. According to Richard J Evans, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast , “Hitler believed that the Weimar Republic, which succeeded the Kaiser’s Germany, was a Jewish creation, and democracy was something Jewish. These were all complete fantasies. But the effect of the First World War was decisive, including on Hitler's anti-Semitism and his belief the Jews were to blame for everything bad that had happened.”

Was Hitler Christian?

What was hitler’s relationship with eva braun.

Eva Braun (1912–1945) was the long-term companion of Adolf Hitler. The pair married on 29 April 1945 – just one day before they both died by suicide.

German historian Heike B Görtemaker notes that Braun was much more than a passive figure in the Nazi regime. “All members of the Berghof circle, including Eva Braun, were not just witnesses, but convinced of the Nazi ideology,” she writes. “Although it cannot be verified that Braun knew about the Holocaust – and all surviving members of Hitler’s inner circle later denied knowledge – Braun, like all others, was at least informed about the persecution of the Jews, depriving them of any civil rights.”

Was Braun in love with Hitler? It is almost impossible to identify her true feelings, says Görtemaker. However Braun’s closest friend, Herta Schneider, “declared in 1949 that Braun had been in love with Hitler”.

• Why did Hitler choose the swastika, and how did a Sanskrit symbol become a Nazi emblem?

Where did Hitler live?

How did hitler die.

During the last months of the Second World War – and as the prospect of losing the war became ever more apparent – Hitler withdrew into his bunker in Berlin. It was “the last station in his flight from reality”, wrote the Führer’s favoured architect, Albert Speer. Hitler continued to deliver orders from the bunker, including one that dictated his body should be incinerated upon the event of his death (he had heard about the treatment of fellow dictator Benito Mussolini’s body, who had been strung up in a public square in Milan).

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On 20 April 1945, Hitler’s 56th birthday, the first enemy shell hit Berlin. Soviet troops soon entered the city – and by 30 April 1945, Hitler was dead.

It is generally accepted that Hitler shot himself, although accounts differ as to whether he also bit down on a cyanide capsule. Following his death by suicide, Hitler’s body and that of his long-term mistress Eva Braun, whom he had married a day earlier and who had herself injected cyanide, were removed from the bunker, doused in petrol and set alight.

Rachel Dinning is the Premium Content Editor at HistoryExtra, website of BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed.

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• Public Broadcasting Service - American Experience - Hitler and Goebbels: A Deadly Partnership
• Spartacus Educational - Biography of Adolf Hitler
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Holocaust Encyclopedia - Adolf Hitler: Early Years, 1889–1913
• The National WWII Museum - How Did Adolf Hitler Happen?
• BBC - iWonder - Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster
• Jewish Virtual Library - Biography of Adolf Hitler
• Adolf Hitler - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Adolf Hitler - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Germany’s war strategy was assumed by Hitler from the first. When the successful campaign against Poland failed to produce the desired peace accord with Britain , he ordered the army to prepare for an immediate offensive in the west. Bad weather made some of his reluctant generals postpone the western offensive. This in turn led to two major changes in planning. The first was Hitler’s order to forestall an eventual British presence in Norway by occupying that country and Denmark in April 1940. Hitler took a close personal interest in this daring operation. From this time onward his intervention in the detail of military operations grew steadily greater. The second was Hitler’s important adoption of General Erich von Manstein ’s plan for an attack through the Ardennes (which began May 10) instead of farther north. This was a brilliant and startling success. The German armies reached the Channel ports (which they had been unable to reach during World War I ) in 10 days. Holland surrendered after 4 days and Belgium after 16 days. Hitler held back General Gerd von Rundstedt ’s tanks south of Dunkirk , thus enabling the British to evacuate most of their army, but the western campaign as a whole was amazingly successful. On June 10 Italy entered the war on the side of Germany. On June 22 Hitler signed a triumphant armistice with the French on the site of the Armistice of 1918.

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Hitler hoped that the British would negotiate an armistice. When this did not happen, he proceeded to plan the invasion of Britain, together with the elimination of British air power. At the same time preparations were begun for the invasion of the Soviet Union , which in Hitler’s view was Britain’s last hope for a bulwark against German control of the continent. Then Mussolini invaded Greece , where the failures of the Italian armies made it necessary for German forces to come to their aid in the Balkans and North Africa . Hitler’s plans were further disrupted by a coup d’état in Yugoslavia in March 1941, overthrowing the government that had made an agreement with Germany. Hitler immediately ordered his armies to subdue Yugoslavia. The campaigns in the Mediterranean theatre, although successful, were limited, compared to the invasion of Russia . Hitler would spare few forces from Operation Barbarossa , the planned invasion of the Soviet Union.

The attack against the U.S.S.R. was launched on June 22, 1941. The German army advanced swiftly into the Soviet Union, corralling almost three million Russian prisoners, but it failed to destroy its Russian opponent. Hitler became overbearing in his relations with his generals. He disagreed with them about the object of the main attack, and he wasted time and strength by failing to concentrate on a single objective. In December 1941, a few miles before Moscow , a Russian counteroffensive finally made it clear that Hitler’s hopes of a single campaign could not be realized.

On December 7, the next day, the Japanese attacked U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor . Hitler’s alliance with Japan forced him to declare war on the United States . From this moment on his entire strategy changed. He hoped and tried (like his idol Frederick II the Great ) to break what he deemed was the unnatural coalition of his opponents by forcing one or the other of them to make peace. (In the end, the “unnatural” coalition between Stalin and Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt did break up, but too late for Hitler.) He also ordered the reorganization of the German economy on a full wartime basis.

Meanwhile, Himmler prepared the ground for a “new order” in Europe . From 1933 to 1939 and in some instances even during the first years of the war, Hitler’s purpose was to expel the Jews from the Greater German Reich. In 1941 this policy changed from expulsion to extermination. The concentration camps created under the Nazi regime were thereby expanded to include extermination camps , such as Auschwitz , and mobile extermination squads, the Einsatzgruppen . Although Catholics, Poles, homosexuals, Roma (Gypsies), and the handicapped were targeted for persecution, if not outright extermination , the Jews of Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union were by far the most numerous among the victims; in German-occupied Europe some six million Jews were killed during the war. The sufferings of other peoples were only less when measured in their numbers killed.

At the end of 1942, defeat at El-Alamein and at Stalingrad and the American landing in French North Africa brought the turning point in the war, and Hitler’s character and way of life began to change. Directing operations from his headquarters in the east, he refused to visit bombed cities or to allow some withdrawals , and he became increasingly dependent on his physician, Theodor Morell, and on the large amounts and varieties of medicines he ingested. Yet Hitler had not lost the power to react vigorously in the face of misfortune. After the arrest of Mussolini in July 1943 and the Italian armistice , he not only directed the occupation of all important positions held by the Italian army but also ordered the rescue of Mussolini, with the intention that he should head a new fascist government . On the eastern front, however, there was less and less possibility of holding up the advance. Relations with his army commanders grew strained, the more so with the growing importance given to the SS ( Schutzstaffel ) divisions. Meanwhile, the general failure of the U-boat campaign and the bombing of Germany made chances of German victory very unlikely.

Desperate officers and anti-Nazi civilians became ready to remove Hitler and negotiate a peace. Several attempts on Hitler’s life were planned in 1943–44; the most nearly successful was made on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg exploded a bomb at a conference being held at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia . But Hitler escaped with superficial injuries, and, with few exceptions, those implicated in the plot were executed. The reduction of the army’s independence was now made complete; National Socialist political officers were appointed to all military headquarters.

Thereafter, Hitler was increasingly ill; but he did not relax or lose control, and he continued to exercise an almost hypnotic power over his close subordinates, none of whom wielded any independent authority. The Allied invasion of Normandy (June 6, 1944) marked the beginning of the end. Within a few months, eight European capitals ( Rome , Paris , Brussels , Bucharest , Sofia , Athens , Belgrade , Helsinki ) were liberated by the Allies or surrendered to them. In December 1944 Hitler moved his headquarters to the west to direct an offensive in the Ardennes aimed at splitting the American and the British armies. When this failed, his hopes for victory became ever more visionary, based on the use of new weapons (German rockets had been fired on London since June 1944) or on the breakup of the Allied Powers.

After January 1945 Hitler never left the Chancellery in Berlin or its bunker, abandoning a plan to lead a final resistance in the south as the Soviet forces closed in on Berlin. In a state of extreme nervous exhaustion, he at last accepted the inevitability of defeat and thereupon prepared to take his own life, leaving to its fate the country over which he had taken absolute command. Before this, two further acts remained. At midnight on April 28–29 he married Eva Braun . Immediately afterward he dictated his political testament, justifying his career and appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and Joseph Goebbels as chancellor .

On April 30 he said farewell to Goebbels and the few others remaining, then retired to his suite and shot himself. His wife took poison . In accordance with his instructions, their bodies were burned.

Hitler’s success was due to the susceptibility of postwar Germany to his unique talents as a national leader. His rise to power was not inevitable; yet there was no one who equalled his ability to exploit and shape events to his own ends. The power that he wielded was unprecedented, both in its scope and in the technical resources at its command. His ideas and purposes were accepted in whole or in part by millions of people, especially in Germany but also elsewhere. By the time he was defeated, he had destroyed most of what was left of old Europe , while the German people had to face what they would later call “Year Zero,” 1945.

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Adolf Hitler: Key Dates

Under Adolf Hitler's leadership and imbued with his racially motivated ideology, the Nazi regime was responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other victims.

Though Hitler’s ideology and leadership bear primary responsibility for the Holocaust and deaths of millions in World War II in Europe, the Nazi regime had substantial support from many quarters and benefitted from much indifference among civilians and professionals.

There are many myths and misunderstandings about Hitler and his life. The most common is his alleged Jewish ancestry.  

The events listed below are some of the important milestones in the life of one of Europe's most ruthless dictators.

April 20, 1889   Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) is born in the Upper Austrian border town of Braunau am Inn, the son of tax collector Alois Hitler. Contrary to popular belief, he had no Jewish ancestors.

1908 Hitler moves to Vienna. His impoverishment and residence in homeless shelters began the following year after he had squandered a generous inheritance. Hitler lives in Vienna until May 1913.

1913 Hitler moves to Munich, Germany, in May, and in the following year he enlists in the German army to fight in World War I .

Adolf Hitler (front row, far left) served on the western front in World War I and during the course of the war was twice decorated for service, wounded, and temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack. He used his veteran status in later election campaigns.

• National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

1918 Hitler is partially blinded in a mustard gas attack near Ypres in Belgium. News of the November 11, 1918, armistice reaches him as he is convalescing in a military hospital. World War I has a profound impact on Hitler and many other Germans. The impact of the conflict and its divisive peace has repercussions for decades to come, giving rise to a second world war and genocide committed under its cover.

September 12, 1919   Hitler attends an early meeting of the German Workers' Party ( Deutsche Arbeiterpartei -DAP), which will later become the Nazi Party under his leadership.

November 8–9, 1923  Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party lead a coalition group in an attempt to overthrow the government of Bavaria and initiate a “national revolution.” This so-called Beer Hall Putsch fails. Hitler and others are arrested for treason.

1923 – 25 Hitler i s convicted of high treason and sentenced to five years imprisonment, although he serves only one year . While in prison, he writes Mein Kampf (My Struggle). This infamous memoir proves significant in promoting key components of Nazism and its racial ideology. Published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, it would sell one million copies in 1933, Hitler's first year in office.

1925 Hitler establishes the SS ( Schutzstaffel ; Protection Squadrons). During the Nazi regime, the SS will become responsible not only for the German police force and the concentration camp system, but also for security, identification of ethnicity, settlement and population policy , and intelligence.  

April 10, 193 2 Hitler loses a run-off election for the German presidency to the elderly incumbent, General Paul von Hindenburg .

January 1933  The Nazi Party comes to power with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor.

March 23, 1933 Following the burning of the German parliament building , the Reichstag, by unknown arsonists, t he German parliament passes the Law for Rectification of the Distress of Nation and Reich, commonly known as the Enabling Act ( Ermächtigungsgesetz ). This law allows Hitler, as Chancellor, to initiate and sign legislation into law without obtaining parliamentary consent. The act effectively establishes a dictatorship, under Hitler, in Germany.

June 30-July 2, 1934 On Hitler’s order, Nazi leaders eliminate the leadership of the SA and kill other political enemies. The murderous purge cement s an agreement between the Nazi regime and the German army that consolidates Nazi power and enables Hitler to proclaim himself Führer (leader) of Germany and to claim absolute power.

Adolf Hitler passes through the Brandenburg Gate on the way to the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games . Berlin, Germany, August 1, 1936.

Summer 1936 Hitler opens the Berlin Olympics. 1936 represents a rare instance in which one nation, Germany, hosted both the winter and summer Olympic Games. Nazi Germany uses the 1936 Olympic s for propaganda purposes. The Nazis promote an image of a new, strong, and united Germany while masking the regime’s targeting of Jews and Roma (Gypsies) as well as Germany’s growing militarism.

1938 Hitler meets with the leaders of Britain, France, and Italy at a conference in Munich, Germany, on September 29–30, 1938, in which they agree to the German annexation of the Sudetenland in exchange for a pledge of peace from Germany. Six months later, Hitler moves against the Czechoslovak state .

March 12, 1938 German troops march into Austria . Native son Adolf Hitler crosses the Austro-German border at midday at his hometown, Braunau on the Inn. On the following day, the annexation of Austria to the German Reich is announced. On March 15, Hitler enters the Austrian capital Vienna before a cheering crowd of 200,000.

January 23 , 1939 In a speech to the German parliament in January 1939, Hitler states that another world war will result in the elimination of Jews from Europe.

August 23, 1939   German and Soviet foreign ministers Ribbentrop and Molotov, respectively,  sign a German-Soviet Pact . The main tenet of this agreement is a ten-year non-aggression pact in which each signatory promises not to attack the other.  

September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invades Poland , initiating World War II .

Fall 1939 or early January 1940 Adolf Hitler signs a secret authorization for a “euthanasia’” program , the systematic killing of patients with mental and physical disabilities who are living in institutional settings in Germany and German-annexed territories. It is the only instance in which Hitler signs an authorization for a program of systematic mass murder.

1941 In 1941, Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and other leading German authorities reach the decision to physically annihilate the Jews of Europe.

June 22, 1941 The German army invades the Soviet Union in "Operation Barbarossa." As opposed to their conquests in western Europe, Hitler and other Nazi leaders see war against the Soviet Union in racial and ideological terms.

December 11, 1941 In the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor , Nazi Germany and its ally Italy declare war on the United States, despite the fact that the US had declared war only against the Empire of Japan.  In less than a year, American ground troops will fight German forces in North Africa.

June 9, 1942 Hitler orders retaliatory measures against the Czech population following the death of Reinhard Heydrich, second-in-command of the SS. The towns of Lidice and Lezaky are destroyed and the inhabitants massacred or deported.

January 31–February 2, 1943 After months of fierce fighting and heavy casualties, German forces (numbering now only about 91,000 surviving soldiers) surrender at Stalingrad in a major turning point of World War II and a disaster for Hitler’s long-held goal of defeating the Soviet Union.

June 6, 1944 Allied troops successfully land on the Normandy beaches of France, opening a “Second Front” against the Germans and Hitler's regime.

July 20 , 1944 Hitler survives an assassination attempt coordinated by military and civilian officials. The failure of the attempt and the intended coup which was to follow led to the arrest of some 7,000 and the execution of nearly 5,000 individuals.

Soviet soldiers guard the entrance to Adolf Hitler's underground bunker. Upon the advance of Soviet forces through the streets of Berlin, Hitler committed suicide here on April 30, 1945, rather than face capture. Berlin, Germany, 1945.

• Wide World Photo

April 30, 1945 Hitler commits suicide in an underground bunker in Berlin rather than face capture by advancing Soviet forces.

1945 The International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg decides not to try Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels in absentia. All three had committed suicide before the end of the war. In doing so, the IMT wished to avoid creating the impression that they might still be alive.

Critical Thinking Questions

• What societal factors and attitudes contributed to the rise of Hitler?
• What pressures and laws led to the persecution of political opponents by the Nazi government?
• Besides military participants, what other professionals were charged with crimes in the wake of the Holocaust?
• How can knowledge of the events in Germany and Europe before the Nazis came to power help citizens today respond to threats of genocide and mass atrocity?

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The Rise of Hitler

Intro to Adolf Hitler

• Ruled Germany as dictator from

- Turned Germany into a powerful war machine and started WWII in 1939 .

- Conquered most of Europe before he was defeated

Hitler’s Early Life

Born April 20, 1889

1. Father: Alois (52)

2. Mother: Klara (28)

- 2nd Cousins

Grandma was Maria Shicklgruber; nobody knew who his grandfather was.

Eventually Grandma married a Hiedler who signed papers saying Alois was his son.

3. Low grades in high school – did not enjoy school.

- Hitler wanted to be an artist

4. Hitler is beat by his father Alois, severely a few times. His father died in 1903.

5. Hitler moved to Vienna to pursue an art degree in 1907. First time he applied to art school he was rejected.

The Art of Adolf Hitler

Hitler Finally Fits In

The German Army

1) Hitler fails physical exam in Vienna (Army)

2) Volunteered for service in German Army

- Served as messenger on the Western Front during WWI

- Hitler loved the army; hated soldiers who disliked the war

3) Hitler finally felt at home and accepted in the army

4) Was involved in a

gas attack and was

temporarily blinded

Hitler and the Foundations of the Nazi Party

A. Formation

1) The Nazi Party was formed in 1919 as the German’s Worker Party

B. Hitler Gets involved in the Nazi Party

1) Began to actively participate

2) Great Public Speaker

3) Became mouthpiece for the Party

4) Began to be recognized as leader of the Party

C. Hitler’s Policies (25 Point Program)

1) Unification of Germany

2) Expulsion of Jews

3) Nationalization of corporations

4) Land reform and welfare policies

D. Hitler’s Private Army

1) Organized a private army: SA or Storm Troopers (Brown Shirts)

- Fought groups who opposed Nazis

The Munich Putsch (Beer Hall Putsch)

A. German Government’s Problems

- Money was worthless

- France and Belgium occupied part of Germany

B. November 8, 1923

- Hitler and Nazi Party decide to have uprising to overthrow government

- Over 2,000 Nazis march through the streets of Munich

- Police opened fire and killed 16 Nazis

- Hitler was missed by approximately 18 inches

- Plot failed and Hitler was arrested

C. Hitler’s Trial

- Hitler gave numerous reasons explaining his actions

- Transformed him from being a little known politician into a superstar

- Hitler sentenced to 5 years in prison

Mein Kampf and the Great Depression

Hitler’s Trial for Treason

- The Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler’s Trial for treason would not prove the end of

his career but in many respects the BEGINNING .

1) Hitler used the courtroom to his advantage

- Hitler did not deny charges

- He admitted wanting to overthrow the government and outlined his

- PORTRAYED HIMSELF AS A PATRIOT

- Portrayed the democratic government and its leaders as the real criminals

- Used courtroom as PROPOGANDA platform

2) The Verdict

- Possible sentence of life: Hitler received 5 years and eligible for parole

in 6 months.

- Taken to LANDSBERG Prison and given a private cell

- Personal secretary and had to restrict visitors

1) “MY STRUGGLE”

2) Orally dictated to his secretary Rudolf Hess

3) Put forward many of Hitler’s beliefs and ideas

- Ideas on race

- Living space “LEBENSRAUM”

4) Hitler learned from his mistakes when he was released from prison 9 months

into his sentence.

Lesson : HITLER AND THE NAZIS WOULD HAVE TO USE THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS TO DEFEAT THE SYSTEM.

The Great Depression Begins

1) Tuesday October 29, 1929 : Financial markets worldwide take a plunge with

disastrous effects.

2) German economy especially vulnerable

A. Built on foreign capital

- Dependent on trade

- Production levels fall

- WORKERS LAID OFF

- BANKS FAILED , saving accounts dried up

3) German People

- Cast into POVERTY

- Deep misery

- Began looking for a solution (Where do they turn?)

4) Great Depression brought disunity to politics

5) Hitler and the Nazis seized the moment

- German people tired of politics

- Tired of suffering and weakness

- Desperate times force people to look to EXTREMES

Nazis Elected to Power

A. Modern Political Campaign Waged by Hitler and the Nazis

1) Traveled country: delivered speeches, attended meetings, shook hands,

signed autographs, posed for pictures and kissed babies.

2) Joseph Goebbels: Propaganda – organized

B. Hitler’s Time Had Arrived

1) GREAT PUBLIC SPEAKER

2) Gave people: encouragement, vague promises, used repetitive and

simple catch phrases

3) Appearances carefully STAGED

4) Hitler offered work to the unemployed, prosperity to business people,

profits to industry, expansion to the army,

order amid chaos, restoration of

German glory and a feeling of unity.

- Make Germany strong again

1) END PAYMENT OF REPARATIONS

2) TEAR UP THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES

3) Deal harshly with the JEWS

Election Day: September 14, 1930

1) Nazi’s received 6,371,000 votes

2) 18% of total

3) 107 seats in the Reichstag

4) Overnight went from 2nd smallest to SECOND largest party

5) Propelled Hitler to further national prestige

Hitler Runs for President

1932 Presidential Election

1) February 1932 President Paul Von Hindenburg reluctantly agrees to run again. Holds country together but is old.

- 85 when elected + 7 year term =

92 years old

2) Hitler decided to oppose him and run

for President

- Campaign slogan:

“FREEDOM AND BREAD”

- Joseph Goebbels waged a furious

propaganda campaign

1) March 13, 1932

- Hitler received over 11 million votes = 30 %

- Von Hindenburg received 18.5 million votes = 49 %

- Most receive an absolute majority

Run-Off Election

1) April 10, 1932

Hitler = 36 %

Von Hindenburg = 53 %

- Hitler lost but proved his popularity with the German people

July Elections (Reichstag/Congress)

1) Nazis received 13,745,000 votes

2) 37 % of total

3) 230 seats in the Reichstag

1932 Presidential Campaign Sign

1) Need a Campaign Slogan

a. May use “Freedom and Bread”

b. Come up with your own

2) Sign needs to include at least 2 of Hitler’s policies

3) Also graded on appearance and effort

Hitler as Chancellor and Fuhrer

Hitler Ascends to the Chancellor

Hindenburg Appointed Hitler as Chancellor

1) Why appoint Hitler?

- OTHER CHANCELLORS HAD FAILED

- Hindenburg and others believed Hitler and the Nazis wouldn’t fair any better and this would be the end of Nazi popularity.

Events that allowed Hitler to Become Absolute Dictator

The Reichstag Burns

1) A Communist arsonist named Marinus Van Der Lubbe had been

wandering the streets of Berlin.

2) On February 27, 1933 Van Der Lubbe set the Reichstag on fire.

- SA Troops also participated in setting the building ablaze.

3) Hitler’s and the Nazis use this to their advantage

- Hitler was able to get Hindenburg to sign an Emergency Decree. The decree stated, “Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the rights of assembly and association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscation as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”

- Use propaganda to justify violence against Communists, Nazis claimed Communists were plotting a revolution/takeover.

4) Van Der Lubbe, the Communist arsonist, was tried and convicted, then

The Burning of Books

“Wherever books are burned, human being are destined to be burned too.”

- Is this true?

1) May 10, 1933

- German students from universities gathered in Berlin to burn books with “UN-GERMAN” ideas.

- SA Troopers joined in the book burning

- The book burning dealt with the idea of how Germans would be EDUCATED .

2) Education

- Germany was now led by a self-educated strongly anti-intellectual individual.

- Anyone who taught anti-Nazi ideas was in danger of being sent to a concentration camp.

- Hitler does not care about subjects

such as SCIENCE and MATH

- Hitler wanted a system to produce

unquestioning young people ready to

obey, even if it meant death.

- Nazi Slogan:

“BELIEVE, FIGHT, OBEY”

- If you refused to follow new ideas

sent away for “RE-EDUCATION”

Hitler Becomes Fuhrer

Hindenburg Dies

Hitler’s Reaction

1) Within hours of Hindenburg’s death the Nazis announce new laws

a. Section 1: The office of President will be combined with the

office of Chancellor. Position now called the Fuhrer.

b. Section 2: Law is in effect at the time of Hindenburg’s death.

2) With new law comes a new oath

a. Every individual in the German Army must

swear allegiance to Hitler not Germany.

3) 90 % of Germans approved of Hitler

and his position

4) Hitler has finally reached his goal of

ABSOLUTE POWER.

Hitler Brings Germany and the World Towards War

Hitler Violates the Treaty of Versailles

1) Builds German Army up to 550,000 troops

2) Moves troops into the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland

3) No European country says or does anything to stop this

APPEASEMENT –

Giving in to keep peace

and avoid war.

Hitler Takes Austria

1) Hitler invaded Austria and again no one did anything

2) Austria to weak to fight the Germans alone

Hitler Takes Czechoslovakia

1) The Munich Conference had taken place in sept. of 1938.At this conference European countries gave Hitler part of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland. They did this to keep the peace and believed Hitler’s thirst for expansion would stop there.

2) Hitler is not satisfied and later intimidates the Czechoslovakian President into turning over his country to the Germans.

1) Hitler invades Poland on September 1, 1939

2) Allies finally declare war on September 3, 1939

Hitler’s Alliances

1) Germany’s main friend in Europe

2) Sign the “Pact of Steel”-Ties two countries together in time of war

Soviet Union

1) “Non-Aggression Pact”

- Hitler needed political friends so he turned to the much hated Communists of the Soviet Union

2) Germany and Soviet Union agree to not attack one another or interfere in each other’s business.

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Hitler was a well-known dictator of all times who gained immense popularity in the 1930s through his oratorical skills and becoming the leader of the German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party). With fiery speeches and aggressive foreign policies, Hitler ignited the outbreak of World War II. His overriding ambition for territorial expansion became the reason for his fall. Hitler was broken after subsequent defeats of the German army and committed suicide in his bunker. This also resulted in the fall of the Nazi regime and the end of the most destructive war.

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Adolf Hitler

Oct 12, 2014

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Adolf Hitler. and How the Nazi’s Rose to Power. Teaching Point. Today we will investigate Hitler through text, images and video. Adolf Hitler. Born April 20, 1889, Austria Died April 30, 1945, Berlin, Germany. Early Life.

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Adolf Hitler and How the Nazi’s Rose to Power

Teaching Point Today we will investigate Hitler through text, images and video

Adolf Hitler • Born April 20, 1889, Austria • Died April 30, 1945, Berlin, Germany

Early Life • Adolf Hitler spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria • Father Died in 1903 • Hitler feared and disliked his father • Hitler was a devoted son to his mother • Mother Died in 1907

Early Life • Hitler never advanced beyond a secondary education. • He eventually moved to Vienna to a big city • At the age of 19 he applied for Art school • Hitler dreamed of becoming an artist but he twice failed to be accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts

Speculation: Hitler is believed to have blamed a Jewish professor for his rejection from the academy. • Some believe this sparked his persecution of Jews in later life

Early Life • For some years he lived a lonely and isolated life, earning a living by painting postcards and advertisements and drifting from one municipal hostel to another. • He also gave up drinking alcohol and was a vegetarian. • In Vienna, is where he started thinking that Jews were different from Germans.

Off to join the military • In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich. Screened for Austrian military service in February 1914, he was classified as physically unfit. • World War I broke out he volunteered for the German army. • Joined the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment.

Continued… • During the war, he was in the front line as a headquarters runner • He was Awarded with the Iron Cross, Second Class, in December 1914 • Awarded the Iron Cross, First Class (a rare decoration for a corporal), in August 1918.

Rise to Power • Hitler took up political work in Munich in May–June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers' Party in Munich (September 1919). • In 1920 he was put in charge of the party's propaganda • He left the army to devote himself to improving his position within the party. • That year the party was renamed the National-Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi).

Continued… • Resentment at the loss of World War I and the severity of the peace terms added to the economic problems and made people’s lives miserable. • After World War I the Imperial government was replaced and became a Republic. • People were not happy with the Weimar Republic. • There were several attempts by different violent groups to take over Germany.

Continued… • In the early 1920s, the ranks of Hitler's Nazi Party swelled with resentful Germans who sympathized with the party's bitter hatred of Germany's democratic government, leftist politics, and Jews • Leftist Politics - the part of a political or social organization advocating a liberal or radical position.

Beer Hall Putsch • In November 1923, after the German government resumed the payment of war reparations to Britain and France, the Nazis launched the "Beer Hall Putsch"--their first attempt at seizing the German government by force. • Hitler hoped that his nationalist revolution in Bavaria would spread to the dissatisfied German army, which in turn would bring down the government in Berlin. • The uprising was immediately suppressed, and Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for high treason.

Imprisonment • He spent his time dictating his autobiography, Mein Kampf, (“My Struggle”) and working on his oratorical skills. • After nine months in prison, political pressure from supporters of the Nazi Party forced his release.

On the Rise… • During the next few years, Hitler and the other leading Nazis reorganized their party. • They were able to gain a majority in the German parliament--the Reichstag--by legal means in 1932. • The Nazi Party won 37% of the Reichstag seats, thanks to a massive propaganda campaign.

Continued… • In the same year, President Paul von Hindenburg defeated a presidential bid by Hitler • Hoping to keep him quiet on January 1933 Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor • Keep your friends close but your enemies closer

1933 • Hitler is appointed the Chancellor of Germany • His reign of terror begins and events that lead to the Holocaust are starting to take place. • August 1934 Hitler declares himself president and Chancellor of the Third Reich

The Holocaust Began WWII on the Horizon

Sources • http://www.biography.com/articles/Adolf-Hitler-9340144 • http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-sent-to-landsberg-jail • http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260274/Hitlers-GCSE-art-sketches-sale.html

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Adolf Hitler - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Adolf Hitler

Adolf hitler. 1889-1945. early life. 1889-born in braunau, austria ... 1923- hitler led a revolution in munich to take over the government- it failed; ... – powerpoint ppt presentation.

• 1889-Born in Braunau, Austria
• Son of an Austrian customs official domineering father
• 1905- Dropped out of school mother died in 1907
• 1907-1913- lived in Vienna(18-24)
• Tried to get into the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts but turned down
• Did odd jobs in Vienna
• Began to blame Jews for his failures
• Developed anti- Semitic philosophy
• Moved to Munich, Germany
• 1914- enlisted in the German military
• Turning point of Hitlers life
• Gains purpose and security
• 1914-1918- fights on the Western Front rose to the rank of corporal
• 1918- gassed before the end of the War
• 1919- Stab in the Back Legend
• Germany in bad shape economically
• Germans upset with the Treaty of Versailles
• 1919-Hitler in Munich joins the National Socialist German Workers Party(Nazi)
• Becomes the spokesman and one of the leaders of the Nazi Party
• Attacked the Jews and the Treaty of Versailles
• 1923- Hitler led a revolution in Munich to take over the government- it failed inspired by Mussolinis March on Rome
• 1923- Hitler arrested and imprisoned dictated Mein Kampf to fellow prisoner and Nazi Rudolf Hess
• Strengthen Germany to the good old days of the 1st Reich and the 2nd Reich
• Take back conquered territories
• Build up the military
• Defeat Communism
• Develop a racial policy
• Organized the Storm Troopers(S.A.)- the Brown Shirts
• Nazi Party still small during the 1920s but grows with the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929
• Sept., 1930 elections- increased their Reichstag members from 12-107
• Spring, 1932- Hitler is defeated by Hindenburg for the presidency of Germany
• Nazi Party have 230 seats in the Reichstag
• Jan.,1933- Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany
• Democratic Germany-1920s
• Fascist Totalitarian Germany- 1930s
• Nazi control of all areas of German life from the cradle to the grave
• SA, SS, and Gestapo enforce Nazi ideology
• Public Work Projects established to help the economy
• Censorship and the Nazification of the Churches
• Persecution of the Jews and other enemies of the state

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