Who is Adolf Hitler | World War II | Chancellor, Fuhrer of Germany Third Reich

Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), also called the Nazi Party. He was the ruler of Germany from 1933 to 1945, serving as Chancellor from 1933-1945 and Führer (literally, "leader" but understood by supporters and opponents alike as "dictator") from 1934-1945.

A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the Nazi Party in 1920 and became its leader in 1921. Following his imprisonment after a 1923 failed coup, he gained support by promoting nationalism, antisemitism and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and propaganda. He was ultimately named chancellor in 1933, and quickly established a totalitarian and fascist dictatorship. Hitler pursued a foreign policy with the declared goal of seizing Lebensraum ("living space"), and directed the resources of the state, including the economy, toward this goal. His rebuilt Wehrmacht invaded Poland in 1939, leading to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

Within three years, Germany and the Axis powers occupied most of Europe and large parts of Africa, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. However, the Allies gained the upper hand from 1942 onward, and Hitler committed suicide in 1945 as Allied armies poured into Germany from all sides. His forces committed numerous atrocities during the war, including the systematic genocide of an estimated six million Jews as well as various other groups of people in what is known as the Holocaust. During the final days of the war in 1945, as Berlin was being invaded by the Red Army, Hitler married Eva Braun. Less than 24 hours later, the two committed suicide in the Führerbunker.

Childhood and Heritage
Adolf Hitler was born at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, on 20 April 1889, the fourth child of six. His father, Alois Hitler (1837-1903), was a customs official. His mother, Klara Pölzl (1860-1907), was Alois' third wife. She was also his half-niece, so a papal dispensation was obtained for the marriage. Of Alois and Klara's six children, only Adolf and his sister Paula, seven years his junior, reached adulthood. Hitler's father also had a son, Alois, Jr., and a daughter, Angela, by his second wife.

Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, was an illegitimate child. For the first 39 years of his life he bore his mother's surname, Schicklgruber. In 1876, he took the surname of his stepfather, Johann Georg Hiedler. The name was spelled Hiedler, Huetler, Huettler and Hitler, and was probably regularized to Hitler by a clerk. The origin of the name is either 'one who lives in a hut' (Standard German Hütte), 'shepherd' (Standard German hüten 'to guard,' English heed), or is from the Slavic word Hidlar and Hidlarcek. [read the Wikipedia article]

Images and Videos

• Adolf Hitler at the Internet Movie Database (The Character portrayed in film and television)
• Color Footage of Hitler - Watch color footage of Hitler during WWII
• Photos of Adolf Hitler
• Download "The Young Hitler I Knew" on archive.org

• A speech from 1932 (text and audiofile), German Museum of History Berlin
• Hitler Speech (10 February 1933) with English Translation
• Hitler's book Mein Kampf (full English translation)
• The Testament of Adolf Hitler the Bormann-Hitler documents

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