Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France. On 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died and Hitler replaced him as the head of state and government. Shortly after, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933 which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. The former chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservative leaders persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933.

As a result, no party was able to form a majority parliamentary coalition in support of a candidate for chancellor. He frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as part of a Jewish conspiracy.īy November 1932, the Nazi Party held the most seats in the German Reichstag but did not have a majority. After his early release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. In jail, he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf ('My Struggle'). In 1923, he attempted to seize governmental power in a failed coup in Munich and was imprisoned with a sentence of five years.

In 1919, he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and was appointed leader of the Nazi Party in 1921. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I. He lived in Vienna later in the first decade of the 1900s and moved to Germany in 1913.

Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims. During his dictatorship, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939.

He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria)Īdolf Hitler ( German: ( listen) 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945.

Hitler by D. Harlan Wilson