Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was a German politician and leader of the Nazi Party. He rose to power as the chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then as Führer in 1934. He initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust, a genocide of about 6 million Jews and millions of other victims.

About Adolf Hitler in brief

Summary Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was a German politician and leader of the Nazi Party. He rose to power as the chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then as Führer in 1934. During his dictatorship from 1933 to 1945, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust, a genocide of about 6 million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Austria – then part of Austria-Hungary – and was raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I. In 1919, he joined the German Workers’ Party, the precursor of theNazi Party. In 1923, he attempted to seize governmental power in a failed coup in Munich and was imprisoned with a sentence of five years. 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. He frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as part of a Jewish conspiracy. In June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941, German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed after 1941, and in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German army.

On 29 April 1945, Hitler married his longtime lover Eva Braun in the Fuehrerbunker in Berlin. Less than two days later, the couple committed suicide to avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army. Their corpses were burned. Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler Sr. was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, and Alois initially bore his mother’s surname, ‘Schickl Gruber’ In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois’s mother Maria Anna. In 1876, Al Lois was made legitimate and his baptismal record annotated by a priest to register Johann Georg hiedler as Alois’s father. Alois then assumed the surname ‘Hitler’, also spelled ‘Hiedler’, ‘Hüttler’, or ‘Huettler’. The name is probably based on the German word hütte, and likely has the meaning ‘one who lives in a hut’ It is believed that Alois’ mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz. No record has been produced of the 19-year-old son of Leopold Franken who fathered Alois during that period, and no record of his residency in Styria had been illegal for 400 years and would not become legal again until 400 years after Al Lois’ birth. He was the fourth of six children of Alois and his third wife, Klara Klara Pzlöl.