Adolf Hitler

Author Code: GAHX

Hitler spent his youth in Linz and Vienna, Austria. An unsuccessful artist, he moved to Munich in 1913. During the First World War, he was wounded in 1916 and gassed in 1918. After the war, he joined the German Worker's Party, which would evolve into the Nazi party, as a political agent and was subsequently promoted to head of its propaganda department in 1920. In 1921 he was made president of the party and began his ascent to power in Germany. In 1923, he and others were arrested and imprisoned after an abortive coup (known as the Munich Beer Hall Putsch) and started work on his book, Mein Kampf (or My Struggle), in which he attacked democratic government and expounded his hatred of the Jews. He was defeated by Hindenburg in 1932 in the presidential election, but the growing strength of the party in German politics resulted in his being named chancellor in 1933. In 1934 he assumed the dual role of president and chancellor and began to pursue the policy outlined in Mein Kampf, i.e. of flouting the Versailles Treaty and rearming Germany, the suppression of trades unions, the elimination of the Jews and economic self-sufficiency for Germany. His policies on expansionism led to the Second World War and Germany's ultimate defeat in 1945. He is believed to have committed suicide in a bunker in the chancellory in Berlin on April 30, 1945 during the final assault of the Russian forces.