Who Was Hitler?

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20 1889 in Austria in Braunau am Inn, a small town near the German border. A failed artist, he lived a bohemian life as a young man in Vienna, where anti-Semitism was rife, and Munich. He fought for Germany in World War One, winning honours for bravery though he was passed over for promotion to officer class on the grounds of perceived poor leadership qualities. After the war, Hitler rose quickly in the Nazi Party and was proclaimed its 'Fuhrer' in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup, the Munich Putsch, which resulted in his imprisonment for much of 1924 on treason charges; he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle) while in prison. On his release, he built up his Party - it was the largest in the German parliament by 1932 - and gained the position of Chancellor, leader, of Germany in January 1933, soon establishing an authoritarian regime. His rise to power was assisted by his charismatic oratory and propaganda that took advantage of the crisis in Germany following the disaster of its defeat in World War One. Throughout the 30s Hitler built up Germany industrially and militarily while instituting repressive measures against citizens he considered undesirables, notably the Jews. He provoked World War Two in 1939 with his invasion of Poland and initiated the atrocity of The Holocaust during that war, a genocide which saw six million Jews and millions from other minority groups murdered by the Nazis. On April 30 1945 - facing defeat in the war - Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker, along with his newlywed wife Eva Braun. So died probably the 20th century's most influential, in an evil and tragic way, figure.

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