Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler (listen ) (IPA: ) (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was the German Chancellor (Reichskanzler) in 1933, and Führer from 1934 until his death. He also led the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the Nazi Party).

Hitler gained power during Germany's period of crisis following World War I. Using propaganda and charismatic oratory, he appealed to the lower and middle classes, while sounding resonant chords of nationalism, antisemitism, and anti-communism. With the establishment of a restructured economy, a rearmed military, and a totalitarian regime, Hitler pursued an aggressive foreign policy with the intention of expanding German Lebensraum (living space). After the annexation of Austria and then parts of Czechoslovakia, Hitler triggered World War II by invading Poland, much of which was also annexed to form the Großdeutsches Reich ("Greater German Reich").

Although Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers occupied most of Europe and parts of Asia at their zenith, they were eventually defeated by the Allies. By the end of the war, Hitler's policies of territorial conquest and racial subjugation had brought death and destruction to tens of millions of people, including the genocide of some six million Jews in what is now known as the Holocaust.

In the final days of the war, Hitler, along with his new wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin, as the city was overrun by the Red Army of the Soviet Union.