Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 вЂ" 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born politician who led the National Socialist German Workers Party. He became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 and FÐ"јhrer in 1934. He ruled until 1945.

The Nazi Party gained power during Germany's period of crisis after World War I, exploiting effective propaganda and Hitler's charismatic oratory to gain popularity. The Party emphasised nationalism, antisemitism and anti-communism, and killed many of its opponents. After the restructuring of the state economy and the rearmament of the German armed forces (Wehrmacht), a dictatorship (commonly characterized as totalitarian or fascist) was established by Hitler, who then pursued an aggressive foreign policy, with the goal of seizing Lebensraum. The German Invasion of Poland in 1939 drew the British and French Empires into World War II.

The Wehrmacht was initially successful and the Axis Powers occupied most of Mainland Europe and parts of Asia. Eventually the Allies defeated the Wehrmacht. By 1945, Germany was in ruins. Hitler's bid for territorial conquest and racial subjugation had caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, including the systematic genocide of an estimated six million Jews, not including various other "undesirable" populations, in what is known as the Holocaust.

During the final days of the war in 1945, as Berlin was being invaded and destroyed by the Red Army, Hitler married Eva Braun. Less than 24 hours later, the two committed suicide in the FÐ"јhrerbunker.

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, the fourth child of six.[2] His father, Alois Hitler, (1837вЂ"1903), was a customs official. His mother, Klara PÐ"¶lzl, (1860вЂ"1907), was Alois' third wife. She was also his half-niece, so a papal dispensation had to be obtained for the marriage. Of Alois and Klara's six children, only Adolf and his sister Paula reached adulthood.[3] Hitler's father also had a son, Alois Jr, and a daughter, Angela, by his second wife.[3]

Alois Hitler was born illegitimate. For the first 39 years of his life he bore his mother's surname, Schicklgruber. In 1876, he took the surname of his stepfather, Johann Georg Hiedler. The name was spelled Hiedler, Huetler, Huettler and Hitler, and probably regularized to Hitler by a clerk. The origin of the name is either 'one who lives in a hut' (Standard Ger. HÐ"јtte), 'shepherd' (Standard Ger. hÐ"јten 'to guard,' Eng. heed), or is from the Slavic word Hidlar and Hidlarcek. (Regarding the first two theories: some German dialects make little or no distinction between the Ð"ј-sound and the i-sound.)

Allied propaganda exploited Hitler's original family name during World War II. Pamphlets bearing the phrase "Heil Schicklgruber" were airdropped over German cities. But he was legally born a Hitler and was also related to Hiedler via his maternal grandmother, Johanna Hiedler.

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