Adolf Hitler

Hitler in his last filmed appearance, honouring Hitler Youth members of the Volkssturm in the Reich Chancellery garden

### Party Affiliation

Nazi Party

**Adolf Hitler** (Template:IPA-de; 20 April 1889Template:Spnd30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party,Template:Efn becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Template:Lang in 1934.Template:Efn During his dictatorship, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust, the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.

Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna later in the first decade of the 1900s before moving to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I. In 1919, he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and in 1921 was appointed leader of the Nazi Party. In 1923, he attempted to seize governmental power in a failed coup in Munich and was imprisoned with a sentence of five years. In prison, he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Template:Lang ("My Struggle"). 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.

By November 1932, the Nazi Party held the most seats in the Reichstag but did not have a majority. None of the political parties were able to form a majority coalition in support of a candidate for chancellor. Former chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservative leaders persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933. Shortly after, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933 which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. On 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died and Hitler succeeded him as the head of state and government. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the abrogation of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War I, and the annexation of territories inhabited by millions of ethnic Germans, which initially gave him significant popular support.

One of Hitler's key goals was Template:Lang (Template:Literal translation) for the German people in Eastern Europe, and his aggressive foreign policy is considered the primary cause of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and, on 1 September 1939, invaded Poland, resulting in Britain and France declaring war on Germany. In June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. In December 1941, he declared war on the United States. 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, he married his long-term partner, Eva Braun, in the *Führerbunker* in Berlin. On the following day, the couple committed suicide to avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army. In accordance with Hitler's wishes, their corpses were burned.

The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil".Template:Sfn Under Hitler's leadership and racist ideology, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims, whom he and his followers deemed *Untermenschen* (subhumans) or socially undesirable. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 28.7 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre. The number of civilians killed during World War II was unprecedented in warfare, and the casualties constitute the deadliest conflict in history.

## Ancestry

Main article: Hitler family
Hitler's father, Alois Hitler (1837–1903), was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber.Template:Sfn The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, and Alois initially bore his mother's surname, Template:Lang. In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois's mother. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler.Template:Sfn In 1876, Alois was made legitimate and his baptismal record annotated by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Alois's father (recorded as "Georg Hitler").Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Alois then assumed the surname "Hitler",Template:Sfn also spelled Template:Lang, or Template:Lang. The name is probably based on the German word Template:Lang (lit., "hut"), and likely has the meaning "one who lives in a hut".Template:Sfn

Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Alois's mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the family's 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois.Template:Sfn No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenberger's existence,Template:Sfn and Jewish residency in Styria had been illegal for nearly 400 years and would not become legal again until decades after Alois's birth,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn so historians dismiss the claim that Alois's father was Jewish.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

## Early years

### Childhood and education

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria), close to the border with the German Empire.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pölzl. Three of Hitler's siblings—Gustav, Ida, and Otto—died in infancy.Template:Sfn Also living in the household were Alois's children from his second marriage: Alois Jr. (born 1882) and Angela (born 1883).Template:Sfn When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany.Template:Sfn There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, rather than Austrian German, which marked his speech throughout his life.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn The family returned to Austria and settled in Leonding in 1894, and in June 1895 Alois retired to Hafeld, near Lambach, where he farmed and kept bees. Hitler attended Template:Lang (a state-funded primary school) in nearby Fischlham.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1989-0322-506, Adolf Hitler, Kinderbild retouched.jpg  The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father-son conflicts caused by Hitler's refusal to conform to the strict discipline of his school.Template:Sfn His father beat him, although his mother tried to protect him.Template:Sfn Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and in 1897 the family moved to Lambach. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even considered becoming a priest.Template:Sfn In 1898 the family returned permanently to Leonding. Hitler was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother Edmund, who died in 1900 from measles. Hitler changed from a confident, outgoing, conscientious student to a morose, detached boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.Template:Sfn

Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps.Template:Sfn Hitler later dramatised an episode from this period when his father took him to visit a customs office, depicting it as an event that gave rise to an unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Ignoring his son's desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist, Alois sent Hitler to the *Realschule* in Linz in September 1900.Template:EfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler rebelled against this decision, and in Template:Lang states that he intentionally performed poorly in school, hoping that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to my dream".Template:Sfn Template:Multiple image Like many Austrian Germans, Hitler began to develop German nationalist ideas from a young age.Template:Sfn He expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg monarchy and its rule over an ethnically variegated empire.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler and his friends used the greeting "Heil", and sang the "Deutschlandlied" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem.Template:Sfn

After Alois's sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's performance at school deteriorated and his mother allowed him to leave.Template:Sfn He enrolled at the *Realschule* in Steyr in September 1904, where his behaviour and performance improved.Template:Sfn In 1905, after passing a repeat of the final exam, Hitler left the school without any ambitions for further education or clear plans for a career.Template:Sfn

### Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich

See also: Paintings by Adolf Hitler
 File:Hitler house in Leonding.jpg  In 1907, Hitler left Linz to live and study fine art in Vienna, financed by orphan's benefits and support from his mother. He applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna but was rejected twice.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The director suggested Hitler should apply to the School of Architecture, but he lacked the necessary academic credentials because he had not finished secondary school.Template:Sfn
On 21 December 1907, his mother died of breast cancer at the age of 47, when he himself was 18. In 1909, Hitler soon ran out of money and was forced to live a bohemian life in homeless shelters and a men's dormitory.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He earned money as a casual labourer and by painting and selling watercolours of Vienna's sights.Template:Sfn During his time in Vienna, he pursued a growing passion for architecture and music, attending ten performances of Template:Lang, his favourite Wagner opera.Template:Sfn

 File:Adolf Hitler Der Alte Hof.jpg  It was in Vienna that Hitler was first exposed to racist rhetoric.Template:Sfn Populists such as mayor Karl Lueger exploited the climate of virulent anti-Semitism and occasionally espoused German nationalist notions for political effect. German nationalism had a particularly widespread following in the Mariahilf district, where Hitler lived.Template:Sfn Georg Ritter von Schönerer became a major influence on Hitler.Template:Sfn He also developed an admiration for Martin Luther.Template:Sfn Hitler read local newspapers such as *Template:Ill* that promoted prejudice and utilised Christian fears of being swamped by an influx of Eastern European Jews.Template:Sfn He read newspapers and pamphlets that published the thoughts of philosophers and theoreticians such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon and Arthur Schopenhauer.Template:Sfn

The origin and development of Hitler's anti-Semitism remains a matter of debate.Template:Sfn His friend August Kubizek claimed that Hitler was a "confirmed anti-Semite" before he left Linz.Template:Sfn However, historian Brigitte Hamann describes Kubizek's claim as "problematical".Template:Sfn While Hitler states in Template:Lang that he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna,Template:Sfn Reinhold Hanisch, who helped him sell his paintings, disagrees. Hitler had dealings with Jews while living in Vienna.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Historian Richard J. Evans states that "historians now generally agree that his notorious, murderous anti-Semitism emerged well after Germany's defeat [in World War I], as a product of the paranoid "stab-in-the-back" explanation for the catastrophe".Template:Sfn

Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich, Germany.Template:Sfn When he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army,Template:Sfn he journeyed to Salzburg on 5 February 1914 for medical assessment. After he was deemed unfit for service, he returned to Munich.Template:Sfn Hitler later claimed that he did not wish to serve the Habsburg Empire because of the mixture of races in its army and his belief that the collapse of Austria-Hungary was imminent.Template:Sfn

### World War I

Main article: Military career of Adolf Hitler
 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1974-082-44, Adolf Hitler im Ersten Weltkrieg retouched.jpg  In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Hitler was living in Munich and voluntarily enlisted in the Bavarian Army.Template:Sfn According to a 1924 report by the Bavarian authorities, allowing Hitler to serve was most likely an administrative error, because as an Austrian citizen, he should have been returned to Austria.Template:Sfn Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (1st Company of the List Regiment),Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium,Template:Sfn spending nearly half his time at the regimental headquarters in Fournes-en-Weppes, well behind the front lines.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In 1914, he was present at the First Battle of YpresTemplate:Sfn and in that year was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class.Template:Sfn

During his service at headquarters, Hitler pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler spent almost two months recovering in hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917.Template:Sfn He was present at the Battle of Arras of 1917 and the Battle of Passchendaele.Template:Sfn He received the Black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918Template:Sfn and in August 1918, on a recommendation by Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, his Jewish superior, Hitler received the Iron Cross, First Class, a decoration rarely awarded to one of Hitler's Template:Lang rank.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn On 15 October 1918, he was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk.Template:Sfn While there, Hitler learned of Germany's defeat, and – by his own account – upon receiving this news, suffered a second bout of blindness.Template:Sfn

Hitler described the war as "the greatest of all experiences", and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery.Template:Sfn His wartime experience reinforced his German patriotism, and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918.Template:Sfn His displeasure with the collapse of the war effort began to shape his ideology.Template:Sfn Like other German nationalists, he believed the Template:Lang (stab-in-the-back myth), which claimed that the German army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" on the home front by civilian leaders, Jews, Marxists, and those who signed the armistice that ended the fighting—later dubbed the "November criminals".Template:Sfn

The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany had to relinquish several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland. The treaty imposed economic sanctions and levied heavy reparations on the country. Many Germans saw the treaty as an unjust humiliation. They especially objected to Article 231, which they interpreted as declaring Germany responsible for the war.Template:Sfn The Versailles Treaty and the economic, social, and political conditions in Germany after the war were later exploited by Hitler for political gain.Template:Sfn

## Entry into politics

Main article: Political views of Adolf Hitler
 File:Hitler's DAP membership card.png  After World War I, Hitler returned to Munich.Template:Sfn Without formal education or career prospects, he remained in the Army.Template:Sfn In July 1919, he was appointed Template:Lang (intelligence agent) of an Template:Lang (reconnaissance unit) of the Template:Lang, assigned to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP). At a DAP meeting on 12 September 1919, Party Chairman Anton Drexler was impressed by Hitler's oratorical skills. He gave him a copy of his pamphlet *My Political Awakening*, which contained anti-Semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas.Template:Sfn On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party,Template:Sfn and within a week was accepted as party member 555 (the party began counting membership at 500 to give the impression they were a much larger party).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Hitler made his earliest known written statement about the Jewish question in a 16 September 1919 letter to Adolf Gemlich (now known as the Gemlich letter). In the letter, Hitler argues that the aim of the government "must unshakably be the removal of the Jews altogether".Template:Sfn

At the DAP, Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the party's founders and a member of the occult Thule Society.Template:Sfn Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and introducing him to a wide range of Munich society.Template:Sfn To increase its appeal, the DAP changed its name to the Template:Lang (National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), known colloquially as the "Nazi Party").Template:Sfn Hitler designed the party's banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background.Template:Sfn

Hitler was discharged from the Army on 31 March 1920 and began working full-time for the party.Template:Sfn The party headquarters was in Munich, a centre for anti-government German nationalists determined to eliminate Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic.Template:Sfn In February 1921—already highly effective at crowd manipulation—he spoke to a crowd of over 6,000.Template:Sfn To publicise the meeting, two truckloads of party supporters drove around Munich waving swastika flags and distributing leaflets. Hitler soon gained notoriety for his rowdy polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, and especially against Marxists and Jews.Template:Sfn

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-10460, Adolf Hitler, Rednerposen.jpg  In June 1921, while Hitler and Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin, a mutiny broke out within the Nazi Party in Munich. Members of its executive committee wanted to merge with the Nuremberg-based German Socialist Party (DSP).Template:Sfn Hitler returned to Munich on 11 July and angrily tendered his resignation. The committee members realised that the resignation of their leading public figure and speaker would mean the end of the party.Template:Sfn Hitler announced he would rejoin on the condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman, and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich.Template:Sfn The committee agreed, and he rejoined the party on 26 July as member 3,680. Hitler continued to face some opposition within the Nazi Party. Opponents of Hitler in the leadership had Hermann Esser expelled from the party, and they printed 3,000 copies of a pamphlet attacking Hitler as a traitor to the party.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn In the following days, Hitler spoke to several large audiences and defended himself and Esser, to thunderous applause. His strategy proved successful, and at a special party congress on 29 July, he was granted absolute power as party chairman, succeeding Drexler, by a vote of 533Template:NbsptoTemplate:Nbsp1.Template:Sfn

Hitler's vitriolic beer hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. A demagogue,Template:Sfn he became adept at using populist themes, including the use of scapegoats, who were blamed for his listeners' economic hardships.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler used personal magnetism and an understanding of crowd psychology to his advantage while engaged in public speaking.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Historians have noted the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups.Template:Sfn Alfons Heck, a former member of the Hitler Youth, recalled: Template:Blockquote

Early followers included Rudolf Hess, former air force ace Hermann Göring, and army captain Ernst Röhm. Röhm became head of the Nazis' paramilitary organisation, the Template:Lang (SA, "Stormtroopers"), which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. A critical influence on Hitler's thinking during this period was the Template:Lang,Template:Sfn a conspiratorial group of White Russian exiles and early Nazis. The group, financed with funds channelled from wealthy industrialists, introduced Hitler to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy, linking international finance with Bolshevism.Template:Sfn

The programme of the Nazi Party was laid out in their 25-point programme on 24 February 1920. This did not represent a coherent ideology, but was a conglomeration of received ideas which had currency in the Template:Lang Pan-Germanic movement, such as ultranationalism, opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, distrust of capitalism, as well as some socialist ideas. For Hitler, the most important aspect of it was its strong anti-Semitic stance. He also perceived the programme as primarily a basis for propaganda and for attracting people to the party.Template:Sfn

### Beer Hall Putsch and Landsberg Prison

Main article: Beer Hall Putsch
 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-00344A, München, nach Hitler-Ludendorff Prozess.jpg  In 1923, Hitler enlisted the help of World War I General Erich Ludendorff for an attempted coup known as the "Beer Hall Putsch". The Nazi Party used Italian Fascism as a model for their appearance and policies. Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini's "March on Rome" of 1922 by staging his own coup in Bavaria, to be followed by a challenge to the government in Berlin. Hitler and Ludendorff sought the support of Template:Lang (State Commissioner) Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Bavaria's *de facto* ruler. However, Kahr, along with Police Chief Hans Ritter von Seisser and Reichswehr General Otto von Lossow, wanted to install a nationalist dictatorship without Hitler.Template:Sfn
On 8 November 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people organised by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich. Interrupting Kahr's speech, he announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government with Ludendorff.Template:Sfn Retiring to a back room, Hitler, with his pistol drawn, demanded and subsequently received the support of Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow.Template:Sfn Hitler's forces initially succeeded in occupying the local Reichswehr and police headquarters, but Kahr and his cohorts quickly withdrew their support. Neither the Army nor the state police joined forces with Hitler.Template:Sfn The next day, Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government, but police dispersed them.Template:Sfn Sixteen Nazi Party members and four police officers were killed in the failed coup.Template:Sfn

 File:Mein Kampf dust jacket.jpeg  Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl and by some accounts contemplated suicide.Template:Sfn He was depressed but calm when arrested on 11 November 1923 for high treason.Template:Sfn His trial before the special People's Court in Munich began in February 1924,Template:Sfn and Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the Nazi Party. On 1 April, Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison.Template:Sfn There, he received friendly treatment from the guards, and was allowed mail from supporters and regular visits by party comrades. Pardoned by the Bavarian Supreme Court, he was released from jail on 20 December 1924, against the state prosecutor's objections.Template:Sfn Including time on remand, Hitler served just over one year in prison.Template:Sfn

While at Landsberg, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of *Mein Kampf* (*My Struggle*; originally entitled *Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice*) at first to his chauffeur, Emil Maurice, and then to his deputy, Rudolf Hess.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an autobiography and exposition of his ideology. The book laid out Hitler's plans for transforming German society into one based on race. Throughout the book, Jews are equated with "germs" and presented as the "international poisoners" of society. According to Hitler's ideology, the only solution was their extermination. While Hitler did not describe exactly how this was to be accomplished, his "inherent genocidal thrust is undeniable", according to Ian Kershaw.Template:Sfn

Published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, Template:Lang sold 228,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. One million copies were sold in 1933, Hitler's first year in office.Template:Sfn

Shortly before Hitler was eligible for parole, the Bavarian government attempted to have him deported to Austria.Template:Sfn The Austrian federal chancellor rejected the request on the specious grounds that his service in the German Army made his Austrian citizenship void.Template:Sfn In response, Hitler formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925.Template:Sfn

### Rebuilding the Nazi Party

At the time of Hitler's release from prison, politics in Germany had become less combative and the economy had improved, limiting Hitler's opportunities for political agitation. As a result of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazi Party and its affiliated organisations were banned in Bavaria. In a meeting with the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Heinrich Held, on 4 January 1925, Hitler agreed to respect the state's authority and promised that he would seek political power only through the democratic process. The meeting paved the way for the ban on the Nazi Party to be lifted on 16 February.Template:Sfn However, after an inflammatory speech he gave on 27 February, Hitler was barred from public speaking by the Bavarian authorities, a ban that remained in place until 1927.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn To advance his political ambitions in spite of the ban, Hitler appointed Gregor Strasser, Otto Strasser, and Joseph Goebbels to organise and enlarge the Nazi Party in northern Germany. Gregor Strasser steered a more independent political course, emphasising the socialist elements of the party's programme.Template:Sfn

The stock market in the United States crashed on 24 October 1929. The impact in Germany was dire: millions became unemployed and several major banks collapsed. Hitler and the Nazi Party prepared to take advantage of the emergency to gain support for their party. They promised to repudiate the Versailles Treaty, strengthen the economy, and provide jobs.Template:Sfn

Template:Antisemitism sidebar

## Rise to power

Main article: Adolf Hitler's rise to power

### Brüning administration

The Great Depression provided a political opportunity for Hitler. Germans were ambivalent about the parliamentary republic, which faced challenges from right- and left-wing extremists. The moderate political parties were increasingly unable to stem the tide of extremism, and the German referendum of 1929 helped to elevate Nazi ideology.Template:Sfn The elections of September 1930 resulted in the break-up of a grand coalition and its replacement with a minority cabinet. Its leader, chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party, governed through emergency decrees from President Paul von Hindenburg. Governance by decree became the new norm and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government.Template:Sfn The Nazi Party rose from obscurity to win 18.3 per cent of the vote and 107 parliamentary seats in the 1930 election, becoming the second-largest party in parliament.Template:Sfn

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 119-0289, München, Hitler bei Einweihung "Braunes Haus".jpg  Hitler made a prominent appearance at the trial of two Reichswehr officers, Lieutenants Richard Scheringer and Hanns Ludin, in late 1930. Both were charged with membership in the Nazi Party, at that time illegal for Reichswehr personnel.Template:Sfn The prosecution argued that the Nazi Party was an extremist party, prompting defence lawyer Hans Frank to call on Hitler to testify.Template:Sfn On 25 September 1930, Hitler testified that his party would pursue political power solely through democratic elections,Template:Sfn which won him many supporters in the officer corps.Template:Sfn

Brüning's austerity measures brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular.Template:Sfn Hitler exploited this by targeting his political messages specifically at people who had been affected by the inflation of the 1920s and the Depression, such as farmers, war veterans, and the middle class.Template:Sfn

Although Hitler had terminated his Austrian citizenship in 1925, he did not acquire German citizenship for almost seven years. This meant that he was stateless, legally unable to run for public office, and still faced the risk of deportation.Template:Sfn On 25 February 1932, the interior minister of Brunswick, Dietrich Klagges, who was a member of the Nazi Party, appointed Hitler as administrator for the state's delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin, making Hitler a citizen of Brunswick,Template:Sfn and thus of Germany.Template:Sfn

Hitler ran against Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential elections. A speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf on 27 January 1932 won him support from many of Germany's most powerful industrialists.Template:Sfn Hindenburg had support from various nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, and republican parties, and some Social Democrats. Hitler used the campaign slogan "Template:Lang" ("Hitler over Germany"), a reference to his political ambitions and his campaigning by aircraft.Template:Sfn He was one of the first politicians to use aircraft travel for campaigning and used it effectively.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, garnering more than 35 per cent of the vote in the final election. Although he lost to Hindenburg, this election established Hitler as a strong force in German politics.Template:Sfn

### Appointment as chancellor

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1972-026-11, Machtübernahme Hitlers.jpg  The absence of an effective government prompted two influential politicians, Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, along with several other industrialists and businessmen, to write a letter to Hindenburg. The signers urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties", which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor after two further parliamentary elections—in July and November 1932—had not resulted in the formation of a majority government. Hitler headed a short-lived coalition government formed by the Nazi Party (which had the most seats in the Reichstag) and Hugenberg's party, the German National People's Party (DNVP). On 30 January 1933, the new cabinet was sworn in during a brief ceremony in Hindenburg's office. The Nazi Party gained three posts: Hitler was named chancellor, Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior, and Hermann Göring Minister of the Interior for Prussia.Template:Sfn Hitler had insisted on the ministerial positions as a way to gain control over the police in much of Germany.Template:Sfn

### Reichstag fire and March elections

Main article: Reichstag fire
As chancellor, Hitler worked against attempts by the Nazi Party's opponents to build a majority government. Because of the political stalemate, he asked Hindenburg to again dissolve the Reichstag, and elections were scheduled for early March. On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Göring blamed a communist plot, as Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found in incriminating circumstances inside the burning building.Template:Sfn Until the 1960s, some historians including William L. Shirer and Alan Bullock thought the Nazi Party itself was responsible;Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn the current consensus of nearly all historians is that van der Lubbe set the fire alone.Template:Sfn At Hitler's urging, Hindenburg responded by signing the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February, drafted by the Nazis, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. The decree was permitted under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave the president the power to take emergency measures to protect public safety and order.Template:Sfn Activities of the German Communist Party (KPD) were suppressed, and some 4,000 KPD members were arrested.Template:Sfn

In addition to political campaigning, the Nazi Party engaged in paramilitary violence and the spread of anti-communist propaganda in the days preceding the election. On election day, 6 March 1933, the Nazi Party's share of the vote increased to 43.9 per cent, and the party acquired the largest number of seats in parliament. Hitler's party failed to secure an absolute majority, necessitating another coalition with the DNVP.Template:Sfn

### Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act

Main article: Enabling Act of 1933
 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S38324, Tag von Potsdam, Adolf Hitler, Paul v. Hindenburg.jpg  On 21 March 1933, the new Reichstag was constituted with an opening ceremony at the Garrison Church in Potsdam. This "Day of Potsdam" was held to demonstrate unity between the Nazi movement and the old Prussian elite and military. Hitler appeared in a morning coat and humbly greeted Hindenburg.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

To achieve full political control despite not having an absolute majority in parliament, Hitler's government brought the Template:Lang (Enabling Act) to a vote in the newly elected Reichstag. The ActTemplate:Sndofficially titled the Template:Lang ("Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich")Template:Sndgave Hitler's cabinet the power to enact laws without the consent of the Reichstag for four years. These laws could (with certain exceptions) deviate from the constitution.Template:Sfn Since it would affect the constitution, the Enabling Act required a two-thirds majority to pass. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to arrest all 81 Communist deputies (in spite of their virulent campaign against the party, the Nazis had allowed the KPD to contest the election)Template:Sfn and prevent several Social Democrats from attending.Template:Sfn

On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag assembled at the Kroll Opera House under turbulent circumstances. Ranks of SA men served as guards inside the building, while large groups outside opposing the proposed legislation shouted slogans and threats towards the arriving members of parliament.Template:Sfn After Hitler verbally promised Centre party leader Ludwig Kaas that Hindenburg would retain his power of veto, Kaas announced the Centre Party would support the Enabling Act. The Act passed by a vote of 444–94, with all parties except the Social Democrats voting in favour. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship.Template:Sfn

### Dictatorship

Template:Blockquote

Having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his allies began to suppress the remaining opposition. The Social Democratic Party was made illegal, and its assets were seized.Template:Sfn While many trade union delegates were in Berlin for May Day activities, SA stormtroopers occupied union offices around the country. On 2 May 1933, all trade unions were forced to dissolve, and their leaders were arrested. Some were sent to concentration camps.Template:Sfn The German Labour Front was formed as an umbrella organisation to represent all workers, administrators, and company owners, thus reflecting the concept of Nazism in the spirit of Hitler's Template:Lang ("people's community").Template:Sfn

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1990-048-29A, Adolf Hitler retouched.jpg  By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated into disbanding. This included the Nazis' nominal coalition partner, the DNVP; with the SA's help, Hitler forced its leader, Hugenberg, to resign on 29 June. On 14 July 1933, the Nazi Party was declared the only legal political party in Germany.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The demands of the SA for more political and military power caused anxiety among military, industrial, and political leaders. In response, Hitler purged the entire SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934.Template:Sfn Hitler targeted Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders who, along with a number of Hitler's political adversaries (such as Gregor Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher), were rounded up, arrested, and shot.Template:Sfn While the international community and some Germans were shocked by the killings, many in Germany believed Hitler was restoring order.Template:Sfn

On 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died. The previous day, the cabinet had enacted the Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich.Template:Sfn This law stated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of president would be abolished, and its powers merged with those of the chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government and was formally named as Template:Lang (leader and chancellor),Template:Sfn although Template:Lang was eventually dropped.Template:Sfn With this action, Hitler eliminated the last legal remedy by which he could be removed from office.Template:Sfn

As head of state, Hitler became commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Immediately after Hindenburg's death, at the instigation of the leadership of the Template:Lang, the traditional loyalty oath of soldiers was altered to affirm loyalty to Hitler personally, by name, rather than to the office of commander-in-chief (which was later renamed to supreme commander) or the state.Template:Sfn On 19 August, the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship was approved by 88 per cent of the electorate voting in a plebiscite.Template:Sfn

 File:Standarte Adolf Hitlers.svg  In early 1938, Hitler used blackmail to consolidate his hold over the military by instigating the Blomberg–Fritsch affair. Hitler forced his War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, to resign by using a police dossier that showed that Blomberg's new wife had a record for prostitution.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Army commander Colonel-General Werner von Fritsch was removed after the Template:Lang (SS) produced allegations that he had engaged in a homosexual relationship.Template:Sfn Both men had fallen into disfavour because they objected to Hitler's demand to make the Template:Lang ready for war as early as 1938.Template:Sfn Hitler assumed Blomberg's title of Commander-in-Chief, thus taking personal command of the armed forces. He replaced the Ministry of War with the Template:Lang (OKW), headed by General Wilhelm Keitel. On the same day, sixteen generals were stripped of their commands and 44 more were transferred; all were suspected of not being sufficiently pro-Nazi.Template:Sfn By early February 1938, twelve more generals had been removed.Template:Sfn

Hitler took care to give his dictatorship the appearance of legality. Many of his decrees were explicitly based on the Reichstag Fire Decree and hence on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag renewed the Enabling Act twice, each time for a four-year period.Template:Sfn While elections to the Reichstag were still held (in 1933, 1936, and 1938), voters were presented with a single list of Nazis and pro-Nazi "guests" which carried with well over 90 per cent of the vote.Template:Sfn These elections were held in far-from-secret conditions; the Nazis threatened severe reprisals against anyone who did not vote or dared to vote no.Template:Sfn

### Economy and culture

Main article: Economy of Nazi Germany
 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-04062A, Nürnberg, Reichsparteitag, SA- und SS-Appell.jpg  In August 1934, Hitler appointed Template:Lang President Hjalmar Schacht as Minister of Economics, and in the following year, as Plenipotentiary for War Economy in charge of preparing the economy for war.Template:Sfn Reconstruction and rearmament were financed through Mefo bills, printing money, and seizing the assets of people arrested as enemies of the State, including Jews.Template:Sfn Unemployment fell from six million in 1932 to one million in 1936.Template:Sfn Hitler oversaw one of the largest infrastructure improvement campaigns in German history, leading to the construction of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. Wages were slightly lower in the mid to late 1930s compared with wages during the Weimar Republic, while the cost of living increased by 25 per cent.Template:Sfn The average work week increased during the shift to a war economy; by 1939, the average German was working between 47 and 50 hours a week.Template:Sfn

Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale. Albert Speer, instrumental in implementing Hitler's classicist reinterpretation of German culture, was placed in charge of the proposed architectural renovations of Berlin.Template:Sfn Despite a threatened multi-nation boycott, Germany hosted the 1936 Olympic Games. Hitler officiated at the opening ceremonies and attended events at both the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the Summer Games in Berlin.Template:Sfn

### Rearmament and new alliances

Main articles: Axis powers, Tripartite Pact, and German re-armament
In a meeting with German military leaders on 3 February 1933, Hitler spoke of "conquest for Template:Lang in the East and its ruthless Germanisation" as his ultimate foreign policy objectives.Template:Sfn In March, Prince Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), issued a statement of major foreign policy aims: Template:Lang with Austria, the restoration of Germany's national borders of 1914, rejection of military restrictions under the Treaty of Versailles, the return of the former German colonies in Africa, and a German zone of influence in Eastern Europe. Hitler found Bülow's goals to be too modest.Template:Sfn In speeches during this period, he stressed the peaceful goals of his policies and a willingness to work within international agreements.Template:Sfn At the first meeting of his cabinet in 1933, Hitler prioritised military spending over unemployment relief.Template:Sfn

Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference in October 1933.Template:Sfn In January 1935, over 90 per cent of the people of the Saarland, then under League of Nations administration, voted to unite with Germany.Template:Sfn That March, Hitler announced an expansion of the Wehrmacht to 600,000 membersTemplate:Sndsix times the number permitted by the Versailles TreatyTemplate:Sndincluding development of an air force (Template:Lang) and an increase in the size of the navy (Template:Lang). Britain, France, Italy, and the League of Nations condemned these violations of the Treaty but did nothing to stop it.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) of 18 June allowed German tonnage to increase to 35 per cent of that of the British navy. Hitler called the signing of the AGNA "the happiest day of his life", believing that the agreement marked the beginning of the Anglo-German alliance he had predicted in Template:Lang.Template:Sfn France and Italy were not consulted before the signing, directly undermining the League of Nations and setting the Treaty of Versailles on the path towards irrelevance.Template:Sfn

Germany reoccupied the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland in March 1936, in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler also sent troops to Spain to support Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War after receiving an appeal for help in July 1936. At the same time, Hitler continued his efforts to create an Anglo-German alliance.Template:Sfn In August 1936, in response to a growing economic crisis caused by his rearmament efforts, Hitler ordered Göring to implement a Four Year Plan to prepare Germany for war within the next four years.Template:Sfn The plan envisaged an all-out struggle between "Judeo-Bolshevism" and German Nazism, which in Hitler's view required a committed effort of rearmament regardless of the economic costs.Template:Sfn

In October 1936, Count Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of Mussolini's government, visited Germany, where he signed a Nine-Point Protocol as an expression of *rapprochement* and had a personal meeting with Hitler. On 1 November, Mussolini declared an "axis" between Germany and Italy.Template:Sfn On 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. Britain, China, Italy, and Poland were also invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in 1937. Hitler abandoned his plan of an Anglo-German alliance, blaming "inadequate" British leadership.Template:Sfn At a meeting in the Reich Chancellery with his foreign ministers and military chiefs that November, Hitler restated his intention of acquiring Template:Lang for the German people. He ordered preparations for war in the East, to begin as early as 1938 and no later than 1943. In the event of his death, the conference minutes, recorded as the Hossbach Memorandum, were to be regarded as his "political testament".Template:Sfn He felt that a severe decline in living standards in Germany as a result of the economic crisis could only be stopped by military aggression aimed at seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler urged quick action before Britain and France gained a permanent lead in the arms race.Template:Sfn In early 1938, in the wake of the Blomberg–Fritsch affair, Hitler asserted control of the military-foreign policy apparatus, dismissing Neurath as foreign minister and appointing himself as War Minister.Template:Sfn From early 1938 onwards, Hitler was carrying out a foreign policy ultimately aimed at war.Template:Sfn

### Early diplomatic successes

#### Alliance with Japan

See also: Germany–Japan relations
In February 1938, on the advice of his newly appointed foreign minister, the strongly pro-Japanese Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler ended the Sino-German alliance with the Republic of China to instead enter into an alliance with the more modern and powerful Empire of Japan. Hitler announced German recognition of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, and renounced German claims to their former colonies in the Pacific held by Japan.Template:Sfn Hitler ordered an end to arms shipments to China and recalled all German officers working with the Chinese Army.Template:Sfn In retaliation, Chinese General Template:Lang cancelled all Sino-German economic agreements, depriving the Germans of many Chinese raw materials.Template:Sfn

#### Austria and Czechoslovakia

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 137-004055, Eger, Besuch Adolf Hitlers.jpg  On 12 March 1938, Hitler announced the unification of Austria with Nazi Germany in the *Anschluss*.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler then turned his attention to the ethnic German population of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.Template:Sfn On 28–29 March 1938, Hitler held a series of secret meetings in Berlin with Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten German Party, the largest of the ethnic German parties of the Sudetenland. The men agreed that Henlein would demand increased autonomy for Sudeten Germans from the Czechoslovakian government, thus providing a pretext for German military action against Czechoslovakia. In April 1938 Henlein told the foreign minister of Hungary that "whatever the Czech government might offer, he would always raise still higher demands ... he wanted to sabotage an understanding by any means because this was the only method to blow up Czechoslovakia quickly".Template:Sfn In private, Hitler considered the Sudeten issue unimportant; his real intention was a war of conquest against Czechoslovakia.Template:Sfn

In April, Hitler ordered the OKW to prepare for Template:Lang (Case Green), the code name for an invasion of Czechoslovakia.Template:Sfn As a result of intense French and British diplomatic pressure, on 5 September Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš unveiled the "Fourth Plan" for constitutional reorganisation of his country, which agreed to most of Henlein's demands for Sudeten autonomy.Template:Sfn Henlein's party responded to Beneš' offer by instigating a series of violent clashes with the Czechoslovakian police that led to the declaration of martial law in certain Sudeten districts.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Germany was dependent on imported oil; a confrontation with Britain over the Czechoslovakian dispute could curtail Germany's oil supplies. This forced Hitler to call off Template:Lang, originally planned for 1 October 1938.Template:Sfn On 29 September Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, and Mussolini attended a one-day conference in Munich that led to the Munich Agreement, which handed over the Sudetenland districts to Germany.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Chamberlain was satisfied with the Munich conference, calling the outcome "peace for our time", while Hitler was angered about the missed opportunity for war in 1938;Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn he expressed his disappointment in a speech on 9 October in Saarbrücken.Template:Sfn In Hitler's view, the British-brokered peace, although favourable to the ostensible German demands, was a diplomatic defeat which spurred his intent of limiting British power to pave the way for the eastern expansion of Germany.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn As a result of the summit, Hitler was selected *Time* magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.Template:Sfn

In late 1938 and early 1939, the continuing economic crisis caused by rearmament forced Hitler to make major defence cuts.Template:Sfn In his "Export or die" speech of 30 January 1939, he called for an economic offensive to increase German foreign exchange holdings to pay for raw materials such as high-grade iron needed for military weapons.Template:Sfn

On 14 March 1939, under threat from Hungary, Slovakia declared independence and received protection from Germany.Template:Sfn The next day, in violation of the Munich Agreement and possibly as a result of the deepening economic crisis requiring additional assets,Template:Sfn Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to invade the Czech rump state, and from Prague Castle he proclaimed the territory a German protectorate.Template:Sfn

### Start of World War II

See also: Causes of World War II
In private discussions in 1939, Hitler declared Britain the main enemy to be defeated and that Poland's obliteration was a necessary prelude for that goal.Template:Sfn The eastern flank would be secured and land would be added to Germany's Template:Lang.Template:Sfn Offended by the British "guarantee" on 31 March 1939 of Polish independence, he said, "I shall brew them a devil's drink".Template:Sfn In a speech in Wilhelmshaven for the launch of the battleship Template:Ship on 1 April, he threatened to denounce the Anglo-German Naval Agreement if the British continued to guarantee Polish independence, which he perceived as an "encirclement" policy.Template:Sfn Poland was to either become a German satellite state or it would be neutralised in order to secure the Reich's eastern flank and prevent a possible British blockade.Template:Sfn Hitler initially favoured the idea of a satellite state, but upon its rejection by the Polish government, he decided to invade and made this the main foreign policy goal of 1939.Template:Sfn On 3 April, Hitler ordered the military to prepare for Template:Lang ("Case White"), the plan for invading Poland on 25 August.Template:Sfn In a Reichstag speech on 28 April, he renounced both the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.Template:Sfn Historians such as William Carr, Gerhard Weinberg, and Ian Kershaw have argued that one reason for Hitler's rush to war was his fear of an early death. He had repeatedly claimed that he must lead Germany into war before he got too old, as his successors might lack his strength of will.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Hitler was concerned that a military attack against Poland could result in a premature war with Britain.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler's foreign minister and former Ambassador to London, Joachim von Ribbentrop, assured him that neither Britain nor France would honour their commitments to Poland.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Accordingly, on 22 August 1939 Hitler ordered a military mobilisation against Poland.Template:Sfn

This plan required tacit Soviet support,Template:Sfn and the non-aggression pact (the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) between Germany and the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, included a secret agreement to partition Poland between the two countries.Template:Sfn Contrary to Ribbentrop's prediction that Britain would sever Anglo-Polish ties, Britain and Poland signed the Anglo-Polish alliance on 25 August 1939. This, along with news from Italy that Mussolini would not honour the Pact of Steel, prompted Hitler to postpone the attack on Poland from 25 August to 1 September.Template:Sfn Hitler unsuccessfully tried to manoeuvre the British into neutrality by offering them a non-aggression guarantee on 25 August; he then instructed Ribbentrop to present a last-minute peace plan with an impossibly short time limit in an effort to blame the imminent war on British and Polish inaction.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded western Poland under the pretext of having been denied claims to the Free City of Danzig and the right to extraterritorial roads across the Polish Corridor, which Germany had ceded under the Versailles Treaty.Template:Sfn In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September, surprising Hitler and prompting him to angrily ask Ribbentrop, "Now what?"Template:Sfn France and Britain did not act on their declarations immediately, and on 17 September, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland.Template:Sfn

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S55480, Polen, Parade vor Adolf Hitler.jpg  The fall of Poland was followed by what contemporary journalists dubbed the "Phoney War" or Template:Lang ("sitting war"). Hitler instructed the two newly appointed Gauleiters of north-western Poland, Albert Forster of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Arthur Greiser of Reichsgau Wartheland, to Germanise their areas, with "no questions asked" about how this was accomplished.Template:Sfn In Forster's area, ethnic Poles merely had to sign forms stating that they had German blood.Template:Sfn In contrast, Greiser agreed with Himmler and carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign towards Poles. Greiser soon complained that Forster was allowing thousands of Poles to be accepted as "racial" Germans and thus endangered German "racial purity".Template:Sfn Hitler refrained from getting involved. This inaction has been advanced as an example of the theory of "working towards the Führer", in which Hitler issued vague instructions and expected his subordinates to work out policies on their own.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Another dispute pitched one side represented by Heinrich Himmler and Greiser, who championed ethnic cleansing in Poland, against another represented by Göring and Hans Frank (governor-general of occupied Poland), who called for turning Poland into the "granary" of the Reich. On 12 February 1940, the dispute was initially settled in favour of the Göring–Frank view, which ended the economically disruptive mass expulsions. On 15 May 1940, Himmler issued a memo entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East", calling for the expulsion of the entire Jewish population of Europe into Africa and the reduction of the Polish population to a "leaderless class of labourers". Hitler called Himmler's memo "good and correct", and, ignoring Göring and Frank, implemented the Himmler–Greiser policy in Poland.Template:Sfn

 File:Adolf Hitler in Paris 1940.jpg  On 9 April, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. On the same day Hitler proclaimed the birth of the Greater Germanic Reich, his vision of a united empire of Germanic nations of Europe in which the Dutch, Flemish, and Scandinavians were joined into a "racially pure" polity under German leadership.Template:Sfn In May 1940, Germany attacked France, and conquered Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. These victories prompted Mussolini to have Italy join forces with Hitler on 10 June. France and Germany signed an armistice on 22 June.Template:Sfn Kershaw notes that Hitler's popularity within GermanyTemplate:Sndand German support for the warTemplate:Sndreached its peak when he returned to Berlin on 6 July from his tour of Paris.Template:Sfn Following the unexpected swift victory, Hitler promoted twelve generals to the rank of field marshal during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Britain, whose troops were forced to evacuate France by sea from Dunkirk,Template:Sfn continued to fight alongside other British dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler made peace overtures to the new British leader, Winston Churchill, and upon their rejection he ordered a series of aerial attacks on Royal Air Force airbases and radar stations in southeast England. On 7 September the systematic nightly bombing of London began. The German Luftwaffe failed to defeat the Royal Air Force in what became known as the Battle of Britain.Template:Sfn By the end of September, Hitler realised that air superiority for the invasion of Britain (in Operation Sea Lion) could not be achieved, and ordered the operation postponed. The nightly air raids on British cities intensified and continued for months, including London, Plymouth, and Coventry.Template:Sfn

On 27 September 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin by Saburō Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Hitler, and Italian foreign minister Ciano,Template:Sfn and later expanded to include Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, thus yielding the Axis powers. Hitler's attempt to integrate the Soviet Union into the anti-British bloc failed after inconclusive talks between Hitler and Molotov in Berlin in November, and he ordered preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn

 File:Greater Germanic Reich.png  In early 1941, German forces were deployed to North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. In February, German forces arrived in Libya to bolster the Italian presence. In April, Hitler launched the invasion of Yugoslavia, quickly followed by the invasion of Greece.Template:Sfn In May, German forces were sent to support Iraqi forces fighting against the British and to invade Crete.Template:Sfn

### Path to defeat

On 22 June 1941, contravening the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, over three million Axis troops attacked the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn This offensive (codenamed Operation Barbarossa) was intended to destroy the Soviet Union and seize its natural resources for subsequent aggression against the Western powers.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The action was also part of the overall plan to obtain more living space for German people; and Hitler thought a successful invasion would force Britain to negotiate a surrender.Template:Sfn The invasion conquered a huge area, including the Baltic republics, Belarus, and West Ukraine. By early August, Axis troops had advanced Template:Convert and won the Battle of Smolensk. Hitler ordered Army Group Centre to temporarily halt its advance to Moscow and divert its Panzer groups to aid in the encirclement of Leningrad and Kiev.Template:Sfn His generals disagreed with this change, having advanced within Template:Convert of Moscow, and his decision caused a crisis among the military leadership.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The pause provided the Red Army with an opportunity to mobilise fresh reserves; historian Russel Stolfi considers it to be one of the major factors that caused the failure of the Moscow offensive, which was resumed in October 1941 and ended disastrously in December.Template:Sfn During this crisis, Hitler appointed himself as head of the Template:Lang.Template:Sfn

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1987-0703-507, Berlin, Reichstagssitzung, Rede Adolf Hitler.jpg  On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the American fleet based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four days later, Hitler declared war against the United States.Template:Sfn On 18 December 1941, Himmler asked Hitler, "What to do with the Jews of Russia?", to which Hitler replied, Template:Lang ("exterminate them as partisans").Template:Sfn Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust.Template:Sfn
In late 1942, German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein,Template:Sfn thwarting Hitler's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. Overconfident in his own military expertise following the earlier victories in 1940, Hitler became distrustful of his Army High Command and began to interfere in military and tactical planning, with damaging consequences.Template:Sfn In December 1942 and January 1943, Hitler's repeated refusal to allow their withdrawal at the Battle of Stalingrad led to the almost total destruction of the 6th Army. Over 200,000 Axis soldiers were killed and 235,000 were taken prisoner.Template:Sfn Thereafter came a decisive strategic defeat at the Battle of Kursk.Template:Sfn Hitler's military judgement became increasingly erratic, and Germany's military and economic position deteriorated, as did Hitler's health.Template:Sfn

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1972-025-12, Zerstörte Lagerbaracke nach dem 20. Juli 1944.jpg  Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Mussolini was removed from power by King Victor Emmanuel III after a vote of no confidence of the Grand Council of Fascism. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, placed in charge of the government, soon surrendered to the Allies.Template:Sfn Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler's armies into retreat along the Eastern Front. On 6 June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord.Template:Sfn Many German officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that continuing under Hitler's leadership would result in the complete destruction of the country.Template:Sfn

Between 1939 and 1945, there were many plans to assassinate Hitler, some of which proceeded to significant degrees.Template:Sfn The most well-known, the 20 July plot of 1944, came from within Germany and was at least partly driven by the increasing prospect of a German defeat in the war.Template:Sfn Part of Operation Valkyrie, the plot involved Claus von Stauffenberg planting a bomb in one of Hitler's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg. Hitler narrowly survived because staff officer Heinz Brandt moved the briefcase containing the bomb behind a leg of the heavy conference table, which deflected much of the blast. Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals resulting in the execution of more than 4,900 people.Template:Sfn

According to British academic Dan Plesch, Hitler was put on the United Nations War Crimes Commission's first list of war criminals in December 1944, after determining that Hitler could be held criminally responsible for the acts of the Nazis in occupied countries. By March 1945 at least seven indictments had been filed against him.Template:Sfn

### Defeat and death

Main article: Death of Adolf Hitler
    File:Stars & Stripes & Hitler Dead2.jpg  By late 1944, both the Red Army and the Western Allies were advancing into Germany. Recognising the strength and determination of the Red Army, Hitler decided to use his remaining mobile reserves against the American and British armies, which he perceived as far weaker.Template:Sfn On 16 December, he launched the Ardennes Offensive to incite disunity among the Western Allies and perhaps convince them to join his fight against the Soviets.Template:Sfn After some temporary successes, the offensive failed.Template:Sfn With much of Germany in ruins in January 1945, Hitler spoke on the radio: "However grave as the crisis may be at this moment, it will, despite everything, be mastered by our unalterable will."Template:Sfn Acting on his view that Germany's military failures meant it had forfeited its right to survive as a nation, Hitler ordered the destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands.Template:Sfn Minister for Armaments Albert Speer was entrusted with executing this scorched earth policy, but he secretly disobeyed the order.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler's hope to negotiate peace with the United States and Britain was encouraged by the death of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945, but contrary to his expectations, this caused no rift among the Allies.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

On 20 April, his 56thTemplate:Nbspbirthday, Hitler made his last trip from the Template:Lang (Führer's shelter) to the surface. In the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery, he awarded Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth, who were now fighting the Red Army at the front near Berlin.Template:Sfn By 21 April, Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the defences of General Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights and advanced to the outskirts of Berlin.Template:Sfn In denial about the dire situation, Hitler placed his hopes on the undermanned and under-equipped Template:Lang (Army Detachment Steiner), commanded by Felix Steiner. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the salient, while the German Ninth Army was ordered to attack northward in a pincer attack.Template:Sfn

During a military conference on 22 April, Hitler asked about Steiner's offensive. He was told that the attack had not been launched and that the Soviets had entered Berlin. Hitler asked everyone except Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Hans Krebs, and Wilhelm Burgdorf to leave the room,Template:Sfn then launched into a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders, culminating in his declaration—for the first time—that "everything is lost".Template:Sfn He announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself.Template:Sfn

By 23 April the Red Army had surrounded Berlin,Template:Sfn and Goebbels made a proclamation urging its citizens to defend the city.Template:Sfn That same day, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden, arguing that since Hitler was isolated in Berlin, Göring should assume leadership of Germany. Göring set a deadline, after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated.Template:Sfn Hitler responded by having Göring arrested, and in his last will and testament of 29 April, he removed Göring from all government positions.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn On 28 April Hitler discovered that Himmler, who had left Berlin on 20 April, was trying to negotiate a surrender to the Western Allies.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He ordered Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot.Template:Sfn

After midnight on the night of 28–29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in the Template:Lang.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Later that afternoon, Hitler was informed that Mussolini had been executed by the Italian resistance movement on the previous day; this likely increased his determination to avoid capture.Template:Sfn

On 30 April 1945, Soviet troops were within five hundred metres of the Reich Chancellery when Hitler shot himself in the head and Braun bit into a cyanide capsule.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In accordance with Hitler's wishes, their corpses were carried outside to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol, and set on fire as the Red Army shelling continued.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels assumed Hitler's roles as head of state and chancellor respectively.Template:Sfn On the evening of 1 May, Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide in the Reich Chancellery garden, after having poisoned their six children with cyanide.Template:Sfn

Berlin surrendered on 2 May. The remains of the Goebbelss, General Hans Krebs (who had committed suicide that day), and Hitler's dog Blondi were repeatedly buried and exhumed by the Soviets.Template:Sfn Hitler's and Braun's remains were alleged to have been moved as well, but this is most likely Soviet disinformation. There is no evidence that any identifiable remains of Hitler or Braun—with the exception of dental bridges—were ever found by them.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn While news of Hitler's death spread quickly, a death certificate was not issued until 1956, after a lengthy investigation to collect testimony from 42 witnesses. Hitler's demise was entered as an assumption of death based on this testimony.Template:Sfn

## The Holocaust

Main articles: The Holocaust and Final Solution
Template:Blockquote

 File:Buchenwald Corpses 60623.jpg  The Holocaust and Germany's war in the East were based on Hitler's long-standing view that the Jews were the enemy of the German people, and that Template:Lang was needed for Germany's expansion. He focused on Eastern Europe for this expansion, aiming to defeat Poland and the Soviet Union and then removing or killing the Jews and Slavs.Template:Sfn The Template:Lang (General Plan East) called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to West Siberia, for use as slave labour or to be murdered;Template:Sfn the conquered territories were to be colonised by German or "Germanised" settlers.Template:Sfn The goal was to implement this plan after the conquest of the Soviet Union, but when this failed, Hitler moved the plans forward.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn By January 1942, he had decided that the Jews, Slavs, and other deportees considered undesirable should be killed.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn

 File:Aktion brand.jpg  The genocide was organised and executed by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. The records of the Wannsee Conference, held on 20 January 1942 and led by Heydrich, with fifteen senior Nazi officials participating, provide the clearest evidence of systematic planning for the Holocaust. On 22 February, Hitler was recorded saying, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews".Template:Sfn Similarly, at a meeting in July 1941 with leading functionaries of the Eastern territories, Hitler said that the easiest way to quickly pacify the areas would be best achieved by "shooting everyone who even looks odd".Template:Sfn Although no direct order from Hitler authorising the mass killings has surfaced,Template:Sfn his public speeches, orders to his generals, and the diaries of Nazi officials demonstrate that he conceived and authorised the extermination of European Jewry.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn During the war, Hitler repeatedly stated his prophecy of 1939 was being fulfilled, namely, that a world war would bring about the annihilation of the Jewish race.Template:Sfn Hitler approved the Template:Lang—killing squads that followed the German army through Poland, the Baltic, and the Soviet UnionTemplate:Sfn—and was well informed about their activities.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn By summer 1942, Auschwitz concentration camp was expanded to accommodate large numbers of deportees for murder or enslavement.Template:Sfn Scores of other concentration camps and satellite camps were set up throughout Europe, with several camps devoted exclusively to extermination.Template:Sfn

Between 1939 and 1945, the Template:Lang (SS), assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, were responsible for the deaths of at least eleven million non-combatants,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn including the murders of about 6 million Jews (representing two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe),Template:SfnTemplate:Efn and between 200,000 and 1,500,000 Romani people.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The victims were killed in concentration and extermination camps, ghettos, and through mass executions. Many victims of the Holocaust were murdered in gas chambers, while others died of starvation or disease or while working as slave labourers.Template:Sfn In addition to eliminating Jews, the Nazis planned to reduce the population of the conquered territories by 30 million people through starvation in an action called the Hunger Plan. Food supplies would be diverted to the German army and German civilians. Cities would be razed, and the land allowed to return to forest or resettled by German colonists.Template:Sfn Together, the Hunger Plan and Template:Lang would have led to the starvation of 80 million people in the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn These partially fulfilled plans resulted in additional deaths, bringing the total number of civilians and prisoners of war who died in the democide to an estimated 19.3 million people.Template:Sfn

Hitler's policies resulted in the killing of nearly two million non-Jewish Polish civilians,Template:Sfn over three million Soviet prisoners of war,Template:Sfn communists and other political opponents, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, and trade unionists. Hitler never spoke publicly about the killings and seems to have never visited the concentration camps.Template:Sfn

The Nazis embraced the concept of racial hygiene. On 15 September 1935, Hitler presented two laws—known as the Nuremberg Laws—to the Reichstag. The laws banned sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and Jews and were later extended to include "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring".Template:Sfn The laws stripped all non-Aryans of their German citizenship and forbade the employment of non-Jewish women under the age of 45 in Jewish households.Template:Sfn Hitler's early eugenic policies targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities in a programme dubbed Action Brandt, and he later authorised a euthanasia programme for adults with serious mental and physical disabilities, now referred to as Template:Lang.Template:Sfn

## Leadership style

 File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B24543, Hauptquartier Heeresgruppe Süd, Lagebesprechung.jpg  Hitler ruled the Nazi Party autocratically by asserting the Template:Lang (leader principle). The principle relied on absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors; thus, he viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself—the infallible leader—at the apex. Rank in the party was not determined by elections—positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank, who demanded unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader.Template:Sfn Hitler's leadership style was to give contradictory orders to his subordinates and to place them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped with those of others, to have "the stronger one [do] the job".Template:Sfn In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power. His cabinet never met after 1938, and he discouraged his ministers from meeting independently.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hitler typically did not give written orders; instead, he communicated verbally, or had them conveyed through his close associate Martin Bormann.Template:Sfn He entrusted Bormann with his paperwork, appointments, and personal finances; Bormann used his position to control the flow of information and access to Hitler.Template:Sfn

Hitler dominated his country's war effort during World War II to a greater extent than any other national leader. He strengthened his control of the armed forces in 1938, and subsequently made all major decisions regarding Germany's military strategy. His decision to mount a risky series of offensives against Norway, France, and the Low Countries in 1940 against the advice of the military proved successful, though the diplomatic and military strategies he employed in attempts to force the United Kingdom out of the war ended in failure.Template:Sfn Hitler deepened his involvement in the war effort by appointing himself commander-in-chief of the Army in December 1941; from this point forward, he personally directed the war against the Soviet Union, while his military commanders facing the Western Allies retained a degree of autonomy.Template:Sfn Hitler's leadership became increasingly disconnected from reality as the war turned against Germany, with the military's defensive strategies often hindered by his slow decision-making and frequent directives to hold untenable positions. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that only his leadership could deliver victory.Template:Sfn In the final months of the war, Hitler refused to consider peace negotiations, regarding the destruction of Germany as preferable to surrender.Template:Sfn The military did not challenge Hitler's dominance of the war effort, and senior officers generally supported and enacted his decisions.Template:Sfn

## Personal life

### Family

Main article: Hitler family
Template:Further information

 File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F051673-0059, Adolf Hitler und Eva Braun auf dem Berghof.jpg  Hitler created a public image as a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the nation.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He met his lover, Eva Braun, in 1929,Template:Sfn and married her on 29 April 1945, one day before they both committed suicide.Template:Sfn

In September 1931, his half-niece, Geli Raubal, took her own life with Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment. It was rumoured among contemporaries that Geli was in a romantic relationship with him, and her death was a source of deep, lasting pain.Template:Sfn Paula Hitler, the younger sister of Hitler and the last living member of his immediate family, died in June 1960.Template:Sfn

### Views on religion

Main article: Religious views of Adolf Hitler
Hitler was born to a practising Catholic mother and an anti-clerical father; after leaving home, Hitler never again attended Mass or received the sacraments.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Albert Speer states that Hitler railed against the church to his political associates, and though he never officially left the church, he had no attachment to it.Template:Sfn He adds that Hitler felt that in the absence of organised religion, people would turn to mysticism, which he considered regressive.Template:Sfn According to Speer, Hitler believed that Japanese religious beliefs or Islam would have been a more suitable religion for Germans than Christianity, with its "meekness and flabbiness".Template:Sfn Historian John S. Conway states that Hitler was fundamentally opposed to the Christian churches.Template:Sfn According to Bullock, Hitler did not believe in God, was anticlerical, and held Christian ethics in contempt because they contravened his preferred view of "survival of the fittest".Template:Sfn He favoured aspects of Protestantism that suited his own views, and adopted some elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchical organisation, liturgy, and phraseology.Template:Sfn In a 1932 speech, Hitler stated that he was not a Catholic, and declared himself a German Christian.Template:Sfn In a conversation with Albert Speer, Hitler said, "Through me the Evangelical Church could become the established church, as in England."Template:Sfn

 File:Hitler with Catholic dignitaries.jpg  Hitler viewed the church as an important politically conservative influence on society,Template:Sfn and he adopted a strategic relationship with it that "suited his immediate political purposes".Template:Sfn In public, Hitler often praised Christian heritage and German Christian culture, though professing a belief in an "Aryan Jesus" who fought against the Jews.Template:Sfn Any pro-Christian public rhetoric contradicted his private statements, which described Christianity as "absurdity"Template:Sfn and nonsense founded on lies.Template:Sfn

According to a US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) report, "The Nazi Master Plan", Hitler planned to destroy the influence of Christian churches within the Reich.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn His eventual goal was the total elimination of Christianity.Template:Sfn This goal informed Hitler's movement early on, but he saw it as inexpedient to publicly express this extreme position.Template:Sfn According to Bullock, Hitler wanted to wait until after the war before executing this plan.Template:Sfn

Speer wrote that Hitler had a negative view of Himmler's and Alfred Rosenberg's mystical notions and Himmler's attempt to mythologise the SS. Hitler was more pragmatic, and his ambitions centred on more practical concerns.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

### Health

See also: Health of Adolf Hitler and Psychopathography of Adolf Hitler
Researchers have variously suggested that Hitler suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat, coronary sclerosis,Template:Sfn Parkinson's disease,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn syphilis,Template:Sfn giant-cell arteritis,Template:Sfn tinnitus,Template:Sfn and monorchism.Template:Sfn

In a report prepared for the OSS in 1943, Walter C. Langer of Harvard University described Hitler as a "neurotic psychopath".Template:Sfn In his 1977 book *The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler*, historian Robert G. L. Waite proposes that he suffered from borderline personality disorder.Template:Sfn Historians Henrik Eberle and Hans-Joachim Neumann consider that while he suffered from a number of illnesses including Parkinson's disease, Hitler did not experience pathological delusions and was always fully aware of, and therefore responsible for, his decisions.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Sometime in the 1930s, Hitler adopted a mainly vegetarian diet,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn avoiding all meat and fish from 1942 onwards. At social events, he sometimes gave graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make his guests shun meat.Template:Sfn Bormann had a greenhouse constructed near the Berghof (near Berchtesgaden) to ensure a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for Hitler.Template:Sfn

Hitler stopped drinking alcohol around the time he became vegetarian and thereafter only very occasionally drank beer or wine on social occasions.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He was a non-smoker for most of his adult life, but smoked heavily in his youth (25 to 40 cigarettes a day); he eventually quit, calling the habit "a waste of money".Template:Sfn He encouraged his close associates to quit by offering a gold watch to anyone able to break the habit.Template:Sfn Hitler began using amphetamine occasionally after 1937 and became addicted to it in late 1942.Template:Sfn Speer linked this use of amphetamine to Hitler's increasingly erratic behaviour and inflexible decision-making (for example, rarely allowing military retreats).Template:Sfn

Prescribed 90 medications during the war years by his personal physician, Theodor Morell, Hitler took many pills each day for chronic stomach problems and other ailments.Template:Sfn He regularly consumed amphetamine, barbiturates, opiates, and cocaine,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn as well as potassium bromide and atropa belladonna (the latter in the form of Doktor Koster's Antigaspills).Template:Sfn He suffered ruptured eardrums as a result of the 20 July plot bomb blast in 1944, and 200 wood splinters had to be removed from his legs.Template:Sfn Newsreel footage of Hitler shows tremors in his left hand and a shuffling walk, which began before the war and worsened towards the end of his life.Template:Sfn Ernst-Günther Schenck and several other doctors who met Hitler in the last weeks of his life also formed a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.Template:Sfn

## Legacy

Further information: Historiography of Adolf Hitler, Consequences of Nazism, and Neo-Nazism
 File:Mahnstein.JPG  Hitler's suicide was likened by contemporaries to a "spell" being broken.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Public support for Hitler had collapsed by the time of his death and few Germans mourned his passing; Kershaw argues that most civilians and military personnel were too busy adjusting to the collapse of the country or fleeing from the fighting to take any interest.Template:Sfn According to historian John Toland, Nazism "burst like a bubble" without its leader.Template:Sfn

Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil".Template:Sfn "Never in history has such ruination—physical and moral—been associated with the name of one man", he adds.Template:Sfn Hitler's political programme brought about a world war, leaving behind a devastated and impoverished Eastern and Central Europe. Germany suffered wholesale destruction, characterised as Template:Lang (Zero Hour).Template:Sfn Hitler's policies inflicted human suffering on an unprecedented scale;Template:Sfn according to R. J. Rummel, the Nazi regime was responsible for the democidal killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war.Template:Sfn In addition, 28.7Template:Nbspmillion soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre of World War II.Template:Sfn The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in the history of warfare.Template:Sfn Historians, philosophers, and politicians often use the word "evil" to describe the Nazi regime.Template:Sfn Many European countries have criminalised both the promotion of Nazism and Holocaust denial.Template:Sfn

Historian Friedrich Meinecke described Hitler as "one of the great examples of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life".Template:Sfn English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper saw him as "among the 'terrible simplifiers' of history, the most systematic, the most historical, the most philosophical, and yet the coarsest, cruelest, least magnanimous conqueror the world has ever known".Template:Sfn For the historian John M. Roberts, Hitler's defeat marked the end of a phase of European history dominated by Germany.Template:Sfn In its place emerged the Cold War, a global confrontation between the Western Bloc, dominated by the United States and other NATO nations, and the Eastern Bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn Historian Sebastian Haffner asserts that without Hitler and the displacement of the Jews, the modern nation state of Israel would not exist. He contends that without Hitler, the de-colonisation of former European spheres of influence would have been postponed.Template:Sfn Further, Haffner claims that other than Alexander the Great, Hitler had a more significant impact than any other comparable historical figure, in that he too caused a wide range of worldwide changes in a relatively short time span.Template:Sfn

### In propaganda

See also: Adolf Hitler in popular culture and List of speeches given by Adolf Hitler
 File:Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden.ogg  Hitler exploited documentary films and newsreels to inspire a cult of personality. He was involved and appeared in a series of propaganda films throughout his political career, many made by Leni Riefenstahl, regarded as a pioneer of modern filmmaking.Template:Sfn Hitler's propaganda film appearances include:

* Template:Lang (*Victory of Faith*, 1933)
* Template:Lang (*Triumph of the Will*, 1935)
* Template:Lang (*Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces*, 1935)
* *Olympia* (1938)