Adolf Hitler

Dictator of Nazi Germany (1933-45). Born in Austria, he had little success as an artist in Vienna before moving to Munich in 1913. As a soldier in the German army in World War I, he was wounded and gassed. After the war, resentful about defeat and the peace terms, he joined the German Workers' Party in Munich (1919). In 1920 he became head of propaganda for the renamed National Socialists, or Nazi Party, and in 1921 party leader. He …

…the Holocaust. His aggressive foreign policy led to the signing of the Munich Agreement. He became allied with B. Mussolini in the Rome-Berlin Axis. The German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939) enabled him to invade Poland, precipitating World War II. After early successes in the war, he often ignored his generals and met dissent with ruthlessness. As defeat grew imminent in 1945, he married E. Braun in an underground bunker in Berlin, and the next day they committed suicide.