Adolf Hitler

 Adolf Hitler   was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party . He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany  from 1934 to 1945. Hitler was at the centre of Nazi Germany, World War II in Europe, and the Holocaust.

 Hitler was a decorated veteran of World War I. He joined the German Workers' Party  in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état in Munich, known as the Beer Hall Putsch. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf . After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. Ancestry Hitler's father, Alois Hitler , was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. Because the baptismal register did not show the name of his father, Alois initially bore his mother's surname, Schicklgruber. In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois's mother, Maria Anna. After she died in 1847 and Johann Georg Hiedler in 1856, Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. In 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Alois's father . Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled as Hiedler Hitter, or Huettler. The Hitler surname is probably based on "one who lives in a hut or on "shepherd" ; alternatively, it might be derived from the Slavic words Hidlar or Hidlarcek.At the outbreak of World War I, Hitler was living in Munich and volunteered to serve in the Bavarian Army as an Austrian citizen. Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 , he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium, spending nearly half his time well behind the front lines.He was present at the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele, and was wounded at the Somme. He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914. Recommended by Hugo Guttmann, he received the Iron Cross, First Class, on 4 August 1918, a decoration rarely awarded to one

 of Hitler's rank . Hitler's post at regimental headquarters, providing frequent interactions with senior officers, may have helped him receive this decoration. Though his rewarded actions may have been courageous, they were probably not highly exceptional.

 Death of Adolf Hitler

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 troops, which he perceived as far weaker. On 16 December, he launched an offensive in the Ardennes to incite disunity among the Western Allies and perhaps convince them to join his fight against the Soviets. The offensive failed. Hitler's hope to negotiate peace with the United States and Britain was buoyed by the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945, but contrary to his expectations, this caused no rift among the Allies. Acting on his view that Germany's military failures 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. Arms minister Albert Speer was entrusted with executing this scorched earth plan, but he quietly disobeyed the order.On 20 April, his 56th birthday, Hitler made his last trip from the Führerbunke to the surface. In the ruined garden of

 the Reich Chancellery, he awarded Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth. By 21 April, Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the defences of German General Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights and advanced into the outskirts of Berlin. In denial about the dire situation, Hitler placed his hopes on the undermanned and under-equipped Armeeabteilung Steiner , commanded by Waffen SS General Felix Steiner. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the salient and the German Ninth Army was ordered to attack northward in a pincer.