Birth Location:
Braunau, Austria
Birth Date:
4/20/1889
Death Location:
Berlin, Germany
Death Date:
4/30/45
Austrian born, Adolf Hitler would rise to become the leader of Germany and one of the most hated men in all of history. Born in 1889, Hitler fought in war I. The peace imposed on Germany then war angered him, and therefore the remainder of his life he sought to reverse the peace that had humiliated his adopted country. In 1919, he founded the Nazi Worker’s Party, and in 1923, he was imprisoned for the Munich Putsch. In 1930, due to the severe economic downturn that he blamed on the Jews, his party won several seats within the German legislature.
He used fear and intimidation, particularly the Brownshirts, to consolidate and maintain power. He established the SS, the Gestapo, and Concentration Camps, where Jews and people against Hitler were sent. Hitler began the war in Europe in 1939 when German forces invaded Poland during a blitzkrieg attack. He then invaded France and his neighbors to the North, but did not subdue Great Britain, who defeated the Germans within the Battle of england . In 1941 he invaded the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) and pushed all the thanks to Moscow before the Russians were ready to stop him.
Because of Hitler’s refusal to offer up any land all ready taken, the Germans suffered defeats at Stalingrad and therefore the Battle of Kursk. British and Americans also pushed him out of North Africa . In 1944, the Allies landed at Normandy in France, and pushed the Germans further and further back, liberating Europe as they went. Hitler, in one last act of desperation, launched an offensive that became referred to as the Battle of the Bulge. While the Germans made initial successes, they were eventually halted and made to retreat.
In April 1945, with the Soviets in Berlin and therefore the Americans pushing forward within the west, Hitler committed suicide, along side his long-time mistress and wife for each day , Eva Braun.
Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945.
