After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.īy the end of 1921, Hitler led the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty. Early LifeĪdolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a small Austrian town near the Austro-German frontier.
After the tide of war turned against him, Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker in April 1945. Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism and obsessive pursuit of Aryan supremacy fueled the murder of some 6 million Jews, along with other victims of the Holocaust. Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of World War II, and by 1941 Nazi forces had occupied much of Europe. Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting to take absolute power in Germany beginning in 1933. Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s Nazi Party, was one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century.
