abstract
| - Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – June 7, 1968) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), popularly known as the Nazi Party. He was the ruler of Germany from 1933 to 1945, serving as Chancellor from 1933 to 1969 and as head of state (Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1969. A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the Nazi Party in 1920 and became its leader in 1921. Following his imprisonment after a failed coup in 1923, he gained support by promoting nationalism, antisemitism and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and propaganda. He was appointed chancellor in 1933, and quickly established a totalitarian and fascist dictatorship. Hitler pursued a foreign policy with the declared goal of seizing Lebensraum ("living space") for Germany, directing the resources of the state toward this goal. After years of restructuring of the state economy and the rearmament of the German armed forces, his rebuilt Wehrmacht invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Poland in 1939, leading to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. Within three years, Germany and the Axis powers occupied most of Europe and large parts of Africa, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Despite relatively heavy casualties in the Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, he had managed to unite the German people to fight for a common cause, and the German armed forces had received valuable lessions and combat experience, which helped them defeat both Poland, the West and the Soviet Union. In 1946 the war ended, with most of . Nazi Germany annexed large parts of Poland, the Soviet Union, the Benelux countries and other territories as well. His forces committed numerous atrocities during the war, including the systematic killing of as many as 17 million civilians. Following the war, he kept up the pressure on the United States during the Cold War, oversaw several proxy wars with the West, made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority, launched the Space Race, finished the enlarged the Social Security programmes, the Autobahn and Breitspurbahn Systems, oversaw several Four Year Plans and finished the Final Solution of the Jewish question, with the genocide of an estimated eight million Jews, a crime known as the Holocaust. He died on June 7, 1968, after 35 years in power.
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