Adolf hitler what was he famous for

In , Hitler began his long-promised expansion of national boundaries to incorporate ethnic Germans. The Czechs looked to Great Britain and France for help, but hoping to avoid war—they had been bled white in World War I—these nations chose a policy of appeasement. The following year, the German army swallowed up the remainder of Czechoslovakia. I believe it is peace for our time.

After being released from prison, Hitler vowed to work within the parliamentary system to avoid a repeat of the Beer Hall Putsch setback. In the s, however, the Nazi Party was still a fringe group of ultraextremists with little political power. It received only 2. But the worldwide economic depression and the rising power of labor unions and communists convinced increasing numbers of Germans to turn to the Nazi Party. The Nazis fed on bank failures and unemployment—proof, Hitler said, of the ineffectiveness of democratic government.

Hitler pledged to restore prosperity, create civil order by crushing industrial strikes and street demonstrations by communists and socialists , eliminate the influence of Jewish financiers, and make the fatherland once again a world power.

As an adult, Janine Simone Hopkins was encouraged by her family to record her experiences and reflections of her life in Paris during the German occupation. Attached to Canadian and British forces, the first Americans to see ground combat in Europe witnessed disaster at Dieppe.

Devastated by the loss, Hitler would consider Geli the only true love affair of his life. He soon began a long relationship with Eva Braun , a shop assistant from Munich, but refused to marry her. The worldwide Great Depression that began in again threatened the stability of the Weimar Republic.

Determined to achieve political power in order to affect his revolution, Hitler built up Nazi support among German conservatives, including army, business and industrial leaders.

In , Hitler ran against the war hero Paul von Hindenburg for president, and received With the government in chaos, three successive chancellors failed to maintain control, and in late January Hindenburg named the year-old Hitler as chancellor, capping the stunning rise of an unlikely leader.

Though the Nazis never attained more than 37 percent of the vote at the height of their popularity in , Hitler was able to grab absolute power in Germany largely due to divisions and inaction among the majority who opposed Nazism. On March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving full powers to Hitler and celebrating the union of National Socialism with the old German establishment i. His autocratic power now secure within Germany, Hitler turned his eyes toward the rest of Europe.

In , Germany was diplomatically isolated, with a weak military and hostile neighbors France and Poland. In a famous speech in May , Hitler struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, claiming Germany supported disarmament and peace. By early the following year, he had withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations and begun to militarize the nation in anticipation of his plans for territorial conquest. When the year-old Hindenburg died on August 2, military leaders agreed to combine the presidency and chancellorship into one position, meaning Hitler would command all the armed forces of the Reich.

Though the Nazis attempted to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to placate the international community during the Berlin Olympics in which German-Jewish athletes were not allowed to compete , additional decrees over the next few years disenfranchised Jews and took away their political and civil rights. In March , against the advice of his generals, Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine. Over the next two years, Germany concluded alliances with Italy and Japan, annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia—all essentially without resistance from Great Britain, France or the rest of the international community.

After ordering the occupation of Norway and Denmark in April , Hitler adopted a plan proposed by one of his generals to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. German troops made it all the way to the English Channel, forcing British and French forces to evacuate en masse from Dunkirk in late May. On June 22, France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany.

Hitler had hoped to force Britain to seek peace as well, but when that failed he went ahead with his attacks on that country, followed by an invasion of the Soviet Union in June On November 9 and 10, , a wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms swept Germany, Austria and parts of the Sudetenland.

Nazis destroyed synagogues and vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses. Close to Jews were murdered. Called Kristallnacht , the "Night of Crystal" or the "Night of Broken Glass," referring to the broken window glass left in the wake of the destruction, it escalated the Nazi persecution of Jews to another level of brutality and violence.

Almost 30, Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps, signaling more horrors to come. Hitler's eugenic policies also targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities, later authorizing a euthanasia program for disabled adults.

His regime also persecuted homosexuals, arresting an estimated , men from to , some of whom were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. At the camps, gay prisoners were forced to wear pink triangles to identify their homosexuality, which Nazis considered a crime and a disease. Between the start of World War II, in , and its end, in , Nazis and their collaborators were responsible for the deaths of at least 11 million noncombatants, including about six million Jews, representing two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe.

As part of Hitler's "Final Solution," the genocide enacted by the regime would come to be known as the Holocaust. German police shooting women and children from the Mizocz Ghetto, October 14, Deaths and mass executions took place in concentration and extermination camps including Auschwitz -Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Treblinka, among many others. Other persecuted groups included Poles, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and trade unionists. Prisoners were used as forced laborers for SS construction projects, and in some instances they were forced to build and expand concentration camps.

They were subject to starvation, torture and horrific brutalities, including gruesome and painful medical experiments.

Hitler probably never visited the concentration camps and did not speak publicly about the mass killings. However, Germans documented the atrocities committed at the camps on paper and in films. In , Hitler, along with several other European leaders, signed the Munich Pact. The treaty ceded the Sudetenland districts to Germany, reversing part of the Versailles Treaty.

As a result of the summit, Hitler was named Time magazine's Man of the Year for This diplomatic win only whetted his appetite for a renewed German dominance. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. By July, Hitler ordered bombing raids on the United Kingdom, with the goal of invasion. On June 22, , Hitler violated the non-aggression pact with Joseph Stalin , sending a massive army of German troops into the Soviet Union.

The invading force seized a huge area of Russia before Hitler temporarily halted the invasion and diverted forces to encircle Leningrad and Kiev. The pause allowed the Red Army to regroup and conduct a counter-offensive attack, and the German advance was stopped outside Moscow in December Honoring the alliance with Japan, Hitler was now at war against the Allied powers, a coalition that included Britain, the world's largest empire, led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill ; the United States, the world's greatest financial power, led by President Franklin D.

Roosevelt ; and the Soviet Union, which had the world's largest army, commanded by Stalin. Initially hoping that he could play the Allies off of one another, Hitler's military judgment became increasingly erratic, and the Axis powers could not sustain his aggressive and expansive war. The German army also suffered defeats at the Battle of Stalingrad , seen as a turning point in the war, and the Battle of Kursk As a result of these significant setbacks, many German officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that Hitler's continued rule would result in the destruction of the country.

Organized efforts to assassinate the dictator gained traction, and opponents came close in with the notorious July Plot , though it ultimately proved unsuccessful. By early , Hitler realized that Germany was going to lose the war. On January 16, , Hitler moved his center of command to an underground air-raid shelter near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. The fact that Hitler was Austrian, born in Braunau am Inn in April , might seem odd given his association with German nationalism.

This affinity was not, however, all that unusual among Austrians. Influenced by the tutelage of his high school teacher, Leopold Poetsch, who had strong German nationalist sensibilities and also taught Aldolf Eichmann , Hitler grew to despise the Austro-Hungarian Empire and express loyalty only to Germany.

In , while living in Munich, Hitler managed to enlist in the Bavarian Army before renouncing his Austrian citizenship in and officially becoming a German citizen in the early 30s. Despite the family moving from Braunau am Inn to Linz when Adolf was three years old, the border town and the house that he was born in but only stayed in for a couple of weeks have a lasting issue with their connection to Hitler. He twice failed the entrance exam of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in and in when it was noted that, though he had some talent for architectural draughtsmanship, his human figures lacked detail and character.

The works, some by world famous artists like Klee and Picasso, were removed from German museums and placed in a condemnatory exhibition.

This process was decreed by the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and , but excess looting took place in occupied zones and the collections of targeted minorities were confiscated. Having had little success selling his paintings, postcards and advertisements, his financial resources were so seriously diminished that he lived in a homeless shelter in Vienna in December Whilst still an Austrian citizen, Adolf Hitler was accepted into the Bavarian army.

He served in the infantry at the First Battle of Ypres, where the new infantry divisions suffered casualties as high as one third to a half.