Adolf Hitler Born in Austria

Summary

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, then in Austria-Hungary and now in Austria. After an unsettled early adulthood in Austria and service in the German army during World War I, he became active in the German Workers’ Party, later the Nazi Party. Hitler rose to lead the movement and was appointed German chancellor in 1933. He then dismantled democratic institutions and established a dictatorship built on extreme nationalism, antisemitism, political repression, and racial ideology. Under his leadership, Nazi Germany pursued territorial expansion that helped bring about World War II in Europe. The Nazi regime also carried out the Holocaust, murdering six million Jews and persecuting and killing millions of other victims. Hitler remained Germany’s dictator until 1945, when he died by suicide in Berlin as Allied forces closed in and the Nazi state collapsed.