Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Era: How a Democracy Fell

Adolf Hitler led Germany from 1933 to 1945. In those twelve years he turned a fragile democracy into a one-party dictatorship, pushed Europe into war, and oversaw the genocide of about six million Jews along with millions of other victims. For this reason, understanding how this happened is one of the most important lessons in modern history.

Early life of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in a small town in Austria-Hungary and grew up near Linz. He moved to Vienna as a young man hoping to become an artist, but the Academy of Fine Arts rejected him twice. As a result, he spent several years in poverty before moving to Munich in 1913.

When World War I began, he volunteered for a Bavarian regiment and served on the Western Front as a messenger. He was wounded and decorated. Germany's defeat in 1918 left him bitter, and like many veterans he blamed politicians and minorities instead of the military failure.

From fringe agitator to party leader

In 1919 Adolf Hitler joined a tiny nationalist group in Munich that later became the Nazi Party. His speeches made him its most powerful voice, and by 1921 he was its leader. The party fed on real anger: the harsh Treaty of Versailles, the loss of territory, and the collapse of the German currency in 1923.

That same year Hitler tried to seize power by force in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. However, it failed. As a result, he was sentenced to five years in prison but served only about a year. In jail he dictated Mein Kampf, a book that set out his hateful views on race and his plans for expansion in the East.

How Adolf Hitler rose to power

After the putsch, Adolf Hitler decided to seek power through elections. For years the Nazis stayed small. Then the Great Depression hit Germany hard, and millions lost their jobs. Voters turned to extreme parties, and by 1932 the Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag, although they never won a majority in a free election.

Conservative politicians believed they could control Hitler if they brought him into government. On 30 January 1933 President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor. It was a catastrophic miscalculation.

Building a dictatorship

Adolf Hitler moved fast. A fire at the Reichstag building in February 1933 was used as an excuse to suspend civil rights and arrest opponents. In March the Enabling Act let his government pass laws without parliament. By summer 1933 all other political parties were banned or forced to dissolve, and the first concentration camps were open.

When Hindenburg died in August 1934, Adolf Hitler combined the offices of president and chancellor and took the title Führer. The army swore a personal oath to him. Propaganda, the secret police and fear silenced most opposition.

Persecution of Jews and other groups

Persecution began almost at once. Jews were fired from public jobs and boycotted. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped German Jews of citizenship and banned marriage between Jews and non-Jews. On the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, known as Kristallnacht, mobs destroyed synagogues and Jewish shops across Germany and Austria, and tens of thousands of Jewish men were arrested.

In addition, the regime targeted Roma, people with disabilities, political opponents, homosexuals and others. These policies were the foundation of what would later become mass murder.

Road to war

• 1936German troops enter the demilitarized Rhineland, breaking the Versailles treaty.
• March 1938Germany annexes Austria in the Anschluss.
• September 1938The Munich Agreement hands the Sudetenland to Germany. Britain and France hope to avoid war.
• March 1939Germany occupies the rest of Czechoslovakia.
• 1 September 1939Germany invades Poland. Britain and France declare war two days later.

Adolf Hitler and World War II

German forces won quick victories in Poland, Norway, the Low Countries and France in 1939 and 1940. However, Britain held out in the air war known as the Battle of Britain. In June 1941 Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest front of the war. In December 1941, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States.

Eventually, the tide turned at Stalingrad, where a German army surrendered in early 1943. The Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944 opened another front in the west, while Soviet armies pushed in from the east.

The Holocaust

During the war, the Nazi regime moved from persecution to systematic murder. Mobile killing squads shot hundreds of thousands of Jews in occupied Soviet territory. In January 1942 senior officials met at the Wannsee Conference to coordinate the deportation and killing of Europe's Jews. Six extermination camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, murdered millions, mostly by gassing.

About six million Jews were killed. Millions of others also died, including Roma, Polish civilians, Soviet prisoners of war and people with disabilities. The Holocaust was carried out by many thousands of ordinary officials, soldiers, police and collaborators, which is why historians study it so closely.

The death of Adolf Hitler

Finally, by early 1945 Germany was in ruins. As Soviet troops fought their way into Berlin, Hitler withdrew to an underground bunker. On 30 April 1945 he died by suicide. Germany surrendered unconditionally on 8 May 1945. World War II is estimated to have killed between 70 and 85 million people, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.

What the world learned

After the war, leading Nazi officials were tried at Nuremberg, and the idea of crimes against humanity entered international law. The United Nations was founded in 1945, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights followed in 1948. Germany rebuilt as a democracy and today teaches this history openly in its schools.