Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was the Austrian leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party. He was
appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and became Führer (leader)<2> in 1934, remaining in power until his suicide before his defeat in 1945.
The Nazi Party under Hitler gained power during Germany''s period of crisis after World War I, using propaganda and charismatic oratory, emphasizing nationalism, anti-semitism and arrest and murder of political opponents. After restructuring the economy and rearming the military, a dictatorship commonly characterized as totalitarian or fascist was established. Hitler pursued an aggressive foreign policy, with an ideological goal of Lebensraum. The German invasion of Poland in 1939 triggered World War II with the British and French Empires.
The Axis Powers occupied most of Europe and parts of Asia at their zenith but were eventually defeated by the Allies. By the end of the war, Hitler''s policies of territorial conquest and racial subjugation had brought death and destruction to tens of millions of people, including the genocide of some six million Jews, in what is now known as the Holocaust.
In the final days of the war, Hitler and his new wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin, as the city was overrun by the Red Army of the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, the fourth child of six.<3> His
father, Alois Hitler, (1837–1903), was a customs official. His
mother, Klara Pölzl, (1860–1907), was Alois'' third wife. She was also his cousin, so a papal dispensation had to be obtained for the marriage. Of Alois and Klara''s six children, only Adolf and his sister Paula reached adulthood.<4> Hitler''s father also had a son, Alois Jr, and a daughter, Angela, by his second wife.<4>
Alois Hitler was born illegitimate. For the first 39 years of his life he bore his mother''s surname, Schicklgruber. In 1876, he took the surname of his stepfather, Johann Georg Hiedler. The name was spelled Hiedler, Huetler, Huettler and Hitler and probably changed to "Hitler" by a clerk. The origin of the name is either from the German word Hittler and similar, "one who lives in a hut", "shepherd", or from the Slavic word Hidlar and Hidlarcek.
Allied propaganda exploited Hitler''s original family name during World War II. Pamphlets bearing the phrase "Heil Schicklgruber" were airdropped over German cities. But he was legally born a Hitler and was also related to Hiedler via his maternal grandmother, Johanna Hiedler.
The name "Adolf" comes from Old High German for "noble wolf" (Adel=nobility + wolf).<5> Hence, one of Hitler''s self-given nicknames was Wolf or Herr Wolf—he began using this nickname in the early 1920s and was addressed by it only by intimates (as "Uncle Wolf" by the Wagners) up until the fall of the Third Reich.<6> The names of his various headquarters scattered throughout continental Europe (Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, Wolfsschlucht in France, Werwolf in Ukraine, etc.) reflect this. By his closest family and relatives, Hitler was known as "Adi".
As a boy, Hitler said he was often whipped by his father. Years later he told his secretary, "I then resolved never again to cry when my father whipped me. A few days later I had the opportunity of putting my will to the test. My mother, frightened, took refuge in the front of the door. As for me, I counted silently the blows of the stick which lashed my rear end."