[[Image:Hitler6-thumb.jpg|right|250px|thumb|Hitler with his dog, Blondie]]
'''Adolf Hitler''' was born April 20, 1889 in Branau Am Inn, [[Austria]]. He died April 30, 1945. His dictatorial rule of [[Germany]], which led to the deaths of millions before and during [[World War II]], has placed him among history's most hated villains.
"Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers [[Mussolini]] and [[Franco]] were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and evil were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." [http://ronrosenbaum.pajamasmedia.com/2006/08/23/about_this_blogger.php]
In the election the national socialist failed to win a majority, but the newly formed Reichstag voted in favor of an Enabling Act, giving the national socialist government the power to enact new laws without interference from parliament or constitution. In the summer of 1933 the Nazi government declared first the communist and social democratic party illegal, briefly afterwards all other parties. At the end of the year the Reichstag cast officially into law that Germany was a one-party-state.
After all political opponents had been neutralised and in order to gain support from the German military, Hitler turned his attention to a key group which had catapulted the Nazi's into power--the stormtroopers (SA) under Ernst Roehm. The German military viewed an armed and trained paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party as a challenge to their power. It was a well known within the Nazi establishment that Roehm was gay, and it was now used against him to discredit him. Heinrich Himmler of the SS, Hitler's personal body guards at the time, was tasked with reigning the SA in. In the so-called ''Night of Long Knives'' the entire top of the SA was executed. This marked the eclipse of the SA as within the [[Nazi Party]], and the rise of the SS as the dominant force. Although hestitant at first, Hitler agreed to have Ernst Roehm executed, a friend and associate since their time in Landsberg prison.[http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html] [http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html]
After President Hindenburgs death in 1934, Hitler received also all presidential powers and was declared ''Führer und Reichskanzler'' (leader and chancellor). This was approved in August 1934 by 84% of the votes in a nationwide plebiscite.
=="Final Solution" / [[Holocaust]]==
'''The Night of Broken Glass:'''
The Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe was implemented by a government of a modern Western state to exterminate people of Jewish ancestry throughout Germany and all its occupied territories. Approximately six million people of all ages--men, women and children, were systematically murdered under a policy directed by Adolf Hitler. Other groups of "undesirables" and "asocials" were also targeted and killed.[http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm]
November 9, 1938, an event occurred which revealed the true nature of Hitler's regime to the world and also marked the beginning of deadly radicalization of Nazi policy concerning the Jews. For some months so-called moderate anti-Semites within the Nazi hierarchy had been losing ground to those favoring extreme measures such as the immediate removal of Jews from Germany. The removal of the first big group of Jews in late October 1938 sparked a chain of events resulting in the ''Night of Broken Glass'', a massive, coordinated attack on Jews throughout Greater Germany.
On October 27, about 17,000 Jews [[Jew]]s of Polish origin, including over 2,000 children, were abruptly expelled from Germany on orders of Reinhard Heydrich, second-in-command of the SS. The Grynszpan family from the city of Hanover were among the Jews forcibly transported in railroad cars then dumped at the Polish border as unwanted persons. Polish border authorities at first denied them permission to enter. The Jews thus ended up in a kind of no-man's-land between the German and Polish borders. The Grynszpan mention is not important on the face, but their 17-year-old son Herschel does. He had gone to Paris for safekeeping at the age of 15 to stay with his uncle who worked there as a tailor. Up hearing about his families plight, he became increasingly depressed and enraged. Driven half-mad with sorrow and anger over all that was happening, Herschel decided to commit a radical act of violence to draw the world's attention to the plight of the Jews. On Monday morning, November 7, he walked into a Paris gun shop and purchased a 6.35-caliber revolver along with a box of 25 bullets. When the shop owner asked why he wanted the gun, Herschel answered that he sometimes carried large amounts of money for his father and needed the protection.
==1944 Assassination Attempt==
==Death==
Hitler committed suicide in the Führerbunker next to the Chancellery in [[Berlin ]] on April 30, 1945, after the Allied forces had invaded Germany, and as the Red Army was fighting its way into the heart of Berlin. [http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/adolfhitler.html] He appointed [[Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz]] to succeed him as President in his last will, to continue the war against the Red Army. A few days later, Dönitz instructed the military to sign an unconditional surrender, and the war ended officially on May 8, 1945, the date that became known as [[V-E Day]].
==References==