Adolf Hitler Timeline and Summary

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• Hitler is born in Austria in 1889 and raised in the vicinity of the city of Linz.
• Around 1909, he moves to Vienna, where he picks up most of the political and social ideas he used as the foundation of his Reich. He becomes a fanatic German nationalist and anti-Semite.
• He's more or less a vagabond until the start of WWI, when he enlists in the German Army.
• He returns to Munich and begins to get involved in politics, building up the German Worker's Party.
• In 1923, he caries out the failed Beer Hall Putsch: is arrested, tried, and serves nine months in prison, during which time he writes his manifesto, Mein Kampf.
• Though savvy political maneuvering and propaganda, he consolidates the power of the Nazi party and gets himself elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
• In 1934 after the death of President Hindenburg, he abolishes the presidential role, and appoints himself "Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor."
• In 1936, he instructs the German Army to occupy the demilitarized Rhineland; he annexes Austria in 1938 and invades Poland in 1939, igniting the Second World War.
• In September 1939, after a period of appeasement, Britain declares war on Hitler's Germany.
• From 1939-41, Hitler carries out a series of successful invasions in the West, resulting in the fall of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, and Denmark.
• He institutes his policies of racial purity, resulting in the extermination of 11 million non-Aryans, including 6 million Jews, between 1939 and 1945.
• After an initial alliance with the Soviets, he violates their non-aggression agreement and invades Russia in June, 1941.
• After the U.S. declares war on Japan, Hitler's obligations to Japan lead him to declare war on the U.S. in 1941.
• Despite encouraging an expansive war of aggression, Hitler begins to experience military defeats in North Africa and Europe.
• In 1945, with the Allies closing in on Berlin and the war lost, Hitler marries Eva Braun and commits suicide in his bunker on April 30.