Adolf Hitler rose from failed artist and WWI corporal to become history's most destructive dictator. After the war, he joined the obscure German Workers' Party, transforming it into the Nazi movement through his oratorical skills and ruthless political instincts. His failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch led to imprisonment, where he wrote Mein Kampf.
Exploiting the Great Depression and Weimar Republic's instability, Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 and swiftly dismantled democratic institutions. The Nazi regime combined totalitarian control, cult of personality, and systematic terror against political opponents. The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of citizenship, leading to Kristallnacht and ultimately the Holocaust—the industrialized murder of six million Jews and millions of others.
Hitler's aggressive foreign policy—remilitarization, Anschluss, the seizure of Czechoslovakia—culminated in World War II. His invasion of the Soviet Union and declaration of war on America sealed Germany's fate. He committed suicide in his Berlin bunker as Soviet forces closed in, leaving a continent in ruins and a legacy that echoes to the present day.