Adolf Hitler Picture 1921 in Military Uniform

Hitler during WW I.

After serving unremarkably in the First World War, the future dictator immersed himself in the German nationalist politics of Munich. In 1921, he claimed control of the German Workers Party and renamed it the National Socialist German Workers Party, and gave himself the title of Führer. In this 1922 photo, he poses with members of the group's paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung, known by its initials, SA.

Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers' Party, the group promoted German pride and anti-Semitism, and expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I (1914-1918) and required Germany to make numerous concessions and reparations. Hitler joined the party the year it was founded and became its leader in 1921. In 1933, he became chancellor of Germany and his Nazi government soon assumed dictatorial powers. After Germany's defeat in World War II (1939-45), the Nazi Party was outlawed and many of its top officials were convicted of war crimes related to the murder of some 6 million European Jews during the Nazis' reign.

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Hitler moved to Munich, Germany in May 1913. He did so seeking to avoid arrest for evasion of his military service obligation to Habsburg Austria and financed by the last installment of his inheritance from his father. In Munich, he continued to drift, supporting himself on his watercolors and sketches until World War I gave his life direction and a cause to which he could commit himself totally. By all surviving accounts, Hitler was a brave soldier: he was promoted to the rank of Corporal, was wounded twice (in 1916 and 1918) and was awarded several medals.
Though reportedly not given to lengthy political discourses at this time, Hitler appeared to have been carried along by an increasingly vicious political antisemitism promulgated by the radical right and seeping into the military hierarchy during the last two years of the war.
In October 1918, Hitler was partially blinded in a mustard gas attack near Ypres in Belgium. He was sent to the military hospital, where the news of the November 11, 1918, armistice reached him as he was convalescing.

END OF THE WAR

The end of the war was a personally emotional disaster for Hitler as well. It brought the threat of demobilization, tearing him from the only community in which he had ever felt at home and returning him to a civilian life in which he had neither direction nor career prospects.
The German Army (Reichswehr) employed Adolf Hitler as an educator and confidential informant. It was in his capacity as a confidential informant that Hitler attended a beer hall meeting of the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei-DAP) on September 12, 1919.


http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1707887_1525737,00.html#ixzz1Ojo3FGIk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranks_and_insignia_of_the_Nazi_Party

http://www.history.com/