Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany and played a central role in starting World War 2. He took control of Germany in the 1930s and rapidly expanded its territory by invading neighboring countries. Hitler's extreme anti-Semitic ideology led to the genocide of 6 million Jews and others in the Holocaust. As the war turned against Germany by 1945, Hitler refused to surrender and committed suicide as Allied forces closed in on Berlin.

1. Samantha Boyd

2. Adolf Hitler was the leader and founder of the Nazi Party

Also Reich Chancellor and major head of the Third Reich

Head of State Supreme

Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces

Was an obsessive anti-Semitist

Believed that Jews, Communists, and intellectuals were the fault of

Germany’s decline

3. Army of Nazi storm troopers also called Brownshirts

They crushed all political opposition

Also performed violent acts ( The Night of Broken Glass)
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Under Hitler’s rule Germany also rearmed themselves

This was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles

Germany was not prohibited to bare arms after WWI

Hitler claimed that it helped to reduce the unemployment rate
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Made other countries nervous of Germany’s growing power


4. As time went on the Allied Powers became more concerned with

Hitler being in power
Germany, Italy, and Japan created a military alliance known as the

Axis Powers
Munich Conference- consisted of four European leaders

Hitler, Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain, and Edouard Daladier
- conference led to a policy of appeasement which basically
was an agreement to give Germany control Sudetenland to
avoid a larger conflict with Germany
Winston Churchill believed that the appeasement would encourage

Hitler to go crazy with power and try to claim more land
This scared other European nations into speeding up their

rearmament
The U.S. was determined to stay peaceful during this so they isolated

themselves from the war

5. Germany became more aggressive

In 1939 Hitler’s armies occupied Czechoslovakia

Britain and France decided to declare was onto Germany if they attacked

Poland
On August 23, 1939, Joseph Stalin and Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with

Hitler that meant they would not attack each other
September 1, 1939, Hitler’s army moved into Poland

Two days later the Allied Powers declared war on Germany


6. Hitler still continued the attack on Poland

Then in May of 1940, moved on to the French border with Germany

called the Maginot Line
Germany began to occupy more and more territory

-Belgium
- Denmark
-northern France
-Luxembourg
-Norway
-Netherlands
Hitler sent bombers into Britain in August on 1940

Concern over Hitler’s growing power began to extremely increase


7. Even though Hitler and Stalin signed a nonaggression pact Hitler sent

German troops to invade the Soviet Union
- June 1941
The element of surprise left Soviet troops with weak fighting strategies

Germany benefitted a lot from the unexpected attack

German troops ended up advancing further into the Soviet Union by

the fall of 1941
After this there was no end to what Germany would do


8. Hitler had an extreme hatred of Jews, Communists, homosexuals, and gypsies

His hatred led to the holocaust, Nazi Germany’s slaughter of European Jews

Due to Germany occupying countries in Europe they were in power of even

more Jews
Some Jews were forced into Ghettos

Others into death or concentration camps

-genocide- the deliberate annihilation of an entire people
Hitler’s hatred led to the death of some 6 million Jews(2/3 of the European

Jewish population), and hundreds of thousands of, Poles, disabled
people, Gypsies, and religious and political prisoners

9. Towards the end of WWII Germany’s out looked appeared grim

Hitler refused to give in

Battle of the Bulge resulted when Allied forces had crossed the

German border
-200,000 Germans soldiers
-80,ooo Allied troops
Allies proceeded to push Germany further and further back, German

offensive had clearly failed by January 1945
Then there was the Yalta Conference

-the meeting of F.D.R, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin where they
planned for postwar peace
- also led to the decision to break Germany into different areas and keep
them occupied

10. Hitler unable to deal with the defeat killed himself

April 30, 1945

On May 7, 1945 Germany surrendered

-unconditionally
WWII finally ended after lasting for 5 years


11. Works Cited
quot;Adolf Hitler - Key Axis Figure of WW2 - History.Com.quot; The History Channel - Home Page. 7
May 2009
<http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id
=949&display_order=6&syb_display_order=27&mini_id=1090>.
quot;Adolf Hitler (dictator of Germany) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia.quot; Encyclopedia -
Britannica Online Encyclopedia. 7 May 2009
<http://britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/267992/Adolf-Hitler>.
quot;Adolf Hitler.quot; Jewish Virtual Library - Homepage. 6 May 2009
<http://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitler.html>.
American Nation in the Modern Era. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2005.