Adolf Hitler

(1889 - 1945)

After his mother died in 1907, Adolf Hitler used an orphan’s pension to study art in Vienna and was twice rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1914 he was awarded the Iron Cross for his service in World War I; in 1919 he joined the German Workers’ Party, subsequently renamed the Nazi Party. He was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, and, after President Paul von Hindenburg’s death in 1934, assumed the title of Führer. In 1945, in a Berlin bunker, Hitler committed suicide.