Adolf Hitler

Austrian-German soldier and politician, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1945)

Adolf Hitler delivers his first public address at a meeting of the German Workers' Party.

Adolf Hitler joins the German Workers' Party (later the Nazi Party).

Adolf Hitler joins the German Workers Party.

The Nazi Party (NSDAP) is founded by Adolf Hitler in the Hofbräuhaus beer hall in Munich, Germany.

The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany. Advocacy of a form of socialism by right-wing figures and movements in Germany became common during and after World War I, influencing Nazism. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck of the Conservative Revolutionary movement coined the term "Third Reich", and advocated an ideology combining the nationalism of the right and the socialism of the left. Prominent Conservative Revolutionary member Oswald Spengler's conception of a "Prussian Socialism" influenced the Nazis. The party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although such aspects were later downplayed in order to gain the support of industrial entities, and in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes. Racism was central to Nazism. The Nazis sought to improve the stock of the Germanic people through racial purity and eugenics, broad social welfare programs, and a disregard for the value of individual life, which could be sacrificed for the good of the Nazi state and the "Aryan master race". To maintain the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan Race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally handicapped. They imposed exclusionary segregation on homosexuals, Africans, Jehovah's Witnesses, and political opponents. The persecution reached its climax when the party-controlled German state organized the systematic murder of approximately six million Jews and five million people from the other targeted groups, in what has become known as the Holocaust. Today, the racial theories on which Nazi ideology and the Aryan Race were based are universally recognized as pseudo-scientific. The party's leader since 1921, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg in 1933. Hitler rapidly established a totalitarian regime known as the Third Reich. Following the defeat of the Third Reich at the conclusion of World War II in Europe, the party was "completely and finally abolished and declared to be illegal" by the Allied occupying powers.

The Sturmabteilung or SA is formally formed by Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

The Sturmabteilung or SA, whose members were known as "brownshirts", physically assault Adolf Hitler's opposition after his speech in Munich.

Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.

Adolf Hitler is arrested in Munich for high treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch.

Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the "Beer Hall Putsch". However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes Mein Kampf.