Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany

Presents the private and public life of the Nazi dictator who involved Germany in the Second World War and tried to exterminate Jews and other citizens he considered undesirable. Adolf Hitler is best known as the man at the helm of the regime that instigated World War II and killed millions during the Holocaust. Born in 1889, and raised in the Bavarian region of Germany in a middle class home, young Hitler dreamed of defying his authoritarian father and becoming an artist. As a young man, he spent several aimless years pursuing that goal in the cities of Munich and Vienna. Disillusioned with the government after Germany surrendered in World War I, Hitler was drawn into radical politics and soon became a leader of the German Workers' Party later renamed the Nazi Party. After an unsuccessful attempt to take over the government in 1923, Hitler was briefly imprisoned for treason, and his star seemed on the wane. But the worldwide economic depression that began in 1929 attracted unhappy Germans to Hitler's promise of a revitalized and powerful state. He was a master orator, offering listeners easy scapegoats Jews and Communists and dreams of prosperity. A series of bold political maneuvers vaulted Hitler to power, and he moved quickly to establish himself as supreme dictator. From there, he ruthlessly attacked and tried to exterminate Jews and other citizens he considered undesirable. He drove Europe into World War II, decimating the people and the landscape in an ultimately fruitless attempt to expand Germany's borders. He died by his own hand rather than surrender, leaving behind a country and a continent broken by one of the most terrible wars ever waged. Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany trace this fearsome dictator's rise to power and the chain of events that allowed him to forever scar the world.