1889–1945. An Austrian by birth, an unhealthily ambitious yet untalented painter, too lazy to take his secondary school graduation examination, the creator and dictator of the Third Reich, leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and a Nazi ideologist, one of the greatest criminals in the history of mankind. He was responsible for the bloodiest war in history, which resulted in 50 million deaths.
He formulated the bases for the Nazi ideology in his book Mein Kampf. Referring to pseudo-scientific, racist theses, he argued that the “master race” were the Aryans, among whom the Germans occupied a special position. Slavs were the lowest Aryan race whose destiny was to serve as slave labourers. The Jews ranked the lowest; Hitler planned on exterminating them after conquering Europe. The ideology became the official dogma of Hitler’s party NSDAP, which exercised totalitarian control in Germany in the years 1933–1945: it was a reign of terror, combined with genocide of civilians after the conquest of Europe.
After Germany was defeated in 1945, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared organisations established by Hitler (NSDAP, SS, SD, and Gestapo) to be criminal organisations that committed crimes against peace (preparation and waging of a war in violation of international law), war crimes (murder and deportation of population of or in occupied territory, murder of prisoners of war, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages), and crimes against humanity (enslavement and extermination of civilian population). Hitler, who committed suicide before the end of the war, never suffered punishment for his crimes.
