Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the National Socialist

German Workers Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and
ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. Founded in
1919 as the German Workers Party, the group promoted German pride and
anti-Semitism, and expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the Treaty of
Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I (1914-1918)
and required Germany to make numerous concessions and reparations.
Hitler joined the party the year it was founded and became its leader in
1921. In 1933, he became chancellor of Germany and his Nazi government
soon assumed dictatorial powers. After Germanys defeat in World War II
(1939-45), the Nazi Party was outlawed and many of its top officials were
convicted of war crimes related to the murder of some 6 million European
Jews during the Nazis reign.

In 1919, army veteran Adolf Hitler, frustrated by Germanys defeat in World

War, which had left the nation economically depressed and politically
unstable, joined a fledgling political organization called the German
Workers Party. Founded earlier that same year by a small group of men
including locksmith Anton Drexler (1884-1942) and journalist Karl Harrer
(1890-1926), the party promoted German nationalism and anti-Semitism,
and felt that the Treaty of Versailles, the peace settlement that ended the
war, was extremely unjust to Germany by burdening it with reparations it
could never pay. Hitler soon emerged as a charismatic public speaker and

began attracting new members with speeches blaming Jews and Marxists
for Germanys problems and espousing extreme nationalism and the
concept of an Aryan master race. In July 1921, he assumed leadership of
the organization, which by then had been renamed the Nationalist Socialist
German Workers (Nazi) Party.

Through the 1920s, Hitler gave speech after speech in which he stated that
unemployment, rampant inflation, hunger and economic stagnation in
postwar Germany would continue until there was a total revolution in
German life. Most problems could be solved, he explained, if communists and
Jews were driven from the nation. His fiery speeches swelled the ranks of the
Nazi Party, especially among young, economically disadvantaged Germans.

In 1923, Hitler and his followers staged the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a
failed takeover of the government in Bavaria, a state in southern Germany.
Hitler had hoped that the putsch, or coup detat, would spark a larger
revolution against the national government. In the aftermath of the Beer Hall
Putsch, Hitler was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years in prison,
but spent less than a year behind bars (during which time he dictated the
first volume of Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, his political autobiography).
The publicity surrounding the Beer Hall Putsch and Hitlers subsequent trial
turned him into a national figure. After his release from prison, he set about

rebuilding the Nazi Party and attempting to gain power through the election
process.

In 1929, Germany entered a period of severe economic depression and

widespread unemployment. The Nazis capitalized on the situation by
criticizing the ruling government and began to win elections. In the July 1932
elections, they captured 230 out of 608 seats in the Reichstag, or German
parliament. In January 1933, Hitler was appointed German chancellor and his
Nazi government soon came to control every aspect of German life.