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Adolf Hitler

German Chancellor
In 1932 he was so bold as to submit his name for the German presidential elections of 1932. Hindenburg was elected instead.
But a year later, with German politics immobilized by in-fighting among the traditional German parties, Hindenburg turned to Hitler and his Nazi Party to form a German coalition government. Hindenburg thought Hitler was a fool whose political following could be manipulated to advance his own political agenda. But Hitler proved to be surprisingly impossible to control. Indeed, as German Chancellor, Hitler was so bold as to suspend the German constitution of Weimar (not well supported in economically depressed, post-War Germany anyway). When the German parliamentary building, the Reichstag, was mysteriously burned, Hitler used this as an occasion to hunt out the "enemies" of Germany (meaning, his own personal enemies.) Then in 1934 Hitler, through his personal bodyguard, the SS, undertook a murderous purging of his own political ranks to further strengthen his complete hold over the Nazi Party. Slowly Hitler was bringing all of Germany under Nazi power, and Nazi power under his own personal authority.

oppression.

Directing German Expansion
He played boldly to German nationalist feelings, gathering popular support as he went. In 1935 he rearmed the German army, in direct violation of the Versailled Treaty of 1919. The next year, 1936, he signed a military pact with Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. He then began to look East to acquire Lebensraum or new territories for German expansion. He began with the forced incorporation of Austria into his growing German Third Reich or Empire in 1938. He then pressured Czechoslovakia to give up lands along the German border (which contained Czechoslovakia's major defenses against an expansionistic Germany)--which the international community, under representation by English Prime Minister Chamberlain, agreed to, in order to save the world from war. Instead, it fired up...