Hitler was the son of an Austrian customs official. He joined
the German Worker’s Party (later the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
(NSDAP), or Nazi Party) in 1919, becoming its leader in 1921. He was appointed
Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and declared himself Führer (Leader) the following
year, by which time he had established a one-party dictatorship. The central feature
of Hitler’s world-view, outlined in Mein Kampf ([1925] 1969), was his attempt to fuse
expansionist German nationalism and virulent anti-Semitism into a theory of history
in which there was an endless battle between the Germans and the Jews, who represented,
respectively, the forces of good and evil. Hitler’s policies contributed decisively
to both the outbreak of World War II and the Holocaust
fascism and certain trends in non-western ideological thought, notably political Islam.