The Bloodiest Tyrant of all Times: Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)

Adolf Hitler (Schicklgrueber) was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, the fourth of Alois and Klara Hitler's six children. Fascinated from an early age by war and militarism, Hitler led an unremarkable life -- indifferent student, mediocre painter, failed artist -- until World War I provided the 25-year-old with a career (soldier) and a cause (the glorification of Germany). 


From 1905 on, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna on an orphan's pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907–1908), citing "unfitness for painting", and was told his abilities lay instead in the field of architecture.

After the first world war ended in 1918, Hitler dedicated himself to a new brand of politics and a political party defined by nationalism, anti-Semitism, and revenge. In 1933, ten years after his arrest and imprisonment for a failed Nazi coup attempt, he was elected (legally) to the German chancellorship; within less than a year, he assumed the title of Fuhrer and, as he had long promised, set about waging war on an unprecedented scale.

By the time of Hitler's own sordid death in a Berlin bunker in 1945, historians had spent years trying to cast light on the brutal rise and grisly fall of the "Thousand Year Reich." Decades later, their works have lost none of their power to shock, humble, and illuminate.