Department of History & Geography Morgan State University Baltimore, Maryland 21251-0001

World Leaders and their Impact after 1500 CE

By

Julius Sesay

Instructor: Dr. Aubrey A. Thompson
Course/Class: History 102.005.
Date: Friday, November 4, 2013.

Sesay 2 Born in Austria in 1889, Adolf Hitler rose to power in German politics as leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, also known as the Nazi Party. He’s a chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and served as dictator from 1934 to 1945. His policies precipitated World War II and the Holocaust. He committed suicide with wife Eva Braun on April 30, 1945, in his Berlin bunker. When he was a child, his life long dream is to become a painter and was described himself as the misunderstood artist. Leaderships are ones who or that which leads for their own purpose. Civilization is an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached. Progress is a movement toward a goal or to a further or higher stage. Hitler believed that he could provide a stronger government that would bring strength and prestige back to Germany. So, on November 9, 1923, he attempted a coup of the government, the Beer Hall Putsch. It failed and Hitler was sentenced to five years at Landsberg Prison. Though he only served nine months of his term, he used this time to formulate his thoughts about a new Germany, which he made into a book, Mein Kampf. Once he was released, he continued on his road to ultimate power. Hitler continued to move with speed in radically changing Germany, consolidating power, locking up “enemies” in camps, bending culture to his will, rebuilding the army and breaking the constraints of the Treaty of Versailles. He tried to change the social fabric of Germany by encouraging women to breed more and bringing in laws to secure racial purity; Jews were particularly targeted. Employment, high elsewhere in a time of depression, fell to zero in Germany. Sesay 3 Hitler also made himself head of the army. Since the world was extremely sensitive about the possibility of starting another world war, Hitler was able to annex Austria in 1938 without a single battle. But when he had his forces enter Poland in August 1939, the world could no longer stand aside and just watch -- World War II began. From the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 to Kristallnacht in 1938, Hitler slowly removed Jews from German society. However, with the cover of World War II, the Nazis created an elaborate and intensive system to work Jews as slaves and kill them. Hitler is considered one of the most evil people in history because of the Holocaust. During the beginning of World War II, the German war machine seemed unstoppable. However, the tide turned at the Battle of Stalingrad in the beginning of 1943. As the Allied Army got closer to Berlin, Hitler continued to control his regime from the safety of an underground bunker. Soon, even that was no longer safe. In 1945, Germany was in a bitter state of war. To add to the misery, the Red army

invaded Berlin. Possibly the intolerable stress and pressure that Hitler went through,

caused him to commit suicide. In the decades since Hitler’s death many commentators

have concluded that he must have been mentally ill, and that if he wasn’t when he started

his rule the pressures of