People of the Revolution and the USSR

Nazi party and regime Fascists and Nazis 1889–1945 ✕ Suicide

Dictator who built a racist war state

In summer 1942, Hitler split Army Group South into Groups A and B to strike at Caucasus oil and the Volga at the same time, a decision that led to the encirclement and destruction of the Sixth Army.

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, and held Austrian citizenship by descent; he moved to Munich in 1913 and falsely registered as stateless. He joined the German Workers' Party in 1919, led it from 1921, and dictated Mein Kampf in prison after the failed 1923 Munich putsch. Released from Austrian citizenship in 1925, he remained stateless until he acquired German citizenship in 1932. Appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933, he used the Enabling Act of 23 March 1933 to build a dictatorship and became head of state on 2 August 1934 after Hindenburg's death. His regime was responsible for the genocide of about six million Jews and the deliberate killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and POWs. He died by suicide in Berlin on 30 April 1945.

Nazi party and regime Fascists and Nazis 1908–1975 ○ Natural causes

A Nazi commando leader magnified by propaganda

Standing before Mussolini at Gran Sasso, Skorzeny became the face of a victory whose command credit belonged elsewhere.

Born in Vienna, Skorzeny became a Waffen-SS officer who directed sabotage and commando operations for Nazi Germany. In the 1943 Gran Sasso raid, he helped locate Benito Mussolini and led an SS detachment at the landing site, but the operation as a whole was planned and commanded by the airborne officers Harald Mors and Kurt Student. Nazi propaganda presented him as Mussolini's liberator, while he also took part in the overthrow of Hungary's government and the Ardennes deception operation. Acquitted at a postwar war-crimes trial, he later lived in Spain amid far-right networks.