Adolf Hitler
The Austrian-born dictator who built the Nazi state, started the deadliest war in history, and orchestrated the Holocaust.
Origin
Adolf Hitler (1889โ1945) was a failed Vienna art student turned WWI corporal turned beer-hall agitator. After a failed 1923 putsch and a prison memoir (Mein Kampf), he came to power legally in 1933 as German chancellor and dismantled the Weimar Republic within months. His regime murdered roughly six million Jews and millions of Roma, disabled people, Soviet POWs, and others in the Holocaust, and started a war that killed an estimated 70โ85 million people worldwide. He shot himself in a Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, as Soviet troops closed in.
Modern usage
The default reference for absolute political evil โ to the point that 'Godwin's law' ([[godwins-law]]) names the inevitability of any long online argument reaching a Hitler comparison. 'Literally Hitler' is the meme-deflation of overuse. The toothbrush mustache, the side-parted hair, and the raised-arm salute have all been retired from civilian life by association.
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