MIKE GRACIA

On July 29, 1921, Adolf Hitler became the leader of the National
Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. Under Hitler, the Nazi
Party grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany as a
totalitarian state from 1933 to 1945.

Hitler’s early years did not seem to predict his rise as a political
leader. Born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, Austria, he
was a poor student and never graduated from high school.

During World War I, he joined a Bavarian regiment of the German
army and was considered a brave soldier, but his commanders
felt he lacked leadership potential and never promoted him beyond corporal.

On June 23, 1940, Adolf Hitler surveys notable sites in the French
capital, now German-occupied territory.

In his first and only visit to Paris, Hitler made Napoleon’s tomb
among the sites to see. “That was the greatest and finest moment
of my life,” he said upon leaving. Comparisons between the Fuhrer
and Napoleon have been made many times.

Hitler visits the tomb of Napoleon.

Annelies Marie Frank (12 June 1929 – c. 12 March 1945)

Ann Frank was Jewish Holocaust victim whose diary describes
her family’s evasion of the Nazis during the World War II-era
German Occupation of the Netherlands. Her Diary of a Young
Girl (The Diary of Anne Frank) gives a full account of her life in
hiding from June 1942 through early August 1944.

Before Fame

She was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and was raised primarily
in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Ann received a blank book for
her thirteenth birthday that she soon transformed into her now-
famous diary. Ann Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

A partial reconstruction of the barracks in the Westerbork
transit camp where Anne Frank was housed from August
to September 1944.

CAMILLE BOHANNON