Today in History: Hitler becomes commander-in-chief of German army

New Delhi: 2nd of August 1934 was the day, when the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler became the commander-in-chief of German Army. With the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg in 1934, Chancellor Adolf Hitler becomes absolute dictator of Germany . Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, in 1889.He spent his childhood in poverty .As a young man he aspired to be a painter. He lived in Vienna till 1913, then he moved to Germany city of Munich in the state of Bavaria..He found direction as a German soldier in World War I, and was appreciated and awarded for his bravery in the battlefield.During 1918 he suffered a temporarily blindness caused by mustard gas attack, during world war-1, when Germany surrendered. He was not against the Germany's surrender and he claimed that the Germany has to loose the war because of its enemies with in the German Army.He remained in the German army after the war, and as an intelligence agent was ordered to report on subversive activities in Munich's political parties. During this period he joined the tiny German Workers' Party, constituted of Army veterans. In 1920 he assumed leadership of the organization, changing its name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' party) commonly known as NAZI.In the early 1920s, the ranks of Hitler's Bavarian-based Nazi party swelled with resentful Germans. A paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (SA), was formed to protect the Nazis and intimidate their political opponents, and the party adopted the ancient symbol of the swastika as its emblem.In November 1923, Hitler was sentenced to five year in prison by Bavarian government after Nazis launched the “Beer Hall Putsch”—an attempt at seizing the German government by force. But Political pressure from the Nazis forced the Bavarian government to commute Hitler's sentence, and he was released after nine months. Again in 1929 Hitler and his followers set about reorganizing the NAZI party as a fanatical mass movement.. In the 1930 election, the Nazis won six million votes, making the party the second largest in Germany. Two years later, Hitler challenged Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency, but the 84-year-old president defeated Hitler with the support of an anti-Nazi coalition.With the death of President Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Hitler secured the highest designation in German Army. Under the Hitler guidance Germany became one of the powerful nations and in the opening years of World War II, Hitler's war machine won a series of stunning victories, conquering the great part of continental Europe. However, the tide turned in 1942 during Germany's disastrous invasion of the USSR.By early 1945, the British and Americans were closing in on Germany from the west, the Soviets from the east, and Hitler was holed up in a bunker under the chancellery in Berlin awaiting defeat. On April 30, with the Soviets less than a mile from his headquarters, Hitler committed suicide with his mistress Eva Braun.