Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (The Nazi party). He was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and became Führer (leader) in 1934, remaining in power until his suicide before his defeat in 1945. By the end of the war, Hitler's policies of territorial conquest and racial subjugation had brought death and destruction to tens of millions of people, including the genocide of some six million Jews, in what is now known as the Holocaust.