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Adolf Hitler was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party. In 1932, Hitler ran for President of Germany, but lost the election to the popular World War I hero, Paul von Hindenburg. The following year, advisors and business leaders, fearing a communist uprising, convinced von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. Shortly after Hitler's appointment, there was a mysterious fire in the building that housed Germany's parliament, the Reichstag. This allowed Hitler to convince President Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, giving the government the right to imprison anybody considered a Nazi opponent, and the Enabling Act, which officially turned Germany into a dictatorship. Upon the President's death in 1934, he proclaimed himself Führer ("supreme leader").
In 1939, the German Wehrmacht, under Hitler's supreme command, invaded Poland, starting World War II.