| DATE | BRIEF DESCRIPTION |
| 1889 | Born April 20 in Braunau am Inn, Austria. |
| 1914-1918 | Serves as a private in the Bavarian army during World War I. |
| 1919 | Joins the nationalist German Workers' Party, soon renamed the National Socialist German Workers', or Nazi, Party. |
| 1921 | Elected Party Chairman, or Führer, with dictatorial powers. |
| 1923 | Leads a failed uprising, or Putsch, in Munich. Sentenced to five years' imprisonment, but serves only eight months, during which time he writes Mein Kampf. |
| 1928 | The Nazi Party gains 12 seats in the German Parliament, the Reichstag. |
| 1929 | Beginning of the Great Depression. |
| 1930 | The Nazi Party gains 107 seats in the Reichstag. |
| 1933 | January. Appointed Chancellor. February. Reichstag fire blamed on communists. March. Reichstag passes an Enabling Act giving full power to the Nazi Party. |
| 1934 | June. "Knight of the Long Knives". August. Death of President Hindenburg. End of Weimar Republic, and beginning of the Third Reich. |
| 1935 | Launches open German rearmament. |
| 1936 | Sends troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. |
| 1938 | Orders annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. |
| 1939 | German invasion of Poland. Britain and France declare war on Germany, beginning World War II. |
| 1940 | German forces overrun Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Britain resists invasion. |
| 1941 | German invasion of the Soviet Union; forces reach the gates of Moscow, but are pushed back. United States enters the war against the Axis powers. |
| 1941-1945 | Campaign to destroy world Jewry, with millions sent to extermination camps. |
| 1944 | German officers' plot to assassinate him fails. |
| 1945 | Marries his long-time companion, Eva Braun, in his Berlin bunker, and then commits suicide. |
