How is Adolf Hitler significant?

Hitler rose to power in 1933 publicising mild anti-Semitic attitudes, before the the start of the Second World War he was openly attacking Jews with events like,Kristallnacht [Night of Broken glass] and the passing of the Nuremburg laws in 1935. He further prosecuted the 'undesirables' who did not fit the criteria for the Aryan Race, for example homosexuals, gypsies and the mentally and physically disabled. He had many mentally ill people sterilised.

The main significance of Hitler is that without him there would have been no World War II and thereby no events that came after him, e.g. the Cold War, NATO, Warsaw Pact, the fall of Russia and the Berlin Wall. Essentially Hitler created the world that we lived in because of his attack on Poland that created WWII.

He showed how dictatorships are formed, especially as many models of his government are still in place up till the late eighties and arguably into the 1990s. Nonetheless Hitler created a greater awareness of the suffering of the Jews.