Branch: Govement
Born: 20 April 1889 Austria-Hungary.
Died: 30 April 1945 Berlin, Germany.
Appointment's:
Führer of Germany 2 August 1934 to 30 April 1945
Chancellor of Germany 30 January 1933 to 30 April 1945
Reichsstatthalter of Prussia 30 January 1933 to 30 January
1935
Decorations:
Other: Personnel
Articles:
I
saw Adolf Hitlers rout at Munich
The
Führer had just left us when
Who
was the Guy Fawkes in the Munich cellar ?
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 and was a Austrian-born
German politician and the leader of the National Socialist
German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
(NSDAP, generally referred to as the National Socialist Party).
Adolf Hitler was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945,
and dictator of Third Reich (Führer und Reichskanzler)
from 1934 to 1945. Adolf Hitler is normally associated with
the rise of fascism in Europe,during Second World War, and
the final solution.
A decorated veteran of the First World War, Adolf Hitler joined
the German Workers' Party, forerunner of the National Socialist
Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP (National Socialist
German Workers Party) in 1921. In 1923 Adolf Hitler undertook
a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich.
The failed coup resulted in Adolf Hitler's incarceration,
during which time he penned his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).
After his release in 1924, Adolf Hitler gained support by
promoting Pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Communism
with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his engagement
as chancellor in 1933, Adolf Hitler transformed the Weimar
Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship
based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism.
His declared aim was to establish a New Order of absolute
Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.
Adolf Hitler's foreign and domestic policies had the goal
of appropriating Lebensraum (living space) for the Germanic
people. Adolf Hitler supervised the rearmament of Germany
and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939,
which led to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe.
Under Adolf Hitler's guidance, in 1941 German forces and their
European allies occupied most of Europe and North Africa.
These gains followed step by step reversal after 1941, and
in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German regular army.
Adolf Hitler's supremacist and racially prompted policies
ensued in the systematised murder of 11 million people, including
virtually 6 million Jews.
In the concluding days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin
in 1945, Adolf Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva
Braun. On 30 April 1945 less than two days later the two committed
suicide to avoid capture by the Russian Army, and their remains
were burned.
Early years
Ancestry
Adolf Hitler's father, Alois Hitler 1837 to 1903, was the
bastard child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. Alois's birth certificate
didn't list the name of the father, and the child bore his
mother's surname. In 1842 Johann Georg Hiedler married Maria,
and in 1876 Johann bore witness before a notary and three
witnesses that he was the father of Alois. National socialist
official
Hans
Frank indicated the existence of letters claiming that
Alois' mother was engaged as a housekeeper for a Jewish family
in Graz and that the family's nineteen year old son, Leopold
Frankenberger, had fathered Alois. Nevertheless, no Frankenberger,
Jewish or otherwise, was recorded in Graz during that period.
Historians now question the claim that Alois' father was Jewish
all Jews had been ejected from Graz under Maximilian I in
the 15th century, and weren't allowed to settle in Styria
till the Basic Laws were passed in 1849.
At age thirty-nine Alois assumed the surname Hitler, also
spelled as Hiedler, Hüttler, or Huettler the name was
probably regularised to its last spelling by a clerk. The
ancestry of the name is either one who lives in a hut (Standard
German Hütte), shepherd, (Standard German hüten
to guard, English heed), or is from the Slavic words Hidlar
and Hidlarcek.
Childhood
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 at the Gasthof zum
Pommer, an inn in Ranshofen, a village annexed in 1938 to
the municipality of Braunau am Inn, Upper Austria. Adolf Hitler
was the 4th of six children to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl
1860 to 1907. Adolf's older siblings Gustav, Ida, and Otto
died in early childhood. Whilst Adolf Hitler was three, the
family moved to Passau, Germany. There he would develop the
distinctive lower Bavarian accent, instead of Austrian German,
which marked his manner of speaking all of his life. In 1894
the family relocated to Leonding (near Linz), and in June
1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld, near
Lambach, where he attempted his hand at farming and beekeeping.
Adolf went to school in nearby Fischlham. Adolf Hitler became
fascinated on warfare after finding a picture book about the
Franco-Prussian War among his father's possessions.
The move to Hafeld seems to have coincided with the onset
of intense father-son differences, caused by Adolf's refusal
to follow the strict discipline of his school. Alois Hitler's
farming efforts at Hafeld finished in failure, and in 1897
the family relocated to Lambach. Adolf Hitler attended a Catholic
school in an 11th century Benedictine cloister, the walls
of which had engravings and crests that comprised the swastika
symbol. The 8 year old Adolf Hitler took singing lessons,
sang in the church choir, and even toyed with thoughts of
becoming a priest. In 1898 the family returned for good to
Leonding. The death of his junior brother Edmund from measles
on 2 February 1900 profoundly affected Adolf Hitler. He changed
from being confident and outgoing and an first-class student,
to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who perpetually fought
with his father and teachers.
Alois had made a successful career in the Bureau of Customs
and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. Adolf Hitler
later dramatised an episode from this period when his father
took him to visit a customs office, portraying it as an event
that brought about the unrelenting hostility between father
and son who were both strong-minded. Dismissing his son's
desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist,
in September 1900 Alois sent Adolf to the Realschule in Linz,
a technical high school of about 300 students. This was the
same high school that Adolf Eichmann would attend some 17
years later. Adolf Hitler rebelled against this decision,
and in Mein Kampf disclosed that he did badly in school, hoping
that once his father saw what little progress he was attaining
at the technical school he would allow me dedicate myself
to my ambitions.
Adolf Hitler became possessed with German nationalism from
a youngish age as a way of rebelling against his father, who
was proudly serving the Austrian authorities. Whilst many
Austrians believed themselves Germans, they were patriotic
to Austria. Adolf Hitler showed loyalty only to Germany, disliking
the waning Habsburg Monarchy and its rule over an ethnically
varied empire. Adolf Hitler and his friends used the German
greeting Heil, and sang the German anthem Deutschland Über
Alles rather than the Austrian Imperial anthem.
After Alois' unforeseen death on 3 January 1903, Adolf Hitler's
conduct at the technical school became even more turbulent,
and he was asked to leave in 1904. Adolf Hitler registered
at the Realschule in Steyr in September 1904 where his conduct
and performance displayed some slight and gradual improvement.
In the fall of 1905, after passing a duplicate and the final
exam, Adolf Hitler left the school without demonstrating any
aspirations for additional schooling or clear plans for his
future career.
Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich
From 1905, Adolf Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna financed
by orphan's benefits and support from his mother. The Academy
of Fine Arts in Vienna turned him away twice, in 1907 and
1908, because of his unfitness for painting, and the director
suggested that he study architecture. All the same, he lacked
the intellectual credentials needed for architecture school.
He would later write,
In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become
an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road for
the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule
were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy's architectural
school without having attended the building school at the
Technik, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had
none of all this. The fulfilment of my artistic dream seemed
physically impossible.
On 21 December 1907, Adolf Hitler's mother passed away at
age forty-seven. Adolf Hitler worked as a casual labourer
and finally as a painter, selling watercolours Later being
rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Adolf Hitler
ran out of money. In 1909, Adolf Hitler lived in a homeless
shelter, and by 1910, Adolf Hitler had settled into a house
for poor working men on Meldemannstraße.
Adolf Hitler declared that he first became an anti-Semitic
in Vienna, which had a large Jewish community, including Orthodox
Jews who had fled the pogroms in Soviet Russia.
There were fewer Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries
their outward appearance had become Europeanised and had taken
on a human look, in fact, I even took them for Germans. The
ridiculousness of this idea didn't dawn on me since I saw
no distinguishing feature but the strange religion. The fact
that they had, as I believed, been persecuted on this account
sometimes almost turned my distaste at unfavourable comments
about them into horror. Therefore I didn't so much as suspect
the existence of an coordinated opposition to the Jews. Then
I came to Vienna.
Once, as I was strolling through the Inner City, I abruptly
encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair
locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought. For, to be sure,
they had not looked like that in Linz. I observed the man
on the sly and carefully, but the longer I stared at this
foreign face, scrutinising feature for feature, the more my
first question assumed a new form: Is this a German?
Adolf Hitler's account has been called into question by his
childhood friend, August Kubizek, who intimated that Adolf
Hitler was already a confirmed anti-Semitic before he left
Linz for Vienna. Brigitte Hamann has disputed Kubizek's account,
writing that of all those early witnesses who can be taken
seriously Kubizek is the only one to portray young Adolf Hitler
as an anti-Semite and exactly in this respect he is not trustworthy.
If Adolf Hitler was an anti-Semitic even before settling in
Vienna, evidently he did not act on his views. He was a common
dinner guest in a wealthy Jewish home, he interacted well
with Jewish merchandisers and sold his paintings almost entirely
to Jewish dealers.
At the time Adolf Hitler lived there, Vienna was a hotbed
of conventional religious prejudice and 19th century racialism.
Concerns of being overrun by immigrants from the East were
widespread, and the populist mayor, Karl Lueger, was adept
at exploiting the rhetoric of virulent anti-Semitism for political
effect. Georg Schönerer's pangermanic ethnic anti-Semitism
had a strong following and base in the Mariahilf district,
where Adolf Hitler lived. Local newspapers such as the Deutsches
Volksblatt, which Adolf Hitler read, fanned prejudices, as
did Rudolf Vrba's writings, which played on Christian fears
of being inundated by an inflow of eastern Jews. He probably
read occult writings, such as the anti-Semitic magazine Ostara,
published by Lanz von Liebenfels. Hostile to what he saw as
Catholic German phobia, he developed an appreciation for Martin
Luther. Luther's anti-Semitic writings were to play a role
in later national socialist propaganda.
Adolf Hitler picked up the final part of his father's estate
in May 1913 and moved to Munich. He wrote in Mein Kampf that
he had always yearned to live in a real German city. In Munich,
he further pursued his interest in architecture and studied
the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who, a decade
later, was to become the first person of national and even
international repute to align himself with Adolf Hitler and
the national socialist movement. Adolf Hitler also may have
left Vienna to avoid conscription into the Austrian army he
was unwilling to serve the Habsburg state and was sickened
by what he perceived as a mixture of races in the Austrian
army. After a physical exam on 5 February 1914, he was viewed
as unfit for service and returned to Munich. When Germany
entered the First World War in August 1914, he successfully
petitioned King Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to serve
in a Bavarian regiment.
World War I
Adolf Hitler served as a runner on the Western Front in France
and Belgium in the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16.
He experienced major combat, including the First Battle of
Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the
Battle of Passchendaele.
He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second
Class, in 1914. Recommended by Hugo Gutmann, he received the
Iron Cross, First Class, on 4 August 1918, a decoration rarely
awarded to one of Adolf Hitler's rank (Gefreiter). Adolf Hitler's
post at regimental headquarters, where he had regular interactions
with higher-ranking officers, may have aided him to receive
this award. The regimental staff, nevertheless, thought Adolf
Hitler lacked leadership skills, and he was never promoted.
He also received the Wound Badge on 18 May 1918.
During his service at the military headquarters, Adolf Hitler
pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for
an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October
1916, he was wounded either in the groin area or the left
thigh by a shell that had detonated in the dispatch runners'
dugout. Adolf Hitler spent almost two months in the Red Cross
hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March
1917. On 15 October 1918, Adolf Hitler was temporarily blinded
by a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk.
Whilst there, Adolf Hitler learnt of Germany's surrender,
and by his own account on hearing this news, he suffered a
2nd bout of blindness. Investigators have indicated his secondary
blindness may have been the result of conversion disorder
brought on by his shock that Germany had lost the war,but
others have brushed aside this theory.
Adolf Hitler became embittered over the break down of the
war effort, and his ideological development began to firmly
take shape. He described the war as the greatest of all experiences,
and was praised by his commanding officers for his courageousness.
The experience made Adolf Hitler a passionate German nationalist,
and he was shocked by Germany's surrender in November 1918.
Like other German patriots, he believed in the Dolchstoßlegende
(stab in the back legend), which claimed that the German army,
undefeated in the field, had been stabbed in the back on the
home front by civilian leaders and Bolsheviks, later dubbed
the November Criminals.
The Treaty of Versailles specified that Germany must give
up several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland.
The treaty enforced economic sanctions and imposed heavy reparations
on the country. A lot of Germans perceived the treaty particularly
Article 231, which proclaimed Germany responsible for the
war as a humiliation. The Versailles treaty and the economic,
social, and political conditions in Germany after the war
were later misused by Adolf Hitler for political gains.
Entry into politics
After the First World War, Adolf Hitler stayed on in the army
and returned to Munich. In July 1919 he was appointed intelligence
agent (Verbindungsmann) of an reconnaissance commando (Aufklärungskommando)
of the Reichswehr, both to influence other soldiers and to
infiltrate the DAP (German Workers' Party). Whilst he studied
the actions of the DAP (German Workers' Party), Adolf Hitler
became impressed with founder Anton Drexler's anti-Semitic,
nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas. Drexler
preferred a strong active government, a non-Jewish version
of socialism, and solidarity among all members of society.
Impressed with Adolf Hitler's oratory skills, Drexler invited
him to join the DAP (German Workers' Party). Adolf Hitler
accepted on 12 September 1919, becoming the party's 55th member.
At the DAP (German Workers' Party), Adolf Hitler met Dietrich
Eckart, one of its early founders and a member of the occult
Thule Society. Eckart became Adolf Hitler's mentor, exchanging
ideas with him and introducing him to a wide range of people
in Munich society. Adolf Hitler gave thanks Eckart and paid
tribute to him in the 2nd volume of Mein Kampf. To increase
its appeal, the party changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers
Party). Adolf Hitler designed the party's banner of a swastika
in a white circle on a red background.
After his discharge from the army in March 1920, Adolf Hitler
started out working full time for the party. In February 1921
already extremely effective at talking to large audiences
he addressed a crowd of over six thousand in Munich. To advertise
the meeting, two truckloads of party supporters drove around
town waving swastika flags and throwing leaflets. Adolf Hitler
soon gained notoriety for his disorderly, controversial speeches
against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, and particularly
against Marxists and Jews. At the time, the NSDAP (National
Socialist German Workers Party) was centred in Munich, a major
hotbed of anti-government German nationalists determined to
crush Marxism and sabotage the Weimar Republic.
In June 1921, whilst Adolf Hitler and Eckart were on a fund
raising trip to Berlin, a mutiny erupted within the DAP (German
Workers' Party) in Munich. Members of the DAP (German Workers'
Party)'s executive committee, a few of whom believed Adolf
Hitler to be too dictatorial, wanted to merge with the rival
DSP (German Socialist Party). Adolf Hitler returned to Munich
on 11 July 1921 and angrily offered his resignation from the
DAP (German Workers' Party). The committee members understood
that his resignation would mean the end of the party. Adolf
Hitler declared he would rejoin on the condition that he would
replace Drexler as party chairman, and that the party headquarters
would remain in Munich. The committee agreed, he returned
to the party as member 3,680. He still faced some resistance
within the DAP (German Workers' Party): Hermann Esser and
his allies printed 3,000 copies of a leaflet attacking Adolf
Hitler as a traitor to the party. In the following days, Adolf
Hitler talked to several full houses and defended himself
to deafening applause. His scheme proved successful: at a
general DAP (German Workers' Party) membership meeting, he
was given absolute powers as party chairman, with only one
no vote cast.
Adolf Hitler's virulent beer hall speeches started attracting
regular audiences. Early followers included
Rudolf
Hess, former air force pilot
Hermann
Göring, and
Ernst
Röhm. The latter became head of the Nazis' paramilitary
force, the Sturmabteilung (SA, Storm Division), which protected
meetings and frequently attacked political adversaries. A
vital influence on his thinking during this period was the
Aufbau Vereinigung, a conspiratorial group formed of White
Russian exiles and early National Socialists. The group, financed
with funds channelled from wealthy industrialists like Henry
Ford, introduced him to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy, linking
international finance with Bolshevism.
Beer Hall Putsch
Adolf Hitler engaged the help of the First World War General
Erich
von Ludendorfff or an attempted coup known as the Beer
Hall Putsch (also known as the Adolf Hitler Putsch or Munich
Putsch). The National Socialist German Workers' Party had
used Italian Fascism as a example for their appearance and
policies, and in 1923, Adolf Hitler wanted to emulate Benito
Mussolini's March on Rome by staging his own Campaign in Berlin.
Adolf Hitler and
Erich
von Ludendorfff looked for support of Staatskommissar
(state commissioner) Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler.
Nevertheless, Kahr, along with Police Chief Hans Ritter von
Seisser (Seißer) and Reichswehr General Otto von Lossow,
wanted to install a nationalist dictatorship without Adolf
Hitler.
Adolf Hitler wanted to seize a critical moment for successful
popular unrest and support. On 8 November 1923 he and the
SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people that had been
organised by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large
beer hall in Munich. Adolf Hitler broke up Kahr's speech and
proclaimed that the national revolution had begun, announcing
the formation of a new government with
Erich
von Ludendorfff. With his handgun drawn, Adolf Hitler
demanded and got the support of Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow.
Adolf Hitler's forces at first succeeded in occupying the
local Reichswehr and police headquarters, nevertheless, neither
the army nor the state police collaborated with him. Kahr
and his associates rapidly withdrew their support and fled
to join Adolf Hitler's opposition. The next day, Adolf Hitler
and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian
War Ministry to bring down the Bavarian government, but police
scattered them. Sixteen NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers
Party) members and four policemen were killed in the failed
coup.
Adolf Hitler took flight to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl,
and by some accounts he contemplated suicide. He was demoralised
but calm when he was apprehended on 11 November 1923 for high
treason. His trial began in February 1924 before the special
People's Court in Munich,and
Alfred
Rosenberg became temporary leader of the NSDAP (National
Socialist German Workers Party). On 1 April Adolf Hitler was
sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison.
He experienced friendly treatment from the guards and numerous
letters from supporters. The Bavarian Supreme Court issued
a pardon and he was released from jail on 20 December 1924,
against the state prosecutor's protests. Including time on
remand, Adolf Hitler had served just over one year in prison.
Whilst at Landsberg, Adolf Hitler dictated most of the 1st
volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle originally entitled Four
and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and
Cowardice) to his deputy,
Rudolf
Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich
Eckart, was an autobiography and an exposition of his ideology.
Mein Kampf was influenced by The Passing of the Great Race
by Madison Grant, which Adolf Hitler called my Bible. The
book laid out Adolf Hitler's plans for transforming German
society into one based on race by means of racial extermination.
Brought out in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, it sold 228,000
copies between 1925 and 1932. One million copies were sold
in 1933, Adolf Hitler's first year in office.
Rebuilding the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers
Party)
At the time of Adolf Hitler's release from prison, politics
in Germany had become less aggressive, and the economic system
had improved. This limited Adolf Hitler's chances for political
upheaval. As a result of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the
NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) and its associated
organisations were prohibited in Bavaria. In a meeting with
Prime Minister of Bavaria Heinrich Held on 4 January 1925,
Adolf Hitler agreed to honour the authority of the state,
he would only seek political power through the democratic
action. The meeting paved the way for the ban on the NSDAP
(National Socialist German Workers Party) to be lifted. Nevertheless,
Adolf Hitler was stopped from public speaking, a ban that
stayed in place until 1927. To advance his political aspirations
in spite of the ban, Adolf Hitler appointed Gregor Strasser,
Otto Strasser, and
Joseph
Goebbels to organise and grow the NSDAP (National Socialist
German Workers Party) in northern Germany. A brilliant organiser,
Gregor Strasser guided a more independent political path,
emphasising the socialist factor of the party's programme.
Adolf Hitler ruled the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers
Party) dictatorially by affirming the Führerprinzip (Leader
principle). Rank in the party was not determined by elections
positions were filled through appointment by those of higher
rank, who demanded implicit obedience to the will of the leader.
The stock exchange in the United States crashed on 24 October
1929. The affect in Germany was dire, 1000000s were thrown
out of work and several major banks collapsed. Adolf Hitler
and the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) geared
up to take advantage of the emergency to acquire support for
their party. They promised to renounce the Versailles treaty,
beef up the economy, and provide jobs.
Rise to power
The Great Depression in Germany in 1930 allowed a political
opportunity for Adolf Hitler. Germans were ambivalent to the
parliamentary republic, which faced strong challenges from
right and left wing extremists. The moderate political parties
were progressively unable to stem the tide of extremism, and
the German referendum of 1929 had helped to elevate national
socialist ideology. The elections of September 1930 ensued
in the break-up of a grand coalition and its replacement with
a minority cabinet. Its leader, chancellor Heinrich Brüning
of the Centre Party, governed through emergency edicts from
the president,
Paul
von Hindenburg. Governance by edict would become the new
norm and paved the way for dictatorial forms of government.
The NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) rose from
obscurity to win 18.3% of the vote and 107 parliamentary seats
in the 1930 election, becoming the second biggest party in
parliament.
Adolf Hitler made a prominent appearance at the trial of two
Reichswehr officers, Lieutenants Richard Scheringer and Hans
Ludin, in the autumn of 1930. Both were charged with membership
in the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party), at
that time illegal for Reichswehr personnel. The criminal prosecution
argued that the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party)
was an extremist party, prompting defence lawyer
Hans
Frank to call on Adolf Hitler to bear witness in court.
On 25 September 1930 Adolf Hitler bore witness that his party
would pursue political power entirely through democratic elections.
Adolf Hitler's testimony won him many supporters in the officer
corps.
Brüning's austerity measures brought little economic
improvement and were exceedingly unpopular. Adolf Hitler exploited
this failing by directing his political messages specifically
to the sections of the population that had been affected by
the inflation of the 1920s and the Depression, such as farmers,
war ex-servicemen, and the middle class.
Adolf Hitler officially renounced his Austrian citizenship
on 7 April 1925, but at the time didn't get German citizenship.
For almost seven years Adolf Hitler was stateless, unable
to run for public office, and faced the risk of deportation.
On 25 February 1932 the interior minister of Brunswick, who
was a member of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers
Party), appointed Adolf Hitler as administrator for the state's
delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin, making Adolf Hitler
a citizen of Brunswick, and thus of Germany.
In 1932 Adolf Hitler ran against
Paul
von Hindenburg in the presidential elections. The viability
of his candidacy was emphasised by a 27 January 1932 speech
to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf, which acquired him
support from many of Germany's most powerful industrialists.
Nevertheless,
Paul
von Hindenburg had support from assorted nationalist,
monarchist, Catholic, and republican parties, and some social
democrats. Adolf Hitler used the campaign slogan Adolf Hitler
über Deutschland (Adolf Hitler over Germany), a reference
to both his political ambitions and to his campaigning by
aircraft. Adolf Hitler came in 2nd in both rounds of the election,
pulling together more than 35% of the vote in the final election.
Whilst he lost to
Paul
von Hindenburg, this election established Adolf Hitler
as a strong force in German politics.
Appointment as chancellor
The absence of an effective government prompted two influential
politicians,
Franz
von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, along with several other
industrialists and businessmen, to write a letter to
Paul
von Hindenburg. The signatories urged
Paul
von Hindenburg to appoint Adolf Hitler as leader of a
government autonomous from parliamentary parties, which could
turn into a movement that would enrapture 1000000s of people.
Paul
von Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Adolf Hitler
as chancellor after two further parliamentary elections in
July and November 1932 had not resulted in the formation of
a majority government. Adolf Hitler was to head a short lived
coalition government formed by the NSDAP (National Socialist
German Workers Party) and Hugenberg's party, the German National
People's Party (DNVP). On 30 January 1933 the new cabinet
was sworn in during a short and simple ceremony in
Paul
von Hindenburg's office. The NSDAP (National Socialist
German Workers Party) held three of the eleven posts, Adolf
Hitler was named chancellor,
Hermann
Göring was named minister without portfolio, and
Wilhelm Frick was appointed minister of the interior.
Reichstag fire and March elections
As chancellor, Adolf Hitler worked against attempts by the
NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party)'s opponents
to build a majority government. Because of the political stalemate,
he asked President
Paul
von Hindenburg to again dissolve the Reichstag, and elections
were scheduled for early March. On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag
building was set on fire.
Hermann
Göring blamed a communist plot, because Dutch communist
Marinus van der Lubbe was found in incriminating circumstances
inside the burning building. At Adolf Hitler's urging,
Paul
von Hindenburg reacted with the Reichstag Fire Decree
of 28 February, which suspended basic rights, including habeas
corpus. Activities of the German Communist Party were suppressed,
and some 4,000 communist party members were arrested. Investigators,
including William L. Shirer and Alan Bullock, are of the opinion
that the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) itself
was responsible for starting the fire.
In addition to political campaigning, the NSDAP (National
Socialist German Workers Party) engaged in paramilitary violence
and the spread of anti-Communist propaganda in the days preceding
the election. On election day, 6 March 1933, the NSDAP (National
Socialist German Workers Party)'s share of the vote increased
to 43.9%, and the party acquired the largest number of seats
in parliament. Nevertheless, Adolf Hitler's party failed to
secure an absolute majority, calling for another coalition
with the DNVP
Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act
On 21 March 1933 the new Reichstag was constituted with an
opening ceremony at the Garrison Church in Potsdam. This Day
of Potsdam was held to demonstrate unity between the national
socialist movement and the old Prussian elite and military.
Adolf Hitler came along in a morning coat and humbly greeted
President
Paul
von Hindenburg.
To accomplish full political control despite not having an
absolute majority in parliament, Adolf Hitler's government
brought in the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) to
a vote in the newly elected Reichstag. The act gave Adolf
Hitler's cabinet full legislative powers for a period of four
years and (with certain exclusions) allowed for deviations
from the constitution. The bill called for a two-thirds majority
to pass. Leaving nothing to chance, the national socialists
used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to keep several
Social Democratic deputies from attending the Communists had
already been prohibited.
On 23 March, the Reichstag got together at the Kroll Opera
House under tumultuous circumstances. Ranks of SA men served
as guards inside the building, while large groups outside
opposing the proposed legislation shouted slogans and threats
toward the arriving members of parliament. The position of
the Centre Party, the third largest party in the Reichstag,
turned out to be decisive. After Adolf Hitler verbally promised
party leader Ludwig Kaas that President
Paul
von Hindenburg would retain his power of veto, Kaas announced
the Centre Party would support the Enabling Act. Finally,
the Enabling Act passed by a vote of 441-84, with all parties
except the Social Democrats voting in favour. The Enabling
Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Adolf
Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship
Removal of remaining limits
Having accomplished full control over the legislative and
executive arms of government, Adolf Hitler and his political
allies started a systematic quelling of the remaining political
resistance. The Social Democratic Party was banned and all
its assets appropriated. While many trade union delegates
were in Berlin for May Day activities, SA storm troopers destroyed
trade union offices around the country. On 2 May 1933 all
trade unions were coerced to dissolve and their leaders were
arrested some were sent to concentration camps. The German
Labour Front was formed to represent all workers, administrators,
and company owners together as one group. This new trade union
reflected the concept of national socialism in the spirit
of Adolf Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft (community of all German
people).
By the end of June, the other parties had been broke up, and
with the help of the SA, Adolf Hitler coerced his nominal
coalition partner, Hugenberg, into resigning. On 14 July 1933
Adolf Hitler's national socialist Party was proclaimed the
only legal political party in Germany. The demands of the
SA for more political and military power caused much anxiety
amongst military, industrial, and political leaders. Adolf
Hitler reacted by purging the entire SA leadership in what
became known as the Night of the Long Knives, which happened
on 30 June to 2 July 1934. Adolf Hitler targeted
Ernst
Röhm and other political opponents (such as Gregor
Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher).
Ernst
Röhm and other SA leaders, along with a number of
Adolf Hitler's political enemies, were rounded up, apprehended,
and shot. While some Germans were shocked by the murders,
many saw Adolf Hitler as the one who restored order to the
country.
On 2 August 1934 President
Paul
von Hindenburg died. The previous day, the cabinet had
enacted a law to take effect upon
Paul
von Hindenburg's death which abolished the office of president
and combined its powers with those of the chancellor. Adolf
Hitler therefore became head of state as well as head of government,
and was formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader
and chancellor).This law violated the Enabling Act as well
as the constitution, the Enabling Act specifically barred
Adolf Hitler from passing any law that tampered with the presidency,
and in 1932, the constitution had been amended to make the
president of the High Court of Justice, not the chancellor,
acting president pending new elections. With this law, Adolf
Hitler removed the last legal remedy by which he could be
removed from office.
As head of state, Adolf Hitler became Supreme Commander of
the armed services. The traditional loyalty oath of soldiers
and sailors was altered to affirm loyalty directly to Adolf
Hitler, rather than to the office of supreme commander. On
19 August, the amalgamation of the presidency with the chancellorship
was approved by a plebiscite with support of 90% of the electorate.
In early 1938, Adolf Hitler coerced his War Minister, Field
Marshal
Werner
von Blomberg, to resign when a police dossier was found
showing that
Werner
von Blomberg's new wife had a record for prostitution.
Adolf Hitler removed army commander Colonel-General
Werner
von Fritsch after the Schutzstaffel (SS) brought about
allegations that he had taken part in a homosexual relationship.
Both men had already fallen into disapproval when they objected
to his demand that they have the Wehrmacht ready to go to
war as early as 1938. Adolf Hitler used this incident, known
as the
Werner
von Blomberg-
Werner
von Fritsch Affair, to consolidate his hold over the armed
forces. He assumed
Werner
von Blomberg's title of Commander-in-Chief, therefore
taking personal command of the armed services. He replaced
the Ministry of War with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High
Command of the Armed Forces, or OKW), headed by General
Wilhelm
Keitel. On the same day, sixteen generals were stripped
of their commands and 44 more were transferred all were suspected
of not being sufficiently pro-national socialist. By early
February 1938, twelve other generals had been removed.
Having consolidated his political powers, Adolf Hitler silenced
or annihilated his opposition by a process termed Gleichschaltung
(bringing into line). He attempted to acquire additional public
support by vowing to reverse the effects of the Depression
and the Versailles treaty.
Third Reich
In 1935 Adolf Hitler appointed Hjalmar Schacht as Plenipotentiary
for War Economy, in charge of organising the economy for war.
Reconstruction Period and rearmament were financed through
Mefo bills, printing money, and seizing the assets of people
arrested as enemies of the State, including Jews. Unemployment
fell considerably, from six million in 1932 to one million
in 1936. Adolf Hitler supervised one of the largest infrastructure
improvement campaigns in German history, leading to the construction
of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. Wages
were slightly reduced in the pre-world War 2 years over those
of the Weimar Republic, while the cost of living increased
by 25%.
Adolf Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an vast
scale.
Albert
Speer, instrumental in applying Adolf Hitler's classicist
reinterpretation of German culture, was placed in charge of
the proposed architectural redevelopments of Berlin. In 1936
Adolf Hitler opened the summer Olympic games in Berlin.
Rearmament and new alliances
In a meeting with German armed forces leaders on 3 February
1933, Adolf Hitler talked of conquest for Lebensraum in the
East and its ruthless Germanisation because his ultimate foreign
policy aims. In March, Prince Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow,
secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), released
a major statement of German foreign policy aims: Anschluss
with Austria, the restitution of Germany's national borders
of 1914, rejection of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles,
the return of the former German colonies in Africa, and a
German zone of influence in Eastern Europe. Adolf Hitler found
Bülow's goals to be too modest. In his speeches of this
period, he stressed the peaceful goals of his policies and
willingness to work within international agreements. At the
first meeting of his Cabinet in 1933, Adolf Hitler prioritised
armed forces spending over unemployment relief.
Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the World
Disarmament Conference in October 1933. In March 1935 Adolf
Hitler declared an expansion of the Wehrmacht to 600,000 members
six times the number specified in Part V of the Versailles
treaty including development of an Air Force (Luftwaffe) and
increasing the size of the Navy (Kriegsmarine). Britain, France,
Italy, and the League of Nations condemned these plans as
violations of the Versailles treaty. The Anglo German Naval
Agreement (AGNA) of 18 June 1935 permitted German tonnage
to increase to 35% of that of the British navy. Adolf Hitler
called the signing of the AGNA the happiest day of his life
as he believed the agreement marked the beginning of the Anglo
German alliance he had forecast in Mein Kampf. France and
Italy were not conferred with before the signing, directly
weakening the League of Nations and putting the Treaty of
Versailles on the path towards irrelevancy.
Germany reoccupied the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland
in March 1936, in violation the Versailles treaty. Adolf Hitler
dispatched troops to Spain to support General Franco after
receiving an appeal for help in July 1936. Simultaneously,
Adolf Hitler carried on his efforts to make an Anglo German
alliance. In reaction to a growing economic crisis caused
by his rearmament efforts, Adolf Hitler released a memorandum
ordering
Hermann
Göring to carry out a Four Year Plan to have Germany
ready for war within the next four years. The Four Year Plan
Memorandum of August 1936 laid out an impending full-scale
struggle between Judeo-Bolshevism and German national socialism,
which in Adolf Hitler's view required a committed effort of
rearmament irrespective of the economic costs.
Count Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of Benito Mussolini's
government, announced an axis between Germany and Italy, and
on 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with
Japan. Britain, China, Italy, and Poland were also invited
to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in
1937. Adolf Hitler gave up his dream of an Anglo German alliance,
blaming poor British leadership. He held a secret meeting
at the Reich Chancellery with his war and foreign ministers
and armed forces chiefs that November. As entered in the Hossbach
Memorandum, Adolf Hitler declared his intention of getting
Lebensraum (living space) for the German people, and ordered
preparations for war in the east, which would start as early
as 1938 and no later than 1943. He declared that the conference
minutes were to be looked upon as his political testament
in the event of his death. He felt the German economic crisis
had reached a point that a severe decline in living standards
in Germany could only be stopped by a policy of military aggression
seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia. Adolf Hitler advocated
quick action, before Britain and France got a permanent lead
in the arms race. In early 1938, in the wake of the
Werner
von Blomberg-
Werner
von Fritsch Affair, Adolf Hitler asserted control of the
military-foreign policy apparatus. Dismissing Neurath as Foreign
Minister, he became Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht (supreme
commander of the armed forces). From early 1938 onwards, Adolf
Hitler was carrying out a foreign policy that had war as its
eventual aim
The Holocaust
One of Adolf Hitler's central and most controversial ideologies
was the concept of what he and his followers termed racial
hygiene. On 15 September 1935, he presented two laws known
as the Nuremberg Laws to the Reichstag. The laws banned marriage
between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans, and forbade the employment
of non Jewish women under the age of 45 in Jewish households.
The laws deprived so called non-Aryans of the benefits of
German citizenship. Adolf Hitler's early eugenic policies
targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities
in a programme dubbed Action T4.
Adolf Hitler's idea of Lebensraum, espoused in Mein Kampf,
focused on gaining new territory for German colonisation in
Eastern Europe. The general plan Ost (General Plan for the
East) called for the population of occupied Eastern Europe
and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to be deported
to West Siberia, used as slave labour, or murdered the conquered
districts were to be colonised by German or Germanised settlers.
The original plan called for this action to begin after the
conquest of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but when
that failed to happen, Adolf Hitler moved the plans forward.
By January 1942 the decision had been taken to kill the Jews
and other exiles that were considered undesirable.
The Holocaust (the Endlösung der jüdischen Frage
or Final Solution of the Jewish Question) was devised and
executed by
Heinrich
Himmler and
Reinhard
Heydrich. The records of the Wannsee Conference held on
20 January 1942 and led by
Reinhard
Heydrich, with fifteen senior national socialist officials
taking part provide the clearest evidence of systematic planning
for the Holocaust. On 22 February Adolf Hitler was recorded
saying to his comrades, we shall recover our health only by
annihilation of the Jews. Around thirty Nazi concentration
camps and extermination camps were used for this purpose.
By summer 1942 the facility at Auschwitz concentration camp
was expanded to accept large numbers of deportees for killing
or enslavement.
Whilst no particular order from Adolf Hitler authorising the
mass killings has showed up, he approved the Einsatzgruppen
killing squads that followed the German army through Poland,
the Baltic, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and
he was well advised about their activities. During interrogations
by Soviet intelligence officers, the records of which were
declassified over fifty years later, Adolf Hitler's valet,
Heinz Linge, and his adjutant, Otto Günsche, stated that
Adolf Hitler had a direct interest in the development of gas
chambers.
Between 1939 and 1945, the Schutzstaffel, aided by quisling
governments and recruits from occupied countries, were responsible
for the deaths of eleven to fourteen million people, including
about six million Jews, representing two-thirds of the Jewish
population in Europe, and between 500,000 and 1,500,000 Roma.
Deaths took place in concentration and extermination camps,
ghettos, and through mass executions. A lot of victims of
the Holocaust were gassed to death, whereas others died of
starvation or disease while working as slave labourers.
Adolf Hitler's policies also resulted in the killings of Poles
and Soviet POWs, communists and other political adversaries,
homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, Jehovah's
Witnesses, Adventists, and trade unionists. Adolf Hitler never
seemed to have visited the concentration camps and did not
speak publicly about the killings.
World War II
In February 1938, on the advice of his newly appointed Foreign
Minister, the strongly pro-Japanese
Joachim
von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler stopped the Sino-German alliance
with the Republic of China to instead enter into an alliance
with the more modern and powerful Japan. Adolf Hitler declared
German recognition of Manchukuo, the Japanese occupied state
in Manchuria, and renounced German claims to their former
colonies in the Pacific held by Japan. Adolf Hitler ordered
an end to arms consignments to China, and called back all
German officers working with the Chinese Army. In revenge,
Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek invalidated all Sino-German
economic agreements, depriving the Germans of many Chinese
raw materials, though they did continue to ship tungsten,
a key metal in armaments production, through to 1939.
Austria and Czechoslovakia
On 12 March 1938 Adolf Hitler announced unification of Austria
with national socialist Germany in the Anschluss. Adolf Hitler
then turned his attention to the ethnic German population
of the Sudetenland district of Czechoslovakia.
On 28-29 March 1938 Adolf Hitler held a series of cloak-and-dagger
meetings in Berlin with Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten Heimfront
(Home Front), the largest of the ethnic German parties of
the Sudetenland. Both men agreed that Henlein would demand
increased autonomy for Sudeten Germans from the Czechoslovakian
government, therefore providing a pretext for German military
action against Czechoslovakia. In April 1938 Henlein told
the foreign minister of Hungary that whatever the Czech government
could offer, he would always raise still higher demands he
wanted to sabotage an understanding by all means because this
was the only method to blow up Czechoslovakia quickly. In
private, Adolf Hitler considered the Sudeten issue insignificant,
his real intention was a war of conquest against Czechoslovakia.
In April 1938 Adolf Hitler ordered the OKW to prepare for
Fall Grün (Case Green), the code name for an invasion
of Czechoslovakia. As a result of intense French and British
diplomatic pressure, on 5 September 1938 Czechoslovakian President
Edvard Beneš revealed the Fourth Plan for constitutional
reorganisation of his country, which agreed to most of Henlein's
demands for Sudeten autonomy. Henlein's Heimfront answered
to Beneš' offer with a series of hostile clashes with
the Czechoslovakian police that led to the announcement of
martial law in certain Sudeten zones.
Germany was dependent on imported oil a confrontation with
Britain over the Czechoslovakian dispute could restrict Germany's
oil supplies. Adolf Hitler cancelled Fall Grün, in the
beginning planned for 1 October 1938. On 29 September 1938
Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier,
and Benito Mussolini attended a one day conference in Munich
that led to the Munich Agreement, which handed over the Sudetenland
districts to Germany.
Chamberlain was content with the Munich conference, calling
the outcome peace for our time, while Adolf Hitler was furious
about the missed opportunity for war in 1938. Adolf Hitler
conveyed his disappointment over the Munich Agreement in a
speech on 9 October 1938 in Saarbrücken. In Adolf Hitler's
view, the British brokered peace, whilst favourable to the
ostensible German demands, was a diplomatic defeat which spurred
his intent of restricting British power to pave the way for
the eastern expansion of Germany. As a result of the summit,
Adolf Hitler was selected Time magazine's Man of the Year
for 1938.
In late 1938 and early 1939, the continuing economic crisis
caused by the rearmament efforts forced Adolf Hitler to make
major defence cuts. In his Export or die speech of 30 January
1939, he called for an economic offensive to increase German
foreign exchange holdings to pay for raw materials such as
high-grade iron needed for military weapons.
On 15 March 1939, in violation of the Munich agreement and
perhaps as a result of the intensifying economic crisis involving
additional assets, Adolf Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to invade
Prague, and from Prague Castle declared Bohemia and Moravia
a German protectorate.
Start of World War II
n private talks in 1939, Adolf Hitler described Britain as
the primary enemy that had to be defeated. In his view, Poland's
annihilation as a sovereign nation was a essential prelude
to that end. The eastern flank would be secured, and land
would be added to Germany's Lebensraum. Adolf Hitler wanted
Poland to become either a German satellite state or be otherwise
nullified to secure the Reich's eastern flank, and to prevent
a possible British blockade. At the start, Adolf Hitler preferred
the idea of a satellite state, this was rejected by the Polish
government. Consequently, Adolf Hitler selected to invade
Poland, he made this the main German foreign policy goal of
1939. Adolf Hitler was appalled by the British assurance of
Polish independence issued on 31 March 1939, and told his
comrades that I shall brew them a devil's drink. In a speech
in Wilhelmshaven for the launch of the battleship
Tirpitz
on 1 April 1939, Adolf Hitler threatened to denounce the
Anglo German Naval Agreement if the British persisted with
their assurance of Polish independence, which he sensed as
an encirclement policy. On 3 April 1939 Adolf Hitler ordered
the armed forces to organise for Fall Weiss (Case White),
the plan for an invasion of Poland on 25 August 1939. In a
speech before the Reichstag on 28 April he renounced both
the Anglo German Naval Agreement and the German Polish nonaggression
Pact. In August Adolf Hitler told his generals that his original
plan for 1939 was to establish a satisfactory relationship
with Poland in order to fight against the West. As Poland
refused to become a German satellite, Adolf Hitler declared
his only option was the invasion of Poland. Historians such
as William Carr, Gerhard Weinberg, and Ian Kershaw have argued
that one reason for Adolf Hitler's rush to war was his morbid
and obsessive fear of an early death, and hence his feeling
that he didn't have long to carry through his work.
Adolf Hitler was afraid that a military attack against Poland
could lead to a premature war with Britain. However, Adolf
Hitler's foreign minister and former Ambassador to London
Joachim
von Ribbentrop reassured him that neither Britain nor
France would honour their commitments to Poland, and that
a German Polish war would only be a restricted regional war.
Joachim
von Ribbentrop claimed that in December 1938 the French
foreign minister, Georges Bonnet, had stated that France believed
Eastern Europe as Germany's exclusive sphere of influence,
Joachim
von Ribbentrop showed Adolf Hitler diplomatic cables that
affirmed his analysis. The German Ambassador in London, Herbert
von Dirksen, affirmed
Joachim
von Ribbentrop's analysis with a communiqué in
August 1939, reporting that Chamberlain knew the social organisation
of Britain, even the conception of the British Empire, wouldn't
survive the bedlam of even a victorious war, and then would
back down. Consequently, on 21 August 1939 Adolf Hitler ordered
a military mobilisation against Poland.
Adolf Hitler's plans for a military campaign in Poland in
late August or early September called for implicit Soviet
support. The nonaggression pact (the Molotov-
Joachim
von Ribbentrop Pact) between Germany and the Soviet Union,
led by Joseph Stalin, included secret protocols with an arrangement
to partition Poland between the two countries. In response
to the Molotov-
Joachim
von Ribbentrop Pact and contrary to the prediction of
Joachim
von Ribbentrop that the newly formed pact would sever
Anglo Polish ties Britain and Poland signed the Anglo Polish
alliance on 25 August 1939. This, along with news from Italy
that Mussolini wouldn't honour the Pact of Steel, caused Adolf
Hitler to delay the attack on Poland from 25 August to 1 September.
In the days before the beginning of the war, Adolf Hitler
attempted to steer the British into neutrality by offering
a nonaggression guarantee to the British Empire on 25 August
and by having
Joachim
von Ribbentrop present a last-minute peace plan with an
impossibly short time limit in an effort to then blame the
war on British and Polish inaction.
As a pretext for a military aggression against Poland, Adolf
Hitler claimed the Free City of Danzig and the right to extraterritorial
roads across the Polish Corridor, which Germany had surrendered
under the Versailles treaty. In spite of his concerns over
a possible British intervention, Adolf Hitler was in the final
analysis not deterred from his aim of invading Poland, and
on 1 September 1939 Germany invaded western Poland. In response,
Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September.
This astonished Adolf Hitler, motivating him to turn to
Joachim
von Ribbentrop and angrily ask Now what? France and Britain
did not act on their declarations straightaway, and on 17
September, Russian forces invaded eastern Poland.
Poland never will rise again in the form of the Versailles
treaty. That is guaranteed not only by Germany, but also Soviet
Russia. Adolf Hitler, public speech in Danzig at the end of
September 1939.
The fall of Poland was followed by what contemporary journalists
nicknamed the Phoney War or Sitzkrieg (sitting war). Adolf
Hitler instructed the two recently appointed Gauleiters of
north-western Poland,
Albert
Forster of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Arthur Greiser
of Reichsgau Wartheland, to Germanise the area, and assured
them on that point there would be no questions asked about
how this was achieved. To
Heinrich
Himmler's chagrin,
Albert
Forster had local Poles sign forms submitting that they
had German blood, and required no further documentation. But
then, Greiser carried out a savage ethnic cleansing campaign
on the Polish population in his purview. Greiser complained
to Adolf Hitler that
Albert
Forster was allowing 1000s of Poles to be accepted as
racial Germans and therefore, in Greiser's view, jeopardising
German racial purity. Adolf Hitler told
Heinrich
Himmler and Greiser to take up their troubles with
Albert
Forster, and not to involve him. Adolf Hitler's handling
of the
Albert
Forster Greiser dispute has been advanced as an example
of Kershaw's theory of working towards the Führer, Adolf
Hitler issued unclear instructions and anticipated his subordinates
to work out policies on their own.
A different dispute broke out between different factions.
One side, represented by
Heinrich
Himmler and Greiser, championed carrying out ethnic cleansing
in Poland, and another side, represented by
Hermann
Göring and
Hans
Frank, Governor General of the General Government territory
of occupied Poland, called for turning Poland into the granary
of the Reich. At a conference held at
Hermann
Göring's Karinhall estate on 12 February 1940, the
dispute was initially settled in favour of the
Hermann
Göring-
Hans
Frank view of economical exploitation, which ended the
economically disruptive mass expulsions. On 15 May 1940, nevertheless,
Heinrich
Himmler presented Adolf Hitler with a memo titled Some
Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East,
which called for expulsion of the entire Jewish population
of Europe into Africa and reducing the remainder of the Polish
population to a leaderless class of labourers. Adolf Hitler
called
Heinrich
Himmler's memo good and correct, he scuttled the so-called
Karinhall agreement and implemented the
Heinrich
Himmler's-Greiser viewpoint as German policy for the Polish
population.
Adolf Hitler began building up armed forces on Germany's western
border, and in April 1940, German forces invaded Denmark and
Norway. On April 9 Adolf Hitler announced the birth of the
Greater Germanic Reich to his comrades, this was his vision
of a united empire of the Germanic nations of Europe, where
the Dutch, Flemish, Scandinavians, and other peoples would
join into a single, racially pure polity under German leadership.
In May 1940, Adolf Hitler's military forces attacked France,
and conquered Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. These
victories prompted Mussolini to have Italy join forces with
Adolf Hitler on 10 June 1940. France surrendered on 22 June
1940.
Great Britain, whose forces were forced to leave France by
sea from Dunkirk, carried on to fight alongside other British
dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic. Adolf Hitler made
peace advances to the British, now led by Sir Winston Leonard
Spenser Churchill, and when these were declined he ordered
bombing raids on the Great Britain. Adolf Hitler's prelude
to a planned invasion of the Great Britain was a series of
aerial attacks in the Battle of Britain on RAF airbases and
radio detection and ranging stations in southeast England.
Nevertheless, the German Luftwaffe failed to defeat the RAF.
On 27 September 1940 the Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin
by Saburo Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Adolf Hitler, and Italian
foreign minister Ciano. The agreement was later expanded to
include Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. They were collectively
known as the Axis powers. The aim of the pact was to deter
the United States government from supporting the British.
By the end of October 1940, air superiority for the invasion
of Britain Operation Sea Lion couldn't be achieved, and Adolf
Hitler ordered nightly air attacks of British cities, including
the capital of the Great Britain, Plymouth, and Coventry.
In the Spring of 1941, Adolf Hitler was distracted from his
plans for the East by military actions in North Africa, the
Balkans, and the Middle East. In February, German forces arrived
in Libya to strengthen the Italian presence. In April, Adolf
Hitler set in motion the invasion of Yugoslavia, promptly
followed by the invasion of Greece. In May, German forces
were sent to support Iraqi rebel forces fighting against the
British and to invade Crete. On 23 May, Adolf Hitler released
Führer Directive No. 30.
Path to defeat
On 22 June 1941, contravening the Adolf Hitler-Stalin nonaggression
pact of 1939, 3 million German troops attacked the Russia
in Operation Barbarossa. The invasion seized a huge area,
including the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine. However,
the German advance was stopped barely short of Moscow in December
1941 by the Russian Winter and fierce Soviet resistance.
Russian troop concentrations on Germany's eastern border in
the spring of 1941 may have prompted Adolf Hitler to engage
in a Flucht nach vorn (flight forward) to get in front of
an unavoidable conflict. Viktor Suvorov, Ernst Topitsch, Joachim
Hoffmann, Ernst Nolte, and David Irving have argued that the
official reason for Barbarossa given by the German armed forces
was the real reason a preventive war to avoid an impending
Russian attack scheduled for July 1941. This hypothesis, however,
has been faulted American historian Gerhard Weinberg at one
time compared the advocates of the preventive war hypothesis
to believers in fairytales
The Wehrmacht invasion of the USSR reached its peak on 2 December
1941, when the 258th Infantry Division advanced to within
fifteen miles (24 km) of Moscow, close enough to see the spires
of the Kremlin. Nevertheless, they were not prepared for the
brutal conditions of the Russian winter, and Russian forces
drove back the German forces over 320 kilometres (200 miles).
On 7 December 1941 Japan attacked Pearl harbour, Hawaii. Four
days later, Adolf Hitler's formal declaration of war against
the U.S. Engaged Germany in war against an alliance that included
the world's largest empire the British Empire, the world's
greatest industrial and financial power the America, and the
world's largest army the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
On 18 December 1941
Heinrich
Himmler met with Adolf Hitler, and in response to
Heinrich
Himmler's question What to do with the Jews of Soviet
Russia?, Adolf Hitler replied als Partisanen auszurotten exterminate
them as partisans. Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented
that the comment is probably as close as historians will ever
get to a conclusive order from Adolf Hitler for the racial
extermination carried out during the Holocaust.
In late 1942 German military forces were defeated in the second
battle of El Alamein, stopping Adolf Hitler's plans to seize
the Suez Canal and the Middle East. In February 1943 the Battle
of Stalingrad ended with the destruction of the German Sixth
Army. Then came the conclusive defeat at the Battle of Kursk.
Adolf Hitler's military judgement became progressively more
erratic, and Germany's military and economic position degenerated
along with Adolf Hitler's health. Kershaw and others believe
that Adolf Hitler may have suffered from Parkinson's syndrome.
Following the allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky)
in 1943, Benito Mussolini was deposed by Pietro Badoglio,
who surrendered to the Allies. Throughout 1943 and 1944, the
USSR steadily forced Adolf Hitler's armies into retreat along
the Eastern Front. On 6 June 1944 the Western Allied armies
landed in northern France in what was one of the biggest amphibious
operations in history, Operation Overlord. As a result of
these substantial setbacks for the German army, many of its
officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that Adolf
Hitler's misjudgement or self-denial would drag out the war
and result in the complete destruction of the country. Several
high profile assassination attempts against Adolf Hitler occurred
during this period.
Between 1939 and 1945 there were many plans to assassinate
Adolf Hitler, a few of which proceeded to significant degrees.
The most well known came from within Germany and was at least
partly driven by the increasing prospect of a German defeat
in the war. In July 1944, in the 20 July plot, part of Operation
Valkyrie, Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in one of
Adolf Hitler's military headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's
Lair) at Rastenburg. Adolf Hitler narrowly survived because
somebody had unwittingly pushed the briefcase that contained
the bomb behind a leg of the heavy conference table. Once
the bomb exploded, the table deflected much of the blast away
from Adolf Hitler. Later, Adolf Hitler ordered brutal reprisals
resulting in the execution of more than 4,900 people.
Defeat and death
By late 1944, the Russian Army had driven the German army
back into Western Europe, and the Western Allies were advancing
into Germany. After being informed of the failure of his Ardennes
Offensive, Adolf Hitler recognised that Germany was going
to lose the war. His hope, buoyed by the death of Franklin
D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945, was to negotiate peace with
United States and Great Britain. Pursuing his view that Germany's
military failures had lost its right to survive as a nation,
Adolf Hitler ordered the destruction of all German industrial
infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands. Implementation
of this scorched earth plan was entrusted to arms minister
Albert
Speer, who quietly disobeyed the order.
On 20 April, his 56th birthday, Adolf Hitler made his last
trip from the Führerbunker (Führer's shelter) to
the surface. In the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery,
he presented Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Adolf Hitler
Youth. By 21 April, Georgi Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front
had broken through the last defences of German General Gotthard
Heinrici's Heeresgruppe Weichsel during the Battle of the
Seelow Heights and advanced into the outskirts of Berlin.
In self-denial about the progressively dire situation, Adolf
Hitler placed his hopes on the units commanded by Waffen SS
General Felix Steiner, the Armeeabteilung Steiner (Army Detachment
Steiner). Adolf Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern
flank of the salient and the German Ninth Army was ordered
to attack northward in a pincer attack.
During a military conference on 22 April, Adolf Hitler asked
about Steiner's offensive. After a long silence, he was told
that the attack had never been launched and that the Soviets
had broken through into Berlin. This news prompted Adolf Hitler
to ask everyone except
Wilhelm
Keitel,
Alfred
Jodl,
Hans
Krebs and
Wilhelm
Burgdorf to leave the room. Adolf Hitler then launched
a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders,
climaxing in his proclamation for the first time that the
war was lost. Adolf Hitler declared that he would stay in
Berlin until the end and then shoot himself.
Joseph
Goebbels made a declaration on 23 April urging the citizens
of Berlin to bravely defend the city. That same day,
Hermann
Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden in Bavaria,
contending that since Adolf Hitler was cut off in Berlin,
he,
Hermann
Göring, should assume leadership of Germany.
Hermann
Göring set a time limit, after which he would consider
Adolf Hitler powerless. Adolf Hitler reacted angrily by having
Hermann
Göring arrested, and when writing his will on 29
April, he removed
Hermann
Göring from all his positions in the government.
The German capital (Berlin) became entirely cut off from the
rest of Germany. On 28 April, Adolf Hitler found out that
Heinrich
Himmler was trying to talk over surrender terms with the
Western Allies. He ordered
Heinrich
Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (
Heinrich
Himmler's SS representative at Adolf Hitler's HQ in Berlin)
shot.
After midnight on 29 April, Adolf Hitler wedded Eva Braun
in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker.
After a humble wedding breakfast with his new wife, he then
took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his
last will and testament. The event was witnessed and written
document signed by
Hans
Krebs,
Wilhelm
Burgdorf,
Joseph
Goebbels, and Martin Bormann. Later on that afternoon,
Adolf Hitler was advised of the assassination of Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini, which presumably added to his determination
to avoid capture.
On 30 April 1945, after concentrated street-to-street combat,
when Russian troops were within a block or two of the Reich
Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and Braun committed suicide, Braun
bit into a cyanide capsule and Adolf Hitler shot himself with
his 7.65 mm Walther PPK pistol. The dead bodies of Adolf Hitler
and Eva Braun were carried upstairs and through the bunker's
emergency exit to the bombed out garden behind the Reich Chancellery,
where they were placed in a bomb crater and soaked with petrol.
The bodies were set on fire and the Russian Army shelling
continued.
Berlin surrendered on 2 May, and there were contradictory
reports about what happened to Adolf Hitler's corpse. Records
in the Russian archives obtained after the fall of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics showed that the corpses of Adolf
Hitler, Eva Braun,
Joseph
Goebbels and Magda Goebbels, the six Goebbels children,
General
Hans
Krebs, and Adolf Hitler's dogs, were repeatedly buried
and exhumed. On 4 April 1970 a KGB team with detailed burial
charts secretly exhumed five wooden boxes which had been buried
at the SMERSH facility in Magdeburg. The remains from the
boxes were thoroughly burned and crushed, after which the
ashes were thrown into the Biederitz river, a tributary of
the nearby Elbe.
Legacy
Adolf Hitler's policies and orders resulted in the death of
about 40 million people, including about 27 million in the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The actions of Adolf
Hitler, and Adolf Hitler's ideology, national socialism, are
almost universally regarded as gravely immoral. Historians,
philosophers, and politicians have often applied the word
evil to describe Adolf Hitler's ideology and its outcomes.
In Germany and Austria, the denial of the Holocaust and the
display of national socialist symbols such as swastikas are
banned by law.
Following the Second World War, the toothbrush moustache fell
out of favour in the West because of its strong association
with Adolf Hitler, which earned it the nickname Adolf Hitler
moustache. The use of the name Adolf declined in post war
years.
Former Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat spoke of his admiration
of Adolf Hitler in 1953, when he was a young man, but it is
conceivable that Sadat's opinions were shaped mainly by his
anti British sentiments. Bal Thackeray, leader of the right
wing Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party in the Indian state
of the Maharashtra, announced in 1995 that he was an admirer
of Adolf Hitler. German historian Friedrich Meinecke said
that Adolf Hitler's life is among the great examples of the
singular and immeasurable power of personality in historical
life.
Religious views
Adolf Hitler's parents were Roman Catholics, but after leaving
home he never attended Mass or received the sacraments. He
favoured aspects of Protestantism that suited his own views,
and adopted some elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchical
organisation, liturgy, and phraseology in his politics. After
his move to Germany, Adolf Hitler did not leave his church.
Historian Richard Steigmann-Gall reasons that he can be classified
as Catholic, but that nominal church membership is a very
unsafe gauge of actual piety in this context.
Publically, Adolf Hitler often praised Christian heritage
and German Christian culture, and declared a belief in an
Aryan Jesus Christ a Jesus who fought against the Jews. He
talked of his version of Christianity as a central motivation
for his anti-Semitism, stating that whilst a Christian I have
no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty
to be a fighter for truth and justice. In private, Adolf Hitler
was more critical of traditional Christianity, considering
it a religion fit only for slaves, he admired the power of
Rome but maintained a severe hostility towards its teaching.
Historian John S. Conway states that Adolf Hitler held a fundamental
antagonism towards the Christian churches.
In political relations with the church, Adolf Hitler assumed
a strategy that suited his immediate political purposes. According
to a US Office of Strategic Services report, Adolf Hitler
had a general plan, even before his accession, to destroy
the influence of Christian churches within the Reich. The
report titled The Nazi Master Plan stated that the destruction
of the church was a goal of the movement right from the start,
but that it was inexpedient to express this extreme position
publicly. His intention, according to Bullock, was to wait
until the war was over to destroy the influence of Christianity.
Adolf Hitler admired the Muslim military tradition, but considered
Arabs as racially inferior. He believed that the racially
superior Germans, in conjunction with Islam, could have conquered
much of the world during the Middle Ages. During a meeting
with a Japanese professor in 1931, Adolf Hitler praised the
Shinto religion and Japanese culture.
Attitude towards occultism
A few researchers suggest that Adolf Hitler did not follow
esoteric ideas, occultism, or Ariosophy, and Adolf Hitler
ridicules such beliefs in Mein Kampf. Others have indicated
that Adolf Hitler's views, especially on race, were strongly
influenced by works that promulgated a mystical superiority
of the Germans these works included the occult and anti-Semitic
magazine Ostara, whose publisher, Lanz von Liebenfels, claimed
that Adolf Hitler had visited him in 1909 and had praised
his work. Historians are divided on the question of the reliability
of von Liebenfels' claim. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke believes
his account reliable, and Brigitte Hamann leaves the question
open. Kershaw feels it is likely that Adolf Hitler read Ostara,
along with other racist pulp which was prominent on Vienna
newspaper stands, whilst he questions the degree to which
Adolf Hitler was influenced by it.
Health
Investigators have suggested that Adolf Hitler suffered from
irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat,
Parkinson's disease, syphilis, and tinnitus. Hypotheses about
Adolf Hitler's medical condition are difficult to prove, and
according them too much weight may have the effect of assigning
many of the events and consequences of the Third Reich to
the possibly impaired physical health of one individual. Kershaw
feels that it is better to take a broader view of German history
by examining what social forces led to the Third Reich and
its policies rather than to pursue narrow explanations for
the Holocaust and the Second World War based on only one person.
Adolf Hitler adopted a vegetarian diet. At social events he
sometimes gave graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals
in an effort to make his dinner guests shun meat. A fear of
cancer from which his mother died is the most widely cited
reason for Adolf Hitler's dietary habits. An antivivisectionist,
Adolf Hitler may have followed his selective diet out of a
profound concern for animals. Martin Bormann had a greenhouse
constructed near the Berghof (near Berchtesgaden) to assure
a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for Adolf Hitler
throughout the war. Adolf Hitler despised alcohol and was
a non-smoker. He encouraged aggressive anti-smoking campaigns
throughout Germany. Adolf Hitler began using amphetamine now
and again after 1937 and became addicted to the drug in the
fall of 1942.
Albert
Speer associated this use of amphetamines to Adolf Hitler's
progressively inflexible decision making for example, never
to allow military retreats.
Prescribed ninety different medications during the war years,
Adolf Hitler took many pills each day for chronic stomach
problems and other ailments. He suffered burst eardrums as
a result of the 20 July plot bomb blast in 1944, and 200 wood
splinters had to be removed from his legs. Newsreel footage
of Adolf Hitler shows tremors of his hand and a shuffling
walk, which began before the war and worsened towards the
end of his life. Adolf Hitler's personal doctor, Theodor Morell,
treated Adolf Hitler with a drug that was commonly prescribed
in 1945 for Parkinson's disease. Ernst-Günther Schenck
and several other doctors who met Adolf Hitler in the last
weeks of his life each formed a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.
Family
To the public, Adolf Hitler promoted his own image as that
of a man without a domestic life, committed entirely to his
political mission and the nation. He met his mistress, Eva
Braun, in 1929, and wedded her in April 1945. In September
1931 his niece, Geli Raubal, committed suicide with Adolf
Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment. Geli was believed to
be in a romantic relationship with him, and her death was
a origin of deep, lasting pain. Paula Adolf Hitler, the last
living member of the immediate family, died in 1960.
Adolf Hitler in media
Adolf Hitler was a notable public speaker, and perfected his
skills by giving speeches to military audiences in 1919 and
1920. He became adept at using populist themes aimed to his
audience, including the use of scapegoats who could be blamed
for the economic hardships of his listeners. He had charisma,
hypnotic blue eyes, and an exceptionally good memory, traits
he used to his advantage while engaged in public speaking.
Alfons Heck, a former member of the Adolf Hitler Youth, describes
the response to a speech by Adolf Hitler: We erupted into
a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria.
For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with
tears flowing down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!
From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul.
Whilst his oratory skills and personal traits were generally
received well by large crowds and at official events, some
who had met Adolf Hitler in private noted that his appearance
and behaviour failed to make a lasting impression on them.
Adolf Hitler used documentaries as a propaganda tool. He was
involved and appeared in a series of films by the pioneering
filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl via Universum Film AG (UFA).
Der Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith, 1933)
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1934), co-produced
by Adolf Hitler
Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht (Day of Freedom: Our Armed
Forces, 1935)
Olympia (1938)
For a complete list of
wikipedia
