Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born April 20, 1889 in Branau am Inn, Austria. He died April 30, 1945. His dictatorial rule of Germany led to the deaths of millions before and during World War II upon his direct orders (see the Holocaust). This has placed him among history's most hated villains.

"Adolf Hitler or the incarnation of absolute evil; this is how future generations will remember the all-powerful Fuehrer of the criminal Third Reich. Compared with him, his peers Mussolini and Franco were novices. Under his hypnotic gaze, humanity crossed a threshold from which one could see the abyss. "Before Hitler, we thought we had sounded the depths of human nature," argues Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler." "He showed how much lower we could go, and that's what was so horrifying. It gets us wondering not just at the depths he showed us but whether there is worse to come. The power of Hitler was to confound the modernist notion that judgments about good and evil were little more than matters of taste, reflections of social class and power and status. Although some modern scholars drive past the notion of evil and instead explain Hitler's conduct as a reflection of his childhood and self-esteem issues, for most survivors of the 20th century he is confirmation of our instinctive sense that evil does exist. It moves among us; it leads us astray and deploys powerful, subtle weapons against even the sturdiest souls." [1]

Birth and pre political life

Hitler was born in 1889 in Austria. His mother was his father's niece, and the incestuous relationship may have influenced the development of Hitler's own psychopathic nature. Later on Hitler became involved with his own niece, and this appears to have been a pattern in Hitler's family extending back for several generations and explains Hitler's attitudes about intermarriage.

After leaving home he worked as an artisan painter. Hitler did not do particularly well in school, leaving formal education in 1905. Unable to settle to a regular job, he drifted. He wished to become an artist but was rejected from the Academy in Vienna. He immigrated to Germany and served as an enlisted soldier in the Imperial Bavarian Army in World War I, and gained the rank of corporal. He won several awards for bravery, including the Iron Cross First Class.

The Beginning Of His Political Life

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After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain. There was much discontent among demobilized veterans because of the lack of employment. The German military had felt it had not been defeated; indeed, the German Army stood on foreign soil when the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918 and not a square inch of German soil had been occupied. The Army felt they had done their job, and the nation had been "stabbed in the back" by a gang of traitors who sought to lay hands on the Fatherland. The "myth" that Germany had been defeated was the "big lie" Hitler spoke of, as repeating it often enough would cause people to believe it.

Many returning Army units remained intact, despite being no longer directly under command of the German Army because of limitations set upon it by the Treaty of Versailles. The situation was highly politicized, and it appears Hitler was originally sent to spy on a small splinter group called the "National Socialist German Workers’ Party" (Nazi) were he found only a shell of an organization, but a willing audience to hear him talk. By 1921 he had became leader of the group. With the terrible economic conditions and rapid inflation, support for Hitler’s party grew. By 1923, the Nazi’s had 56,000 members and many more supporters.

Beer Hall Putsch

Germany in 1923 was marked by social and political unrest caused by hyperinflation. In this time Hitler was able convince Erich Ludendorff, an accomplished general and leader of the German forces in the first World War, to join him in a coup d'etat (Putsch in German). When Hitler learned that the nationalist Prime Minister of Bavaria was giving a speech to 3000 officials in one of Munich's biggest beer halls, he ordered his paramilitaries to surround the building. Hitler went into building and took the prime minister hostage, in an attempt to convince him to join Hitler's coup against Berlin, and to become member in his new administration. The Bavarian prime minister agreed under pressure, but informed the nation via radio later that night, that he did not support Hitler. The prime minister also informed the federal government in Berlin, and the putsch was at this point poised to fail.

The next morning, 9 November 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching with approximately 2000 partly armed supporters through Munich in a show of strength, to regain the momentum. They were stopped by the Bavarian army and police forces. In the ensuing fight at least 14 Nazi supporters and three policemen, were killed, and hundreds wounded. Ludendorff handed himself over to the authorities, while Hitler fled soon after the fighting began. Hitler was arrested a few days later at a friend's house, were had been in hiding since the failed coup. Ludendorff was acquitted of all charges, while Hitler was sentenced to 5 years in prison. In Landsberg prison Hitler wrote his book Mein Kampf. He was released early, in 1924, after one year of prison. The Bavarian prime minister, who foiled the plan, was killed in 1934 in the "Night of the Long Knives".

Path to Power

In the early 1930 Germany was in a permanent political and constitutional crisis. This was caused by rising unemployment during the great depression, combined with frustration about the perceived injustice imposed on Germany by the Versailles treaty, street violence between various extreme groups, and an inability of centrist democratic parties to cooperate. This resulted in a polarization of extremes, communists on one side and national socialists on the other. The national socialist were also simply known as Hitler movement.

In the first election of 1932 communists and national socialist together won the majority of seats in the Reichstag. This means that the anti-democratic forces outnumbered the democratic forces. In a second election that year, the national socialists lost ground, but the democratic forces were still unable to form a functioning government. After a series of minority cabinets former Chancellor van Papen convinced President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler to become Chancellor in a coalition government with the national conservative party. Van Papen expected the nation would recognize Hitler to be a fraud within a few months in government. The national socialist celebrated the Machtergreifung (seizure of power in German) on January 30, 1933, with massive marches through Berlin. Two days later new elections for parliament were announced for March.[2]

Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek, writing in April 1945, observed, "By the time Hitler came to power, liberalism was dead in Germany. And it was socialism that had killed it.

Consolidation of Power

In the lead up to the 1933 election oppression and harassment of political opponents increased. On February 27, 1933, six day before the Reichstag election, the Dutch National and communist Marinus van der Lubbe was caught setting the Reichstag on fire. While the exact events surrounding this event are still contended, it was blamed on a Comintern conspiracy. Georgi Dimitrov, who later became General Secretary of the Comintern, was one of those arrested in the plot. President Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire decree the next day, which increased Hitlers powers and gave him the opportunity to arrest political opponents, among them elected members of parliament.[3] [4]

In the election the national socialist failed to win a majority, but the newly formed Reichstag voted in favor of an Enabling Act with a majority of 69% (67% being the necessary quota), giving the national socialist government the power to enact new laws without interference from parliament or constitution. Only the members of the Social Democrats (SPD) and Communists (KPD) voted against the act. Hitler and the NSDAP had successfully bullied the members of the Bayerische Volkspartei and the Zentrum into supporting the act. In the summer of 1933 the Nazi government declared first the communist and social democratic party illegal, briefly afterwards all other parties. At the end of the year the Reichstag cast officially into law that Germany was a one-party-state.

After all political opponents had been neutralised and in order to gain support from the German military, Hitler turned his attention to a key group which had catapulted the Nazi's into power--the stormtroopers (SA) under Ernst Roehm. The German military viewed an armed and trained paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party as a challenge to their power. It was a well known within the Nazi establishment that Roehm was gay, and it was now used against him to discredit him. Heinrich Himmler of the SS, Hitler's personal body guards at the time, was tasked with reigning the SA in. In the so-called Night of Long Knives the entire top of the SA was executed. This marked the eclipse of the SA as within the Nazi Party, and the rise of the SS as the dominant force. Although hesitant at first, Hitler agreed to have Ernst Roehm executed, a friend and associate since their time in Landsberg prison.[5] [6] Hitler also used this event to settle his account with other opponents, such as Georg Strasser, who stood for a more socialist and less racist national socialism, and the former Bavarian prime minister who foiled the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Both men were killed in the Night of Long Knives.

After President Hindenburgs death in 1934, Hitler received also all presidential powers and was declared Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). This was approved in August 1934 by 84% of the votes in a nationwide plebiscite.

Holocaust

The Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe was implemented by a government of a modern Western state to exterminate people of Jewish ancestry throughout Germany and all its occupied territories. Approximately six million people of all ages--men, women and children, were systematically murdered under a policy directed by Adolf Hitler. Other groups of "undesirables" and "asocials" were also targeted and killed.[7]

The prosecution of Jews became apparent in the The Night of Broken Glass on November 9, 1938. During this pogrom 400 people were killed, and most Jewish temples and cemeteries in Germany destroyed, as were many shops and houses of Jewish citizens. In the following days 30.000 Jewish citizens were imprisoned in concentration camps. This event revealed the true nature of Hitler's regime to the world and also marked the beginning of deadly radicalization of Nazi policy concerning the Jews. For some months so-called moderate anti-Semites within the Nazi hierarchy had been losing ground to those favoring extreme measures such as the immediate removal of Jews from Germany. A few weeks before the Night of Broken Glass, a 17 year-old Jewish boy, outraged by his family's deportation from Germany, shot a Nazi official in Paris. The death of this official on 9 November was used to orchestrate the pogrom as as a show of public outrage, and to give way to the radical anti-Semites within Nazi ranks.

1944 Assassination Attempt

On July 20, 1944, officers of the German Wehrmacht succeeded in planting a bomb in Hitler's secret headquarters in East Prussia which exploded, killing three and injuring Hitler.

In the aftermath and up until the final days of the War approximately 5,000 people, mostly German officers, were executed for treason, disloyalty, or suspected of not offering fanatical resistance to fight to the end.

Marriage

He married Eva Braun, on 29 April 1945 in Berlin.

Death

Hitler committed suicide in the Führerbunker next to the Chancellery in Berlin on April 30, 1945, after the Allied forces had invaded Germany, and as the Red Army was fighting its way into the heart of Berlin. [8] He appointed Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz to succeed him as President in his last will, to continue the war against the Red Army. A few days later, Dönitz instructed the military to sign an unconditional surrender, and the war ended officially on May 8, 1945, the date that became known as V-E Day.

Sources

• Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler, His Life and Legend, Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.