Adolf Hitler 2

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Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈaːdɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] (listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party,^[a] becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934.^[b]

During his dictatorship, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust, the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.

Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna later in the first decade of the 1900s and moved to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I. In 1919, he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and was appointed leader of the Nazi Party in 1921. In 1923, he attempted to seize governmental power in a failed coup in Munich and was imprisoned with a sentence of five years.

In jail, he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"). After his early release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. He frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as part of a Jewish conspiracy.

By November 1932, the Nazi Party held the most seats in the German Reichstag but did not have a majority. As a result, no party was able to form a majority parliamentary coalition in support of a candidate for chancellor. The former chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservative leaders persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933.

Shortly after, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933 which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. On 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died and Hitler replaced him as the head of state and government.

Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the abrogation of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War I, and the annexation of territories inhabited by millions of ethnic Germans, which initially gave him significant popular support.

Hitler sought Lebensraum (lit.'living space') for the German people in Eastern Europe, and his aggressive foreign policy is considered the primary cause of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and, on 1 September 1939, invaded Poland, resulting in Britain and France declaring war on Germany. In June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. In December 1941, he declared war on the United States. By the end of 1941, German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed after 1941, and in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German army. On 29 April 1945, he married his longtime partner, Eva Braun, in the Führerbunker in Berlin. Less than two days later, the couple committed suicide to avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army. Their corpses were burned as Hitler had commanded.

The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil".^[3] Under Hitler's leadership and racist ideology, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims, whom he and his followers deemed Untermenschen (subhumans) or socially undesirable. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 28.7 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre. The number of civilians killed during World War II was unprecedented in warfare, and the casualties constitute the deadliest conflict in history.

Ancestry

Main article: Hitler family

Hitler's father, Alois Hitler (1837–1903), was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber.^[4] The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, and Alois initially bore his mother's surname, 'Schicklgruber'. In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois's mother. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler.^[5] In 1876, Alois was made legitimate and his baptismal record annotated by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Alois's father (recorded as "Georg Hitler").^[6][7] Alois then assumed the surname "Hitler",^[7] also spelled 'Hiedler', 'Hüttler', or 'Huettler'. The name is probably based on the German word Hütte (lit., "hut"), and likely has the meaning "one who lives in a hut".^[8]

Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Alois's mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the family's 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois.^[9] No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenberger's existence,^[10] and Jewish residency in Styria had been illegal for nearly 400 years and would not become legal again until decades after Alois's birth,^[10][11] so historians dismiss the claim that Alois's father was Jewish.^[12][13]

Early years

Childhood and education

Adolf Hitler as an infant (c. 1889–90)

Hitler's father, Alois, c. 1900

Hitler's mother, Klara, 1870s

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (in present-day Austria), close to the border with the German Empire.^[14][15] He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pölzl. Three of Hitler's siblings—Gustav, Ida, and Otto—died in infancy.^[16] Also living in the household were Alois's children from his second marriage: Alois Jr. (born 1882) and Angela (born 1883).^[17]

When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany.^[18] There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, rather than Austrian German, which marked his speech throughout his life.^[19][20][21] The family returned to Austria and settled in Leonding in 1894, and in June 1895 Alois retired to Hafeld, near Lambach, where he farmed and kept bees. Hitler attended Volksschule (a state-funded primary school) in nearby Fischlham.^[22][23]

The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father-son conflicts caused by Hitler's refusal to conform to the strict discipline of his school.^[24] His father beat him, although his mother tried to protect him.^[25] Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and in 1897 the family moved to Lambach. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even considered becoming a priest.^[26] In 1898 the family returned permanently to Leonding. Hitler was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother Edmund, who died in 1900 from measles. Hitler changed from a confident, outgoing, conscientious student to a morose, detached boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.^[27]

Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps.^[28] Hitler later dramatised an episode from this period when his father took him to visit a customs office, depicting it as an event that gave rise to an unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed.^[29][30][31] Ignoring his son's desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist, Alois sent Hitler to the Realschule in Linz in September 1900.^[c][32] Hitler rebelled against this decision, and in Mein Kampf states that he intentionally did poorly in school, hoping that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to my dream".^[33]

Like many Austrian Germans, Hitler began to develop German nationalist ideas from a young age.^[34] He expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg monarchy and its rule over an ethnically variegated empire.^[35][36] Hitler and his friends used the greeting "Heil", and sang the "Deutschlandlied" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem.^[37]

After Alois's sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's performance at school deteriorated and his mother allowed him to leave.^[38] He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in September 1904, where his behaviour and performance improved.^[39] In 1905, after passing a repeat of the final exam, Hitler left the school without any ambitions for further education or clear plans for a career.^[40]

Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich

World War I

Main article: Military career of Adolf Hitler

](

Hitler (far right, seated) with his army comrades of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (c. 1914–18)

In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Hitler was living in Munich and voluntarily enlisted in the Bavarian Army.^[65] According to a 1924 report by the Bavarian authorities, allowing Hitler to serve was almost certainly an administrative error, since as an Austrian citizen, he should have been returned to Austria.^[65] Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (1st Company of the List Regiment),^[66][65] he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium,^[67] spending nearly half his time at the regimental headquarters in Fournes-en-Weppes, well behind the front lines.^[68][69] In 1914, he was present at the First Battle of Ypres^[70] and in that year was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class.^[70]

During his service at headquarters, Hitler pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout.^[71] ^[70] Hitler spent almost two months recovering in hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917.^[72] He was present at the Battle of Arras of 1917 and the Battle of Passchendaele.^[70]

He received the Black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918^[73] and in August 1918, on a recommendation by Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, his Jewish superior, Hitler received the Iron Cross, First Class, a decoration rarely awarded to one of Hitler's Gefreiter rank.^[74][75] On 15 October 1918, he was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk.^[76] While there, Hitler learned of Germany's defeat, and – by his own account – upon receiving this news, suffered a second bout of blindness.^[77]

Hitler described the war as "the greatest of all experiences", and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery.^[78] His wartime experience reinforced his German patriotism, and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918.^[79] His bitterness over the collapse of the war effort began to shape his ideology.^[80] Like other German nationalists, he believed the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth), which claimed that the German army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" on the home front by civilian leaders, Jews, Marxists, and those who signed the armistice that ended the fighting—later dubbed the "November criminals".^[81]

The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany had to relinquish several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland. The treaty imposed economic sanctions and levied heavy reparations on the country. Many Germans saw the treaty as an unjust humiliation. They especially objected to Article 231, which they interpreted as declaring Germany responsible for the war.^[82] The Versailles Treaty and the economic, social, and political conditions in Germany after the war were later exploited by Hitler for political gain.^[83]

Entry into politics

Main article: Political views of Adolf Hitler

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World War II

Hitler and the Japanese foreign minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, at a meeting in Berlin in March 1941. In the background is Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Early diplomatic successes

Alliance with Japan

Austria and Czechoslovakia

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_137-004055,_Eger,_Besuch_Adolf_Hitlers.jpg)October 1938: Hitler is driven through the crowd in Cheb (German: Eger), in the Sudetenland.

On 12 March 1938, Hitler announced the unification of Austria with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss.^[219][220] Hitler then turned his attention to the ethnic German population of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.^[221] On 28–29 March 1938, Hitler held a series of secret meetings in Berlin with Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten German Party, the largest of the ethnic German parties of the Sudetenland. The men agreed that Henlein would demand increased autonomy for Sudeten Germans from the Czechoslovakian government, thus providing a pretext for German military action against Czechoslovakia. In April 1938 Henlein told the foreign minister of Hungary that "whatever the Czech government might offer, he would always raise still higher demands ... he wanted to sabotage an understanding by any means because this was the only method to blow up Czechoslovakia quickly".^[222] In private, Hitler considered the Sudeten issue unimportant; his real intention was a war of conquest against Czechoslovakia.^[223]

In April, Hitler ordered the OKW to prepare for Fall Grün (Case Green), the code name for an invasion of Czechoslovakia.^[224] As a result of intense French and British diplomatic pressure, on 5 September Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš unveiled the "Fourth Plan" for constitutional reorganisation of his country, which agreed to most of Henlein's demands for Sudeten autonomy.^[225] Henlein's party responded to Beneš' offer by instigating a series of violent clashes with the Czechoslovakian police that led to the declaration of martial law in certain Sudeten districts.^[226][227]

Germany was dependent on imported oil; a confrontation with Britain over the Czechoslovakian dispute could curtail Germany's oil supplies. This forced Hitler to call off Fall Grün, originally planned for 1 October 1938.^[228] On 29 September Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, and Mussolini attended a one-day conference in Munich that led to the Munich Agreement, which handed over the Sudetenland districts to Germany.^[229][230]

Chamberlain was satisfied with the Munich conference, calling the outcome "peace for our time", while Hitler was angered about the missed opportunity for war in 1938;^[231][232] he expressed his disappointment in a speech on 9 October in Saarbrücken.^[233] In Hitler's view, the British-brokered peace, although favourable to the ostensible German demands, was a diplomatic defeat which spurred his intent of limiting British power to pave the way for the eastern expansion of Germany.^[234][235] As a result of the summit, Hitler was selected Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.^[236]

In late 1938 and early 1939, the continuing economic crisis caused by rearmament forced Hitler to make major defence cuts.^[237] 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.^[237]

On 14 March 1939, under threat from Hungary, Slovakia declared independence and received protection from Germany.^[238] The next day, in violation of the Munich Agreement and possibly as a result of the deepening economic crisis requiring additional assets,^[239] Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to invade the Czech rump state, and from Prague Castle he proclaimed the territory a German protectorate.^[240]

Start of World War II

Path to defeat

On 22 June 1941, contravening the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, over three million Axis troops attacked the Soviet Union.^[278] This offensive (codenamed Operation Barbarossa) was intended to destroy the Soviet Union and seize its natural resources for subsequent aggression against the Western powers.^[279][280] The action was also part of the overall plan to obtain more living space for German people; and Hitler thought a successful invasion would force Britain to negotiate a surrender.^[281] The invasion conquered a huge area, including the Baltic republics, Belarus, and West Ukraine. By early August, Axis troops had advanced 500 km (310 mi) and won the Battle of Smolensk. Hitler ordered Army Group Centre to temporarily halt its advance to Moscow and divert its Panzer groups to aid in the encirclement of Leningrad and Kiev.^[282] His generals disagreed with this change, having advanced within 400 km (250 mi) of Moscow, and his decision caused a crisis among the military leadership.^[283][284] The pause provided the Red Army with an opportunity to mobilise fresh reserves; historian Russel Stolfi considers it to be one of the major factors that caused the failure of the Moscow offensive, which was resumed in October 1941 and ended disastrously in December.^[282] During this crisis, Hitler appointed himself as head of the Oberkommando des Heeres.^[285]

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1987-0703-507,_Berlin,_Reichstagssitzung,_Rede_Adolf_Hitler.jpg)Hitler announcing the declaration of war against the United States to the Reichstag on 11 December 1941

On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the American fleet based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four days later, Hitler declared war against the United States.^[286] On 18 December 1941, Himmler asked Hitler, "What to do with the Jews of Russia?", to which Hitler replied, "als Partisanen auszurotten" ("exterminate them as partisans").^[287] Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust.^[287]

In late 1942, German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein,^[288] thwarting Hitler's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. Overconfident in his own military expertise following the earlier victories in 1940, Hitler became distrustful of his Army High Command and began to interfere in military and tactical planning, with damaging consequences.^[289] In December 1942 and January 1943, Hitler's repeated refusal to allow their withdrawal at the Battle of Stalingrad led to the almost total destruction of the 6th Army. Over 200,000 Axis soldiers were killed and 235,000 were taken prisoner.^[290] Thereafter came a decisive strategic defeat at the Battle of Kursk.^[291] Hitler's military judgement became increasingly erratic, and Germany's military and economic position deteriorated, as did Hitler's health.^[292]

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1972-025-12,_Zerst%C3%B6rte_Lagerbaracke_nach_dem_20._Juli_1944.jpg)The destroyed map room at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's eastern command post, after the 20 July plot

Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Mussolini was removed from power by King Victor Emmanuel III after a vote of no confidence of the Grand Council of Fascism. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, placed in charge of the government, soon surrendered to the Allies.^[293] Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler's armies into retreat along the Eastern Front. On 6 June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord.^[294] Many German officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that continuing under Hitler's leadership would result in the complete destruction of the country.^[295]

Between 1939 and 1945, there were many plans to assassinate Hitler, some of which proceeded to significant degrees.^[296] The most well known, the 20 July plot of 1944, came from within Germany and was at least partly driven by the increasing prospect of a German defeat in the war.^[297] Part of Operation Valkyrie, the plot involved Claus von Stauffenberg planting a bomb in one of Hitler's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg. Hitler narrowly survived because staff officer Heinz Brandt moved the briefcase containing the bomb behind a leg of the heavy conference table, which deflected much of the blast. Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals resulting in the execution of more than 4,900 people.^[298]

According to British academic Dan Plesch, Hitler was put on the United Nations War Crimes Commission's first list of war criminals in December 1944, after determining that Hitler could be held criminally responsible for the acts of the Nazis in occupied countries. By March 1945 at least seven indictments had been filed against him.^[299]

Defeat and death

Main article: Death of Adolf Hitler

Hitler in his last filmed appearance, honouring Hitler Youth members of the Volkssturm in the Reich Chancellery garden

])Front page of the US Armed Forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, 2 May 1945, announcing Hitler's death

By late 1944, both the Red Army and the Western Allies were advancing into Germany. Recognising the strength and determination of the Red Army, Hitler decided to use his remaining mobile reserves against the American and British armies, which he perceived as far weaker.^[300] On 16 December, he launched the Ardennes Offensive to incite disunity among the Western Allies and perhaps convince them to join his fight against the Soviets.^[301] After some temporary successes, the offensive failed.^[302]

With much of Germany in ruins in January 1945, Hitler spoke on the radio: "However grave as the crisis may be at this moment, it will, despite everything, be mastered by our unalterable will."^[303] Acting on his view that Germany's military failures meant it had forfeited its right to survive as a nation, Hitler ordered the destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands.^[304]

Minister for Armaments Albert Speer was entrusted with executing this scorched earth policy, but he secretly disobeyed the order.^[304][305] Hitler's hope to negotiate peace with the United States and Britain was encouraged by the death of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945, but contrary to his expectations, this caused no rift among the Allies.^[301][306]

On 20 April, his 56th birthday, Hitler made his last trip from the Führerbunker (Führer's shelter) to the surface. In the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery, he awarded Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth, who were now fighting the Red Army at the front near Berlin.^[307]

By 21 April, Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the defences of General Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights and advanced to the outskirts of Berlin.^[308] In denial about the dire situation, Hitler placed his hopes on the undermanned and under-equipped Armeeabteilung Steiner (Army Detachment Steiner), commanded by Felix Steiner. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the salient, while the German Ninth Army was ordered to attack northward in a pincer attack.^[309]

During a military conference on 22 April, Hitler asked about Steiner's offensive. He was told that the attack had not been launched and that the Soviets had entered Berlin. Hitler asked everyone except Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Hans Krebs, and Wilhelm Burgdorf to leave the room,^[310] then launched into a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders, culminating in his declaration—for the first time—that "everything was lost".^[311] He announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself.^[312]

By 23 April the Red Army had surrounded Berlin,^[313] and Goebbels made a proclamation urging its citizens to defend the city.^[310] That same day, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden, arguing that since Hitler was isolated in Berlin, Göring should assume leadership of Germany. Göring set a deadline, after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated.^[314] Hitler responded by having Göring arrested, and in his last will and testament of 29 April, he removed Göring from all government positions.^[315][316] On 28 April Hitler discovered that Himmler, who had left Berlin on 20 April, was trying to negotiate a surrender to the Western Allies.^[317][318] He ordered Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot.^[319]

After midnight on the night of 28–29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in the Führerbunker.^[320][e] Later that afternoon, Hitler was informed that Mussolini had been executed by the Italian resistance movement on the previous day; this presumably increased his determination to avoid capture.^[321]

On 30 April 1945, Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery when Hitler shot himself in the head and Braun bit into a cyanide capsule.^[322][323] Carrying out Hitler's previous command, their corpses were carried outside to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol, and set on fire as the Red Army shelling continued.^{[324][325][326]} Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels assumed Hitler's roles as head of state and chancellor respectively.^[327]

Berlin surrendered on 2 May. The remains of Joseph and Magda Goebbels, the six Goebbels children, General Hans Krebs, and Hitler's dogs were repeatedly buried and exhumed.^[328] Hitler and Braun's remains were alleged to have been moved as well, but this is most likely Soviet disinformation. There is no evidence that any identifiable remains of Hitler or Braun—with the exception of dental bridges—were ever found by the Soviets.^{[329][330][331]} While news of Hitler's death spread quickly, a death certificate was not issued until 1956, after a lengthy investigation to collect testimony from 42 witnesses. Hitler's demise was entered as an assumption of death based on this testimony.^[332]

The Holocaust

Main articles: The Holocaust and Final Solution

If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!^[333]

— Adolf Hitler, 30 January 1939 Reichstag speech

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Knowledge Web Content (see main node)

Name: Adolf Hitler

Nickname/Alias: Der Fuhrer

Achievements: Nazism

Born: April 20, 1889; Braunau am Inn, Austro-Hungary

Died: April 30, 1945; Berlin, Germany (Aged 56)

Field & Discipline: Politics; Dictator

Language: German

Father: Alois Schickelgruber Hitler (1837-1903)

Mother: Klara Poelzl (d. 1908)

Siblings: Five siblings, only one, Paula (d. 1960), survived infancy

Spouse: Eva Braun (married 1945; d. 1945)

Children: None

Education: Linz Realschule, 1897-1901; Steyr Boarding School, 1901-05

Major Work:

“Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle,” 1925)

Life & Times:

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 at Braunau am Inn, Austria, the son of a 52-year-old Habsburg customs official, Alois Schickelgruber Hitler, and his third wife, a young peasant girl named Klara Poelzl. Hitler attended a primary school in Braunau for five years, and then moved with his family to Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, on his father's retirement in 1897.He then spent four years at the Linz Realschule, followed by a period at a boarding school in Steyr. Hitler failed to succeed in his studies and left school in 1905 to become a painter. After two idle years in Linz, in October 1907 Hitler left his mother (who was incurably ill with cancer) and moved to Vienna, where he remained until 1913 leading a bohemian existence, making a precarious living selling paintings and drawings of Vienna and producing posters and advertisements for small traders.

During this Vienna period (1907-13), Hitler read a great deal and absorbed many of the anti-Semitic, anti-liberal and anti-democratic ideas then common in Austria, spread by, amongst others, the defrocked monk, Lanz von Liebenfels (whose theory of "Theozoology" divided humanity into two groups - Aryan supermen and animal subhumans), and the Austrian Pan-German leader, Georg von Schoenerer.From these and other sources, the young Hitler began to construct a vision of the world in which Jews (by race, rather than by religion) became the symbol and cause of all chaos, corruption, and destruction in culture, politics and the economy, and that the press, prostitution, syphilis, capitalism, Marxism, democracy and pacificism were all means exploited by 'the Jew' in his conspiracy to undermine the German nation and the purity of the creative Aryan race.

In May 1913, Hitler left Vienna for Munich, Germany in order to avoid military training in Austria. In August 1914 he enlisted in the Sixteenth Bavarian Infantry Regiment, serving as a dispatch runner on the Western front.Although he did not rise above the rank of Lance Corporal, he proved himself an able and courageous soldier, wounded twice and awarded the Iron Cross, both first and second class, for conspicuous bravery. He was badly gassed four weeks before the end of the war and, temporarily blinded, spent three months recuperating in a hospital in Pomerania During the war Hitler had found comradeship, discipline, and participation in conflict intensely satisfying, and in November 1918 learned with horror of Germany's defeat, and of the humiliation of the armistice arranged by the 'big three': [influenced by] Lloyd George* (UK) , [influenced by] Clemenceau* (France) and [influenced by] Woodrow Wilson* (US).

On leaving hospital, Hitler returned to Munich, where he worked for the army as a political agent, spying on extremist groups like the nationalist and racist German Workers' Party (DAP), which Hitler joined in September 1919.He quickly showed a marked talent for inflammatory speaking, political agitation and party organization. Hitler left the army in 1920, and became party propagandist, editing the party newspaper the 'Volkischer Beobachter' ('People’s Observer'), arranging frequent meetings, changing the name of the party to the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (the National Socialist German Workers' Party, NSDAP or Nazi Party), imposing himself as its Chairman by July 1921, and giving the new Party its symbol - the swastika - and its greeting, 'Heil!'.

The Nazi Party adopted the ideas Hitler had acquired in Vienna - violent racial nationalism, anti-Semitism and opposition to liberal democracy, combined with perverted versions of the philosophies of such German thinkers as [influenced by] Haeckel* and [influenced by] Nietzsche* - combined with a hatred of the post-war republican German government and 'socialistic' ideas of profit-sharing and nationalization.

By November 1921, mainly through Hitler's aggressive leadership, the party had 3,000 members. From these Hitler organized strong-arm squads to keep order at his meetings and to break up those of his Socialist and Communist opponents. Out of this grew the storm troopers (SA), organized in 1921 by Captain Ernst Rohm, and Hitler's black-shirt personal bodyguard force, the 'Schutzstaffel' (SS).At the same time, Hitler gathered around him several of Nazi leaders who later became infamous, including [collaborated with] Rudolf Hess* (who introduced him to [influenced by] Haushofer’s* expansionist theory of "Lebensraum").

By November 1923 Hitler was convinced that the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse, and together with [attempted coup with] Ludendorff* and local nationalist groups he tried to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich.In a Munich beer-hall, on the night of 8 November, he and Ludendorff proclaimed the "National Revolution", and the following day they marched through Munich at the head of 3,000 men, only to be met by police fire which left 16 dead (and [worked with] Goering* severely injured) and brought the attempted 'putsch' to an end.

Hitler was tried on 26 February 1924 and sentenced to five years imprisonment at Landberg fortress. However, he was released after only nine months, during which he dictated to Hess his autobiography and personal testament 'Mein Kampf' ('My Struggle'), published in 1925 and which by 1939 had sold five million copies, making Hitler a wealthy man.On his release, Hitler began to rebuild the Nazi Party, which had disintegrated in his absence, with the help of Goering, Hess and [worked with] Goebbels*, and in 1926 he grabbed power from a rival Nazi leader, Gregor Strasser.

From his experiences, Hitler had now learned that the road to power lay not through force alone, but through legal subversion of the Weimar Constitution, and he set out to build a mass movement empowered by a combination of parliamentary strength and extra-parliamentary street terror and intimidation.At first, development was slow. The mid-1920s saw a period of economic stability in Germany, and while in January 1925 the ban on the party was removed in Bavaria, allowing Hitler to speak in public, elsewhere prohibitions remained in force until 1927-28, and the Nazi Party won only 12 seats in the 1928 elections. However, the depression of 1929 enhanced the appeal for the Nazis, and Hitler found support among wealthy industrialists keen to finance a strong right-wing, anti-democratic government, which at last placed the Party on a secure financial footing.

With the backing of the press tycoon, Alfred Hugenberg, in 1929-30 Hitler got nationwide exposure and in the 1930 elections, after an intensive series of rallies, the Nazi vote jumped dramatically from 810,000 to 6,409,000 (18.3 per cent of the total vote), and the Party won 107 seats in the Reichstag, becoming the second largest party in the country.

During the years 1930-33 Hitler's impassioned promises attracted members of all social groups in Germany, including industrial magnates, high-ranking army officials, prominent intellectuals (including the philosopher [influenced] Heidegger* and, until 1934, the cultural historian [influenced] Spengler*) and the wealthy members of the 'Landbund', or League of Land, who opposed the redistribution of land proposed by the Weimar Republic.

In the 1932 elections, just after becoming a German citizen, Hitler opposed the aging [won election over] Hindenburg* in the presidential election, taking 36.8 percent of the vote on the second ballot and depriving von Hindenburg of the necessary absolute majority. Although Hindenburg won the majority in the run-off election held in July 1932, the Nazi Party emerged as the single largest party in Germany, obtaining nearly 14 million votes and 230 seats.

Then, in spite of a decline in the party's votes to 11 million in November 1932, Hitler was helped to power by a deal with former Chancellor [did deal with] Papen*, in which they secretly agreed to work together for a government in which Hitler would be chancellor and Papen's conservative supporters would hold important ministries. In January 1933 Papen persuaded a reluctant von Hindenburg to nominate Hitler as Reich Chancellor, a position he accepted on 30 January.

Once in power, Hitler moved with great speed to outmaneuvre his rivals and began consolidating the foundations of a totalitarian one-party state; the Reichstag fire in February 1933 (apparently the work of a Dutch Communist, Marinus van der Lubbe) provided the excuse for clamping down on and legalizing the regime's intimidating tactics.

In the last 'democractic' elections held in Germany in March 1933, the Nazi Party gained a majority, and two days later an enabling bill giving full powers to Hitler was passed in the Reichstag by the combined votes of Nazi, Nationalist, and Centre party deputies. By July 1933, Hitler had virtually removed the conservatives from any real participation in government, abolished the free trade unions, eliminated the Communists, Social Democrats and Jews from any role in political life, and had begun putting opponents in concentration camps.In June 1934, Hitler was confronted by serious opposition from within his own party, dissatisfaction and dissension centring around the SA and its leader, Captain Ernst Rohm, who were demanding more radical social reforms.

Hitler tried first to secure Rohm's support for his policies by persuasion and by giving him government office but failed to persuade him and, with pressure from Goering and [worked with] Himmler*, in June 1934 he approved the so-called Blood Purge, when Rohm and some 150 SA leaders were murdered, leaving Hitler as undisputed dictator of the Third Reich. Both the army and the judiciary passively accepted these murders, and at the beginning of August consented to the merging of the chancellorship and the presidency - with which went the supreme command of the armed forces of the Reich - and all officers and ministers took an oath of allegiance to Hitler personally.

During the next four years (1934-38), helped by economic recovery and a reduction in unemployment, Hitler enjoyed a series of international successes which consolidated his power in Germany, and helped (along with Goebbels' propaganda) Germany to accept the nazification of all aspects of German life, enforced by Himmler's Secret State Police (Gestapo) and the opening of concentration camps for political opponents and Jews, who were systematically persecuted.

He also began preparing for the war of revenge he had promised in 'Mein Kampf.’ In 1935 he abandoned the Versailles Treaty, re-establishing universal military service, building a powerful air force, and persuading the British to sign a naval treaty recognizing Germany's right to rearm. In 1936, he occupied and fortified the Rhineland, with the Italian dictator [collaborated with] Mussolini* began sending military aid to Franco's fascist forces in Spain, and in October 1936 forged the Rome-Berlin Axis.

In February 1938, he dismissed 16 senior generals and took personal command of the armed forces. In March 1938, he forced Austria into 'Anschluss' (political union) with Germany, making a triumphal entry into Vienna.On 29 September 1938, Hitler and Mussolini met at Munich with the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Daladier, who agreed to the bloodless surrender of the Sudetenland by Czechoslovakia, and in March 1939 German troops entered Prague and the absorption of Czechoslovakia was complete.

In August 1939, Hitler and [signed pact with] Stalin* signed a nonaggression pact, freeing Hitler to turn his full attention to Western Europe. Convinced that the natural field of expansion for German Lebensraum lay eastwards, on 1 September 1939 German armies invaded Poland (the independence of which was guaranteed by Britain and France), and two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. From the first, Hitler held personal command of the armed forces and pushed his plans for total war against the conviction of army leaders ( particularly General Ludwig Beck, chief of the general staff) that Germany was not strong enough to defeat the Allied powers.

The first phase of World War II was dominated by German 'Blitzkrieg' tactics - sudden shock attacks against airfields, communications, military installations, using fast mobile armour and infantry to follow up the first wave of bomber and fighter aircraft, through which Poland was overrun in 19 days, Denmark and Norway in two months, and Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France in six weeks.After the fall of France in June 1940, Hitler then turned his attention to the invasion of Great Britain. The Battle of Britain, in which the Royal Air Force denied the Luftwaffe aerial control over the English Channel, was Hitler's first setback, and in October 1940 he cancelled the invasion code-named Operation Sea Lion.He then turned his attention to the Balkans and North Africa, where his Italian allies had suffered defeats, and the German armies rapidly overran Greece, Yugoslavia, the island of Crete and Cyrenaica.

With the failure of the British campaign, Hitler again looked eastwards, and began the long preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union, which would prove his most crucial decision of the war. The attack against the U.S.S.R., racially and ideologically justified by Hitler as an anti-Bolshevik anti-Jewish crusade, was finally launched on 22 June 1941, with Hitler so confident of success that he announced it would be over in six weeks, and refused to provide winter clothing and equipment for his troops.

Although the German army advanced fast into the Soviet Union, an unexpected counter attack in December 1941 made it clear that Hitler's plan for of a single campaign were wrong. A day later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Hitler declared war on the United States, although the German pact with Japan was purely defensive and he had not been informed of Japanese intentions.

This widening of the conflict into a world war by the end of 1941 finally drove Hitler to implement the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question' which had been under consideration since 1939. He directed Himmler to prepare the ground for the "New Order" in Europe, and the concentration camps in Poland were expanded, in preparation for what had now become a policy of the liquidation of all Jews under German rule. Adding more extermination camps at Auschwitz, Belsen, Treblinka and Mauthausen, as well as mobile extermination squads, during the next three years in German-occupied Europe between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 Jews were killed, along with hundreds of thousands of Slavs, Poles, Russians, gypsies and political dissidents.

At the end of 1942, German defeat at el-Alamein and at Stalingrad brought the turning point in the war, and Hitler's character and way of life began to alter, his personal decline symbolized by his increasingly rare appearances and his self-enforced isolation in the 'Wolf's Lair' in the east Prussian forests.He refused to read reports of defeats, and those close to him, especially his secretary Martin Bormann, took care that only positive information reached him. In July 1943 the Allies captured Sicily and Mussolini's regime collapsed in Italy. In September 1943, the Allies invaded Italy, and then Normandy, France in June 1944. Soon a million Allied troops were driving the German allies eastwards, while the Soviets came from the opposite direction.At last Germany had to face the fact that it lacked the resources equal to a struggle against a world alliance which Hitler himself had provoked.

On 29 July 1944 came the last of several attempts to assassinate Hitler when Colonel von Stauffenberg exploded a time bomb at a conference at Hitler's field headquarters. Hitler escaped with only minor injuries, however, and ordered the execution of all those implicated.His narrow escape convinced him that he had been chosen by God to lead the German people, and he drastically reduced the army's independence, appointingNational Socialist political officers to all military positions.In December 1944 he moved his headquarters to Berlin, where he directed the German offensive in the Ardennes. When it failed, he clutched at fantastic hopes that his 'secret weapons', the V-1 and V-2 rockets, would turn the tide of war.

From January 1945 Hitler never left the chancellery bunker in Berlin. As the Red Army approached Berlin and the Anglo-Americans reached the Elbe, on 19 March Hitler ordered the destruction of what remained of German industry, communications and transport systems, and refused to allow his troops to surrender, effectively sentencing them to death.On 29 April, having finally accepted the inevitability of defeat, Hitler married his long-term mistress Eva Braun and dictated his final political testament, appointed Admiral Donitz as head of state and Goebbels as chancellor, and concluded, "Above all, I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry."

The following day, Hitler committed suicide with his wife and, in accordance with his instructions, their bodies were carried into the garden of the Reich Chancellery by aides, covered with petrol and burned (as documented by, for example, Trevor-Roper's*: 'The Last Days of Hitler', 1947).

Extra Connections: His anti-Jewish laws caused physicist [fired] Born* to be fired.

An early supporter was [supported by] Lenard*

Influenced by theories of [influenced by] Mackinder* and [influenced by] Gobineau*

Had political connection with [political connection with] Benes*

Assessment: His 'Third Reich', which was to have endured forever, ended after twelve years of unparalleled brutality, in which 30 million people lost their lives, twelve million of them far from the battlefields: by mass shootings, in forced labour camps and in the gas ovens of Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and other concentration camps in accordance with Nazi racial theories.

Oneliner: Adolf Hitler, World War II German leader and head of Nazi party.

Bibliography:

Encyclopedia Britannica.
Collier’s Encyclopedia.
Geary, Dick, Hitler and Nazism, London: Routledge, 2000.

Wistrich, Robert S.,Who's Who in Nazi Germany, London: Routledge, 1995.

Wikipedia