ADOLF HITLER

ADOLF HITLER Adolf Hitler was a dictator of the German Nazi movement. He was born April 20, 1889 in the small Austrian town of Braunau. After a prior performance in elementary school, Adolf soon became rebellious and began failing in the Realschule, which is a college preparatory school. Following transfer to another school, he finally left formal education altogether in 1905 and, refusing to bow to the training of a regular job, began his years of amateur painting, wandering in the woods, and dreaming of becoming a famous artist. In 1907, when his mother died, he moved to Vienna in an attempt to enroll in the famed Academy of Fine Arts. However he was not admitted. He wandering through the streets of Vienna living on an orphan's pension and the money he could earn by painting and selling picture postcards. It was during this time of his homeless being among the disordered circumstances of the old Hapsburg capital, that he first became fascinated by the immense possibility of political manipulation. He was impressed by the successes of the anti-Semitic, nationalist Christian-Socialist party of Vienna Mayor Karl Lueger and his propaganda organization (Website, Biography.com Hitler). Under Lueger's influence Hitler first developed the extreme anti-Semitism that were to remain central to his own beliefs and that of the Nazi party. In May 1913, in an attempt to avoid induction into the Austrian military service after he had failed to register for draft, Hitler slipped across the German border to Munich, only to be arrested and turned over to the Austrian police. He was able to persuade the authorities not to confine him for draft avoidance and presented himself for the draft physical examination, which he failed to pass. He returned to Munich, and after the outbreak of World War I a year later, he volunteered for action in the German army. During the war he fought on Germany's Western front with excellence but gained no promotion beyond the rank of corporal. Injured twice, he won several awards' for bravery, among them the highly respected Iron Cross First Class (Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris. By Ian Kershaw. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998). The end of the war suddenly left Hitler without a place and drove him to join the many frustrated veterans who continued to fight in the streets of Germany. In the spring of 1919 he found employment as a political officer in the army in Munich with the help of an adventurer-soldier by the name of Ernst Roehm. Ernst Roehm later became the head of Hitler's storm troopers. Hitler attended a meeting of the so-called German Workers' party, a nationalist, anti-Semitic, and socialist group, in September 1919. He quickly famed himself as this party's most popular and impressive speaker. The first two years in office were almost completely dedicated to power. With several prominent Nazis in key positions and his military ally Werner von Blomberg in the Defense Ministry, he quickly gained efficient control. He convinced the aging president and the Reichstag to invest him with emergency powers suspending the constitution in the so-called Enabling Act of Feb. 28, 1933. Under this act and with the help of a mysterious fire in the Reichstag building, he eliminated his political rivals and brought all levels of government under his control. By means of the Roehm purge of the summer of 1934 he guaranteed himself of the loyalty of the army by the inferiority of the Nazi storm troopers and the murder of its chief together with the financial disaster of major rivals within the army. The death of President Hindenburg in August 1934 cleared the way for the elimination of the presidential title by voting. Hitler became ruler of Germany and in result head of state as well as commander in chief of the armed forces. Joseph Goebbels's extensive propaganda machine and Heinrich Himmler's police system together perfected dictatorial control of Germany. This can be seen as demonstrated in the great Nazi rally of 1934 in Nuremberg, where millions marched in unison and saluted Hitler's dramatic appeals. Once internal control was assured, Hitler began enlisting Germany's resources for military conquest and racial domination of the landmasses of central and Eastern Europe. He put Germany's six million unemployed to work on a vast building program, coupled with a propaganda campaign to prepare the nation for war. Foreign relations were directed toward preparation for war because of the improvement of Germany's military position, the purchase of strong allies and the division of Germany's enemies. Playing on the weaknesses of the Versailles Peace Treaty and the general fear of war, this policy was previously successful in the face of governments in England and France. After an unsuccessful achievement attempt in Austria in 1934, Hitler gained Mussolini's union as a result of Italy's Ethiopian war in 1935, illegally marched into the Rhineland in 1936 and successfully intervened in the Spanish Civil War (Time Magazine, January 2, 1939, Roles Minor). Under the popular emblem of national self-determination, he attached Austria and some of Czechoslovakia with the West in 1938, only to occupy all of Czechoslovakia in early in 1939. Alliances with Italy and Japan followed. On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler began World War II with the invasion of Poland, which he immediately followed with the ethnic cleansing of Jews and the Polish aristocrats, the slavery of the local alien population, and the beginnings of a German colonization. Following the exposition of war by France and England, he temporarily turned his military west, where the attacks of the German forces quickly prevailed. In April 1940 Denmark surrendered, and Norway was taken by an amphibious operation. In May-June the progressing tank forces defeated France and the Low Countries. The major goal of Hitler's conquest was in the East and the war had already entered in the middle of 1940. German war production was preparing for an eastern campaign. The Air Battle of Britain, which Hitler had hoped would permit either German invasion or an alliance with Germanic England, was broken off, and Germany's naval warfare shattered for lack of reinforcements. On June 22, 1941, the German army advanced on Russia in the so-called Operation Barbarossa, which Hitler regarded as “Germany's final struggle for existence and ‘living space’ and for the creation of the ‘new order’ of German racial domination” (The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition, 1998). After advances, the German troops were stopped by the harsh Russian winter which in turn helped them to fail at reaching any of their three major goals: Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. The following year's advances were again slower than expected, and with the first major setback at Stalingrad in 1943, the long retreat from Russia began. A year later, the Western Allies started advancing on Germany. Hitler withdrew almost entirely from the public. His orders became increasingly incoherent; and recalling his earlier triumphs over the generals, he refused to listen to advice from his military counselors. He dreamed of miracle bombs and suspected treason everywhere. Under the slogan of total victory or total ruin, the entire German nation from young boys to old men was mobilized and sent to the front. After an unsuccessful assassination attempt by a group of former military men on July 20, 1944, the reign of fear tightened. In the last days of the Third Reich, with the Russian troops in the limits of Berlin, Hitler entered into a last stage of anxiety in his underground bunker in Berlin. He ordered Germany destroyed since it was not worthy of him. He dismissed his trusted lieutenants Himmler and Goring from the party; and made a last request to the German nation. Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, leaving the last bits of unconquered German territory to the command of non-Nazi Admiral Karl Doenitz. Bibliography Works Cited 1. Website, Biography.com Hitler 2. The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition, 1998 3. Time Magazine, January 2, 1939, Roles Minor 4. Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris. By Ian Kershaw. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998 Word Count: 1298