was a German political and government leader. And he is one of the 20 th century’s most powerful dictators, when he ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. He turned Germany into a powerful war machine and provoked World War II in 1939, when he invaded Poland. He built the Nazi party into a mass movement. For sometime he dominated most of Europe and North Africa. He caused the slaughter of millions of Jews and others whom he considered inferior.
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 inBranau am Inn, Austria. Adolf’s father, Alois Hitler was a minor customs official. He died in 1903. Adolf’s mother, Klara Hitler was peasant girl.
She died in 1907. Hitler did not do well in school and he dropped out of high school. He was eager to become an artist, so he applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1907 and 1908 but he was rejected both times. During his spare time he read a lot, developing anti-Jewish and antidemocratic views. When World War I started Hitler was rejected by the Austrian Army, but accepted by the German Army. He served as a messenger on the Western Front for most of the war, taking part in some of the bloodiest battles.
He was wounded and received the Iron Cross for bravery. But he was never promoted higher than lance corporal. But after the war he found himself unable to find a job. After Germany’s defeat in 1918 he returned to Munich, remaining in the army until 1920. In September 1919 he joined the nationalist German Workers’ Party. In April 1920 he went to work full time for the party, now renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or the Nazi party.
In 1921 he was elected party chairman with dictatorial powers. He now became known as Der Fuhrer. The Nazis aim was to organize all Germans into one nation. And to rid the Jews of German citizenship and eliminate them completely.
He organized meetings with his personal bodyguard force, the Storm Troopers. In November 1923, at a time of political and economic chaos, he led an uprising or Putsch in Munich against the postwar Weimar Republic, the German government. This was known as the Beer Hall Putsch. However the Putsch collapsed. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. He only spent nine months in prison.
During this time he spent writing his autobiography, Mein Kampf which means My Struggle. In it was a plan to conquer Europe and much of the world. The failure of the Beer Hall Putsch taught Hitler that the Nazi Party must use legal means to assume power. Hitler was released as a result of general amnesty in December 1924. He then rebuilt his party without interference from those whose government he tried to overthrow. When the Great Depression struck in 1929, Hitler explained it as a Jewish-Communist plot.
This was accepted by many Germans. Hitler promised a strong Germany, jobs, and national glory. He attracted millions of voters. Nazi representation in the Reichstag, the German parliament, rose from 12 seats in 1928 to 107 seats in 1930. The Nazi Party was becoming widespread and popular and was recognized as a legitimate party. On January 30, 1933, the president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany.
Once in power, Hitler quickly established himself as a dictator. Hitler called his government the Third Reich. In 1933, Hitler’s government passed the Enabling Act which permitted Hitler’s government to make laws without the legislation. This act made the legislation powerless.
This act Nazi fied the country and banned all political parties except his own. All the anti-Nazis were round up and taken to concentration camps. To intimidate his opponents, Hitler relied on jails, concentration camps, and his secret police, the Gestapo. His armament drive wiped out unemployment. Hitler grouped all the workers and employers into what was called the German Labor Front.
Hitler told the Germans that they were a”Master Race” and they had the right to dominate all nations. Heal so said the persecution of Jews was to insure this. Because of all this Hitler successfully appealed to a Germany that was humiliated by defeat in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. After he rearmed Germany, Hitler sent troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936.
When the Spanish Civil War begun in July 1936, Hitler supported the Nationalist leader by supplying airplanes and weapons. By doing this Hitler got to test his strategies weapons. In October 1936, Hitler signed a pact with Italy’s Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. In November 1936, he signed a pact with Japan. In 1940 Germany signed an alliance with Italy and Japan. They would become known as the Axis Powers.
In March 1938 Hitler’s troops invaded Austria. It was then annexed and became part of Germany. In September 1938, France, Great Britain, and Germany met over the German occupation of the Sudentenland in Czechoslovakia. Out of this came the Munich Pact which gave Germany the Sudentenland in exchange for Germany’s promise not to take any additional Czech. territory. By March 1939, Hitler brought the rest of Czechoslovakia under German control.
In August 1939, Germany signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. In this the two countries secretly divided up Poland. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and overpowered it quickly. This was known as a blitzkrieg. On September 3, 1939, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany.
World War I Ihad begun. In the spring of 1940, Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Benito Mussolini, Italy’s dictator, declared war on France and Britain on June 10, 1940. When the defeat of France seemed certain. On June 22, 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany.
The defeat of Britain was avoided by the British Royal Air Force which defended the Luftwaffe, the German air force. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Hitler believed that the war would be brief and so he did not allow his troops to take provisions for the winter. The German troops were successful at first and they almost reached Moscow and St. Petersburg. But in December 1941 the Soviet armies counterattacked.
Hitler severely underestimated the size and strength of the Soviet Army. He also underestimated the significance of the United States in the war, who had been supplying the Soviet Union with supplies and reinforcements. The Soviets wiped out the whole German army of 300, 000 men. This German defeat was a major turning point in the war.
While his empire lasted, Hitler directed the storm troopers, Nazi officials, and members of the army and civil service in a campaign of mass slaughter. In 1942, Hitler met with high Reich officials to create the final solution to world Jewry. The Germans began building large extermination camps to accompany the concentration camps. Endless trains took millions of Jews, to these camps, seriously interfering with the war effort. Six million Jews, over two-thirds of the Jews of Europe, were murdered in these camps. This became known as the Holocaust.
More than 3 million Soviet prisoners of war were starved and worked to death. Hitler’s victims also included large numbers of Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, Jehovah ” s Witnesses, priests and ministers, mental patients, and Communists and other political opponents. As passed and defeat became more likely, Hitler refused to surrender. Anti-Germans and anti-Nazis had tried since 1938 to kill Hitler and overthrow the Nazis. But repeated plots failed. On July 20, 1944, Hitler narrowly escaped death when a German Army officer placed a bomb in Hitler’s briefing room.
Early in 1945 the Allies marched into the heart of Germany against dwindling opposition. By April 1945, Hitler had become a broken man. His head, hands, and feet trembled and he was tortured by stomach cramps. On April 29, 1945, Hitler married Eva Braun, his mistress since the 1930’s. On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in his underground bunker under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Aides burned there bodies.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. Adolf Hitler was successful only because many Germans were willing to be led. His impact was destructive and nothing of what he instituted and built survived.