rise and fall of Hitler

Around 1923, with inflation soaring and the ranks of his Nazi supporters growing, Hitler decided it was time to start a revolution against the Weimar government.

World history Our Human Story Pearson and Holdren IBN#978-1-60153-123-0

Hitler quickly attracted thousands of followers by playing upon their sense of frustration with the Weimar government.

World history Our Human Story Pearson and Holdren IBN#978-1-60153-123-0

Hitler survived gas attacks and received honors for bravery. Germany's defeat in world war one made Hitler bitter and angry. He lashed out against the politicians who had surrendered, for he believed that Germany had been on the verge of winning the war.

World history Our Human Story Pearson and Holdren IBN#978-1-60153-123-0

Inspired by the Italian Fascists' March on Rome, Hitler led a group of his Nazis into a political meeting and seized three government officials. "The National Revolution has begun!" he screamed. However, a few days later the police arrested him. He was carried to prison.

World history Our Human Story Pearson and Holdren IBN#978-1-60153-123-0

Soon, encouraged by army commanders, Hitler took over a tiny political party. He renamed it the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei--the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi party for short.

World history Our Human Story Pearson and Holdren IBN#978-1-60153-123-0

By 1930, the Nazis were polling around 6.5 million votes. In the presidential elections of 1932, Hitler had came second. On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg was forced to appoint Hitler as Chancellor, given his popular support.

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Allied bombing began to have a telling effect on German industrial production and to undermine the morale of the population. The generals, frustrated by Hitler's total refusal to trust them in the field and recognizing the inevitability of defeat, planned, together with the small anti-Nazi Resistance inside the Reich, to assassinate the Fuhrer on 20 July 1944, hoping to pave the way for a negotiated peace with the Allies that would save Germany from destruction. The plot failed and Hitler took implacable vengeance on the conspirators, watching with satisfaction a film of the grisly executions carried out on his orders. As disaster came closer, Hitler buried himself in the unreal world of the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, clutching at fantastic hopes that his "secret weapons," the V-1 and V-2 rockets, would yet turn the tide of war. He gestured wildly over maps, planned and directed attacks with non-existent armies and indulged in endless, night-long monologues which reflected his growing senility, misanthropy and contempt for the "cowardly failure" of the German people.

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As the Red Army approached Berlin and the Anglo-Americans reached the Elbe, on 19 March 1945 Hitler ordered the destruction of what remained of German industry, communications and transport systems. He was resolved that, if he did not survive, Germany too should be destroyed. The same ruthless nihilism and passion for destruction which had led to the extermination of six million Jews in death camps, to the biological "cleansing" of the sub-human Slavs and other subject peoples in the New Order, was finally turned on his own people.

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During the next four years Hitler enjoyed a dazzling string of domestic and international successes, outwitting rival political leaders abroad just as he had defeated his opposition at home. In 1935 he abandoned the Versailles Treaty and began to build up the army by conscripting five times its permitted number. He persuaded Great Britain to allow an increase in the naval building program and in March 1936 he occupied the demilitarized Rhineland without meeting opposition. He began building up the Luftwaffe and supplied military aid to Francoist forces in Spain, which brought about the Spanish fascist victory in 1939.

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Hitler's saber-rattling tactics bludgeoned the British and French into the humiliating Munich agreement of 1938 and the eventual dismantlement of the Czechoslovakian State in March 1939. The concentration camps, the Nuremberg racial laws against the Jews, the persecution of the churches and political dissidents were forgotten by many Germans in the euphoria of Hitler's territorial expansion and bloodless victories. The next designated target for Hitler's ambitions was Poland (her independence guaranteed by Britain and France) and, to avoid a two-front war, the Nazi dictator signed a pact of friendship and non-aggression with Soviet Russia.

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On April 29, 1945, he married his mistress Eva Braun and dictated his final political testament, concluding with the same monotonous, obsessive fixation that had guided his career from the beginning: "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."

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On September 1, 1939, German armed forces invaded Poland and henceforth Hitler's main energies were devoted to the conduct of a war he had unleashed to dominate Europe and secure Germany's "living space." The first phase of World War II was dominated by German Blitzkrieg tactics: sudden shock attacks against airfields, communications, military installations, using fast mobile armor and infantry to follow up on the first wave of bomber and fighter aircraft. Poland was overrun in less than one month, Denmark and Norway in two months, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg and France in six weeks. After the fall of France in June 1940 only Great Britain stood firm

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The death of his father when Hitler was 13, releases the pressure on him to get a job working for the civil service, Adolf is able to pursue his preferred choice of study, which is art. He attends art school and claims himself as an artist. He began studying diverse cultural influences, the opera, theatre, reading and drawing.

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The disaster before Moscow in December 1941 led him to dismiss his Commander-in-Chief von Brauchitsch, and many other key commanders who sought permission for tactical withdrawals, including Guderian, Bock, Hoepner, von Rundstedt and Leeb, found themselves cashiered. Hitler now assumed personal control of all military operations, refusing to listen to advice, disregarding unpalatable facts and rejecting everything that did not fit into his preconceived picture of reality. His neglect of the Mediterranean theatre and the Middle East, the failure of the Italians, the entry of the United States into the war, and above all the stubborn determination of the Russians, pushed Hitler on to the defensive. From the winter of 1941 the writing was on the wall but Hitler refused to countenance military defeat, believing that implacable will and the rigid refusal to abandon positions could make up for inferior resources and the lack of a sound overall strategy. Convinced that his own General Staff was weak and indecisive, if not openly treacherous, Hitler became more prone to outbursts of blind, hysterical fury towards his generals, when he did not retreat into bouts of misanthropic brooding. His health, too, deteriorated under the impact of the drugs prescribed by his quack physician, Dr. Theodor Morell. Hitler's personal decline, symbolized by his increasingly rare public appearances and his self-enforced isolation in the "Wolf's Lair," his headquarters buried deep in the East Prussian forests, coincided with the visible signs of the coming German defeat which became apparent in mid-1942.

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The following day Hitler committed suicide, shooting himself through the mouth with a pistol. His body was carried into the garden of the Reich Chancellery by aides, covered with petrol and burned along with that of Eva Braun. This final, macabre act of self-destruction appropriately symbolized the career of a political leader whose main legacy to Europe was the ruin of its civilization and the senseless sacrifice of human life for the sake of power and his own commitment to the bestial nonsense of National Socialist race mythology. With his death nothing was left of the "Greater Germanic Reich," of the tyrannical power structure and ideological system which had devastated Europe during the twelve years of his totalitarian rule.

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The widening of the conflict into a world war by the end of 1941, the refusal of the British to accept Germany's right to continental European hegemony (which Hitler attributed to "Jewish" influence) and to agree to his "peace" terms, the racial-ideological nature of the assault on Soviet Russia, finally drove Hitler to implement the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" which had been under consideration since 1939. The measures already taken in those regions of Poland annexed to the Reich against Jews (and Poles) indicated the genocidal implications of Nazi-style "Germanization" policies. The invasion of Soviet Russia was to set the seal on Hitler's notion of territorial conquest in the East, which was inextricably linked with annihilating the 'biological roots of Bolshevism' and hence with the liquidation of all Jews under German rule.

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It was during this prison term that many of Hitler's basic ideas of political strategy and tactics matured. Here he outlined his major plans and beliefs in Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which he dictated to his loyal confidant Rudolf Hess. He planned the reorganization of his party, which had been outlawed and had lost much of its appeal. After his release, he reconstituted the party around a group of loyal followers who were to remain the center of the Nazi movement and state.

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Adolf Hitler is born on April 20th in Braunau am Inn in the empire of Austria-Hungary in 1889. His father, Alois, regarded as strict and distant, becomes a customs official and expects his son to pursue a career in Civil service His mother, Klara, is of a more compassionate nature, adoring and indulging him.

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At the age of six he attends school and, while clearly intelligent. He is uninterested in formal education, eventually leaving with a poor educational record of achievement.

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At the outbreak of the First World War, Hitler volunteers for service in the German army and joined the 16th Barvarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. He distinguishes himself in service, being promoted to corporal and decorated with the Iron Cross for services as a runner on the western front.

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At the time of the armistice, Hitler is lying in hospital suffering from temporary blindness due to a British gas attack in Ypres Salient. He had returned to his regiment in Munich, later that year.

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During his period of poverty, Hitler volunteers in much political activity, attending meetings, reading and studying political newspapers and literature.

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Faced with military service for the Habsburg Empire, Hitler takes action to evade being forced to serve in the military by moving to Munich in Southern Germany. This move is possible in part due to his inheritance of a small legacy from his father's estate. Here his life continues much as before, until the events of the First World War changed the course of his life.

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Hitler moves to Vienna with the aim of attending the Vienna Academy of Art, but his application is rejected. He is also disappointed by his failure to get into the Vienna School of Architecture. Due to his inability to provide a school leaving certificate.

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Intent on remaining in the army, having found real purpose to his depressing life, Hitler is appointed to the Intelligence/Propaganda section where he undertook political training. His activities involved making speeches to the troops advocating German nationalism and anti-Socialism, where he further developed his oratory skills. He also acted as an army informer, spying on small political parties. He joined the German Workers' Party, an extreme anti-communist, anti-Semitic right wing organization.

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Without any means of money, Hitler struggles to survive in Vienna, living in a men's hostel. He sells postcards and paintings which he's drawn, of famous sights. He began to undertake a series of menial jobs, to earn petty sums of money.

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