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Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945): |
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Adolf Hitler was the German dictatorial leader throughout all of World War II. He is considered to be one of the most ruthless and influential dictators in history. He was responsible for the ascension of the Nazi Party in the Weimar Republic, and the subsequent rearmament of the German armed forces and the conversion to a fully militarized German state. His policies almost all involved anti-Semitism in some form, as well as anti-democratic and anti-Communist themes. Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 to a poor family. Due to his economic situation, he was not able to finish high school. He applied to Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and was rejected twice. He joined the Bavarian army in 1914 to fight in World War I and proved to be a faithful soldier but was never promoted past the rank of private. Ironically, this was due to his superiors' belief that he did not possess the necessary skills for leadership. After discharge from the Army, he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1919. He soon went to work full time for the party, and became Führer of the party in 1921. He spent the next years of his life religiously spreading pro-Nazi propaganda and threatened political enemies with his bodyguard, the SA (Sturmabteilung), or Storm Troopers. With the support of Nazi members in his home town of Munich in 1923, Hitler attempted an overthrow of the Weimar regime in Munich by "Marching on Munich" just as Benito Mussolini had Marched on Rome a year earlier. However, unlike Mussolini's campaign, Hitler's lacked sufficient planning and military support, and failed miserably, even though it included popular World War I General Leudendorf. In fact, the planning was so poor that it is said to have taken place in a saloon, and the event since come to be known as the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. Because of his involvement in the plot, Hitler was imprisoned for nine months, during which time he wrote his manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). In this book, he outlines the major concepts of Nazism as it has come to be known, explaining that all of the problems of Germany were due either to democracy, Communism, or Semitic plots. He also asserted that based on the example of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, the party must obtain power through entirely legal means. When he was released in 1924, he rebuilt the Nazi Party on these ideals. In order to attract voters, Hitler employed ingenious methods of propaganda. These included distributing radios that could only be tuned to Nazi stations, and paying off local alcoholics and dressing them in Nazi uniforms to exaggerate the party's numbers. In addition, Hitler was a brilliant orator, and was able to mesmerize the masses at Nazi rallies. Once the Great Depression hit in 1929, he was able to launch a platform based on the belief in a Jewish-Communist conspiracy as a cause of the depression. Using this platform, he was able to take the Nazi from 12 to 107 seats in the Reichstag between 1928 and 1930. Through the fear of Communism, economic desperation, and Hitler's eloquent speeches, the Nazi Party gained so much support that Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic in 1933. Hitler was quickly able to get the submissive Nazi-dominated Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act, which gave Hitler emergency dictatorial powers. As a result, the legislature became totally useless, as Hitler instituted Nazi law, outlawed all labor unions not controlled by the Nazis, and took over the media. He was able to completely nullify political opponents by basing one's livelihood on political alignment. At this point, the first concentration camps were opened, and close to ten thousand Communists were sent to them. While he often used the Gestapo, his secret police, to intimidate opponents, he was generally supported with great enthusiasm by the German people. He had totally eliminated unemployment through the rearmament, and impressed citizens with his political successes, both domestic and later foreign. Due to popular support, he was able to institute his barbaric "morals". He asserted the superiority of the Aryan race, from which the German race was spawned. The Germans, he believed, represented the highest breed of all of the Aryans, a mythological race of blonde haired, blue eyed supermen and women. This had obvious appeal to blonde haired and blue eyed Germans, and even "pure" Germans not possessing these traits. In addition, to Hitler, the Aryan race was a rationale for the Holocaust, as the systematic weeding out of Jews would lower interbreeding between the master race and inferior peoples. He encouraged fornication and promiscuity among young and virile Germans in order to produce the next generation of Aryan heroes. Ironically, he denounced the church on the basis of immorality as he prepared to launch his campaign against the world. In 1935, Hitler brought the secret German rearmament efforts into the open and received little opposition from his European neighbors. Based on English and French passivity, he sent troops into the demilitarized French controlled Rhineland with the order to withdraw at the sight of any opposition. France offered no such opposition, and Hitler knew that he would have free reign of Europe for the immediate future. In that same year, he supported the Fascist regime in the Spanish Civil War, led by Francisco Franco. This was mutually beneficial, as it gave Franco's regime the edge over the Communists that they needed, and gave Hitler the opportunity to test out his new weapons and strategies. This proved to be extremely successful, and convinced Hitler that he was ready to meet military opposition. His initial goal, at least the one that he announced to the world, was to unite the German speaking people of the world. He demanded that he be granted the Sudetenland and was appeased under the Munich Pact of 1938. He then proceeded to invade the rest of Czechoslovakia as well. He all but invaded Austria that year and announced that he was annexing that nation, without opposition. He did not meet opposition until 1939 when he invaded Poland, and Great Britain and France declared war on him. That year, Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR, and in the spring of 1940 he ordered his troops to invade Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France. His first defeat came that year when he tried to invade Britain, softening up the defenses with his air force. The British air force defeated the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, and the British invasion was postponed indefinitely. In 1941 Hitler broke the non-aggression pact, and launched Operation Barbarossa. He underestimated the strength of the USSR, and when the blitzkrieg failed, he was faced with a losing eastern front and a neglected western front. In addition, he did not realize the importance of the U.S. in the war. As the war progressed, he became less intent with victory and more intent on destroying the Jews in the territories that he occupied. High-ranking German officials attempted to assassinate Hitler in 1944 but were unsuccessful. In 1945, as the Soviet army approached Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. |
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