Adolf Hitler
In 1889, in a small town in Austria, the future leader of the Third Reich was born. Alois and Klara Hitler welcomed their new son Adolf into their family. This was their third child, their previous two children had died at unfortunately young ages. Young Adolf would not be their only child to survive into adulthood, but he and his sister Paula would be the only two out of five to do so. Another son, Edmund, would die at the young age of six years.
Young Adolf would struggle through his schooling. He left school early due to his lack of success there to try his hand as an artist. He even applied for entry into the Vienna Academy of Fine arts, but he was denied admission. His father died while Adolf was barely a teenager, and was left in the care of his widowed mother. During his latter teenage years young Adolf would not work to help his struggling mother and sister.
By Adolf’s 19th year, his mother had died from cancer and he was left with no one to support him, so Adolf moved to Vienna and was soon destitute. He was able to sell a few of his art works on occasion to make some money, but not enough for a living. At the outset of the first World War, Hitler volunteered for the army and became a soldier.
During the war Hitler was a member of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. He was a capable soldier and was promoted to the rank of corporal and received two Iron Crosses. At the end of the war in 1918, Hitler was recovering from a British gas attack. This attack left him temporarily blind.
After the war, he was assigned to several different positions, one of which required him to spy on local political organizations. At one of the meetings that he was present, he became enraged with one of the speakers and gave an eloquent speech in return. This speech prompted the founder of the group, the German Workers Party, to invite Hitler to join them. Hitler was placed in a position in the organization responsible for propaganda and publicity. He quickly began recruiting members and it was during one of his speeches for the group that he introduced the idea of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, which is the long form of Nazi.
Shortly after this meeting, Hitler left the army and began strengthening his influence in the party. He created a secret group, called the Sturmabteilung, to seek out dissent in the party and squash it, and to crush opposing party meetings. This would be the first of Hitler’s stormtroopers. This group and Hitler’s influence of the party gave him nearly complete and absolute control of the party by 1921. Some in the party did not care much for Hitler and his methods and attempted to lighten Hitler’s power by bringing in a similar party to share the control. Hitler threatened resigning from the party and the coup was stopped. Most of the party would not agree to the merger with Hitler’s threat because Hitler was too important to the party.
Hitler’s first military act as head of the Nazi party was a complete failure as a military outing, however it did serve to make Hitler’s name known. In a two day strike on the Bavarian government, Hitler and his stormtroopers, accompanied by a General in the German Army, the Nazi’s took the Bavarian leaders as hostages. They then tried to claim a new government using the identities of the Bavarians. This coup did not last as the Bavarians were able to escape and retake control of the police force. They then held against the Nazi’s and took the German General prisoner. Hitler fled but was captured soon after and charged with treason. Hitler was sentenced to a few years in prison for the escapade.It was during this time in prison that Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf”.
During the next decade, the Nazi party went through a rebuilding stage, due mostly to the failed military coup of Bavaria. The party was banned from most activities and was struggling to rebuild. Hitler ended up only serving 6 months of his treason sentence. However he was banned from giving speeches, and although the party’s political clout decreased severely at this time, membership grew under Hitler’s continued leadership. This growth was helped severely by the Great Depression, which caused widespread unemployment in Germany.
!932 was a busy year for Germany and the Nazi party. Hitler lost his first bid at the presidency to incumbent President Hindenburg. Hitler also refused a seat as Vice-Chancellor when the Nazi party regained power and won a near majority of the elected positions in the new German government. Finally in 1933 after much opposition and political wrangling with the German government and President Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler was named the new German Chancellor.
Although the position of Chancellor did not give Hitler the power he would need to become one of the most despised dictators in history, moves were being planned that would give him the power to do so. The Enabling Act of 1933 passed the required two thirds vote needed in the German Reichstag. This was made easier by the Nazi party’s influence of the voting body. The Enabling Act was to give Hitler dictator like control of the government legally for a set period of years. Using this new authority, Hitler sealed his power by removing opposition in any way that suited him. In 1934, the death of Hindenburg gave Hitler an opportunity and he had the President’s power’s transferred to him, and disbanned the Presidency.
The following years showed what Hitler had been after. The Nazi party expanded its scope and began enforcing Hitler’s dictatorship. The Jewish community began to see the first acts of the Holocaust carried out. The German people were living under complete totalitarian rule. Hitler began preparing Germany for war.
From 1934 through 1937 Hitler began building his army. This was in direct violation to the Treaty of Versailles signed at the end of the first World War. Hitler also sent troop into the demilitarized zone also in breach of the treaty. The escalations finally led to war with the German invasion of Poland in 1939. World War Two had begun.
The events of the war have become well known to history. Hitler fought a war on two fronts, Russia to the East and the Allies to the West. His army eventually fell at the hands of the Allied nations. Hitler ended his life in a bunker on April 30, 1945, after the Soviets had gained control of Berlin. This ended one of the worst reigns of terror that the world has ever known.
Suggested Reading:
Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War IIIn this collection of articles written before, during, and just after World War I, G. K. Chesterton described what had gone wrong with Germany and war... Read More >
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