HITLER, ADOLF (1889-1945) Fuehrer (leader) of the Third German Reich
Early History
Born in Braunau, Austria, the son of a customs official from a smallholder family, Hitler spent his youth in the country of his birth. From 1900-1905, he attended the intermediate grades of the Realschule (secondary school), which concluded his formal education. Hitler's father died in 1903. In 1907, Hitler took the entrance test for the Vienna Academy of Art's School of Painting, and failed. His mother died that year of breast cancer; the doctor who treated her was a Jew named Eduard Bloch. In 1908, Hitler made Vienna his home, living on the orphan's stipend that he received. Anti-Semitism was rife in Vienna at the time. In Hitler's own words, the Vienna period of his life was formative and decisive in shaping his views. In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich. When World I broke out in 1914, he volunteered for the Bavarian army. He served as a dispatch runner in Belgium and France, was promoted to private first class (lance corporal) and was awarded medals for bravery.
Early Political Career
In his first political document (written on his return to Munich on September 19, 1919), Hitler stated that the final goal of anti-Semitism must be "the total removal of the Jews." He served as a political spokesman and agent for the Bavarian army, and in 1919 joined a small anti-Semitic party that in 1920 took the name Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist Workers' Party, or NSDAP). The party's 1920 platform called for all the Jews of Germany to be deprived of their civil rights and for some of them to be expelled. Hitler gained attention as a public speaker, and in 1921 became the party chairman, with unlimited powers. In November 1923, he headed an attempt to bring the government down by an armed putsch, known as the Munich (Beer-Hall) Putsch, for which he was sentenced in 1924 to five years' imprisonment. During his imprisonment in Landsberg, Hitler dictated the first volume of his book "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"). He was released after only nine months. In 1925, he re-established the National Socialist party. Hitler aimed to use constitutional means to gain a parliamentary majority in order to destroy the constitution by due process.
From Chancellor to Dictator
In the Reichstag elections of July 1932, the National Socialist party received 37.3 percent, the highest it ever obtained in free elections, and it became the largest political party represented in the Reichstag. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of a minority government. Although his party held only three out of the eleven ministries, Hitler managed to set up a dictatorship. Following the Reichstag fire of February 27, basic civil rights were suspended and after elections held on March 5, parliamentary rule was abolished by the Ermachtigungsgesetz (Enabling Law). This law transferred all legislative power from the Reichstag to the cabinet, where the conservatives held a solid majority. Eventually, by out manoeuvring them, Hitler became all-powerful. Anti-Semitic riots took place in March, culminating in the boycott of April 1, 1933, and in a law, passed on April 7, that inaugurated the Jews' elimination from public life in Germany. On July 14, after the dissolution of the trade unions and the other political parties, the NSDAP became the only recognised party in the land. After president Hindenburg died, on August 2, 1934, Hitler also became head of state and commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, assuming the title of Fuehrer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). He was now the dictator of Germany.
Persecution of the Jews
The rearmament of the country was accelerated, as was the persecution of the Jews. The Nuremberg Laws were adopted on September 15, 1935, and many other decrees issued by Hitler or in his name led to the exclusion of the Jews from German society. After the Anschluss of Austria on March 13, 1938, nearly 200,000 Jews were added to the Reich. Hitler's radical racial WeltanschauungÄwas combined with a Social Darwinism that saw the Jew as a source of danger to Germany and humanity, and as a central factor in the dynamic development of hostile ideological trends such as democracy, liberalism, and socialism. Even the Christian sources of ethnic political thinking in Western society were perceived by Hitler as manifestations of the infiltration of the Jewish spirit into Western European civilisation. On January 30, 1939, Hitler declared in the Reichstag that a new World War would lead to the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe. When the war began in Poland, on September 1 of the same year, the Germans embarked upon the destruction of Jews in that country, although for a while this was done in a haphazard rather than a methodical way. It was also at about this time that the systematic killing of the mentally ill with toxic gas was undertaken, on Hitler's orders. The systematic killing of Jews (the "Final Solution") began after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. According to Hitler's worldview and his political strategy, the goal of the territorial expansion - to gain Lebensraum ("living space") in the East - and the destruction of the Jewish people as the central ideological enemy were connected and were the focal point of the whole struggle. The first massacres of Jews in the Soviet Union were carried out by the Einsatzgruppen in June 1941; the killing was then extended to include the rest of the Jews of Europe. On several occasions, Hitler reminded the public about his prophecy concerning the destruction of the Jews, and on April 2, 1945, he boasted that he had 'exterminated the Jews of Germany and central Europe.' His political testament of April 29, 1945, ended with a call for 'merciless resistance to the universal poisoner of all nations - international Jewry.' The following day, he committed suicide in Berlin.
