Hitler, Adolf

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Adolf Hitler Summary

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Hitler, Adolf

GERMAN DICTATOR
1889–1945

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was national socialist dictator of Germany's totalitarian Third Reich from January 1933 until his suicide in the closing days of World War II (1939–1945). He ranks alongside the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin (1879–1853) and China's Mao Tse-tung (1893–1976) as one of the modern world's most ruthless and maniacal political figures.

Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in eastern Austria. He enjoyed a pampered childhood and adolescence, was an indifferent student, and failed to graduate from secondary school. In 1907 Hitler moved to Vienna, where he developed basic convictions that formed the subsequent basis of his political ideology. These included a commitment to pan-German nationalism coupled with a radical racial anti-semitism; an appreciation of the power of mass mobilization in politics; and his rejection of liberalism, socialism, Marxism, and democracy. While debating politics on a daily basis, Hitler also developed exceptional skills as an impassioned orator.

In 1913 Hitler left for Munich, the capital of Bavaria, and enthusiastically joined a Bavarian regiment at the onset of World War I. The war—including Germany's defeat in 1918—was a pivotal experience for Hitler, who became obsessed with perpetuating war. "That is how he looked at politics as a career—as a means for gaining power which would make possible a new war, this one, however, fought according to his ideas until final victory was won" (Bracher 1970, pp. 66–67).

Hitler resigned from the military to join the German Workers Party, a radical right group formed in Munich to oppose postwar Germany's fledgling democratic regime (the Weimar Republic). He quickly became party leader (führer), changed the party's name to the German National Socialist Workers Party (NSDAP), and initiated a Putsch (attempted seizure of power) against the Bavarian government in November 1923. Hitler was arrested, tried for treason, and sentenced to five years in prison, during which time he wrote Mein Kampf, an inflammatory autobiography. The book later inspired millions of Germans and other Europeans to accept Hitler's claim to leadership and the Nazi agenda.

After his early release from prison in December 1924, Hitler devoted his energies to the reorganization of the NSDAP and extending its political appeal. He obtained the support of sympathetic voters and the German military in a calculated strategy to achieve a legal rise to political power. Hitler's targets included Jews, socialists, liberals, and pacifists. These groups had allegedly conspired to bring about Germany's defeat in 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles, which had imposed territorial, financial, and political costs on the Weimar Republic.

Initially, the NSDAP's prospects seemed dismal; it received only 2.6 percent of the national vote in 1928. However, support for the party surged to 18.3 percent in 1930 and 37.3 percent in July 1932. Key factors in Hitler's growing popularity included the onset of the Great Depression and resulting mass unemployment, the persuasiveness of his ideological oratory, and a parallel increase in support for the Communist Party that frightened many middle-class voters. Another factor was the failure of democratic leaders to devise credible measures to combat the effects of the Depression, or to unite in defense of the republic against its radical opponents on both the right and left. Although the NSDAP's strength sagged marginally in the November 1932 election (to 33.1 percent), conservative politicians persuaded Weimar President Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) to appoint Hitler as chancellor of a coalition NSDAP-conservative government on January 30, 1933.

Once in office, Hitler proceeded swiftly to consolidate power. In 1933 he coerced the parliament into granting his cabinet dictatorial powers to deal with the "national crisis." The Nazis quickly outlawed other political parties and mass organizations, subordinated the economy and all social and educational institutions to party control, imposed censorship on all media, rejected the Versailles treaty, and began a systematic program of rearmament in preparation for the resumption of war. Upon Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler combined the offices of chancellor and president into his personal role as absolute führer. Following the views expounded in Mein Kampf, the Nazis launched a coordinated program of overt discrimination, subsequent imprisonment, and later the mass extermination of millions of Jews and other regime "outsiders." In foreign policy, Hitler engineered—with British and

ADOLF HITLER IN 1933. Hilter's appointment as chancellor of a coalition German National Socialist Workers Party (NSDAP)-conservative government on January 30, 1933 set Germany on the path toward a consolidation of government and Hitler's dictatorship. (SOURCE: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES)

French acquiescence—the annexation of Austria and most of Czechoslovakia in 1938. When the Western powers subsequently balked at his demands to seize Polish territory on Germany's eastern border, Hitler launched World War II on September 1, 1939.

Hitler's demise—and that of the Third Reich—came as a result of a military alliance between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union in 1941, after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The advance of the Red Army through eastern Germany into Berlin and a relentless drive by Anglo-American forces through Germany in the West convinced Hitler that he had no recourse but to take his life and entrust what remained of the Third Reich and its armed forces to others. He shot himself in an underground bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945. A week later, German military officers surrendered unconditionally to the wartime allies. Most of the bunker remains (unmarked), but Hitler's body was taken by the Red Army and was never officially interred.