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Hitler Adolf, German political and government leader
and one of the 20th century's most powerful dictators, who converted
Germany into a fully militarized society and launched World War II.
Making anti-Semitism a keystone of his propaganda and policies, he
built up the Nazi into a mass movement. For a time he dominated most
of Europe and North Africa. He caused the slaughter of millions of
Jews and others whom he considered inferior human beings.
Hitler was born in
Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889, the son of a minor
customs official and a peasant girl. A poor student, he never
completed high school. He applied for admission to the Academy of
Fine Arts in Vienna but was rejected for lack of talent. Staying in
Vienna until 1913, he lived first on an orphan's pension, later on
small earnings from pictures he drew. He read voraciously,
developing anti-Jewish and antidemocratic convictions, an admiration
for the outstanding individual, and a contempt for the masses.
In World War I,
Hitler, by then in Munich, volunteered for service in the Bavarian
army. He proved a dedicated, courageous soldier, but was never
promoted beyond private first class because his superiors thought
him lacking in leadership qualities. After Germany's defeat in 1918
he returned to Munich, remaining in the army until 1920. His
commander made him an education officer, with the mandate to
immunize his charges against pacifist and democratic ideas. In
September 1919 he joined the nationalist German Workers' party, and
in April 1920 he went to work full time for the party, now renamed
the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) party. In 1921 he was
elected party chairman (Führer) with dictatorial powers.
Organizing meeting
after meeting, terrorizing political foes with groups of party
thugs, Hitler spread his gospel of racial hatred and contempt for
democracy. He soon became a key figure in Bavarian politics, aided
by high officials and businessmen. In November 1923, a time of
political and economic chaos, he led an uprising (Putsch) in Munich
against the postwar Weimar Republic, proclaiming himself chancellor
of a new authoritarian regime. Without military support, however,
the Putsch collapsed.
As leader of the plot, Hitler was sentenced to five
years' imprisonment and spent the eight months he actually served
dictating his autobiography Mein Kampf. Released as a result of a
general amnesty in December 1924, he rebuilt his party without
interference from those whose government he had tried to overthrow.
When the Great Depression struck in 1929, his explanation of it as a
Jewish-Communist plot was accepted by many Germans. Promising a
strong Germany, jobs, and national glory, he attracted millions of
voters. Nazi representation in the Reichstag (parliament) rose from
12 seats in 1928 to 107 in 1930.
During the following
two years the party kept expanding, benefiting from growing
unemployment, fear of Communism, Hitler's self-certainty, and the
diffidence of his political rivals. Nevertheless, when Hitler was
appointed chancellor in January 1933, he was expected to be an
easily controlled tool of big business.
Once in power,
however, Hitler quickly established himself as a dictator. Thousands
of anti-Nazis were hauled off to concentration camps and all signs
of dissent suppressed. An Enabling Act passed by a subservient
legislature allowed him to Nazify the bureaucracy and the judiciary,
replace all labor unions with one Nazi-controlled German Labor
Front, and ban all political parties except his own. The economy,
the media, and all cultural activities were brought under Nazi
authority by making an individual's livelihood dependent on his or
her political loyalty.
Hitler relied on his
secret police, the Gestapo, and on jails and camps to intimidate his
opponents, but most Germans supported him enthusiastically. His
armament drive wiped out unemployment, an ambitious recreational
program attracted workers and employees, and his foreign policy
successes impressed the nation. He thus managed to mold the German
people into the pliable tool he needed to establish German rule over
Europe and other parts of the world. Discrediting the churches with
charges of corruption and immorality, he imposed his own brutal
moral code. He derided the concept of human equality and claimed
racial superiority for the Germans. As the master race, they were
told, they had the right to dominate all nations they subjected. The
increasingly ruthless persecution of the Jews was to inure the
Germans to this task.
Setting out on his
empire-building mission, Hitler launched Germany's open rearmament
in 1935 (in defiance of the World War I peace treaty), sent troops
into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, and annexed Austria and
Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland in 1938. In March 1939 he brought the
remainder of Czechoslovakia under German control. He also came to
the aid of Francisco Franco's rebels in Spain's civil war
(1936-1939). Outmaneuvered and fearful of war, no national leader
offered resistance to his moves.
Hitler realized,
however, that any further moves might lead to a European conflict,
and he unhesitatingly prepared for the struggle, which he believed
would strengthen Germany's moral fiber. Having neutralized the
Soviet Union with the promise of a partition of Poland after the
latter's defeat, he attacked Poland in September 1939. The Poles
were quickly overpowered, and their allies, the British and French,
who had declared war on Germany, would do nothing to help. In the
spring of 1940 Hitler's forces overran Denmark and Norway and a few
weeks later routed the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The defeat
of Britain was averted by the Royal Air Force, which fended off the
German Luftwaffe.
Driven by his
ambitions and his hatred of communism, Hitler then turned on the
Soviet Union. To protect his flank, he first subdued the Balkan
Peninsula. The invasion of the USSR in June 1941 quickly carried the
German armies to the gates of Moscow, but in December they were
pushed back by the Russians, just as the United States entered the
war. Hitler then realized that the war was lost militarily, but he
resolved to play for time in the hope that some new miracle weapon
or a diplomatic maneuver might still save the situation.
As time passed and
defeat became more certain, Hitler still refused to give up, feeling
that Germany did not deserve to survive because it had not lived up
to its mission. Throughout this period, moreover, the campaign to
destroy world Jewry continued, and endless trains took millions of
Jews to extermination camps, seriously interfering with the war
effort. An officers' plot to assassinate Hitler and end the war
failed in 1944. Finally, on April 30, 1945, with all of Germany
overrun by Allied invaders, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin
bunker, as did his long-time companion, Eva Braun, whom he had
married the day before.
Hitler had a
charismatic personality of overpowering forcefulness. An amoral man,
rootless and incapable of personal friendships, he looked on his
fellow humans as mere bricks in the world structure he wished to
erect. He knew how to appeal to people's baser instincts and made
use of their fears and insecurities. He could do that, however, only
because they were willing to be led, even though his program was one
of hatred and violence. His impact was wholly destructive, and
nothing of what he instituted and built survived.
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