The First World War had left a defeated Germany politically and economically, in a botched process by implementing liberal democracy to replace former monarchies. This, together with the rooted military tradition of romantic nationalism according to which the state was the embodiment of the spirit of the people, and authoritarian habits of German society, was an excellent breeding ground for any National, in vogue the time.
Adolf Hitler masterfully added the element of racism to form the explosive mixture and paranoid to galvanize an entire nation. Enlisted the support of an army wounded in his honor; of industrial unions and facing the fear of Marxist ideology, of a frustrated middle class and the proletariat "victim of trade unions and political parties. " Elicit knew all the hatred of Jews, as a cohesive element, and suggest the superiority of the Aryan race as the only valid for world domination.
Adolf-Hitler
His work Mein Kampf (My Struggle) became a mass gospel, without being concerned about politics, and the holy book of the life and ideas of the supreme leader, without any confession of the author, despite the title. As explained therein, the Aryan race is superior by nature, the state is the unit of "blood and soil", and the Fuhrer is the embodiment of the state and therefore the people ... Nothing new. But the most effective weapon to defeat the cruelest of the people who used the greatest genocide in history and the destruction of Europe.
Bloodline
The search for a family history that could justify the imbalance of Hitler led the construction of various stories about their origins. The darkness of the few real data and the unreliability of some of the discharge by him in his book Mein Kampf, helped raise them. Thus, there has been speculation about possible alcoholism of his father, on which he died confined in an asylum, or that his mother was a prostitute and had a Jewish grandparent. Neither hypothesis has been tested and only one can say with absolute certainty that Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau Inn, border town of Upper Austria, and was the third son of a couple formed by the inspection Customs Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Polzl.It is assumed that his grandfather was Johann-Georg Hiedler, Miller of Lower Austria in 1842 he married a peasant paula-antonio, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, who already had an illegitimate child of five years, Alois, whose father was none other, apparently the Hiedler own, but did not give his name. Nearly forty years later, in 1876, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, his brother, Alois was submitted to the parish priest and asked Dollersheim deregistered the word "illegitimate" and enrolled him as Alois Hiedler express wish of the father . Johann-Georg was twenty years and his mother buried thirty, but the priest agreed. Alois, a year after his legitimacy, he changed his surname Hiedler, of Czech origin, by Hitler, similar to its phonetic spelling.
Alois Hitler had entered the age of eighteen years at the Imperial Customs Service and until 1895 worked as an officer in several border towns austrobavara. Had married Anna Glass in 1864, much older than himself, who died childless in 1883 . A month later he married Franziska Matzelberger, who had already given him a son, Alois, and three months after the wedding gave him a daughter, Angela, the only one who had to support Adolf relationship throughout his life, and whose Geli Raubal daughter became enamored. The second wife also died shortly afterwards from tuberculosis. In January 1885 Alois married Klara Polzl, his third wife. Gustav was born in May. This and a daughter born in 1887 died in infancy. Adolf was born in 1889 and later Paula.
Adolf Hitler was six when his father retired. The family then left Passau, its ultimate destination, he moved to Hafeld-am-Traun, then Lambach and finally bought a house in Leonding, a village on the outskirts of Linz. Hitler would spend his childhood there and for that reason is considered the "birthplace of the Führer" and therefore Nazi pilgrimage center. His father died on January 3, 1903 leaving his widow a pension. Two years later his mother sold the house for ten thousand crowns and settled in Linz.
young Hitler
In the summer of 1905 Adolf concluded his studies under compulsion, for his mediocre performance in the Realschule had earned him the expulsion without getting any securities. When her mother died in 1907, he moved to Vienna with the inheritance money. Drawing as a hobby and hoped to become an academic painter. She signed up for the entrance exams at the Academy of Fine Arts, but failed the entrance exam. The following year brought the largest number of his drawings and returned to academia, but the institution, noting, this time not even admitted for examination.
It was then, in late 1908, when he came in contact with anti-Semitism by Liebenfels theories. They hinted at the germ of his later ideology: Liebenfels called Arioheroiker ('Aryan heroes') to the blonde race lords and faced lesser beings, the Affing ('monkey'), concluding that the need for decimate the latter was biologically justified, as do away with the runt of miscegenation.
Throughout the following year Hitler burned quantities of these racist pamphlets. And then lived miserably, had exhausted his inheritance and did not work, was staying at a hostel for homeless men and starved in their wanderings through Vienna. Also, did not show repeated calls to military service, and twenty-four-age at which stopped the obligation to pay-up-and crossed the German border, settling in Munich.
The Germ
The Austrian authorities about his whereabouts and forced him to appear at the consulate in Munich and then to the committee recruitment of Salzburg. There, given their weak physical condition, was declared unfit and useless for the military. On August 16, 1914 he volunteered for the German army: the First World War had begun. Wounded and gassed at the front was decorated with iron crosses paths military merit second-and first-class, the latter very rare honor for a sergeant, as he was.
Hitler hailed by the crowd
In March the following year he left the military to devote himself entirely to his political activity was when the party National Socialist added to its name, becoming the National socialistic Deutsche Arbeia-terpartei (whose abbreviation word Nazi arise), and Hitler became his chief of propaganda. As such managed to recruit outstanding people of Munich society, essentially nationalist and to a lesser extent, to workers, whose numbers were declining as the NSDAP became great, and he was done with the presidency, after eliminating Drexler.
In November 1923, following the example of Mussolini in Italy, attempted a coup, known as the putsch of 1923. The two leaders of the putsch, Hitler and Ludendorff, were arrested and tried, his flop earned him a sentence of five years imprisonment, of which only served nine months because of pressure from their comrades. That stay at Landsberg Prison came the first edition of Mein Kampf, dictated to Rudolf Hess.
Hitler and Ludendorff, stars of the putsch
The economic crisis of 1929 allowed the Nazi party a more than considerable. In 1932 he submitted to the presidential election, and though he was defeated, won thirteen million and a half votes. In January 1933 foreign office with the conservative Von Papen . Hitler dissolved parliament, launched a campaign funded by the magnates of the Ruhr (Von Thyssen, Otto Wolff, Voegele) marked by the violence of the Schutz Staffel, the SS, the military police of the Nazi party, and the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin Feb. 27, actually he used in his favor attributing the authorship of communist subversion and given standing to institute a state of emergency.
Were the necessary steps to eliminate their opponents? First enacted a law to restore vaguely "career performance", but actually served to purge the Jews and Marxists in government services and in general anyone who would secure a position coveted by the new Nazi leaders. After his first meeting with Mussolini, on June 14, 1934 in Venice, head of Hitler and National Socialism (Goebbels, Goring, Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler) got rid of his once prized Ernst Rohm and other opponents of the regime: Gregor Strasser, Schleicher , Kahr, head of a hundred, all executed at close range in what was called "Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1934). Von Papen was spared from burning because of the protection of Marshal von Hindenburg, Reich President yet, but just in case was ready to resign from his position as deputy foreign minister, went to Vienna as ambassador and later continued to serve Hitler in Ankara .
With Marshal Von Hindenburg
On August 2, 1934 died on old Paul von Hindenburg, president of the Reich, and Hitler, thanks to a law enacted at the same moment he became supreme head of state, unifying the two ministries (State Chancellery) and army swore allegiance to "the Fuhrer and Chancellor Adolf Hitler. " At that time the SS had more than one hundred thousand men led by a former farmer fan, according to some, exceeded the temerity to own Führer, Himmler.
The Third Reich
Under the feint of devotion to duty and Prussian jargon, the new state reflecting the characteristics of his creator: effective, but messy, energetic and centralized. Hitler was faithful to its customs Vienna: rose at twelve, and covered by a large number of private secretaries to ministerial level filtering to its visitors, who received only wanted and only for a couple of minutes. Their vitality appeared overnight, when your terror of loneliness led him to maintain extensive monologues until dawn.There were no meetings of government. The laws were enacted by his terse orders and later only be satisfied with a whimsical observation. Their unconditional scoring all spontaneous occurrences and transmitted to the nation as orders of the Fuehrer. There is an anecdote in this connection that, well founded or not, it certainly illustrative: Hitler said to his companions, opposite the church of San Mateo in Munich, next time do not want to see that pile of stones. He was referring to a pile of paving stones that were stacked near the entrance, but his observation is interpreted as an allusion to the church and it is demolished without next day.
Well functioning governance mechanisms of a nation of seventy million people, and yet, worked, thanks to his intuition, his smell, his choice systematic solutions. Its social policy surti an extraordinary effect on the masses . Works ordered, he said, opposed on the "theoretical socialism" the "socialism of the facts' loans' marriage 'that drove the creation of new families, protection and rest for mothers of children mass mailing (370,000 the first year ) to summer camps, nurseries, kindergartens, works with such strange names as "winter relief ', ' home ',' strength through joy 'and campaigns with titles like" good light "," green areas in the Enterprise "," popular education "," leisure department, "or" beauty work ", all designed with a strategic vision and for a people out of poverty.
Meanwhile, Himmler closeted half a million people in the twenty golf hundred and sixty concentration and labor camps, and that does not include the millions of Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, suspected subversives Semitism and passed through camps and perished in gas chambers or were killed by the job. First clandestinely, then openly, extermination meet the objectives set out in Mein Kampf. And foreign policy, like Mussolini, Hitler helped Franco in their fight against the republic. Then camouflaged under the name of "fight against Bolshevism, " the alliance with the dictators. By joining Japan, could threaten the rear of the Soviet Union, with France, were his greatest threats.
Hitler and Mussolini
At the end of 1937 decided to collect all German speaking countries before the Western powers had just reset. To the alarm of the more conservative wing of the army, hostile to the SS, got rid of Blomberg, von Neurath and removed the commander of the Wehrmacht, Von Fritsch, accusing him of homosexual, and the chief of staff Beck, assuming he command.
Insurance Duce's accession in March 1938 he seized Austria. In September, with the fear of war in their favor and anti-Western, won the signing of the Munich Agreement, which won a quarter of Czechoslovakia . On March 15, 1939, and organized the Slovak secession, put under his wing occupied Bohemia-Moravia and Memel. Beginning in April called for the German districts of Poland, strengthened its alliance with Italy by the Pact of Steel May 22 and signed the Neutrality Pact between Germany and Soviet. On September 1, invaded Poland, triggering World War II.
Goodbye to Berlin
Hitler's dominance soon spread throughout Europe. On June 22, 1941 attacked the Soviet Union from Moscow failure led him to make himself the command of the army. Even in late 1942 his company was successful. That year had already been announced, though veiled the Final Solution to the Jewish question ", and succeeded the mass murder of Jews throughout Europe. In Poland, just to build new camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec. Including Russian Jews, less pessimistic calculations estimate the victims in more than four million.On September 10 he had achieved the maximum expansion of the Germans in the Soviet Union. War was stagnant and forced opponents to defend Germany. In November the Allied forces landed in Morocco and Algeria and in January 1943 the Anglo-American Casablanca Conference unconditional capitulation. A month later, the German army must surrender at Stalingrad. Goebbels then declared "total war. "
During the following months, however, the German power was waning overwhelmed by different events. In April and May rebelled resistance in the Warsaw ghetto and the Afrika Korps, Italian-Germany surrendered in Tunisia. In July, the allies entered the phase of massive bombing of Hamburg and destroyed much of the city, the 10th the British and Americans landed in Sicily and 25 fell Mussolini. Italy then declared war on Germany. On December 1, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at the Teheran Conference, suggested the desirability of dismembering Germany. In June 1944 the Allies landed in Normandy.
After the attack in Rastenburg (July 1944)
Hitler, harassed, has also had an attempted coup by a group of officers when he was at his headquarters in Rustenburg (East Prussia) and was slightly injured. In retaliation, did execute at least two hundred tough political-military elite, and Kluge and Rommel committed suicide. On September 25, appealed to the people's forces as a last attempt to protect "the empire. " Worn by the defeats, it was just mentally ill. However, still believed in the triumph by the secret weapons in preparation and even oversaw the last German offensive in the Ardennes. He then returned to the bunker of the chancellery.
At dawn on April 29 ordered that he appear before a civil registrar and contracted liaison with Eva Braun, his "faithful student" he had known when he was employed by the store Hoffmann, his photographer, in 1932, just months after his first love, Geli Raubal, the daughter of his brother, committed suicide in Hitler's private home in Munich. Hitler and Eva Braun had already planned to kill themselves when they decided their marriage. The Fuehrer had received a few hours ago the news of the execution of Benito Mussolini in front of the Lake Como then ordered that poison Blondi, his German shepherd. Issued at the end of the ceremony naming the political testament Admiral Doenitz as his successor . The next day, about three in the afternoon we heard two shots: Hitler and Eva Braun were dead.
Hitler towards the end of war
As the two bodies were consumed by flames in the garden of the bunker, Bormann radioed to Donitz Hitler had appointed him his successor, but concealed the death of the Fuhrer still twenty-four hours. During that time, he and Goebbels tried a new negotiation with the Soviets, but it was a futile effort. Then again telegraphed to Donitz informing death. The news came on the radio on 1 May with Wagner and Bruckner background, suggesting that the Fuhrer was a hero who had fallen fighting to the end against Bolshevism. That night they held a mass flight and there were many who managed to escape from Berlin. Goebbels preferred to poison your children, then killed his wife shot and killed himself with one stone. On May 7, 1945 signed the surrender at Reims and was repeated on day 9 the signing in Berlin. That same day suspension of all hostilities in the European fronts. The Third Reich had survived its creator exactly seven days.
