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Context:
Basic information
1 Military career of Adolf Hitler
1.1 World War I
1.2 World War II
2. The Beer Hall Putsch
3. Third Reich
3.1 Economy and culture
3.2 Rearmament and new alliances
3.3 The Holocaust
Conclusion
Literature
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Basic information
The German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) led the extreme nationalist and racist Nazi party and served as chancellor-president of Germany from 1933 to 1945. Probably the most effective and powerful demagogue of the 20th century, his leadership led to the extermination of approximately 6 million Jews.
Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist movement belong among the many irrationally nationalistic, racist, and fundamentally nihilist political mass movements that sprang from the ground of political, economic, and social desperation following World War I and the deeply upsetting economic dislocations of the interwar period. Taking their name from the first such movement to gain power—Mussolini's fascism in Italy (1922)—fascist-type movements reached the peak of their popular appeal and political power in the widespread panic and mass psychosis that spread to all levels of the traditional industrial and semi-industrial societies of Europe with the world depression of the 1930s. Always deeply chauvinistic, antiliberal and antirational, and violently anti-Semitic, these movements varied in form from the outright atheistic and industrialist German national socialism to the lesser-known mystical-religious and peasant-oriented movements of eastern Europe.
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1 Military career of Adolf Hitler
1.1 World War I
Hitler served as a runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium in the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16. He experienced major combat, including the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele.
During his service at the headquarters, Hitler pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded either in the groin area or the left thigh by a shell that had exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout. Hitler spent almost two months in the Red Cross hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917.On 15 October 1918, Hitler was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk. While there, Hitler learnt of Germany's defeat, and—by his own account—on receiving this news, he suffered a second bout of blindness. Researchers have suggested his secondary blindness may have been the result of conversion disorder brought on by his shock that Germany had lost the war,[58][59] but others have dismissed this theory.
Hitler became embittered over the collapse of the war effort, and his ideological development began to firmly take shape.He described the war as "the greatest of all experiences", and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery. The experience made Hitler a passionate German patriot, and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918. Like other German nationalists, he believed in the Dolchstoßlegende (Stab-in-the-back legend), which claimed that the German army, "undefeated in the field," had been "stabbed in the back" on the home front by civilian leaders and Marxists, later dubbed the "November Criminals".
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The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany must relinquish several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland. The treaty imposed economic sanctions and levied heavy reparations on the country. Many Germans perceived the treaty—especially Article 231, which declared Germany responsible for the war—as a humiliation. The Versailles treaty and the economic, social, and political conditions in Germany after the war were later exploited by Hitler for political gains.
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1.2 World War II
As absolute ruler, Hitler also began to employ the foreign policy he had in mind to avenge the shame of the Versailles Treaty. He aligned himself with several ambitious rulers such as Benito Mussolini of Italy and Francisco Franco of Spain. His vision was to acquire Lebensraum, living space, for the German people in Eastern Europe. It began with the annexation of Austria then Czechoslovakia. During this time, he displayed utmost mastery in manipulating leaders of the western Allies; "his intuitive grasp of how far he could go with Allied leaders was uncanny", commented William Manchester. It was not until after the invasion of Poland in Sep 1939 that Britain and France finally declared war on Germany.
While Hitler played an active role in international diplomacy and war planning, he exhibited a general lack of interest in German domestic politics. After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, he rarely held cabinet meetings; in fact, he rarely visited the Chancellory in Berlin. When facing issues he did not care of resolve, he either forced different sides of an issue to resolve the issue before presenting it to him, or simply agreed with whoever presented the issue to rid himself of the work. Intentional or not, the latter created a system of government that could be described as institutional Darwinism. It was so labyrinthine and redundant that Nazi Germany resembled more like a collection of Medieval fiefdoms rather than the highly organized machine that it presented itself as.
After WW2 broke out in Europe, Hitler's racial persecutions intensified. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated minimum of 11 million people were systematically brought to concentration camps and murdered. No one could ever be sure of how many innocent Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political enemies of the Nazi Party were killed in these concentration camps; some estimates ran as high as 25 million. The Holocaust was a part of the Final Solution carried out by the Nazi Party to establish a pure German nation. "[W]e shall regain our health only by
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eliminating the Jews", as Hitler said casually and heartlessly. To convince his followers, he justified this by claiming he was doing the work of God. "I believe today I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator", he claimed in Mein Kampf, "by warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work." While he openly expressed himself as a leader of a crusade of sorts, his actual attitude toward religion was rather unfavorable. Although originally baptized Catholic, he actually did not abide by any doctrines of Christianity. He picked and chose elements of Christianity as he saw fit to aid him in his persecution of Jews and to establish his political position.
Anti-Semitism was not an uncommon thing in Europe at this time, for that the Christian majority had always looked down upon those of Jewish faith. It was especially prevalent in rural Catholic communities. However, by this time Hitler viewed the Jews as more than a mere group of annoyance as commonly felt by the ignorant; he looked at the Jews, along with Slavs and other European minorities, as sub-human creatures. This twisted belief was later merged with his own suffering from syphilis, rumored to have acquired during a rendezvous with a prostitute in Vienna who might possibly had been Jewish, which led him to strangely associate the Jewish faith with diseases. Out of the feeling that he was not able to save her mother from breast cancer, he felt that he must act as Germany's savior and rid the nation of its suffering.
To achieve this, Hitler obsessed with maintaining pure blood in German people. Like most of Hitler's artwork, this was not an original concept by him; rather, it was plagiarized by earlier writers such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He eventually became so obsessive with this concept that he had ordered to set up facilities where the supposedly superior Aryans were sent to mate. While he believed that it would maintain the pure blood of a superior race, ironically this practice also treated the blond-haired and blue-eyed Aryans like animals on breeding grounds.
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Hitler's complete disregard for humanity, then, made his complete lack of integrity so much expected. The Sep 1939 invasion of Poland was committed while a peace treaty between Germany and Poland was still in place. Then in Jun 1941, Hitler tore up the non-aggression pact that his government had sign with Russia only a few years before, and launched Operation Barbarossa into Russia. Throughout his career as the leader of Germany, he again and again turned on those who helped him to the top, purging them out of positions of power to prevent them from challenging his position.
Many believed Hitler was one-quarter Jewish or Czechoslovakian Slav. Many studies also found suppressed homosexual tendencies in Hitler. The strongest evidence came from his close working relationship with the early Nazi Party founders such as Ernst Röhm, who were homosexuals. Röhm, in fact, was a man who Hitler addressed with the affectionate German pronoun du, a practice he did not continue with anyone else after Röhm's death in 1934. His interest in the opposite sex also was rather intriguing. Although he had many female companions, he was never married. His earlier relationships showed signs of a perverse sexual nature, especially illustrated with his relationship with his niece, Geli, who was either killed (purposefully or otherwise) by Hitler in the heat of passion, or was sexually abused so harshly that she committed suicide. These theories, though none ever proven completely, painted a picture of Hitler that, if true, seemed to explain the Holocaust as a twisted extension of his own unbalanced psyche.
Another interesting observation on Hitler, which perhaps could also be described as rather unbalanced, was his hatred for Berlin as a city. He disliked Berlin the first time he stepped on its grounds. In 1928, he denounced the city as "a melting pot of everything that is evil - prostitutes, drinking houses, cinemas, Marxism, Jews, strippers, dancing, and all the vile offshoots of so-called 'modern-art'." This was not difficult to understand. Where Paris used to be known as the sin city, Berlin had now taken over the title. Prostitution was rampant, some even featured young teenage
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girls; gay bars opened up one after another, visited by financial executives and ordinary citizens alike; with the influx of Hollywood films, gangsters like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano became role models. It was not hard to see why Hitler, who believed in the purity of the German people and culture, hated Berlin. Throughout his entire reign, he never stayed in Berlin longer than what he had to, preferring to remain in his remote headquarters such as Wolfsschanze (the Wolf's Lair) in Rastenburg, East Prussia or aboard special armored trains such as Amerika. Perhaps the previously mentioned Marxist-backed munitions workers strike Hitler witnessed in 1918 had much to do with it, too: Berlin had, despite the Nazi regime, a strong liberal mentality that could never be taken away from its citizens.
In 1943, as Mussolini's government fell in Italy, Mussolini became imprisoned. To save his ally, Hitler commissioned commandos under Otto Skorzeny to rescue him; the operation was to become a great success. During the planning process, Skorzeny attended several meetings with Hitler; Skorzeny observed: "All I heard was the Führer's deep voice as he put his curt questions... What struck me at the time was the unmistakeable soft Austrian accent, even when he was emphatic." In a later meeting, Skorzeny observed how much Hitler valued his friendship with Mussolini. "There was such a warm, human inflection in his voice when he spoke of his loyalty to his Italian friend that I was deeply moved", recalled Skorzeny.
In Sep 1944, Skorzeny met with Hitler again at Wolfsschanze, and noted that the war had placed apparent strain on Hitler. Skorzeny wrote:
I was deeply shocked at the appearance of the Supreme Commander, remembering how he looked when I last saw him only the previous autumn. He stooped and seemed years older, and there was a weary tone in his deep base voice. I wondered whether he had been smitten by some insidious disease. His left hand trembled so violently that he had to steady himself with his right when he got up.
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Militarily, despite having no training in higher levels of military leadership, Hitler enjoyed micro-managing the operations. While this practice frequently disadvantaged the German military, the biggest negative consequence from this lack of delegation came from Hitler's indecisiveness during moments of need. For example, Hitler's delay in deploying armor in counterattacking the Allied Normandy invasion gave the Allies the critical hours necessary to secure the weak beachhead. During the Ardennes Offensive (The Battle of the Bulge as it was known to the western Allies) in Dec 1944, Hitler's insistence that the 6th SS Panzer Army report back to Berlin, instead of reporting to the field generals, caused the group to sit idle for the first crucial days of the offensive; it was often attributed by German commanders as the biggest reason for the German failure at the Ardennes. A major reason for this behavior was Hitler's distrustful nature toward others, especially after the 20 Jul 1944 assassination attempt on his life. German General Heinz Guderian made an observation of the post-20 Jul Hitler:
After the July 20th attempt, Hitler was a sick man. Even before the assassination attempt, he had been very nervous, and not in complete possession of his faculties. His left side trembled. His mind was not clear enough to appreciate the real situation of Germany. He was a man of energy and will; his will outweighed his sense. He hypnotized his entourage. He had a special picture of the world, and every fact had to fit in with that fancied pictured. As he believed, so the world must be. But, in fact, it was a picture of another world.
Another trait of Hitler's that made it difficult for military commanders to work with him was his stubbornness. Once an idea got into his head, it was nearly impossible for anyone to change his mind, even if his most trusted advisors recommended against it. "He always had his way," recalled Wilhelm Keitel. Whenever Hitler was at fault, he found a scapegoat so that he remained blameless. First-class officers were often sacrificed with dismissal so that he could remain the perfect leader atop the German military hierarchy.
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The assassination attempt took place at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's command quarters in East Prussia. While meeting with his commanders, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg placed a bomb under the table which Hitler stood next to, reviewing maps. The sturdy construction of the table and the design of the room saved Hitler from serious injuries. Hitler purged many military leaders and placed Nazi Party members in the positions left vacant by the purge. Many inept leaders, characterized by men like Josef Dietrich, rose to power; it was under Dietrich's command that the 6th SS Panzer Army sat un-utilized during the Battle of the Bulge.
Many researchers attributed part of Hitler's psychotic behavior to a possible dependency on various substances, including methamphetamine. He was known to have received various shots, some nutritional and some narcotic, on a regular basis. One must take in this fact with a critical eye, however, as some substances we know today as narcotic were not considered so and were widely accepted in upper social circles. Hitler, however, had most likely grown dependent on methamphetamine. During his last days in Berlin he was known to be lifeless and struggled even to stand from a seated position when his personal physician Dr. Theodore Morell did not provide him with his daily regiment of needles. Eventually, Hitler dismissed Morell for fear that the doctor might be convinced by other top Nazi officials to drug him and forcibly transport him away from Berlin as the Russians closed in on the city. Beyond the use of drugs, Hitler lived a rather healthy lifestyle, restraining from alcohol and tobacco, which was unlike the norm of the German influential figures at the time. The only weakness he had in terms of food was with sweets and desert, which he consumed in large quantities at times.
With the Russian army pressuring Berlin, Hitler committed suicide alongside of his companion Eva Braun beneath the Berlin Chancellery on 30 Apr 1945. Earlier that morning, Hitler married Braun in a small ceremony. That afternoon, at about 1530, Hitler pulled the trigger of a pistol against his right temple, while Braun swallowed cyanide. SS Oberscharfuehrer Rochus Misch, who was Hitler's
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bodyguard, courier, and telephone operator, was in Hitler's bunker during his final days, as he noted during a 2009 interview with BBC journalist Steven Rosenberg. He was working as a telephone and teletype machine operator when others in the bunker realized Hitler had pulled the trigger. He recalled:
Suddenly I heard somebody shouting to Hitler's attendant: 'Linge, Linge, I think it's happened.' They'd heard a gunshot, but I hadn't. At that moment Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, ordered everyone to be silent. Everyone began whispering. I was speaking on the telephone and I made sure I talked louder on purpose because I wanted to hear something. I didn't want it to feel like we were in a death bunker.... Then Bormann ordered Hitler's door to be opened. I saw Hitler slumped with his head on the table. Eva Braun was lying on the sofa, with her head towards him. Her knees were drawn tightly up to her chest. She was wearing a dark blue dress with white frills. I will never forget it.... I watched as they wrapped Hitler up. His legs were sticking out as they carried him past me. Someone shouted to me: 'Hurry upstairs, they're burning the boss!' I decided not to go because I had noticed that Mueller from the Gestapo was there - and he was never usually around. I said to my comrade Hentschel, the mechanic: 'Maybe we will be killed for being the last witnesses.'
Hitler left behind a battered Europe and countless millions of broken families. However, he did contribute to the growth of the future Germany as well. Among his contributions were the beginning of the German superhighways infrastructure and the creation of the Volkswagen.
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