On April 20, 1889, in the Austrian village of Braunau, Adolf Hitler was born. He is viewed as a representation of oppression and one of the most polarising authoritarian rulers in recent history.
Humble Beginnings And Unfulfilled Dreams
His strict father, Alois Hitler, was a high-ranking customs officer, while his mother, Clara, came from a poor farming family. Hitler did not do well in school, and in 1905 he abandoned his basic education. Due to his incomplete education, he could not get any regular job and he kept wandering here and there.
Though he wanted to be a famous artist, the Vienna art academy rejected him. Adolf Hitler was a popular student in primary school who demonstrated remarkable intellectual prowess and was looked up to for his leadership qualities.
However, by the time he attended secondary school, Hitler had developed into a hard worker. Faced with competition, his flight to the heights stalled and his popularity among fellow students also began to wane.
Instead of performing in class, he became more interested in dramatizing the “Boer War” with younger children. During 1880-81, this war was fought between the British Empire and two African states. He was required to retake the same subject the next year after failing his school examinations at the age of 15, but he was so discouraged by the failure that he turned around and never returned to school.
When his father died in 1903, he inherited some money and moved to Vienna to pursue painting as his favorite subject during his school days. It is both the Vienna School of Fine Arts and the School of Architecture which teach painting Institutions rejected his requests.
Many historians today concur that if Adolf Hitler had the chance to study art back then, the course of world history would be considerably different today. Hitler faced severe financial difficulties due to his failure to become an artist. His paintings sold very little and were paid very little.
His finances were so strained under these circumstances that in December 1909 he had to spend days in a shelter built for the homeless in Vienna. Then till 1913, he stayed in a government men’s hostel. It is said that these were the days when Hitler became interested in politics and learned how the common people could be drawn like blind imitators toward certain topics.
His anti-Semitic sentiments were especially influenced by the Christian Socialist Party, a nationalist group.
Joining Army As Corporal
He attained the rank of corporal while offering his combat services to the German army during World War I. He had a good reputation as a military messenger. He received various honors, including the Iron Cross First Class, for his bravery in battle. In October 1918, he was almost blinded by an attack of “mustard gas”.
He was under treatment in the hospital when Germany had to surrender in World War I. At that time, he would suffer severe bouts of despair and depression and would cry for hours over Germany’s defeat.
Joining Politics
With the end of the war, Adolf Hitler found his future uncertain. He went to the German Workers’ Party’s inaugural conference in 1919, which was thought to be a fiercely anti-Jewish nationalist organization. He had offered his services as a spy to the German army, but he felt that he was being betrayed by party leader Anton Drexler’s German.
Although he could support nationalist and anti-Semitic ideas, he did not agree with the way the party was being run, after which he began a series of passionate public addresses and soon a fiery speech. Earned his iron as a speaker.
Germany and the Allies signed the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, which made Germany responsible for starting the war and obliged it to pay for all related expenditures. Hitler began to express his feelings openly in his speeches against the Allies, considering these clauses extremely defamatory to Germany.
It soon became clear that people gathered at Workers’ Party meetings just to hear Hitler’s speeches. Listening to his rousing speeches, a state of excitement and frenzy began to set in the people, and the audience was all that. They were ready to do whatever Hitler could point to.
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Creation Of Nazi Party And Its Rebellion
Rising to prominence in the party, he became its leader by 1921, which was renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and briefly referred to as the “Nazi” Party.
After World War I, the worst economic conditions and the rapidly increasing rate of inflation increased the number of supporters of Hitler’s party. By 1923, the number of members of the Nazi Party had reached 56 thousand. Apart from these activists, there were thousands of silent supporters.
On November 8 and 9, 1923, Hitler raised the flag of rebellion against the government of Munich, Bavaria, which is known as the Nazi Beer Hall Putsch in European history. He hoped that the Bavarian government would march on Berlin together with the Nazis, but this attempt failed. Hitler was arrested and tried for treason, but for unknown reasons received a very light sentence.
He wrote the well-known book “Mein Kampf” when he was a prisoner, in which he publicly expressed his political ideas. After his release, he reorganized his party, however, until the global recession Germany was not affected either, by that time a large number of people were not attracted to the Nazi Party.
By 1930, the number of Nazi voters had reached 65 lac. In the 1932 presidential election, Hitler came second. On January 30, 1933, German President Hindenburg was forced to appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor due to his popularity. After assuming this position, Hitler began to consolidate his power.
The appointment of Nazis to government offices became common and Hitler was given emergency powers. There is no opposition left in the country and this is said to be necessary to control the emergency.
After Hindenburg died in 1934, there was no one left to challenge Hitler’s authority. Hitler then embarked on a program of mass arming of Germany’s unemployed to prepare his country for war.
Initially, Hitler’s actions were ignored by his powerful neighbors because they believed that it was not advisable to provoke Hitler and that war could only be avoided through expediency, but Hitler’s expansionist policies now started to come out of the mind and become practical.
Germany retook control of the Rhineland’s demilitarized zone in March 1936, violating the “Treaty of Versailles.”Then he added Czechoslovakia and parts of Austria to Germany.
Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy came to an agreement on September 29, 1938, in Munich, whereby the Western nations recognized Germany’s usurpation on the condition that Germany would refrain from acquiring any further European territories.
After proclaiming the non-aggression pact and alliance with Russia on August 23, 1939, and Italy on May 22, 1939, what transpired was that September 1 Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 marked the beginning of World War II.
In April 1940, Denmark and Norway were also occupied by German troops, and a month later France was also occupied. By this point, Hitler had largely controlled Western Europe, but this did not satisfy him. He was now eagerly looking towards the East.
Operation Barbarossa
On June 22, 1941, Germany launched “Operation Barbarossa” against Russia despite being an ally under a treaty. The attack turned out to be Hitler’s biggest error.
The Soviet Army used the “Scorched Earth” in this war. Adopted a strategy of retreating which meant that they would burn crops, destroy bridges and evacuate factories while retreating, slowing the advance of the German army.
Even winter set in and the icy winds of Siberia chilled the blood of the German army. Hitler’s army was unable to get reinforcements under these dire circumstances, which resulted in a significant number of German soldiers dying from the severity of the cold, malnutrition, and sickness.
As a result, a protracted retreat began in 1943. At the same time, the Western allied forces had started increasing pressure on Germany and they started attacking Germany. Even Germany had to vacate all the territories it had usurped because the very existence of Germany was threatened.
It is said that this was the period when Adolf Hitler became extremely irritable and reclusive and suffered from hysterical fits. He was assassinated several times due to his favorable policies.
End of Hitler’s Era
Despite a botched attempt to kill him, Colonel Klaas von Stauffenberg managed to escape on July 20, 1944. On April 30, 1945, as Soviet troops prepared to enter the German Chancellery in Berlin, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun however committed suicide in their fortified bunker.
They were both married last night after being together for a long time. To commit suicide, Hitler used his pistol on a canapé and Eva Braun ended her life by swallowing a capsule of cyanide poison.
Adolf Hitler created an armed group, known as the SS for short, to consolidate his rule, crush opponents, and spread terror through brutality. The name of this organization is “Schutz-Staffel”. was, which means “protector of the elite” in German.
The SS began as Adolf Hitler’s bodyguards in 1925 and eventually developed into the most formidable and feared organization in Nazi Germany. Hitler’s passionate opponent of Jews, Heinrich Himmler, was picked in 1929 to head the SS.
Those who wanted to join the organization had to prove that none of their ancestors had Jewish blood. These individuals were led to feel that they were superior to not only the Nazi Party but also all other people due to their intense commitment to Hitler and military training. A total of 2.5 million persons had joined the SS at the start of World War-II.
Their responsibilities included providing secret information, overseeing Nazi concentration camps, and the genocide of Jews. According to various traditions, the German Nazis oppressed the Jews. They broke mountains that are unprecedented in human history.
These horrific events have been called the Holocaust, and it is claimed that between 50 and 60 million Jews were systematically exterminated, although many quarters deny the authenticity of these events including the most horrific ones being suffocation in gas chambers and burning corpses.
Some critics argue that the Nazis certainly committed atrocities against the Jews, but that the death toll has been greatly exaggerated.