Hitler Essay, Research Paper
Adolf Hitler
1. At 6:30 p.m. on the evening of April 20, 1889, he was born in the small Austrian village of Braunau Am Inn just across the border from German Bavaria.
2. In 1895, at age six, two important events happened in the life of young Adolf Hitler. First, the unrestrained, carefree days he had enjoyed up to now came to an end as he entered primary school. Secondly, his father retired on a pension from the Austrian civil service. He found school easy and got good grades with little effort. He also discovered he had considerable talent for drawing, especially sketching buildings. He had the ability to look at a building, memorize the architectural details, and accurately reproduce it on paper, entirely from memory. , young Hitler had dreams of one day becoming an artist. He wanted to go to the classical school. But his father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become a civil servant and sent him to the technical high school in the city of Linz, in September 1900.
Hitler, the country boy, was lost in the city and its big school. City kids also looked down on country kids who went to the school. He was very lonely and extremely unhappy. He did quite poorly his first year, getting kept back. He would later claim he wanted to show his father he was unsuited for technical education with its emphasis on mathematics and science and thus should have been allowed to become an artist. Hitler began his second year at the high school as the oldest boy in his class since he had been kept back. This gave him the advantage over the other boys.
Once again he became a little ringleader and even led the boys in afterschool games of cowboys and Indians, becoming Old Shatterhand. He managed to get better grades in his second year, but still failed mathematics. There was also a history teacher at school, Dr. Leopold P?tsch, who touched Hitler’s imagination with exciting tales of the glory of German figures such as Bismark and Frederick the Great. For young Hitler, German Nationalism quickly became an obsession. for young Hitler, the struggle with his father was about to come to a sudden end.
In January 1903, Hitler’s father died suddenly of a lung hemorrhage, leaving his thirteen-year-old son as head of the Hitler household. For convenience, young Hitler went to live at a boys’ boarding house in Linz where he was attending the technical high school. This saved him the long daily commute from Leonding. On weekends, he went back home to his mother. In autumn 1903, when he returned to school after summer vacation, things got worse. Along with his poor grades in mathematics and French, Hitler behaved badly, knowing he was likely to fail. With no threat of discipline at home and disinterest shown by his school teachers, Hitler performed pranks and practical jokes aimed at the teachers he now disliked so much.
Among Hitler’s antics – giving contrary, insulting, argumentative answers to questions, which upset the teacher and delighted the other boys who sometimes applauded him. With those boys, he also released cockroaches in the classroom, rearranged the furniture, and organized confusion in the classroom by doing the opposite of what the teacher said.
In May of 1904, at age 15, Adolf Hitler received the Catholic Sacrament of Confirmation in the Linz Cathedral. As a young boy he once entertained the idea of becoming a priest. But by the time he was confirmed he was bored and uninterested in his faith and hardly bothered to make the appropriate responses during the religious ceremony.
Shortly after this, Hitler left the high school at Linz. He had been given a passing mark in French on a make-up exam on the condition that he not return to the school. In September 1904, he entered another high school, at Steyr, a small town 25 miles from Linz. He lived in a boarding house there, sharing a room with another boy. They sometimes amused themselves by shooting rats.
Hitler got terrible marks his first semester at the new school, failing math, German, French, and even got a poor grade for handwriting. He improved during his second semester and was told he might even graduate if he first took a special make-up exam in the fall. During the summer, however, Hitler suffered from a bleeding lung ailment, an inherited medical problem.
He regained his health and passed the exam in September 1905, and celebrated with fellow students by getting drunk. He wound up the next morning lying on the side of the road, awakened by a milkman. After that experience he swore off alcohol and never drank again.
But Hitler could not bring himself to take the final exam for his diploma. Using poor health as his excuse, he left school at age sixteen never to return. From now on he would be self taught, continuing his heavy reading habits and interpreting what he read on his own, living in his own dreamy reality and creating his own sense of truth.
3. Corporal Adolf Hitler was ordered in September 1919 to investigate a small group in Munich known as the German Workers’ Party. On September 12 He listened to a speech on economics by Gottfried Feder entitled, “How and by what means is capitalism to be eliminated?”
After the speech, Hitler began to leave when a man rose up and spoke in favor of the German State of Bavaria breaking away from Germany and forming a new South German nation with Austria.
This enraged Hitler and he spoke out forcefully against the man for the next fifteen minutes uninterrupted, to the astonishment of everyone. One of the founders of the German Workers’ Party, Anton Drexler, reportedly whispered: “…he’s got the gift of the gab. We could use him.”
After Hitler’s outburst ended, Drexler hurried to Hitler and gave him a forty-page pamphlet entitled: “My Political Awakening.” He urged Hitler to read it and also invited Hitler to come back again
He spent two days thinking it over then decided.
“…I finally came to the conviction that I had to take this step…It was the most decisive resolve of my life. From here there was and could be no turning back.”
Adolf Hitler joined the committee of the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or DAP) and thus entered politics.
4. When Hitler got up to speak, The German Workers’ Party meeting he astounded everyone with a highly emotional, at times near hysterical manner of speech making. For Hitler, it was an important moment in his young political career. He described the scene in Mein Kampf:
“I spoke for thirty minutes, and what before I had simply felt within me, without in any way knowing it, was now proved by reality: I could speak! After thirty minutes the people in the small room were electrified and the enthusiasm was first expressed by the fact that my appeal to the self-sacrifice of those present led to the donation of three hundred marks.”
Hitler took charge of party propaganda in early 1920, and also recruited young men he had known in the Army. Army Captain Ernst R?hm, a new party member, who would play a vital role in Hitler’s eventual rise to power, aided him in his recruiting efforts.
He also understood how a political party directly opposed to a possible Communist revolution could play on the fears of so many Germans and gain support.
In February of 1920, Hitler urged the German Workers’ Party to hold its first mass meeting. He met strong opposition from leading party members who thought it was premature and feared it might be disrupted by Marxists. Hitler had no fear of disruption. In fact he welcomed it, knowing it would bring his party anti-Marxist notoriety. He even had the hall decorated in red to aggravate the Marxists.
On February 24, 1920, Hitler was thrilled when he entered the large meeting hall in Munich and saw two thousand people waiting, including a large number of Communists.
A few minutes into his speech, shouting followed by open brawling between German Workers’ Party associates and disruptive Communists drowned him out. He proceeded to outline the rest of the German Workers’ Party political platform, which included; the union of all Germans in a greater German Reich. The rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, the demand for additional territories for the German people (Lebensraum), and citizenship determined by race with no Jew to be considered a German. It also covered all income not earned by work to be confiscated, a thorough reconstruction of the national education system, religious freedom except for religions which endanger the German race, and a strong central government for the execution of effective legislation.
Hitler realized one thing the movement lacked was a recognizable symbol or flag. In the summer of 1920, Hitler chose the symbol which to this day remains perhaps the most infamous in history, the swastika.
It was not something Hitler invented, but is found even in the ruins of ancient times. Hitler had seen it each day as a boy when he attended the Benedictine monastery school in Lambach, Austria. The ancient monastery was decorated with carved stones and woodwork that included several swastikas.
Hitler described the symbolism involved: “In the red we see the social idea of the movement, in the white the national idea, in the swastika the mission to struggle for the victory of Aryan man and at the same time the victory of the idea of creative work, which is eternally anti-Semitic and will always be anti-Semitic.”
The German Workers’ Party name was changed by Hitler to include the term National Socialist. Thus the full name was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) called for short, Nazi. The executive committee of the Nazi Party eventually backed down and Hitler’s demands were put to a vote of the party members. Hitler received 543 votes for, and only one against.
At the next gathering, July 29, 1921, Adolf Hitler was introduced as F?hrer of the Nazi Party, marking the first time that title was publicly used to address him.
The trial of Adolf Hitler for high treason after the Beer Hall Putsch was not the end of Hitler’s political career as many had expected. In many ways marked the true beginning.
Overnight, Hitler became a nationally and internationally known figure due to massive press coverage. A Nazi sympathizer in the Bavarian government chose the judges in this sensational trial. They allowed Hitler to use the courtroom as a propaganda platform from which he could speak at any length on his own behalf, interrupt others at any time and even cross examine witnesses.
Rather than deny the charges, Hitler admitted wanting to overthrow the government and outlined his reasons, portraying himself as a German patriot and the democratic government itself, its founders and leaders, as the real criminals.
The court’s verdict – guilty. Possible sentence – life. Hitler’s sentence – five years, eligible for parole in six months.
On April 1, 1924, Hitler was taken to the old fortress at Landsberg and given a spacious private cell with a fine view. He got gifts, was allowed to receive visitors whenever he liked and had his own private secretary, Rudolph Hess.
The Nazi Party after the Putsch became fragmented and disorganized, but Hitler had gained national influence by taking advantage of the press to make his ideas known. Now, although behind bars, Hitler was not about to stop communicating.
Pacing back and forth in his cell, he continued expressing his ideas, while Hess took down every word. The result would be the first volume of a book, Mein Kampf, outlining Hitler’s political and racial ideas in brutally intricate detail, serving both as a blueprint for future actions and as a warning to the world. (The original title Hitler chose was “Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.” His Nazi publisher knew better and shortened it to “Mein Kampf,” simply My Struggle, or My Battle.)
Throughout Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Jews as parasites, liars, dirty, crafty, sly, wily, clever, without any true culture, a sponger, a middleman, a maggot, eternal blood suckers, repulsive, unscrupulous, monsters, foreign, menace, bloodthirsty, avaricious, the destroyer of Aryan humanity, and the mortal enemy of Aryan humanity…
This conspiracy idea and the notion of ‘competition’ for world domination between Jews and Aryans would become widespread beliefs in Nazi Germany and would even be taught to school children.
This, combined with Hitler’s racial attitude toward the Jews, would be shared to varying degrees by millions of Germans and people from occupied countries, so that they either remained silent or actively participated in the Nazi effort to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
When Mein Kampf was first released in 1925 it sold poorly. People had been hoping for a juicy autobiography or a behind-the-scenes story of the Beer Hall Putsch. What they got were hundreds of pages of long, hard to follow sentences and wandering paragraphs composed by a self-educated man.
However, after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, millions of copies were sold. It was considered proper to own a copy and to give one to newlyweds, high school graduates, or to celebrate any similar occasion. But few Germans ever read it cover to cover. Although it made him rich, Hitler would later express regret that he produced Mein Kampf, considering the extent of its revelations.
A few days before Christmas, 1924, Adolf Hitler emerged a free man after nine months in prison, having learned from his mistakes. In addition to creating the book, Mein Kampf, Hitler had given considerable thought to the failed Nazi revolution (Beer Hall Putsch) of November 1923, and its implications for the future.
On February 27, the Nazis held their first big meeting since the Beer Hall Putsch at which Hitler reclaimed his position as absolute leader of the Nazi Party and patched up some of the ongoing feuds. But during his two-hour speech before four thousand cheering Nazis, Hitler got carried away and started spewing out the same old threats against the democratic republic, Marxists, and Jews.
The Nazi party itself was divided into two major political organizations.
PO I – Dedicated to undermining and overthrowing the German democratic republic.
PO II – Designed to create a government in waiting, a highly organized Nazi government within the republic that would some day replace it. PO II even had its own departments of Agriculture, Economy, Interior, Foreign Affairs, Propaganda, and Justice, along with Race and Culture.
The Nazis into thirty-four districts, or Gaue divided Germany up, with each one having a Gauleiter, or leader. The Gau itself was divided into circles, Kreise, and each one had a Kreisleiter, or circle leader. The circles were divided into Ortsgruppen, or local groups. And in the big cities, the local groups were divided along streets and blocks.
For young people, the Hitler Jugend, or Hitler Youth was formed. It was for boy’s aged 15 to 18, and was modeled after the popular Boy Scout programs. Younger boys aged 10 to 15 could join the Deutsche Jungvolk. There was an organization for girls called Bund Duetscher Maedel and for women, the Frauenschaften.
Amid all this, Adolf Hitler new it was going to be slow going for his party which had counted so many unhappy, disgruntled men among its early members. But Hitler also had a sense that the good times would not last. The German republic was living on borrowed money and borrowed time. The underlying political and racial tensions he was so keen to exploit were still there, only dormant. And when the good times were over, they would once again come looking for him. But for now he just had to wait.
above the village of Berchtesgaden in the German State of Bavaria, he found an ideal home. He spent his days gazing at inspiring, majestic mountain views and dreaming of future glory for himself and his German Reich.
Those dreams centered around asserting the supremacy of the Germanic race, acquiring more living space (Lebensraum) for the German people, and dealing harshly with Jews and Marxists.
By May of 1926, Hitler had overcome any remaining rivals within the Nazi Party and assumed the title of supreme leader (F?hrer). Ideological differences and infighting between factions of the Nazi Party were resolved by Hitler through his considerable powers of personal persuasion during closed door meetings with embattled leaders.
During these quiet years, Joseph Goebbels first came to Hitler’s attention and experienced a quick rise in the Nazi hierarchy.
He was a rarity among the Nazis, a highly educated man, with a Ph.D. in literature from Heidelberg
Hitler sent Goebbels in October 1926, to the German capital, Berlin, to be its Gauleiter. Once there, he faced the huge task of reorganizing and publicizing the largely ignored Nazi Party.
Berlin proved to be a training ground for the future Propaganda Minister.
But problems arose after Nazi storm troopers badly beat up an old pastor who heckled Goebbels during a Nazi rally. The police declared the party illegal in Berlin and eventually banned Nazi speech making throughout the entire German State of Prussia.
The ban was short-lived however. It was lifted in the spring of 1927. Hitler then came to Berlin and gave a speech before a crowd of about 5000 supporters.
On May 20, national elections were held in Germany. The Nazis had a poor showing, although Goebbels won a seat in the Reichstag. For the average German, the Nazis at this time had little appeal. Things seemed to be just fine without them. The economy was strong, inflation was under control, and people were working again.