The Rise And Fall Of Hitler

The Rise And Fall Of Hitler

The Rise and Fall of Hitler
Adolf Hitler did not come to power in the traditional revolutionary manner. He attempted to take control by force one time and failed. This landed him in prison. The second time Hitler was ready and by manipulation and lies he got himself elected to political office. By March 23, 1933 Hitler was dictator. The rise and sudden fall of Hitler had a sensational effect on people and nations around the world.
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau, Austria. His mother was Klara Hitler and father was Alois Hitler. Alois worked as a customs officer on the border crossing. Hitler’s ancestors were peasants, small independent farmers or village craftsmen. His father was the first to break away. Contrary to the impression Hitler conveyed in Mein Kampf, he was neither poor nor harshly treated. His father advanced steadily in the service, and ended the highest rank open to a civil servant of his education. He had a secure income as well as the social standing of an imperial official and when he died he left his widow and children well provided for. His mom was twenty-two years younger than his father. Hitler was a choirboy, in the Benedictine Monastery of Lambach. Hitler did not do well in school. One of the teacher in his high school classified young Hitler as notorious and willful. Adolf saw no real reason to stay in high school. He left school at age sixteen without a leaving certificate. In September 1907, Hitler left home taking with him all the money left to him by his father, who had died a few years earlier. The money would be enough for tuition and board at the art school in Vienna. Hitler applied for entrance to the school two times and was rejected both times. His artist career was over. Hitler then abandoned any thought of further education.
In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, life for him was not great there until the First World War started in 1914. While many people were frightened and sad at the thought of a world war, Hitler was delighted. He held the rank of corporal, an d in forty-seven battles he served on the Western Front as a dispatch runner, delivering messages back and forth between the front lines and the officers in the rear. Hitler was disappointed when he heard the news of Germany’s surrender. After the war Hitler was given a job guarding a post. He was later given an undercover agent job.
As part of Hitler’s job, he investigated a party called “the German Workers’ party.” He was disgusted how the group had no organization, although he was in favor of many of the party’s ideas. To follow up with his job, he joined the group to make sure they were no threat to the government. The group was severely hurting by their lack of attendance; this was mainly due to the lack of communication with the group. Hitler took hold, and made a drastic change in the publicity the group got. Hitler first succeeded in attracting over a hundred people to a meeting at which he delivered his first speech to a large audience. This meeting was a great success and subsequently in February 1920 he organized a much larger event for a crowd of nearly two thousand in the Munich Hofbrauhaus. Hitler presented a twenty-five-point program of ideas, which were to be the basis of the party. The name of the party itself was changed to the National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi for short on April 1, 1920. By 1921 Adolf Hitler had virtually secured total control of the Nazi party.
Up to November 1923 Hitler continued to build up the strength of the Nazi Party. During this time he also plotted to overthrow the German Weimar Republic by force. On November 8, 1923 Hitler led an attempt to take over the local Bavarian Government in Munich in an action that became known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” Despite initially kidnapping the Bavarian officials in the beer hall in Munich and proclaiming a new regime using their names, the coup was not successful. The officials were allowed to escape and regain control of the police and the armed forces. The coup was ended on the morning of November 9th, when armed police halted a column of three thousand SA men headed by Hitler and General Ludendorff on their way to the center of Munich. Hitler fled the scene and was later arrested and charged with treason. After his trial for treason he was sentenced to five years in Landsberg prison. During his term in prison Hitler began dictating his thoughts and philosophies to Rudolf Hess, which became the book Mein Kampf.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler divides humans into categories based on physical appearance, establishing higher and lower orders, or types of humans. At the top, according to Hitler, is the Germanic man with his fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes. Hitler refers to this type of person as an Aryan. He asserts that the Aryan is the supreme form of human or master race. In Hitler’s thinking, if there is a supreme form of human, then there must be others less than supreme or racially inferior. Hitler assigns this position to Jews and the Slavic peoples, notably the Czechs, Poles, and Russians. Hitler stated that the Aryan is culturally superior. Hitler describes the struggle for world domination as an ongoing racial, cultural, and political battle between Aryans and Jews. He outlines his thoughts in detail, accusing the Jews of conducting an international conspiracy to control world finances, controlling the press, inventing liberal democracy as well as Marxism, promoting prostitution and vice, and using culture to spread disharmony. 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 bloodsuckers, repulsive, unscrupulous, 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 shares 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. Hitler would later express regret that he produced Mein Kampf, considering the extent of its revelations. Those revelations concerning the nature of his character and his blueprint of Germany’s future served as a warning to the world. A warning that was mostly ignored.
Hitler was released from Landsberg prison in December 1924 after serving only six months of his sentence. At that time the government banned the Nazi Party and its associated newspapers and Hitler himself was forbidden from making public speeches. The support for National Socialism was waning throughout Germany; their voting figures in elections fell from almost two million in 1924 to 810,000 by 1928. At the same time, Hitler succeeded in increasing the party membership and developed the organization of the party throughout Germany with the help of Gregor Strasser who was responsible for the organization of the Nazi Party in northern Germany.
The collapse of the Wall St. stock exchange in 1929 led to a worldwide recession, which hit Germany especially hard. All loans to Germany from foreign countries dried up, German industrial production slumped and millions were made unemployed. The Great Depression began and German families were cast into poverty and deep misery, and they began looking for a solution, any solution. These conditions were beneficial to Hitler and his Nazi campaigning. By July of the following year Chancellor Bruening, without a parliamentary majority in the Reichstag, was unable to pass a new finance bill and was forced to ask President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call for new elections for the coming September. Hitler and the Nazis sprang into action. Hitler campaigned hard for the Nazi candidates, promising the public a way out of their hardship. When the results of the election were announced, the Nazi Party had won 6.4 million votes. Overnight the Nazi party went from he smallest to the second largest party in Germany.
After the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis began a systematic takeover of the state governments throughout Germany, ending a centuries old tradition of local political independence. Armed SA and SS men barged into local government offices using the state of emergency decree as a pretext to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners. Political enemies were arrested by the thousands and put in hastily constructed holding pens. Old army barracks and abandoned factories were used as prisons. Once inside, prisoners were subjected to military style drills and harsh discipline. They were often beaten and sometimes even tortured to death. This was the very beginning of the Nazi concentration camp system. Adolf Hitler’s goal of a legally established dictatorship was now within reach. He needed to get and Enabling Act passed by the Reichstag. On March 23, the newly elected Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to vote on the Enabling Act. The vote was taken, 441 for and only 84 against. Democracy was ended in Germany, and Hitler became dictator legally.
For the first time, Adolf Hitler turned his attention to the driving force, which had propelled him into politics in the first place, his hatred of the Jews. Hitler said, “What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe”(Hitler 214). He wanted to make sure that Jewish people and really anyone other than Aryans would be wiped out. This began with a boycott on April 1, 1933, and would end years later in the greatest tragedy in all of human history.
During the years after Hitler took control he set about the “Nazification” of Germany and its release from the armament restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. Censorship covered all aspects of life including the press, films, radio, books, and art. The churches were persecuted and ministers who preached non-Nazi doctrine were frequently arrested and carted off to concentration camps. The Jewish population was increasingly persecuted and ostracized form society. Under the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 Jews were no longer considered to be German Citizens and therefore no longer had any legal rights. Jews were no longer allowed to hold public office, not allowed to work in the civil service, the media, farming, teaching, the stock exchange and eventually barred from practicing law or medicine. Hitler geared the German economy towards war.
Hitler ordered the army to be tripled in size, from the 100,000 man Versailles Treaty limit, to 300,000 men by October of 1934. This was initially ordered to be carried out under the utmost secrecy. The chief of the navy was given orders to begin the construction of large warships, way above the maximum size decreed by the Versailles Treaty. The construction of submarines, also forbidden by the Treaty, had already begun secretly by building parts in foreign dockyards ready for assembly. Hitler was increasing the strength of the armed forces, and at the same time said he was going to follow the clauses of the Versailles Treaty.
This was not going to last. Hitler began to lose World War II. The truth about him was coming out. Feeling that all was lost, Hitler shot himself on April 30, 1945. By orders formally given by him before his death, SS officers immersed Hitler’s body in gasoline and burned it in the garden of the Chancellery. Soon after the suicide of Hitler, the German forces surrendered. The war was officially over; however the world was only beginning to realize the extent of its horror. Hitler caused the unnecessary death of so many, leaving people and nations around the world to pick up the pieces and deal with the effects.
The Rise and Fall of Hitler
Adolf Hitler did not come to power in the traditional revolutionary manner. He attempted to take control by force one time and failed. This landed him in prison. The second time Hitler was ready and by manipulation and lies he got himself elected to political office. By March 23, 1933 Hitler was dictator. The rise and sudden fall of Hitler had a sensational effect on people and nations around the world.
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau, Austria. His mother was Klara Hitler and father was Alois Hitler. Alois worked as a customs officer on the border crossing. Hitler’s ancestors were peasants, small independent farmers or village craftsmen. His father was the first to break away. Contrary to the impression Hitler conveyed in Mein Kampf, he was neither poor nor harshly treated. His father advanced steadily in the service, and ended the highest rank open to a civil servant of his education. He had a secure income as well as the social standing of an imperial official and when he died he left his widow and children well provided for. His mom was twenty-two years younger than his father. Hitler was a choirboy, in the Benedictine Monastery of Lambach. Hitler did not do well in school. One of the teacher in his high school classified young Hitler as notorious and willful. Adolf saw no real reason to stay in high school. He left school at age sixteen without a leaving certificate. In September 1907, Hitler left home taking with him all the money left to him by his father, who had died a few years earlier. The money would be enough for tuition and board at the art school in Vienna. Hitler applied for entrance to the school two times and was rejected both times. His artist career was over. Hitler then abandoned any thought of further education.
In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, life for him was not great there until the First World War started in 1914. While many people were frightened and sad at the thought of a world war, Hitler was delighted. He held the rank of corporal, an d in forty-seven battles he served on the Western Front as a dispatch runner, delivering messages back and forth between the front lines and the officers in the rear. Hitler was disappointed when he heard the news of Germany’s surrender. After the war Hitler was given a job guarding a post. He was later given an undercover agent job.
As part of Hitler’s job, he investigated a party called “the German Workers’ party.” He was disgusted how the group had no organization, although he was in favor of many of the party’s ideas. To follow up with his job, he joined the group to make sure they were no threat to the government. The group was severely hurting by their lack of attendance; this was mainly due to the lack of communication with the group. Hitler took hold, and made a drastic change in the publicity the group got. Hitler first succeeded in attracting over a hundred people to a meeting at which he delivered his first speech to a large audience. This meeting was a great success and subsequently in February 1920 he organized a much larger event for a crowd of nearly two thousand in the Munich Hofbrauhaus. Hitler presented a twenty-five-point program of ideas, which were to be the basis of the party. The name of the party itself was changed to the National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi for short on April 1, 1920. By 1921 Adolf Hitler had virtually secured total control of the Nazi party.
Up to November 1923 Hitler continued to build up the strength of the Nazi Party. During this time he also plotted to overthrow the German Weimar Republic by force. On November 8, 1923 Hitler led an attempt to take over the local Bavarian Government in Munich in an action that became known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” Despite initially kidnapping the Bavarian officials in the beer hall in Munich and proclaiming a new regime using their names, the coup was not successful. The officials were allowed to escape and regain control of the police and the armed forces. The coup was ended on the morning of November 9th, when armed police halted a column of three thousand SA men headed by Hitler and General Ludendorff on their way to the center of Munich. Hitler fled the scene and was later arrested and charged with treason. After his trial for treason he was sentenced to five years in Landsberg prison. During his term in prison Hitler began dictating his thoughts and philosophies to Rudolf Hess, which became the book Mein Kampf.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler divides humans into categories based on physical appearance, establishing higher and lower orders, or types of humans. At the top, according to Hitler, is the Germanic man with his fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes. Hitler refers to this type of person as an Aryan. He asserts that the Aryan is the supreme form of human or master race. In Hitler’s thinking, if there is a supreme form of human, then there must be others less than supreme or racially inferior. Hitler assigns this position to Jews and the Slavic peoples, notably the Czechs, Poles, and Russians. Hitler stated that the Aryan is culturally superior. Hitler describes the struggle for world domination as an ongoing racial, cultural, and political battle between Aryans and Jews. He outlines his thoughts in detail, accusing the Jews of conducting an international conspiracy to control world finances, controlling the press, inventing liberal democracy as well as Marxism, promoting prostitution and vice, and using culture to spread disharmony. 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 bloodsuckers, repulsive, unscrupulous, 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 shares 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. Hitler would later express regret that he produced Mein Kampf, considering the extent of its revelations. Those revelations concerning the nature of his character and his blueprint of Germany’s future served as a warning to the world. A warning that was mostly ignored.
Hitler was released from Landsberg prison in December 1924 after serving only six months of his sentence. At that time the government banned the Nazi Party and its associated newspapers and Hitler himself was forbidden from making public speeches. The support for National Socialism was waning throughout Germany; their voting figures in elections fell from almost two million in 1924 to 810,000 by 1928. At the same time, Hitler succeeded in increasing the party membership and developed the organization of the party throughout Germany with the help of Gregor Strasser who was responsible for the organization of the Nazi Party in northern Germany.
The collapse of the Wall St. stock exchange in 1929 led to a worldwide recession, which hit Germany especially hard. All loans to Germany from foreign countries dried up, German industrial production slumped and millions were made unemployed. The Great Depression began and German families were cast into poverty and deep misery, and they began looking for a solution, any solution. These conditions were beneficial to Hitler and his Nazi campaigning. By July of the following year Chancellor Bruening, without a parliamentary majority in the Reichstag, was unable to pass a new finance bill and was forced to ask President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call for new elections for the coming September. Hitler and the Nazis sprang into action. Hitler campaigned hard for the Nazi candidates, promising the public a way out of their hardship. When the results of the election were announced, the Nazi Party had won 6.4 million votes. Overnight the Nazi party went from he smallest to the second largest party in Germany.
After the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis began a systematic takeover of the state governments throughout Germany, ending a centuries old tradition of local political independence. Armed SA and SS men barged into local government offices using the state of emergency decree as a pretext to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners. Political enemies were arrested by the thousands and put in hastily constructed holding pens. Old army barracks and abandoned factories were used as prisons. Once inside, prisoners were subjected to military style drills and harsh discipline. They were often beaten and sometimes even tortured to death. This was the very beginning of the Nazi concentration camp system. Adolf Hitler’s goal of a legally established dictatorship was now within reach. He needed to get and Enabling Act passed by the Reichstag. On March 23, the newly elected Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to vote on the Enabling Act. The vote was taken, 441 for and only 84 against. Democracy was ended in Germany, and Hitler became dictator legally.
For the first time, Adolf Hitler turned his attention to the driving force, which had propelled him into politics in the first place, his hatred of the Jews. Hitler said, “What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe”(Hitler 214). He wanted to make sure that Jewish people and really anyone other than Aryans would be wiped out. This began with a boycott on April 1, 1933, and would end years later in the greatest tragedy in all of human history.
During the years after Hitler took control he set about the “Nazification” of Germany and its release from the armament restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. Censorship covered all aspects of life including the press, films, radio, books, and art. The churches were persecuted and ministers who preached non-Nazi doctrine were frequently arrested and carted off to concentration camps. The Jewish population was increasingly persecuted and ostracized form society. Under the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 Jews were no longer considered to be German Citizens and therefore no longer had any legal rights. Jews were no longer allowed to hold public office, not allowed to work in the civil service, the media, farming, teaching, the stock exchange and eventually barred from practicing law or medicine. Hitler geared the German economy towards war.
Hitler ordered the army to be tripled in size, from the 100,000 man Versailles Treaty limit, to 300,000 men by October of 1934. This was initially ordered to be carried out under the utmost secrecy. The chief of the navy was given orders to begin the construction of large warships, way above the maximum size decreed by the Versailles Treaty. The construction of submarines, also forbidden by the Treaty, had already begun secretly by building parts in foreign dockyards ready for assembly. Hitler was increasing the strength of the armed forces, and at the same time said he was going to follow the clauses of the Versailles Treaty.
This was not going to last. Hitler began to lose World War II. The truth about him was coming out. Feeling that all was lost, Hitler shot himself on April 30, 1945. By orders formally given by him before his death, SS officers immersed Hitler’s body in gasoline and burned it in the garden of the Chancellery. Soon after the suicide of Hitler, the German forces surrendered. The war was officially over; however the world was only beginning to realize the extent of its horror. Hitler caused the unnecessary death of so many, leaving people and nations around the world to pick up the pieces and deal with the effects.

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