We explain who Adolf Hitler was and what his life was like from his childhood. Furthermore, the general characteristics and ideals of him that he followed.
They called Hitler “the Führer” which means boss or leader in German.
Who was Adolf Hitler?
Adolf Hitler was a military man and politician of Austrian origin who led Nazism in Germany, was appointed German chancellor in 1933 and was one of the main political protagonists of the Second World War (1939-1945). He was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn (at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
He was a frustrated painter and dedicated his life to politics. Although he never had children, he maintained a relationship and married Eva Braun, twenty-three years his junior. They called him “the Führer”, which means boss or leader in German..
In his early days as a soldier he participated in the First World War (1914-1918), where he obtained the rank of corporal. He was very critical of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which imposed severe war reparations on Germany, and He led the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as the Nazi Party..
Hitler wanted to establish absolute hegemony of Germany over Europe. This was one of the axes of his political-military activity, which was based on the idea of the superiority of the “Aryan race” and caused the outbreak of World War II and the killing of millions of people (especially European Jews) in extermination camps.
Adolf Hitler He committed suicide with Eva Braun on April 30, 1945 in their Berlin bunker, while Soviet troops entered the capital. and Germany’s defeat in World War II was imminent. Since then, some rumors spread the idea that Hitler had not died and had escaped to some unknown destination.
However, available reports indicate that the bodies of Hitler and Braun were cremated and buried, and that in 1970 the Soviets exhumed and cremated the remains again, then dumped the ashes into a river.
The early years of Adolf Hitler
Hitler’s childhood and adolescence
Hitler tried to enter the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna but was rejected.
hitler Born in a village in Upper Austriavery close to the border with Germany. He was the fourth son of Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl, who was in turn Alois’s third wife. In his adulthood, Adolf Hitler commented that his father used to spank him as a child. It is believed that Alois had alcohol problems.
The Hitler family used to move periodically. Adolf was a good student in elementary school, but when he reached sixth grade he had to repeat the year. The pan-Germanic ideas of his history teacherLeopold Pötsch, influenced his later ideologyAt the age of sixteen, Hitler left secondary school without obtaining a degree.
Subsequently He tried to enter the Academy of Fine Arts in Viennabecause he wanted to devote himself to painting, but was rejected due to “lack of talent”. During his stay in Vienna, his political and military ideas, as well as his anti-Semitism, shaped Hitler’s future personality.
He did not do military service at the age of 21 because he did not want to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Empire alongside Jewish conscripts. At the age of 24 he received the inheritance left to him by his father, who died in 1903., and moved to Munich (Germany). In January 1914 the Austrian authorities found him and He was forced to report for military service but was finally declared unfit..
Hitler in World War I
Social instability and fear of the advance of communism brought more support to Hitler.
hitler He participated in the First World War as a volunteer in the Bavarian regiment of the German army. In 1916 He was wounded in the leg and obtained the rank of corporal. Additionally, throughout the war he twice earned the Iron Cross, a decoration awarded for military merit.
In October 1918 he suffered temporary blindness from a mustard gas attack and, when Germany lost the war on November 11, 1918, Hitler was dejected and, according to his own testimony, he had a second episode of temporary blindness.
In 1919, the German government of the Weimar Republic was forced to sign with the victorious powers the Treaty of Versailles, by which He held Germany responsible for the war and imposed costly war reparations. Hitler shared the critical opinion of many Germans about the Treaty of Versailles, which they called the “diktat” (the imposition), and During the interwar period he accused the government and social democratic politicians of having betrayed the German people..
After the end of the First World War, Germany was in a situation of great political and social instability.In addition to economic difficulties, strikes and uprisings (such as the one led by the Spartacist League in 1919) fueled the idea of a communist threat among nationalist sectors.
Hitler’s beginnings in politics
The first political participation of hitler it was like spy within his own armywhere he had to expose his comrades who had collaborated with the Soviet government when the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic was formed in 1919.
Hitler later joined the German Workers’ Party (DAP), which had a nationalist and anti-communist ideology. A year later, in 1920, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), also known as the Nazi Party. Hitler became leader of the party in 1921.
In November 1923, Hitler led the “Munich putsch”a coup that failed and took him to prison. There he began writing his book My struggle (1925), in which he organized his political ideas and expressed his anti-Semitic thoughts.
In My struggle Hitler also developed his vision of German foreign policy.The alliance with the United Kingdom, whose empire he saw as a symbol of the superiority of the Germanic race, and with Italy, where Benito Mussolini ruled, whom he admired, would serve to confront Germany’s traditional enemy: France. Large territories of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (USSR) would serve as expansion territory or Life space (“living space”) to the German people.
Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany
The Great Depression and Hitler’s rise to power
Hitler convinced the majority of Germans that he was the savior of the nation.
Hitler’s political rise came during the Great Depression which began in 1929 in the United States and affected most of the world’s economies during the 1930s. The economic crisis caused Germany problems in accessing American loans and led to rising unemployment.
The difficult economic situation and The fear in some sectors of the population of the growth of communism allowed Hitler to gain followers in society, politics and the armed forces. He also had relations with wealthy individuals who financed his party in the expectation of Germany’s recovery.
In 1932, presidential elections were held in Germany in which Adolf Hitler ran. Paul von Hindenburg, president of Germany since 1925, ran again, despite his advanced age, because he opposed the ideas of Nazism.
Hitler came in second place and Hindenburg was re-elected, but In the legislative elections of July 1932 the Nazi Party received the most voteswhich allowed it to occupy 230 seats in the Reichstag (the German Parliament). Nazism became the main political force in Germany and, on January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by President Hindenburg.
On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building in Berlin was set on fire and Hitler’s government blamed the communists, so it convinced Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree suspending several constitutional guarantees on the grounds of the fight against communism.
In 1934 Hindenburg died and Hitler concentrated all powersupported by a large part of the German population who considered him a savior. In this way, a totalitarian regime was consolidated, commonly known as Nazi Germany or the Third Reich.
The Third Reich and the beginnings of German expansion
Since 1933 Hitler carried out an expansionist international policy destined to destroy the order imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1933 he left the League of Nations and began German rearmament.
In 1935 he reestablished compulsory military service and in 1936, after remilitarizing the Rhineland, He took part alongside Mussolini in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). This collaboration led to the formation of the Rome-Berlin Axis in October 1936, and in November 1936 Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with the Empire of Japan.
Hitler took advantage of the policy of appeasement applied by the democracies of Western Europe (mainly the United Kingdom and France) and from 1937 launched an expansionist policy. In 1938, achieved the long-awaited “Anschluss” (the German annexation of Austria) and, after the signing of the Munich Pact, the occupation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.
The subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia demonstrated its expansionist intentions and forced the United Kingdom and France to abandon their policy of appeasement.
Faced with the imminence of war, Nazi Germany signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in August 1939 (also called the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact). Days later, on September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Polandwhich precipitated the declaration of war on Germany by the United Kingdom and France and the beginning of World War II.
Political propaganda and education under Nazism
Hitler was one of the first leaders to use new media for propaganda.
During the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler in Germany, The media was intervened by the StateEverything that was published had to pass through the control of censorship bodies, so there was no freedom of the press or of opinion.
In addition to holding large events and demonstrations, Hitler was one of the first to use the new mass media (radio and cinema) for political purposes.This task was carried out by the Ministry of Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler’s most trusted Nazi leaders.
Nazi political propaganda aimed to inform the German population of the works Hitler was carrying out and to present him as the person responsible for the improvements the country was experiencing. The media were also used to spread anti-Semitic propaganda. and justify acts of discrimination and violence against the Jewish population.
Nazi ideology was also spread in the educational field, in particular, from primary school onwards.. Hitler…