short biography about hitler

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Adolf Hitler

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 30, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s  Nazi Party , was one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century. After serving with the German military in World War I , Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting during the Weimar Republic to rise through the ranks of the Nazi Party.

In a series of ruthless and violent actions—including the Reichstag Fire and the Night of Long Knives—Hitler took absolute power in Germany by 1933. Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of  World War II , and by 1941, Nazi forces had used “blitzkrieg” military tactics to occupy much of Europe. Hitler’s virulent  anti-Semitism  and obsessive pursuit of Aryan supremacy fueled the murder of some 6 million Jews, along with other victims of the  Holocaust . After the tide of war turned against him, Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker in April 1945.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a small Austrian town near the Austro-German frontier. After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

Not wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps as a civil servant, he began struggling in secondary school and eventually dropped out. Alois died in 1903, and Adolf pursued his dream of being an artist, though he was rejected from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.

After his mother, Klara, died in 1908, Hitler moved to Vienna, where he pieced together a living painting scenery and monuments and selling the images. Lonely, isolated and a voracious reader, Hitler became interested in politics during his years in Vienna, and developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

Military Career of Adolf Hitler

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, in the German state of Bavaria. When World War I broke out the following summer, he successfully petitioned the Bavarian king to be allowed to volunteer in a reserve infantry regiment.

Deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, Hitler served throughout the Great War and won two decorations for bravery, including the rare Iron Cross First Class, which he wore to the end of his life.

Hitler was wounded twice during the conflict: He was hit in the leg during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and temporarily blinded by a British gas attack near Ypres in 1918. A month later, he was recuperating in a hospital at Pasewalk, northeast of Berlin, when news arrived of the armistice and Germany’s defeat in World War I .

Like many Germans, Hitler came to believe the country’s devastating defeat could be attributed not to the Allies, but to insufficiently patriotic “traitors” at home—a myth that would undermine the post-war Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler’s rise.

After Hitler returned to Munich in late 1918, he joined the small German Workers’ Party, which aimed to unite the interests of the working class with a strong German nationalism. His skilled oratory and charismatic energy helped propel him in the party’s ranks, and in 1920 he left the army and took charge of its propaganda efforts.

In one of Hitler’s strokes of propaganda genius, the newly renamed National Socialist German Workers Party, or  Nazi Party , adopted a version of the swastika—an ancient sacred symbol of  Hinduism , Jainism and Buddhism —as its emblem. Printed in a white circle on a red background, Hitler’s swastika would take on terrifying symbolic power in the years to come.

By the end of 1921, Hitler led the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty . Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich would join the Nazis, notably Ernst Röhm, who recruited the “strong arm” squads—known as the Sturmabteilung (SA)—which Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch 

On the evening of November 8, 1923, members of the SA and others forced their way into a large beer hall where another right-wing leader was addressing the crowd. Wielding a revolver, Hitler proclaimed the beginning of a national revolution and led marchers to the center of Munich, where they got into a gun battle with police.

Hitler fled quickly, but he and other rebel leaders were later arrested. Even though it failed spectacularly, the Beer Hall Putsch established Hitler as a national figure , and (in the eyes of many) a hero of right-wing nationalism.

'Mein Kampf' 

Tried for treason, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but would serve only nine months in the relative comfort of Landsberg Castle. During this period, he began to dictate the book that would become " Mein Kampf " (“My Struggle”), the first volume of which was published in 1925.

In it, Hitler expanded on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic views he had begun to develop in Vienna in his early twenties, and laid out plans for the Germany—and the world—he sought to create when he came to power.

Hitler would finish the second volume of "Mein Kampf" after his release, while relaxing in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden. It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler’s rise it became Germany’s best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there.

Hitler’s second book, “The Zweites Buch,” was written in 1928 and contained his thoughts on foreign policy. It was not published in his lifetime due to the poor initial sales of “Mein Kampf.” The first English translations of “The Zweites Buch” did not appear until 1962 and was published under the title “Hitler's Secret Book.” 

Obsessed with race and the idea of ethnic “purity,” Hitler saw a natural order that placed the so-called “Aryan race” at the top.

For him, the unity of the Volk (the German people) would find its truest incarnation not in democratic or parliamentary government, but in one supreme leader, or Führer.

" Mein Kampf " also addressed the need for Lebensraum (or living space): In order to fulfill its destiny, Germany should take over lands to the east that were now occupied by “inferior” Slavic peoples—including Austria, the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), Poland and Russia.

The Schutzstaffel (SS) 

By the time Hitler left prison, economic recovery had restored some popular support for the Weimar Republic, and support for right-wing causes like Nazism appeared to be waning.

Over the next few years, Hitler laid low and worked on reorganizing and reshaping the Nazi Party. He established the Hitler Youth  to organize youngsters, and created the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a more reliable alternative to the SA.

Members of the SS wore black uniforms and swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. (After 1929, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler , the SS would develop from a group of some 200 men into a force that would dominate Germany and terrorize the rest of occupied Europe during World War II .)

Hitler spent much of his time at Berchtesgaden during these years, and his half-sister, Angela Raubal, and her two daughters often joined him. After Hitler became infatuated with his beautiful blonde niece, Geli Raubal, his possessive jealousy apparently led her to commit suicide in 1931.

Devastated by the loss, Hitler would consider Geli the only true love affair of his life. He soon began a long relationship with Eva Braun , a shop assistant from Munich, but refused to marry her.

The worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 again threatened the stability of the Weimar Republic. Determined to achieve political power in order to affect his revolution, Hitler built up Nazi support among German conservatives, including army, business and industrial leaders.

The Third Reich

In 1932, Hitler ran against the war hero Paul von Hindenburg for president, and received 36.8 percent of the vote. With the government in chaos, three successive chancellors failed to maintain control, and in late January 1933 Hindenburg named the 43-year-old Hitler as chancellor, capping the stunning rise of an unlikely leader.

January 30, 1933 marked the birth of the Third Reich, or as the Nazis called it, the “Thousand-Year Reich” (after Hitler’s boast that it would endure for a millennium).

HISTORY Vault: Third Reich: The Rise

Rare and never-before-seen amateur films offer a unique perspective on the rise of Nazi Germany from Germans who experienced it. How were millions of people so vulnerable to fascism?

Reichstag Fire 

Though the Nazis never attained more than 37 percent of the vote at the height of their popularity in 1932, Hitler was able to grab absolute power in Germany largely due to divisions and inaction among the majority who opposed Nazism.

After a devastating fire at Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, in February 1933—possibly the work of a Dutch communist, though later evidence suggested Nazis set the  Reichstag fire  themselves—Hitler had an excuse to step up the political oppression and violence against his opponents.

On March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving full powers to Hitler and celebrating the union of National Socialism with the old German establishment (i.e., Hindenburg ).

That July, the government passed a law stating that the Nazi Party “constitutes the only political party in Germany,” and within months all non-Nazi parties, trade unions and other organizations had ceased to exist.

His autocratic power now secure within Germany, Hitler turned his eyes toward the rest of Europe.

In 1933, Germany was diplomatically isolated, with a weak military and hostile neighbors (France and Poland). In a famous speech in May 1933, Hitler struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, claiming Germany supported disarmament and peace.

But behind this appeasement strategy, the domination and expansion of the Volk remained Hitler’s overriding aim.

By early the following year, he had withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations and begun to militarize the nation in anticipation of his plans for territorial conquest.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 29, 1934, the infamous Night of the Long Knives , Hitler had Röhm, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and hundreds of other problematic members of his own party murdered, in particular troublesome members of the SA.

When the 86-year-old Hindenburg died on August 2, military leaders agreed to combine the presidency and chancellorship into one position, meaning Hitler would command all the armed forces of the Reich.

Persecution of Jews

On September 15, 1935, passage of the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship, and barred them from marrying or having relations with persons of “German or related blood.”

Though the Nazis attempted to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to placate the international community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics (in which German-Jewish athletes were not allowed to compete), additional decrees over the next few years disenfranchised Jews and took away their political and civil rights.

In addition to its pervasive anti-Semitism, Hitler’s government also sought to establish the cultural dominance of Nazism by burning books, forcing newspapers out of business, using radio and movies for propaganda purposes and forcing teachers throughout Germany’s educational system to join the party.

Much of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other targets occurred at the hands of the Geheime Staatspolizei (GESTAPO), or Secret State Police, an arm of the SS that expanded during this period.

Outbreak of World War II

In March 1936, against the advice of his generals, Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine.

Over the next two years, Germany concluded alliances with Italy and Japan, annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia—all essentially without resistance from Great Britain, France or the rest of the international community.

Once he confirmed the alliance with Italy in the so-called “Pact of Steel” in May 1939, Hitler then signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union . On September 1, 1939, Nazi troops invaded Poland, finally prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

Blitzkrieg 

After ordering the occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, Hitler adopted a plan proposed by one of his generals to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. The blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) attack began on May 10; Holland quickly surrendered, followed by Belgium.

German troops made it all the way to the English Channel, forcing British and French forces to evacuate en masse from Dunkirk in late May. On June 22, France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany.

Hitler had hoped to force Britain to seek peace as well, but when that failed he went ahead with his attacks on that country, followed by an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany’s alliance with Japan demanded that Hitler declare war on the United States as well.

At that point in the conflict, Hitler shifted his central strategy to focus on breaking the alliance of his main opponents (Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union) by forcing one of them to make peace with him.

Concentration Camps

Beginning in 1933, the SS had operated a network of concentration camps, including a notorious camp at Dachau , near Munich, to hold Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz -Birkenau in occupied Poland.

In addition to forced labor and mass execution, certain Jews at Auschwitz were targeted as the subjects of horrific medical experiments carried out by eugenicist Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death.” Mengele’s experiments focused on twins and exposed 3,000 child prisoners to disease, disfigurement and torture under the guise of medical research.

Though the Nazis also imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma (gypsies) and the disabled, above all they targeted Jews—some 6 million of whom were killed in German-occupied Europe by war’s end.

End of World War II

With defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad , as well as the landing of U.S. troops in North Africa by the end of 1942, the tide of the war turned against Germany.

As the conflict continued, Hitler became increasingly unwell, isolated and dependent on medications administered by his personal physician.

Several attempts were made on his life, including one that came close to succeeding in July 1944, when Col. Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that exploded during a conference at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia.

Within a few months of the successful Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces.

But after January 1945, he holed up in a bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. With Soviet forces closing in, Hitler made plans for a last-ditch resistance before finally abandoning that plan.

How Did Adolf Hitler Die?

At midnight on the night of April 28-29, Hitler married Eva Braun in the Berlin bunker. After dictating his political testament,  Hitler shot himself  in his suite on April 30; Braun took poison. Their bodies were burned according to Hitler’s instructions.

With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, 1945, bringing the war in Europe to a close.

In the end, Hitler’s planned “Thousand-Year Reich” lasted just over 12 years, but wreaked unfathomable destruction and devastation during that time, forever transforming the history of Germany, Europe and the world.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich iWonder – Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster, BBC . The Holocaust : A Learning Site for Students, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum .

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Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany. His fascist agenda led to World War II and the deaths of at least 11 million people, including some six million Jews.

(1889-1945)

Who Was Adolf Hitler?

Hitler’s fascist policies precipitated World War II and led to the genocide known as the Holocaust , which resulted in the deaths of some six million Jews and another five million noncombatants.

The fourth of six children, Hitler was born to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl . As a child, Hitler clashed frequently with his emotionally harsh father, who also didn't approve of his son's later interest in fine art as a career.

Following the death of his younger brother, Edmund, in 1900, Hitler became detached and introverted.

Young Hitler

Hitler showed an early interest in German nationalism, rejecting the authority of Austria-Hungary. This nationalism would become the motivating force of Hitler's life.

In 1903, Hitler’s father died suddenly. Two years later, Hitler's mother allowed her son to drop out of school. After her death in December 1907, Hitler moved to Vienna and worked as a casual laborer and watercolor painter. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts twice and was rejected both times.

Lacking money outside of an orphan's pension and funds from selling postcards, he stayed in homeless shelters. Hitler later pointed to these years as the time when he first cultivated his anti-Semitism, though there is some debate about this account.

In 1913, Hitler relocated to Munich. At the outbreak of World War I , he applied to serve in the German army. He was accepted in August 1914, though he was still an Austrian citizen.

Although Hitler spent much of his time away from the front lines (with some reports that his recollections of his time on the field were generally exaggerated), he was present at a number of significant battles and was wounded at the Battle of the Somme . He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross First Class and the Black Wound Badge.

Hitler became embittered over the collapse of the war effort. The experience reinforced his passionate German patriotism, and he was shocked by Germany's surrender in 1918. Like other German nationalists, he purportedly believed that the German army had been betrayed by civilian leaders and Marxists.

He found the Treaty of Versailles degrading, particularly the demilitarization of the Rhineland and the stipulation that Germany accepts responsibility for starting the war.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S ADOLF HITLER FACT CARD

Nazi Germany and Speeches

After World War I, Hitler returned to Munich and continued to work for the German military. As an intelligence officer, he monitored the activities of the German Workers’ Party (DAP) and adopted many of the anti-Semitic, nationalist and anti-Marxist ideas of party founder Anton Drexler.

In September 1919, Hitler joined the DAP, which changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) — often abbreviated to Nazi.

Hitler personally designed the Nazi party banner, appropriating the swastika symbol and placing it in a white circle on a red background. He soon gained notoriety for his vitriolic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, Marxists and Jews. In 1921, Hitler replaced Drexler as the Nazi party chairman.

Hitler's fervid beer-hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. Early followers included army captain Ernst Rohm, the head of the Nazi paramilitary organization the Sturmabteilung (SA), which protected meetings and frequently attacked political opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch

On November 8, 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting featuring Bavarian prime minister Gustav Kahr at a large beer hall in Munich. Hitler announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government.

After a short struggle that led to several deaths, the coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch failed. Hitler was arrested and tried for high treason and sentenced to nine months in prison.

'Mein Kampf'

During Hitler’s nine months in prison in 1924, he dictated most of the first volume of his autobiographical book and political manifesto, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), to his deputy, Rudolf Hess.

The first volume was published in 1925, and a second volume came out in 1927. It was abridged and translated into 11 languages, selling more than five million copies by 1939. A work of propaganda and falsehoods, the book laid out Hitler's plans for transforming German society into one based on race.

In the first volume, Hitler shared his Anti-Semitic, pro-Aryan worldview along with his sense of “betrayal” at the outcome of World War I, calling for revenge against France and expansion eastward into Russia.

The second volume outlined his plan to gain and maintain power. While often illogical and full of grammatical errors, Mein Kampf was provocative and subversive, making it appealing to the many Germans who felt displaced at the end of World War I.

Rise to Power

With millions unemployed, the Great Depression in Germany provided a political opportunity for Hitler. Germans were ambivalent to the parliamentary republic and increasingly open to extremist options. In 1932, Hitler ran against 84-year-old Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency.

Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, garnering more than 36 percent of the vote in the final count. The results established Hitler as a strong force in German politics. Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor in order to promote political balance.

Hitler as Führer

Hitler used his position as chancellor to form a de facto legal dictatorship. The Reichstag Fire Decree, announced after a suspicious fire at Germany's parliament building, suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial.

Hitler also engineered the passage of the Enabling Act, which gave his cabinet full legislative powers for a period of four years and allowed for deviations from the constitution.

Anointing himself as Führer ("leader") and having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his political allies embarked on a systematic suppression of the remaining political opposition.

By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated into disbanding. On July 14, 1933, Hitler's Nazi Party was declared the only legal political party in Germany. In October of that year, Hitler ordered Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations .

Night of the Long Knives

Military opposition was also punished. The demands of the SA for more political and military power led to the infamous Night of the Long Knives , a series of assassinations that took place from June 30 to July 2, 1934.

Rohm, a perceived rival, and other SA leaders, along with a number of Hitler's political enemies, were hunted down and murdered at locations across Germany.

The day before Hindenburg's death in August 1934, the cabinet had enacted a law abolishing the office of president, combining its powers with those of the chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government and was formally named leader and chancellor. As the undisputed head of state, Hitler became supreme commander of the armed forces.

Hitler the Vegetarian

Hitler’s self-imposed dietary restrictions towards the end of his life included abstinence from alcohol and meat.

Fueled by fanaticism over what he believed was a superior Aryan race, he encouraged Germans to keep their bodies pure of any intoxicating or unclean substances and promoted anti-smoking campaigns across the country.

Hitler’s Laws and Regulations Against Jews

From 1933 until the start of the war in 1939, Hitler and his Nazi regime instituted hundreds of laws and regulations to restrict and exclude Jews in society. These anti-Semitic laws were issued throughout all levels of government, making good on the Nazis’ pledge to persecute Jews.

On April 1, 1933, Hitler implemented a national boycott of Jewish businesses. This was followed by the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of April 7, 1933, which excluded Jews from state service.

The law was a Nazi implementation of the Aryan Paragraph, which called for the exclusion of Jews and non-Aryans from organizations, employment and eventually all aspects of public life.

Additional legislation restricted the number of Jewish students at schools and universities, limited Jews working in medical and legal professions, and revoked the licenses of Jewish tax consultants.

The Main Office for Press and Propaganda of the German Student Union also called for "Action Against the Un-German Spirit,” prompting students to burn more than 25,000 “Un-German” books, ushering in an era of censorship and Nazi propaganda. By 1934, Jewish actors were forbidden from performing in film or in the theater.

On September 15, 1935, the Reichstag introduced the Nuremberg Laws, which defined a "Jew" as anyone with three or four grandparents who were Jewish, regardless of whether the person considered themselves Jewish or observed the religion.

The Nuremberg Laws also set forth the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour," which banned marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which deprived "non-Aryans" of the benefits of German citizenship.

In 1936, Hitler and his regime muted their Anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions when Germany hosted the Winter and Summer Olympic Games , in an effort to avoid criticism on the world stage and a negative impact on tourism.

After the Olympics, the Nazi persecution of Jews intensified with the continued "Aryanization" of Jewish businesses, which involved the firing of Jewish workers and takeover by non-Jewish owners. The Nazis continued to segregate Jews from German society, banning them from public school, universities, theaters, sports events and "Aryan" zones.

Jewish doctors were also barred from treating "Aryan" patients. Jews were required to carry identity cards and, in the fall of 1938, Jewish people had to have their passports stamped with a "J."

Kristallnacht

On November 9 and 10, 1938, a wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms swept Germany, Austria and parts of the Sudetenland. Nazis destroyed synagogues and vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses. Close to 100 Jews were murdered.

Called Kristallnacht , the "Night of Crystal" or the "Night of Broken Glass," referring to the broken window glass left in the wake of the destruction, it escalated the Nazi persecution of Jews to another level of brutality and violence. Almost 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps, signaling more horrors to come.

Persecution of Homosexuals and People with Disabilities

Hitler's eugenic policies also targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities, later authorizing a euthanasia program for disabled adults.

His regime also persecuted homosexuals, arresting an estimated 100,000 men from 1933 to 1945, some of whom were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. At the camps, gay prisoners were forced to wear pink triangles to identify their homosexuality, which Nazis considered a crime and a disease.

The Holocaust and Concentration Camps

Between the start of World War II, in 1939, and its end, in 1945, Nazis and their collaborators were responsible for the deaths of at least 11 million noncombatants, including about six million Jews, representing two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe.

As part of Hitler's "Final Solution," the genocide enacted by the regime would come to be known as the Holocaust.

Deaths and mass executions took place in concentration and extermination camps including Auschwitz -Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Treblinka, among many others. Other persecuted groups included Poles, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and trade unionists.

Prisoners were used as forced laborers for SS construction projects, and in some instances they were forced to build and expand concentration camps. They were subject to starvation, torture and horrific brutalities, including gruesome and painful medical experiments.

Hitler probably never visited the concentration camps and did not speak publicly about the mass killings. However, Germans documented the atrocities committed at the camps on paper and in films.

• World War II

In 1938, Hitler, along with several other European leaders, signed the Munich Pact. The treaty ceded the Sudetenland districts to Germany, reversing part of the Versailles Treaty. As a result of the summit, Hitler was named Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.

This diplomatic win only whetted his appetite for a renewed German dominance. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, sparking the beginning of World War II. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later.

In 1940 Hitler escalated his military activities, invading Norway, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium. By July, Hitler ordered bombing raids on the United Kingdom, with the goal of invasion.

Germany’s formal alliance with Japan and Italy, known collectively as the Axis powers, was agreed upon toward the end of September to deter the United States from supporting and protecting the British.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler violated the 1939 non-aggression pact with Joseph Stalin , sending a massive army of German troops into the Soviet Union . The invading force seized a huge area of Russia before Hitler temporarily halted the invasion and diverted forces to encircle Leningrad and Kiev.

The pause allowed the Red Army to regroup and conduct a counter-offensive attack, and the German advance was stopped outside Moscow in December 1941.

On December 7, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Honoring the alliance with Japan, Hitler was now at war against the Allied powers, a coalition that included Britain, the world's largest empire, led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill ; the United States, the world's greatest financial power, led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt ; and the Soviet Union, which had the world's largest army, commanded by Stalin.

Stumbling Toward Defeat

Initially hoping that he could play the Allies off of one another, Hitler's military judgment became increasingly erratic, and the Axis powers could not sustain his aggressive and expansive war.

In late 1942, German forces failed to seize the Suez Canal , leading to the loss of German control over North Africa. The German army also suffered defeats at the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-43), seen as a turning point in the war, and the Battle of Kursk (1943).

On June 6, 1944, on what would come to be known as D-Day , the Western Allied armies landed in northern France. As a result of these significant setbacks, many German officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that Hitler's continued rule would result in the destruction of the country.

Organized efforts to assassinate the dictator gained traction, and opponents came close in 1944 with the notorious July Plot , though it ultimately proved unsuccessful.

Hitler's Bunker

By early 1945, Hitler realized that Germany was going to lose the war. The Soviets had driven the German army back into Western Europe, their Red Army had surrounded Berlin and the Allies were advancing into Germany from the west.

On January 16, 1945, Hitler moved his center of command to an underground air-raid shelter near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Known as the Führerbunker, the reinforced concrete shelter had about 30 rooms spread out over some 2,700 square feet.

Hitler's bunker was furnished with framed oil paintings and upholstered furniture, fresh drinking water from a well, pumps to remove groundwater, a diesel electricity generator and other amenities.

At midnight, going into April 29, 1945, Hitler married his girlfriend, Eva Braun , in a small civil ceremony in his underground bunker. Around this time, Hitler was informed of the execution of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini . He reportedly feared the same fate could befall him.

Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, fearful of being captured by enemy troops. Hitler took a dose of cyanide and then shot himself in the head. Eva Braun is believed to have poisoned herself with cyanide at around the same time.

Their bodies were carried to a bomb crater near the Reich Chancellery, where their remains were doused with gasoline and burned. Hitler was 56 years old at the time of his death.

Berlin fell to Soviet troops on May 2, 1945. Five days later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

A 2018 analysis of the exhumed remains of Hitler's teeth and skull , secretly preserved for decades by Russian intelligence agencies, have confirmed that the Führer was killed by means of cyanide and a gunshot wound.

Hitler's political programs brought about a horribly destructive world war, leaving behind a devastated and impoverished Eastern and Central Europe, including Germany.

His policies inflicted human suffering on an unprecedented scale and resulted in the death of tens of millions of people, including more than 20 million in the Soviet Union and six million Jews in Europe.

Hitler's defeat marked the end of Germany's dominance in European history and the defeat of fascism. A new ideological global conflict, the Cold War , emerged in the aftermath of the devastating violence of World War II.

Winston Churchill

Benito Mussolini

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Joseph Stalin

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Adolf Hitler
• Birth Year: 1889
• Birth date: April 20, 1889
• Birth City: Braunau am Inn
• Birth Country: Austria
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany. His fascist agenda led to World War II and the deaths of at least 11 million people, including some six million Jews.
• World Politics
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Adolf Hitler wanted to be a painter in his youth, but his applications to obtain proper schooling were rejected.
• Hitler personally designed the Nazi party banner, appropriating the swastika symbol and placing it in a white circle on a red background.
• Hitler avoided multiple assassination attempts by chance.
• Death Year: 1945
• Death date: April 30, 1945
• Death City: Berlin
• Death Country: Germany

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Adolf Hitler Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/adolf-hitler
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 26, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
• We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was 'legal.'” (Martin Luther King Jr.)
• It is not truth that matters, but victory.
• History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.
• Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.
• All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.
• We will meet propaganda with propaganda, terror with terror, and violence with violence.
• By shrewd and constant application of propaganda, heaven can be presented to the people as hell and, vice versa, the wretchedest existence as a paradise.
• And what nonsense it is to aspire to a Heaven to which, according to the Church's own teaching, only those have entry who have made a complete failure of life on earth!
• But there's one thing I can predict to eaters of meat, that the world of the future will be vegetarian!
• Strength lies not in defense but in attack.
• I don't see much future for the Americans. In my view, it's a decayed country.
• Germany will either be a world power or will not be at all.
• I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.
• If you want to shine like sun first you have to burn like it.

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Adolf Hitler Biography

Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 to relatively humble beginnings. His early life gave few hints as to his future destiny. He was a comparative failure and something of a loner. He was twice rejected from his application to study art, and after struggling to survive in Vienna, in 1913, he moved to Munich. In his early life, he imbibed the anti-semitic feelings which were common for the times but displayed little political interest. On the outbreak of the First World

On the outbreak of the First World War, he joined the German army and got promoted to Corporal. He survived the war and in 1918 – like many other German officers – was bitterly disappointed with the perceived ‘betrayal’ of the German surrender and the harsh retribution meted out by the Versailles Treaty.

Against this backdrop of defeat and threat of turmoil within Germany, Hitler turned to politics and set up a fledgeling political party – the NSDAP (Nazi party) with its mixture of nationalistic and fascist policies.

In 1923, Hitler led his small Nazi party in an attempted seizure of power – known as the Munich beer hall putsch. The putsch failed, and Hitler was sentenced to a lenient jail sentence. It was in prison that he wrote ‘ Mein Kampf ‘ a rambling exposition of his philosophy which included his growing anti-semitic ideology and ideas of an idealised Aryan race.

“the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”

– Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf , Chapter 11.

Hitler giving speech

On his release, Hitler then turned his attentions to gaining electoral support and contesting the elections of Weimar Germany. The onset of the Great Depression provided fertile ground for his radical and extremist policies. Against a backdrop of six million unemployed people – many in Germany – felt there was a clear choice between Communism and the Nationalism of Hitler’s Nazi party. With the help of his powerful rhetoric and his own private militia, Hitler led the Nazi party to victory in the 1933 elections. He was made Chancellor and in 1934, on the death of Hindenburg, he was made the President in 1934, Hitler declared himself the supreme leader and ended all pretence to democracy.

Hitler also sought to regain territory lost in the Treaty of Versailles. This was the justification for the Anschluss with Austria and later the reclamation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. But, Hitler’s ambitions did not merely rest on regaining lost territory. He also began eyeing new territories and, in 1938, successfully gained the whole of Czechoslovakia. Anxious to avoid war, Allied leaders, such as Neville Chamberlain pursued a policy of appeasement and gave into Hitler’s demands.

“I want war. To me all means will be right. My motto is not “Don’t, whatever you do, annoy the enemy.” My motto is “Destroy him by all and any means.” I am the one who will wage the war!”

– Adolf Hitler

However, when it came to Poland, Britain and France decided to oppose Hitler’s intentions, and when Hitler invaded Poland, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany. Yet, it soon became apparent that Germany had built one of the most powerful armies ever created and were technically and tactically superior to the Allied armies.

Until the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, Hitler’s war machine appeared unstoppable. A parade of stunning military victories led to one of the most successful military conquests in history. Yet, by invading the Soviet Union, combined with the entry of the US into the war, even Hitler’s Germany had overstretched itself. Slowly the tide of war turned, and in 1944, the Soviets in the East, and the Allies in the West began their long liberation through occupied Europe to eventually meet in Berlin.

Almost until the end, Hitler retained a fantasy of gaining a last minute victory through imaginary weapons and now imaginary armies. It was not until Soviet troops were within earshot of his Bunker, that Hitler finally admitted the inevitable and committed suicide.

During the war, Hitler met with his other Nazi henchman to agree on a plan for the ‘final solution’ of the Jewish problem. This involved the systematic and complete elimination of the Jewish population. Over six million Jewish people died in various concentration and extermination camps. These camps also saw the deaths of millions of other undesirables, from Russian prisoners of war to Communists, homosexuals and Gipsies. It remains a crime of unprecedented scale and horror.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Adolf Hilter”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net , Published 1st March 2008. Last updated 17th March 2017.

Hitler: A Biography

Hitler: A Biography by Ian Kershaw at Amazon

Related pages

• Germans who resisted Hitler and the Nazis
• People who changed the World

External links

• Biography of Adolf Hitler
• Short Bio of Hitler at BBC
• Adolf Hitler at Amazon.co.uk
• Adolf Hitler at Amazon.com

Biography of Adolf Hitler, Leader of the Third Reich

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The First World War

Hitler enters politics, the beer hall putsch, president and führer, world war ii and the failure of the third reich.

• M.A., Medieval Studies, Sheffield University
• B.A., Medieval Studies, Sheffield University

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was the leader of Germany during the Third Reich (1933–1945). He was the primary instigator of both the Second World War in Europe and the mass execution of millions of people deemed to be "enemies," or inferior to the Aryan ideal. He rose from being a talentless painter to the dictator of Germany and, for a few months, emperor of much of Europe. His empire was crushed by an array of the world's strongest nations; he killed himself before he could be tried and brought to justice.

Fast Facts: Adolf Hitler

• Known For : Leading the German Nazi party and instigating World War II
• Born : April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria
• Parents : Alois Hitler and Klara Poelzl
• Died : April 30, 1945 in Berlin, Germany
• Education : Realschule in Steyr
• Published Works : Mein Kampf
• Spouse : Eva Braun
• Notable Quote : "In starting and waging a war it is not right that matters but victory."

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889 to Alois Hitler (who, as an illegitimate child, had previously used his mother’s name of Schickelgruber) and Klara Poelzl. A moody child, he grew hostile towards his father, especially once the latter had retired and the family had moved to the outskirts of Linz. Alois died in 1903 but left money to take care of the family. Adolf was close to his mother, who was highly indulgent of him, and he was deeply affected when she died in 1907. He left school at age 16 in 1905, intending to become a painter. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't a very good one.

Hitler went to Vienna in 1907 where he applied to the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts but was twice turned down. This experience further embittered the increasingly angry Hitler. He returned to Vienna again when his mother died, living first with a more successful friend (Kubizek) and then moving from hostel to hostel as a lonely, vagabond figure. He recovered to make a living selling his art cheaply as a resident in a community "Men's Home."

During this period, Hitler appears to have developed the worldview that would characterize his whole life, and which centered on hatred for Jews and Marxists. Hitler was well-placed to be influenced by the demagogy of Karl Lueger, Vienna’s deeply anti-Semitic mayor and a man who used hate to help create a party of mass support. Hitler had previously been influenced by Schonerer, an Austrian politician against liberals, socialists, Catholics, and Jews. Vienna was also highly anti-Semitic; Hitler's hate was not unusual, it was simply part of the popular mindset. What Hitler went on to do was present these ideas more successfully than ever before.

Hitler moved to Munich in 1913 and avoided Austrian military service in early 1914 by virtue of being unfit for service. However, when the First World War broke out in 1914, he joined the 16th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, serving throughout the war, mostly as a corporal after refusing promotion. He proved to be an able and brave soldier as a dispatch runner, winning the Iron Cross on two occasions (First and Second Class). He was also wounded twice, and four weeks before the war ended he suffered a gas attack that temporarily blinded and hospitalized him. It was there he learned of Germany’s surrender, which he took as a betrayal. He especially hated the Treaty of Versailles , which Germany had to sign after the war as part of the settlement.

After WWI, Hitler became convinced he was destined to help Germany, but his first move was to stay in the army for as long as possible because it paid wages, and to do so, he went along with the socialists now in charge of Germany. He was soon able to turn the tables and drew the attention of army anti-socialists, who were setting up anti-revolutionary units. In 1919, working for an army unit, he was assigned to spy on a political party of roughly 40 idealists called the German Workers Party. Instead, he joined it, swiftly rose to a position of dominance (he was chairman by 1921), and renamed it the Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). He gave the party the Swastika as a symbol and organized a personal army of "storm troopers" (the SA or Brownshirts) and bodyguards of black-shirted men, the Schutzstaffel (SS), to attack opponents. He also discovered, and used, his powerful ability for public speaking.

In November 1923, Hitler organized Bavarian nationalists under a figurehead of General Ludendorff into a coup (or "putsch"). They declared their new government in a beer hall in Munich; a group of 3,000 marched through the streets, but they were met by police who opened fire, killing 16.

Hitler was arrested in1924 and used his trial to spread his name and his ideas widely. He was sentenced to just five years in prison, a sentence often described as a sign of tacit agreement with his views.

Hitler served only nine months in prison, during which he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a book outlining his theories on race, Germany, and Jews. It sold five million copies by 1939. Only then, in prison, did Hitler come to believe he was destined to be a leader. The man who thought he was paving the way for a German leader of genius now thought he was the genius who could take and use power.

After the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler resolved to seek power through subverting the Weimar government system, and he carefully rebuilt the NSDAP, or Nazi, party, allying with future key figures like Goering and propaganda mastermind Goebbels. Over time, he expanded the party’s support, partly by exploiting the fears of socialists and partly by appealing to everyone who felt their economic livelihood threatened by the depression of the 1930s.

Over time, he gained the interest of big business, the press, and the middle classes. Nazi votes jumped to 107 seats in the Reichstag in 1930. It's important to stress that Hitler wasn't a socialist . The Nazi party that he was molding was based on race, not the idea of socialism, but it took a good few years for Hitler to grow powerful enough to expel the socialists from the party. Hitler didn't take power in Germany overnight and took years for him to take full power of his party overnight.

In 1932, Hitler acquired German citizenship and ran for president, coming in second to von Hindenburg . Later that year, the Nazi party acquired 230 seats in the Reichstag, making them the largest party in Germany. At first, Hitler was refused the office of Chancellor by a president who distrusted him, and a continued snub might have seen Hitler cast out as his support failed. However, factional divisions at the top of government meant that, thanks to conservative politicians believing they could control Hitler, he was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Hitler moved with great speed to isolate and expel opponents from power, shutting trade unions and removing communists, conservatives, and Jews.

Later that year, Hitler perfectly exploited an act of arson on the Reichstag (which some believe the Nazis helped cause) to begin the creation of a totalitarian state, dominating the March 5 elections thanks to support from nationalist groups. Hitler soon took over the role of president when Hindenburg died and merged the role with that of chancellor to become führer ("leader") of Germany.

Hitler continued to move with speed in radically changing Germany, consolidating power, locking up “enemies” in camps, bending culture to his will, rebuilding the army, and breaking the constraints of the Treaty of Versailles. He tried to change the social fabric of Germany by encouraging women to breed more and bringing in laws to secure racial purity; Jews were particularly targeted. Employment, high elsewhere in a time of depression, fell to zero in Germany. Hitler also made himself head of the army, smashed the power of his former brownshirt street warriors, and expunged the socialists fully from his party and his state. Nazism was the dominant ideology. Socialists were the first in the death camps.

Hitler believed he must make Germany great again through creating an empire and engineered territorial expansion, uniting with Austria in an Anschluss and dismembering Czechoslovakia. The rest of Europe was worried, but France and Britain were prepared to concede limited expansion with Germany, taking within it the German fringe. Hitler, however, wanted more.

It was in September 1939, when German forces invaded Poland, that other nations took a stand and declared war. This was not unappealing to Hitler, who believed Germany should make itself great through war, and invasions in 1940 went well. Over the course of that year, France fell and the Third Reich expanded. However, his fatal mistake occurred in 1941 with the invasion of Russia, through which he wished to create lebensraum, or "living room." After initial success, German forces were pushed back by Russia, and defeats in Africa and West Europe followed as Germany was slowly beaten.

During the last years of the war, Hitler became gradually more paranoid and divorced from the world, retreating to a bunker. As armies approached Berlin from two directions, Hitler married his mistress Eva Braun and on April 30, 1945, he killed himself. The Soviets found his body soon after and spirited it away so it would never become a memorial. A piece remains in a Russian archive.

Hitler will forever be remembered for starting the Second World War, the most costly conflict in world history, thanks to his desire to expand Germany’s borders through force. He will equally be remembered for his dreams of racial purity, which prompted him to order the execution of millions of people , perhaps as high as 11 million. Although every arm of German bureaucracy was turned to pursuing the executions, Hitler was the chief driving force.

In the decades since Hitler’s death, many commentators have concluded that he must have been mentally ill and that, if he wasn’t when he started his rule, the pressures of his failed wars must have driven him mad. Given that he ordered genocide and ranted and raved, it is easy to see why people have come to this conclusion, but it’s important to state that there is no consensus among historians that he was insane, or what psychological problems he may have had.

“ Adolf Hitler .” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 14 Feb. 2019.

Alan Bullock, Baron Bullock, et al. “ Adolf Hitler .” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 19 Dec. 2018.

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Your guide to Adolf Hitler: key facts about the Nazi dictator

He's one of the most well known – but reviled – figures in history. But how much do you know about German dictator Adolf Hitler? Here's everything you need to know about the Nazi leader, from his rise to power to the truth about his death in Berlin in 1945...

• Rachel Dinning
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Adolf Hitler is one of the most well-known – and despised – figures in history. He was the chief architect of the Second World War , following his rise to power as the leader of the Nazi Party in the 1920s. His anti-Semitic policies lead to the deaths of more than six million Jews during the Holocaust, cementing his reputation as one of the most infamous men in history.

Here's your guide to the German dictator – from his early life growing up in Austria to his rise to power and eventual death during the Second World War...

Hitler: key facts

Born: Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria.

Died: Hitler died by suicide in a Berlin bunker, age 56, on 30 April 1945

Known for: Being the leader of the the Nazi Party and initiating the Second World War. Adolf Hitler replaced Anton Drexler as party chairman of the Nazi Party in July 1921, and soon after he acquired the title führer (“leader”). He was chancellor of Germany from 30 January, 1933, and Führer and chancellor combined from 2 August 1934. His rise to power led to the Second World War and the deaths of more than six million Jews in the Holocaust.

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Family: Adolf Hitler was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler (1837–1903) and his third wife, Klara (1860–1907). His full siblings are: Gustav, Ida, Otto, Edmund and Paula, but he also had two half-siblings – Alois Jr and Angela – from his father’s previous marriages. Alois, who was illegitimate, bore his mother’s name Schicklgruber for some time, but by 1876 had established his family claim to the surname 'Hitler'. Adolf Hitler himself never used any other surname.

Early childhood: Most of Hitler’s childhood was spent in Linz, Austria. He had a difficult relationship with his father, with many of their arguments focusing on Hitler’s refusal to behave at school. However he was very fond of his mother, who died in 1907.

Education: Hitler had a mixed education and has generally been considered a mediocre student by many historians. Although his father wished for his son to follow a career in his own footsteps, at a customs office, Hitler had other ideas. Tensions rose when Alois sent Hitler to the Realschule (a type of secondary school) in Linz in September 1900 and Hitler performed poorly. Hitler later suggested that this was an intentional act on his behalf: he deliberately performed badly to show his father that he should be allowed to pursue his dream of becoming an artist.

The narrative doesn't entirely hold up if you consider that, following Alois’s death in January 1903, Hitler’s educational performance deteriorated even more. He went on to study at another school in Steyr, where he had to retake his final exams before leaving without any intentions to take his education any further.

Are we more fascinated with Hitler than any other dictator?

Hitler has been memorialised in countless books, tv shows and films. so why are we fascinated with the nazi dictator, was hitler a good painter.

While leaders including Winston Churchill and George W Bush took up painting as a post-politics hobby, a young Adolf Hitler paid the bills as a jobbing artist from 1910–14. He focused mainly on postcards and advertisements – and earned enough to sustain a living, moving around hostels in Vienna.

He was, however, technically mediocre. He failed the examination for the General School of Painting at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts, partly down to his struggle to capture the human form. The second time he applied, his sample drawings were considered of such poor quality that he was not even admitted to the entrance examination.

Some might argue that Hitler's art was also oddly pedestrian in a radical era of Picasso and Van Gogh. As a voracious reader of history and mythology, and with a mind bubbling over with political thoughts, it’s somewhat surprising that this angry outsider painted bland postcard scenes of buildings and landscapes.

• When Hitler took cocaine

If painting was not his forte, Hitler's real strength could be found in his oratory skills. "He was, of course, a masterly demagogue – the basis of his early dominance within the Nazi Party," explains Professor Kershaw. "More than any other contemporary German politician, he spoke in a language that gave voice to the anger and prejudice of his audience."

He was also, Kershaw notes, very widely read: "His excellent memory enabled him to recall information on many subjects. This impressed not only those around him and others who were already susceptible to his message."

What did Hitler do during World War One?

Although Adolf Hitler was in his mid-20s at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he initially tried to avoid conscription. Then, when made to enlist, he failed the medical. He still ended up in uniform, joining the Bavarian (part of the German) army instead.

Hitler served in this army at the First Battle of Ypres . According to Hitler, his regiment of 3,600 was reduced to 611 during the battle and he was one of only 42 survivors from his 250-strong company. One of his roles was that of a trench runner . He was also wounded at the Somme and was twice awarded the Iron Cross for bravery, once on the recommendation of a Jewish comrade.

Then, on the night of 13–14 October 1918, Corporal Hitler got caught in a mustard gas attack by the British. He spent the rest of the war recovering from temporary blindness, learning of Germany’s surrender in a military hospital, although there is some suggestion that this story was made up by Hitler and that he was in fact being treated for 'hysterical amblyopia', a psychiatric disorder known as 'hysterical blindness'. It was during this time, Hitler later claimed in his political manifesto Mein Kampf (first published in 1925), that “the idea came to me that I would liberate Germany, that I would make it great”.

When did Hitler first become involved with politics?

Hitler first emerged on the political scene in the German city of Munich in late 1919 as a speaker for the right-wing German Workers’ Party (DAP). The DAP changed its name to NSDAP ( Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ) in February 1920, before Hitler officially took over as party chairman in July 1921. The party, which Hitler felt lacked direction, was also referred to as ‘Hitler’s Nazi Party’ at this time, however Hitler himself was not really known outside of Bavaria until much later.

• The dark charisma of Adolf Hitler

During the early 1920s, Hitler purposefully maintained a degree of mystery around himself. He refused to let unofficial photographers take his picture, instead opting to employ his own personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, who produced a series of bestselling books of pictures that portrayed the Nazi leader as an aloof intellectual. "They aimed to show Hitler as a man of the people and, at the same time, the political philosopher of genius in lofty isolation, among the mountains that surrounded his Alpine retreat near the town of Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, as he pondered Germany’s future and bore the entire burden of responsibility on his shoulders," explains Professor Kershaw. The creation of the 'Hitler mystery' was a masterful move of PR, utilised at a time when other politicians did not pay too much attention to such tactics.

How did Hitler rise to power?

Hitler’s first official grasp for power took place in November 1923. He and his supporters attempted to seize political power in Munich, as a prelude to a takeover in Berlin. Around 2,000 Nazis took part in the violent daytime coup, which became known as the Munich Beer Hall Putsch .

What happened during the Beer Hall Putsch?

When the coup collapsed, Hitler was arrested and charged with treason. The subsequent trial was a complex affair – as historian Roger Moorhouse explains: "Hitler probably should have been sent for trial to the constitutional court at Leipzig, but Munich’s political establishment was keen to keep the matter ‘in house’, for fear of giving oxygen to the rumours of official complicity with the Nazis. So, with a tame, sympathetic judge – Georg Neithardt – presiding, the trial opened in the Munich infantry school on 26 February.

"Those hoping for Hitler’s political demise were to be disappointed. He expertly played the court, assisted by Neithardt, and so reached a much wider audience than he had ever reached before. By the end of the trial, he had a national following for the first time, and had emerged as the undisputed leader of the German radical right."

• Hitler’s millionaire backers: how Germany’s elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis

Hitler served just nine months of his five-year prison sentence at Landsberg Prison. Following his release, he was forbidden from making public speeches but continued speaking to private audiences and gained a reputation as a formidable orator. By the 1930s he had cultivated an elaborate public profile, selling a “novel vision” to his followers and the wider German public. “Hitler was offering national redemption, a ‘new Germany’, a ‘new man’, a ‘new Jerusalem’,” says Moorhouse.

The Nazi party gradually grew in numbers throughout the late 1920s – and by July 1932, they had transformed from a small, revolutionary party to the largest elected party in the Reichstag (German parliament). They did this primarily through the use of effective propaganda, with support from the from the Sturmabteilung (SA), otherwise known as the Brownshirts, a paramilitary wing of the NSDAP.

Rise to dictator

Once Hitler had established himself as a key player in the German political scene of the 1930s, consolidation of his power as a dictator happened rather quickly. He achieved this with a “twin-track approach”, according to historian Richard J Evans.

The first track involved convincing the right-wing government that Hitler should rule Germany by decree. This was agreed by conservatives who were largely motivated by a desire to crush the Communist Party. “In November 1932, the Social Democrats and Communists together had more votes and seats than the Nazis, but they were also deadly enemies of each other and couldn’t get their act together to stop the Nazis. Hitler used legal or quasi-legal powers of the government, particularly the president’s power to rule by decree in a state of emergency,” explains Evans.

• Listen | Historian Frank McDonough discusses the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany, covering the period from the start of the Third Reich to the early months of World War Two

On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag was persuaded by Hitler – through a mixture of threats and inducements – to vote for an Enabling Law that meant that the cabinet (Hitler and the ministers) had the power to issue legislation without reference to the president or to the Reichstag, thereby giving them dictatorial powers.

The second track involved “mass, brutal violence” on the streets. During this time, between 100,000–200,000 people were put into concentration camps or ‘roughed up’ and released on condition of not engaging in politics.

Read more about how Hitler rose to power

Where did Hitler get his ideas?

According to historian Richard J Evans, Hitler drew his political ideas from a variety of sources: “from a version of Social Darwinism that saw society and international relations as a sort of struggle of races for the survival of the fittest; from Arthur de Gobineau, a French theorist who invented the pseudoscientific idea of race theory; from Russian émigrés from the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, who brought with them the idea that Bolshevism and communism were creations of the Jewish race; from a certain amount of what's called ‘geopolitics’, which was invented by an American.”

Why did Hitler hate the Jews?

Anti-Semitism was at the heart of Nazi ideology, but what inspired Hitler’s hatred of the Jews and prompted the creation of a system that ultimately led to the systematic rounding up and killing of some six million people?

Hitler obviously did not invent modern anti-Semitism, which has roots in the Middle Ages . By the 13th century, for example, rules enacted across Europe obliged Jews to wear an identifying badge to distinguish them from non-Jews’. And in medieval Europe specifically, anti-Jewish hostility was exemplified by the concept of ‘the blood libel’, the accusation that Jews were murdering Christian children as part of their Passover rituals.

Although we don’t know how early Hitler formed his opinions of Jewish people, he himself states that he felt anti-Jewish while working as a painter in Vienna – a city with a large Jewish population – before the First World War. “For me this was a time of the greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through,” he writes in Mein Kampf . “I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-Semite.” Some historians have since suggested that Hitler created this narrative of himself as an early anti-Semite retrospectively – and Mein Kampf should certainly be understood in the context of its purpose as propaganda. Perhaps rather curiously, one of Hitler most loyal patrons while he lived in Vienna as a young artist was a Jew called Samuel Morgenstern.

• Your guide to the Holocaust

What is clearer is that Hitler’s anti-Semitism intensified following Germany’s defeat during the First World War, in which he served as an ordinary soldier on the western front and was decorated for bravery. The defeat had come as a shock to many Germans, who believed that they had been on course to win following the Spring Offensive and victory over Russia in 1918. Following the Allied victory, harsh penalties were imposed on Germany including the loss of certain territories and reparations were demanded, through the Treaty of Versailles .

Like many of his contemporaries, Hitler decided that the reason Germany lost the war was the weak will of the Kaiser, who was deposed in 1918. According to Richard J Evans, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast , “Hitler believed that the Weimar Republic, which succeeded the Kaiser’s Germany, was a Jewish creation, and democracy was something Jewish. These were all complete fantasies. But the effect of the First World War was decisive, including on Hitler's anti-Semitism and his belief the Jews were to blame for everything bad that had happened.”

Was Hitler Christian?

What was hitler’s relationship with eva braun.

Eva Braun (1912–1945) was the long-term companion of Adolf Hitler. The pair married on 29 April 1945 – just one day before they both died by suicide.

German historian Heike B Görtemaker notes that Braun was much more than a passive figure in the Nazi regime. “All members of the Berghof circle, including Eva Braun, were not just witnesses, but convinced of the Nazi ideology,” she writes. “Although it cannot be verified that Braun knew about the Holocaust – and all surviving members of Hitler’s inner circle later denied knowledge – Braun, like all others, was at least informed about the persecution of the Jews, depriving them of any civil rights.”

Was Braun in love with Hitler? It is almost impossible to identify her true feelings, says Görtemaker. However Braun’s closest friend, Herta Schneider, “declared in 1949 that Braun had been in love with Hitler”.

• Why did Hitler choose the swastika, and how did a Sanskrit symbol become a Nazi emblem?

Where did Hitler live?

How did hitler die.

During the last months of the Second World War – and as the prospect of losing the war became ever more apparent – Hitler withdrew into his bunker in Berlin. It was “the last station in his flight from reality”, wrote the Führer’s favoured architect, Albert Speer. Hitler continued to deliver orders from the bunker, including one that dictated his body should be incinerated upon the event of his death (he had heard about the treatment of fellow dictator Benito Mussolini’s body, who had been strung up in a public square in Milan).

• Georg Elser: the man who nearly assassinated Hitler

On 20 April 1945, Hitler’s 56th birthday, the first enemy shell hit Berlin. Soviet troops soon entered the city – and by 30 April 1945, Hitler was dead.

It is generally accepted that Hitler shot himself, although accounts differ as to whether he also bit down on a cyanide capsule. Following his death by suicide, Hitler’s body and that of his long-term mistress Eva Braun, whom he had married a day earlier and who had herself injected cyanide, were removed from the bunker, doused in petrol and set alight.

Rachel Dinning is the Premium Content Editor at HistoryExtra, website of BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed.

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Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler Facts

4/20/1889 Austria

4/30/1945 Berlin (Suicide)

Führer of Germany

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Adolf Hitler summary: Born on April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was Austrian by birth but became the leader of the German Nazi Party. He ruled the party from August 2, 1934 to April 30, 1945. He came into German politics and eventually was named chancellor by President Paul Von Hindenburg in January of 1933.

He served in the Bavarian Army (a part of the German military) during World War I. He rose to the rank of lance corporal and was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, an unusually high honor for one of his rank. He was wounded and was temporarily blinded by a British gas attack. He was recuperating in hospital when the war ended. In 1919, Hitler became part of the German Worker’s Party, later named the National Socialist Party (NSDAP, or Nazi Party), and became one of its leaders. On November 8, 1923, four years after he joined the GWP, he tried an overthrow in Munich to seize power in Bavaria as a first step to controlling all of Germany. Generally known as the Beer Hall Putsch (coup), the revolt was quickly suppressed, and Hitler spent nine months in prison. He used his trial to gain national political attention and spent his time in prison dictating a memoir, Mein Kampf ( My Struggle ), sales of which would make him a rich man although he concealed that fact from the German people. He restructured the NSDAP and by the end of the 1920s it had become a political force; by June of 1932, it was the largest political party in the German parliament, the Reichstag . Though Hitler lost the 1932 presidential election to war hero Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, he was able to use the power of the Nazi Party and its popularity among conservative voters to negotiate an appointment for himself as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. His ideas of anti-Semitism, anti-communism and a purity-of-the-Germanic-race ideology found widespread acceptance in Germany and elsewhere.

Hitler Establishes The Third Reich

On February 27, 1933—less than a month after Hitler had been named chancellor—the Reichstag building burned down; blame fell on a young Dutch communist, but it may have been a Nazi plot. Hitler seized the opportunity to convince members of the Reichstag to approve an emergency decree that that legalized Nazi thuggery. Soon, he convinced the center-to-right parties of the Reichstag to grant the government the freedom to decree laws without parliamentary approval for the next four years. By July 1933 all political parties except the NSDAP had been dissolved. Following the death of President von Hindengurn in August 1934, Hitler combined the roles of chancellor and president and assumed control of the country’s military forces.

With complete control of the country, Hitler initiated a new German society that became known as the Third Reich; he proclaimed it would last 1,000 years. Not content to rule Germany, he followed a policy of Lebensraum (living room) to seize lands outside Germany to allow the German people to expand their living space.

Initially, his expansion was bloodless. He renounced the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that had ended the Great War and reclaimed land that had been ceded to France. When German tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia, it was to “liberate” the Sudetenland where the population was largely German. The Czechs expected Britain and France to stand by agreements to protect the country, but with memories of the slaughter that had marked the First World War, those countries chose to negotiate a settlement that preserved “peace in our time” at the expense of the Czechs. Austria was the next country annexed.

Hitler Invades Poland And Starts WWII

In September 1939, German troops invaded Poland. This time, Britain and France declared war. In far-off Asia, Japan and China were already at war. The invasion of Poland is often called the beginning of World War II.  For the next two years, Hitler gambled on his opponents’ weakness, often against the advice of his generals, and won. The Nazi swastika symbol flew over the greater portions of Europe and parts of North Africa as well. Only Britain managed to keep the Nazi wolf at bay, fighting in the skies over Britain, in the sands of North Africa, and the waters of the Atlantic and Mediterranean. On June 22, 1941, Hitler made perhaps his biggest gamble—the invasion of the Soviet Union. Two years after that, Hitler’s rule was riddled with defeat. By that time, six million Jews and another five million others of non-German origin were systematically murdered. Hitler married Eva Braun during the Battle of Berlin. A couple days later, he and his wife committed suicide. The policies he promoted were responsible for the cause of death of nearly 50 million people during the course of World War II.

The Holocaust

He approved the formation of killing squads that followed his army to murder Jews and anyone not of German dissent. Auschwitz and many other concentration camps were set up to systematically murder those the army and killing squad had rounded up or to put them into slavery. There were many of these concentration camps set up across Europe and several were even devoted to only exterminating or murdering people. From the years of 1939-1945 the SS (part of the Nazi army) were responsible for deaths of 11-14 million people which included about 2/3s of the European Jewish population or 6 million people. In addition they killed between 200,000 and 1.5 million Romanis, often called gypsies. Most of which were gassed while others starved or died of disease.

Hitler and The Nazi Legacy

The widespread murder Hitler and his Nazis were responsible for is referred to as the Holocaust and is the topic of many classes, books, movies, plays and more. The name Hitler and the term Nazi have widespread association with physical and moral ruin or worse. Hitler has often been considered the person responsible for World War II and therefore the death of more than 50 million people. Many countries in Europe have made Nazism and the denial of the Holocaust a criminal act. Hitler made all of the major military decisions and is responsible for many Anti-Semitic laws. His leadership and personality traits are discussed both in history classes and in psychology classes. He had a tendency to foster distrust and competition among those in his army and the fact that he got so many people to follow him devotedly is a matter of much discussion.

Articles Featuring Adolf Hitler From History Net Magazines

Featured article, hitler’s greatest blunders.

B y overruling his senior officers and achieving a string of stunning victories in the years leading up to World War II, Adolf Hitler came to be considered, and considered himself, a military genius. He masterminded the march into the Rhineland in 1936, the annexation of Austria two years later, the subsequent annexation and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, and the invasion of Poland in 1939. Hitler’s seemingly unerring political, military, and diplomatic judgment fed a messianic conviction of his invincibility.

When mixed with dictatorial power and a growing propensity to react to strategic differences with towering rages, the result proved a fatal brew—one that had the ironic effect over time of turning Hitler into one of the Allies’ most effective weapons. At almost every point where an important decision was required, the Nazi leader could be counted on to make the one that inadvertently benefited the Allied cause, and helped to doom his own. A complete catalog of Hitler’s failures as a war chief could fill a thick volume; a dubious honor roll of the worst of them follows.

Declares War on the United States On December 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt went before Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Japan. Germany was never mentioned. There was little popular support to expand the war; unless Hitler made some gesture of monumental stupidity, the United States at the time had no official reason to declare war on Germany. British and American strategists were frustrated. They had always presumed that once the United States entered the war, defeating Germany would take priority over Japan. But now it appeared America would take on Japan first while Great Britain fought alone against Germany.

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Fortunately for them, four days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler committed one of the most monumental blunders in history. While President Roosevelt needed 517 words to declare war and doom Japan, when Hitler went before the Reichstag he required just 334 to seal the fate of the Third Reich.

In the final month of 1941, a perceptive observer may have noticed the first glimmers of hope for the Allied cause, as German prospects took a turn for the worse. Britain was not only unbowed, it was actively counterattacking wherever possible. More worrying for the Germans was the Soviet counterattack in front of Moscow, where fresh Siberian divisions were tearing at the Wehrmacht’s Army Group Center.

Despite these rapidly darkening skies, Hitler, upon hearing news of Pearl Harbor, left his Prussian headquarters—where he had gone to personally deal with the Russian winter offensive—and rushed to Berlin. On December 11, he went before the Reichstag to declare war on the United States. It was an act of suicidal hubris. Although Germany was already locked in a war against Great Britain and the Soviet Union, Hitler, when presented with the opportunity to declare war against a nation capable of producing as many munitions in one year as Germany could in five, did not hesitate or flinch. It was not his first serious blunder, nor his last. It was, however, his most colossal.

Why did he do it? This question has long puzzled historians. Hitler was certainly aware of America’s production potential, for he had written about it in Mein Kampf. The simplest answer is that despite this knowledge, he remained unimpressed with American military potential. In 1940, he had told Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov that the United States would not be a threat to Germany for decades—“1970 or 1980 at the earliest.” Moreover, Hitler had always believed that war with the United States was inevitable. For him, it was better to have that war at a time of his choosing, and when he could count on Japan siphoning off significant amounts of American power. So Germany, for the second time in a generation, found itself in a two-front war against the combined might of the world’s greatest economic powers.

Issues Halt Order at Dunkirk Still, there was one brief moment when Hitler had it within his power to win the war on one front and remove both France and Britain from his list of antagonists. It had come more than a year and a half earlier, on the coast of northern France. On May 10, 1940, German spearheads brushed aside light resistance in the Ardennes Forest before smashing through the French defensive line at Sedan. Slashing across France, General Heinz Guderian’s panzers entered Abbeville, 20 miles from the English Channel, a mere 10 days later. The French army, cut in half and thrown off balance, never recovered its equilibrium.

But even as the Wehrmacht was finishing off France, Hitler’s next actions guaranteed the survival of another of his foes, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), thereby presenting his most committed opponent, Winston Churchill, with a gift of inestimable value: an army with which to continue the struggle.

On May 23, the leading panzer units were only 18 miles from the port at Dunkirk, closer to it than most British units. Although the German troops were exhausted from two weeks of continuous marching and fighting, local commanders judged that they could easily capture the port, and thereby trap the British Army in France. Sensing that a crushing victory was near, Wehrmacht commander in chief Walter von Brauchitsch ordered the city taken. But just before the tanks went forward, Hitler issued his infamous “halt order,” stopping them outside Dunkirk.

He never mentioned his rationale for the order; guesses include Hermann Göring’s assurance that the Luftwaffe could complete the destruction of the BEF, and Hitler’s reluctance to risk his valuable panzers in the unfriendly marsh terrain of neighboring Flanders. Whatever the reason, the halt gave the British two precious days to solidify their defenses around Dunkirk, permitting them to carry out the most famous sealift of modern history. In that end, the Royal Navy, assisted by some French warships and a flotilla of 800 private vessels, pulled 338,226 troops off the beaches at Dunkirk, including 118,000 French, Belgian, and Dutch soldiers. These rescued men provided a veteran core around which Britain rebuilt its army.

Overlooks U-boats’ Potential With the Royal Navy protecting the English Channel and the Royal Air Force denying air dominance to the Luftwaffe, England was safe from invasion. Still, Hitler had one weapon that could take Britain out of the war: the U-boat. In 1917, U-boats came close to bringing Britain to its knees. Despite this, Hitler was slow to see their value. If, during the second half of the 1930s, he had taken the resources wasted on the construction of an almost useless surface fleet and instead applied them to the construction of U-boats, Germany could have started the war with hundreds of these silent killers, rather than 57.

Even with their paucity of numbers, the U-boats came within a hair’s breadth of knocking Britain out of the war. By the middle of 1940, Germany had only 25 U-boats left in service. Still, they managed to sink close to 700,000 tons of Allied shipping by the end of the year, or over 225 merchant ships. Despite that success, it was not until February 1941 that Hitler issued Führer Directive 23, ordering a crash program of U-boat production.

Germany went on to build more than 1,100 U-boats during the war, with over 450 still in service in 1945. By early 1943, the U-boats had Britain in desperate straits, and winning the Battle of the Atlantic became the Allies’ top priority. Then, in March 1943—almost imperceptibly at first—the tide started to turn. A combination of better tactics, new antisubmarine technology, and a broken German naval code turned the North Atlantic into a submarine graveyard.

U-boats continued sinking Allied ships until the end of the war, but their own losses were unacceptably high. In the end, Germany lost almost 800 U-boats and some 30,000 crewmen. Although they sank close to 14 million tons of Allied shipping, that impressive total was overwhelmed by the nearly 40 million tons of additional shipping the United States alone built during the war. Considering that the entire British merchant fleet in 1940 was less than 18 million tons, it is clear that if Germany had started the war with as many U-boats as it ended with, Britain could not have survived long.

Opens Vast Second Front But Britain did survive, and was still defiant when Hitler made a blunder second only in folly to his gratuitous declaration of war against the United States: the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Slightly more than two decades had passed since Germany had last launched a two-front war—and suffered devastating consequences. It therefore took a stunning level of strategic incompetence on Hitler’s part to initiate a war in the East when the outcome in the West was still at issue. Tenacity, coupled with flashes of tactical and operational brilliance, kept the German army in the field for four bloody years. And once again, the German military almost made good on Hitler’s gamble. But such martial attributes were insufficient to overcome the fundamental strategic mistake that placed them deep into Russia to begin with. It took a number of additional blunders on Hitler’s part to crush German hopes of a Drang Nach Osten —“Drive to the East.”

Fails to Take Moscow The first of those blunders came soon after Operation Barbarossa was launched. From the outset, Hitler’s military leaders knew that speed was of the essence: they were after a quick contest, not a protracted war. And their initial prospects of winning that race against time were promising: after smashing through the Soviet forward divisions, Army Group Center won a hard-fought battle at Smolensk. At its conclusion, more than 200,000 Soviet prisoners were marched into already overcrowded holding pens, and the road to Moscow was laid bare. Now was the time for a strong, direct thrust at the Soviet capital.

More than just a political objective, Moscow was the nerve center for the Communist Party, a major industrial center, and, most important, the nexus for almost every major rail line in the Soviet Union; if Moscow fell, lateral movement of Soviet forces would become impossible. Moreover, the defeat of Moscow would help cut western Russia off from the eastern armies, which were already beginning their move to the city’s aid. In 1812, Russia could give up Moscow to Napoleon and suffer few military consequences. Losing Moscow in 1940 would have been catastrophic to the Soviet cause.

But then Hitler shifted Germany’s strategic emphasis: rather than send his forces on to Moscow, at the end of August Hitler ordered General Heinz Guderian to take his Second Panzer Army south to assist the slow-moving Army Group South. By way of explanation, he pointed to the natural resources of the Ukraine and the oil in the Caucasus, both of which he saw as vital to the German war effort. When his generals persisted in protesting this shift in strategy, Hitler exclaimed, “My generals know nothing of economics!” Reluctantly, Guderian took his panzers south, netting another 600,000 prisoners in the Kiev pocket. It was the greatest tactical victory of war, but it was not without cost.

Overvalues Stalingrad as a Target All hope for victory was not lost, however. In the spring and summer of 1942, a restored Wehrmacht launched a new offensive to secure the Caucasus oil fields. It was at this point that Hitler made a series of misjudgments that doomed a German field army and had dire effects on the overall war effort.

After chastising his generals about Moscow being a mere political target of little military consequence, Hitler, remarkably, allowed himself to be drawn into a battle of prestige for control of Stalingrad. Instead of focusing on the oil fields, he divided his force, sending one to head south toward Baku, the other to take Stalingrad. It was a battle he waged ferociously, long after the city had lost any military utility. Division after division was fed into the Stalingrad maelstrom, where whole battalions were virtually obliterated 24 hours after their commitment. For almost three months, the German Sixth Army pounded at the city until only a small sliver remained in Soviet hands.

Myopically focused on capturing the city named for his mortal enemy, Hitler took no notice of the buildup of Soviet reserves on Sixth Army’s weakly held flanks. When the Soviets launched an attack to encircle Sixth Army—Operation Uranus—in mid-November, they quickly shattered first the Romanian and later the Italian and Hungarian armies flanking the city. Two days later, Soviet pincers met at the nearby town of Kalach, entrapping the Sixth Army. For several months the doomed army slowly starved, before finally surrendering on February 2, 1943.

Hitler’s maniacal insistence on seizing and holding Stalingrad had cost over 750,000 causalities, and the loss of an irreplaceable field army. It was, up to that point, the greatest single disaster the German army endured.

Gambles All at Kursk Eventually, the Soviet Stalingrad offensive petered out, and the Germans were given breathing space to consolidate a new defensive line and restore their depleted forces. If they were to have any chance of negotiating a favorable peace, now was the time to fortify in depth, build mobile strike forces for counterattacks—such as Erich von Manstein’s successful counteroffensive at Kharkov in February–March 1943—and husband their strength to meet the next Soviet offensive.

Instead, Hitler became fixated on a massive summer offensive aimed at an enormous bulge in the Soviet line around the city of Kursk. Ordering simultaneous thrusts from the north and south, he hoped to trap the Soviet forces within the bulge, or salient, and to tear a gap in their line, allowing the offensive to continue to the east.

If it was the Battle of Stalingrad that decided Hitler would not win the war, it was the Battle of Kursk that decided he would lose it. Aware of the massive preparations the Russians were making around Kursk, many German generals were reluctant to attack; even Hitler had doubts, admitting that the thought of the attack made him feel ill. Despite his foreboding, Hitler eventually ordered it to go forward.

Reinforces Afrika Korps Too Late Even as the Germans plodded forward at Kursk, Allied forces were landing at Sicily. That they were able to make relatively short work of the island’s defenses and follow up with a rapid invasion of the Italian mainland can be attributed to another of Hitler’s blunders. Since early 1941, Hitler had allowed the commander of German forces in North Africa, Erwin Rommel, to conduct an economy-of-force operation there. For two years, Hitler’s reluctance to commit more than a trifling amount of troops to the North African sideshow forced Rommel to make his reputation by fighting and generally winning despite being heavily outnumbered.

It was only after the Battle of El Alamein was finally lost, and in the wake of the successful Allied landing in western North Africa—both in early November 1942—that Hitler suddenly decided to massively reinforce Rommel’s army. Tens of thousands of German troops were flown and shipped into Tunisia in a forlorn attempt to keep a toehold in North Africa. Hitler’s decision came long after all hope of victory had vanished, and had predictable results. Approximately 230,000 Axis troops surrendered at Tunis in May 1943, including most of Rommel’s legendary Afrika Korps. These veterans were desperately needed and sorely missed in the contest for Northern Europe.

Hesitates at Normandy By early 1944, it was apparent to the German general staff and even Hitler that the final contest for control of Northern Europe was not going to be delayed much longer, and that the Allies would soon attempt a Channel crossing. In one of his flashes of intuition, Hitler predicted that the invasion would come at Normandy. Unfortunately for German military planners, he did not have the courage of his convictions. When the Allies actually landed at Normandy, Hitler suspected it was a deception and that their real target was northeast of there, in the Pas-de-Calais region. The upshot for the Allies was that 19 nearby German divisions, including six powerful panzer divisions, spent D-Day idle. Their early commitment to Normandy would have made the Allied beaches a living hell, and might even have thrown the invasion back into the sea. Over the succeeding weeks, Hitler became ever more convinced that the Normandy invasion was a ruse, and it was not until the end of July that he finally approved the movement of a single division from Fifteenth Army, which was guarding the coast near Pas-de-Calais. Once again, it was too late. By the time reinforcing divisions arrived, the German line was hanging by a thread.

In a further blunder on Hitler’s part, he had ordered the Normandy front held at all cost. This ensured that when his forces inevitably did give way, the surviving skeleton formations would be incapable of conducting mobile operations or making a stand much short of the defensive fortifications along Germany’s western prewar borders.

Issues Prophetic ‘Stand and Die’ Order But Hitler’s “stand and die” orders had more fateful consequences on the Eastern Front.

Timed to closely coincide with the Allied invasion of Normandy, Stalin had ordered Operation Bagration—the destruction of Germany’s Army Group Center—to commence on June 22, 1944, the anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Prior to the Soviet attack, Hitler’s generals advised him to pull back the army—then trying to hold the city of Minsk—to shorter and more defensible positions, so as to let the offensive hit empty space. Failing to persuade him of the necessity of moving out of the way of the Soviet juggernaut, they begged for permission to establish a defense in depth.

Instead, Hitler ordered most of his forces to hold in their forward positions and countenanced no requests for withdrawal, no matter how desperate the situation. The result was calamitous. In one month’s fighting the Soviets obliterated Army Group Center, annihilating 20 divisions in the opening weeks of the offensive—almost as many as the Allies were fighting in Normandy. Only exhaustion brought the Soviet horde to a halt on the Vistula River, across from Warsaw. There they restored their strength and prepared their next big move, into the Reich itself.

Loses Second Gamble at the Ardennes There was, however, a decent probability that Hitler could have spared East Germany almost two generations of Soviet occupation, if not for his next major misstep. By the end of 1944, Allied armies were poised to enter Germany from both the east and west. Through a maximum effort, the Wehrmacht managed to refit several of its panzer divisions and build a mobile reserve with which to meet the onslaught. The refitted armored formations fell far short of what Germany required to turn the tide of the war. But if these divisions had been deployed to the Eastern Front, they could have held off the Russians just long enough for the Western Allies to advance and occupy most of Germany.

Of course, such thinking never concerned Hitler. Instead, he launched his armor that December at a weak sector of the American front—in the Ardennes Forest—in what has become famous as the Battle of the Bulge. Attacking through the Ardennes was a forlorn hope and doomed from the start. It might delay the Allies, but it had no real chance of reenacting the glorious advance of 1940, which had driven over the same ground. All Hitler gained was a foothold in Belgium that could not be sustained. For that he squandered the bulk of his mobile forces and, with them, Germany’s last hope of salvaging something from the disaster about to envelop it.

I n the end, it’s striking that despite blunder after blunder, Germany resisted the combined might of the world’s greatest powers for almost half a decade. This is a testament to the operational capabilities of the German army, which demonstrated remarkable recuperative powers throughout the war. Even as late as 1945, the battered Wehrmacht proved capable of lashing out viciously at its tormentors, inflicting more than two battle losses for every one sustained in the war’s final months. But it was all in vain. Prowess on the battlefield could not overcome incompetence at the top. Nor could it erase the fact that the Wehrmacht’s vaunted fighting capabilities were harnessed to a vile cause. Humanity should remain forever thankful that that cause was led by one of history’s greatest military blunderers.

Jim Lacey is the Professor of War, Policy, and Strategy at the Marine War College. A former U.S. Army infantry officer, he is the author of several books on military history, including the forthcoming First Clash on the Battle of Marathon and Keep From All Thoughtful Men on World War II strategy.

Truman Smith: The American Who Saw Hitler Coming

A t six foot four inches tall, Truman Smith cut an imposing figure, and possessed an impressive pedigree. Smith’s grandfather had served as a U.S. senator, and his father was a military officer who was killed in action in the Philippines in 1900. Young Smith was no slouch himself: he graduated from Yale in 1915, and might have become a history professor. But after he joined the New York National Guard, his regiment was called up for duty on the Mexican border in 1916. This ended his graduate studies and led him to a military career instead. He became a battalion commander in World War I, and earned a Silver Star.

Smith was an avid student of German language and culture, and his expertise earned him postings to Germany during two of its most momentous periods. He first served as a political adviser to the U.S. Army in Coblenz in 1919, then served in the Berlin embassy from 1920 to 1924. About a decade later, he returned to Germany to work as a senior military attaché in the crucial run-up years to World War II—1935 to 1939.

During Smith’s first stint in Berlin, Adolf Hitler’s name was just beginning to be heard around the country. Those were the early days of the Weimar Republic, a period of chronic political and economic unrest that offered plenty of opportunities for violent extremists on both the far right and far left. Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party was only one group of radicals among many others.

That would change, of course. In Berlin, the American ambassador Alanson B. Houghton, an industrialist-turned-congressman-turned-diplomat, was deeply troubled by the turmoil in Germany and, in particular, by the political unrest in the southern part of the country. In the fall of 1922, there were rumblings that General Erich Ludendorff, who had led the German army in the later half of World War I, might be planning to topple the government and impose a right-wing dictatorship. After a brief exile following Germany’s defeat, Ludendorff returned to Munich and took up with Hitler and other rabble-rousers. Against the backdrop of Benito Mussolini’s ascent in Italy, Germany’s political far right seemed on the rise. “Something is brewing in Bavaria and no one seems to know exactly what it is,” Houghton wrote in his diary.

To keep an eye on the situation, Houghton turned to his young assistant military attaché, Truman Smith. Smith would later point out that most foreign diplomats in Berlin at the time had written off the National Socialists as “being without significance,” and described the party leader Adolf Hitler as an “uneducated madman.” Houghton, in contrast, “seems to have had, even at this early date, a premonition that the movement and its leader might play an important role in the disturbed Germany of the early twenties.” Ambassador Houghton and the embassy’s military attaché, Smith’s immediate superior, urged Smith to “try to make personal contact with Hitler himself and form an estimate of his character, personality, abilities, and weaknesses.”

General Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, the artillery commander of the German army’s 7th Division, told Smith he hadn’t met Hitler but had the impression that the man was “an oratorical genius.” He added that “Hitler was not as radical as his speeches made him out,” and that he was anti-Semitic in “a healthy sense” since he wanted to keep Jews out of government positions. Barring some mistake, Kress von Kressenstein told Smith, Hitler’s movement had “a great future before it.” Friedrich Trefz, chief editor of the newspaper Münchner Neueste Nachrichten ( Munich Latest News ), agreed. He told Smith that Hitler was a “marvelous speaker. None better.” Trefz said that he’d gone to a National Socialist meeting and sat between a general and a Communist; both had attended out of curiosity, and afterward both signed up as party members. Trefz’s conclusion: “The National Socialists present no immediate danger to the government. The ground is fertile, however, and the party will grow.”

Smith next ventured to the informal headquarters of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, at Georgenstrasse 42. There he met with Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, an early confidante of Hitler who claimed that the party had 35,000 members in Munich, 200,000 sympathizers, and a “militarily organized” underground armed with clubs and pistols. The American was then invited to watch Hitler review his paramilitary troops, the Brown Shirts. It was “a remarkable sight indeed,” Smith noted. “Twelve hundred of the toughest roughnecks I have ever seen pass in review before Hitler at the goosestep under the old Reichflag wearing red armbands with Hakenkreuzen (swastikas).” The Nazi leader gave a short speech, vowing to defy anyone trying to stop the movement. “He then shouts, ‘Death to the Jews’ etc. and etc. There was frantic cheering. I never saw such a sight in my life.”

At 4 p.m. on Monday, November 21, Smith met Hitler at the party headquarters. The diplomat was startled by Hitler’s quarters, which reminded him of a dreary back room of a New York tenement house. Smith’s impressions that day, which he recorded in his notebook once he had returned to his room in the Hotel Marienbad, were right to the point. “A marvelous demagogue,” he wrote. “I have rarely listened to such a logical and fanatical man. His power over the mob must be immense.” Hitler’s message was unequivocal: “Parliament and parliamentarianism must go. No one can govern with it in Germany today. Only a dictatorship can bring Germany to its feet.”

In a report he filed after returning to Berlin, Smith added this assessment:

The question whether Hitler’s National Socialists can play a role in Germany equivalent to the role of the Fascisti in Italy can still not be answered with any degree of certainty. In the limited area of Bavaria, south of the Danube, Hitler’s success cannot be gainsaid…. It is believed that not only in Munich but in all Germany, there is a fertile field even among the factory workers for a national movement…. It seems hardly probable, furthermore, that with the results already achieved, there will be any lack of money for the propagation of the idea of a national dictatorship. These facts, coupled with the magnetism and oratorical ability of the National Socialist leader, speak for a rapid and consistent development of the German “Fascisti.”

Unlike many of his counterparts in other embassies, Smith had no budget to pay for spies. What he did have was a long list of German contacts—officers he had met during his first tour in Germany and later when he was an instructor at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1928 to 1932. The assistant commandant of the Infantry School was George C. Marshall, then a lieutenant colonel, who treated Smith as an aide and translator when it came to dealing with visiting Germans.

After the Nazis took power in 1933, they forbade any German officer from visiting the house of a foreigner unless he knew the foreigner previously. This meant most military attachés were effectively prevented from inviting German officers to their homes. But Smith was already well established in that circle: When he held a party upon the couple’s return to Berlin, Kay Smith recalled that “the other attachés were dumbfounded to find so many German officers at our reception. They were green with envy and Truman became their prime target in their attempt to get news.” By comparison, Kay noted, the British and the French, who relied heavily on paid spies, “were remarkably bare of contacts.”

Now a colonel, Smith worked obsessively to learn about the German military. Early in his second tour, he carefully noted the insignia of regiments that were displayed on the shoulders of German officers, piecing together valuable information, and even enlisting Kay and their daughter Kätchen to help with this task. “Whenever we drove out in the car together she [Kätchen] would take one side and I the other, our faces pressed against the window pane,” Kay wrote. “It made an amusing game for us and we had the feeling of helping solve the riddle.”

Early on, Smith realized there was one picture he could not put together. He had few contacts with the Luftwaffe and “negligible” knowledge of the German air force’s organization, tactics, or technical capabilities. Captain Theodore Koenig, the American assistant attaché responsible for monitoring Germany’s growing air power, was a capable officer. But Smith worried that his team was too small and poorly equipped to effectively analyze the Luftwaffe—an urgent task as Hitler pushed to reassert Germany’s might.

In May 1936, two months after German troops had moved into the demilitarized Rhineland, Kay and Truman were having breakfast when she pointed out a front-page story in the Herald Tribune about Charles Lindbergh’s visit to an airplane factory in France. Truman wondered if the famous airman, whose transatlantic flight had captured the imaginations of people everywhere, could gain the same kind of access to German factories. He checked with aides to the supreme Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring, who said they would be pleased to show Lindbergh their combat units and factories. Smith wrote a letter to Lindbergh on May 25, relaying this invitation.

Smith had never met Lindbergh, but didn’t hesitate to make a forceful case. “I need hardly tell you that the present German air development is very imposing and on a scale which I believe is unmatched in the world,” he wrote. Pointing out that the Luftwaffe’s buildup had been shrouded in secrecy until recently, he added that the Germans had demonstrated a greater openness to Americans than to representatives of other nations. “General Göring has particularly exerted himself for friendly relations with the United States,” Smith added. “From a purely American point of view, I consider your visit here would be of high patriotic benefit. I am certain they will go out of their way to show you more than they will show us.”

S mith’s appeal to Lindbergh , who was then living with his wife Anne in England, would prove to be a brilliant and fateful initiative. Lindbergh replied that he would be “extremely interested in seeing some of the German developments in both civil and military aviation.” Smith was aware that the Germans would seek to exploit Lindbergh’s visit for propaganda purposes, but he could do nothing to prevent it. He focused on persuading the Germans to allow Lindbergh to inspect a long list of airplane factories, research facilities, and Luftwaffe units, accompanied by himself or assistant attaché Captain Koenig. That way, the American attachés would be able to scrutinize the installations and make valuable new contacts.

When the Lindberghs flew to Berlin aboard a private plane in July 1936, they were greeted by Ministry of Aviation officials, Deutsche Lufthansa airline executives, and other representatives of German aviation. The Smiths put the Lindberghs up in their apartment, and the two couples struck up a friendship. “Colonel Smith is alive, questioning, and talks well,” Anne Morrow Lindbergh recorded in her diary, adding of Kay, “She is observant, intelligent, and amusing.”

The most important social event during Lindbergh’s visit was a formal luncheon at Göring’s official residence on Wilhelmstrasse. It was attended by top aviation officials, including the legendary World War I pilot Ernst Udet. The Lindberghs and the Smiths were treated as honored guests. For Truman Smith, this was the first time he had the chance to observe and talk with the Luftwaffe’s chief—and he took full advantage of the occasion. “Göring showed many facets of his personality,” he noted. “In turn he was magnetic, genial, vain, intelligent, frightening, and grotesque.”

Lindbergh proved to be just the intelligence wedge Smith needed. The real payoff came from the American pilot’s visits to Germany’s air installations. At the Heinkel factory in Rostock, for instance, Lindbergh and Koenig were allowed to inspect the new He 111 medium bomber. Lindbergh concluded that it was comparable to British and American bombers, and superior to French ones. They also watched Udet fly a new He 112 fighter prototype—and saw the plane disintegrate during a dive, forcing the famed pilot to parachute to safety. Still, based on what they saw of those and two other Heinkel planes—the fast and versatile He 70 and the He 118 dive-bomber prototype—along with the company’s modern factory for navy planes at Warnemünde, the Americans were impressed. “I have never seen four planes, each distinct in type and built by one manufacturer, which were so well designed,” Lindbergh told Smith.

The aviator was clearly swayed. Writing to a family friend, Lindbergh pointed out that “we have nothing to compare in size to either the Heinkel or Junkers factories.” In a letter to his lawyer, he professed he was struck by “a spirit in Germany which I have not seen in any other country.” After his first visit, he wrote again to the family friend, “While I still have many reservations, I have come away with a feeling of great admiration for the German people.” As for Hitler, he wrote, “he is undoubtedly a great man, and I believe he has done much for the German people.”

Göring may have deliberately exaggerated some of his claims about Germany’s capabilities, but Lindbergh took them seriously. At a cocktail party, Lindbergh was overheard telling Udet: “German aviation ranks higher than that in any other country. It is invincible.” No wonder German officials boasted that Lindbergh would be “the best promotion campaign we could possibly invest in.”

Lindbergh made four more visits to Germany before the start of World War II, and was treated like royalty during each. This might help explain his subsequent vocal campaign to keep the United States out of the war in Europe, his involvement in the America First movement, and his conviction that the Soviet Union represented the real threat to European civilization—and that, in a war between the two powers, “a victory by Germany’s European people would be preferable to one by Russia’s semi-Asiatic Soviet Union.” His remarks confirmed what his critics had suspected: the aviator had become, in effect, an apologist for Hitler.

F or his part, Smith was convinced that Washington needed to understand the breathtaking scope of Germany’s military buildup, but his reports were often dismissed as alarmist. To be sure, not all of the intelligence Smith gathered was on target. He made some erroneous assessments about the degree of disaffection between the Nazis and the military, and was certainly off when he described “Hitler’s realistic and reticent foreign policy,” as he put it in 1937. But on balance, the regular intelligence reports Smith sent to Washington were clear-sighted and trenchant. Thanks to the factory doors Lindbergh had opened, he was the best-informed attaché in Berlin on the Luftwaffe.

But the diplomat’s association with Lindbergh also brought him grief. Like the aviator, Smith was accused by some of being a Nazi dupe. After he was diagnosed with diabetes and left Berlin in April 1939, Smith was assigned to Washington by General George C. Marshall, then the army chief of staff, to serve as an adviser on the German military. As Hitler’s armies swept across Western Europe, Smith heard from colleagues in army intelligence that Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter and secretary of the interior Harold Ickes were behind attacks against him written by the influential columnists Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell. They charged that Smith was pro-German and was writing Lindbergh’s isolationist speeches after Germany invaded Poland. Smith also heard reports that the two officials had urged Roosevelt to have him court-martialed.

Nothing of the sort ever happened, for good reason. While Smith maintained his friendship with Lindbergh, he never played any role in the aviator’s political activities. And he began getting a measure of the recognition he deserved for his reporting from Berlin. On Marshall’s recommendation, Secretary of War Henry Stimson awarded the Distinguished Service Medal to Smith in January 1945. Five months later, one of FDR’s advisers wrote to General Marshall: “How well and how timely were his warnings about German preparations! And what little attention we paid to them!”

Smith retired from the military in 1946 and moved back to Connecticut. He made a run for Congress, but lost the Republican primary. He had more success writing articles on military affairs, but remained shadowed by suspicions related to his Berlin service, despite testimonies to his outstanding performance.

Long after World War II, Smith wrote The Facts of Life , an autobiographical manuscript that he tried but failed to publish. Fourteen years after his death in 1970, it would finally appear in print, along with his Munich notebook and his military reports, in a Hoover Institution Press volume called Berlin Alert: The Memoirs and Reports of Truman Smith . In The Facts of Life , Smith recalled his meeting with Hitler in 1922. “The diary I kept in Munich indicates that I was deeply impressed with his personality and thought it likely he would play an important role in German politics,” he wrote. “I must confess, however, that I did not see him as the future ruler of most of Europe.”

Andrew Nagorski is the former Newsweek Berlin bureau chief, and is now vice president and director of public policy at the EastWest Institute. He is the author of The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II (2008). His article is adapted from his forthcoming book Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power (Simon & Schuster, March 2012).

Adolf Hitler: Biography

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in the small Austrian town of Braunau to Alois Hitler who later became a senior customs official and his wife Klara, who was from a poor peasant family.

Hitler did not do particularly well in school , leaving formal education in 1905. Unable to settle into a regular job, he drifted. He wished to become an artist but was rejected from the Academy in Vienna.

At primary school, Hitler showed great intellectual potential and was extremely popular with fellow pupils as well as being admired for his leadership qualities. However, competition at secondary school was tougher and Hitler stopped trying as a result.

He also lost his popularity among his fellow students and instead preferred to re-enact battles from the Boer war with younger children. At the age of 15, he failed his exams and was told to repeat the year but he left without a formal education instead.

At the age of 18, he moved to Vienna with money inherited after his father's death in 1903, in order to pursue a career in art, as this was his best subject at school. However his applications for both the Vienna Academy of Art and the School of Architecture were rejected.

It was supposedly at this time that Hitler first became interested in politics and how the masses could be made to respond to certain themes. He was particularly impressed with the anti-Semitic, nationalist Christian-Socialist party.

During the First World War he volunteered to fight for the German Army and gained the rank of corporal, earning accolades as a dispatch-runner. He won several awards for bravery, including the Iron Cross First Class.

In October 1918, he was blinded in a mustard gas attack. Germany surrendered while Hitler was in hospital and he went into a state of great depression, spending lots of time in tears. After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain.

In 1919, Hitler attended his first meeting of the German Workers' party, an anti-Semitic, nationalist group as a spy for the German Army. However, he found he agreed with Anton Drexler's German nationalism and anti-Semitism. He disagreed with how they were organised leading him to make a passionate speech. Hitler quickly cemented his reputation as an engaging orator through his passion about the injustices faced by Germany as a result of the Treaty of Versailles .

It soon became clear that people were joining the party just to see Hitler make his speeches, which would leave the audience in a state of near hysteria and willing to do whatever he suggested.

Read more about WW2

10 things you didn't know about Hitler

He quickly rose through the ranks and, by 1921, was the leader of the re-named National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) .

With terrible economic conditions and rapid inflation, support for Hitler's party grew. By 1923, the Nazi's had 56,000 members and many more supporters.

On 8 and 9 November 1923, Hitler staged the Nazi Beer Hall Putsch. He hoped to force the Bavarian government to work with the Nazis and march together on Berlin. The attempt failed but, although Hitler was tried for treason, the judge gave him a very light sentence.

While in prison, Hitler wrote 'Mein Kampf', which formulated his political ideas. He reorganised his party on his release from jail, but it was not until the world depression hit Germany that the Nazis were able to attract significant followers.

By 1930, the Nazis were polling around 6.5 million votes. In the presidential elections of 1932, Hitler came second. On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg was forced to appoint Hitler as Chancellor , given his popular support.

In office, Hitler set about consolidating his power, appointing Nazis to government and gaining control of emergency powers. He eliminated all opposition, in the name of emergency control and, with the death of Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler's power was secured.

Hitler put Germany's unemployed to work on a massive rearmament programme, using propaganda and manufacturing enemies, such as the Jews , to prepare the country for war. Initially, Hitler's actions were ignored by his powerful neighbours, as they believed appeasement was the only way to avoid a war.

In 1936, Hitler invaded the Rhineland, which had been demilitarised at Versailles . He then proceeded to annex Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. Under the Munich Agreement of 1938, the West accepted this.

In 1939, Hitler made an alliance with Russia (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) and with Italy (Pact of Steel). On 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and the Second World War began as a result. In April 1940, Denmark and Norway were also taken. France quickly followed .

Hitler had conquered much of Western Europe, now he turned his sights East . In 1941, despite the alliance, Germany invaded Russia under Operation Barbarossa . It was one of his greatest mistakes. With the German advance slowed by the Russians 'scorched earth' policy, the German army found themselves in the Russian winter without an adequate supply line. In 1943, they started their long retreat.

At the same time, the Western Allies were pushing hard, and began to advance on Germany. In response, Hitler withdrew almost entirely. It was reported he was increasingly erratic and out-of-touch.

In 1944, there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt and, in response, Hitler stepped up the atmosphere of suspicion and terror.

Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, with his long term girlfriend Eva Braun , who he is thought to have perhaps married at the last minute. Germany's surrender followed soon after.

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Hitler: Essential Background Information

Adolf Hitler  (1889-1945) is unquestionably the central figure in the story of the Holocaust.  It was the combination of his virulent hatred of Jews and his success in creating a political movement that was able to seize control of Germany that made the campaign to exterminate the Jews possible. 

Hitler’s origins :  Hitler was born in a small town in Austria in 1889.  He was the son of a local customs official and his much younger third wife.  Hitler’s father was an illegitimate child and it is uncertain who his father was, but there is no evidence for the legend that this unidentified grandfather was Jewish.  Hitler’s father was harsh and distant. He had a closer relationship with his mother, and her death from cancer when he was 17 was traumatic for him. Hitler had a normal education.  As a young man, he showed no special talents.  He wanted to study art, and moved to Vienna after his mother’s death in hope of being accepted to art school, but was turned down for lack of talent. 

Sources of Hitler’s anti-semitism :  Because we have very little reliable information about Hitler’s early life, it is hard to determine exactly when he became a confirmed anti-semite.  His own account, in his book  Mein Kampf , is not entirely accurate:  by the time he wrote it, he wanted to make it appear that he had adopted anti-semitic ideas quite early in his life.  Prejudice against Jews was widespread in the early 20 th  century, but there is no evidence that Hitler’s family was particularly anti-semitic.  Discussions of Hitler’s antisemitism focus on three periods in his life:

• The  Vienna  years (1909-1913) :  Hitler later claimed this was when he developed his antisemitic outlook.  Vienna had a large Jewish minority (about 10% of the population when Hitler lived there).  It was also a hotbed of ethnic conflict, as members of all the different populations of the Austrian Empire (Czechs, Poles, Croats, Hungarians) migrated to the rapidly growing capital.  Hitler observed the success of the city’s popular mayor, Lueger, who was regularly re-elected on a virulently anti-semitic program.  He also probably read some of the widely circulated racist and anti-semitic literature that was easily available in the city.  Many of these pamphlets also claimed that Jews were the main architects of modern capitalism, and that they lived off the sweat of honest non-Jewish workers.  On the other hand, Hitler was a regular visitor in at least one Jewish family’s home, and his efforts to support himself by selling paintings were made possible primarily by Jewish art dealers.  In other words, Hitler had not yet made anti-semitism the center of his life during this period, despite his later claims.
• The war years and the defeat of  Germany  (1914-1919) :  although he was an Austrian citizen, Hitler volunteered to serve in the German Army at the start of World War I.  He served through all four years of the conflict, although he rose only to the rank of corporal.  He identified completely with the German cause, and was deeply disturbed by the defeat of 1918.  Like many disappointed soldiers, he believed that the army had been “stabbed in the back” by traitors.  Although German Jews had loyally supported their country during the war, they were more likely than other Germans to welcome the new, democratic  Weimar   Republic  established after the defeat.  This led to accusations that Jews were responsible for Germany’s defeat.  In addition, the war had led to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the establishment of the  Bolshevik  or  Communist  regime there, devoted to the overthrow of capitalism.  In 1919, there was a short-lived attempt to create a Communist government in Germany as well.  Enemies of the Communists pointed to the role of a few Jews in this movement and labeled Communism a Jewish conspiracy.  Modern scholars, particularly Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, tend to see these years, rather than the Vienna period, as the time when Hitler’s ideas about Jews really became fixed.  This focuses attention on the impact of the war, rather than the ethnic hatreds in pre-war Austria.
• The first years of the  Weimar   Republic   (1919-1923) :  After the war, Hitler lived in Munich, a city overrun with bitter ex-soldiers and others angry at the new democratic government in Berlin.  He began to associate with some of the many groups formed to agitate against all the evils affecting Germany:  capitalism, Communism, the unpopular Treaty of Versailles, democracy, and the Jews.  By September 1919, Hitler had clearly come to see the Jews as the organizing force behind these problems.  He also began to speak of Germany’s need to conquer additional territory— Lebensraum  or “living space”—for itself, at the expense of the “Jewish Bolsheviks” in Russia.  There was nothing original about his ideas.  He did begin to make a name for himself, however, because of his unusual speaking ability.  By 1920, he had become one of the most popular agitational speakers in Munich.  He took over one of the many small ultra-right-wing groups, the German Workers’ Party (later renamed National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazis for short) and built it up into a larger group, although its support was still mostly limited to Munich and surrounding areas.  Anti-semitism was a regular part of Hitler’s message throughout this period.  By 1923, he thought anger against the Weimar Republic was widespread enough to make the overthrow of the government possible; he wanted to set up a right-wing government, but did not yet imagine himself as its leader.  This  Beer Hall Putsch  (Nov. 9, 1923) failed when the army and the police refused to support it.  Hitler was arrested, and his movement seemed to have failed.  During this period, Hitler became an effective propagandist for anti-semitism, but his ideas on the subject had formed earlier.

The Stages of Hitler’s Rise to Power (1924-1933) After the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Hitler was tried and sentenced to prison.  Most observers assumed that his political career was over.  The extreme economic problems that had weakened the Weimar Republic in its first few years eased starting in 1924, and fewer people were attracted to political extremism.

• 1924 :  In prison, Hitler writes  Mein Kampf , setting out his ideas.  In his absence, it becomes clear that no one else can create a successful ultra-right-wing movement
• 1925-28 :  Hitler, released from prison, reconstitutes the Nazi Party under his exclusive leadership.  The Party does very poorly in elections, but this period allows Hitler to recruit a small but devoted group of followers, including many who would be leading figures in the Nazi regime after it came to power.
• 1929-32 :  the start of the world economic depression following the crash of the United States stock market in October 1929 gives Hitler a chance.  As unemployment skyrockets in Germany, voters turn against parties associated with the Weimar Republic.  The Nazis score a series of successes in state elections.  Hitler benefits from the deep divisions among the other German political parties.  The  Communists  hope to profit from the Depression.  They blame Germany’s problems on capitalism, call for a revolution, and refuse to cooperate with any of the others parties.   Conservative nationalist  parties blame parliamentary democracy and the Versailles treaty for Germany’s problems.  They hope to use the economic crisis to overturn the constitution and restore an authoritarian system similar to the pre-war monarchy.  They see Hitler as a potentially useful ally.  The  Social Democratic Party  is the strongest defender of the democratic system, but blames the “bourgeois” pro-capitalist parties for the economic crisis.  The  Catholic   Center  party has the greatest weight in the government, but has no remedy for the Depression.  By contrast, the Nazis offer a simple explanation of the crisis—it’s the fault of the Jews—and a simple program for ending it.  In national parliamentary elections in September 1930, the Nazis score an unexpected success, winning 18% of the vote and becoming the second-largest party (after the Social Democrats).  In 1932, Hitler runs for president against the celebrated war hero Hindenburg and wins 37% of the vote. 
• 1932-1933:   An unpopular coalition government led by the Center Party fails to gain support, and new parliamentary elections are called in July 1932; Hitler’s party wins 37% of the vote, while the Communists get 16%.  No majority coalition in favor of democracy can be established any more.  Various right-wing politicians compete with each other to create a government that will rule by decree.  Hitler is offered a place in one of these schemes, engineered by von Schleicher, in August 1932, but refuses because he would not have full control.  New elections are held in November 1932 to break the deadlock.  For the first time since 1929, the Nazis’ share of the vote goes down, to 32%.  Fearing that his moment may be about to pass, Hitler becomes more conciliatory to Schleicher.  On January 30, 1933, an agreement is announced:  Hitler will be named Chancellor (prime minister).  Despite the broad support for the Nazis, the party will have only four seats in the cabinet.  Schleicher and other conservatives expect Hitler’s extremism to undermine his popularity; they will then be able to dismiss him and keep power themselves. 

Significant points about Hitler’s rise to power : (1) Hitler’s success owed a great deal to the weakness of democracy in Germany; (2) it took the Great Depression to create the conditions in which Hitler could come to power; (3) although his party did become the largest in Germany, Hitler was not elected to office; the Nazis never won an absolute majority of votes, even in the final elections held after they came to power in March 1933; (4) Hitler became Chancellor thanks to the calculations of right-wing nationalist politicians who thought they could use his popularity to destroy the Weimar system.

The best biographies of Hitler :  historians rely on the three serious and thoroughly researched biographies of Hitler.  There are other good books about Hitler, but there is also an enormous literature of very dubious quality dealing with him, which often relates rumor as if it was fact.  The three essential books about Hitler are:

• Alan Bullock,  Hitler: A Study in Tyranny .  Originally published in 1952, this book is now somewhat dated but still very readable and essentially accurate on the stages of Hitler’s rise to power.
• Joachim Fest,  Hitler .  Originally published in 1973, this is the most important examination of Hitler’s life by a German scholar.
• Ian Kershaw,  Hitler  (2 vs., 1999 and 2000):  Even longer and more detailed than Bullock and Fest, Kershaw’s recent biography incorporates the latest research on topics such as Hitler’s early life, and shows why many of the stories about Hitler included in earlier biographies are no longer considered reliable.  This will undoubtedly be the standard biography of Hitler for many years to come.

New Times, New Thinking.

Inside the court of Adolf Hitler

Richard J Evans’s group biography of the Third Reich’s enforcers provides a revelatory account of the Nazi mind.

By William Boyd

Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Ernst Röhm, Albert Speer, Joachim von Ribbentrop. The roll-call is still grimly familiar some 80 years on from this motley and deeply unsavoury crew’s heyday. And I have to confess to a disquieting familiarity with these monsters’ lives as I spent many months in 2000 and 2001 researching and writing a six-hour TV drama series about Hitler’s astonishing rise to power over the years between 1913-33 – an unparalleled transformation from a homeless, mentally unstable, penniless vagrant in Vienna to the all-powerful chancellor of Germany in Berlin. I have shelves full of memoirs, histories, diaries and biographies of all the key Nazi players. The series was commissioned by the BBC and 20th Century Fox but was never made (Fox lost its nerve), but its conception – it wasn’t based on any book – absorbed and educated me in the history of the Third Reich and its noxious denizens. So, to open Hitler’s People was to renew acquaintances I thought I had left far behind. Scales fell from my eyes.

The premise behind Richard J Evans ’s utterly absorbing book is that a biographical approach to the history of the Third Reich will tell us more about the perverse culture and power struggles of those key personages who made up Hitler’s inner circle – and whose influence extended further down the food chain – than the overarching, geopolitical historical studies would. He presents us with 22 short biographies, or “portraits”, of the players he considers as crucial. They are congregated under four headings: the Leader, the Paladins, the Enforcers, and the Instruments. The result is an extraordinary rogues’ gallery of the Nazi elite and its more menial jobsworths. Intriguingly, although the Nazi programme was overwhelmingly male-driven, Evans identifies similarly enthusiastic cruelty among women in the lower ranks: Ilse Koch, Irma Grese and Gertrud Scholtz-Klink are among those he includes under the “Instruments” rubric. This top-to-toe analysis is as shocking as it is surprising.

Evans is a magisterial presence in the history of Hitler’s Third Reich. His three influential books – The Coming of the Third Reich , The Third Reich in Power and The Third Reich at War – make him pre-eminently suited to assess the significant personalities in the court of Adolf Hitler and, of course, Der Führer, himself, the “Boss”.

Evans starts his brilliant hundred-page biography of Hitler with the sentence: “For the first thirty years of his life, Adolf Hitler was a nobody.” Here lies the utterly compelling paradox. As Evans reminds us, without Hitler there would have been no Third Reich, no Second World War and no Holocaust. How could this deranged young man, selling his mediocre postcards in 1913 Vienna, wearing a yellow cycling cape that failed to disguise his rank body odour, end up as chancellor of Germany 20 years later and, through his crazed ambitions, have plunged the Western world into war and brought about the deaths of millions of people?

There are many possible answers and Evans judiciously analyses all the more recent historical interpretations. We know far more about Nazi Germany today than ever before. The catastrophe and humiliation of the 1918 Armistice; the revolutionary movements and social unrest that then ensued in Germany; the debilitating depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street crash are all useful pieces of evidence that might explain the rise of the Nazi party (the highest vote the Nazis ever achieved was 37 per cent in the 1932 elections) and its drawn-out, bloody, disastrous denouement. But it seems to me that Evans’s biographical approach to understanding this phenomenon is perhaps the new route to some sort of enlightenment.

The Saturday Read

Morning call.

Of all the “Paladins” that Evans examines, the one that fascinates me most – and who played a significant role in my doomed TV series – is Albert Speer. Speer – tall, handsome, cultured, educated – was an architect, and the youngest member of the Nazi inner circle, only 40 years old at the end of the war. Hitler saw him as a putative son and Speer returned the “love”. It was Speer who first articulated the power of Führerkontakt – that bizarre charisma that Hitler, the most insignificant and undistinguished of men, seemed to possess in his pomp. Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, an urbane, sophisticated American-German who was briefly a kind of PR official to the embryonic Nazi party in the 1920s described Hitler as having all the allure of a “suburban hairdresser on his day off”. And yet Hitler’s singular presence to his acolytes, and the German population, miraculously grew as his power grew. It seemed almost messianic – and he knew absolutely how to cultivate it.

Hitler promoted Speer to become the minister of armaments and munitions in 1942, supervising a vast population of forced labour of some 14 million, which kept the Nazi war machine working to its best ability. Hundreds of thousands of slave-labourers died under Speer’s watch yet, at his trial in Nuremberg after the war, he claimed to be ignorant of every aspect of the Nazi’s ruthless extermination process.

Speer’s “get-out-of-jail” ruse was to assert that, at the very end of the war, he had tried to gas Hitler in the bunker, and those in the bunker with him, and bring about an end to the conflict. Ironies abound – gassing Hitler? He failed, he said, because the ventilation towers of the bunker were too high. However, Speer’s intellectual, classy, soigné manner was persuasive in court. He wasn’t to be executed – he was sentenced instead to 20 years imprisonment. Another brutal irony – Speer’s number two, Fritz Sauckel, was executed for the crimes Speer’s organisation committed. Speer’s incarceration ended in 1966 and his memoir, Inside the Third Reich , became a bestseller and made its author an international celebrity, continually interviewed about his unique familiarity with the Hitlerian court. He spun his story extremely well. Speer died in 1981, after having a stroke in a London hotel while on a visit to his mistress.

Evans is unsparing about Speer, calling him out as a clever, manipulating, unscrupulous liar who finessed his way to avoid his justified execution as one of the mass murderers of the Nazi regime. However, his portraits of the other significant figures in the Hitler entourage are far more nuanced. Evans rejects the knee-jerk depiction of Himmler, Göring and Goebbels, et al, as sociopaths, deviants and losers. His short biographies weigh up all the new evidence and present these ghoulish, mythic personas as rounded, three-dimensional figures. They were, by and large, middle class, and from normal, happy families. They had clearly delineated personalities. Röhm was an accomplished pianist; Goebbels had earned a doctorate; Göring was an enthusiastic if erratic art collector. But all of them owed their ascent to power to one man, Adolf Hitler.

So what about the “Boss”? Evans says that, despite the mass of new material about Hitler, “opinion among historians and biographers remains deeply divided”. But it is clear that this ordinary, disturbed man was transmogrified into a sort of semi-deity that the German populace readily identified with. Evans argues that:

“Constant adulation further corrupted Hitler’s already narcissistic mentality. His arrogance and overconfidence, based on crude racial stereotypes, led him into fatal misjudgements during the war. The Americans, he declared, were “as stupid as chickens”. “The Russian colossus is collapsing under its immobility”. The “English” were “decadent”… From the very beginning, misled by the memory of World War I, Hitler grotesquely overestimated the ability of Germany, a medium-sized European power, to confront and defeat three vast empires, the British, American and Soviet, any one of which possessed resources that far exceeded its own. But for Hitler, economic statistics were irrelevant: what counted in his mind was strength of will, a reflection above all of what he supposed to be the Germans’ racial superiority.”

My conclusion, after spending many months reading and writing about Hitler and his “people”, was that the most cogent interpretation of his behaviour and abhorrent values, from the outset of his rise to power, was that he was insane. This was to be the message of my aborted TV series. “Deluded”, “narcissistic”, “egomaniacal” – similar interpretations don’t do enough to explain his actions. To me, Hitler’s fraught endgame in the bunker in April 1945 was the moment the veils were stripped away. The rambling, thought-disordered, drug-abusing, Parkinson’s-diseased, weirdo-nutter was, writ large, the man he had always been.

Martin Amis , in the afterword to his 2014 novel about the Holocaust, The Zone of Interest , would appear to agree with me. He wrote about Hitler that “we are continuing to beg an enormous question: the question of sanity… And madness, if we impute it (and how can we exclude it?) is bound to frustrate our investigation – because of course we will get no coherence, and no legible why, from the mad.” If you only read one book about Hitler and the short, bleak, horrendous life of Nazi Germany, then this is the one for you. Richard Evans’s superb and important account – with its dark and chilling narrative of Hitler’s eagerly compliant associates, underlings, servants and enforcers – establishes that evil, apocalyptic regime as the most potent warning to our contemporary world.

William Boyd’s novel, “Gabriel’s Moon”, is out 5 September

Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich Richard J Evans Allen Lane, 624pp, £35

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Adolf Hitler The Definitive Biography

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Short Bio » Politician » Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian born politician. German Adolf Hitler was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen. There is no doubt he reshaped the entire world with his deeds. He was at the centre of World War II. Adolf Hitler always sought Lebensraum (living space) for the German people. This is believed to be the main reason for the World War II outbreak. He was and always will be a monumental figure in history.

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889. He was born in a town in Austria-Hungary. His birthplace is modern-day Austria. His father Alois Hitler and mother Klara Pölzl moved to Germany when Adolf Hitler was 3 years old. Since childhood, he was a German Nationalist. He sang the German national anthem with his friends. After the death of his father, he lived a bohemian lifestyle. He worked as a painter in 1905. Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts rejected Adolf Hitler twice. After his mother died Hitler ran out of money. He was forced to live in homeless shelters. He returned to Munich in 1914. In 1994, World War I broke out. He volunteered to serve in the Bavarian Army. In the army, he was a brave and decorated soldier. After the war, Adolf Hitler entered politics. Hitler designed the Swastika logo for NSDWP. Hitler was involved in the unsuccessful coups d’état in 1923. Erich Ludendorff was his ally in this failed attempt to overthrow the government in Munich. He was arrested for treason in 1923. He served only one year of his five-year sentence. After the New York Stock Market Crash in 1929 NSDWP took the opportunity to gain support from the German people. The Nazi Party promised to provide jobs for the unemployed and rebuild the economy. In 1932 Adolf Hitler ran for the presidency. In 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed as the Chancellor of Germany. After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler took over Germany as Führer und Reichskanzler. In 1938 he formed an alliance with the new modern and powerful Japan. In 1931 he invaded Poland. Due to this Britain and France declared war on Germany. In 1941 The Nazis invaded The Soviet. He failed to defeat the Soviets. The entry of the United States of America into the war forced The Nazi Germany to the blink of defeat. The war ended with the Battle of Berlin in 1945. At the end, Hitler was responsible for the genocide of at least 5.5 million Jews. He was also responsible for the death of more than 19 million other people.

Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun on 29th April 1945. He committed suicide on 30th April to avoid being captured by the RED Army. His wife also committed suicide alongside him. He despised the Jews and other racially inferior people (slaves, blacks and gypsies). Hitler did not believe in God He believed in the theory “Survival of the fittest”.

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Adolf Hitler

• Occupation: Dictator of Germany
• Born: April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary
• Died: April 30 1945 in Berlin, Germany
• Best known for: Starting World War II and the Holocaust

• Hitler loved the circus, especially the acrobats.
• He never took his coat off, no matter how hot it got.
• He didn't exercise and didn't like sports.
• Only one of Hitler's 5 siblings survived childhood, his sister Paula.
• Hitler was temporarily blind from a mustard gas attack during World War I.
• He had a cat named Schnitzel.
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Adolf Hitler: Facts & Related Content

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Did You Know?

• The KGB claims that they destroyed Hitler's remains and scattered his ashes so that his grave would not become a shrine for his supporters.
• When tested, the skull fragment that Russia held which supposedly belonged to Hitler was definitively found to belong to a female.
• The execution and humiliation of Mussolini and his mistress after fascist Italy fell are said to have contributed to Hitler's decision to commit suicide along with his wife.

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Related Topics and References

• Third Reich: Introduction
• Third Reich: The plot against Hitler
• Third Reich: Hitler’s consolidation of power
• Third Reich: Hitler’s early foreign policy
• Normandy Invasion: Hitler’s Reich, east and west
• Wehrmacht: Hitler and the Wehrmacht

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