“official portrait”
*1938*
*~age 49*
.
*’20 APRIL 1889′ – ’30 APRIL 1945’*
*born in ‘braunau am inn’ / ‘austria-hungary’*
*died in ‘berlin’*
(age 56)
*suicide*
*’gunshot’ to ‘head’*
(as the russian ‘red army’ enveloped ‘berlin’)
.
.
.
.
(in 1842, ‘johann georg hiedler’ married ‘maria’)
.
(in 1876 ‘alois’ testified before a notary and three witnesses that ‘johann’ was his father)
(at age 39, alois took the surname “hitler”
(this surname was variously spelled hiedler, hüttler, huettler and hitler, and was probably regularized to hitler by a clerk)
the origin of the name is either “one who lives in a hut” (Standard German Hütte), “shepherd” (Standard German hüten “to guard”, English heed), or is from the Slavic word Hidlar and Hidlarcek.
(regarding the first two theories: some German dialects make little or no distinction between the ü-sound and the i-sound.)
despite this testimony, Alois’ paternity has been the subject of controversy.
(after receiving a “blackmail letter” from hitler’s nephew ‘William Patrick Hitler’ threatening to reveal embarrassing information about Hitler’s family tree, nazi party lawyer hans frank investigated, and, in his memoirs, claimed to have uncovered letters revealing that Alois’ mother, ‘Maria Schicklgruber’, was employed as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Graz and that the family’s 19-year-old son, ‘Leopold Frankenberger’, fathered ‘Alois’)
No evidence has ever been produced to support Frank’s claim, and Frank himself said Hitler’s full Aryan blood was obvious.
Frank’s claims were widely believed in the 1950s, but by the 1990s, were generally doubted by historians.
(ian kershaw dismisses the frankenberger story as a “smear” by hitler’s enemies, noting that all jews had been expelled from graz in the 15th century and were not allowed to return until well after alois was born)
Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary
the fourth of Alois and Klara Hitler’s six children
(who was alois’s third wife)
(his second wife died)
4/20
(1889 – 1945)
hitler’s father, alois hitler, was an illegitimate child and, for the first 39 years of his life, bore his mother’s surname, “schicklgruber”
*it has been said that alois hitler behaved like a self-important tyrant at home*
“even one of his closest friends admitted that Alois was ‘awfully rough’ with his wife and ‘hardly ever spoke a word to her at home.'”
If hitler was in a bad mood, he picked on the older children or klara herself, in front of them. After Hitler and his oldest son Alois Jr. had a climactic and violent argument, Alois Jr. left home, and the elder Alois swore he would never give the boy a penny of inheritance beyond what the law required.
At the age of three, his family moved to Kapuzinerstrasse 5 in Passau, Germany where the young Hitler would acquire Lower Bavarian rather than Austrian as his lifelong native dialect. In 1894, the family moved to Leonding near Linz, then in June 1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld near Lambach, where he tried his hand at farming and beekeeping. During this time, the young Hitler attended school in nearby Fischlham. As a child, he tirelessly played “Cowboys and Indians” and, by his own account, became fixated on war after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War in his father’s things. He wrote in Mein Kampf: “It was not long before the great historic struggle had become my greatest spiritual experience. From then on, I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in any way connected with war or, for that matter, with soldiering.”
His father’s efforts at Hafeld ended in failure and the family moved to Lambach in 1897.
(there, hitler attended a catholic school located in an 11th-century benedictine cloister whose walls were engraved in a number of places with crests containing the symbol of the swastika)
it was in Lambach that the eight year-old Hitler sang in the church choir, took singing lessons, and even entertained the fantasy of one day becoming a priest. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding
His younger brother Edmund died of measles on 2 February 1900, causing permanent changes in Hitler. He went from a confident, outgoing boy who found school easy, to a morose, detached, sullen boy who constantly battled his father and his teachers
(Hitler is 11)
Hitler was close to his mother, but had a troubled relationship with his authoritarian father, who frequently beat him, especially in the years after Alois’ retirement and disappointing farming efforts.
Alois wanted his son to follow in his footsteps as an Austrian customs official, and this became a huge source of conflict between them.
despite his son’s pleas to go to classical high school and become an artist, his father sent him to the Realschule in Linz, a technical high school of about 300 students, in September 1900. Hitler rebelled, and in Mein Kampf confessed to failing his first year in hopes that once his father saw “what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to the happiness I dreamed of.” Alois never relented, however, and Hitler became even more bitter and rebellious.
For young Hitler, German Nationalism quickly became an obsession, and a way to rebel against his father, who proudly served the Austrian government. Most people who lived along the German-Austrian border considered themselves German-Austrians, but Hitler expressed loyalty only to Germany. In defiance of the Austrian monarchy, and his father who continually expressed loyalty to it, Hitler and his young friends liked to use the German greeting “Heil”, and sing the German anthem “Deutschland Über Alles” instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem
After Alois’ sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler’s behaviour at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave. He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in 1904, but upon completing his second year, he and his friends went out for a night of celebration and drinking, and an intoxicated Hitler tore his school certificate into four pieces and used it as toilet paper. When someone turned the stained certificate in to the school’s director, he “… gave him such a dressing-down that the boy was reduced to shivering jelly. It was probably the most painful and humiliating experience of his life.” Hitler was expelled, never to return to school again
(Hitler is 15)
At age 15, Hitler took part in his First Holy Communion on Whitsunday, 22 May 1904, at the Linz Cathedral. His sponsor was Emanuel Lugert, a friend of his late father
From 1905 on, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna on an orphan’s pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907–1908), citing “unfitness for painting”, and was told his abilities lay instead in the field of architecture. His memoirs reflect a fascination with the subject:
The purpose of my trip was to study the picture gallery in the Court Museum, but I had eyes for scarcely anything but the Museum itself. From morning until late at night, I ran from one object of interest to another, but it was always the buildings which held my primary interest
Following the school rector’s recommendation, he too became convinced this was his path to pursue, yet he lacked the proper academic preparation for architecture school:
In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy’s architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfilment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible
On 21 December 1907, Hitler’s mother died of breast cancer at age 47.
(Hitler is 18 years old)
Ordered by a court in Linz, Hitler gave his share of the orphans’ benefits to his sister Paula.
When he was 21, he inherited money from an aunt. He struggled as a painter in Vienna, copying scenes from postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists.
After being rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909, he lived in a shelter for the homeless. By 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men on Meldemannstraße. Another resident of the house, Reinhold Hanisch, sold Hitler’s paintings until the two men had a bitter falling-out
(‘hitler’ said he first became an anti-semite in vienna, which had a large jewish community, including orthodox jews who had fled the pogroms in ‘russia’)
(cue billy joel’s “vienna”)
according to childhood friend August Kubizek, however, Hitler was a “confirmed anti-Semite” before he left Linz.
Vienna at that time was a hotbed of traditional religious prejudice and 19th century racism.
Hitler may have been influenced by the writings of the ideologist and anti-Semite Lanz von Liebenfels and polemics from politicians such as Karl Lueger, founder of the Christian Social Party and Mayor of Vienna; the composer Richard Wagner; and Georg Ritter von Schönerer, leader of the pan-Germanic Away from Rome! movement.
Hitler claims in Mein Kampf that his transition from opposing antisemitism on religious grounds to supporting it on racial grounds came from having seen an Orthodox Jew.
There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanised in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic antisemitism. Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?
He often was a guest for dinner in a noble Jewish house, and he interacted well with Jewish merchants who tried to sell his paintings.
Hitler may also have been influenced by Martin Luther’s On the Jews and their Lies.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Martin Luther as a great warrior, a true statesman, and a great reformer, alongside Richard Wagner and Frederick the Great.
wilhelm Röpke, writing after the Holocaust, concluded that “without any question, Lutheranism influenced the political, spiritual and social history of Germany in a way that, after careful consideration of everything, can be described only as fateful”
Hitler received the final part of his father’s estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich.
He wrote in Mein Kampf that he had always longed to live in a “real” German city. In Munich, he became more interested in architecture and, he says, the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
Moving to Munich also helped him escape military service in Austria for a time, but the Munich police (acting in cooperation with the Austrian authorities) eventually arrested him.
After a physical exam and a contrite plea, he was deemed unfit for service and allowed to return to Munich.
However, when Germany entered World War I in August 1914, he petitioned King Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to serve in a Bavarian regiment.
(like wagner)
(like wittgenstein)
This request was granted, and Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian army
(wagner’s ludwig???)
(hitler served in france and belgium)
(equivalent of private first class in american army)
(runner on the western front)
(his troop of 250 reduced to 42)
(twice decorated for bravery)
(two iron crosses)
(rarely given to soldier of his class)
(regimental staff believed hitler lacked leadership skills)
(or because he wasn’t a german citizen???)
(never promoted to british equivalent of ‘corporal’)
(had lots of free time to devote to his artwork)
(like me blogging @ jpmorganchase)
(drew cartoons and instructional drawings for an army newspaper)
(wounded in groin or left thigh during the battle of the somme)
(returned to the front)
(received the ‘wound badge’)
1918
(Hitler is 29 years old)
(temporarily blinded by mustard gas)
(conversion disorder / hysteria)
(is this is messianic moment?)
At the beginning of the Great War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas . . . then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain
These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human weakness and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty, unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas. The weaker natures must be told that here it is a case of to be or not to be
1918
germany surrenders
treaty of versailles re-creates poland
(say hello to nietzsche!)
Like many other German nationalists, Hitler believed in the Dolchstoßlegende (“dagger-stab legend”) which claimed that the army, “undefeated in the field,” had been “stabbed in the back” by civilian leaders and Marxists back on the home front. These politicians were later dubbed the November Criminals
(Hitler remained in the army after WWI)
(attended funeral march for charismatic bavarian jew kurt Eisner / and socialist to boot)
After the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he took part in “national thinking” courses organized by the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr Group, Headquarters 4 under Captain Karl Mayr.
Scapegoats were found in “international Jewry”, communists, and politicians across the party spectrum, especially the parties of the Weimar Coalition
In July 1919, 30-year-old Hitler was appointed a Verbindungsmann (police spy) of an Aufklärungskommando (Intelligence Commando) of the Reichswehr, both to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate a small party, the German Workers’ Party (DAP).
During his inspection of the party, Hitler was impressed with founder Anton Drexler’s anti-semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist ideas, which favoured a strong active government, a “non-Jewish” version of socialism and mutual solidarity of all members of society.
Drexler was impressed with Hitler’s oratory skills and invited him to join the party.
Hitler joined DAP on 12 September 1919 and became the party’s 55th member.
He was also made the seventh member of the executive committee.
Years later, he claimed to be the party’s seventh overall member, but it has been established that this claim is false
Here Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the early founders of the party and member of the occult Thule Society. The Thule members believed in the coming of a “German Messiah” who would redeem Germany after its defeat in World War I. Dietrich Eckart expressed his anticipation in a poem he published months before he met Hitler for the first time. In the poem, Eckart refers to “the Great One”, “the Nameless One”, “Whom all can sense but no one saw”.
When Eckart met Hitler in 1919, he believed to have found this prophesied redeemer.
Eckart became Hitler’s mentor, exchanging ideas with him, teaching him how to dress and speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people. Hitler thanked Eckart by paying tribute to him in the second volume of Mein Kampf.
To increase the party’s appeal, the party changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialist German Workers Party (abbreviated NSDAP).
Hitler was discharged from the army in March 1920 and with his former superiors’ continued encouragement began participating full time in the party’s activities. By early 1921, Hitler was becoming highly effective at speaking in front of large crowds. In February, Hitler spoke before a crowd of nearly six thousand in Munich.
To publicize the meeting, he sent out two truckloads of party supporters to drive around with swastikas, cause a commotion and throw out leaflets, their first use of this tactic.
Hitler gained notoriety outside of the party for his rowdy, polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians (including monarchists, nationalists and other non- internationalist socialists) and especially against Marxists and Jews.
The NSDAP was centred in Munich, a hotbed of German nationalists who included Army officers determined to crush Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic. Gradually they noticed Hitler and his growing movement as a suitable vehicle for their goals. Hitler traveled to Berlin to visit nationalist groups during the summer of 1921, and in his absence there was a revolt among the DAP leadership in Munich.
The party was run by an executive committee whose original members considered Hitler to be overbearing.
They formed an alliance with a group of socialists from Augsburg.
Hitler rushed back to Munich and countered them by tendering his resignation from the party on 11 July 1921.
When they realized the loss of Hitler would effectively mean the end of the party, he seized the moment and announced he would return on the condition that he replace Drexler as party chairman, with unlimited powers.
Infuriated committee members (including Drexler) held out at first.
Meanwhile an anonymous pamphlet appeared entitled Adolf Hitler: Is he a traitor?, attacking Hitler’s lust for power and criticizing the violent men around him.
Hitler responded to its publication in a Munich newspaper by suing for libel and later won a small settlement.
The executive committee of the NSDAP eventually backed down and Hitler’s demands were put to a vote of party members. Hitler received 543 votes for and only one against. At the next gathering on 29 July 1921, Adolf Hitler was introduced as Führer of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, marking the first time this title was publicly used.
hitler’s beer hall oratory, attacking Jews, social democrats, liberals, reactionary monarchists, capitalists and communists, began attracting adherents. Early followers included Rudolf Hess, the former air force pilot Hermann Göring, and the army captain Ernst Röhm, who eventually became head of the Nazis’ paramilitary organization the SA (Sturmabteilung, or “Storm Division”), which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. As well, Hitler assimilated independent groups, such as the Nuremberg-based Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft, led by Julius Streicher, who became Gauleiter of Franconia.
hitler attracted the attention of local business interests, was accepted into influential circles of Munich society, and became associated with wartime General Erich Ludendorff during this time
It appears that the “tall and stately”Erna hanfstaengl (4 years older than Hitler) had simply been polite to Hitler and had shown courtesy to her brother’s friend at their initial meeting in the early 1920s, and Hitler misinterpreted this as romantic affection. Gross claims that Hitler was in love with Erna, but that she considered the whole business to be a joke, and that she was amused at his attempts to court her and please her. According to Gross, she was teased by her society friends about the unwanted affections shown by her “suitor” and made sure that she was never alone with him.
Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl (February 2, 1887 – November 6, 1975), was a German businessman who worked for adolf Hitler and Franklin Roosevelt, and was once engaged to the author Djuna Barnes
In any event it appears that during the period 1922-23, Erna assisted her brother in his aspirations to become one of Hitler’s inner circle, by furthering Hitler’s introduction to people of wealth and social standing in Munich
Encouraged by this early support, Hitler decided to use Ludendorff as a front in an attempted coup later known as the “Beer Hall Putsch” (sometimes as the “Hitler Putsch” or “Munich Putsch“). The Nazi Party had copied Italy’s fascists in appearance and had adopted some of their policies, and in 1923, 34-year-old Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini’s “March on Rome” by staging his own “Campaign in Berlin”. Hitler and Ludendorff obtained the clandestine support of Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria’s de facto ruler, along with leading figures in the Reichswehr and the police. As political posters show, Ludendorff, Hitler and the heads of the Bavarian police and military planned on forming a new government.
On 8 November 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting headed by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall in Munich. He declared that he had set up a new government with Ludendorff and demanded, at gunpoint, the support of Kahr and the local military establishment for the destruction of the Berlin government.
Kahr withdrew his support and fled to join the opposition to Hitler at the first opportunity.
The next day, when Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government as a start to their “March on Berlin”, the police dispersed them.
Sixteen NSDAP members were killed.
Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl and contemplated suicide; Hanfstaengl’s wife Helene talked him out of it. He was soon arrested for high treason.
Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the party.
During Hitler’s trial, he was given almost unlimited time to speak, and his popularity soared as he voiced nationalistic sentiments in his defence speech.
A Munich personality thus became a nationally known figure. On 1 April 1924, Hitler was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment at Landsberg Prison. Hitler received favoured treatment from the guards and had much fan mail from admirers. He was pardoned and released from jail on 20 December 1924, by order of the Bavarian Supreme Court on 19 December, which issued its final rejection of the state prosecutor’s objections to Hitler’s early release.
including time on remand, he had served little more than one year of his sentence
(‘my struggles’)
(Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice)
(‘mein kampf’)
(Hitler is 36 years old)
(1925)
(first deputy rudolf hess)
The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an autobiography and an exposition of his ideology. Mein Kampf was influenced by The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant, which Hitler called “my Bible”
selling about 240,000 copies between 1925 and 1934. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies had been sold or distributed (newlyweds and soldiers received free copies). The copyright of Mein Kampf in Europe is claimed by the Free State of Bavaria and scheduled to end on 31 December 2015. Reproductions in Germany are authorized only for scholarly purposes and in heavily commented form
(when he was released from jail, germany’s economic situation had improved)
(nazi party was banned in bavaria)
Hitler convinced Heinrich Held, Prime Minister of Bavaria, to lift the ban, based on representations that the party would now only seek political power through legal means. Even though the ban on the NSDAP was removed effective 16 February 1925, Hitler incurred a new ban on public speaking as a result of an inflammatory speech
Since Hitler was banned from public speeches, he appointed Gregor Strasser, who in 1924 had been elected to the Reichstag, as Reichsorganisationsleiter, authorizing him to organize the party in northern Germany.
Strasser, joined by his younger brother Otto and Joseph Goebbels, steered an increasingly independent course, emphasizing the socialist element in the party’s programme.
The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gauleiter Nord-West became an internal opposition, threatening Hitler’s authority, but this faction was defeated at the Bamberg Conference in 1926, during which Goebbels joined Hitler.
After this encounter, Hitler centralized the party even more and asserted the Führerprinzip (“Leader principle”) as the basic principle of party organization.
Leaders were not elected by their group, but were rather appointed by their superior, answering to them while demanding unquestioning obedience from their inferiors.
Consistent with Hitler’s disdain for democracy, all power and authority devolved from the top down.
A key element of Hitler’s appeal was his ability to evoke a sense of offended national pride caused by the Treaty of Versailles imposed on the defeated German Empire by the Western Allies.
Germany had lost economically important territory in Europe along with its colonies and in admitting to sole responsibility for the war had agreed to pay a huge reparations bill totaling 132 billion marks.
Most Germans bitterly resented these terms, but early Nazi attempts to gain support by blaming these humiliations on “international Jewry” were not particularly successful with the electorate. The party learned quickly, and soon a more subtle propaganda emerged, combining antisemitism with an attack on the failures of the “Weimar system” and the parties supporting it.
Having failed in overthrowing the Republic by a coup, Hitler pursued a “strategy of legality”: this meant formally adhering to the rules of the Weimar Republic until he had legally gained power. He would then use the institutions of the Weimar Republic to destroy it and establish himself as dictator. Some party members, especially in the paramilitary SA, opposed this strategy; Röhm and others ridiculed Hitler as “Adolphe Legalité”
The political turning point for Hitler came when the Great Depression hit Germany in 1930.
(Hitler is 41 years old)
The Weimar Republic had never been firmly rooted and was openly opposed by right-wing conservatives (including monarchists), communists and the Nazis. As the parties loyal to the democratic, parliamentary republic found themselves unable to agree on counter-measures, their grand coalition broke up and was replaced by a minority cabinet.
The new Chancellor, Heinrich Brüning of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, lacking a majority in parliament, had to implement his measures through the president’s emergency decrees.
Tolerated by the majority of parties, this rule by decree would become the norm over a series of unworkable parliaments and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government
The Reichstag‘s initial opposition to Brüning’s measures led to premature elections in September 1930. The republican parties lost their majority and their ability to resume the grand coalition, while the Nazis suddenly rose from relative obscurity to win 18.3% of the vote along with 107 seats. In the process, they jumped from the ninth-smallest party in the chamber to the second largest
In September–October 1930, Hitler appeared as a major defence witness at the trial in Leipzig of two junior Reichswehr officers charged with membership of the Nazi Party, which at that time was forbidden to Reichswehr personnel. The two officers, Leutnants Richard Scheringer and Hans Ludin, admitted quite openly to Nazi Party membership, and used as their defence that the Nazi Party membership should not be forbidden to those serving in the Reichswehr.
When the Prosecution argued that the Nazi Party was a dangerous revolutionary force, one of the defence lawyers, Hans Frank had Hitler brought to the stand to prove that the Nazi Party was a law-abiding party.
During his testimony, Hitler insisted that his party was determined to come to power legally, that the phrase “National Revolution” was only to be interpreted “politically”, and that his Party was a friend, not an enemy of the Reichswehr. Hitler’s testimony of 25 September 1930 won him many admirers within the ranks of the officer corps
Brüning’s measures of budget consolidation and financial austerity brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular.
Under these circumstances, Hitler appealed to the bulk of German farmers, war veterans and the middle class, who had been hard-hit by both the inflation of the 1920s and the unemployment of the Depression.
(looks more like a child than a girl)
(she was 23 years old to hitler’s 44)
Born in Linz, Austria, she was the second child and eldest daughter of Leo Raubal Sr. and Hitler’s half-sister, Angela Raubal. She was rumoured to be Adolf Hitler’s lover
Angela Franziska Johanna Hammitzsch (née Hitler 28 July 1883 – 30 October 1949), first married to Leo Raubal, Sr., was the elder half-sister of Adolf Hitler.
Angela Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria, the second child of Alois Hitler and his second wife, Franziska Matzelberger.
Her mother died the next year. She and her brother Alois Hitler, Jr. were raised by their father and his third wife Klara Pölzl. Her half-brother Adolf Hitler was born six years after her and they grew very close. She is the only one of his siblings mentioned in Mein Kampf
As he rose to power as leader of the Nazi Party, Hitler kept a tight rein over Geli, who lived at either his Munich apartment or his Berghof villa near Berchtesgaden, where her mother served as housekeeper, after 1929
He did not allow her to associate with friends freely and attempted to have himself or someone he trusted near her at all times, accompanying her on window shopping excursions, to the movies, and to the opera.
Despite Hitler’s efforts to control her, Geli did not seem to return his feelings and became linked to Emil Maurice, a founding member of the SS and Hitler’s chauffeur.
Hitler dismissed him as a result but later rehired and promoted him.
Maurice later claimed that he “…loved her, but it was a strange affection that did not dare show itself”
If any hard feelings arose on Hitler’s part, they did not last, and he and Maurice were reconciled: during the last two days of Hitler’s life, according to reports, he displayed two photographs on his dresser: one of his mother and one of Maurice
Several writers claim that, years later, Geli Raubal, Hitler’s niece (and possibly his lover for a period, although many authorities doubt their relationship was consummated) was jealous of Hitler’s association with Erna
(maurice’s great-grandfather was a jew)
(he met eva braun in 1929)
(she was 17 years old)
(he was 40 years old)
took a job as an office and lab assistant and photographer’s model for Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer for the Nazi Party
She met Hitler, 23 years her senior, at Hoffmann’s studio of Munich in October 1929. He had been introduced to her as “Herr Wolff” (a childhood nickname he used during the 1920s for security purposes). She described him to friends as a “gentleman of a certain age with a funny moustache, a light-coloured English overcoat, and carrying a big felt hat.” He appreciated her eye colour, which was said to be close to his mother’s.
Her family was strongly against the relationship and little is known about it during the first two years
In September 1931, Hitler’s niece Geli Raubal was found dead in her bedroom in his Munich apartment (his half-sister Angela and her daughter Geli had been with him in Munich since 1929), an apparent suicide.
Geli, who was believed to be in some sort of romantic relationship with Hitler, was 19 years younger than he was and had used his gun.
His niece’s death is viewed as a source of deep, lasting pain for him
Hitler saw more of Braun after the apparent 1931 suicide of his half sister Angela’s daughter Geli Raubal with whom, it was rumoured, he had been intimate.
The circumstances of Raubal’s death in Munich have never been confirmed.
Some historians suggest she killed herself because she was distraught over her relationship with Hitler or his relationship with Braun, while others have speculated Hitler played a more direct role in the death of his niece.
Braun was unaware that Raubal was a rival for Hitler’s affections until after Raubal’s death. Meanwhile, Hitler was seeing other women, such as actress Renate Müller, whose early death may also have been suicide
Eva Braun first attempted suicide on 1 November 1932 at the age of 20 by shooting herself in the chest with her father’s pistol
Hitler becomes german citizen in 1932
(at age 43)
In 1932, Hitler intended to run against the aging President Paul von Hindenburg in the scheduled presidential elections.
His 27 January 1932 speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf won him, for the first time, support from a broad swath of Germany’s most powerful industrialists.
Though Hitler had left Austria in 1913 and had renounced his Austrian citizenship in 1925, he still had not acquired German citizenship and hence could not run for public office.
On 25 February, however, the interior minister of the Brunswick, a Nazi (the Nazis were part of a right-wing coalition governing the state) appointed Hitler as administrator for the state’s delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin.
This appointment made Hitler a citizen of Brunswick.
in those days, the states conferred citizenship, so this automatically made Hitler a citizen of Germany as well and thus eligible to run for president.
The new German citizen ran against Hindenburg, who was supported by a broad range of nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, republican and even social democratic parties.
Another candidate was a Communist and member of a fringe right-wing party.
Hitler’s campaign was called “Hitler über Deutschland” (Hitler over Germany).
The name had a double meaning; besides a reference to his dictatorial ambitions, it referred to the fact that he campaigned by aircraft.
Hitler came in second on both rounds, attaining more than 35% of the vote during the second one in April.
Although he lost to Hindenburg, the election established Hitler as a realistic alternative in German politics
Meanwhile, Papen tried to get his revenge on Schleicher by working toward the General’s downfall, through forming an intrigue with the camarilla and Alfred Hugenberg, media mogul and chairman of the DNVP.
Also involved were Hjalmar Schacht, Fritz Thyssen and other leading German businessmen and international bankers.
They financially supported the Nazi Party, which had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the cost of heavy campaigning.
The businessmen wrote letters to Hindenburg, urging him to appoint Hitler as leader of a government “independent from parliamentary parties” which could turn into a movement that would “enrapture millions of people”
Finally, the president reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler Chancellor of a coalition government formed by the NSDAP and DNVP.
However, the Nazis were to be contained by a framework of conservative cabinet ministers, most notably by Papen as Vice-Chancellor and by Hugenberg as Minister of the Economy.
The only other Nazi besides Hitler to get a portfolio was Wilhelm Frick, who was given the relatively powerless interior ministry (in Germany at the time, most powers wielded by the interior minister in other countries were held by the interior ministers of the states).
As a concession to the Nazis, Göring was named minister without portfolio.
While Papen intended to use Hitler as a figurehead, the Nazis gained key positions.
On the morning of 30 January 1933, in Hindenburg’s office, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor during what some observers later described as a brief and simple ceremony.
His first speech as Chancellor took place on 10 February. The Nazis’ seizure of power subsequently became known as the Machtergreifung or Machtübernahme
Having become Chancellor, Hitler foiled all attempts by his opponents to gain a majority in parliament. Because no single party could gain a majority, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag again.
Elections were scheduled for early March, but on 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire.
Since a Dutch independent communist was found in the building, the fire was blamed on a communist plot.
The government reacted with the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February which suspended basic rights, including habeas corpus.
Under the provisions of this decree, the German Communist Party (KPD) and other groups were suppressed, and Communist functionaries and deputies were arrested, forced to flee, or murdered.
Campaigning continued, with the Nazis making use of paramilitary violence, anti-communist hysteria, and the government’s resources for propaganda.
On election day, 6 March, the NSDAP increased its result to 43.9% of the vote, remaining the largest party, but its victory was marred by its failure to secure an absolute majority, necessitating maintaining a coalition with the DNVP
braun attempted suicide a second time on 28 May 1935 by taking an overdose of Phanodorm (sleeping pills)
after Braun’s recovery, Hitler became more committed to her and arranged for the substantial royalties from widely published and popular photographs of him taken by Hoffmann’s photo studio to pay for a villa in Munich.
This income also provided her with a Mercedes, a chauffeur and a maid.
Braun’s sister Gretl moved in with her.
Hoffmann later asserted Braun became a fixture in Hitler’s life by attempting suicide less than a year after Geli Raubal’s death, as Hitler wished to avoid any further scandal
When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Braun sat on the stage in the area reserved for VIPs as a secretary, to which Hitler’s sister Angela strongly objected, along with the wives of other ministers.
She was banned from living anywhere near Braun as a result.
By 1936 Braun was at Hitler’s household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden whenever he was in residence there and her parents were also invited for dinner several times.
in 1938 Hitler named Braun his primary heir, to receive about 600 pounds yearly after his death.
In February 1938, Hitler finally ended the dilemma that had plagued German Far Eastern policy, namely whether to continue the informal Sino-German alliance that existed with Republic of China since the 1910s or to create a new alliance with Japan.
the military at the time strongly favoured continuing Germany’s alliance with China. China had the support of Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath and War Minister Werner von Blomberg, the so-called “China Lobby” who tried to steer German foreign policy away from war in Europe.
Both men, however, were sacked by Hitler in early 1938.
Upon the advice of Hitler’s newly appointed Foreign Minister, the strongly pro-Japanese Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler chose to end the alliance with China as the price of gaining an alignment with the more modern and powerful Japan.
In an address to the Reichstag, Hitler announced German recognition of Manchukuo, the Japanese-occupied puppet state in Manchuria, and renounced the German claims to the former colonies in the Pacific held by Japan.
Hitler ordered an end to arms shipments to China, and ordered the recall of all the German officers attached to the Chinese Army.
In retaliation for ending German support to China in the war against Japan, Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek canceled all of the Sino-German economic agreements, which deprived the Germans of raw materials such as tungsten that the Chinese had previously provided.
The ending of the Sino-German alignment increased the problems of German rearmament, as the Germans were now forced to use their limited supply of foreign exchange to buy raw materials on the open market
In March 1938, Hitler pressured Austria into unification with Germany and made a triumphant entry into Vienna on 14 March. Next, he intensified a crisis over the German-speaking Sudetenland districts of Czechoslovakia
On 3 March 1938, the British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson met with Hitler and presented on behalf of his government a proposal for an international consortium to rule much of Africa (in which Germany would be assigned a leading role) in exchange for a German promise never to resort to war to change the frontiers
In December 1938, the Chancellery of the Führer headed by Philipp Bouhler received a letter concerning a severely physically and mentally disabled baby girl named Sofia Knauer living in Leipzig.
At that time, there was a furious rivalry existing between Bouhler’s office, the office of the Reich Chancellery led by Hans-Heinrich Lammers, the Presidential Chancellery of Otto Meissner, the office of Hitler’s adjutant Wilhelm Brückner and the Deputy Führer‘s office which was effectively headed by Martin Bormann over control of access to Hitler.
As part of a power play against his rivals, Bouhler presented the letter concerning the disabled girl to Hitler, who thanked Bouhler for bringing the matter to his attention and responded by ordering his personal physician Dr. Karl Brandt to kill Knauer.
In January 1939, Hitler ordered Bouhler and Dr. Brandt to henceforward have all disabled infants born in Germany killed.
This was the origin of the Action T4 program.
Subsequently Dr. Brandt and Bouhler, acting on their own initiative in the expectation of winning Hitler’s favour, expanded the T4 program to killing, first, all physically or mentally disabled children in Germany, and, second, all disabled adults
1 september 1939
(germany invades west poland)
3 september 1939
(britain and france declare war on germany)
(hitler was surprised: ‘now what?’)
(wimpy french ambassador arrives with declaration of war)
17 september 1939:
(soviet forces invade eastern poland)
(beginning of ‘cold war’)
(joga vs blumberg)
(hitler wanted no more poland)
(get rid of debbie toresco and the fragnitos)
Hitler’s handling of the Forster–Greiser dispute has often been advanced as an example of Ian Kershaw’s theory of “Working Towards the Führer”, namely that Hitler issued vague instructions, and allowed his subordinates to work out policy on their own.
After the conquest of Poland, another major dispute broke out between different factions with one centring around Reichsfüherer SS Heinrich Himmler and Arthur Greiser championing and carrying out ethnic cleansing schemes for Poland, and another centring around Hermann Göring and Hans Frank calling for turning Poland into the “granary” of the Reich.
At a conference held at Göring’s Karinhall estate on 12 February 1940, the dispute was settled in favour of the Göring-Frank view of economic exploitation, and ending mass expulsions as economically disruptive.
On 15 May 1940, Himmler showed Hitler a memo entitled “Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East”, which called for expelling the entire Jewish population of Europe into Africa and reducing the remainder of the Polish population to a “leaderless labouring class”.
Hitler called Himmler’s memo “good and correct”.
Hitler’s remark had the effect of scuttling the so-called Karinhall argreement, and led to the Himmler–Greiser viewpoint triumphing as German policy for Poland.
During this period, Hitler built up his forces on Germany’s western frontier. In April 1940, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway.
In May 1940, Hitler’s forces attacked France, conquering Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium in the process.
These victories persuaded Benito Mussolini of Italy to join the war on Hitler’s side on 10 June 1940.
France surrendered on 22 June 1940
Britain, whose forces evacuated France by sea from Dunkirk, continued to fight alongside other British dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic.
After having his overtures for peace rejected by the British, now led by Winston Churchill, Hitler ordered bombing raids on the United Kingdom.
The Battle of Britain was Hitler’s prelude to a planned invasion. The attacks began by pounding Royal Air Force airbases and radar stations protecting South-East England. However, the Luftwaffe failed to defeat the Royal Air Force.
On 27 September 1940, the Tripartite Treaty was signed in Berlin by Saburo Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Hitler, and Ciano. The purpose of the Tripartite Treaty, which was directed against an unnamed power that was clearly meant to be the United States, was to deter the Americans from supporting the British. It was later expanded to include Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. They were collectively known as the Axis Powers. By the end of October 1940, air superiority for the invasion Operation Sealion could not be assured, and Hitler ordered the bombing of British cities, including London, Plymouth, and Coventry, mostly at night.
Adolf Hitler in his second visit to an occupied territory, in this case, Maribor, Yugoslavia in 1941.
In the Spring of 1941, Hitler was distracted from his plans for the East by various activities in North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. In February, German forces arrived in Libya to bolster the Italian forces there. In April, he launched the invasion of Yugoslavia which was followed quickly by the invasion of Greece.
In May, German forces were sent to support Iraqi rebel forces fighting against the British and to invade Crete.
On 23 May, Hitler released Fuhrer Directive No. 30
Führer Directive No. 30 dealt with German intervention in support of Arab nationalists in the Kingdom of Iraq.
During the 1930s, representatives of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy attempted to gain favor with various Iraqi nationalists and promised support against the British.
On 1 April 1941, Rashid Ali and members of the pro-Axis “Golden Square” staged a coup d’etat against the pro-British government of Regent Amir Abdul Illah.
On 2 May, after tensions mounted on both sides, the British launched pre-emptive air strikes against Iraqi forces and the Anglo-Iraqi War began.
Rashid Ali immediately requested that the Germans make good on the earlier promises of assistance
(“heelp me NOW!”)
(says a proto-saddam / irate arabic hitler figure)
(as the south park duo giggles incessantly)
On 22 June 1941, three million German troops attacked the Soviet Union, breaking the non-aggression pact Hitler had concluded with Stalin two years earlier.
This invasion seized huge amounts of territory, including the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine.
It also encircled and destroyed many Soviet forces, which Stalin had ordered not to retreat.
However, the Germans were stopped barely short of Moscow in December 1941 by the Russian winter and fierce Soviet resistance.
The invasion failed to achieve the quick triumph Hitler wanted.
A major historical dispute concerns Hitler’s reasons for ‘Operation Barbarossa’.
Some historians such as Andreas Hillgruber have argued that Barbarossa was merely one “stage” of Hitler’s Stufenplan (stage by stage plan) for world conquest, which Hillgruber believed that Hitler had formulated in the 1920s.
Other historians such as John Lukacs have contended that Hitler never had a stufenplan, and that the invasion of the Soviet Union was an ad hoc move on the part of Hitler due to Britain’s refusal to surrender.
Lukacs has argued that the reason Hitler gave in private for Barbarossa, namely that Winston Churchill held out the hope that the Soviet Union might enter the war on the Allied side, and that the only way of forcing a British surrender was to eliminate that hope, was indeed Hitler’s real reason for Barbarossa.
In Lukacs’s perspective, Barbarossa was thus primarily an anti-British move on the part of Hitler intended to force Britain to sue for peace by destroying her only hope of victory rather than an anti-Soviet move.
Klaus Hildebrand has maintained that Stalin and Hitler were independently planning to attack each other in 1941.
Hildebrand has claimed that the news in the spring of 1941 of Soviet troop concentrations on the border led to Hitler engaging in a flucht nach vorn (“flight forward” – i.e. responding to a danger by charging on rather than retreating)
A third faction comprising a diverse group such as Viktor Suvorov, Ernst Topitsch, Joachim Hoffmann, Ernst Nolte, and David Irving have argued that the official reason given by the Germans for Barbarossa in 1941 was the real reason, namely that Barbarossa was a “preventive war” forced on Hitler to avert an impeding Soviet attack scheduled for July 1941.
This theory has been widely attacked as erroneous; the American historian Gerhard Weinberg once compared the advocates of the preventive war theory to believers in “fairy tales”
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union reached its apex on 2 December 1941 as part of the 258th Infantry Division advanced to within 15 miles (24 km) of Moscow, close enough to see the spires of the Kremlin,[269] but they were not prepared for the harsh conditions brought on by the first blizzards of winter and in the days that followed, Soviet forces drove them back over 320 kilometres (200 miles).
On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and four days later, Hitler’s formal declaration of war against the United States officially engaged him in war against a coalition that included the world’s largest empire (the British Empire), the world’s greatest industrial and financial power (the United States), and the world’s largest army (the Soviet Union).
(on ’18 december 1941′, the appointment book of the Reichsführer-SS ‘heinrich himmler’ shows he met with Hitler, and in response to Himmler’s question “What to do with the Jews of Russia?“, Hitler’s response was recorded as “als Partisanen auszurotten” (“exterminate them as partisans”))
The Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust
In late 1942, German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein, thwarting Hitler’s plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East.
In February 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad ended with the destruction of the German 6th Army. Thereafter came the Battle of Kursk. Hitler’s military judgment became increasingly erratic, and Germany’s military and economic position deteriorated along with Hitler’s health, as indicated by his left hand’s severe trembling.
Hitler’s biographer Ian Kershaw and others believe that he may have suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
Syphilis has also been suspected as a cause of at least some of his symptoms, although the evidence is slight
Following the allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky) in 1943, Mussolini was deposed by Pietro Badoglio, who surrendered to the Allies.
Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler’s armies into retreat along the Eastern Front.
On 6 June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in what was one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord.
Realists in the German army knew defeat was inevitable, and some plotted to remove Hitler from power.
There were numerous attempts or ideas by private individuals, organisations or states wishing to assassinate Hitler. Some of the plans proceeded to significant degrees. While some attempts occurred before World War II, the most famous attempt came from within Germany. The plan was at least partly driven by the prospect of the increasingly imminent defeat of Germany in the war.
In July 1944, as part of Operation Valkyrie in what became known as the 20 July plot, Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in Hitler’s headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) at Rastenburg.
Hitler narrowly escaped death due to random chance, as someone unknowingly moved the briefcase that contained a bomb by pushing it behind a leg of the heavy conference table.
When the bomb exploded, the table subsequently deflected much of the blast away from Hitler.
Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals, resulting in the executions of more than 4,900 people, sometimes by starvation in solitary confinement followed by slow strangulation.
The main resistance movement was destroyed, although smaller isolated groups continued to operate.
By late 1944, the Red Army had driven the Germans back into Central Europe and the Western Allies were advancing into Germany.
Hitler realized that Germany had lost the war, but allowed no retreats.
He hoped to negotiate a separate peace with America and Britain, a hope buoyed by the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945.
Hitler’s stubbornness and defiance of military realities allowed the Holocaust to continue.
(he ordered the complete destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands, saying that Germany’s failure to win the war forfeited its right to survive)
Rather, Hitler decided that the entire nation should go down with him.
Execution of this scorched earth plan was entrusted to arms minister Albert Speer, who disobeyed the order
On 20 April, Hitler celebrated his 56th birthday in the Führerbunker (“Führer’s shelter”) below the Reichskanzlei (Reich Chancellery).
Elsewhere, the garrison commander of the besieged Festung Breslau (“fortress Breslau”), General Hermann Niehoff, had chocolates distributed to his troops in honour of Hitler’s birthday.
By 21 April, Georgi Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the last defences of German General Gotthard Heinrici’s Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights.
Facing little resistance, the Soviets advanced headlong into the outskirts of Berlin.
Ignoring the facts, Hitler saw salvation in the ragtag units commanded by Waffen SS General Felix Steiner. Steiner’s command became known as Armeeabteilung Steiner (“Army Detachment Steiner”). But “Army Detachment Steiner” existed primarily on paper. It was more than a corps but less than an army. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the huge salient created by the breakthrough of Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front.
Meanwhile, the German Ninth Army, which had been pushed south of the salient, was ordered to attack north in a pincer attack.
ate on 21 April, Heinrici called Hans Krebs, chief of the Oberkommando des Heeres (Supreme Command of the Army or OKH), and told him that Hitler’s plan could not be implemented. Heinrici asked to speak to Hitler but was told by Krebs that Hitler was too busy to take his call.
On 22 April, during the military conference, Hitler interrupted the report to ask what had happened to Steiner’s offensive.
There was a long silence.
Then Hitler was told that the attack had never been launched and the Russians had broken through into Berlin.
Hitler asked everyone except Wilhelm Keitel, Hans Krebs, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Burgdorf, and Martin Bormann to leave the room, and launched into a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders.
This culminated with Hitler openly declaring for the first time the war was lost.
Hitler announced he would stay in Berlin, head up the defence of the city and then shoot himself.
Before the day ended, Hitler again found salvation in a new plan that included General Walther Wenck’s Twelfth Army.
This new plan had Wenck turn his army – currently facing the Americans to the west – and attack towards the east to relieve Berlin.
Twelfth Army was to link up with Ninth Army and break through to the city.
Wenck did attack and, in the confusion, made temporary contact with the Potsdam garrison.
But the link with the Ninth Army, like the plan in general, was ultimately unsuccessful.
On 23 April, Joseph Goebbels made the following proclamation to the people of Berlin:
I call on you to fight for your city. Fight with everything you have got, for the sake of your wives and your children, your mothers and your parents. Your arms are defending everything we have ever held dear, and all the generations that will come after us. Be proud and courageous! Be inventive and cunning! Your Gauleiter is amongst you. He and his colleagues will remain in your midst. His wife and children are here as well. He, who once captured the city with 200 men, will now use every means to galvanize the defence of the capital. The Battle for Berlin must become the signal for the whole nation to rise up in battle …
The same day, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden in Bavaria.
Göring argued that, since Hitler was cut off in Berlin, he should assume leadership of Germany as Hitler’s designated successor.
Göring mentioned a time limit after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated.
Hitler responded, in anger, by having Göring arrested.
Later when Hitler wrote his will on 29 April, Göring was removed from all his positions in the government.
Further on the 23 April, Hitler appointed General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling as the commander of the Berlin Defense Area.
Weidling replaced Lieutenant General (Generalleutnant) Helmuth Reymann and Colonel (Oberst) Ernst Kaether.
Hitler also appointed Waffen-SS Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke the (Kommandant) Battle Commander for the defence of the government district (Zitadelle sector) that included the Reich Chancellery and Führerbunker.
By the end of the day on 27 April, Berlin was completely cut off from the rest of Germany. As the Soviet forces closed in, Hitler’s followers urged him to flee to the mountains of Bavaria to make a last stand in the National Redoubt.
However, Hitler was determined to either live or die in the capital.
On 28 April, Hitler discovered that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies (through the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte).
Hitler ordered Himmler’s arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler’s SS representative at Hitler’s HQ in Berlin) shot.
Cover of US military newspaper The Stars and Stripes, May 1945
During the night of 28 April, Wenck reported that his Twelfth Army had been forced back along the entire front. He noted that no further attacks towards Berlin were possible.
General Alfred Jodl (Supreme Army Command) did not provide this information to Hans Krebs in Berlin until early in the morning of 30 April.
In the early morning hours of April 29, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker.
Antony Beevor stated that after Hitler hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife, he took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament.
Hitler signed these documents at approximately 4:00 AM. The event was witnessed and documents signed by Hans Krebs, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Joseph Goebbels, and Martin Bormann.
Hitler then retired to bed.
That afternoon, Hitler was informed of the assassination of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, which is presumed to have increased his determination to avoid capture.
On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler and Braun committed suicide; Eva by biting into a cyanide capsule and Hitler by shooting himself with his Walther PPK 7.65 mm pistol.
Hitler had at various times in the past contemplated suicide, and the Walther was the same pistol that his niece, Geli Raubal had used in her suicide.
The lifeless bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were carried up the stairs and through the bunker’s emergency exit to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery where they were placed in a bomb crater and doused with petrol. The corpses were set on fire as the Red Army advanced and the shelling continued.
On 2 May, Berlin surrendered. In the postwar years there were conflicting reports about what happened to Hitler’s remains. After the fall of the Soviet Union, records found in the Soviet archives revealed that the remains of Hitler, Eva Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, the six Goebbels children, General Hans Krebs and Hitler’s dogs, were collected, moved and secretly buried in graves near Rathenow in Brandenburg.
In 1970, the remains were disinterred, cremated and scattered in the Elbe River by the Soviets.
According to the Russian Federal Security Service, a fragment of human skull stored in its archives and displayed to the public in a 2000 exhibition came from the remains of Hitler’s body.
the authenticity of the skull has been challenged by historians and researchers. DNA analysis conducted in 2009 showed the skull fragment to be that of a woman and analysis of the sutures between the skull plates indicated an age between 20 and 40 years old at the time of death.
hitler began using amphetamine occasionally after 1937 and became addicted to amphetamine after the late summer of 1942.
(albert speer stated he thought this was the most likely cause of the later rigidity of hitler’s decision-making (never allowing military retreats))
hitler is a scapegoat. humanity caused the holocaust. he was just your average loser who suddenly found himself knee-deep in a nation of losers. he got caught up in his own vitriolic rhetoric and subsequently backed himself in a corner. it was his very hate that got him to power in the first place. he was simply a megalomaniac reactionary.
read recently about dear ollie stone catching shit from anti-defamers about comments indicating that to say hitler was simply ‘pure evil incarnate’ is too easy an explanation. oliver stone’s a smarter guy than people give him credit for. tony montana’s ‘bad guy / good guy’ speech at the end of ‘scarface’ is absolutely brilliant. dead-on. we all like to believe that had we lived in nazi germany, we’d be harboring jews from the SS. but the truth of the matter is over the course of all of our lives our military has taken out hundreds of thousands of arabs in the name of retaliation. and it’s all rooted in some eternal struggle for control of an alleged holy land. we haven’t yet gotten over the crusades mentality. fundamentalist christians should first and foremost be advocating for the abolition of the US military. instead they whine about how ‘society’ won’t let them celebrate christmas like they used to. these are the same people who consider annual trips to disney world ‘traveling’. their god is a god of nostalgia + comfort…
(*cue blissfullly stoned bing crosby floating on a cloud crooning ‘white christmas’*)
on the other hand, it’s a fundamental/biologically truth that the scaredy cat masses fundamentally respond to brutal measures. otherwise they get carried away in propping up their weak at the expense of the strong. that is why they respond so fervently to those who seem not to fear death. this is why christians celebrate the passion year after year, muslims venerate their suicide bombers, and the 20th century japs honored their kamikazes.
the national socialists understood this principle. so did george w. bush and his team of neocons. i for one am grateful bush took a hard line against angry arabs when he had the chance. because that bearded bunch talks a good game from their bunkers, but notice that once we brought it all back home to their turf, all we’ve had to deal with were comical rogue losers trying + failing to blow up planes.
religion is a reflection of where we as a species are at. the collective desire for a single savior. not realizing that they kill off all potential saviors before they’re out of the gates.
a synesthetic savior is the answer: the synthesis of all world religions so that all sheep are satiated…
now youtube is crawling with hitler documentaries…until the users inevitably get busted for “copyright infringements”…the documentaries are always narrated by old british men who are secretly fascinated by hitler’s former power…even though their forefathers managed to “defeat” him…these narrators attempt to mask their admiration by referring to him in disparaging terms…a “failed art student”…because the academy of fine arts in vienna rejected him twice…at age 19…ironically enough, the fey cuntlicker of a narrator cant even pronounce ARt correctly…there’s an “R” there for a reason!…
was hitler really a “failed” artist?
(he was able to enforce his aesthetic vision upon an entire nation)
(in terms of popular opinion, he was a highly successful “artist”!)
in 1842, johann georg hiedler married maria
in 1876 alois testified before a notary and three witnesses that johann was his father.
at age 39, alois took the surname “hitler”
(this surname was variously spelled hiedler, hüttler, Huettler and Hitler, and was probably regularized to Hitler by a clerk)
the origin of the name is either “one who lives in a hut” (Standard German Hütte), “shepherd” (Standard German hüten “to guard”, English heed), or is from the Slavic word Hidlar and Hidlarcek.
(regarding the first two theories: some German dialects make little or no distinction between the ü-sound and the i-sound.)
despite this testimony, Alois’ paternity has been the subject of controversy. after receiving a “blackmail letter” from hitler’s nephew William Patrick Hitler threatening to reveal embarrassing information about Hitler’s family tree, nazi party lawyer hans frank investigated, and, in his memoirs, claimed to have uncovered letters revealing that Alois’ mother, Maria Schicklgruber, was employed as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Graz and that the family’s 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger, fathered Alois. No evidence has ever been produced to support Frank’s claim, and Frank himself said Hitler’s full Aryan blood was obvious. Frank’s claims were widely believed in the 1950s, but by the 1990s, were generally doubted by historians.
ian kershaw dismisses the frankenberger story as a “smear” by hitler’s enemies, noting that all jews had been expelled from graz in the 15th century and were not allowed to return until well after alois was born
Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary
the fourth of Alois and Klara Hitler’s six children
(who was alois’s third wife)
(his second wife died)
4/20
(1889 – 1945)
hitler’s father, alois hitler, was an illegitimate child and, for the first 39 years of his life, bore his mother’s surname, “schicklgruber”
*it has been said that alois hitler behaved like a self-important tyrant at home*
“even one of his closest friends admitted that Alois was ‘awfully rough’ with his wife and ‘hardly ever spoke a word to her at home.'”
If hitler was in a bad mood, he picked on the older children or klara herself, in front of them. After Hitler and his oldest son Alois Jr. had a climactic and violent argument, Alois Jr. left home, and the elder Alois swore he would never give the boy a penny of inheritance beyond what the law required.
At the age of three, his family moved to Kapuzinerstrasse 5 in Passau, Germany where the young Hitler would acquire Lower Bavarian rather than Austrian as his lifelong native dialect. In 1894, the family moved to Leonding near Linz, then in June 1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld near Lambach, where he tried his hand at farming and beekeeping. During this time, the young Hitler attended school in nearby Fischlham. As a child, he tirelessly played “Cowboys and Indians” and, by his own account, became fixated on war after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War in his father’s things. He wrote in Mein Kampf: “It was not long before the great historic struggle had become my greatest spiritual experience. From then on, I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in any way connected with war or, for that matter, with soldiering.”
His father’s efforts at Hafeld ended in failure and the family moved to Lambach in 1897. There, Hitler attended a Catholic school located in an 11th-century benedictine cloister whose walls were engraved in a number of places with crests containing the symbol of the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika” \o “Swastika” swastika. it was in Lambach that the eight year-old Hitler sang in the church choir, took singing lessons, and even entertained the fantasy of one day becoming a priest. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding
His younger brother Edmund died of measles on 2 February 1900, causing permanent changes in Hitler. He went from a confident, outgoing boy who found school easy, to a morose, detached, sullen boy who constantly battled his father and his teachers
(Hitler is 11)
Hitler was close to his mother, but had a troubled relationship with his HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian” \o “Authoritarian” authoritarian father, who frequently beat him, especially in the years after Alois’ retirement and disappointing farming efforts. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler” \l “cite_note-17” [18] Alois wanted his son to follow in his footsteps as an Austrian customs official, and this became a huge source of conflict between them. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler” \l “cite_note-Payne-13” [14] Despite his son’s pleas to go to classical high school and become an artist, his father sent him to the Realschule in Linz, a technical high school of about 300 students, in September 1900. Hitler rebelled, and in Mein Kampf confessed to failing his first year in hopes that once his father saw “what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to the happiness I dreamed of.” Alois never relented, however, and Hitler became even more bitter and rebellious.
For young Hitler, German Nationalism quickly became an obsession, and a way to rebel against his father, who proudly served the Austrian government. Most people who lived along the German-Austrian border considered themselves German-Austrians, but Hitler expressed loyalty only to Germany. In defiance of the Austrian monarchy, and his father who continually expressed loyalty to it, Hitler and his young friends liked to use the German greeting “Heil”, and sing the German anthem “Deutschland Über Alles” instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem
After Alois’ sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler’s behaviour at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave. He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in 1904, but upon completing his second year, he and his friends went out for a night of celebration and drinking, and an intoxicated Hitler tore his school certificate into four pieces and used it as toilet paper. When someone turned the stained certificate in to the school’s director, he “… gave him such a dressing-down that the boy was reduced to shivering jelly. It was probably the most painful and humiliating experience of his life.” Hitler was expelled, never to return to school again
(Hitler is 15)
At age 15, Hitler took part in his HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Holy_Communion” \o “First Holy Communion” First Holy Communion on HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecost” \o “Pentecost” Whitsunday, 22 May 1904, at the Linz Cathedral. His sponsor was Emanuel Lugert, a friend of his late father
From 1905 on, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna on an orphan’s pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907–1908), citing “unfitness for painting”, and was told his abilities lay instead in the field of architecture. His memoirs reflect a fascination with the subject:
The purpose of my trip was to study the picture gallery in the Court Museum, but I had eyes for scarcely anything but the Museum itself. From morning until late at night, I ran from one object of interest to another, but it was always the buildings which held my primary interest
Following the school rector’s recommendation, he too became convinced this was his path to pursue, yet he lacked the proper academic preparation for architecture school:
In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy’s architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfilment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible
On 21 December 1907, Hitler’s mother died of HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer” \o “Breast cancer” breast cancer at age 47.
(Hitler is 18 years old)
Ordered by a court in Linz, Hitler gave his share of the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan” \o “Orphan” orphans’ benefits to his sister HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Hitler” \o “Paula Hitler” Paula. When he was 21, he inherited money from an aunt. He struggled as a painter in Vienna, copying scenes from postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists. After being rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909, he lived in a shelter for the homeless. By 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men on Meldemannstraße. Another resident of the house, Reinhold Hanisch, sold Hitler’s paintings until the two men had a bitter falling-out
hitler said he first became an anti-semite in vienna, which had a large jewish community, including orthodox jews who had fled the pogroms in russia.
according to childhood friend August Kubizek, however, Hitler was a “confirmed anti-Semite” before he left HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linz” \o “Linz” Linz. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler” \l “cite_note-Kampf-vol1ch2-22” [23] Vienna at that time was a hotbed of traditional religious prejudice and 19th century HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism” \o “Racism” racism. Hitler may have been influenced by the writings of the ideologist and anti-Semite HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanz_von_Liebenfels” \o “Lanz von Liebenfels” Lanz von Liebenfels and HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemic” \o “Polemic” polemics from politicians such as HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lueger” \o “Karl Lueger” Karl Lueger, founder of the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Social_Party_%28Austria%29” \o “Christian Social Party (Austria)” Christian Social Party and HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Vienna” \o “List of mayors of Vienna” Mayor of Vienna; the composer Richard Wagner; and Georg Ritter von Schönerer, leader of the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Germanism” \o “Pan-Germanism” pan-Germanic Away from Rome! movement. Hitler claims in Mein Kampf that his transition from opposing antisemitism on religious grounds to supporting it on racial grounds came from having seen an HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Judaism” \o “Orthodox Judaism” Orthodox Jew.
There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europeanisation” \o “Europeanisation” Europeanised in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic antisemitism. Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?
He often was a guest for dinner in a noble Jewish house, and he interacted well with Jewish merchants who tried to sell his paintings.
Hitler may also have been influenced by HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther” \o “Martin Luther” Martin Luther’s HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_their_Lies” \o “On the Jews and their Lies” On the Jews and their Lies. In Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Martin Luther as a great warrior, a true statesman, and a great reformer, alongside HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner” \o “Richard Wagner” Richard Wagner and HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great” \o “Frederick the Great” Frederick the Great. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler” \l “cite_note-25” [26] HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_R%C3%B6pke” \o “Wilhelm Röpke” Wilhelm Röpke, writing after the Holocaust, concluded that “without any question, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutheranism” \o “Lutheranism” Lutheranism influenced the political, spiritual and social history of Germany in a way that, after careful consideration of everything, can be described only as fateful.
Hitler received the final part of his father’s estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich. He wrote in Mein Kampf that he had always longed to live in a “real” German city. In Munich, he became more interested in architecture and, he says, the writings of HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Stewart_Chamberlain” \o “Houston Stewart Chamberlain” Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Moving to Munich also helped him escape HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription” \o “Conscription” military service in Austria for a time, but the Munich police (acting in cooperation with the Austrian authorities) eventually arrested him. After a physical exam and a contrite plea, he was deemed unfit for service and allowed to return to Munich. However, when Germany entered World War I in August 1914, he petitioned King HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_III_of_Bavaria” \o “Ludwig III of Bavaria” Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to serve in a HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavaria” \o “Bavaria” Bavarian regiment. This request was granted, and Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian army
(wagner’s ludwig???)
(hitler served in france and belgium)
(equivalent of private first class in american army)
(runner on the western front)
(his troop of 250 reduced to 42)
(twice decorated for bravery)
(two iron crosses)
(rarely given to soldier of his class)
(regimental staff believed hitler lacked leadership skills)
(or because he wasn’t a german citizen???)
(never promoted to british equivalent of ‘corporal’)
(had lots of free time to devote to his artwork)
(like me blogging @ jpmorganchase)
(drew cartoons and instructional drawings for an army newspaper)
(wounded in groin or left thigh during the battle of the somme)
(returned to the front)
(received the ‘wound badge’)
1918
(Hitler is 29 years old)
(temporarily blinded by mustard gas)
(conversion disorder / hysteria)
(is this is messianic moment?)
At the beginning of the Great War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas . . . then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain
These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human weakness and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty, unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas. The weaker natures must be told that here it is a case of to be or not to be
1918
germany surrenders
treaty of versailles re-creates poland
(say hello to nietzsche!)
Like many other German nationalists, Hitler believed in the Dolchstoßlegende (“dagger-stab legend”) which claimed that the army, “undefeated in the field,” had been “stabbed in the back” by civilian leaders and Marxists back on the home front. These politicians were later dubbed the November Criminals
(Hitler remained in the army after WWI)
(attended funeral march for charismatic bavarian jew kurt Eisner / and socialist to boot)
After the suppression of the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_Soviet_Republic” \o “Bavarian Soviet Republic” Bavarian Soviet Republic, he took part in “national thinking” courses organized by the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichswehr” \o “Reichswehr” Reichswehr Group, Headquarters 4 under Captain HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Mayr” \o “Karl Mayr” Karl Mayr. Scapegoats were found in “international Jewry”, communists, and politicians across the party spectrum, especially the parties of the Weimar Coalition
In July 1919, 30-year-old Hitler was appointed a Verbindungsmann (police spy) of an Aufklärungskommando (Intelligence Commando) of the Reichswehr, both to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate a small party, the German Workers’ Party (DAP).
During his inspection of the party, Hitler was impressed with founder HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Drexler” \o “Anton Drexler” Anton Drexler’s HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-semitic” \o “Anti-semitic” anti-semitic, nationalist, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-capitalism” \o “Anti-capitalism” anti-capitalist and anti- HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist” \o “Marxist” Marxist ideas, which favoured a strong active government, a “non-Jewish” version of socialism and mutual solidarity of all members of society. Drexler was impressed with Hitler’s oratory skills and invited him to join the party. Hitler joined DAP on 12 September 1919 and became the party’s 55th member. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler” \l “cite_note-44” [45] He was also made the seventh member of the executive committee. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler” \l “cite_note-45” [46] Years later, he claimed to be the party’s seventh overall member, but it has been established that this claim is false
Here Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the early founders of the party and member of the occult Thule Society. The Thule members believed in the coming of a “German Messiah” who would redeem Germany after its defeat in World War I. Dietrich Eckart expressed his anticipation in a poem he published months before he met Hitler for the first time. In the poem, Eckart refers to “the Great One”, “the Nameless One”, “Whom all can sense but no one saw”. When Eckart met Hitler in 1919, he believed to have found this prophesied redeemer. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler” \l “cite_note-48” [49] Eckart became Hitler’s mentor, exchanging ideas with him, teaching him how to dress and speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people. Hitler thanked Eckart by paying tribute to him in the second volume of Mein Kampf.
To increase the party’s appeal, the party changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialist German Workers Party (abbreviated NSDAP).
Hitler was discharged from the army in March 1920 and with his former superiors’ continued encouragement began participating full time in the party’s activities. By early 1921, Hitler was becoming highly effective at speaking in front of large crowds. In February, Hitler spoke before a crowd of nearly six thousand in Munich. To publicize the meeting, he sent out two truckloads of party supporters to drive around with HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika” \o “Swastika” swastikas, cause a commotion and throw out leaflets, their first use of this tactic. Hitler gained notoriety outside of the party for his rowdy, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemic” \o “Polemic” polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians (including HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchist” \o “Monarchist” monarchists, nationalists and other non- HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalism_%28politics%29” \o “Internationalism (politics)” internationalist socialists) and especially against Marxists and Jews.
The NSDAP HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_hitler” \l “cite_note-49” [50] was centred in Munich, a hotbed of German nationalists who included Army officers determined to crush Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic. Gradually they noticed Hitler and his growing movement as a suitable vehicle for their goals. Hitler traveled to Berlin to visit nationalist groups during the summer of 1921, and in his absence there was a revolt among the DAP leadership in Munich.
The party was run by an executive committee whose original members considered Hitler to be overbearing. They formed an alliance with a group of socialists from HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augsburg” \o “Augsburg” Augsburg. Hitler rushed back to Munich and countered them by tendering his resignation from the party on 11 July 1921. When they realized the loss of Hitler would effectively mean the end of the party, he seized the moment and announced he would return on the condition that he replace Drexler as party chairman, with unlimited powers. Infuriated committee members (including Drexler) held out at first. Meanwhile an anonymous pamphlet appeared entitled Adolf Hitler: Is he a traitor?, attacking Hitler’s lust for power and criticizing the violent men around him. Hitler responded to its publication in a Munich newspaper by suing for HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel” \o “Libel” libel and later won a small HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_settlement” \o “Legal settlement” settlement.
The executive committee of the NSDAP eventually backed down and Hitler’s demands were put to a vote of party members. Hitler received 543 votes for and only one against. At the next gathering on 29 July 1921, Adolf Hitler was introduced as Führer of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, marking the first time this title was publicly used.
hitler’s beer hall oratory, attacking Jews, social democrats, liberals, reactionary monarchists, capitalists and communists, began attracting adherents. Early followers included Rudolf Hess, the former air force pilot Hermann Göring, and the army captain HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm” \o “Ernst Röhm” Ernst Röhm, who eventually became head of the Nazis’ paramilitary organization the SA (Sturmabteilung, or “Storm Division”), which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. As well, Hitler assimilated independent groups, such as the Nuremberg-based Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft, led by Julius Streicher, who became Gauleiter of Franconia.
hitler attracted the attention of local business interests, was accepted into influential circles of Munich society, and became associated with wartime General Erich Ludendorff during this time
It appears that the “tall and stately”Erna hanfstaengl (4 years older than Hitler) had simply been polite to Hitler and had shown courtesy to her brother’s friend at their initial meeting in the early 1920s, and Hitler misinterpreted this as romantic affection. Gross claims that Hitler was in love with Erna, but that she considered the whole business to be a joke, and that she was amused at his attempts to court her and please her. According to Gross, she was teased by her society friends about the unwanted affections shown by her “suitor” and made sure that she was never alone with him.
Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl (February 2, 1887 – November 6, 1975), was a HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans” \o “Germans” German HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Businessman” \o “Businessman” businessman who worked for HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler” \o “Adolf Hitler” Adolf Hitler and HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Roosevelt” \o “Franklin Roosevelt” Franklin Roosevelt, and was once engaged to the author Djuna Barnes
In any event it appears that during the period 1922-23, Erna assisted her brother in his aspirations to become one of Hitler’s inner circle, by furthering Hitler’s introduction to people of wealth and social standing in Munich
Encouraged by this early support, Hitler decided to use Ludendorff as a front in an attempted coup later known as the “Beer Hall Putsch” (sometimes as the “Hitler Putsch” or “Munich Putsch“). The Nazi Party had copied Italy’s fascists in appearance and had adopted some of their policies, and in 1923, 34-year-old Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini’s “March on Rome” by staging his own “Campaign in Berlin”. Hitler and Ludendorff obtained the clandestine support of Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria’s de facto ruler, along with leading figures in the Reichswehr and the police. As political posters show, Ludendorff, Hitler and the heads of the Bavarian police and military planned on forming a new government.
On 8 November 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting headed by Kahr in the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCrgerbr%C3%A4ukeller” \o “Bürgerbräukeller” Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall in Munich. He declared that he had set up a new government with Ludendorff and demanded, at gunpoint, the support of Kahr and the local military establishment for the destruction of the Berlin government. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-50” [51] Kahr withdrew his support and fled to join the opposition to Hitler at the first opportunity. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-51” [52] The next day, when Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_War_%28Kingdom_of_Bavaria%29” \o “Ministry of War (Kingdom of Bavaria)” Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government as a start to their “March on Berlin”, the police dispersed them. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch” \l “Nazis_who_died_in_the_Putsch” \o “Beer Hall Putsch” Sixteen NSDAP members were killed. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-52” [53]
Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl and contemplated suicide; Hanfstaengl’s wife Helene talked him out of it. He was soon arrested for HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_treason” \o “High treason” high treason. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Rosenberg” \o “Alfred Rosenberg” Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the party. During Hitler’s trial, he was given almost unlimited time to speak, and his popularity soared as he voiced nationalistic sentiments in his HYPERLINK “http://www.humanitas-international.org/showcase/chronography/speeches/1924-03-27.html” defence speech. A Munich personality thus became a nationally known figure. On 1 April 1924, Hitler was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment at HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsberg_Prison” \o “Landsberg Prison” Landsberg Prison. Hitler received favoured treatment from the guards and had much fan mail from admirers. He was pardoned and released from jail on 20 December 1924, by order of the Bavarian Supreme Court on 19 December, which issued its final rejection of the state prosecutor’s objections to Hitler’s early release. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-53” [54]
including time on remand, he had served little more than one year of his sentence
(‘my struggles’)
(Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice)
(‘mein kampf’)
(Hitler is 36 years old)
(1925)
(first deputy rudolf hess)
The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an autobiography and an exposition of his ideology. Mein Kampf was influenced by The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant, which Hitler called “my Bible”
selling about 240,000 copies between 1925 and 1934. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies had been sold or distributed (newlyweds and soldiers received free copies). The copyright of Mein Kampf in Europe is claimed by the Free State of Bavaria and scheduled to end on 31 December 2015. Reproductions in Germany are authorized only for scholarly purposes and in heavily commented form
(when he was released from jail, germany’s economic situation had improved)
(nazi party was banned in bavaria)
Hitler convinced Heinrich Held, Prime Minister of Bavaria, to lift the ban, based on representations that the party would now only seek political power through legal means. Even though the ban on the NSDAP was removed effective 16 February 1925, Hitler incurred a new ban on public speaking as a result of an inflammatory speech
Since Hitler was banned from public speeches, he appointed HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Strasser” \o “Gregor Strasser” Gregor Strasser, who in 1924 had been elected to the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_%28institution%29” \o “Reichstag (institution)” Reichstag, as Reichsorganisationsleiter, authorizing him to organize the party in northern Germany. Strasser, joined by his younger brother HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Strasser” \o “Otto Strasser” Otto and HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels” \o “Joseph Goebbels” Joseph Goebbels, steered an increasingly independent course, emphasizing the socialist element in the party’s programme. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gauleiter Nord-West became an internal opposition, threatening Hitler’s authority, but this faction was defeated at the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamberg_Conference” \o “Bamberg Conference” Bamberg Conference in 1926, during which Goebbels joined Hitler.
After this encounter, Hitler centralized the party even more and asserted the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip” \o “Führerprinzip” Führerprinzip (“Leader principle”) as the basic principle of party organization. Leaders were not elected by their group, but were rather appointed by their superior, answering to them while demanding unquestioning obedience from their inferiors. Consistent with Hitler’s disdain for democracy, all power and authority devolved from the top down.
A key element of Hitler’s appeal was his ability to evoke a sense of offended national pride caused by the Treaty of Versailles imposed on the defeated HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reich” \o “Second Reich” German Empire by the Western Allies. Germany had lost economically important territory in Europe along with its colonies and in admitting to sole responsibility for the war had agreed to pay a huge HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations” \o “World War I reparations” reparations bill totaling 132 billion HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_gold_mark” \o “German gold mark” marks. Most Germans bitterly resented these terms, but early Nazi attempts to gain support by blaming these humiliations on “international Jewry” were not particularly successful with the electorate. The party learned quickly, and soon a more subtle propaganda emerged, combining antisemitism with an attack on the failures of the “Weimar system” and the parties supporting it.
Having failed in overthrowing the Republic by a coup, Hitler pursued a “strategy of legality”: this meant formally adhering to the rules of the Weimar Republic until he had legally gained power. He would then use the institutions of the Weimar Republic to destroy it and establish himself as dictator. Some party members, especially in the paramilitary SA, opposed this strategy; Röhm and others ridiculed Hitler as “Adolphe Legalité”
The political turning point for Hitler came when the Great Depression hit Germany in 1930.
(Hitler is 41 years old)
The Weimar Republic had never been firmly rooted and was openly opposed by right-wing conservatives (including monarchists), communists and the Nazis. As the parties loyal to the democratic, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_republic” \o “Parliamentary republic” parliamentary republic found themselves unable to agree on counter-measures, their HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_coalition” \o “Grand coalition” grand coalition broke up and was replaced by a minority cabinet. The new Chancellor, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Br%C3%BCning” \o “Heinrich Brüning” Heinrich Brüning of the Roman Catholic HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Party_%28Germany%29” \o “Centre Party (Germany)” Centre Party, lacking a majority in parliament, had to implement his measures through the president’s HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_powers” \o “Emergency powers” emergency decrees. Tolerated by the majority of parties, this rule by decree would become the norm over a series of unworkable parliaments and paved the way for HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian” \o “Authoritarian” authoritarian forms of government
The Reichstag‘s initial opposition to Brüning’s measures led to premature elections in September 1930. The republican parties lost their majority and their ability to resume the grand coalition, while the Nazis suddenly rose from relative obscurity to win 18.3% of the vote along with 107 seats. In the process, they jumped from the ninth-smallest party in the chamber to the second largest
In September–October 1930, Hitler appeared as a major defence witness at the trial in Leipzig of two junior Reichswehr officers charged with membership of the Nazi Party, which at that time was forbidden to Reichswehr personnel. The two officers, Leutnants Richard Scheringer and Hans Ludin, admitted quite openly to Nazi Party membership, and used as their defence that the Nazi Party membership should not be forbidden to those serving in the Reichswehr. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-Wheeler-216-61” [62] When the Prosecution argued that the Nazi Party was a dangerous revolutionary force, one of the defence lawyers, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Frank” \o “Hans Frank” Hans Frank had Hitler brought to the stand to prove that the Nazi Party was a law-abiding party. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-Wheeler-216-61” [62] During his testimony, Hitler insisted that his party was determined to come to power legally, that the phrase “National Revolution” was only to be interpreted “politically”, and that his Party was a friend, not an enemy of the Reichswehr. Hitler’s testimony of 25 September 1930 won him many admirers within the ranks of the officer corps
Brüning’s measures of budget consolidation and financial austerity brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-64” [65] Under these circumstances, Hitler appealed to the bulk of German farmers, war veterans and the middle class, who had been hard-hit by both the inflation of the 1920s and the unemployment of the Depression. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-65” [66]
(looks more like a child than a girl)
(she was 23 years old to hitler’s 44)
Born in Linz, Austria, she was the second child and eldest daughter of Leo Raubal Sr. and Hitler’s half-sister, Angela Raubal. She was rumoured to be Adolf Hitler’s lover
Angela Franziska Johanna Hammitzsch ( HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A9e” \o “Née” née Hitler 28 July 1883 – 30 October 1949), first married to Leo Raubal, Sr., was the elder half-sister of HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler” \o “Adolf Hitler” Adolf Hitler.
Angela Hitler was born in HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunau_am_Inn” \o “Braunau am Inn” Braunau, Austria, the second child of HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler” \o “Alois Hitler” Alois Hitler and his second wife, Franziska Matzelberger. Her mother died the next year. She and her brother Alois Hitler, Jr. were raised by their father and his third wife Klara Pölzl. Her half-brother Adolf Hitler was born six years after her and they grew very close. She is the only one of his siblings mentioned in Mein Kampf
As he rose to power as leader of the Nazi Party, Hitler kept a tight rein over Geli, who lived at either his Munich apartment or his Berghof villa near Berchtesgaden, where her mother served as housekeeper, after 1929
He did not allow her to associate with friends freely and attempted to have himself or someone he trusted near her at all times, accompanying her on window shopping excursions, to the movies, and to the opera. Despite Hitler’s efforts to control her, Geli did not seem to return his feelings and became linked to HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Maurice” \o “Emil Maurice” Emil Maurice, a founding member of the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS” \o “SS” SS and Hitler’s HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauffeur” \o “Chauffeur” chauffeur. Hitler dismissed him as a result but later rehired and promoted him. Maurice later claimed that he “…loved her, but it was a strange affection that did not dare show itself.” If any hard feelings arose on Hitler’s part, they did not last, and he and Maurice were reconciled: during the last two days of Hitler’s life, according to reports, he displayed two photographs on his dresser: one of his mother and one of Maurice
Several writers claim that, years later, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geli_Raubal” \o “Geli Raubal” Geli Raubal, Hitler’s niece (and possibly his lover for a period, although many authorities HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Hanfstaengl” \l “cite_note-12” [13] doubt their relationship was consummated) was jealous of Hitler’s association with Erna
(maurice’s great-grandfather was a jew)
(he met eva braun in 1929)
(she was 17 years old)
(he was 40 years old)
took a job as an office and lab assistant and photographer’s model for Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer for the Nazi Party
She met Hitler, 23 years her senior, at Hoffmann’s studio of Munich in October 1929. He had been introduced to her as “Herr Wolff” (a childhood nickname he used during the 1920s for security purposes). She described him to friends as a “gentleman of a certain age with a funny moustache, a light-coloured English overcoat, and carrying a big felt hat.” He appreciated her eye colour, which was said to be close to HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klara_Hitler” \o “Klara Hitler” his mother’s. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Braun” \l “cite_note-psychopathic-2” [3] Her family was strongly against the relationship and little is known about it during the first two years
In September 1931, Hitler’s niece Geli Raubal was found dead in her bedroom in his Munich apartment (his half-sister HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Hitler” \o “Angela Hitler” Angela and her daughter Geli had been with him in Munich since 1929), an apparent suicide. Geli, who was believed to be in some sort of romantic relationship with Hitler, was 19 years younger than he was and had used his gun. His niece’s death is viewed as a source of deep, lasting pain for him
Hitler saw more of Braun after the apparent 1931 HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide” \o “Suicide” suicide of his half sister HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Hitler” \o “Angela Hitler” Angela’s daughter HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geli_Raubal” \o “Geli Raubal” Geli Raubal with whom, it was rumoured, he had been intimate. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Braun” \l “cite_note-4” [5] HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Braun” \l “cite_note-5” [6] The circumstances of Raubal’s death in Munich have never been confirmed. Some historians suggest she killed herself because she was distraught over her relationship with Hitler or his relationship with Braun, while others have speculated Hitler played a more direct role in the death of his niece. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Braun” \l “cite_note-6” [7] HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Braun” \l “cite_note-7” [8] Braun was unaware that Raubal was a rival for Hitler’s affections until after Raubal’s death. Meanwhile, Hitler was seeing other women, such as actress Renate Müller, whose early death may also have been suicide
Eva Braun first attempted suicide on 1 November 1932 at the age of 20by shooting herself in the chest with her father’s pistol
Hitler becomes german citizen in 1932
(at age 43)
In 1932, Hitler intended to run against the aging President Paul von Hindenburg in the scheduled presidential elections. His 27 January 1932 speech to the Industry Club in HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCsseldorf” \o “Düsseldorf” Düsseldorf won him, for the first time, support from a broad swath of Germany’s most powerful industrialists. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-67” [68] Though Hitler had left Austria in 1913 and had renounced his Austrian citizenship in 1925, he still had not acquired German citizenship and hence could not run for public office. On 25 February, however, the interior minister of the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_of_Brunswick” \o “Free State of Brunswick” Brunswick, a Nazi (the Nazis were part of a right-wing coalition governing the state) appointed Hitler as administrator for the state’s delegation to the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsrat_%28Germany%29” \o “Reichsrat (Germany)” Reichsrat in Berlin. This appointment made Hitler a citizen of Brunswick. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-68” [69] In those days, the states conferred citizenship, so this automatically made Hitler a citizen of Germany as well and thus eligible to run for president. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-69” [70]
The new German citizen ran against Hindenburg, who was supported by a broad range of HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalist” \o “Nationalist” nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism” \o “Republicanism” republican and even social democratic parties. Another candidate was a HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Germany” \o “Communist Party of Germany” Communist and member of a fringe right-wing party. Hitler’s campaign was called “Hitler über Deutschland” (Hitler over Germany). HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-bull201-70” [71] The name had a double meaning; besides a reference to his dictatorial ambitions, it referred to the fact that he campaigned by aircraft. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-bull201-70” [71] Hitler came in second on both rounds, attaining more than 35% of the vote during the second one in April. Although he lost to Hindenburg, the election established Hitler as a realistic alternative in German politics
Meanwhile, Papen tried to get his revenge on Schleicher by working toward the General’s downfall, through forming an intrigue with the camarilla and HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hugenberg” \o “Alfred Hugenberg” Alfred Hugenberg, media mogul and chairman of the DNVP. Also involved were HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjalmar_Schacht” \o “Hjalmar Schacht” Hjalmar Schacht, HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Thyssen” \o “Fritz Thyssen” Fritz Thyssen and other leading German businessmen and international bankers. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-72” [73] They financially supported the Nazi Party, which had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the cost of heavy campaigning. The businessmen wrote letters to Hindenburg, urging him to appoint Hitler as leader of a government “independent from parliamentary parties” which could turn into a movement that would “enrapture millions of people.” HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-73” [74]
HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1972-026-11,_Macht%C3%BCbernahme_Hitlers.jpg” INCLUDEPICTURE “http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1972-026-11%2C_Macht%C3%BCbernahme_Hitlers.jpg/220px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1972-026-11%2C_Macht%C3%BCbernahme_Hitlers.jpg” \* MERGEFORMATINET
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Adolf Hitler, at a window of the Reich’s Chancellory, receives an ovation from supporters in his first day in office as HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_of_Germany_%28German_Reich%29” \o “Chancellor of Germany (German Reich)” Chancellor. (30 January 1933)
Finally, the president reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler Chancellor of a coalition government formed by the NSDAP and DNVP. However, the Nazis were to be contained by a framework of conservative cabinet ministers, most notably by Papen as HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice-Chancellor_of_Germany” \o “Vice-Chancellor of Germany” Vice-Chancellor and by Hugenberg as Minister of the Economy. The only other Nazi besides Hitler to get a portfolio was HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Frick” \o “Wilhelm Frick” Wilhelm Frick, who was given the relatively powerless interior ministry (in Germany at the time, most powers wielded by the interior minister in other countries were held by the interior ministers of the states). As a concession to the Nazis, Göring was named HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_without_portfolio” \o “Minister without portfolio” minister without portfolio. While Papen intended to use Hitler as a figurehead, the Nazis gained key positions.
On the morning of 30 January 1933, in Hindenburg’s office, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor during what some observers later described as a brief and simple ceremony. His first speech as Chancellor took place on 10 February. The Nazis’ seizure of power subsequently became known as the Machtergreifung or Machtübernahme
Having become Chancellor, Hitler foiled all attempts by his opponents to gain a majority in parliament. Because no single party could gain a majority, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag again. Elections were scheduled for early March, but on 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Since a HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinus_van_der_Lubbe” \o “Marinus van der Lubbe” Dutch independent communist was found in the building, the fire was blamed on a communist plot. The government reacted with the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree” \o “Reichstag Fire Decree” Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February which suspended basic rights, including HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus” \o “Habeas corpus” habeas corpus. Under the provisions of this decree, the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Germany” \o “Communist Party of Germany” German Communist Party (KPD) and other groups were suppressed, and Communist functionaries and deputies were arrested, forced to flee, or murdered.
Campaigning continued, with the Nazis making use of paramilitary violence, anti-communist hysteria, and the government’s resources for propaganda. On election day, 6 March, the NSDAP increased its result to 43.9% of the vote, remaining the largest party, but its victory was marred by its failure to secure an absolute majority, necessitating maintaining a coalition with the DNVP
braun attempted suicide a second time on 28 May 1935 by taking an HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdose” \o “Overdose” overdose of Phanodorm (sleeping pills)
after Braun’s recovery, Hitler became more committed to her and arranged for the substantial royalties from widely published and popular photographs of him taken by Hoffmann’s photo studio to pay for a villa in HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich” \o “Munich” Munich. This income also provided her with a HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz” \o “Mercedes-Benz” Mercedes, a chauffeur and a maid. Braun’s sister Gretl moved in with her. Hoffmann later asserted Braun became a fixture in Hitler’s life by attempting suicide less than a year after Geli Raubal’s death, as Hitler wished to avoid any further scandal
When Hitler became HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_of_Germany_%28German_Reich%29” \o “Chancellor of Germany (German Reich)” Chancellor of Germany, Braun sat on the stage in the area reserved for VIPs as a secretary, to which Hitler’s sister HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Hitler” \o “Angela Hitler” Angela strongly objected, along with the wives of other ministers. She was banned from living anywhere near Braun as a result. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Braun” \l “cite_note-hitlerwomen-8” [9] By 1936 Braun was at Hitler’s household at the HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berghof_%28Hitler%29” \o “Berghof (Hitler)” Berghof near Berchtesgaden whenever he was in residence there and her parents were also invited for dinner several times.
in 1938 Hitler named Braun his primary heir, to receive about 600 pounds yearly after his death
In February 1938, Hitler finally ended the dilemma that had plagued German Far Eastern policy, namely whether to continue the informal Sino-German alliance that existed with Republic of China since the 1910s or to create a new alliance with Japan.
the military at the time strongly favoured continuing Germany’s alliance with China. China had the support of Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath and War Minister Werner von Blomberg, the so-called “China Lobby” who tried to steer German foreign policy away from war in Europe. Both men, however, were sacked by Hitler in early 1938. Upon the advice of Hitler’s newly appointed Foreign Minister, the strongly pro-Japanese HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop” \o “Joachim von Ribbentrop” Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler chose to end the alliance with China as the price of gaining an alignment with the more modern and powerful Japan. In an address to the Reichstag, Hitler announced German recognition of HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchukuo” \o “Manchukuo” Manchukuo, the Japanese-occupied puppet state in HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchuria” \o “Manchuria” Manchuria, and renounced the German claims to the former colonies in the Pacific held by Japan. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-Bloch-178-154” [155] Hitler ordered an end to arms shipments to China, and ordered the recall of all the German officers attached to the Chinese Army. HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler” \l “cite_note-Bloch-178-154” [155] In retaliation for ending German support to China in the war against Japan, Chinese Generalissimo HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek” \o “Chiang Kai-shek” Chiang Kai-shek canceled all of the Sino-German economic agreements, which deprived the Germans of raw materials such as HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten” \o “Tungsten” tungsten that the Chinese had previously provided. The ending of the Sino-German alignment increased the problems of German rearmament, as the Germans were now forced to use their limited supply of foreign exchange to buy raw materials on the open market
In March 1938, Hitler pressured Austria into unification with Germany and made a triumphant entry into Vienna on 14 March. Next, he intensified a crisis over the German-speaking Sudetenland districts of Czechoslovakia
On 3 March 1938, the British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson met with Hitler and presented on behalf of his government a proposal for an international consortium to rule much of Africa (in which Germany would be assigned a leading role) in exchange for a German promise never to resort to war to change the frontiers
In December 1938, the Chancellery of the Führer headed by Philipp Bouhler received a letter concerning a severely physically and mentally disabled baby girl named Sofia Knauer living in Leipzig.[225] At that time, there was a furious rivalry existing between Bouhler’s office, the office of the Reich Chancellery led by Hans-Heinrich Lammers, the Presidential Chancellery of Otto Meissner, the office of Hitler’s adjutant Wilhelm Brückner and the Deputy Führer‘s office which was effectively headed by Martin Bormann over control of access to Hitler.[226] As part of a power play against his rivals, Bouhler presented the letter concerning the disabled girl to Hitler, who thanked Bouhler for bringing the matter to his attention and responded by ordering his personal physician Dr. Karl Brandt to kill Knauer.[227] In January 1939, Hitler ordered Bouhler and Dr. Brandt to henceforward have all disabled infants born in Germany killed.[227] This was the origin of the Action T4 program. Subsequently Dr. Brandt and Bouhler, acting on their own initiative in the expectation of winning Hitler’s favour, expanded the T4 program to killing, first, all physically or mentally disabled children in Germany, and, second, all disabled adults
1 september 1939
(germany invades west poland)
3 september 1939
(britain and france declare war on germany)
(hitler was surprised: ‘now what?’)
(wimpy french ambassador arrives with declaration of war)
17 september 1939
(soviet forces invade eastern poland)
(beginning of ‘cold war’)
(joga vs blumberg)
(hitler wanted no more poland)
(get rid of debbie toresco and the fragnitos)
Hitler’s handling of the Forster–Greiser dispute has often been advanced as an example of Ian Kershaw’s theory of “Working Towards the Führer”, namely that Hitler issued vague instructions, and allowed his subordinates to work out policy on their own.
After the conquest of Poland, another major dispute broke out between different factions with one centring around Reichsfüherer SS Heinrich Himmler and Arthur Greiser championing and carrying out ethnic cleansing schemes for Poland, and another centring around Hermann Göring and Hans Frank calling for turning Poland into the “granary” of the Reich.[262] At a conference held at Göring’s Karinhall estate on 12 February 1940, the dispute was settled in favour of the Göring-Frank view of economic exploitation, and ending mass expulsions as economically disruptive.[262] On 15 May 1940, Himmler showed Hitler a memo entitled “Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East”, which called for expelling the entire Jewish population of Europe into Africa and reducing the remainder of the Polish population to a “leaderless labouring class”.[262] Hitler called Himmler’s memo “good and correct”.[262] Hitler’s remark had the effect of scuttling the so-called Karinhall argreement, and led to the Himmler–Greiser viewpoint triumphing as German policy for Poland.
During this period, Hitler built up his forces on Germany’s western frontier. In April 1940, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. In May 1940, Hitler’s forces attacked France, conquering Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium in the process. These victories persuaded Benito Mussolini of Italy to join the war on Hitler’s side on 10 June 1940. France surrendered on 22 June 1940
Britain, whose forces evacuated France by sea from Dunkirk, continued to fight alongside other British dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic. After having his overtures for peace rejected by the British, now led by Winston Churchill, Hitler ordered bombing raids on the United Kingdom. The Battle of Britain was Hitler’s prelude to a planned invasion. The attacks began by pounding Royal Air Force airbases and radar stations protecting South-East England. However, the Luftwaffe failed to defeat the Royal Air Force. On 27 September 1940, the Tripartite Treaty was signed in Berlin by Saburo Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Hitler, and Ciano. The purpose of the Tripartite Treaty, which was directed against an unnamed power that was clearly meant to be the United States, was to deter the Americans from supporting the British. It was later expanded to include Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. They were collectively known as the Axis Powers. By the end of October 1940, air superiority for the invasion Operation Sealion could not be assured, and Hitler ordered the bombing of British cities, including London, Plymouth, and Coventry, mostly at night.
Adolf Hitler in his second visit to an occupied territory, in this case, Maribor, Yugoslavia in 1941.
In the Spring of 1941, Hitler was distracted from his plans for the East by various activities in North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. In February, German forces arrived in Libya to bolster the Italian forces there. In April, he launched the invasion of Yugoslavia which was followed quickly by the invasion of Greece. In May, German forces were sent to support Iraqi rebel forces fighting against the British and to invade Crete. On 23 May, Hitler released Fuhrer Directive No. 30
Führer Directive No. 30 dealt with German intervention in support of Arab nationalists in the Kingdom of Iraq. During the 1930s, representatives of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy attempted to gain favor with various Iraqi nationalists and promised support against the British. On 1 April 1941, Rashid Ali and members of the pro-Axis “Golden Square” staged a coup d’etat against the pro-British government of Regent Amir Abdul Illah. On 2 May, after tensions mounted on both sides, the British launched pre-emptive air strikes against Iraqi forces and the Anglo-Iraqi War began. Rashid Ali immediately requested that the Germans make good on the earlier promises of assistance
On 22 June 1941, three million German troops attacked the Soviet Union, breaking the non-aggression pact Hitler had concluded with Stalin two years earlier. This invasion seized huge amounts of territory, including the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine. It also encircled and destroyed many Soviet forces, which Stalin had ordered not to retreat. However, the Germans were stopped barely short of Moscow in December 1941 by the Russian winter and fierce Soviet resistance. The invasion failed to achieve the quick triumph Hitler wanted.
A major historical dispute concerns Hitler’s reasons for Operation Barbarossa. Some historians such as Andreas Hillgruber have argued that Barbarossa was merely one “stage” of Hitler’s Stufenplan (stage by stage plan) for world conquest, which Hillgruber believed that Hitler had formulated in the 1920s.[264] Other historians such as John Lukacs have contended that Hitler never had a stufenplan, and that the invasion of the Soviet Union was an ad hoc move on the part of Hitler due to Britain’s refusal to surrender.[265] Lukacs has argued that the reason Hitler gave in private for Barbarossa, namely that Winston Churchill held out the hope that the Soviet Union might enter the war on the Allied side, and that the only way of forcing a British surrender was to eliminate that hope, was indeed Hitler’s real reason for Barbarossa.[266] In Lukacs’s perspective, Barbarossa was thus primarily an anti-British move on the part of Hitler intended to force Britain to sue for peace by destroying her only hope of victory rather than an anti-Soviet move. Klaus Hildebrand has maintained that Stalin and Hitler were independently planning to attack each other in 1941.[267] Hildebrand has claimed that the news in the spring of 1941 of Soviet troop concentrations on the border led to Hitler engaging in a flucht nach vorn (“flight forward” – i.e. responding to a danger by charging on rather than retreating.)[267] A third faction comprising a diverse group such as Viktor Suvorov, Ernst Topitsch, Joachim Hoffmann, Ernst Nolte, and David Irving have argued that the official reason given by the Germans for Barbarossa in 1941 was the real reason, namely that Barbarossa was a “preventive war” forced on Hitler to avert an impeding Soviet attack scheduled for July 1941. This theory has been widely attacked as erroneous; the American historian Gerhard Weinberg once compared the advocates of the preventive war theory to believers in “fairy tales”
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union reached its apex on 2 December 1941 as part of the 258th Infantry Division advanced to within 15 miles (24 km) of Moscow, close enough to see the spires of the Kremlin,[269] but they were not prepared for the harsh conditions brought on by the first blizzards of winter and in the days that followed, Soviet forces drove them back over 320 kilometres (200 miles).
On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and four days later, Hitler’s formal declaration of war against the United States officially engaged him in war against a coalition that included the world’s largest empire (the British Empire), the world’s greatest industrial and financial power (the United States), and the world’s largest army (the Soviet Union).
On 18 December 1941, the appointment book of the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler shows he met with Hitler, and in response to Himmler’s question “What to do with the Jews of Russia?“, Hitler’s response was recorded as “als Partisanen auszurotten” (“exterminate them as partisans”).[270] The Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust
In late 1942, German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein, thwarting Hitler’s plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. In February 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad ended with the destruction of the German 6th Army. Thereafter came the Battle of Kursk. Hitler’s military judgment became increasingly erratic, and Germany’s military and economic position deteriorated along with Hitler’s health, as indicated by his left hand’s severe trembling. Hitler’s biographer Ian Kershaw and others believe that he may have suffered from Parkinson’s disease.[271] Syphilis has also been suspected as a cause of at least some of his symptoms, although the evidence is slight
Following the allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky) in 1943, Mussolini was deposed by Pietro Badoglio, who surrendered to the Allies. Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler’s armies into retreat along the Eastern Front. On 6 June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in what was one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord. Realists in the German army knew defeat was inevitable, and some plotted to remove Hitler from power.
There were numerous attempts or ideas by private individuals, organisations or states wishing to assassinate Hitler. Some of the plans proceeded to significant degrees. While some attempts occurred before World War II, the most famous attempt came from within Germany. The plan was at least partly driven by the prospect of the increasingly imminent defeat of Germany in the war.
In July 1944, as part of Operation Valkyrie in what became known as the 20 July plot, Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in Hitler’s headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) at Rastenburg. Hitler narrowly escaped death due to random chance, as someone unknowingly moved the briefcase that contained a bomb by pushing it behind a leg of the heavy conference table. When the bomb exploded, the table subsequently deflected much of the blast away from Hitler. Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals, resulting in the executions of more than 4,900 people,[273] sometimes by starvation in solitary confinement followed by slow strangulation. The main resistance movement was destroyed, although smaller isolated groups continued to operate.
By late 1944, the Red Army had driven the Germans back into Central Europe and the Western Allies were advancing into Germany. Hitler realized that Germany had lost the war, but allowed no retreats. He hoped to negotiate a separate peace with America and Britain, a hope buoyed by the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945.[274][275][276][277] Hitler’s stubbornness and defiance of military realities allowed the Holocaust to continue. He ordered the complete destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands, saying that Germany’s failure to win the war forfeited its right to survive.[278] Rather, Hitler decided that the entire nation should go down with him. Execution of this scorched earth plan was entrusted to arms minister Albert Speer, who disobeyed the order
On 20 April, Hitler celebrated his 56th birthday in the Führerbunker (“Führer’s shelter”) below the Reichskanzlei (Reich Chancellery). Elsewhere, the garrison commander of the besieged Festung Breslau (“fortress Breslau”), General Hermann Niehoff, had chocolates distributed to his troops in honour of Hitler’s birthday.[279]
By 21 April, Georgi Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the last defences of German General Gotthard Heinrici’s Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights. Facing little resistance, the Soviets advanced headlong into the outskirts of Berlin.[280] Ignoring the facts, Hitler saw salvation in the ragtag units commanded by Waffen SS General Felix Steiner. Steiner’s command became known as Armeeabteilung Steiner (“Army Detachment Steiner”). But “Army Detachment Steiner” existed primarily on paper. It was more than a corps but less than an army. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the huge salient created by the breakthrough of Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front. Meanwhile, the German Ninth Army, which had been pushed south of the salient, was ordered to attack north in a pincer attack.
ate on 21 April, Heinrici called Hans Krebs, chief of the Oberkommando des Heeres (Supreme Command of the Army or OKH), and told him that Hitler’s plan could not be implemented. Heinrici asked to speak to Hitler but was told by Krebs that Hitler was too busy to take his call.
On 22 April, during the military conference, Hitler interrupted the report to ask what had happened to Steiner’s offensive. There was a long silence. Then Hitler was told that the attack had never been launched and the Russians had broken through into Berlin. Hitler asked everyone except Wilhelm Keitel, Hans Krebs, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Burgdorf, and Martin Bormann to leave the room,[281] and launched into a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders. This culminated with Hitler openly declaring for the first time the war was lost.[282] Hitler announced he would stay in Berlin, head up the defence of the city and then shoot himself.[283]
Before the day ended, Hitler again found salvation in a new plan that included General Walther Wenck’s Twelfth Army.[284] This new plan had Wenck turn his army – currently facing the Americans to the west – and attack towards the east to relieve Berlin.[284] Twelfth Army was to link up with Ninth Army and break through to the city. Wenck did attack and, in the confusion, made temporary contact with the Potsdam garrison. But the link with the Ninth Army, like the plan in general, was ultimately unsuccessful.[285]
On 23 April, Joseph Goebbels made the following proclamation to the people of Berlin:
I call on you to fight for your city. Fight with everything you have got, for the sake of your wives and your children, your mothers and your parents. Your arms are defending everything we have ever held dear, and all the generations that will come after us. Be proud and courageous! Be inventive and cunning! Your Gauleiter is amongst you. He and his colleagues will remain in your midst. His wife and children are here as well. He, who once captured the city with 200 men, will now use every means to galvanize the defence of the capital. The Battle for Berlin must become the signal for the whole nation to rise up in battle …[281]
The same day, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. Göring argued that, since Hitler was cut off in Berlin, he should assume leadership of Germany as Hitler’s designated successor. Göring mentioned a time limit after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated.[286] Hitler responded, in anger, by having Göring arrested. Later when Hitler wrote his will on 29 April, Göring was removed from all his positions in the government.[286][287][288] Further on the 23 April, Hitler appointed General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling as the commander of the Berlin Defense Area. Weidling replaced Lieutenant General (Generalleutnant) Helmuth Reymann and Colonel (Oberst) Ernst Kaether. Hitler also appointed Waffen-SS Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke the (Kommandant) Battle Commander for the defence of the government district (Zitadelle sector) that included the Reich Chancellery and Führerbunker.[289]
By the end of the day on 27 April, Berlin was completely cut off from the rest of Germany. As the Soviet forces closed in, Hitler’s followers urged him to flee to the mountains of Bavaria to make a last stand in the National Redoubt. However, Hitler was determined to either live or die in the capital.
On 28 April, Hitler discovered that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies (through the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte).[290] Hitler ordered Himmler’s arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler’s SS representative at Hitler’s HQ in Berlin) shot.[287][291]
Cover of US military newspaper The Stars and Stripes, May 1945
During the night of 28 April, Wenck reported that his Twelfth Army had been forced back along the entire front. He noted that no further attacks towards Berlin were possible. General Alfred Jodl (Supreme Army Command) did not provide this information to Hans Krebs in Berlin until early in the morning of 30 April.
In the early morning hours of April 29, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker. Antony Beevor stated that after Hitler hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife, he took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament.[292][293] Hitler signed these documents at approximately 4:00 AM. The event was witnessed and documents signed by Hans Krebs, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Joseph Goebbels, and Martin Bormann.[287] Hitler then retired to bed.[294] That afternoon, Hitler was informed of the assassination of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, which is presumed to have increased his determination to avoid capture.[295]
On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler and Braun committed suicide; Eva by biting into a cyanide capsule[296] and Hitler by shooting himself with his Walther PPK 7.65 mm pistol.[297][298][299][300] Hitler had at various times in the past contemplated suicide, and the Walther was the same pistol that his niece, Geli Raubal had used in her suicide.[301] The lifeless bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were carried up the stairs and through the bunker’s emergency exit to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery where they were placed in a bomb crater[302][303] and doused with petrol. The corpses were set on fire[304] as the Red Army advanced and the shelling continued.[305]
On 2 May, Berlin surrendered. In the postwar years there were conflicting reports about what happened to Hitler’s remains. After the fall of the Soviet Union, records found in the Soviet archives revealed that the remains of Hitler, Eva Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, the six Goebbels children, General Hans Krebs and Hitler’s dogs, were collected, moved and secretly buried in graves near Rathenow in Brandenburg.[306] In 1970, the remains were disinterred, cremated and scattered in the Elbe River by the Soviets.[307][308] According to the Russian Federal Security Service, a fragment of human skull stored in its archives and displayed to the public in a 2000 exhibition came from the remains of Hitler’s body.
the authenticity of the skull has been challenged by historians and researchers. DNA analysis conducted in 2009 showed the skull fragment to be that of a woman and analysis of the sutures between the skull plates indicated an age between 20 and 40 years old at the time of death…
hitler began using amphetamine occasionally after 1937 and became addicted to amphetamine after the late summer of 1942.
albert speer stated he thought this was the most likely cause of the later rigidity of hitler’s decision making (never allowing military retreats)
hitler is a scapegoat. humanity caused the holocaust. he was just your average loser who suddenly found himself knee-deep in a nation of losers. he got caught up in his own vitriolic rhetoric and subsequently backed himself in a corner. it was his very hate that got him to power in the first place. he was simply a megalomaniac reactionary.
read recently about dear ollie stone catching shit from anti-defamers about comments indicating that to say hitler was simply ‘pure evil incarnate’ is too easy an explanation. oliver stone’s a smarter guy than people give him credit for. tony montana’s ‘bad guy / good guy’ speech at the end of ‘scarface’ is absolutely brilliant. dead-on. we all like to believe that had we lived in nazi germany, we’d be harboring jews from the SS. but the truth of the matter is over the course of all of our lives our military has taken out hundreds of thousands of arabs in the name of retaliation. and it’s all rooted in some eternal struggle for control of an alleged holy land. we haven’t yet gotten over the crusades mentality. fundamentalist christians should first and foremost be advocating for the abolition of the US military. instead they whine about how ‘society’ won’t let them celebrate christmas like they used to. these are the same people who consider annual trips to disney world ‘traveling’. their god is a god of nostalgia + comfort…
(*cue blissfullly stoned bing crosby floating on a cloud crooning ‘white christmas’*)
on the other hand, it’s a fundamental/biologically truth that the scaredy cat masses fundamentally respond to brutal measures. otherwise they get carried away in propping up their weak at the expense of the strong. that is why they respond so fervently to those who seem not to fear death. this is why christians celebrate the passion year after year, muslims venerate their suicide bombers, and the 20th century japs honored their kamikazes.
the national socialists understood this principle. so did george w. bush and his team of neocons. i for one am grateful bush took a hard line against angry arabs when he had the chance. because that bearded bunch talks a good game from their bunkers, but notice that once we brought it all back home to their turf, all we’ve had to deal with were comical rogue losers trying + failing to blow up planes.
religion is a reflection of where we as a species are at. the collective desire for a single savior. not realizing that they kill off all potential saviors before they’re out of the gates.
a synesthetic savior is the answer: the synthesis of all world religions so that all sheep are satiated…
now youtube is crawling with hitler documentaries…until the users inevitably get busted for “copyright infringements”…the documentaries are always narrated by old british men who are secretly fascinated by hitler’s former power…even though their forefathers managed to “defeat” him…these narrators attempt to mask their admiration by referring to him in disparaging terms…
a “failed art student”…
because the academy of fine arts in vienna rejected him twice…
at age 19…
ironically enough, the fey cuntlicker of a narrator cant even pronounce ARt correctly…
there’s an “R” there for a reason!…
was hitler really a “failed” artist?
he was able to enforce his aesthetic vision upon an entire nation.
(in terms of popular opinion, he was actually a highly successful “artist”!)
(just as surely as the ‘unabomber’ is an ‘anarcho-activist’)
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*👨🔬🕵️♀️🙇♀️*SKETCHES*🙇♂️👩🔬🕵️♂️*
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👈👈👈☜*“FAMOUS ADOLFS”* ☞ 👉👉👉
*THE FAITHFULLY DEPARTED*
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💕💝💖💓🖤💙🖤💙🖤💙🖤❤️💚💛🧡❣️💞💔💘❣️🧡💛💚❤️🖤💜🖤💙🖤💙🖤💗💖💝💘
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*🌈✨ *TABLE OF CONTENTS* ✨🌷*
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🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥*we won the war* 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥