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Hitler, leader of the German Nazi party and, from 1933 until his death, dictator of Germany. He rose from the bottom of society to conquer first Germany and then most of Europe. Riding on a wave of European fascism after World War I and favored by traditional defects in German society, especially its lack of cohesion, he built a Fascist regime unparalleled for barbarism and terror. His rule resulted in the destruction of the German nation-state and its society, in the ruin of much of Europe's traditional structure, and in the extermination of about 6 million Jews. He was eventually defeated, but his temporary success demonstrated frighteningly, at the brink of the atomic age, the vulnerability of civilization.
Early Years Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, at Braunau-am-Inn, Austria. Alois, his father, had risen from a poor peasant background to become an Austrian customs official and was able to provide his son with a secondary school education. Adolf, a bright and talented student at his village school, felt out of place in the much larger urban secondary school. He gave himself up to aimless reading, dreamed about becoming an artist, and developed a talent for evading responsibilities. Poor school marks prevented him from obtaining the customary graduation certificate. After the death of his father, he left his home in Linz, Upper Austria, in 1907 to seek his fortune in Vienna.
Hitler's professed aim in Vienna was to study art, especially architecture, but he twice failed, in 1907 and 1908, to get admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts. These failures destroyed what little order he had established in his life. He withdrew completely from family and friends and wandered aimlessly through the city, observing its life. Though he continued to read voraciously, he derived most of his knowledge from secondhand sources, coffeehouse talk, newspapers, and pamphlets. He encountered the writings of an obscure author whose racist and anti-Semitic ideas impressed him. Politically, he turned to a fervent German nationalism and a vague anti-Marxism.
But at this time he was probably mainly interested in being accepted as an artist and architect. When the money left by his parents ran out, Hitler fell into total poverty, lodging in a men's hostel. Grudgingly, he decided to support himself by painting postcards and watercolors and to accommodate himself to the mixed company of tramps, outcasts, cranks, and transients that populated his lodgings. In both respects he did the barest minimum; he never learned to work regularly, and he remained essentially a loner. But he learned an invaluable lesson: how to evaluate and exploit the mentality of these marginal people, the Lumpenproletariat. He never considered that they posed a social problem, however, and for the rest of his life he mistook them for the real working class.
Military Service In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich in the hope both of evading Austrian military service and of finding a better life in the Germany he admired so much. Opportunities for making a living, however, were even fewer in Munich than in Vienna, which partly explains his relief and enthusiasm at the outbreak of World War I. Hitler served throughout the war as a volunteer in a Bavarian infantry regiment, operating mostly in the front line as a headquarters runner. He was wounded in the leg in 1916 and gassed in 1918. Significantly enough, he was never promoted to a leadership position, but he was awarded unusually high decorations for bravery in action. The war had a profound influence on him.
It provided him, finally, with a purpose that filled the void in his life. He was especially impressed by, and learned much about, violence and its uses. Hitler the artist was dead, and the politician was soon to emerge. Rise to Political Leadership The end of the war and Germany's humiliating defeat again deprived his life of meaning, and he turned against the revolution in Germany and the pacifist Weimar republic that he imagined had caused him to be so deprived.
Soon afterward he discovered his power as a public speaker when, after his return to Munich, the Bavarian military command appointed him an instructor in a program for the political indoctrination of the troops. In September 1919, while an army political agent, he encountered the German Workers' party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), a small group interested in extending the message of nationalism to the workers. It later renamed itself the Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' party, NSDAP, or Nazis). Hitler quickly recognized that this party offered him a better chance for his new goal: political power. In April 1920 he left the army to devote all his time to his position as chief propagandist for the party.
He developed a new system of political propaganda, one that emphasized mass emotionalism and violent provocation. Hitler was a masterly demagogue, and the party soon became a factor in Bavarian politics, mainly attracting the urban petty bourgeoisie. In July 1921, he became party chairman with dictatorial powers. His goal was to overthrow the government, but he had to compete with numerous other Bavarian right-wing groups and with his friend Ernst Roehm, a Bavarian staff officer. Roehm advocated the primacy of the military and wanted to incorporate the party's paramilitary units, called the SA, or Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilung) into his secret army, while Hitler insisted on the primacy of politics. When the French occupied the Ruhr in January 1923, German nationalist feelings ran high, and military authorities prepared for mobilization.
The views of Roehm and the other right-wingers now seemed to be prevailing; Hitler thereupon tried to regain control of the movement by his Beer Hall Putsch of Nov. 8 - 9, 1923. The putsch was aimed at capturing, first, the government of Bavaria, and then the nation's, but the Bavarian authorities were able to suppress it. The failure of the putsch destroyed the party organization, severed its army ties, and resulted in prison terms for Hitler and other leaders. Hitler used his trial to gain nationwide attention for his cause. He served nine months of his 5 -year sentence in the fortress of Landsberg, where he wrote Mein Kampf in an effort to demonstrate that his leadership was based on intellectual as well as political superiority. Hitler's writing in Mein Kampf is crude and disorganized, and his ideas are not original, but the book is still an important document.
The most persistent theme is social Darwinism: the struggle for life governs the relationships of both individuals and nations. He argued that the German people, supposedly racially superior, were threatened by liberalism, Marxism, humanism, and bolshevism, which were directed from behind the scenes by the Jews. Relief would come from a plebiscite dictatorship that would fight a relentless war against internal and external foes, in the process conquering Lebensraum (living space) that would make Germany militarily and economically unassailable. Hitler was much more effective when writing about the techniques of power and demagoguery.
He appears in the book as a man determined, and to some degree able, to implement even the maddest schemes. Rebuilding the Nazi Party When Hitler left prison and tried to rebuild the party, he met with great difficulties. He was challenged in northern Germany by the " socialist Nazi left leader Gregor Strasser, who aimed his appeal at the workers. To meet the challenge, Hitler wooed certain extremist military groups, the leftovers from World War I. While the workers ignored Strasser's program, the military outcasts eagerly followed Hitler. At a party conference in May 1926, Hitler outflanked Strasser and won back the dictatorial chairmanship, which he subsequently reinforced by declaring the party program unalterable, thus undercutting any attempt to revive the controversy over socialism.
Social conditions still prevented the party from growing, however. Interest in extremist solutions had waned as Germany had regained economic and political stability. In addition, Hitler was prohibited from speaking, which deprived him of his most powerful weapon. His breakthrough came in 1929, when the German Nationalist party made him politically respectable by soliciting his help in its vicious campaign against the Young Plan's arrangements for German reparations.
In September 1930, after the depression had hit Germany, the Nazis made their first substantial showing (18. 3 % of the vote) in national elections, and from then on Hitler seemed to rise irresistibly. He still used propaganda, demagoguery, and terror, but he now proclaimed, and defended against strong party opposition, a policy of legality. While his propaganda appealed to the lower class victims of the depression, his insistence on legality made him acceptable to the conservatives, nationalists, and the military. Personal Life and Rise to Power During this period, Hitler lived mainly from royalties for his book and fees for newspaper articles. He was able to afford an apartment in Munich, a villa in the Alps, and a car, but his style of life remained modest. He had a craving for pastries, movies, and Richard Wagner's music.
His behavior still alternated between outbursts of energy and periods of inactivity and laziness. His sex life seems to have been abnormal. In 1928 he began a passionate affair with his niece Geli Rural. The affair ended tragically in 1931 when Geli, feeling suffocated by his tyranny, committed suicide.
After he became d...
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