Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg (left), and Dr. Friedrich Weber of the Freikorps Oberland (Oberland Free Corps), during the Munich Putsch.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1924
Hitler posing to a recording of one of his speeches after his release from Landsberg Prison.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1924
Hindenburgring 12, 86899 Landsberg am Lech, Germany
Adolf Hitler leaves the Landsberg Fortress after a nine-month period of imprisonment.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1930
Brown House, Munich, Germany
Hitler and NSDAP treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz at the dedication of the renovation of the Palais Barlow on Brienner Straße in Munich into the Brown House headquarters, December 1930.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1930
Hitler mets a group of disabled war veterans.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1932
Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, presided over a meeting of 230 Nazi members taking the oath of allegiance after the meeting. Left to right: Captain Hermann Goering, Dr. Wilhelm Frick, Adolf Hitler, Gregor Strasser, and Wilhelm Stoehr. In the background is Dr. Joseph Goebbels.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1933
Dortmund, Germany
Adolf Hitler addresses soldiers with his back facing the camera at a Nazi rally in Dortmund, Germany.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1933
Berchtesgaden, Germany
Adolf Hitler at his mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden, 6th March 1933.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1934
Adolf Hitler giving the Nazi salute from his car whilst at the Nazi Party Congress.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1935
Adolf Hitler, wearing evening dress, inspecting the guard of honor after receiving the new Polish ambassador in Lipski.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1935
Adolf Hitler speaks in front of microphones and gestures with his hands. Original Publication: From the newsreel 'The March of Time.'
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1935
Luneburg Heath, Germany
German General and Nazi politician Karl Litzmann (1850 - 1936) shakes hands with Adolf Hitler (left) during German Army maneuvers on the Luneburg Heath, Germany, 8th September 1935.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1936
Nuremberg, Germany
A huge crowd of soldiers in combat gear stands at attention beneath the reviewing stand at Nuremberg, Germany, listening to a speech by the German Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler during the Nazi Party rally of 1936.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1936
Berlin, Germany
Adolf Hitler and the Crown Prince of Italy attend the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1937
Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini viewing columns of German troops in Munich during Mussolini's visit to Germany. Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess is seen bottom right corner.)
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1937
Adolf Hitler celebrating Harvest Day festival with a massive crowd of adoring Germans pressing forward to greet their idol. (Photo by Hugo Jaeger)
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1937
Carinhall, Germany
Adolf Hitler and an unidentified officer Nazi official watch as Hermann Goering demonstrates an exercise horse in the home gymnasium of his villa, Carinhall, Germany, October 1937.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1938
German political leader Adolf Hitler with Eva Braun.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1938
Nuremberg, Germany
Hitler receives the salute of the Columns in Adolf Hitler Platz during the Reichs Party Congress in Nuremberg, Germany. (Photo by Hugo Jaeger)
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1938
Florence, Italy
German dictator Adolf Hitler and his Italian counterpart Benito Mussolini share a joke during a drive in Florence.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1938
Adolf Hitler admires a model of the Volkswagen car and is amused to find the engine in the boot. He is with the designer Ferdinand Porsche (left), and to the right Korpsfuhrer Huehnlein, Dr. Ley, Schmeer, and Werlin. (Photo by Hoffmann)
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1938
Bayerstraße 10A, 80335 München, Germany
Mussolini's reception in a Munich railway station during the time of the 1938 conference.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1938
Florence, Italy
Adolf Hitler waves from his bullet-proof railway carriage as he leaves Florence for Berlin after a visit to Italian leader Benito Mussolini, 11th May 1938.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1938
Bayerstraße 10A, 80335 München, Germany
Field Marshal Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Italian leader Benito Mussolini, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano outside Munich Station upon Mussolini's arrival in Germany to sign the Munich Agreement, 29th September 1938. (Photo by Keystone)
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1939
Berlin, Germany
Austrian automobile manufacturer Ferdinand Porsche (left, in dark suit) presents a newly designed convertible Volkswagon car to German Fuhrer and Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler for his 50th Birthday, Berlin, Germany, April 20, 1939. Nazi politician Robert Ley (1890 - 1945) (fifth right, with a gold wreath on armband) stands with them. (Photo by Hugo Jaeger)
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1940
Berchtesgaden, Germany
Adolf Hitler with his mistress Eva Braun at Hitler's Berchtesgaden retreat. The photograph was found among Braun's personal belongings.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1940
Champ de Mars, 5 Avenue Anatole France, 75007 Paris, France
German leader Adolf Hitler in German-occupied France, posing in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1940
Hitler with unidentified woman.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1940
Berchtesgaden, Germany
Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) looking at an eagle owl in the Kehlstein area near his residence, the Berghof near Berchtesgaden, Germany, 1940.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1940
Forest of Compiegne, France
Delegations from the French Third Republic and Nazi Germany sign an armistice ending the Battle of France in the Forest of Compiegne, France, 22nd June 1940. The signing is taking place in the same railway carriage used to agree on the Armistice with Germany in 1918. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) is second from right.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1944
German dictator Adolf Hitler at various moments during his delivery of a speech.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1945
Berlin, Germany
Servicemen in New York cheer the news that Hitler died in his Chancellery in Berlin.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler and Nazis, about 1932-33.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler on the porch of a rustic cabin, circa 1930.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
Germany
Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) enjoys a quiet picnic between meetings, circa 1933.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler raises a defiant, clenched fist during a speech.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
Graz, Austria
Election campaign, Graz, Austria. Front row R to L: Schaub (SS uniform), Buerkel, Hitler, Seyss-Inquart, and Himmler.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
Potsdam, Germany
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) salutes an audience of high ranking military figures during a speech in Potsdam, Germany circa 1940.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
Berlin, Germany
Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess during the 'Congress of National Labour' in Berlin, Germany, ca. 1935.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
1914
Odeonspl. 1, 80539 München, Germany
A high-angle view of a crowd gathered in the Odeon Platz in Munich, Germany. An inset shows future Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in the crowd.
Gallery of Adolf Hitler
Hitler (seated, far right) with other members of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16, and their dog, Fuchsl.
Hitler and NSDAP treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz at the dedication of the renovation of the Palais Barlow on Brienner Straße in Munich into the Brown House headquarters, December 1930.
Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, presided over a meeting of 230 Nazi members taking the oath of allegiance after the meeting. Left to right: Captain Hermann Goering, Dr. Wilhelm Frick, Adolf Hitler, Gregor Strasser, and Wilhelm Stoehr. In the background is Dr. Joseph Goebbels.
German General and Nazi politician Karl Litzmann (1850 - 1936) shakes hands with Adolf Hitler (left) during German Army maneuvers on the Luneburg Heath, Germany, 8th September 1935.
A huge crowd of soldiers in combat gear stands at attention beneath the reviewing stand at Nuremberg, Germany, listening to a speech by the German Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler during the Nazi Party rally of 1936.
Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini viewing columns of German troops in Munich during Mussolini's visit to Germany. Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess is seen bottom right corner.)
Adolf Hitler and an unidentified officer Nazi official watch as Hermann Goering demonstrates an exercise horse in the home gymnasium of his villa, Carinhall, Germany, October 1937.
Adolf Hitler admires a model of the Volkswagen car and is amused to find the engine in the boot. He is with the designer Ferdinand Porsche (left), and to the right Korpsfuhrer Huehnlein, Dr. Ley, Schmeer, and Werlin. (Photo by Hoffmann)
Adolf Hitler waves from his bullet-proof railway carriage as he leaves Florence for Berlin after a visit to Italian leader Benito Mussolini, 11th May 1938.
Field Marshal Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Italian leader Benito Mussolini, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano outside Munich Station upon Mussolini's arrival in Germany to sign the Munich Agreement, 29th September 1938. (Photo by Keystone)
Austrian automobile manufacturer Ferdinand Porsche (left, in dark suit) presents a newly designed convertible Volkswagon car to German Fuhrer and Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler for his 50th Birthday, Berlin, Germany, April 20, 1939. Nazi politician Robert Ley (1890 - 1945) (fifth right, with a gold wreath on armband) stands with them. (Photo by Hugo Jaeger)
Delegations from the French Third Republic and Nazi Germany sign an armistice ending the Battle of France in the Forest of Compiegne, France, 22nd June 1940. The signing is taking place in the same railway carriage used to agree on the Armistice with Germany in 1918. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) is second from right.
Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess during the 'Congress of National Labour' in Berlin, Germany, ca. 1935.
Connections
colleague: Hermann Göring
1933
Hermann Göring in the uniform of Field Marshall. The photograph was taken at the time of his greatest power as Air Minister of Germany and Prussian Minister of the Interior.
(In 1924, while in prison for high treason, Hitler began w...)
In 1924, while in prison for high treason, Hitler began writing what would later be considered one of the world’s most dangerous books. In Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), which was initially published in two volumes (1925, 1927), Hitler chronicled his life and presented his racist ideology; he claimed to have become "a fanatical anti-Semite" while living in Vienna. Although it initially had only limited success, Mein Kampf’s popularity grew as did that of Hitler and the Nazis. A bible of National Socialism, it was required reading in Germany, and by 1939 more than five million copies had been sold. After Hitler’s death, the work was banned in Germany and other countries, and the German state of Bavaria, which held the copyright, refused to grant publishing rights. However, some foreign publishers continued to print the work, and in 2016 it entered the public domain after the copyright expired. Days later a heavily annotated Mein Kampf was published in Germany for the first time since 1945. It became a bestseller.
Adolf Hitler was a founder and leader of the Nazi Party, Reich Chancellor, and guiding spirit of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945, dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer and Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945, and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. His name is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
Background
The fourth of six children, Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl. Alois Hitler Sr. (1837–1903) was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. For a time he bore his mother’s name, Schicklgruber, but by 1876 he had established his family claim to the surname, Hitler. Adolf never used any other surname.
The young Adolf was a resentful, discontented child. Moody, lazy, of unstable temperament, he was deeply hostile towards his strict, authoritarian father. Louis L. Snyder has pointed out: "Hitler's mother was a quiet, hardworking woman with a solemn, pale face and large, staring eyes. She kept a clean household and labored diligently to please her husband. Hitler loved his indulgent mother, and she in turn considered him her favorite child, even if, as she said, he was moonstruck. Later, he spoke of himself as his mother's darling. She told him how different he was from other children. Despite her love, however, he developed into a discontented and resentful child. Psychologically, she unconsciously made him, and through him the world would pay for her own unhappiness with her husband. Adolf feared his strict father, a hard and difficult man who set the pattern for the youngster's own brutal view of life... This sour, hot-tempered man was master inside his home, where he made the children feel the lash of his cane, switch, and belt. Alois snarled at his son, humiliated him, and corrected him again and again. There was deep tension between two unbending wills. It is probable that Adolf Hitler's later fierce hatreds came in part from this hostility to his father. He learned early in life that right was always on the side of the stronger one."
In early childhood, Adolf Hitler was often ill and his mother became over-protective, wanting nothing less than to lose another child. Dr. Edward Bloch, her doctor, remarked: "Outwardly, his love for his mother was his most striking feature... I have never seen a closer attachment between mother and son." Hitler was deeply fond of his mother. He said that one of his happiest memories was of sleeping alone with her in the big bed when his father was away.
Education
After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.
At primary school, Hitler showed great intellectual potential and was extremely popular with fellow pupils as well as being admired for his leadership qualities. However, competition at secondary school was tougher and Hitler stopped trying as a result. He also lost his popularity among his fellow students and instead preferred to re-enact battles from the Boer war with younger children. Not wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps as a civil servant, he began struggling in secondary school and eventually dropped out. Alois died in 1903, and Adolf pursued his dream of being an artist.
After his mother, Klara, died in 1908, Hitler moved to Vienna, where he pieced together a living painting scenery and monuments and selling the images. Hitler wanted to study Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna but was rejected twice. The director of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna advised Hitler to apply to the School of Architecture but he couldn't do so as he didn't finish his Senior Secondary schooling. It was supposedly at this time that Hitler first became interested in politics and how the masses could be made to respond to certain themes. He was particularly impressed with the anti-Semitic, nationalist Christian-Socialist party. In Vienna, he acquired his first education in politics by studying the demagogic techniques of the popular Christian-social Mayor, Karl Lueger.
In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, in the German state of Bavaria. When World War I broke out the following summer, he successfully petitioned the Bavarian king to be allowed to volunteer in a reserve infantry regiment. He served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium and spent half of his time at the regimental headquarters behind the front lines. Hitler participated in the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele.
In 1914, Hitler was also awarded the Iron Cross (Second Class) for bravery and in 1918, received Iron Cross (First Class) upon the recommendation of Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann. On May 18, 1918, Hitler received the Black Wound Badge. While rendering his service at headquarters, Hitler drew cartoons for an army newspaper. He greeted the war with enthusiasm, as a great relief from the frustration and aimlessness of civilian life. He found discipline and comradeship satisfying and was confirmed in his belief in the heroic virtues of war.
Hitler was wounded twice during the conflict: he was hit in the leg during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and temporarily blinded by a British gas attack near Ypres in 1918. A month later, he was recuperating in a hospital at Pasewalk, northeast of Berlin, when news arrived of the armistice and Germany’s defeat in World War I.
Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany’s defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May–June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers’ Party in Munich (September 1919). In 1920 he was put in charge of the party’s propaganda and left the army to devote himself to improving his position within the party, which in that year was renamed the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi).
Conditions were ripe for the development of such a party. Resentment at the loss of the war and the severity of the peace terms added to the economic woes and brought widespread discontent. This was especially sharp in Bavaria, due to its traditional separatism and the region’s popular dislike of the republican government in Berlin. In March 1920 a coup d’état by a few army officers attempted in vain to establish a right-wing government.
Munich was a gathering place for dissatisfied former servicemen and members of the Freikorps, which had been organized in 1918–19 from units of the German army that were unwilling to return to civilian life, and for political plotters against the republic. Many of these joined the Nazi Party.
Conditions were favorable for the growth of the small party, and Hitler was sufficiently astute to take full advantage of them. When he joined the party, he found it ineffective, committed to a program of nationalist and socialist ideas but uncertain of its aims and divided in its leadership. He accepted its program but regarded it as a means to an end. He engaged in unrelenting propaganda through the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter ("Popular Observer," acquired in 1920), and through meetings whose audiences soon grew from a handful to thousands. In July 1921 Hitler became party's leader with almost unlimited powers.
The climax of this rapid growth of the Nazi Party in Bavaria came in an attempt to seize power in the Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch of November 1923, when Hitler and General Erich Ludendorff tried to take advantage of the prevailing confusion and opposition to the Weimar Republic to force the leaders of the Bavarian government and the local army commander to proclaim a national revolution. In the melee that resulted, the police and the army fired at the advancing marchers, killing a few of them. Hitler was injured, and four policemen were killed. Placed on trial for treason, he characteristically took advantage of the immense publicity afforded to him. He also drew a vital lesson from the Putsch - that the movement must achieve power by legal means. He was sentenced to prison for five years but served only nine months, and those in relative comfort at Landsberg castle. Hitler used the time to dictate the first volume of Mein Kampf, his political autobiography as well as a compendium of his multitudinous ideas.
After his release from prison, Hitler worked throughout the 1920s and 1930s on building a mass political movement. Nazi Party propaganda publicized Hitler’s ideas of a Jewish and socialist threat by arguing that both were responsible for Germany’s inflationary crisis that was, in fact, due to the Republic’s printing of monies to make reparations payments, a number of attempted coups, and the French occupation of the Ruhr. Between 1925 and 1928 alone, Nazi Party membership jumped from 27, 000 to 108, 000 active supporters. On the eve of the United States stock market crash of 1929, the National Socialists were active in parliamentary politics, earning 810, 000 votes in the 1928 election and occupying twelve seats in the Reichstag.
The Nazis gained considerable momentum as the economic crisis intensified with the onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s. The major challenge for Hitler and the Nazis was to prevent unemployed workers from becoming socialist revolutionaries, and so their propaganda vilified trade unionism.
In the 1932 election, the Nazis won 230 Reichstag seats, the most seats ever held by a single political party in German history, though they still did not enjoy an electoral majority.
On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler the chancellor of Germany. The Reichstag fire on February 27, erroneously believed to have been set by representatives of the German Communist Party (KPD), allowed Hitler a further opportunity to warn Germans of an impending socialist revolution that would destroy the German Fatherland. With heavy pressure from Hitler, Hindenburg then issued an emergency decree "for the Protection of People and State" that restricted personal liberties, extended the government’s legal ability to obtain warrants for house searches, confiscate private property, and monitor citizens’ postal and electronic communications, and allowed all KPD Reichstag members and other leading anti-Nazis to be arrested. A plebiscite in late 1933 confirmed the Nazis’ control and, with Hindenburg’s death in August 1934, Hitler became Germany’s new führer.
After securing Germans’ loyalty through his propaganda of equality and community, Hitler set out to expand Germany’s borders through imperialist wars. First, he instituted compulsory military service and re-militarized the Rhineland in blatant violation of the terms of the Versailles Treaty. He then began the process of uniting all Germanic peoples into a Grossdeutschland ("large Germany") with the annexation of Austria in early 1938. Participants of the Munich Conference in late 1938 - Britain, France, and Italy - then allowed Hitler to annex the Sudetenland, the northwestern portion of Czechoslovakia, bringing the large German minority population there under Nazi control. Hitler’s imperialist intentions became more apparent in early 1939 when he invaded Bohemia-Moravia and established a Nazi puppet state in Slovakia. Britain and France then realized that their policy of appeasement toward Germany was failing and prepared for war. World War II broke out in September 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland, a move the Western allies viewed as a blatant violation of Poland’s right to national self-determination.
Hitler invaded Poland for what he called "Lebensraum" ("living space"). His goal was to expand Germany’s empire through the annexation of Polish territory, the murder of Polish Jews and political dissenters, and the resettlement of the German Volk (the "people") into Poland.
Germany’s war strategy was assumed by Hitler from the first. When the successful campaign against Poland failed to produce the desired peace accord with Britain, he ordered the army to prepare for an immediate offensive in the west. Bad weather made some of his reluctant generals postpone the western offensive. This in turn led to two major changes in planning. The first was Hitler’s order to forestall an eventual British presence in Norway by occupying that country and Denmark in April 1940. Hitler took a close personal interest in this daring operation. From this time onward his intervention in the detail of military operations grew steadily greater. The second was Hitler’s important adoption of General Erich von Manstein’s plan for an attack through the Ardennes (which began May 10) instead of farther north. This was a brilliant and startling success. The German armies reached the Channel ports (which they had been unable to reach during World War I) in 10 days. Holland surrendered after 4 days and Belgium after 16 days. Hitler held back General Gerd von Rundstedt’s tanks south of Dunkirk, thus enabling the British to evacuate most of their army, but the western campaign as a whole was amazingly successful. On June 10 Italy entered the war on the side of Germany. On June 22 Hitler signed a triumphant armistice with the French on the site of the Armistice of 1918.
Hitler hoped that the British would negotiate an armistice. When this did not happen, he proceeded to plan the invasion of Britain, together with the elimination of British airpower. At the same time, preparations were begun for the invasion of the Soviet Union, which in Hitler’s view was Britain’s last hope for a bulwark against German control of the continent. Then Mussolini invaded Greece, where the failures of the Italian armies made it necessary for German forces to come to their aid in the Balkans and North Africa. Hitler’s plans were further disrupted by a coup d’état in Yugoslavia in March 1941, overthrowing the government that had made an agreement with Germany. Hitler immediately ordered his armies to subdue Yugoslavia. The campaigns in the Mediterranean theatre, although successful, were limited, compared to the invasion of Russia. Hitler would spare few forces from Operation Barbarossa, the planned invasion of the Soviet Union.
The attack against the Soviet Union was launched on June 22, 1941. The German army advanced swiftly into the Soviet Union, corralling almost three million Russian prisoners, but it failed to destroy its Russian opponent. Hitler became overbearing in his relations with his generals. He disagreed with them about the object of the main attack, and he wasted time and strength by failing to concentrate on a single objective. In December 1941, a few miles before Moscow, a Russian counteroffensive finally made it clear that Hitler’s hopes of a single campaign could not be realized.
On December 7, the next day, the Japanese attacked United States forces at Pearl Harbor. Hitler’s alliance with Japan forced him to declare war on the United States. From this moment on his entire strategy changed. He hoped and tried (like his idol Frederick II the Great) to break what he deemed was the unnatural coalition of his opponents by forcing one or the other of them to make peace. He also ordered the reorganization of the German economy on a full wartime basis.
At the end of 1942, defeat at El-Alamein and at Stalingrad and the American landing in French North Africa brought the turning point in the war, and Hitler’s character and way of life began to change. Directing operations from his headquarters in the east, he refused to visit bombed cities or to allow some withdrawals, and he became increasingly dependent on his physician, Theodor Morell, and on the large amounts and varieties of medicines he ingested. Yet Hitler had not lost the power to react vigorously in the face of misfortune. After the arrest of Mussolini in July 1943 and the Italian armistice, he not only directed the occupation of all important positions held by the Italian army but also ordered the rescue of Mussolini, with the intention that he should head a new fascist government. On the eastern front, however, there was less and less possibility of holding up the advance. Relations with his army commanders grew strained, the more so with the growing importance given to the SS (Schutzstaffel) divisions Meanwhile, the general failure of the U-boat campaign and the bombing of Germany made chances of German victory very unlikely.
Desperate officers and anti-Nazi civilians became ready to remove Hitler and negotiate peace. Several attempts on Hitler’s life were planned in 1943–44; the most nearly successful was made on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg exploded a bomb at a conference being held at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia. But Hitler escaped with superficial injuries, and, with few exceptions, those implicated in the plot were executed.
The Allied invasion of Normandy (June 6, 1944) marked the beginning of the end. Within a few months, eight European capitals (Rome, Paris, Brussels, Bucharest, Sofia, Athens, Belgrade, Helsinki) were liberated by the Allies or surrendered to them. In December 1944 Hitler moved his headquarters to the west to direct an offensive in the Ardennes aimed at splitting the American and the British armies. When this failed, his hopes for victory became ever more visionary, based on the use of new weapons (German rockets had been fired on London since June 1944) or on the breakup of the Allied Powers.
After January 1945 Hitler never left the Chancellery in Berlin or its bunker, abandoning a plan to lead a final resistance in the south as the Soviet forces closed in on Berlin. In a state of extreme nervous exhaustion, he at last accepted the inevitability of defeat and thereupon prepared to take his own life, leaving to its fate the country over which he had taken absolute command. Before this, two further acts remained. At midnight on April 28–29, he married Eva Braun. Immediately afterward he dictated his political testament, justifying his career and appointing Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and Joseph Goebbels as chancellor.
On April 30 he said farewell to Goebbels and the few others remaining, then retired to his suite and shot himself. His wife took poison. In accordance with his instructions, their bodies were burned.
(In 1924, while in prison for high treason, Hitler began w...)
1925
painting
Abris À Fournes
Schloss Belvedere, Wien
Hofbräuhaus, Munich
House With White Fence
Vase with Flowers
House at a Lake with Mountains
1910
Standesamt München
1910
Tree at a Track
1911
Vienna State Opera House
1912
Mother Mary with the Holy Child Jesus Christ
1913
Maison Du Dr. Bloch
1913
Ruin of a Monastery in Mesen
1914
The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich
1914
Fromelles
1915
Fromelles
1916
Arda In Flanders
1917
Oedensplatz
Religion
The religious views of Adolf Hitler are the subject of controversy among historians.
Hitler was born to a practicing Catholic mother and an anticlerical father. When Hitler was 8 years old he used to sing in a church choir and took singing lessons to improve his vocals. He even aspired to become a priest.
In his book Mein Kampf and in public speeches he often made statements that affirmed a belief in Christianity. Prior to World War II Hitler had promoted "positive Christianity," a Christian movement which purged Christianity of its Jewish elements and instilled it with Nazi philosophy. According to the controversial collection of transcripts edited by Martin Bormann, titled Hitler's Table Talk, as well as the testimony of some intimates, Hitler had privately negative views of Christianity. Others reported he was a committed believer. In public statements, especially at the beginning of his rule, Hitler frequently spoke positively about the Christian German culture and his belief in an Aryan Christ. Before his ascension to power, Hitler stated before a crowd in Munich: "My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord, at last, rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison? Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian, I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice."
Politics
Hitler's political views were based on the condemnation of the socialists. He targeted them as enemies of the German nation because the Social Democratic and German Communist parties had voted against war credits during World War I and a revolutionary German socialist government had signed the armistice authorizing Germany’s capitulation in 1918. Nazi propaganda became more openly anti-Semitic at this time too, with Hitler firmly blaming the Jewish for Germany’s national crisis through their perpetuation of immoral capitalist practices. At the same time, Hitler pointed to the inability of Weimar’s parliamentary system to respond adequately to the Depression. Disagreements between coalition factions and internal divisions in the Social Democratic Party, Germany’s largest political party, led to a general paralysis in how to finance unemployment relief. As the leader of the Nazi Party, Hitler promised voters the eradication of unemployment, the creation of a welfare state, and a nationalist program of industrial, agricultural, and governmental cooperation.
Being a Germany's leader, throughout the mid-1930s Hitler successfully established a strong centralized government that exercised unlimited authority to direct the development of the Third Reich, as Hitler titled his new German empire. The state fulfilled its promises to solve Germany’s national crisis by guaranteeing universal employment (with the caveat that all citizens must work), extending social welfare programs including old-age pensions and economic protection of mothers and children, nationalizing industry, introducing land reform, and institutionalizing the creation of physical fitness programs to promote national health and vigor. The government also solidified its political power by controlling all forms of media, forming a national army, institutionalizing a "social contract" that emphasized the symbiotic dutiful relationship between state and citizen (not of individuals to one another as in the Marxist model) primarily through the heavy use of propaganda, parades, and other public displays of nationalism. In addition, the state re-aligned the education system’s philosophical foundation to fuse "German" moral values of obedience and deference to authority with Hitler’s race doctrine and developed a legal system that defended the Nazis’ use of terror and coercion to create a totalitarian state.
The Nazi government also worked to expose and eradicate Jews from German society. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws, which included the Reich Citizenship Act and the Act for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, enacted a number of anti-Semitic laws allowing only ethnically "pure" Germans citizenship rights. These acts categorically excluded Jews from civil and public service and prohibited Germans and Jews from marrying and forming other intimate relationships in order to preserve the Aryan bloodline. The Nuremberg Laws were the first step in the eventual ghettoization and murder of millions of European Jews in concentration camps during World War II.
Foreign and military policy absorbed a large part of Hitler's energy throughout the whole history of the Third Reich. As early as February 1933 he announced to the cabinet that the chief priority of the new regime was to re-create Germany's military power. In October 1933 he took Germany out of the Disarmament Conference that had been called the year before at Geneva, and withdrew Germany from the League of Nations. He moved cautiously at first to avoid the fear of foreign intervention, but in March 1935 he publicly declared German rearmament, and a year later, in March 1936, he ordered German forces to reoccupy the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland, imposed on Germany under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In August 1936, at Berchtesgaden, he drafted a memorandum that laid out the future of German strategy. He saw Jewish bolshevism as the greatest threat Germany confronted and called for rearmament on a massive scale at the expense of every other priority. In October he appointed Hermann Goering (chief of the German air force) to head the creation of a four-year plan to prepare the German economy and the German armed forces for war in four years.
Hitler's style of ruling was deliberately unconventional. He saw himself as the country's messiah whose task was to guide the German people to its new destiny. He disliked committee meetings and his attendance at cabinet meetings declined rapidly after 1934, until the cabinet ceased meeting altogether in February 1938. He preferred more informal governance. He met party leaders in secret meetings; ministers and officials discussed issues with him face-to-face; he delegated a good deal of responsibility to special commissioners who enjoyed his powerful backing; decisions were taken over lunch, at dinner, or on walks around his villa in the small Bavarian town, Berchtesgaden, that he chose as his retreat from Berlin and as a second political center. He preferred the company of party friends and leaders, and it was they who came to play an increasingly important part in pushing policy through and in subverting the normative state, vying for Hitler's attention and basking in his reflected glory. He indulged technical experts as well. Throughout his period as dictator Hitler was fascinated by monumental architecture and advanced technology; in 1934 he launched the construction of a network of fast motorways and in 1937 decreed the rebuilding of Germany's major cities, both projects a monument to his self-image as an "artist-ruler" rather than a mere politician.
Views
Hitler’s ideas included inequality among races, nations, and individuals as part of an unchangeable natural order that exalted the "Aryan race" as the creative element of mankind. According to Hitler, the natural unit of mankind was the Volk ("the people"), of which the German people was the greatest. Moreover, he believed that the state existed to serve the Volk - a mission that to him the Weimar German Republic betrayed. All morality and truth were judged by this criterion: whether it was in accordance with the interest and preservation of the Volk. The parliamentary democratic government stood doubly condemned. It assumed the equality of individuals that for Hitler did not exist and supposed that what was in the interests of the Volk could be decided by parliamentary procedures. Instead, Hitler argued that the unity of the Volk would find its incarnation in the Führer, endowed with perfect authority. Below the Führer, the party was drawn from the Volk and was in turn its safeguard.
The greatest enemy of Nazism was not, in Hitler’s view, liberal democracy in Germany, which was already on the verge of collapse. It was the rival Weltanschauung, Marxism (which for him embraced social democracy as well as communism), with its insistence on internationalism and economic conflict. Beyond Marxism he believed the greatest enemy of all to be the Jew, who was for Hitler the incarnation of evil. There is debate among historians as to when anti-Semitism became Hitler’s deepest and strongest conviction. As early as 1919 he wrote, "Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition. Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether." In Mein Kampf, he described the Jew as the "destroyer of culture," "a parasite within the nation," and "a menace."
Understanding the importance of youth, Hitler outlawed youth groups like the Boy Scouts and required all non-Jewish boys in Germany to join his Hitler Youth Organization. Through this group, the Nazi Party held the power to condition over 90 percent of Germany’s young men. The boys faced military-like training in weaponry and survival while fostering an almost religious devotion to Hitler. Following years of indoctrination, boys at the age of 17 had to serve in the military.
Embedded in the aforementioned philosophy of the superiority of the Aryan race was the idea that they should dominate in all athletic competitions. This translated into sport, as exemplified by Hitler’s infamous distaste during the 1936 Olympics with the success of non-Aryans, including Jesse Owens. As stated in Albert Speer’s Inside the Third Reich: “He was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games."
Quotations:
"In my scheme of the German state, there will be no room for the alien, no use for the wastrel, for the usurer or speculator, or anyone incapable of productive work."
"I only acknowledge one nobility - that of labour."
"The liberty of the individual ends where it starts to harm the interests of the collective."
"The creation of a socially just state, a model society that would continue to eradicate all social barriers."
"We shall banish want. We shall banish fear. The essence of National Socialism is human welfare."
Personality
During WWI Hitler proved an able, courageous soldier, receiving the Iron Cross (First Class) for bravery, but did not rise above the rank of Lance Corporal. Twice wounded, he was badly gassed four weeks before the end of the war and spent three months recuperating in a hospital in Pomerania. Temporarily blinded and driven to impotent rage by the abortive November 1918 revolution in Germany as well as the military defeat, Hitler, once restored, was convinced that fate had chosen him to rescue a humiliated nation.
Hitler developed the techniques that made him into such a persuasive orator. Hitler always arrived late which helped to develop tension and a sense of expectation. He took the stage, stood to attention, and waited until there was complete silence before he started his speech. For the first few months, Hitler appeared nervous and spoke haltingly. Slowly he would begin to relax and his style of delivery would change. He would start to rock from side to side and begin to gesticulate with his hands. His voice would get louder and become more passionate. Sweat poured off him, his face turned white, his eyes bulged and his voice cracked with emotion. He ranted and raved about the injustices done to Germany and played on his audience's emotions of hatred and envy. By the end of the speech, the audience would be in a state of near hysteria.
Once in power, Hitler ruled the NSDAP autocratically by asserting the Führerprinzip (leader principle). The principle relied on absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors; thus he viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself - the infallible leader - at the apex. Rank in the party was not determined by elections - positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank, who demanded unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader. Hitler's leadership style was to give contradictory orders to his subordinates and to place them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped with those of others, to have "the stronger one [do] the job." In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximize his own power. His cabinet never met after 1938, and he discouraged his ministers from meeting independently. Hitler typically did not give written orders; instead, he communicated verbally or had them conveyed through his close associate, Martin Bormann.
Adolf Hitler was largely indifferent to clothes and food but did not eat meat and gave up drinking beer (and all other alcohols). He smoked heavily in his youth; 25 to 40 cigarettes a day. Eventually, he quit and remained a non-smoker for most of his life. His rather irregular working schedule prevailed. He usually rose late and retired late at night.
Despite the immense mass of surviving German documents (and the large volume of his recorded speeches and other statements), Hitler was, as he himself said on a few occasions, a secretive man; and some of his views and decisions differed at times from his public expressions.
While much has been made of Hitler’s failed career as an artist, his interest in art seemed only to increase after he became führer. While Hitler favored the idealized work of Classical Greece and Rome, he was highly critical of contemporary movements such as Impressionism, Cubism, and Dada. In the 1930s Nazis began removing such "degenerative art" from German museums. Modern works by Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, and Emile Nolde were later shown in a 1937 multicity exhibition and described as "culture documents of the decadent work of Bolsheviks and Jews." Throughout the war, Hitler ordered the systematic looting of artworks on an unprecedented scale; reportedly his most coveted stolen item was the Ghent Altarpiece. This and other works were intended to fill a planned "super museum" in Linz, Austria, known as the Führermuseum.
Hitler reportedly relaxed by whistling tunes including 'when you wish upon a star.' He entertained dinner guests by whistling and performed the hobby in moments of euphoria- such as following the fall of Paris in June 1940.
Besides, Hitler was an avid cinema fan. He particularly liked Hollywood movies, which he viewed in a private cinema room. The Nazi leader reportedly enjoyed King Kong (1933) Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) and the films of Charlie Chaplin – but his favorite movie of all was said to be the animated Disney feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937).
Physical Characteristics:
The popular view of Hitler often involves assumptions about his mental health. There has been a tendency to attribute madness to Hitler. Despite the occasional evidences of his furious outbursts, Hitler’s cruelties and his most extreme expressions and orders suggest cold brutality that was fully conscious. The attribution of madness to Hitler would of course absolve him from his responsibility for his deeds and words (as it also absolves the responsibility of those who are unwilling to think further about him). Extensive researches of his medical records also indicate that, at least until the last 10 months of his life, he was not profoundly handicapped by illness (except for advancing symptoms of Parkinson disease). What is indisputable is that Hitler had a certain tendency to hypochondria; that he ingested vast amounts of medications during the war; and that as early as 1938 he convinced himself that he would not live long - which may have been a reason for speeding up his timetable for conquest at that time. It should also be noted that Hitler possessed mental abilities that were denied by some of his earlier critics: these included an astonishing memory for certain details and an instinctive insight into his opponents’ weaknesses.
Hitler's preferred mustache style was actually of the handlebar variety. Unfortunately for him, during WWI service he was ordered to scale it back so it would fit underneath gas masks.
Quotes from others about the person
"One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations." - Winston Churchill
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." - Winston Churchill
"I have never met happier people than the Germans and Hitler is one of the greatest men. The old trust him; the young idolize him. It is the worship of a national hero who has saved his country." - David Lloyd George
"Everybody thinks Hitler got to power because of his armies, because they were willing to kill, and that's partially true, because in the real world power is always built on the threat of death and dishonor. But mostly he got to power on words, on the right words at the right time." - Orson Scott Card
"I would have preferred it if he'd followed his original ambition and become an architect." - Paula Hitler
Interests
whistling, art, reading
Philosophers & Thinkers
Martin Luther
Writers
Karl May, James Fenimore Cooper, Miguel de Cervantes
Artists
Albrect Durer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Johannes Vermeer
Sport & Clubs
boxing
Music & Bands
Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven
Connections
Hitler dedicated his entire life to his political mission and the nation. In 1929, Hitler met his lover, Eva Braun, and married her on April 29, 1945, (a day before the couple committed suicide). In September 1931, Hitler's half-niece, Geli Raubal, took her own life with Hitler's gun at his Munich apartment. This gave rise to several rumors that Geli was in a romantic relationship with Hitler and her death was a source of deep, lasting pain.
Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945
This is a masterful account of a spectacular downfall and essential addition to understanding of Hitler and the Second World War.
2018
Hitler: A Biography
From one of the most prominent biographers of the Nazi period, a new and provocative portrait of the figure behind the century's worst crimes.
The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler
Many people believe Hitler was the personification of evil. In this Sibert Medal–winning biography, James Cross Giblin penetrates this facade and presents a picture of a complex person - at once a brilliant, influential politician and a deeply disturbed man.
2002
The Trial of Adolf Hitler: The Beer Hall Putsch and the Rise of Nazi Germany
The Trial of Adolf Hitler tells the true story of the monumental criminal proceeding that thrust Hitler into the limelight after the failed e Beer Hall Putsch provided him with an unprecedented stage for his demagoguery, and set him on his improbable path to power.
The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic
Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time.