Adolf Hitler (Braunau am Inn, Austria 1889 – Berlin 1945), German politician of Austrian origin, Führer (guide) and chancellor of the Nazi regime, architect of one of the most accomplished totalitarian states that the history of the twentieth century has known and of extermination planned of six million Jews.
Once he assumed power in 1933, he implemented a policy of redemption of the German nation in the name of nationalistic values, which resulted in the remilitarization of Germany and the revision of the European equilibrium, processes which ended up dragging the whole of Europe into World War II. .
After making xenophobia, anti-Semitism and the expansionism of the Aryan people the foundations of its propaganda and politics, he attempted to impose a “new order” by transforming the Nazi Party (see National Socialism) into the instrument for overthrowing the democratic regime in Germany and to give a worldwide diffusion to the fascist movement.
ADOLF HITLER: POLITICAL RISE
The political rise . The son of a humble Austrian customs officer, he was a mediocre student and never completed secondary school.
After unsuccessfully attempting to be admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, he worked in this city as a decorator and painter, voraciously reading works intended to fuel his anti-Semitic and anti-democratic beliefs, as well as his admiration for individualism and contempt for the masses . Moving to Munich, he was surprised here by the outbreak of the First World War (1914) and enlisted as a volunteer in the Bavarian army.
After the war he returned to Munich and remained in the army until 1920; enrolled in the nationalist Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers’ Party), he soon became its leader and, associating other nationalist groups with it, refounded it with the name of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German National Socialist Party of Workers, abbreviated to Nazi Party), of which he was elected president with dictatorial powers; while spreading his ideology centered on racial hatred and contempt for democracy, he linked himself to the paramilitary squad groups founded by Major Röhm, the SA (Sturmabteilungen, assault teams), endorsing their actions of violence against men and headquarters of the social democratic and communist left.
Adolf Hitler: short biography
ADOLF HITLER: SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Hitler focused his political action on the attack on the Weimar Republic, accused of treason and surrender to foreigners, gathering the support of figures such as Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring and Alfred Rosenberg. In November 1923, at a time of confusion and weakness in the country’s government, he made his first appearance on the German political scene by leading a coup attempt in Bavaria, the Munich putsch. The army, however, was not compact in supporting the operation and the putsch failed. Recognized as responsible for the plot, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, reduced to eight months for a general amnesty. During his detention, he dictated his autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Battle), in which he expounded the principles ofand the superiority of the Aryan race. Back in freedom (1924), he rebuilt the party in 1925 without the government, which he had tried to overthrow, doing anything to prevent it.
Hitler, Adolf (Braunau am Inn, Austria 1889 – Berlin 1945), German politician of Austrian origin, Führer (guide) and chancellor of the Nazi regime, architect of one of the most accomplished totalitarian states that the history of the twentieth century has known and of planned extermination of six million Jews.
Once he assumed power in 1933, he implemented a policy of redemption of the German nation in the name of nationalistic values, which resulted in the remilitarization of Germany and the revision of the European equilibrium, processes which ended up dragging the whole of Europe into World War II. . After making xenophobia, anti-Semitism and the expansionism of the Aryan people the foundations of its propaganda and its politics, it attempted to impose a “new order” by transforming the Nazi Party (see National Socialism) into the instrument for overthrowing the democratic regime in Germany and to give a worldwide diffusion to the fascist movement.
The political rise The son of a humble Austrian customs official, he was a mediocre student and never completed secondary school. After unsuccessfully attempting to be admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, he worked in this city as a decorator and painter, voraciously reading works intended to fuel his anti-Semitic and anti-democratic beliefs, as well as his admiration for individualism and contempt for the masses. Moving to Munich, he was surprised here by the outbreak of the First World War (1914) and enlisted as a volunteer in the Bavarian army. After the war he returned to Munich and remained in the army until 1920; enrolled in the nationalist Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers’ Party), he soon became its leader and, associating other nationalist groups with it, he re-founded it with the name of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German National Socialist Workers’ Party, abbreviated to Nazi Party), of which he was elected president with dictatorial powers; while spreading his ideology centered on racial hatred and contempt for democracy, he linked himself to the paramilitary squad groups founded by Major Röhm, the SA (Sturmabteilungen, assault teams), endorsing their actions of violence against men and headquarters of the social democratic and communist left. Hitler focused his political action on the attack on the Weimar Republic, accused of treason and surrender to foreigners, gathering the support of figures such as Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring and Alfred Rosenberg. In November 1923, in a moment of confusion and weakness of the country’s government, he made his first appearance on the German political scene by leading a coup attempt in Bavaria, the Munich putsch. The army, however, was not compact in supporting the operation and the putsch failed. Recognized as responsible for the plot, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, reduced to eight months for a general amnesty. While in detention, he dictated his autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Battle), in which he expounded the principles of Nazi ideology and the superiority of the Aryan race. Back in freedom (1924), he rebuilt the party in 1925 without the government, which he had tried to overthrow, doing anything to prevent it. The Great Depression broke out in 1929, which led to the collapse of the mark and the rise in unemployment, Hitler was able to exploit popular discontent by gaining support for the Nazi Party and securing the support of the right-wing sectors of high finance, big industry and the army; with the promise of creating a strong, rich and powerful Germany it attracted millions of voters. His oratory capacity inflamed the masses: in the elections of 1930 the Nazi seats in the Reichstag (parliament) rose from twelve in 1928 to one hundred and seven; at the same time he strengthened the party’s paramilitary structures using Röhm’s SA and the SS, created by Himmler. During the next two years the party continued to grow, taking advantage of high unemployment, fear of communism, Hitler’s resolve and the weakness of his political rivals. Hitler succeeded in establishing himself as the strong man, capable of getting the government out of immobility and the shoals of conflicts between Parliament and the presidency of the Republic. With the support of the military leaders, he obtained the post of Chancellor from President Paul von Hindenburg (January 30, 1933). On the death of Hindenburg (1934) he also reunited the office of president, having this act ratified with a plebiscite that awarded him 90% of the votes. At that point his totalitarian project could unfold without obstacles. The dictatorship When he came to power, Hitler quickly turned into a dictator. A submissive parliament granted him full powers, so that he was able to enslave the state bureaucracy and the judiciary to the needs of the party. The unions were eliminated, thousands of opponents locked up in concentration camps and every slightest repressed dissent. The organization of the police was entrusted to Himmler, the head of the SS. On June 30, 1934, in the “night of the long knives”, Hitler violently freed himself from the more radical elements present in his own party and in the SA. In a short time the economy, the media and all cultural activities passed under Nazi authority through the control of the political loyalty of every citizen, exercised by the Gestapo, the notorious secret police. Hitler reserved foreign policy as his exclusive competence. In 1935 he denounced the Versailles Treaty of 1919, proclaiming his firm intention to restore Germany to the rank of a great military and naval power, and to begin with, through a plebiscite, he took over the Saar region, on the western frontier. In 1936 he believed that the time was ripe to begin his expansion policy: he sent troops to the demilitarized Rhineland, signed an alliance with Mussolini’s fascist Italy that took the name of Rome-Berlin Axis, and signed with Japan the Anticomintern Pact with an anti-communist and anti-Soviet function. In 1938 he decided to invade and annex Austria (see Anschluss), without finding any military resistance. At the Munich meeting (see Munich Pact) he obtained the ratification of the dismemberment of a part of Czechoslovakia (see Question of the Sudetenland), the premise of its dissolution, which took place in March 1939. From these events the Second World War arose. War broke out in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, which had formed an alliance with England. In 1940 the German army occupied Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France; in June 1941 the attack on the Soviet Union began.
In the following July, Hitler commissioned SS chief Heydrich to work out and plan the “final solution to the Jewish question” which would lead to the genocide of six million Jews (see Holocaust). In December the course of the war changed direction: the Russian counter-offensive repelled the German army, inflicting very heavy losses on Germany; Hitler refused to authorize the retreat. In those same days, the United States entered the war. Faced with the advance of the enemy armies on both the European and African fronts, Hitler, who survived various plots hatched by German officers who wanted to put an end to the fighting and annihilation of Germany (see July 1944 Plot), and convinced until to
National Socialism The term, more often abbreviated to “Nazism”, designates the political doctrine that gave ideological content to the National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; German National Socialist Workers’ Party), marking its action and, in general, all internal and foreign politics of Adolf Hitler and his government from 1933 to 1945. The central principles of the Nazi doctrine, in some respects akin to Italian fascism, were inspired by the theories that supported an alleged biological and cultural superiority of the Aryan race formulated by Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Alfred Rosenberg; but the success of the political formula in Germany was also due to its relationship of continuity with the Prussian nationalist, militarist and expansionist tradition, as well as its roots in the irrationalist culture of the turn of the century. The first postwar period The rise of the National Socialist movement drew strong impetus from the widespread discontent among the Germans at the end of the First World War. Believed to be the main culprit of the conflict, Germany had in fact to accept the very heavy conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, as a result of which it entered a period of economic depression, marked by unstoppable inflation and vast unemployment. Financed by the military, the political formation led by Adolf Hitler was born in 1920 in a country prostrated by war and crossed by violent political and social conflicts (see Weimar Republic). Part of the militants were organized into a kind of armed wing, the SA (Sturmabteilungen, “sections of he wrote the first part of Mein Kampf (My Battle), the work in which he summarized the cornerstones of Nazi ideology, outlining his plan for the conquest of Europe. Hitler’s intellectual sources were quite heterogeneous and National Socialism thus presented itself more as a conglomerate of ideas with the most disparate matrices than as an organized and structured ideology. In Mein Kampf the nationalist demands and the project of a great Germany that would bring together all the German-speaking people found a theorization that fits well into the climate caused by the defeat of the war: Hitler proposed a plan to expand the national territory, justifying it with the need to enlarge the Lebensraum (“living space”) for the German people. The other nations had to submit to the Aryan race, by virtue of its acclaimed superiority, destined as it was to reign over the whole world. Enemies of the Aryans were primarily the Jews, responsible for the economic disaster and the spread of Marxist and liberal ideologies. The NSDAP in parliament Once released, Hitler reorganized the party, created the armed body of the SS (SchutzStaffeln, “defense squads”), headed by Heinrich Himmler, and the propaganda office, which was entrusted to Joseph Goebbels. In 1929, the year of the great crisis following the collapse of Wall Street, most of the great German entrepreneurs began to look favorably on Hitler and his program and huge sums of money began to flow into the coffers of the Nazi party. Also supported by the middle classes, from smallholders and unemployed people affected by the great economic depression, the Nazi party won the relative majority in the elections of 1932. A year later Hitler obtained the chancellorship and, skilfully exploiting the episode of the Reichstag fire, made sure that the President of the Republic decreed a state of emergency, entrusting him with extraordinary powers. In the following political elections the National Socialist Party won a landslide victory; Hitler was thus assured of full powers, which he used to absorb the powers of parliament and violently eliminate the opposition. The National Socialist Party became the only legal political organization. In 1933, in order to eliminate dissidents, the Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police) was established, known as the Gestapo, released from any legal control and subject only to its own commander, Himmler. The new order With the suppression of political opponents and constitutional and civil rights, the regime faced the employment crisis, planning an industrial and agricultural restructuring of the entire country, evading the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty, abolishing cooperatives and placing trade unions under control of the state. Thanks to the “new order” Hitler Germany emerged from the crisis: the fortunes of high finance and large national industry were revived and unemployment was gradually absorbed; but this was also due to the work created for the preparation of a mighty war machine, while an extremely aggressive and brutal foreign policy was inaugurated.
Finally, the invasion of Poland (September 1, 1939) was the spark that sparked the Second World War.
(see Blitzkrieg) In the first phase of the conflict, Germany seemed to have the upper hand; Hitler and his men then gave way to the so-called “final solution”, organizing the deportation and elimination of millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill, political opponents and so on. (see Holocaust). Nazism after World War II At the end of the war, an international military court tried the surviving Nazi leaders in Nuremberg (see War Crimes Trials), while the Allies organized the so-called “denazification process” of the country. The new democratic constitution sanctioned the prohibition of reconstituting the National Socialist Party; however in the postwar period, especially starting from the 1960s, Nazism returned to the limelight.
In Germany, in other European countries and in the United States itself, small neo-Nazi groups have sprung up that still today preach racial hatred and anti-Semitism, commit violence against immigrants and organize terrorist actions. The same bombing of April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City was allegedly organized by Nazi-inspired American paramilitary groups.
