FREE ESSAY ON ADOLF HITLER

ADOLF HITLER

ADOLF HITLER
Adolf Hitler was a dictator of the German Nazi movement. He was born April 20, 1889 in
the small Austrian town of Braunau. After a prior performance in elementary school, Adolf
soon became rebellious and began failing in the Realschule, which is a college
preparatory school. Following transfer to another school, he finally left formal
education altogether in 1905 and, refusing to bow to the training of a regular job, began
his years of amateur painting, wandering in the woods, and dreaming of becoming a famous
artist. In 1907, when his mother died, he moved to Vienna in an attempt to enroll in the
famed Academy of Fine Arts. However he was not admitted. He wandering through the streets
of Vienna living on an orphan's pension and the money he could earn by painting and
selling picture postcards. It was during this time of his homeless being among the
disordered circumstances of the old Hapsburg capital, that he first became fascinated by
the immense possibility of political manipulation. He was impressed by the successes of
the anti-Semitic, nationalist Christian-Socialist party of Vienna Mayor Karl Lueger and
his propaganda organization (Website, Biography.com Hitler). Under Lueger's influence
Hitler first developed the extreme anti-Semitism that were to remain central to his own
beliefs and that of the Nazi party. 
In May 1913, in an attempt to avoid induction into the Austrian military service after he
had failed to register for draft, Hitler slipped across the German border to Munich, only
to be arrested and turned over to the Austrian police. He was able to persuade the
authorities not to confine him for draft avoidance and presented himself for the draft
physical examination, which he failed to pass. He returned to Munich, and after the
outbreak of World War I a year later, he volunteered for action in the German army.
During the war he fought on Germany's Western front with excellence but gained no
promotion beyond the rank of corporal. Injured twice, he won several awards' for bravery,
among them the highly respected Iron Cross First Class (Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris. By Ian
Kershaw. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998).
The end of the war suddenly left Hitler without a place and drove him to join the many
frustrated veterans who continued to fight in the streets of Germany. In the spring of
1919 he found employment as a political officer in the army in Munich with the help of an
adventurer-soldier by the name of Ernst Roehm. Ernst Roehm later became the head of
Hitler's storm troopers. Hitler attended a meeting of the so-called German Workers'
party, a nationalist, anti-Semitic, and socialist group, in September 1919. He quickly
famed himself as this party's most popular and impressive speaker.
The first two years in office were almost completely dedicated to power. With several
prominent Nazis in key positions and his military ally Werner von Blomberg in the Defense
Ministry, he quickly gained efficient control. He convinced the aging president and the
Reichstag to invest him with emergency powers suspending the constitution in the
so-called Enabling Act of Feb. 28, 1933. Under this act and with the help of a mysterious
fire in the Reichstag building, he eliminated his political rivals and brought all levels
of government under his control. By means of the Roehm purge of the summer of 1934 he
guaranteed himself of the loyalty of the army by the inferiority of the Nazi storm
troopers and the murder of its chief together with the financial disaster of major rivals
within the army. The death of President Hindenburg in August 1934 cleared the way for the
elimination of the presidential title by voting. Hitler became ruler of Germany and in
result head of state as well as commander in chief of the armed forces. Joseph Goebbels's
extensive propaganda machine and Heinrich Himmler's police system together perfected
dictatorial control of Germany. This can be seen as demonstrated in the great Nazi rally
of 1934 in Nuremberg, where millions marched in unison and saluted Hitler's dramatic
appeals. 
Once internal control was assured, Hitler began enlisting Germany's resources for
military conquest and racial domination of the landmasses of central and Eastern Europe.
He put Germany's six million unemployed to work on a vast building program, coupled with
a propaganda campaign to prepare the nation for war. 
Foreign relations were directed toward preparation for war because of the improvement of
Germany's military position, the purchase of strong allies and the division of Germany's
enemies. Playing on the weaknesses of the Versailles Peace Treaty and the general fear of
war, this policy was previously successful in the face of governments in England and
France. After an unsuccessful achievement attempt in Austria in 1934, Hitler gained
Mussolini's union as a result of Italy's Ethiopian war in 1935, illegally marched into
the Rhineland in 1936 and successfully intervened in the Spanish Civil War (Time
Magazine, January 2, 1939, Roles Minor). Under the popular emblem of national
self-determination, he attached Austria and some of Czechoslovakia with the West in 1938,
only to occupy all of Czechoslovakia in early in 1939. Alliances with Italy and Japan
followed. 
On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler began World War II with the invasion of Poland, which he
immediately followed with the ethnic cleansing of Jews and the Polish aristocrats, the
slavery of the local alien population, and the beginnings of a German colonization.
Following the exposition of war by France and England, he temporarily turned his military
west, where the attacks of the German forces quickly prevailed. In April 1940 Denmark
surrendered, and Norway was taken by an amphibious operation. In May-June the progressing
tank forces defeated France and the Low Countries. 
The major goal of Hitler's conquest was in the East and the war had already entered in
the middle of 1940. German war production was preparing for an eastern campaign. The Air
Battle of Britain, which Hitler had hoped would permit either German invasion or an
alliance with Germanic England, was broken off, and Germany's naval warfare shattered for
lack of reinforcements.
On June 22, 1941, the German army advanced on Russia in the so-called Operation
Barbarossa, which Hitler regarded as "Germany's final struggle for existence and 'living
space' and for the creation of the 'new order' of German racial domination" (The Concise
Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition, 1998). After advances, the German troops were
stopped by the harsh Russian winter which in turn helped them to fail at reaching any of
their three major goals: Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. The following year's advances
were again slower than expected, and with the first major setback at Stalingrad in 1943,
the long retreat from Russia began. A year later, the Western Allies started advancing on
Germany. 
Hitler withdrew almost entirely from the public. His orders became increasingly
incoherent; and recalling his earlier triumphs over the generals, he refused to listen to
advice from his military counselors. He dreamed of miracle bombs and suspected treason
everywhere. Under the slogan of total victory or total ruin, the entire German nation
from young boys to old men was mobilized and sent to the front. After an unsuccessful
assassination attempt by a group of former military men on July 20, 1944, the reign of
fear tightened. 
In the last days of the Third Reich, with the Russian troops in the limits of Berlin,
Hitler entered into a last stage of anxiety in his underground bunker in Berlin. He
ordered Germany destroyed since it was not worthy of him. He dismissed his trusted
lieutenants Himmler and Goring from the party; and made a last request to the German
nation. Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, leaving the last bits of
unconquered German territory to the command of non-Nazi Admiral Karl Doenitz.
Bibliography
Works Cited
1. Website, Biography.com Hitler 
2. The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition, 1998
3. Time Magazine, January 2, 1939, Roles Minor
4. Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris. By Ian Kershaw. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company,
1998