hitler essay introduction

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Adolf Hitler

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 29, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s Nazi Party , was one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century. After serving with the German military in World War I , Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting during the Weimar Republic to rise through the ranks of the Nazi Party.

In a series of ruthless and violent actions—including the Reichstag Fire and the Night of Long Knives—Hitler took absolute power in Germany by 1933. Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of World War II , and by 1941, Nazi forces had used “blitzkrieg” military tactics to occupy much of Europe. Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism and obsessive pursuit of Aryan supremacy fueled the murder of some 6 million Jews, along with other victims of the Holocaust . After the tide of war turned against him, Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker in April 1945.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a small Austrian town near the Austro-German frontier. After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

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, though he was rejected from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.

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. Lonely, isolated and a voracious reader, Hitler became interested in politics during his years in Vienna, and developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

Military Career of Adolf Hitler

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.

Deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, Hitler served throughout the Great War and won two decorations for bravery, including the rare Iron Cross First Class, which he wore to the end of his life.

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 .

Like many Germans, Hitler came to believe the country’s devastating defeat could be attributed not to the Allies, but to insufficiently patriotic “traitors” at home—a myth that would undermine the post-war Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler’s rise.

After Hitler returned to Munich in late 1918, he joined the small German Workers’ Party, which aimed to unite the interests of the working class with a strong German nationalism. His skilled oratory and charismatic energy helped propel him in the party’s ranks, and in 1920 he left the army and took charge of its propaganda efforts.

In one of Hitler’s strokes of propaganda genius, the newly renamed National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party , adopted a version of the swastika—an ancient sacred symbol of Hinduism , Jainism and Buddhism —as its emblem. Printed in a white circle on a red background, Hitler’s swastika would take on terrifying symbolic power in the years to come.

By the end of 1921, Hitler led the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty . Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich would join the Nazis, notably Ernst Röhm, who recruited the “strong arm” squads—known as the Sturmabteilung (SA)—which Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch 

On the evening of November 8, 1923, members of the SA and others forced their way into a large beer hall where another right-wing leader was addressing the crowd. Wielding a revolver, Hitler proclaimed the beginning of a national revolution and led marchers to the center of Munich, where they got into a gun battle with police.

Hitler fled quickly, but he and other rebel leaders were later arrested. Even though it failed spectacularly, the Beer Hall Putsch established Hitler as a national figure, and (in the eyes of many) a hero of right-wing nationalism.

'Mein Kampf' 

Tried for treason, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but would serve only nine months in the relative comfort of Landsberg Castle. During this period, he began to dictate the book that would become " Mein Kampf " (“My Struggle”), the first volume of which was published in 1925.

In it, Hitler expanded on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic views he had begun to develop in Vienna in his early twenties, and laid out plans for the Germany—and the world—he sought to create when he came to power.

Hitler would finish the second volume of "Mein Kampf" after his release, while relaxing in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden. It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler’s rise it became Germany’s best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there.

Hitler’s second book, “The Zweites Buch,” was written in 1928 and contained his thoughts on foreign policy. It was not published in his lifetime due to the poor initial sales of “Mein Kampf.” The first English translations of “The Zweites Buch” did not appear until 1962 and was published under the title “Hitler's Secret Book.” 

Obsessed with race and the idea of ethnic “purity,” Hitler saw a natural order that placed the so-called “Aryan race” at the top.

For him, the unity of the Volk (the German people) would find its truest incarnation not in democratic or parliamentary government, but in one supreme leader, or Führer.

" Mein Kampf " also addressed the need for Lebensraum (or living space): In order to fulfill its destiny, Germany should take over lands to the east that were now occupied by “inferior” Slavic peoples—including Austria, the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), Poland and Russia.

The Schutzstaffel (SS) 

By the time Hitler left prison, economic recovery had restored some popular support for the Weimar Republic, and support for right-wing causes like Nazism appeared to be waning.

Over the next few years, Hitler laid low and worked on reorganizing and reshaping the Nazi Party. He established the Hitler Youth  to organize youngsters, and created the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a more reliable alternative to the SA.

Members of the SS wore black uniforms and swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. (After 1929, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler , the SS would develop from a group of some 200 men into a force that would dominate Germany and terrorize the rest of occupied Europe during World War II .)

Hitler spent much of his time at Berchtesgaden during these years, and his half-sister, Angela Raubal, and her two daughters often joined him. After Hitler became infatuated with his beautiful blonde niece, Geli Raubal, his possessive jealousy apparently led her to commit suicide in 1931.

Devastated by the loss, Hitler would consider Geli the only true love affair of his life. He soon began a long relationship with Eva Braun , a shop assistant from Munich, but refused to marry her.

The worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 again threatened the stability of the Weimar Republic. Determined to achieve political power in order to affect his revolution, Hitler built up Nazi support among German conservatives, including army, business and industrial leaders.

The Third Reich

In 1932, Hitler ran against the war hero Paul von Hindenburg for president, and received 36.8 percent of the vote. With the government in chaos, three successive chancellors failed to maintain control, and in late January 1933 Hindenburg named the 43-year-old Hitler as chancellor, capping the stunning rise of an unlikely leader.

January 30, 1933 marked the birth of the Third Reich, or as the Nazis called it, the “Thousand-Year Reich” (after Hitler’s boast that it would endure for a millennium).

HISTORY Vault: Third Reich: The Rise

Rare and never-before-seen amateur films offer a unique perspective on the rise of Nazi Germany from Germans who experienced it. How were millions of people so vulnerable to fascism?

Reichstag Fire 

Though the Nazis never attained more than 37 percent of the vote at the height of their popularity in 1932, Hitler was able to grab absolute power in Germany largely due to divisions and inaction among the majority who opposed Nazism.

After a devastating fire at Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, in February 1933—possibly the work of a Dutch communist, though later evidence suggested Nazis set the  Reichstag fire  themselves—Hitler had an excuse to step up the political oppression and violence against his opponents.

On March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving full powers to Hitler and celebrating the union of National Socialism with the old German establishment (i.e., Hindenburg ).

That July, the government passed a law stating that the Nazi Party “constitutes the only political party in Germany,” and within months all non-Nazi parties, trade unions and other organizations had ceased to exist.

His autocratic power now secure within Germany, Hitler turned his eyes toward the rest of Europe.

In 1933, Germany was diplomatically isolated, with a weak military and hostile neighbors (France and Poland). In a famous speech in May 1933, Hitler struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, claiming Germany supported disarmament and peace.

But behind this appeasement strategy, the domination and expansion of the Volk remained Hitler’s overriding aim.

By early the following year, he had withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations and begun to militarize the nation in anticipation of his plans for territorial conquest.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 29, 1934, the infamous Night of the Long Knives , Hitler had Röhm, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and hundreds of other problematic members of his own party murdered, in particular troublesome members of the SA.

When the 86-year-old Hindenburg died on August 2, military leaders agreed to combine the presidency and chancellorship into one position, meaning Hitler would command all the armed forces of the Reich.

Persecution of Jews

On September 15, 1935, passage of the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship, and barred them from marrying or having relations with persons of “German or related blood.”

Though the Nazis attempted to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to placate the international community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics (in which German-Jewish athletes were not allowed to compete), additional decrees over the next few years disenfranchised Jews and took away their political and civil rights.

In addition to its pervasive anti-Semitism, Hitler’s government also sought to establish the cultural dominance of Nazism by burning books, forcing newspapers out of business, using radio and movies for propaganda purposes and forcing teachers throughout Germany’s educational system to join the party.

Much of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other targets occurred at the hands of the Geheime Staatspolizei (GESTAPO), or Secret State Police, an arm of the SS that expanded during this period.

Outbreak of World War II

In March 1936, against the advice of his generals, Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine.

Over the next two years, Germany concluded alliances with Italy and Japan, annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia—all essentially without resistance from Great Britain, France or the rest of the international community.

Once he confirmed the alliance with Italy in the so-called “Pact of Steel” in May 1939, Hitler then signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union . On September 1, 1939, Nazi troops invaded Poland, finally prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

Blitzkrieg 

After ordering the occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, Hitler adopted a plan proposed by one of his generals to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. The blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) attack began on May 10; Holland quickly surrendered, followed by Belgium.

German troops made it all the way to the English Channel, forcing British and French forces to evacuate en masse from Dunkirk in late May. On June 22, France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany.

Hitler had hoped to force Britain to seek peace as well, but when that failed he went ahead with his attacks on that country, followed by an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany’s alliance with Japan demanded that Hitler declare war on the United States as well.

At that point in the conflict, Hitler shifted his central strategy to focus on breaking the alliance of his main opponents (Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union) by forcing one of them to make peace with him.

Concentration Camps

Beginning in 1933, the SS had operated a network of concentration camps, including a notorious camp at Dachau , near Munich, to hold Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz -Birkenau in occupied Poland.

In addition to forced labor and mass execution, certain Jews at Auschwitz were targeted as the subjects of horrific medical experiments carried out by eugenicist Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death.” Mengele’s experiments focused on twins and exposed 3,000 child prisoners to disease, disfigurement and torture under the guise of medical research.

Though the Nazis also imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma (gypsies) and the disabled, above all they targeted Jews—some 6 million of whom were killed in German-occupied Europe by war’s end.

End of World War II

With defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad , as well as the landing of U.S. troops in North Africa by the end of 1942, the tide of the war turned against Germany.

As the conflict continued, Hitler became increasingly unwell, isolated and dependent on medications administered by his personal physician.

Several attempts were made on his life, including one that came close to succeeding in July 1944, when Col. Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that exploded during a conference at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia.

Within a few months of the successful Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces.

But after January 1945, he holed up in a bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. With Soviet forces closing in, Hitler made plans for a last-ditch resistance before finally abandoning that plan.

How Did Adolf Hitler Die?

At midnight on the night of April 28-29, Hitler married Eva Braun in the Berlin bunker. After dictating his political testament,  Hitler shot himself  in his suite on April 30; Braun took poison. Their bodies were burned according to Hitler’s instructions.

With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, 1945, bringing the war in Europe to a close.

In the end, Hitler’s planned “Thousand-Year Reich” lasted just over 12 years, but wreaked unfathomable destruction and devastation during that time, forever transforming the history of Germany, Europe and the world.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich iWonder – Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster, BBC . The Holocaust : A Learning Site for Students, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum .

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Essay on Hitler

Students are often asked to write an essay on Hitler in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Hitler

Introduction.

Adolf Hitler, born in Austria in 1889, was a significant figure in world history. He is known as the leader of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945.

Rise to Power

Hitler’s rise to power began in the early 1930s. He became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and later the dictator in 1934.

World War II

Under Hitler’s leadership, Germany started World War II in 1939. He aimed to establish a new order based on absolute Nazi German hegemony.

End of Hitler

Hitler’s aggressive policies and expansionist ideology are often seen as the causes of the start of World War II. He died by suicide in his bunker in Berlin on 30 April 1945.

250 Words Essay on Hitler

Early life and rise to power.

Adolf Hitler, born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, in 1889, was a controversial figure who rose to power as Germany’s dictator in 1933. Hitler’s early life was marked by struggle and failure, which shaped his extremist ideologies and charismatic leadership style. His political career began post World War I, when he joined the German Workers’ Party, later rebranded as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party).

Hitler’s Ideology and the Holocaust

Hitler’s ideology was a toxic blend of anti-Semitism, Aryan racial superiority, and totalitarianism. His extremist views led to the Holocaust, the genocide of six million Jews, which stands as a stark reminder of the destructive potential of hate and bigotry. Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a manifesto outlining his political ideology and plans for Germany, became a cornerstone of the Nazi regime.

World War II and Hitler’s Downfall

Hitler’s aggressive foreign policies and expansionist ideology were significant causes of World War II. His invasion of Poland in 1939 triggered the war, and his militaristic tactics resulted in the occupation of several European countries. However, the tide turned against Hitler after the failed invasion of the Soviet Union and the entry of the United States into the war. In 1945, with Allied forces closing in, Hitler died by suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

This brief overview of Hitler’s life and impact underscores the dangers of unchecked power, extremist ideologies, and the manipulation of public sentiment, lessons that remain pertinent today.

500 Words Essay on Hitler

Adolf Hitler, a name synonymous with tyranny and destruction, was the Führer and Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945. His policies precipitated World War II and the Holocaust, leading to the genocide of six million Jews. Hitler’s actions and ideology, steeped in anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and Aryan supremacy, have left an indelible scar on human history.

Early Life and Political Inception

Born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, Austria, Hitler’s early life was marked by conflict and hardship. His father, a stern and volatile man, was often at odds with Hitler’s artistic aspirations. Hitler moved to Munich in 1913, and his life took a decisive turn with the outbreak of World War I, where he served with distinction. Post-war Germany, laden with the punitive Treaty of Versailles, was fertile ground for Hitler’s extremist views. He joined the German Workers’ Party in 1919, which later evolved into the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party), and he became its leader in 1921.

Hitler’s charisma, coupled with his fervent nationalism and anti-Semitic rhetoric, resonated with the economically distressed and politically disillusioned Germans. His failed coup attempt in 1923, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, led to his imprisonment, during which he wrote ‘Mein Kampf’, outlining his political ideology and future plans for Germany. Released in 1924, Hitler methodically rebuilt the Nazi Party and by 1933, he was appointed Chancellor of Germany.

Hitler’s Regime

Once in power, Hitler swiftly dismantled Germany’s democratic institutions, establishing a totalitarian regime. The Reichstag fire in 1933 provided him the pretext to enact the Enabling Act, granting him dictatorial powers. Hitler pursued aggressive foreign policies, defying the Treaty of Versailles, and initiated World War II with the invasion of Poland in 1939.

The Holocaust

Hitler’s most abhorrent act was the systematic genocide of six million Jews during the Holocaust. His virulent anti-Semitism, articulated in ‘Mein Kampf’, became state policy with the implementation of the “Final Solution” – the extermination of the Jewish people.

Downfall and Legacy

Hitler’s downfall began with the disastrous decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941. By 1945, Allied forces had overrun Germany. Facing imminent defeat, Hitler died by suicide in his bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945. His legacy, a testament to the destructive potential of totalitarian regimes and extremist ideologies, serves as a stark reminder of humanity’s darkest hour.

Adolf Hitler, a man whose name evokes images of horror and devastation, changed the course of the 20th century. His reign of terror serves as a grim reminder of the catastrophic consequences of unchecked power, racial hatred, and ideological extremism. As we reflect on Hitler’s life and actions, it is incumbent upon us to ensure that the lessons of history are not forgotten, and such atrocities are never repeated.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — Adolf Hitler — The Life of Adolf Hitler: Understanding the Emergence of a Monster

The Life of Adolf Hitler: Understanding The Emergence of a Monster

• Categories: Adolf Hitler

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Words: 487 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 487 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, early life of adolf hitler, hitler's political rise, hitler as the german leader, genocide and world war ii, downfall and legacy.

• Kershaw, (1998). Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris. Penguin Books.
• Kershaw, (2000). Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis. Penguin Books.
• Shirer, W. L. (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Simon and Schuster.
• Toland, J. (1976). Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography. Anchor Books.

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Introduction to the Holocaust

• Women during the Holocaust
• Nazi Territorial Aggression: The Anschluss
• Ravensbrück
• The Enabling Act
• The Rhine Crossings in World War II
• Antisemitism
• How Many People did the Nazis Murder?

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The Holocaust was an evolving process that took place throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945.

Antisemitism was at the foundation of the Holocaust. Antisemitism, the hatred of or prejudice against Jews, was a basic tenet of Nazi ideology. This prejudice was also widespread throughout Europe.

Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews evolved and became increasingly more radical between 1933 and 1945. This radicalization culminated in the mass murder of six million Jews.

During World War II, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews using deadly living conditions, brutal mistreatment, mass shootings and gassings, and specially designed killing centers.

• Final Solution
• Third Reich
• World War II

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What was the Holocaust? 

The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. 1 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933–1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust is also sometimes referred to as “the Shoah,” the Hebrew word for “catastrophe.”

Why did the Nazis target Jews?

The Nazis targeted Jews because the Nazis were radically antisemitic. This means that they were prejudiced against and hated Jews. In fact, antisemitism was a basic tenet of their ideology and at the foundation of their worldview. 

The Nazis falsely accused Jews of causing Germany’s social, economic, political, and cultural problems. In particular, they blamed them for Germany’s defeat in World War I (1914–1918). Some Germans were receptive to these Nazi claims. Anger over the loss of the war and the economic and political crises that followed contributed to increasing antisemitism in German society. The instability of Germany under the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), the fear of communism , and the economic shocks of the Great Depression also made many Germans more open to Nazi ideas, including antisemitism.

However, the Nazis did not invent antisemitism. Antisemitism is an old and widespread prejudice that has taken many forms throughout history. In Europe, it dates back to ancient times. In the Middle Ages (500–1400), prejudices against Jews were primarily based in early Christian belief and thought, particularly the myth that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Suspicion and discrimination rooted in religious prejudices continued in early modern Europe (1400–1800). At that time, leaders in much of Christian Europe isolated Jews from most aspects of economic, social, and political life. This exclusion contributed to stereotypes of Jews as outsiders. As Europe became more secular, many places lifted most legal restrictions on Jews. This, however, did not mean the end of antisemitism. In addition to religious antisemitism, other types of antisemitism took hold in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. These new forms included economic, nationalist, and racial antisemitism. In the 19th century, antisemites falsely claimed that Jews were responsible for many social and political ills in modern, industrial society. Theories of race, eugenics , and Social Darwinism falsely justified these hatreds. Nazi prejudice against Jews drew upon all of these elements, but especially racial antisemitism . Racial antisemitism is the discriminatory idea that Jews are a separate and inferior race. 

Where did the Holocaust take place?

The Holocaust was a Nazi German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe’s Jewish population, which in 1933 numbered 9 million people. 

The Holocaust began in Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. Almost immediately, the Nazi German regime (which called itself the Third Reich ) excluded Jews from German economic, political, social, and cultural life. Throughout the 1930s, the regime increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate. 

But the Nazi persecution of Jews spread beyond Germany. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy . This culminated in World War II, which began in Europe in 1939. Prewar and wartime territorial expansion eventually brought millions more Jewish people under German control. 

Nazi Germany’s territorial expansion began in 1938–1939. During this time, Germany annexed neighboring Austria and the Sudetenland and occupied the Czech lands. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began World War II (1939–1945) by attacking Poland . Over the next two years, Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe, including western parts of the Soviet Union . Nazi Germany further extended its control by forming alliances with the governments of Italy , Hungary , Romania , and Bulgaria . It also created puppet states in Slovakia and Croatia. Together these countries made up the European members of the Axis alliance , which also included Japan. 

By 1942—as a result of annexations, invasions, occupations, and alliances—Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe and parts of North Africa. Nazi control brought harsh policies and ultimately mass murder to Jewish civilians across Europe. 

The Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews.

Geography of the Holocaust

How did Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators persecute Jewish people? 

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators implemented a wide range of anti-Jewish policies and measures. These policies varied from place to place. Thus, not all Jews experienced the Holocaust in the same way. But in all instances, millions of people were persecuted simply because they were identified as Jewish. 

Throughout German-controlled and aligned territories, the persecution of Jews took a variety of forms:

• Legal discrimination in the form of antisemitic laws . These included the Nuremberg Race Laws and numerous other discriminatory laws.
• Various forms of public identification and exclusion. These included antisemitic propaganda , boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses , public humiliation , and obligatory markings (such as the Jewish star badge worn as an armband or on clothing). 
• Organized violence. The most notable example is Kristallnacht . There were also isolated incidents and other pogroms (violent riots).
• Physical Displacement. Perpetrators used forced emigration, resettlement, expulsion, deportation, and ghettoization to physically displace Jewish individuals and communities.
• Internment. Perpetrators interned Jews in overcrowded ghettos , concentration camps , and forced-labor camps, where many died from starvation, disease, and other inhumane conditions.
• Widespread theft and plunder. The confiscation of Jews’ property, personal belongings, and valuables was a key part of the Holocaust. 
• Forced labor . Jews had to perform forced labor in service of the Axis war effort or for the enrichment of Nazi organizations, the military, and/or private businesses. 

Many Jews died as a result of these policies. But before 1941, the systematic mass murder of all Jews was not Nazi policy. Beginning in 1941, however, Nazi leaders decided to implement the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. They referred to this plan as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” 

What was the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”?

The Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” (“ Endlösung der Judenfrage ”) was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews. It was the last stage of the Holocaust and took place from 1941 to 1945. Though many Jews were killed before the "Final Solution" began, the vast majority of Jewish victims were murdered during this period.

Mass Shootings

The Nazi German regime perpetrated mass shootings of civilians on a scale never seen before. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German units began to carry out mass shootings of local Jews. At first, these units targeted Jewish men of military age. But by August 1941, they had started massacring entire Jewish communities. These massacres were often conducted in broad daylight and in full view and earshot of local residents. 

Mass shooting operations took place in more than 1,500 cities, towns, and villages across eastern Europe. German units tasked with murdering the local Jewish population moved throughout the region committing horrific massacres. Typically, these units would enter a town and round up the Jewish civilians. They would then take the Jewish residents to the outskirts of the town. Next, they would force them to dig a mass grave or take them to mass graves prepared in advance. Finally, German forces and/or local auxiliary units would shoot all of the men, women, and children into these pits. Sometimes, these massacres involved the use of specially designed mobile gas vans. Perpetrators would use these vans to suffocate victims with carbon monoxide exhaust.

Germans also carried out mass shootings at killing sites in occupied eastern Europe. Typically these were located near large cities. These sites included Fort IX in Kovno (Kaunas), the Rumbula and Bikernieki Forests in Riga , and Maly Trostenets near Minsk . At these killing sites, Germans and local collaborators murdered tens of thousands of Jews from the Kovno, Riga, and Minsk ghettos. They also shot tens of thousands of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews at these killing sites. At Maly Trostenets, thousands of victims were also murdered in gas vans.

The German units that perpetrated the mass shootings in eastern Europe included Einsatzgruppen (special task forces of the SS and police), Order Police battalions, and Waffen-SS units. The German military ( Wehrmacht ) provided logistical support and manpower. Some Wehrmacht units also carried out massacres. In many places, local auxiliary units working with the SS and police participated in the mass shootings. These auxiliary units were made up of local civilian, military, and police officials.

As many as 2 million Jews were murdered in mass shootings or gas vans in territories seized from Soviet forces. 

Killing Centers

German authorities, with the help of their allies and collaborators, transported Jews from across Europe to these killing centers. They disguised their intentions by calling the transports to the killing centers “resettlement actions” or “evacuation transports.” In English, they are often referred to as “deportations.” Most of these deportations took place by train. In order to efficiently transport Jews to the killing centers, German authorities used the extensive European railroad system , as well as other means of transportation. In many cases the railcars on the trains were freight cars; in other instances they were passenger cars. 

The conditions on deportation transports were horrific. German and collaborating local authorities forced Jews of all ages into overcrowded railcars. They often had to stand, sometimes for days, until the train reached its destination. The perpetrators deprived them of food, water, bathrooms, heat, and medical care. Jews frequently died en route from the inhumane conditions.

The vast majority of Jews deported to killing centers were gassed almost immediately after their arrival. Some Jews whom German officials believed to be healthy and strong enough were selected for forced labor. 

My mother ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, and she told me "Leibele, I'm not going to see you no more. Take care of your brother."  — Leo Schneiderman  describing arrival at Auschwitz, selection, and separation from his family

At all five killing centers, German officials forced some Jewish prisoners to assist in the killing process. Among other tasks, these prisoners had to sort through victims’ belongings and remove victims’ bodies from the gas chambers. Special units disposed of the millions of corpses through mass burial, in burning pits, or by burning them in large, specially designed crematoria .

Nearly 2.7 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered at the five killing centers. 

What were ghettos and why did German authorities create them during the Holocaust? 

Ghettos were areas of cities or towns where German occupiers forced Jews to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. German authorities often enclosed these areas by building walls or other barriers. Guards prevented Jews from leaving without permission. Some ghettos existed for years, but others existed only for months, weeks, or even days as holding sites prior to deportation or murder. 

German officials first created ghettos in 1939–1940 in German-occupied Poland. The two largest were located in the occupied Polish cities of Warsaw and Lodz (Łódź). Beginning in June 1941, German officials also established them in newly conquered territories in eastern Europe following the German attack on the Soviet Union. German authorities and their allies and collaborators also established ghettos in other parts of Europe. Notably, in 1944, German and Hungarian authorities created temporary ghettos to centralize and control Jews prior to their deportation from Hungary. 

The Purpose of the Ghettos

German authorities originally established the ghettos to isolate and control the large local Jewish populations in occupied eastern Europe. Initially, they concentrated Jewish residents from within a city and the surrounding area or region. However, beginning in 1941, German officials also deported Jews from other parts of Europe (including Germany) to some of these ghettos. 

Jewish forced labor became a central feature of life in many ghettos. In theory, it was supposed to help pay for the administration of the ghetto as well as support the German war effort. Sometimes, factories and workshops were established nearby in order to exploit the imprisoned Jews for forced labor. The labor was often manual and grueling. 

Life in the Ghettos

Jews in the ghettos sought to maintain a sense of dignity and community. Schools, libraries, communal welfare services, and religious institutions provided some measure of connection among residents. Attempts to document life in the ghettos, such as the Oneg Shabbat archive and clandestine photography, are powerful examples of spiritual resistance . Many ghettos also had underground movements that carried out armed resistance. The most famous of these is the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943.    

Liquidating the Ghettos

Beginning in 1941–1942, Germans and their allies and collaborators murdered ghetto residents en masse and dissolved ghetto administrative structures. They called this process “liquidation.” It was part of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The majority of Jews in the ghettos were murdered either in mass shootings at nearby killing sites or after deportation to killing centers. Most of the killing centers were deliberately located near the large ghettos of German-occupied Poland or on easily-accessible railway routes. 

Who was responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution?

Many people were responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution. 

At the highest level, Adolf Hitler inspired, ordered, approved, and supported the genocide of Europe’s Jews. However, Hitler did not act alone. Nor did he lay out an exact plan for the implementation of the Final Solution. Other Nazi leaders were the ones who directly coordinated, planned, and implemented the mass murder. Among them were Hermann Göring , Heinrich Himmler , Reinhard Heydrich , and Adolf Eichmann . 

However, millions of Germans and other Europeans participated in the Holocaust. Without their involvement, the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe would not have been possible. Nazi leaders relied upon German institutions and organizations; other Axis powers; local bureaucracies and institutions; and individuals. 

German Institutions, Organizations, and Individuals

As members of these institutions, countless German soldiers , policemen , civil servants , lawyers, judges , businessmen , engineers, and doctors and nurses chose to implement the regime’s policies. Ordinary Germans also participated in the Holocaust in a variety of ways. Some Germans cheered as Jews were beaten or humiliated. Others denounced Jews for disobeying racist laws and regulations. Many Germans bought, took, or looted their Jewish neighbors' belongings and property. These Germans’ participation in the Holocaust was motivated by enthusiasm, careerism, fear, greed, self-interest, antisemitism, and political ideals, among other factors. 

Non-German Governments and Institutions

Nazi Germany did not perpetrate the Holocaust alone. It relied on the help of its allies and collaborators. In this context, “allies” refers to Axis countries officially allied with Nazi Germany. “Collaborators” refers to regimes and organizations that cooperated with German authorities in an official or semi-official capacity. Nazi Germany’s allies and collaborators included:

• The European Axis Powers and other collaborationist regimes (such as Vichy France ). These governments passed their own antisemitic legislation and cooperated with German goals.
• German-backed local bureaucracies, especially local police forces. These organizations helped round up, intern, and deport Jews even in countries not allied with Germany, such as the Netherlands .
• Local auxiliary units made up of military and police officials and civilians. These German-backed units participated in massacres of Jews in eastern Europe (often voluntarily). 

The terms “allies” and “collaborators” can also refer to individuals affiliated with these governments and organizations.

Individuals across Europe 

Throughout Europe, individuals who had no governmental or institutional affiliation and did not directly participate in murdering Jews also contributed to the Holocaust. 

One of the deadliest things that neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, and even friends could do was denounce Jews to Nazi German authorities. An unknown number chose to do so. They revealed Jews’ hiding places, unmasked false Christian identities, and otherwise identified Jews to Nazi officials. In doing so, they brought about their deaths. These individuals’ motivations were wide-ranging: fear, self-interest, greed, revenge, antisemitism, and political and ideological beliefs.

Individuals also profited from the Holocaust. Non-Jews sometimes moved into Jews’ homes, took over Jewish-owned businesses, and stole Jews’ possessions and valuables. This was part of the widespread theft and plunder that accompanied the genocide. 

Most often individuals contributed to the Holocaust through inaction and indifference to the plight of their Jewish neighbors. Sometimes these individuals are called bystanders . 

Who were the other victims of Nazi persecution and mass murder?

The Holocaust specifically refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. However, there were also millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder . In the 1930s, the regime targeted a variety of alleged domestic enemies within German society. As the Nazis extended their reach during World War II, millions of other Europeans were also subjected to Nazi brutality. 

The Nazis classified Jews as the priority “enemy.” However, they also targeted other groups as threats to the health, unity, and security of the German people. The first group targeted by the Nazi regime consisted of political opponents . These included officials and members of other political parties and trade union activists. Political opponents also included people simply suspected of opposing or criticizing the Nazi regime. Political enemies were the first to be incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps . Jehovah’s Witnesses were also incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. They were arrested because they refused to swear loyalty to the government or serve in the German military.

The Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to German society. These included men accused of homosexuality , persons accused of being professional or habitual criminals, and so-called asocials (such as people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics). Tens of thousands of these victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly sterilized and persecuted Afro-Germans . 

People with disabilities were also victimized by the Nazi regime. Before World War II, Germans considered to have supposedly unhealthy hereditary conditions were forcibly sterilized. Once the war began, Nazi policy radicalized. People with disabilities, especially those living in institutions, were considered both a genetic and a financial burden on Germany. These people were targeted for murder in the so-called Euthanasia Program .

The Nazi regime employed extreme measures against groups considered to be racial, civilizational, or ideological enemies. This included Roma (Gypsies) , Poles (especially the Polish intelligentsia and elites), Soviet officials , and Soviet prisoners of war . The Nazis perpetrated mass murder against these groups.

How did the Holocaust end? 

But liberation did not bring closure. Many Holocaust survivors faced ongoing threats of violent antisemitism and displacement as they sought to build new lives. Many had lost family members, while others searched for years to locate missing parents, children, and siblings.

How did some Jews survive the Holocaust? 

Despite Nazi Germany’s efforts to murder all the Jews of Europe, some Jews survived the Holocaust. Survival took a variety of forms. But, in every case, survival was only possible because of an extraordinary confluence of circumstances, choices, help from others (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and sheer luck. 

Survival outside of German-Controlled Europe 

Some Jews survived the Holocaust by escaping German-controlled Europe. Before World War II began, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated from Nazi Germany despite significant immigration barriers. Those who immigrated to the United States, Great Britain, and other areas that remained beyond German control were safe from Nazi violence. Even after World War II began, some Jews managed to escape German-controlled Europe. For example, approximately 200,000 Polish Jews fled the German occupation of Poland. These Jews survived the war under harsh conditions after Soviet authorities deported them further east into the interior of the Soviet Union.

Survival in German-Controlled Europe

A smaller number of Jews survived inside German-controlled Europe. They often did so with the help of rescuers. Rescue efforts ranged from the isolated actions of individuals to organized networks, both small and large. Throughout Europe, there were non-Jews who took grave risks to help their Jewish neighbors, friends, and strangers survive. For example, they found hiding places for Jews, procured false papers that offered protective Christian identities, or provided them with food and supplies. Other Jews survived as members of partisan resistance movements . Finally, some Jews managed, against enormous odds, to survive imprisonment in concentration camps, ghettos, and even killing centers. 

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, those Jews who survived were often confronted with the traumatic reality of having lost their entire families and communities. Some were able to go home and chose to rebuild their lives in Europe. Many others were afraid to do so because of postwar violence and antisemitism . In the immediate postwar period, those who could not or would not return home often found themselves living in displaced persons camps . There, many had to wait years before they were able to immigrate to new homes.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world has struggled to come to terms with the horrors of the genocide, to remember the victims, and to hold perpetrators responsible . These important efforts remain ongoing.

Series: After the Holocaust

Liberation of Nazi Camps

The Aftermath of the Holocaust: Effects on Survivors

Displaced Persons

About Life after the Holocaust

Postwar Trials

What is Genocide?

Genocide timeline, series: the holocaust.

"Final Solution": Overview

Forced Labor: An Overview

Mass Shootings of Jews during the Holocaust

Gassing Operations

Deportations to Killing Centers

Killing Centers: An Overview

Switch series, critical thinking questions.

• <p>What can we learn from the massive size and scope of the Holocaust?</p>
• <p>Across Europe, the Nazis found countless willing helpers who collaborated or were complicit in their crimes. What motives and pressures led so many individuals to persecute, to murder, or to abandon their fellow human beings?</p>
• <p>Were there warning signs of what was to come before the Nazis came to power in 1933? Before the start of mass killing in 1941?</p>

In this context, “allies” refers to Axis countries officially allied with Nazi Germany. “Collaborators” refers to regimes and organizations that cooperated with German authorities in an official or semi-official capacity. These German-backed collaborators included some local police forces, bureaucracies, and paramilitary units. The terms “allies” and “collaborators” can also refer to individuals affiliated with these governments and organizations.

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The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers

By Adam Gopnik

Hitler is so fully imagined a subject—so obsessively present on our televisions and in our bookstores—that to reimagine him seems pointless. As with the Hollywood fascination with Charles Manson , speculative curiosity gives retrospective glamour to evil. Hitler created a world in which women were transported with their children for days in closed train cars and then had to watch those children die alongside them, naked, gasping for breath in a gas chamber. To ask whether the man responsible for this was motivated by reading Oswald Spengler or merely by meeting him seems to attribute too much complexity of purpose to him, not to mention posthumous dignity. Yet allowing the specifics of his ascent to be clouded by disdain is not much better than allowing his memory to be ennobled by mystery.

So the historian Timothy W. Ryback’s choice to make his new book, “ Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power ” (Knopf), an aggressively specific chronicle of a single year, 1932, seems a wise, even an inspired one. Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election and whom the entire conservative political class regarded as a chaotic clown with a violent following. Ryback shows how major players thought they could find some ulterior advantage in managing him. Each was sure that, after the passing of a brief storm cloud, so obviously overloaded that it had to expend itself, they would emerge in possession of power. The corporate bosses thought that, if you looked past the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you had someone who would protect your money. Communist ideologues thought that, if you peered deeply enough into the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you could spy the pattern of a popular revolution. The decent right thought that he was too obviously deranged to remain in power long, and the decent left, tempered by earlier fights against different enemies, thought that, if they forcibly stuck to the rule of law, then the law would somehow by itself entrap a lawless leader. In a now familiar paradox, the rational forces stuck to magical thinking, while the irrational ones were more logical, parsing the brute equations of power. And so the storm never passed. In a way, it still has not.

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour Adam Gopnik considers Hitler’s rise to power.

Ryback’s story begins soon after Hitler’s very incomplete victory in the Weimar Republic’s parliamentary elections of July, 1932. Hitler’s party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (its German initials were N.S.D.A.P.), emerged with thirty-seven per cent of the vote, and two hundred and thirty out of six hundred and eight seats in the Reichstag, the German parliament—substantially ahead of any of its rivals. In the normal course of events, this would have led the aging warrior Paul von Hindenburg, Germany’s President, to appoint Hitler Chancellor. The equivalent of Prime Minister in other parliamentary systems, the Chancellor was meant to answer to his party, to the Reichstag, and to the President, who appointed him and who could remove him. Yet both Hindenburg and the sitting Chancellor, Franz von Papen, had been firm never-Hitler men, and naïvely entreated Hitler to recognize his own unsuitability for the role.

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The N.S.D.A.P. had been in existence since right after the Great War, as one of many völkisch , or populist, groups; its label, by including “national” and “socialist,” was intended to appeal to both right-wing nationalists and left-wing socialists, who were thought to share a common enemy: the élite class of Jewish bankers who, they said, manipulated Germany behind the scenes and had been responsible for the German surrender. The Nazis, as they were called—a put-down made into a popular label, like “Impressionists”—began as one of many fringe and populist antisemitic groups in Germany, including the Thule Society, which was filled with bizarre pre- QAnon conspiracy adepts. Hitler, an Austrian corporal with a toothbrush mustache (when Charlie Chaplin first saw him in newsreels, he assumed Hitler was aping his Little Tramp character), had seized control of the Party in 1921. Then a failed attempt at a putsch in Munich, in 1923, left him in prison, but with many comforts, much respect, and paper and time with which to write his memoir, “Mein Kampf.” He reëmerged as the leader of all the nationalists fighting for election, with an accompanying paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (S.A.), under the direction of the more or less openly homosexual Ernst Röhm, and a press office, under the direction of Joseph Goebbels. (In the American style, the press office recognized the political significance of the era’s new technology and social media, exploiting sound recordings, newsreels, and radio, and even having Hitler campaign by airplane.) Hitler’s plans were deliberately ambiguous, but his purposes were not. Ever since his unsuccessful putsch in Munich, he had, Ryback writes, “been driven by a single ambition: to destroy the political system that he held responsible for the myriad ills plaguing the German people.”

Ryback skips past the underlying mechanics of the July, 1932, election on the way to his real subject—Hitler’s manipulation of the conservative politicians and tycoons who thought that they were manipulating him—but there’s a notable academic literature on what actually happened when Germans voted that summer. The political scientists and historians who study it tell us that the election was a “normal” one, in the sense that the behavior of groups and subgroups proceeded in the usual way, responding more to the perception of political interests than to some convulsions of apocalyptic feeling.

The popular picture of the decline of the Weimar Republic—in which hyperinflation produced mass unemployment, which produced an unstoppable wave of fascism—is far from the truth. The hyperinflation had ended in 1923, and the period right afterward, in the mid-twenties, was, in Germany as elsewhere, golden. The financial crash of 1929 certainly energized the parties of the far left and the far right. Still, the results of the July, 1932, election weren’t obviously catastrophic. The Nazis came out as the largest single party, but both Hitler and Goebbels were bitterly disappointed by their standing. The unemployed actually opposed Hitler and voted en masse for the parties of the left. Hitler won the support of self-employed people, who were in decent economic shape but felt that their lives and livelihoods were threatened; of rural Protestant voters; and of domestic workers (still a sizable group), perhaps because they felt unsafe outside a rigid hierarchy. What was once called the petite bourgeoisie, then, was key to his support—not people feeling the brunt of economic precarity but people feeling the possibility of it. Having nothing to fear but fear itself is having something significant to fear.

It was indeed a “normal” election in that respect, responding not least to the outburst of “normal” politics with which Hitler had littered his program: he had, in the months beforehand, damped down his usual ranting about Jews and bankers and moneyed élites and the rest. He had recorded a widely distributed phonograph album (the era’s equivalent of a podcast) designed to make him seem, well, Chancellor-ish. He emphasized agricultural support and a return to better times, aiming, as Ryback writes, “to bridge divides of class and conscience, socialism and nationalism.” By the strange alchemy of demagoguery, a brief visit to the surface of sanity annulled years and years of crazy.

The Germans were voting, in the absent-minded way of democratic voters everywhere, for easy reassurances, for stability, with classes siding against their historical enemies. They weren’t wild-eyed nationalists voting for a millennial authoritarian regime that would rule forever and restore Germany to glory, and, certainly, they weren’t voting for an apocalyptic nightmare that would leave tens of millions of people dead and the cities of Germany destroyed. They were voting for specific programs that they thought would benefit them, and for a year’s insurance against the people they feared.

Ryback spends most of his time with two pillars of respectable conservative Germany, General Kurt von Schleicher and the right-wing media magnate Alfred Hugenberg. Utterly contemptuous of Hitler as a lazy buffoon—he didn’t wake up until eleven most mornings and spent much of his time watching and talking about movies—the two men still hated the Communists and even the center-left Social Democrats more than they did anyone on the right, and they spent most of 1932 and 1933 scheming to use Hitler as a stalking horse for their own ambitions.

Schleicher is perhaps first among Ryback’s too-clever-for-their-own-good villains, and the book presents a piercingly novelistic picture of him. Though in some ways a classic Prussian militarist, Schleicher, like so many of the German upper classes, was also a cultivated and cosmopolitan bon vivant, whom the well-connected journalist and diarist Bella Fromm called “a man of almost irresistible charm.” He was a character out of a Jean Renoir film, the regretful Junker caught in modern times. He had no illusions about Hitler (“What am I to do with that psychopath?” he said after hearing about his behavior), but, infinitely ambitious, he thought that Hitler’s call for strongman rule might awaken the German people to the need for a real strongman, i.e., Schleicher. Ryback tells us that Schleicher had a strategy he dubbed the Zähmungsprozess , or “taming process,” which was meant to sideline the radicals of the Nazi Party and bring the movement into mainstream politics. He publicly commended Hitler as a “modest, orderly man who only wants what is best” and who would follow the rule of law. He praised Hitler’s paramilitary troops, too, defending them against press reports of street violence. In fact, as Ryback explains, the game plan was to have the Brown Shirts crush the forces of the left—and then to have the regular German Army crush the Brown Shirts.

Schleicher imagined himself a master manipulator of men and causes. He liked to play with a menagerie of glass animal figurines on his desk, leaving the impression that lesser beings were mere toys to be handled. In June of 1932, he prevailed on Hindenburg to give the Chancellorship to Papen, a weak politician widely viewed as Schleicher’s puppet; Papen, in turn, installed Schleicher as minister of defense. Then they dissolved the Reichstag and held those July elections which, predictably, gave the Nazis a big boost.

Ryback spends many mordant pages tracking Schleicher’s whirling-dervish intrigues, as he tried to realize his fantasy of the Zähmungsprozess . Many of these involved schemes shared with the patriotic and staunchly anti-Nazi General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord (familiar to viewers of “Babylon Berlin” as Major General Seegers). Hammerstein was one of the few German officers to fully grasp Hitler’s real nature. At a meeting with Hitler in the spring of 1932, Hammerstein told him bluntly, “Herr Hitler, if you achieve power legally, that would be fine with me. If the circumstances are different, I will use arms.” He later felt reassured when Hindenburg intimated that, if the Nazi paramilitary troops acted, he could order the Army to fire on them.

Yet Hammerstein remained impotent. At various moments, Schleicher, as the minister of defense, entertained what was in effect a plan for imposing martial law with himself in charge and Hammerstein at his side. In retrospect, it was the last hope of protecting the republic from Hitler—but after President Hindenburg rejected it, not out of democratic misgivings but out of suspicion of Schleicher’s purposes, Hammerstein, an essentially tragic figure, was unable to act alone. He suffered from a malady found among decent military men suddenly thrust into positions of political power: his scruples were at odds with his habits of deference to hierarchy. Generals became generals by learning to take orders before they learned how to give them. Hammerstein hated Hitler, but he waited for someone else of impeccable authority to give a clear direction before he would act. (He went on waiting right through the war, as part of the equally impotent military nexus that wanted Hitler dead but, until it was too late, lacked the will to kill him.)

The extra-parliamentary actions that were fleetingly contemplated in the months after the election—a war in the streets, or, more likely, a civil confrontation leading to a military coup—seemed horrific. The trouble, unknowable to the people of the time, is that, since what did happen is the worst thing that has ever happened, any alternative would have been less horrific. One wants to shout to Hammerstein and his cohorts, Go ahead, take over the government! Arrest Hitler and his henchmen, rule for a few years, and then try again. It won’t be as bad as what happens next. But, of course, they cannot hear us. They couldn’t have heard us then.

Ryback’s gift for detail joins with a nice feeling for the black comedy of the period. He makes much sport of the attempts by foreign journalists resident in Germany, particularly the New York Times’ Frederick T. Birchall, to normalize the Nazi ascent—with Birchall continually assuring his readers that Hitler, an out-of-his-depth simpleton, was not the threat he seemed to be, and that the other conservatives were far more potent in their political maneuvering. When Papen made a speech denying that Hitler’s paramilitary forces represented “the German nation,” Birchall wrote that the speech “contained dynamite enough to change completely the political situation in the Reich.” On another occasion, Birchall wrote that “the Hitlerites” were deluded to think they “hold the best cards”; there was every reason to think that “the big cards, the ones that will really decide the game,” were in the hands of people such as Papen, Hindenburg, and, “above all,” Schleicher.

Ryback, focussing on the self-entrapped German conservatives, generally avoids the question that seems most obvious to a contemporary reader: Why was a coalition between the moderate-left Social Democrats and the conservative but far from Nazified Catholic Centrists never even seriously attempted? Given that Hitler had repeatedly vowed to use the democratic process in order to destroy democracy, why did the people committed to democracy let him do it?

Many historians have jousted with this question, but perhaps the most piercing account remains an early one, written less than a decade after the war by the émigré German scholar Lewis Edinger, who had known the leaders of the Social Democrats well and consulted them directly—the ones who had survived, that is—for his study. His conclusion was that they simply “trusted that constitutional processes and the return of reason and fair play would assure the survival of the Weimar Republic and its chief supporters.” The Social Democratic leadership had become a gerontocracy, out of touch with the generational changes beneath them. The top Social Democratic leaders were, on average, two decades older than their Nazi counterparts.

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Worse, the Social Democrats remained in the grip of a long struggle with Bismarckian nationalism, which, however oppressive it might have been, still operated with a broad idea of legitimacy and the rule of law. The institutional procedures of parliamentarianism had always seen the Social Democrats through—why would those procedures not continue to protect them? In a battle between demagoguery and democracy, surely democracy had the advantage. Edinger writes that Karl Kautsky, among the most eminent of the Party’s theorists, believed that after the election Hitler’s supporters would realize he was incapable of fulfilling his promises and drift away.

The Social Democrats may have been hobbled, too, by their commitment to team leadership—which meant that no single charismatic individual represented them. Proceduralists and institutionalists by temperament and training, they were, as Edinger demonstrates, unable to imagine the nature of their adversary. They acceded to Hitler’s ascent with the belief that by respecting the rules themselves they would encourage the other side to play by them as well. Even after Hitler consolidated his power, he was seen to have secured the Chancellorship by constitutional means. Edinger quotes Arnold Brecht, a fellow exiled statesman: “To rise against him on the first night would make the rebels the technical violators of the Constitution that they wanted to defend.”

Meanwhile, the centrist Catholics—whom Hitler shrewdly recognized as his most formidable potential adversaries—were handicapped in any desire to join with the Democratic Socialists by their fear of the Communists. Though the Communists had previously made various alliances of convenience with the Social Democrats, by 1932 they were tightly controlled by Stalin, who had ordered them to depict the Social Democrats as being as great a threat to the working class as Hitler.

And, when a rumor spread that Hitler had once spat out a Communion Host, it only made him more popular among Catholics, since it called attention to his Catholic upbringing. Indeed, most attempts to highlight Hitler’s personal depravities (including his possibly sexual relationship with his niece Geli, which was no secret in the press of the time; her apparent suicide, less than a year before the election, had been a tabloid scandal) made him more popular. In any case, Hitler was skilled at reassuring the Catholic center, promising to be “the strong protector of Christianity as the basis of our common moral order.”

Hitler’s hatred of parliamentary democracy, even more than his hatred of Jews, was central to his identity, Ryback emphasizes. Antisemitism was a regular feature of populist politics in the region: Hitler had learned much of it in his youth from the Vienna mayor Karl Lueger. But Lueger was a genuine populist democrat, who brought universal male suffrage to the city. Hitler’s originality lay elsewhere. “Unlike Hitler’s anti-Semitism, a toxic brew of pseudoscientific readings and malignant mentoring, Hitler’s hatred of the Weimar Republic was the result of personal observation of political processes,” Ryback writes. “He hated the haggling and compromise of coalition politics inherent in multiparty political systems.”

Second only to Schleicher in Ryback’s accounting of Hitler’s establishment enablers is the media magnate Alfred Hugenberg. The owner of the country’s leading film studio and of the national news service, which supplied some sixteen hundred newspapers, he was far from an admirer. He regarded Hitler as manic and unreliable but found him essential for the furtherance of their common program, and was in and out of political alliance with him during the crucial year.

Hugenberg had begun constructing his media empire in the late nineteen-teens, in response to what he saw as the bias against conservatives in much of the German press, and he shared Hitler’s hatred of democracy and of the Jews. But he thought of himself as a much more sophisticated player, and intended to use his control of modern media in pursuit of what he called a Katastrophenpolitik —a “catastrophe politics” of cultural warfare, in which the strategy, Ryback says, was to “flood the public space with inflammatory news stories, half-truths, rumors, and outright lies.” The aim was to polarize the public, and to crater anything like consensus. Hugenberg gave Hitler money as well as publicity, but Hugenberg had his own political ambitions (somewhat undermined by a personal aura described by his nickname, der Hamster) and his own party, and Hitler was furiously jealous of the spotlight. While giving Hitler support in his media—a support sometimes interrupted by impatience—Hugenberg urged him to act rationally and settle for Nazi positions in the cabinet if he could not have the Chancellorship.

What strengthened the Nazis throughout the conspiratorial maneuverings of the period was certainly not any great display of discipline. The Nazi movement was a chaotic mess of struggling in-groups who feared and despised one another. Hitler rightly mistrusted the loyalty even of his chief lieutenant, Gregor Strasser, who fell on the “socialist” side of the National Socialists label. The members of the S.A., the Storm Troopers, meanwhile, were loyal mainly to their own leader, Ernst Röhm, and embarrassed Hitler with their run of sexual scandals. The N.S.D.A.P. was a hive of internal antipathies that could resolve only in violence—a condition that would endure to the last weeks of the war, when, standing amid the ruins of Germany, Hitler was enraged to discover that Heinrich Himmler was trying to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies.

The strength of the Nazis lay, rather, in the curiously enclosed and benumbed character of their leader. Hitler was impossible to discourage, not because he ran an efficient machine but because he was immune to the normal human impediments to absolute power: shame, calculation, or even a desire to see a particular political program put in place. Hindenburg, knowing of Hitler’s genuinely courageous military service in the Great War, appealed in their meetings to his patriotism, his love of the Fatherland. But Hitler, an Austrian who did not receive German citizenship until shortly before the 1932 election, did not love the Fatherland. He ran on the hydrogen fuel of pure hatred. He did not want power in order to implement a program; he wanted power in order to realize his pain. A fascinating and once classified document, prepared for the precursor of the C.I.A. , the O.S.S., by the psychoanalyst Walter Langer, used first-person accounts to gauge the scale of Hitler’s narcissism: “It may be of interest to note at this time that of all the titles that Hitler might have chosen for himself he is content with the simple one of ‘Fuehrer.’ To him this title is the greatest of them all. He has spent his life searching for a person worthy of the role but was unable to find one until he discovered himself.” Or, as the acute Hungarian American historian John Lukacs, who spent a lifetime studying Hitler’s psychology, observed, “His hatred for his opponents was both stronger and less abstract than was his love for his people. That was (and remains) a distinguishing mark of the mind of every extreme nationalist.”

In November of 1932, one more Reichstag election was held. Once again, it was a bitter disappointment to Hitler and Goebbels—“a disaster,” as Goebbels declared on Election Night. (An earlier Presidential election had also reaffirmed Hindenburg over the Hitler movement.) The Nazi wave that everyone had expected failed to materialize. The Nazis lost seats, and, once again, they could not crack fifty per cent. The Times explained that the Hitler movement had passed its high-water mark, and that “the country is getting tired of the Nazis.” Everywhere, Ryback says, the cartoonists and editorialists delighted in Hitler’s discomfiture. One cartoonist showed him presiding over a graveyard of swastikas. In December of 1932, having lost three elections in a row, Hitler seemed to be finished.

The subsequent maneuverings are as dispiriting to read about as they are exhausting to follow. Basically, Schleicher conspired to have Papen fired as Chancellor by Hindenburg and replaced by himself. He calculated that he could cleave Gregor Strasser and the more respectable elements of the Nazis from Hitler, form a coalition with them, and leave Hitler on the outside looking in. But Papen, a small man in everything except his taste for revenge, turned on Schleicher in a rage and went directly to Hitler, proposing, despite his earlier never-Hitler views, that they form their own coalition. Schleicher’s plan to spirit Strasser away from Hitler and break the Nazi Party in two then stumbled on the reality that the real base of the Party was fanatically loyal only to its leader—and Strasser, knowing this, refused to leave the Party, even as he conspired with Schleicher to undermine it.

Then, in mid-January, a small regional election in Lipperland took place. Though the results were again disappointing for Hitler and Goebbels—the National Socialist German Workers’ Party still hadn’t surmounted the fifty-per-cent mark—they managed to sell the election as a kind of triumph. At Party meetings, Hitler denounced Strasser. The idea, much beloved by Schleicher and his allies, of breaking a Strasser wing of the Party off from Hitler became obviously impossible.

Hindenburg, in his mid-eighties and growing weak, became fed up with Schleicher’s Machiavellian stratagems and dispensed with him as Chancellor. Papen, dismissed not long before, was received by the President. He promised that he could form a working majority in the Reichstag by simple means: Hindenburg should go ahead and appoint Hitler Chancellor. Hitler, he explained, had made significant “concessions,” and could be controlled. He would want only the Chancellorship, and not more seats in the cabinet. What could go wrong? “You mean to tell me I have the unpleasant task of appointing this Hitler as the next Chancellor?” Hindenburg reportedly asked. He did. The conservative strategists celebrated their victory. “So, we box Hitler in,” Hugenberg said confidently. Papen crowed, “Within two months, we will have pressed Hitler into a corner so tight that he’ll squeak!”

“The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction,” Goebbels said as the Nazis rose to power—one of those quotes that sound apocryphal but are not. The ultimate fates of Ryback’s players are varied, and instructive. Schleicher, the conservative who saw right through Hitler’s weakness—who had found a way to entrap him, and then use him against the left—was killed by the S.A. during the Night of the Long Knives, in 1934, when Hitler consolidated his hold over his own movement by murdering his less loyal lieutenants. Strasser and Röhm were murdered then, too. Hitler and Goebbels, of course, died by their own hands in defeat, having left tens of millions of Europeans dead and their country in ruins. But Hugenberg, sidelined during the Third Reich, was exonerated by a denazification court in the years after the war. And Papen, who had ushered Hitler directly into power, was acquitted at Nuremberg ; in the nineteen-fifties, he was awarded the highest honorary order of the Catholic Church.

Does history have patterns or merely circumstances and unique contingencies? Certainly, the Germany of 1932 was a place unto itself. The truth, that some cycles may recur but inexactly, is best captured in that fine aphorism “History does not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes.” Appropriately, no historian is exactly sure who said this: widely credited to Mark Twain , it was more likely first said long after his death.

We see through a glass darkly, as patterns of authoritarian ambition seem to flash before our eyes: the demagogue made strong not by conviction but by being numb to normal human encouragements and admonitions; the aging center left; the media lords who want something like what the demagogue wants but in the end are controlled by him; the political maneuverers who think they can outwit the demagogue; the resistance and sudden surrender. Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in bright midafternoon light, where politicians fall back on familiarities and make faint offers to authoritarians and say a firm and final no—and then wake up a few days later and say, Well, maybe this time, it might all work out, and look at the other side! Precise circumstances never repeat, yet shapes and patterns so often recur. In history, it’s true, the same thing never happens twice. But the same things do. ♦

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Great Contemporaries: The Three Lives of Churchill’s Hitler Essays

• By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
• | January 3, 2024
• Category: Explore Great Contemporaries

The Hitler Essays by Winston S. Churchill: “The Truth About Hitler,” in The Strand Magazine , November 1935, Cohen C481. “Hitler and His Choice,” in Great Contemporaries (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1937), Cohen A105. “This Age of Government by Great Dictators,” in News of the World , 10 October 1937, Cohen C535.7.

“Did Churchill ever admire Hitler?”

The question, perplexing on its face, is nevertheless sometimes asked. Critics have long quoted selectively from Churchill to show he was “for Hitler before he was against him.” For Bavarian politician Franz Joseph Strauss , the proof was Churchill’s writing: “We may yet live to see Hitler a gentler figure in a happier age.” 1 Historian Robert Rhodes James said Churchill “sympathetically” described Hitler’s “long, wearying battle for the German heart.” In fact Churchill’s word was “wearing” not “wearying,” which was rather less sympathetic. 2

Looking at Churchill’s Hitler essays in the round, the assertion is insupportable, as Professor James Muller wrote: “Despite a few statements that, quoted out of context, might seem to lend color to such a claim, no fair-minded reader of the essay could suppose that Churchill harbored illusions about Hitler. If his tone is diplomatic, his purpose is monitory and his message urgent.” 3

The subject of those essays didn’t think Churchill was diplomatic at all. After reading “The Truth About Hitler” in 1935, an infuriated Führer instructed his ambassador in London “to lodge a strong protest against ‘the personal attack on the head of the German state.’” 4

Hitler as “Great Contemporary”

“The Truth About Hitler,” first of the Hitler essays, appeared in late 1935. Deciding to republish it in his 1937 book Great Contemporaries, Churchill courteously submitted his text to Sir Robert Vansittart , Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office. This was a careful choice, since Vansittart had been somewhat supportive of Churchill’s demands for rearmament.

But Vansittart was on holiday, so Churchill’s draft was read by Clifford Norton , who recommended it not appear at all: “[I]t is hardly to be thought that this article would be at all palatable to the powers that be in Germany. In the present rather delicate state of our relations with that country, when one does not know which way the cat will jump, it might therefore be questioned whether republication just now was advisable.” Churchill agreed to certain deletions which would “take the sting out of the article,” but said he “would cut out nothing” that he wouldn’t say “on public platforms.” 5 This did not prevent him from restoring some of his deletions in another newspaper article. (Read on.)

Professor Muller questioned why Churchill “made room for such a man in a book about great men…. Must we conclude, despite his reputation as an unwelcome herald of the dangers from Hitler, who warned his countrymen to the detriment of his own popularity, that Churchill was too optimistic about Hitler’s intentions?” 6 Perhaps—or as Martin Gilbert often quipped, “perhaps not.” Hitler was a popular subject for writers in the mid-1930s. Germany’s rearmament and intentions were mounting concerns. Yet, like all three of his Hitler essays, Churchill had little to say that was positive.

Churchill’s textual changes

We have long wondered what in his 1935 article Churchill altered in Great Contemporaries. What did the Foreign Office persuade him to “soften”? We decided to find out—with a line-by-line digital comparison of the “The Truth About Hitler” and the Great Contemporaries chapter. A Word document containing the 1935 text, showing 1937 deletions in strike-throughs and highlights, is available to readers via email. Contact [email protected] .

This exercise was worth the trouble because it answered our questions. It shows that Churchill barely changed his sentiments between 1935 and 1937. His deletions mainly involve events well known in 1935 that were old news in 1937. His view of the Führer remained consistent.

Minor alterations

There was only one significant deletion in the early part of the Great Contemporaries chapter. That was Churchill’s 1935 assertion that history would “determine whether [Hitler] will rank in Valhalla with Pericles , with Augustus and with Washington , or welter in the inferno of human scorn with Attila and Tamerlane .” It is not clear what if anything the Foreign Office saw wrong with that. Churchill may have pulled it as a gesture of compliance—after all, the F.O. would have preferred that he drop the whole chapter.

Nor were those words gone for long. On 10 October 1937, six days after publishing Great Contemporaries, they reappeared—in Churchill’s third Hitler article, “Government of Great Dictators” for News of the World. 7 For good measure he wrote of Hitler’s “guilt of blood” and “wicked” methods.

Was this third essay a defiance of the Foreign Office? ​Or was it simply written because Churchill was too good a writer to omit a memorable line? Whatever the reason, it does not materially change ​his opinion of Hitler.

Other early changes to the 1935 text were almost all for readability or currency. A minor deletion was his reference to Heinrich Brüning , the anti-Hitler Chancellor of Weimer Germany in 1930-32. In his original Strand article, Churchill wrote that the Nazis “even drove the patriotic Brüning, under threat of murder, from German soil.”

Safe in America, Brüning became a professor of government at Harvard, where he continued to warn of German and Soviet expansionism. In 1937 Churchill asked him to proofread his Great Contemporaries Hitler chapter. Brüning’s only comment was, “I admire very much your description of the feelings of the German people in these fourteen years after the War and the characteristics of the British policy at that time.” 8

The main deletion

Not apparent until our text comparison of Hitler essays was a long passage at the end of the 1935 Strand article removed from Great Contemporaries. It described the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, when Hitler purged Ernst Röhm  and the  Sturmabteilung (SA). This appears in no edition of the book, nor p, the Churchill Collected Essays . It is not even in the Churchill Project’s digital canon of Churchill’s published words.

This passage did not appear in Churchill’s third article, “Government of Great Dictators.”  It may well have been considered provocative by the Foreign Office, but also, it was rather dated by 1937. Readers must judge for themselves. Since it is otherwise inaccessible, we reproduce it here:

In the annals of the new triumphant Germany there is a lurid anniversary. It is the 30th of June. On that night last year [1934] many hundreds of men and some women were put to death in Germany without law, without accusation, without trial. These persons represented many varieties of life and thought of Germany. There were Nazis and anti-Nazis. There were Generals and Communists; there were Jews, Protestants, and Catholics. Some were rich and some were poor; some were young and some were old; some were famous and some were humble. But all had one thing in common, namely, that they were deemed to be obnoxious or obstructive to the Hitler regime. Therefore, they were blotted out.

Armed police caught them in the streets, shot them in their beds, shot the wife who threw herself before her husband, dragged all manner of people to the different gaols—killed some on the way—sent others to face the firing parties on the outskirts of Berlin. The sinister volleys succeeded each other through a long morning, afternoon, and night. The relations who ventured to inquire for the missing father, brother or son received, after a considerable interval, a small urn containing cremated ashes.

The history of the world is full of gruesome, squalid episodes of this kind, from the butcheries of ancient Rome and the numberless massacres which have stained the history of Asia down to the “smellings out” of the Zulu and Hottentot witch doctors. But in all its ups and downs mankind has always recoiled in horror from such events; and every record which has pretended to be that of a civilized race has proclaimed its detestation of them.

Adolf Hitler took upon himself the full responsibility. It is true that he explained that many more people were murdered—for I call the slaughter of a human being in peace without trial murder—who were not on his list. Zealous lieutenants, we are assured, filled in the gaps, sometimes with public, and sometimes with their own private enemies; and some of them were executed themselves for having overstepped the mark. What a mark!

But the astounding thing is that the great German people, educated, scientific, philosophical, romantic, the people of the Christmas tree, the people of Goethe and Schiller, of Bach and Beethoven, Heine, Leibnitz, Kant and a hundred other great names, 9 have not only not resented this horrible blood-bath, but have endorsed it and acclaimed its author with the honours not only of a sovereign but almost of a god. Here is the frightful fact before which what is left of European civilization must bow its head in shame, and what is to more practical purpose, in fear.

Can we really believe that a hierarchy and society built upon such deeds can be entrusted with the possession of the most prodigious military machinery yet planned among men? Can we believe that by such powers the world may regain “the joy, the peace and glory of mankind”? The answer, if answer there be, other than the most appalling negative, is contained in that mystery called HITLER. 10

The Hitler essays in retrospect

Churchill’s views plainly underwent no significant change during the two years spanning his Hitler essays. If his original description of the Röhm purge was deleted, it did not affect the tenor of what he left in. As Professor Muller concluded, “Hitler’s way of ensuring full employment for Germans was to put them to work making weapons. Churchill makes it clear that the only prudent course for his neighbors is to look to their defenses.” 11

There is something about those excised passages that arrests the eye today. Because on 7 October 2023, much the same thing happened in Israel.

“All manner of people” were killed by murderers who “caught them in the streets, shot them in their beds, shot the wife who threw herself before her husband…. Sinister volleys succeeded each other through a long morning, afternoon and night.” Not only did  “a civilised race” not resent “this horrible blood-bath. [They] endorsed it and acclaimed its author with the honours not only of a sovereign but almost of a God.”

And again mankind recoiled in horror. The only difference seems to be that in 1934 Germany, “relations who ventured to inquire for the missing father, brother or son received, after a considerable interval, a small urn containing cremated ashes.” In 2023, the barbarians didn’t bother to do that.

1 Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey (London: HarperCollins, 1994), 274.

2 Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900-1939 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970), 317.

3 James W. Muller, editor, introduction to Great Contemporaries: Churchill Reflects on FDR, Hitler, Kipling, Chaplin, Balfour, and Other Giants of His Age (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2012), xxvii.

4 Gilbert, In Search, 275.

5 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, Prophet of Truth 1922-1939 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2009), 865.

6 James W. Muller, op. cit., xxvii.

7 Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), ​”This Age of Government by Great Dictators,” in News of the World, 10 October 1937.

8 Heinrich Brüning to Winston S. Churchill, 28 August 1937, in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, vol. 13, The Coming of War 1936-1939 (Hillsdale College Press, 2009), 752.

9 Churchill originally listed Schiller, Goethe and Beethoven as great Germans. He sent his draft to his friend Professor Lindemann , who added Bach, Heine, Leibnitz and Kant. See Violet Pearman to Reeves Shaw, 1 August 1935, in Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 12, The Wilderness Years 1929-1935 (Hillsdale College Press, 2009), 1227.

10 WSC, “The Truth About Hitler,” in The Strand Magazine, November 1935, 21.

11 James W. Muller, op. cit., xxviii.

Further reading

“Hitler’s American Gamble” by Simms and Laderman,” 2022.

“Facing the Dictator: Stalin, 1946, Hitler, 1938,” 2023.

“Hitler’s ‘Tet Offensive’: The Austrian Anschluss, 1938,” 2020.

Video: “ Churchill: The Wilderness Years : Meeting Hitler, 1932, ” 2016.

Churchill’s Great Contemporaries

The most complete and illuminating version of Churchill’s book is the 2012 ISI edition , edited by James W. Muller , Paul H. Courtenay and Erica L. Chenoweth . Expertly footnoted with an extensive introduction, it adds five essays that might well have been in previous editions, on H.G. Wells, Charlie Chaplin, Lord Kitchener, Edward VIII and Rudyard Kipling.

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Essay: Adolf Hitler

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Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria. His parents were Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl. Adolf was the fourth child out of six. Three years after he was born, the family relocated from Austria to Germany. Typically, Adolf Hitler and his father did not agree; the fine arts fascinated Adolf, but his father disapproved of it. Adolf Hitler was profoundly affected by the death of his younger brother, Edmund. Adolf Hitler also displayed a curiosity in German nationalism at a young age. His mother permitted him to quit school two years following his father’s death in 1903. After he abandoned school, he moved to Vienna. Adolf was an aspiring watercolor painter in Vienna. He applied two times to the Academy of Fine Arts and was rejected both times. Hitler served in the German military during World War I. Although Adolf was an Austrian citizen, he was still authorized to serve in the German army. He received the Iron Cross First Class and the Black Wound Badge after World War I. Adolf Hitler did not take likeness to the fact that the Germans had capitulated in 1918 during the First World War. Adolf Hitler began to adopt various anti-Semitic, nationalist, and anti-Marxist ideas whilst being an associate of the German Worker’s Party. While being involved with the German Worker’s Party, Adolf Hitler created the notorious swastika. Adolf Hitler started to compose speeches opposed to the Treaty of Versailles, Jews, and additional groups. An abundant amount of the history of Germany is revolved around Hitler and the Nazi Party, but it is not the respectable kind of history. The Nazi Party was primarily designated as the “German Workers’ Party” which was established via Anton Drexter and Karl Harrer. The party was to support nationalism in Germany; they additionally believed the Treaty of Versailles was a liability to Germany. The war could have been resolved without the treaty, but the party was not on the radar of anyone until Hitler joined it. He was an extremely charismatic man, and he brought numerous new members in with his speeches. The Jews were the reason the war was lost, or at least this is what Hitler said. Since the Jews were only an insignificant part of the population, this gained him several supporters. Quickly the party was renamed the “Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party”. This name is frequently abbreviated to the Nazi Party. As time went by, Hitler got more admired and more popular, and as he got recognized, so did the Nazi Party. The country was in a fragile state and needed a dependable leader like they assumed Hitler was, and he acquired leadership of the Nazi party in July of 1921. This party was everything Hitler needed to grab the publics’ attention, and he began ascending the political ladder very quickly. The Nazi Party tried to achieve power of Germany resulting in Hitler getting five years in prison; this is where he composed his autobiography. In elections for leadership over Germany, the Nazi Party didn’t do extremely well, and their greatest percent of the ballots was 37.3%. The reason that the Nazis had considerably supplementary dominance was because of their muscle power, but they didn’t have as many supporters as certain other parties might have had. Instead of coming to power by the right technique, they forced their way to the top. Hitler had constantly been a little different, but nobody would have ever supposed it would lead to what transpires in the conclusion. When Hitler and the Nazi party gained power over Germany on January 30th, 1933, they didn’t have complete control, but he would obtain it by March. The speed at which he gained control over the entire country was impractical. Hitler’s military training assisted him a lot in the campaigning process, and his communication with the public won over much of the population. His conventions for his campaign were more like military processions than anything else because they were prearranged, coordinated, and proficient. When he communicated to the citizens, he spoke with passion and authority in every sentence. One of the main significant part of his party was the SA; also identified as the Stormtroopers. They were an assembly of men, usually discharged from the military, that functioned to protect Hitler. Instead of doing just this, they seemed to disrupt many of the other parties’ gatherings, but there was nothing the other parties could do about it. They were being attacked by Hitler and the Stormtroopers, but they were far stronger than additional parties. For instance, Hitler was sent to prison for his part in a mob occurrence on additional political subject in September of 1921. Germany, being in such a weak state, needed a strong, dependable leader, and they understood was Hitler. The Stormtroopers were just a single fragment of Hitler’s party that disrupted the harmony, but it was probably the ultimate one. The SA were comparable to a gang of individuals that terrorized additional political parties and inhabitants. They started out as predominantly veterans, but quickly there were more and more ferocious thugs in the assortment with them. Hitler was trying to accomplish being chancellor by intimidating several of the other parties, and I suppose it operated somewhat. The single reason Hitler gained control over the country was because of the Jews, and without them, he would have never been chancellor. After the war, the people of Germany desired somebody to blame for the devastation of their country. Instead of accusing themselves, they listened to Hitler and blamed the Jews, but in honesty, the Jews had nothing to do with it. They were the minority of the population, and they received the blame. When the Nazis came to power, the Holocaust started along with the downfall and the introduction to the most fatal battle in human history. The word Holocaust originally meant sacrificial offers burned on an altar, but since 1945, the term has taken on a horrific new meaning. The Holocaust entailed the genocide of 6 million Jews and other minority groups by the German Nazis throughout the Second World War. The Nazi ruler Adolf Hitler saw Jews as racially inferior and a threat to the German purity, although his reasoning and roots of his ideas are unclear. One of the leading causes of World War II is the Holocaust. After centuries of anti-Judaism which led to anti-Semitism, the Holocaust officially started when Adolf Hitler came to power as chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. The first of the concentration camps opened in Dachau in March 1933. Within four months, an estimated 27,000 people were held in custody in the camps. Many concentrations camps were built and followed therefore after, with a total of 20,000 German camps established. By this time, Jews comprised one percent of the overall German population. Throughout the following six years, the Nazis began controlling and rejecting non-Aryans from civil service, disbanding Jewish owned businesses and organizations. A set of rules called the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, established Jews and German blood and forbade marriage between the two. The Jews then became targets and objectives for persecution. This climaxed in Kristallnacht in November 1938, where Jewish buildings were ransacked and demolished. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, ghettos were established in numerous Polish cities. The ghettos integrated the Jews and effectively imprisoned them. The living circumstances in the restricted ghettos were atrocious, and illness, hunger and congestion killed the majority. The Germans expelled Jews from all over Europe to these ghettos. Meanwhile, opening in the autumn of 1939, Nazi officials chose approximately 70,000 Germans institutionalized with mental illness or debilities to be gassed to death in the Euthanasia Program. After important German spiritual leaders protested, Hitler ended the program in August 1941. Killings of the disabled persisted in secrecy, and by only four years around 275,000 people deemed handicapped had been exterminated. In retrospection, the Euthanasia Program operated as a pilot for the Holocaust. Beginning in 1941, all Jews in German territory were distinguished with a yellow star badge. As more Jews were deported to camps, experimentations with mass destruction had been continuing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz, near Krakow. The first of the mass gassings began near Lublin at the camp of Belzec. Gassing processes by vans and chambers became popular after the Einsatzgruppe members made complaints of agony after shooting large numbers of women and children, plus it was cheaper. These mobile killings entities, Einsatzgruppen, gassed mostly Jews, Roma, and the mentally ill. Zyklon B is infamous for its use in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other camps. At Auschwitz only, more than 2 million people were slaughtered, and as many as 12,000 Jews were killed daily. The majority of the world was affected by World War II, especially the West. The war began September 1, 1939, and the concluding date from World War II was September 2, 1945. During these years an overwhelming multitude of actions happened in the West. Throughout the duration of the war, the world was divided between the axis powers, which were Germany, Italy, and Japan. Many nations fought against the axis power such as, Lebanon, San Marino, Belgium, Egypt, Liberia, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia, El Salvador, Luxembourg, South Africa, Brazil, Ethiopia, Mexico, Soviet Union, Canada, France, Mongolian People\’s Republic, Syria, Chile, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. Whilst these nations fought against the axis powers a plethora of events were occurring in the Middle East during World War II. Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine all had a role during this duration of time and were all affected by the events that the war brought about. Although there was much fighting in other parts of the world, the Middle East countries during World War II were busy being pro axis or neutral. This meant that the countries were either coinciding with the axis powers or they had been taken over by a higher power. For example, Egypt was pro axis before the war, but became neutral due to King Farouk conceding to British command over Egypt’s government. Like Egypt, Iraq was pro axis, and their pro axis sentiment was tied to anti-British. This did not sit well with the British and they invaded Iraq and occupied it until 1947. Since the British were occupying Iraq, their army could station and transit troops through Iraq, which was an exceptionally, outstanding advantage to have during the war. Syria, on the other hand, was governed by the Vichy forces after the fall of France. Once France became free, Syria and Lebanon were supposed to be free too, due to an arrangement that had been made. It was hard to accomplish freeing Syria and Lebanon. The power to carry off such a reoccupation was difficult for France, so the independence of Syria and Lebanon was not recognized till the end of the war. Meanwhile in Palestine, Jews were arriving in waves in the hope of fleeing the Nazis. Military organizations such as Haganah, IZL, and Stern Gang were very active in the region. Illegal immigrations of Jews into Palestine were often carried out with these military organizations’ assistance. Immigration restrictions on the White Paper of 1939 were violated due to the wave of Jews arriving illegally in Palestine. The move of the Jews paved the way for the creation of Israel. Palestine was then set up to become a battlefield due to the immigration of the Jews. Not only were places in the Middle East being occupied, but locations around the region of the West began to be occupied by Germans. Austria, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, and parts of the Soviet Union were only a few of the places in the West occupied by the Germans during World War II. The occupation of these countries was a horrid time, but the liberation and end of these occupations was an occasion that would be forever remembered in history to come. On March 12, 1938, Austria became the first nation that was annexed by Nazi Germany. Austrian Nazis conspired several times to capture the Austrian government and connect with Nazi Germany. Austria’s Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg met with Adolf Hitler with hopes of confirming Austria’s independence, but returned with Austrian Nazis added to his cabinet. Schuschnigg called for a vote on annexation, but before anything could take place, Schuschnigg gave in to the pressure and resigned shortly after. He pleaded for his country not to resist any German advances into the country. The following day, German troops accompanied by Hitler entered Austria. Hitler allotted a Nazi government to rule and the annexation was proclaimed. Austria continued as a federal state of Germany until the conclusion of the War; the Allies declared the Anschluss void and reinstated Austria. By the summer of the same year of annexation, the Mauthausen camp was established, it was the main Nazi camp in the country. The Germans entitled the camp a category III camp, representing the harsh regimen and punishment. Thousands of prisoners were worked to death because of the harsh punishments including forced labor work like carrying heavy solid stone slabs up 186 steps near the camp. On November 1938, Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass, began when synagogues in the capital were destroyed and burned. Jewish buildings and businesses were ravaged and vandalized, and then the Jews were taken to the Dachau or Buchenwald camps. The reaction external to Germany on Kristallnacht was astonishment and outrage, making a storm of negative publicity in tabloids and among radio reporters that attended to isolate Hitler\’s Germany from the civilized nations and deteriorate any pro-Nazi attitudes in those countries. Following Kristallnacht, the United States withdrew its ambassador permanently. Another of the countries mentioned that was occupied by Germany was Poland. Poland had many difficulties withstanding their country because so many of their neighboring countries had succumbed to war. With their weak economy, Poland was unable to protect their country from invaders. Germany and the Soviet Union had a non-aggression treaty towards each other, but the countries became divided in 1939. After this happened, Germany attacked the Soviet Union during the summer of 1941 in order to become the sole occupier of Poland. Many people want to blame Germany for their cruelty towards the Polish Jews and other citizens, but the Soviet Union also was involved in abusing the citizens of Poland, who they were occupying over at this time. Although many Jews were killed in concentration camps, there were also many casualties that resulted from the horrible mentality of the Germans and Soviets. About 5.7 million Polish citizens were killed by the German occupiers, and only one hundred and fifty thousand Polish were murdered by the Soviet Union during their few years as occupiers. Clearly, the Germans were extremely more abusive than the Soviets, but any death is worthy of punishment. The Polish showed their resistance by organizing uprisings and riots to show their imprisoners that they were tired of being abused emotionally and physically. These uprisings include the ones in Warsaw where both the Ghetto citizens and the non-Jewish people rose up against their oppressors. The uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto began on April 19, 1943 when the inhabitants refused to obey their orders, and in retaliation, police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop ordered the burning of the entire Ghetto. The last German troops were expelled from Poland thanks to the Red Army in March 1945, weeks before the final allied victory over Europe. France was another area occupied by Nazi Germany. The end of their occupation would not come until the summer of 1944. France was liberated by the successful allied operations called Overlord and Dragoon. Czechoslovakia was another country that became occupied by Germany in World War II, but the country was actually handed over to Germany peacefully. The Munich Pact was signed by, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The Munich Pact was an agreement that handed over a portion of Czechoslovakia that contained voluminous amounts of German speakers, and this section of Czechoslovakia is what the German military began occupying in 1938. In March of 1938, the complete and total conquest of Czechoslovakia became Hitler’s next ambition. During late March, Czechoslovakia succumbed to German occupation because they were weak after the annexation of the German part of the country called the Sudetenland. The Germans rule would come to an end following the March 1945 Rhine Rivers crossing that precipitated the U.S. Army’s involvement with Czechoslovakia. Finally, the Czechoslovakians were freed after six long years of occupation in April of 1945. In 1938, France joined Great Britain in an attempt to appease Nazi aggression. France signed the Munich Pact and helped give Germany “permission” to invade the Sudeten territories of Czechoslovakia. It was soon clear that this attempt at appeasement failed. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, France declared war. France\’s war against Germany did not last long. On June 22, 1940, France surrendered to Germany. France was occupied by the Germans until 1944. June 6 of that year was D-day. A massive Allied force invaded the beaches of Normandy. D-Day, also referred to as “The Invasion of Normandy”, is considered by some to be the turning point of the twentieth century. D-Day occurred on June 6, 1944 when troops of mostly American, British, and Canadian origin landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. Originally, D-Day was set for June 5, but had to be postponed because of inclement weather. In the military, the phrase “D-Day” simply represents a day of which an operation or combat attack is intended to transpire; however, the most acclaimed D-Day would be the Invasion of Normandy. The Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy with the intent of liberating France and the rest of northwest Europe from German occupation. There were 156,000 soldiers who landed on the coastline, but by the end of the invasion ten thousand soldiers were either killed, wounded, or declared missing. D-Day was and continues to be the largest amphibious assault in all of history-virtually flooding the coast of Normandy with ships. An amphibious assault is an offensive military operation using naval ships to deliver the troops to the hostile shore or landing beach. The codename for this invasion of France was “Operation Overlord”. The overall commander for this operation was American General Dwight Eisenhower. Fifty miles of coastline in Normandy, France were used for this assault with the coastline on which the soldiers landed divided into five sections. The code names for these sectors of coastline were: Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, Sword Beach, Juno Beach, and Gold Beach. Many lives were lost on these beaches, over three thousand fatalities at Omaha beach alone. Operation Overlord ended on August 19, 1944 when the Allies crossed the River Seine. In total, 425,000 troops, Allied and German were either killed, wounded, or missing by the end of D-day invasion. Another country that became occupied by Germans was Denmark. Denmark was conquered by Germany on April 9, 1940, although Hitler was not interested in the country itself but more so for control and its air bases for future attacks on Norway. Also, Denmark was to be together with Germany to prevent an Allied invasion. Denmark was relatively easy to take over and was not a challenge, considering the soldiers’ defense lasting only a few hours and then quickly surrendered. Denmark’s government negotiated with the German invasion forces on easy terms. Because the Danish were easy to cooperate with and Germany\’s absence of interest in Denmark, the occupation went quite serenely at first. The administration stayed in office and government remained mainly in Danish hands, although the police were obliged to accommodate with the Germans. Although Denmark’s population was obviously against the occupation, there was a need to handle the condition in a pragmatic manner. This era, branded the “politics of cooperation”, continued until 1943. One of the great successes out of the peaceful collaboration was that the Danish Jews were not mistreated or wronged throughout this time. By 1943, Denmark had become dissatisfied with the Germans and turned to strikes. The Germans in response tried to impose the death penalty but failed when the Danish government refused. On August 28, the cooperation between the two countries ended, and by October all the Jews were to be deported. This was ultimately prevented when the Jewish populations were transported to Sweden, where they were safe. When the statement of freedom was broadcasted on the radio on May 4, 1945, people everywhere assembled into the streets waving their countries’ flags. Denmark was liberated by the British forces by the following day, but shortly after, the island of Bornholm was occupied by the Russian Army and not liberated until 1946. Austria was occupied by Soviet and American forces during April and May 1945. The Holocaust lasted until 1945, where liberations of the camps slowly removed Hitler from authority. By the culmination of the War, there were an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 survivors who lived in occupied Europe. Since many survivors saw it impossible to return home, the Allies powers created what is present day Israel as a permanent homeland for Jewish survivors in 1948. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, or U.S.S.R. for short, became involved in World War II when it was invaded by Nazi Germany on June 22,1941. Ironically, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had signed a peace agreement in 1939 promising to avoid conflict. In this pact, called the German-Soviet Nonagression Pact, they agreed to not attack each other when World War II began and for the next ten years. Articles have stated that the reason Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed the Nonagression Pact was to keep his nation on peaceful terms with Germany, and in addition, give his country time to make its military larger and more powerful. Adolf Hitler signed this pact for the Germans because he wanted to assure that the Germans could invade Poland unopposed. The pact was broken in June of 1941 when Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union. This secret military offensive, known by the codename Operation Barbarossa, covered a distance of two thousand miles. The Germans had a strong, reliable, and vast army for this invasion and they were extremely confident they could defeat the Soviets with ease. However, they were proven wrong. The inability of the Germans to defeat the Soviet Union in this invasion marked a critical juncture in World War II, as the Soviet triumph weakened the German military effort and rallied the Allies. In July of 1942, the Soviet Union was yet again invaded by Nazi Germany in the Battle of Stalingrad. The Russians were determined to defend the city of Stalingrad because it served as a vital industrial and transportation center. This battle stopped the German advancement into the Soviet Union, and was a catalyst that turned the tide of the war in favor of the Allied forces. This battle was one of the bloodiest in Russian history, and is regarded as one of that country’s greatest military victories. Belgium was also an additional country that became occupied by Nazi Germany. With all the suffering that transpired in World War I, King Leopold III and the citizens of Belgium desired to be left out of World War II. Belgium was unbiased until the Germans captured their country. On May 10, 1940, Belgium was imprisoned by the Nazis. The citizens of Belgium resisted confinement; they were inexorably defeated. The Jews began to be persecuted in Belgium due to the invasion of Germans. Belgium was captured to be a location for the Germans to operate. Since Belgium borders France, Germany assumed that being situated in Belgium would provide an improved opportunity to invade. Saboteurs destroyed major railways that led from Germany to France. Belgium had a colony in the Congo of Africa where it had access to masses of uranium. Belgium gave a quantity of this uranium to the United States for the manufacturing of an atomic bomb. In 1944, Belgium was liberated from the Germans. The imprisonment by the Germans traumatized Belgium as a country along with the residents. Germany halted exports of coke to the Luxembourg steel industry which made Luxembourg slightly hostile. Although Luxembourg was impartial, the country was captured by the Nazis on May 10, 1940. Germany captured Luxembourg to have an additional base to maneuver off of; this would enable a better opportunity to attack France. The royal family and the government evacuated to Canada, so Gustav Simon took control over the government in Luxembourg. He ridded the Luxembourg citizens of anything that was French. Citizens were informed to not use French greetings any longer. People were not permitted to wear French berets. Several Jews were extradited to Spain and France, but those countries rejected them too. Other Jews were relocated to concentration camps. The Germans cleared all Jews out of Luxembourg. The additional non-Jewish citizens went about their daily existence. They sustained their routines and anticipated every day to be liberated. Luxembourg was liberated on September 10, 1944. The citizens and the country were overwhelmed by the Germans capture and interrogation. Switzerland was a neutral nation for both World War I and World War II. This allowed them to concern themselves with protecting their own country and inhabitants, while also serving as a neutral territory. Several historians claim that Switzerland remains prodigious because they allowed their country to be a safe haven for refugees, but in truth, the Swiss government laid out many restrictions towards the refugees and a countless amount were turned away. A person could not find refuge in Switzerland unless they were under personal threat because of their political activities; refugees could not enter Switzerland if they were escaping discrimination over their race, religion, or ethnicity, but eventually, Switzerland gave 300,000 refugees access to their designated refugee areas. They accepted about 27,000 Jews, and this act saved numerous lives. It seems much happened in the West during World War II. The Middle East had a wide assortment of conflicts and the end of many occupations in the West took place. In Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, many exploits occurred. The end of occupations in countries inhabiting the West had a lot of fighting, killing, and freedoms. Without everything that occurred in the West, history today would be forever changed. Hitler became chairman of the German Worker’s Party in 1921. Adolf Hitler and a Nazi paramilitary organization stormed a communal conference in a beer hall announcing that a novel government was emergent. In conclusion of his actions, Hitler was apprehended afterwards and placed in a penitentiary for a year where he composed the earliest volume of his book, Mein Kampf. This book illustrates Hitler’s strategies to convert Germany into a one race nation. In 1932, Hitler competed for presidency two times. He lost both times to Paul von Hindenburg. After coming in second place, Hitler was designated chancellor. By the uprisings, Hitler and his organization had performed, the other parties were completely intimidated, and on July 14, 1933, Hitler’s Nazi Party was the only officially permitted political party in Germany. An original decree was established stating that the presidential powers were now coalesced with the chancellor powers, so when Hindenburg died, Hitler obtained unmitigated power. The Night of the Long Knives occurred on June 30, 1934 which was the assassination of people that Hitler considered would be a threat in the future. Adolf Hitler endorsed anti-smoking campaigns. He believed in eating healthy; people’s bodies should remain unpolluted. He did not imbibe alcohol or consume meat. Adolf commenced segregating people by constructing innovative regulations where Jews could not marry non-Jews. Persecutions and exterminations transpired throughout the Holocaust if an individual happened to be Jewish, Polish, a communist, a homosexual, a Jehovah’s Witness, or a trade unionist. There are rumors about Hitler’s religion. Some people state he had Jewish or African background. One of the stories was that his father was the illegitimate child of a woman that was a maid for a wealthy Jewish man. In 1939, Germans attempted the blitzkrieg against Poland first. They corroborated it would succeed; then it was executed on Belgium, the Netherlands, and France in 1940. The residents in Germany during World War II had grocery allowances. With the provisions being rationed, various people had more victuals during rationing than they had previously. There was a scarcity of petroleum in Germany. People were permitted to utilize warm water twice a week to manage the quantity of fuel depleted. Soap was an additional article that was limited; furthermore, there was no toilet paper. The black market thrived during World War II, since denizens were exchanging regulated merchandise. In September 1940, children were advised to evacuate Berlin, but the majority did not vacate. Germans wanted women to have more children, so the population could proliferate. Additionally, Germans exhorted women to labor more, but the Germans were ineffective. After World War II, the nation and the populace of Germany were devastated. It took an extensive period for Germany to recuperate from the downfall of the nation. Hitler did not only ensue devastation upon the regions that were occupied by German forces. He has done many horrifying things to countries that were never taken over by his army. One of the wickedest things Hitler accomplished was the bombing of London, but there are many other things as well. Not only did he plunge a bomb down on London, he dropped thousands of them, and the first penetration was on September 7, 1940 when about 350 German bombers appeared above London being accompanied by 650 fighters. This bombing alone devastated London, but there was far worse to come in the future. In the first attack alone, over 450 inhabitants were slaughtered and 1,300 were sincerely injured, and while London was still picking up the pieces from the night before, Hitler and his men struck again. They did the same precise thing every single night for two whole months, and the people of London assumed it would never end. On December 29, nineteen churches were demolished; furthermore, this was a Sunday. Overall, around 30,000 bombs were dropped on London, and the first thirty days 6,000 people were killed. This overwhelmed London for a long time, but the occurrences ultimately ceased in May of 1941. Now London had to pick up what was left of their population or attempt to, but it would prove to take an extremely extensive period to get to where they were. Hitler supposed that defeating London from the air would devastate them, but they awaited patiently for it to stop and took it as it. Hitler did some horrifying things to many countries and their inhabitants, and some people blame it on his childhood. Evil was inside of him the day he was born, and the day he killed himself. The North African Campaign began in June of 1940, the campaign lasted for three years, ending during May of 1943. When the North African Campaign commenced, The Axis and Allied powers were fighting nonstop, back and forth in northern Africa. The region that is considered to be North Africa included Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Morocco, and parts of the Sahara Desert. The North African Campaign was comprised of three phases, the Western Desert Campaign, Operation Torch, and the Tunisia Campaign. The Western Desert Campaign was the opening conflict. The Axis and Allied powers fought during this campaign in the countries of Libya and Egypt. This battle was launched when Italian General Rodolfo Graziani invaded Egypt. The Western Campaign was consisted of constant battling between the Axis powers and the Allied powers. The next phase following the Western Campaign was Operation Torch. Operation Torch involved the British and United States military forces launching an amphibious maneuver in French North Africa. The French retained control over two territories, Algeria and Morocco. These territories were the location for the landing of this operation. This battle had the code name “Torch”, this name was the result of many long arguments between the American and British strategists. These planners struggled to make a decision about the future course of action for the Allies. These arguments were ultimately settled by President Franklin Roosevelt with the decision to invade North Africa. President Roosevelt worked together with British Prime Minister Winston Church Hill during this operation. Torch’s impact was important to the outcome of the war and was later recognized as one of the most significant strategic decision the Allied leaders would make. The next phase of the North African Campaign was the Tunisia Campaign. The Allies began this assault with another amphibious landing in eastern Tunisia in January, 1943. The German General, Erwin Rommel was cut off from his supply bases by the Americans and the British during his attempt to stall them with his defensive operations. The Axis powers were outgunned and outnumbered. The Allies made steady advances by forcing the Axis troops into a pocket along the northern Tunisian coast. The Allies captured the last remaining Axis port and six days after this occurred the Axis army surrendered. This left 267,000 German and Italian soldiers as prisoners of war. During the entire North African Campaign, 220,00 British and American soldiers were lost, while the German and Italians suffered 620,000 casualties. This Allied victory was critically important to the course of this War. The win in North Africa removed the Axis threat to middle eastern oil fields and also their threat to the British supply lines into Asia and Africa. The reign of Nazi Germany must have certainly felt like an eternity to the groups of people who were negatively affected by its power, but the power and control that the Nazis had accumulated did eventually wean. There were many factors to the fall of Nazi Germany, including attacks made against Germany as the government was growing weaker and the death of Hitler. The Battle of Berlin was the last major offensive of World War II leading up to Hitler’s suicide. During the Battle of Berlin, which began on April 16, 1945 and ended on May 2, 1945, Hitler assimilated himself into an underground bunker that was fifty feet below the Nazi headquarters in Berlin. The Red Army fought forces containing the German Army for control of the capital city of Nazi Germany. He married Eva Braun, whilst inside the bunker, on April 29, 1945. Multiple families of important Nazi officials joined the couple in the bunker. One of the families elected to have their children killed by cyanide. Hitler instigated the testing of cyanide pills on the family dog and its puppies. Both the doctor and Hitler desired that the pills would not fail if needed to commit suicide. When Hitler inquired the opinion of the doctor on the proper way to commit suicide, the doctor advocated a cyanide pill and gunshot at the same time. On April 30, 1945, after Soviet troops overcame the street-to-street combat in Berlin Hitler nad Braun committed suicide in the bunker. Eyewitness accounts claim that only one gunshot was heard from the room where Hitler and Eva planned to kill themselves in. A few minutes after the shot was heard, a few people, who were living in the bunker at this time, decided to open the door and see if Hitler and his wife were dead. There were no pictures taken at the site of Hitler and Eva’s death. Historians must believe the written accounts of spectators because there is no real evidence of Hitler’s death. Witnesses claimed to have seen Hitler, with his head on a table, holding a gun in his hand, and Eva sitting in a chair facing Hitler with a cyanide pill coursing through her body. Adolf and Eva Hitler were known as dead throughout the world, but their companions in the bunker seized their bodies and burned them upon request by Hitler. The Russians were ordered to find the body of Hitler in order to be sure he was dead, but the bodies were not discovered until May of 1945. From the 4th through the 8th of May, most of the remaining German armed forces in Europe surrendered which led to the end of World War II. The surrender document was signed on the 7th of May, 1945 in a Reims, France schoolhouse, which was being used as General Dwight Eisenhower’s temporary headquarters. The document was signed by Alfred Jodl, who was representing Admiral Doenitz at the meeting. The document was required to be printed out in the following four different languages: English, French, German, and Russian. Copies of the document had to be sent to London, Paris, and Moscow for approval. Press attended the meeting and took many pictures and took note of things that were said. It was noted that after Alfred Jodl signed the document, he addressed the crowd in the room and said, “I want to say a word. With this signature the German people and the German armed forces are for better or worse delivered into the victor’s hands. In this war, which has lasted more than five years, they both have achieved and suffered more than perhaps any other people in the world. In this hour I can only express the hope that the victor will treat them with generosity.” No one in the crowd had a response, and most of the Germans quietly left the room. After World War II in Europe was over, the impression that the war left on many of the Europeans who were affected by it remained intact, and the horrifying aftermath was a reminder of how hard life really was during the war. 54 million people as a result of the Holocaust. Another 60 million were uprooted from their homes. There were 11 million displaced persons, and there were more civilians killed than troops. 100,000 Jewish people were left to roam, and many of them travelled back to their home country. “Hitlerism” still lingered throughout Europe, and West Germany and East Germany were separated. The Nuremberg Trials were a series of 13 trials in Nuremberg, Germany. Starting on November 20, 1945 and ending on October 1, 1946. These trials were brought about so that the Nazi war criminals would face justice and be punished for the crimes they have committed against humanity. The defendants included Nazi Party officers, lawyers, and doctors. They were indicted on crimes against humanity and peace. Since Hitler was an important political leader, he had multiple decoys to insure his safety, but this can cause problems when looking for the real body of Hitler. Many historians believe that Hitler escaped Germany and fled to Argentina. There is a large Nazi presence in the small villages of Argentina. There are photographs were the Nazi flag can be seen being flown at many small schools. The Nazi Youth was a big organization, and it held a large manifestation in South Ameri

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Socio-Cultural Anthropology under Hitler: An Introduction to Four Case Studies from Vienna

Note to readers: This introduction seeks to draw attention to the three-volume collection examining Socio-Cultural Anthropology in Vienna during the Nazi period (1938-1945) , recently published in German and edited by Andre Gingrich and Peter Rohrbacher . The editors’ essay below is followed by brief essays in English based on a selection of chapters by Katja Geisenhainer, Lisa Gottschall , Gabriele Anderl, Ildikó Cazan-Simányi , Reinhold Mittersakschmöller, and Peter Rohrbacher. We thank the editors and authors for making their work available in this way, as a joint effort by our “Clio’s Fancy” and “Field Notes” sections, and invite readers to follow up with the complete work.– HAR editors.

Elaborating and interpreting anthropology’s history under Nazism is not only a continuing ethical, moral, and political obligation for the field today. It also represents a set of complex challenges in many of its empirical, methodological, and conceptual dimensions, open to debate and reflection by interested laypersons and experts in the relevant languages, regions, and periods but also from all other fields of anthropology and history as well. Through the present introduction to four case examples from Vienna, the authors seek to contribute to these debates by pointing out the relevance of well-researched archival evidence within sound methodological contexts. This is the indispensable prerequisite for advancing further debates and related research.

To a considerable extent, when Hitler’s party came to power in early 1933, socio-cultural anthropology ( Völkerkunde ) was institutionally separate from biological anthropology ( Humanbiologie or Physische Anthropologie ) at most museums and university institutes in Germany. This was also true for Austria after the “ Anschluss ” (“union,” or annexation) of March 1938. As a consequence of the Anschluss , Vienna became the second largest academic site in the “Third Reich.” Its institutional landscape for Völkerkunde included (as of the late 1920s) a university institute, a museum, a missionary educational center (since 1906), subdivisions in Vienna’s Academy of Sciences (after 1914), and the Anthropological Society of Vienna (as of 1870). In terms of size and institutional diversity, case studies from Vienna can therefore be taken as good indicators for how socio-cultural anthropology was carried out under Hitler and in exile: who profited from its practices, who stood by, and who suffered and resisted. All of these questions need to be raised and explored, but many of them cannot yet be fully answered.

Like elsewhere in the “Third Reich,” individual researchers and students were persecuted for “racial” and/or political reasons within Vienna’s institutions of socio-cultural anthropology. Entire institutions and research directions were dissolved or marginalized if they followed research orientations in conflict with Nazi priorities. What remained as quasi-legitimate socio-cultural anthropology under the Nazis was pushed, with considerable support by those involved, into research programs conspicuously connected to Nazi ideological priorities for German supremacist racism, for winning the war when it broke out, and for collaborating in practical activities serving the regime’s political agenda. What remained of socio-cultural anthropology under Nazi dictatorship contained as its core elements some prominent trends in (German) historical diffusionism in Vienna as elsewhere, the emerging networks of (German) functionalism (in Vienna until mid-1939), and local variants of a proto-structuralism outside Vienna. All of these directions were informed by varying versions of biological racism. Obvious intersections and parallels between the directions promoted as quasi-legitimate under the Nazis, and dominant paradigms in western socio-cultural anthropology after 1945 require further analysis and reflection, as one of us has pointed out (Gingrich 2010).

Socio-cultural anthropology under Hitler took on a radical agenda in its practical and empirical dimensions: addressing the (print and radio) media was one important element, while reaching out to the public through spectacular colonial and imperial museum exhibits and lectures was another. Pursuing “embedded” research in combat zones for army or espionage units was actively promoted, for example during Rommel’s North Africa campaign. Providing professional reviews to Himmler on how to promote SS justifications of annihilation and murder in East Europe was part of socio-cultural anthropologists’ “applied” routine. Last but not least, the publication of entertaining and bestselling books on exotic societies and their bizarre habits contributed—after passing censorship—to a prevailing sense of a smiling public normality so important to the regime under Joseph Goebbels. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the SS engaged PhD candidates and young post-docs from socio-cultural anthropology and neighboring fields in the humanities to carry out enquiries among Jewish families who were about to be murdered and to do secret fieldwork in prison camps, both among gypsy families before they were deported to death camps and among POWs from Africa or Asia before they perished in forced labor or were recruited as “volunteers” to the SS or the Wehrmacht.

In Vienna, the new Nazi regime after 1938 quickly disbanded the Catholic missionary unit of St. Gabriel, and dismissed all senior representatives with explicit sympathies for an independent Austrian state. At the Museum of Ethnology, the old director with pro-German sympathies was able to hold on to his position because members of a previously clandestine Nazi cell now gained an official voice. At the University-based anthropology institute, the Nazi party member Hermann Baumann became the new director until 1945, with an aim to re-orientate the institute according to the Reich’s colonial interests in Africa. While the regime prepared for war and mass persecutions, Himmler installed and promoted a new research unit with socio-cultural anthropology on its central agenda in his notorious, elite research organization, the SS- Ahnenerbe (“ancestral heritage”). By contrast, the record of resistance among socio-cultural anthropologists is less disappointing than often assumed. In Vienna, this ranged from conservative anti-Nazi patriots to clandestine communists, many of them supporting the formation of the underground organization, O5 (where “5” stands for “e,” and “Oe” represents “Ö,” the first letter of the German word for Austria). In exile, several socio-cultural anthropologists supported local resistance groups in occupied Austria or they supported their British and US hosts’ war efforts.

These and many other details are presented and discussed by twenty-eight authors in our three recently published co-edited volumes: Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938-1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (Gingrich and Rohrbacher 2021). Though this work is appearing in German, its topics will be of considerable interest to many readers internationally. We are therefore publishing four brief vignettes here, adapted from chapters in the three volumes, to introduce English readers to some of the work’s major themes and the wide variety of its examples. In keeping with the focus of “Clio’s Fancy” and the importance of neglected archives for this research, each piece also highlights the dispersed documents and collections which have allowed these stories to be told.

In her text, “ Marginalized in Central European Anthropology and Persecuted as a Jew: The Case of Marianne Schmidl ,” author Katja Geisenhainer (U Frankfurt/U Vienna) presents the example of a pioneer of mathematical anthropology and a cultural-historical expert in studying sub-Saharan basket weaving. She shows how this almost forgotten but brilliant scholar was persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. Schmidl was never able to complete her main research project on African basket weaving. Surviving family members’ memories and correspondence are the primary sources in this study.

“ Assisting in the Holocaust: Pro-Nazi Anthropologists from Vienna in Occupied Poland (1940–1944) ” by Lisa Gottschall (U Vienna) scrutinizes the activities of a largely unknown and forgotten doctoral graduate from Vienna’s Völkerkunde institute who prepared early measurements among the Jewish resident population around Kraków, before they were sent into that city’s ghetto. Parallel to that, he and two female colleagues were crucial to the Nazi “documentation” of Jewish residents on Tarnów’s main square, right before several hundred of them were deported into the death camps. The text presents a vivid example of the Nazis’ recruitment of ambitious junior anthropologists into their deadly schemes, and how some of their plans relied to an extent on new institutions, such as the IDO (Institute for German Studies in the East) in this case, which was set up after the dissolution of the Jagiellonian University.

Gabriele Anderl, Ildikó Cazan-Simányi, and Reinhold Mittersakschmöller are a team of freelance and museum staff authors in Vienna; their essay, “ Rivalries with Fatal Consequences ,” addresses an enduring competition during the Nazi period between two Indonesia specialists at Vienna’s Ethnology Museum. Indonesia had strategic importance for the Nazis, both as a recent colony of their Japanese allies and in view of Dutch source materials for research. One of the two contenders was Frederic M. Schnitger, an internationally widely read Dutch author with a partially Chinese Java background; his rival, a less qualified, local female party mentee, made accusations which led to Schnitger being sent to die in a concentration camp. The key sources here are museum archives and Gestapo files.

The contribution by Peter Rohrbacher (Austrian Academy of Sciences), “ A Priest in the Resistance: Father Wilhelm Schmidt and His Alliances in World War II ,” shows how Wilhelm Schmidt—a Catholic priest and missionary who founded the Vienna School of Ethnology—worked from exile in Switzerland, with covert support by the Vatican and British SOE, to sponsor Austrian defectors from the Wehrmacht who re-organized as anti-Nazi guerilla groups. This study draws upon the discovery of Schmidt’s day-to-day notebook from 1943-45.

These four diverse vignettes seek to attract readers’ interest to the relevant chapters in the three volumes, and to encourage further relevant research on the theme at large. The authors are grateful to the editors at HAR for their support and assistance in making this set of contributions possible.

Other essays from this collection:

Katja Geisenhainer, “Marginalized in Central European Anthropology and Persecuted as a Jew: The Case of Marianne Schmidl.”

Lisa Gottschall, “Assisting in the Holocaust: Pro-Nazi Anthropologists from Vienna in Occupied Poland (1940–1944).”

Gabriele Anderl, Ildikó Cazan-Simányi and Reinhold Mittersakschmöller, “Rivalries with Fatal Consequences.”

Peter Rohrbacher, “A Priest in the Resistance: Father Wilhelm Schmidt and His Alliances in World War II .”

Gingrich, Andre. 2010. “Alliances and Avoidance: British Interactions with German-speaking Anthropologists, 1933–1953.” In Culture Wars: Context, Models, and Anthropologists’ Accounts , edited by Deborah James, Evelyn Plaice, and Christina Toren, 19-31. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.

Gingrich, Andre, and Peter Rohrbacher, eds. 2021. Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938-1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken . Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27, 3 volumes. Vienna: Verlag der ÖAW. https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/produkt/voelkerkunde-zur-ns-zeit-aus-wien-1938-1945/99200565

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125 Hitler Essay Topics & Examples

This list contains the best essay topics and research questions about Adolf Hitler. With their help, you can explore Hitler’s rise to power, his dictatorship over Germany, and other interesting aspects. Feel free to choose among our history research topics about Hitler, questions for essays, and presentation titles.

🔝 Top 10 Essay Topics about Hitler

🏆 best hitler topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 interesting hitler essay topics, ❓ research questions about adolf hitler, 🔍 simple & easy hitler research topics, ✍️ hitler’s rise to power essay questions, ✅ hitler & nazi germany essay questions.

• Adolf Hitler’s Formative Years
• Hitler’s Lasting Impact and Legacy
• The Role of Women in Nazi Germany
• Social Factors Behind Hitler’s Rise to Power
• Media and Manipulation in Nazi Germany
• Origins and Impact of Hitler’s Genocidal Policies
• Hitler’s Ideological Beliefs of Racial Superiority
• Hitler’s Military Strategy: Tactics and Failures
• Psychological Perspectives on Hitler’s Mindset
• Opposition and Resistance to Hitler’s Regime
• The Rise of Hitler to Power It was this paramilitary formed by Hitler that would cause unrest later to tarnish the name of the communists leading to distrust of communism by the Germans and on the other hand rise of popularity […]
• Adolf Hitler’s Cultural Theories in “Mein Kampf” So, according to Adolf Hitler, the foreign Aryan spirit was the awakener of Japanese people hence the bore a culture that they did not create.
• “The End and the Beginning” and “Hitler’s First Photograph” Poems by Szymborska The particular imagery refers to the effects of the Second World War, the pushing of rubble, the collection of corpses, and miring in sofa springs and glass.
• Comparison of Gandhi’s and Hitler’s Leadership The primary direction of Gandhi’s political and social work was the fight against the nationalist movement of the British rule of India.
• Hitler’s Use of Propaganda and Fear-Mongering The establishment of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party led to the adoption of a properly coordinated propaganda campaign that would prepare the country for war.
• World War 2 Leaders Comparison: Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler World War 2 remains one of the most significant and historically important events in the entire world because the United States of America, Japan, and the majority of European countries were involved in it.
• Man and Monster: The Life of Adolf Hitler He was born to Alois Hitler, his father and Klara Hitler, his mother who was a third wife to Alois Hitler.
• Hitler’s Speech in Reaction to the Treaty of Versailles Hitler believed that the treaty of Versailles made Germany a colony to the outside world; he blamed it for the suppression of Germany’s workforce.
• Leadership Styles: Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler The human qualities of a leader are in many ways more revealing regarding his or her success, the respect of the people, and the appreciation of descendants than education and professionalism.
• Adolf Hitler’s Biography and Achievements Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in 1889; he became the ruler of Germany and one of the most reviled persons in history.
• Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock The subject of the book under study is the historic personality of Adolf Hitler, the person who managed to change the flow of the European history of the twentieth century, the person who caused the […]
• Saddam Hussein and Adolph Hitler As a man of a worldwide mind, he was determined to get his way at all mean to be an upstaired position.”He proved this in 1958 when he launched his political career by assassinating a […]
• WWII History: How Hitler Died From the onset of the war, Hitler proved to be a trustworthy leader. In the US, tests done on a part of the skull purported to be Hitler’s have given unconvincing results.
• Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler: Leaders Ways This paper aims to reveal the cause of the problems faced by the United States and Germany as identified by their leaders in inaugural speeches and the ways Roosevelt and Hitler were planning to solve […]
• The Aryan Race in “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler The provided passage is taken from Mein Kampf, the most known work of Adolf Hitler, the infamous leader of the NSDAP since 1921 and the F hrer of Nazi Germany in 1934-1945.
• How Hitler Compares to Stalin Initially the post of General Secretary was not so powerful in the party; however, following the death Vladimir Lenin who had led the communist party from 1917, Stalin strengthened the opposition by eliminating opposition within […]
• “Hitler, Chamberlain and Appeasement” by Frank McDonough The term is widely used when referring to the foreign policy that defined the interaction between Neville Chamberlain of Britain and Adolf Hitler of German.
• The Escape of Adolf Hitler: Discussion The third theory asserts the fact that upon realizing that the war was at its conclusion, the F hrer implemented a devious plan to escape right under the noses of the advancing Soviet forces.
• Newspaper Coverage of Adolf Hitler’s Death It marks the end of the era of the terrible events of the Holocaust, the seizure of Poland, the extermination of millions of people.
• Did Hitler Commit Suicide? The siege of Berlin by the Soviet soldiers marked the end of his rule. The confirmation of the teeth to be of the ruler proves he died in the bunker.
• Comparing the Operational Codes of Stalin and Hitler The model was developed in the middle of the twentieth century when the American government needed to evaluate the potential conduct of and choices made by Soviet leaders and political elites.
• Fascist Elements in Dictatorial Ideas of Mussolini and Hitler The ideological and political differences between the ideas of Mussolini and Hitler are nuanced. They lie in such government branches as ethnic and military issues.
• The Rise of Adolf Hitler: The World’s Most Renowned Tyrant Due to their great influence, he had the party saw the need to retain him and therefore took him back as the leader of the party a term which he had offered the party if […]
• The Role of Individuals in International Politics: Hitler and Stalin The focus of this dissertation will be on the personalities of the two leaders and their opinions on war and peace.
• Nietzsche’s Influence on Hitler and the Third Reich Nietzsche’s all-out assault on the entire Western Judeo-Christian cultural and philosophical tradition is one of the most important issues of the abandonment of the faith in progress through the submission of human reason that had […]
• Historical Event: Hitler in the World History Taking into consideration the fact that the World War II and its appalling events are still remembered and feared of, I would really want to interfere with nature and erase from the history the day […]
• Age of Dictators. Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia The status of the ‘ordinary’ worker was elevated and May Day became the ‘National Day of Labor’, a symbol of the national community where all workers, as well as their employers, would participate in a […]
• The Spanish Civil War, Franco vs. Hitler, Juan Pujol, Double Agents The war ended with the conquest of the revolutionaries and the dawning of the authoritarianism led by General Francisco Franco, a fascist.
• “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler After the death of his mother in 1907, Hitler moved to the city of Vienna, where he hoped to join the Art Academy.
• “Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives” and “East & West”: The Book and the Movie Comparison Alexei, Marie, and their young son are assigned a room in a multifamily apartment, and Marie is given a job in the wardrobe department of an army song-and-dance troupe.
• Dates of Hitler’s Life in a Diary Form Today, I became the Chancellor of Germany and it means that I am going to change the way other people see our country.
• Hitler’s Life: Five Dates From His Life I told the German people that they could no longer trust a government that sold out to the enemy at the end of the Great War. It is the only hope of the fatherland, the […]
• The Mind of a Monster in A. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” The book was written by Adolf Hitler, who was the Nazi leader and the ruler of Germany during the period of the Holocaust.
• Adolf Hitler’s Treatment of Non-Germans His writings also indicate that his hate for non-Germans was due to the entrepreneurial nature of some of these non-Germans such as the Jews who were seen by Adolf Hitler as exploiters of the Germans.
• Hitler’s Actions and 8-Steps for Leading Change He further rallied his allies to convince the unstable Reichstag to pass the dictatorial Act that initiated the Nazi revolution. He could design and enforce his purpose to people with the help of his self-dramatizing […]
• The Reasons Behind the Rise of Hitler and the Nazis Socio-economic instability, tough ideology, and the active involvement of the media were the key drivers that allowed Hitler to convince people of the power that the Nazi idea carried.
• “Mein Kampf” a Historical Book by Adolf Hitler However, the book shows that even under the mask of one of the cruelest people in the world, there is a boy with his own dreams and intentions to have a happy life.
• Adolf Hitler in Arno Breker’s Sculpture In a piece of art, the artist presents the subject of his art to the intended audience from his point of view of the subject.
• “Joseph Goebbels” and “German Artists and Hitler’s Mind” The book is very informative for a reader willing to learn about art in Nazi Germany and covers the topic fully.
• Hitler’s and British Policies in World War II Britain was among the countries that did not welcome the idea of another war due to the bloodshed that had ensued in the World War I.
• Adolf Hitler Life and Strategies This research paper critically analyses the life of Hitler as the president of Germany and the extent he went to conquer the whole world which he sought to do.
• Adolf Hitler’s Anti-Semitic “Final Solution” While the responsibility of Hitler and the Nazi top command in the mass killing of the Jews is unquestionable, there are disputes over the role that ordinary Germans played.
• Adolf Hitler and a History of the Holocaust Before going any further it is important to point out the kind of mindset that the German people had back then that made it easier for Hitler to convince them to join him in a […]
• Propaganda of Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones This is a scenario that has occurred with the Nazi, under the command of Adolf Hitler, and the story of Jim Jones, and the people who followed him in a quest to build an ideal […]
• Adolf Hitler: From Patriotism to Racism He was also forced to live and work in the city and it is was the cultural and social shock that he experienced as he transferred from the rural to the urban that changed the […]
• WW II and Hitler’s Army After the massive defeat and deaths of the German army in the war that took place in the eastern side, it was evident that the traditional groups of the army were no longer working as […]
• To What Extent did Hitler Rule Germany with Popular Consent? Hitler’s absolute hold on power was achieved in 1934 when he consolidated the office of the president and that of the chancellor in the person of “the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler”.
• “The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and the Allies Misread The Strategic Realities of World War II” by John Mosier In order to present a clear picture of German participation in the war and the reasons, which provoked these people to fight and kill, it is necessary to concentrate on various sources and perspectives and […]
• The Art of Adolf Hitler He gives a reason that the present Germany is a result of the efforts of himself and partners in the nation’s struggle which offered art in Germany fresh incentives as well as environment for a […]
• The Leadership Styles of Grant and Hitler Second, Grant was a strategist who wanted the best out of himself and his soldiers while Hitler did not mind much about the well being of his soldiers and most of his strategies involved murder. […]
• Hitler’s Rise to Power Henrich von Treitschke, a German logician argues that another reason that led to the rise of Hitler was the shame subjected to the background of Hitler as he described the conformity of the masses as […]
• History of Hitler’s Nazi Propaganda According to Hitler, the German’s defeat in the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, German’s post war inflation, and the economic crisis of the year 1929 were accredited to International Jewry. Over time, the masses […]
• The Burden of Hitler’s Legacy In his opinion, the Jews were to be blamed for Germany’s downfall in World War 1 and the subsequent peace treaty that was a source of embarrassment to the nation.
• Adolf Hitler Psychotic State Brief history and family background of Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler was certainly a disharmonious and destructive personality and, in order to define the main underpinnings and causes of his psychological disorders, family background and history […]
• German Resistance to Hitler The aim of the pact was to protect each other against any military attack and at the same time attack other countries such as Greece by the Italians, Libya by the Germans, Indo-china by the […]
• Adolf Hitler and Nationalism The war would also bring the downfall of the old European culture of kings and noblemen and their codes of honor”.[2] However, neither the number of casualties at the battlefields could reflect the actual devastation […]
• Hitler’s Table Talk The involvement of priests in the affairs of the state provided important insights on some of the reasons that made Hitler to be ruthless in his table talk against Christians. As manifested in his table […]
• Schutzstaffel: Hitler’s Infamous Legions of Death In order to execute the roles of this group, any chosen member had to be of Germany origin and show loyalty to the party.
• Is Barrack Obama Like Hitler? According to his book, Obama on the other hand recognizes and desires to change the problems in the American functional government and state of politics. This has generated a lot of criticism and the continued […]
• Germany During Hitler’s Era The multi-polar international system continued to support the actions of leaders such as Hitler, even after the First World War Western powers allowed Germany to ream itself due to the fears posed by the international […]
• How and Why Was Adolf Hitler Able to Come to Power?
• Did Adolf Hitler Use Fear to Control?
• Did Adolf Hitler and the Nazis Treat the Jews Badly?
• How Did Adolf Hitler Gain and Maintain Power?
• Why Did Adolf Hitler Become a Hate Filled Dictator?
• How Adolf Hitler Abused His Power in the Nazi Germany?
• How Adolf Hitler’s Childhood Changed His Personality and the Course of History?
• How Would the World Be Different in Adolf Hitler Never Existed?
• Why Adolf Hitler Wanted to Annex the Sudetenland and Began World War II?
• Why the Jews Were Persecuted in Germany during Adolf Hitler’s Rule?
• Why Adolf Hitler Was Appointed Chancellor on 30th January 1933?
• What Extent Did the Existence of the Third Reich Depend on Adolf Hitler?
• What Is the Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler?
• Did Adolf Hitler Has Post-encephalitic Parkinsonism?
• Why Adolf Hitler Spared the Judges?
• What Were Some of Adolf Hitler’s Weaknesses?
• Why Did Hitler Want So Badly to Proceed the Anschluss of Austria?
• Did Adolf Hitler Bring Germany Out of Economic Depression?
• How Germans Tolerated Adolf Hitler after World War I?
• How Adolf Hitler Came to Be Published in the United States?
• Why Did the German Workers Stand by Adolf Hitler?
• What Were Adolf Hitler’s and the Nazi Party’s Ideas?
• Did Hitler Want a World Dominion or It Was Even Bigger Goal of His?
• What Were the Political Views and Ideology of Adolf Hitler?
• Why Did the Invasion of Poland by Adolf Hitler Launched World War II?
• Hitler’s Legacy of Hate and Prejudice
• Hitler’s Relationship with Eva Braun
• Adolf Hitler’s Last Days and the Fall of Berlin
• The Nuremberg Trials and the Quest for Justice
• Hitler’s Early Career as a Failed Painter
• Indoctrination and Education of the Hitler Youth
• Hitler’s Plans for Germania and Monumental Buildings
• Holocaust Denial: Historical Evidence Against Revisionist Claims
• Hitler’s Foreign Policy and Expansionism Leading to World War II
• Speculations and Medical Records Regarding Hitler’s Mental State
• What Key Political and Economic Conditions in Germany Facilitated Hitler’s Rise to Power?
• How Did Hitler Exploit the Weaknesses of the Weimar Republic to Gain Support for the Nazi Party?
• What Role Did Propaganda Play in Hitler’s Rise to Power?
• How Did Hitler’s Charismatic Leadership Style Contribute to His Influence?
• How Did the Great Depression Impact the Nazi Party’s Electoral Success?
• What Major Events and Political Strategies Led to Hitler’s Appointment as Chancellor of Germany?
• Why Did Hitler’s Racist Ideology Resonate with Certain Segments of the German Population?
• What Strategies Did the Nazi Party Employ to Consolidate Power and Suppress Opposition?
• How Did Hitler Dismantle Democratic Institutions and Establish a Totalitarian Regime in Germany?
• What Role Did the Enabling Act Of 1933 Play in Consolidating Hitler’s Power?
• What Major Events Lead to the Rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party?
• How Did the Ideologies of the Nazi Regime Affect Various Aspects of German Society?
• How Did the Nazi Government Implement and Enforce Its Anti-Semitic Laws and Policies?
• What Were the Economic Policies of Nazi Germany?
• How Did the Nazi Regime Control and Manipulate Public Opinion through Censorship?
• What Was the Role of the Hitler Youth and Other Organizations in Shaping the Younger Generation’s Values in Nazi Germany?
• How Did the Nazi Regime Persecute and Oppress “Undesirable” Individuals or “Enemies of the State”?
• What Were the Resistance Movements Within Germany Against the Nazi Regime?
• How Did Nazi Germany’s Foreign Policy and Military Aggression Lead to the Outbreak of World War II?
• What Were the Outcomes of the War for Germany and the World?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Essay Plan. How was Hitler able to achieve power in 1933?

Mary Waters

How was Hitler able to achieve power in 1933?

In the years leading up to 1933, Germany was filled with unsureness and with a lack of confidence amongst the German people, causing them to search for new solutions and new leaders. It was circumstances such as the failure of the Weimar Republic and the economic depression of 1929 that forced people to search to the extreme of the political spectrum, either to the extreme left or the extreme right. Hitler and his Nazi Party offered solutions to the political, economic and social dilemmas which appealed to the majority of the German population in a rigorously conducted campaign.

The political instability and lack of constitution in the Weimar Republic was one of the key factors that allowed Hitler to achieve power.

Weakness of Weimar in its inability to provide a stable government

Discredit of democracy with the failure of the Weimar political system

Hatred of Treaty of Versailles and the guilt clause

Republic associated with the hated T.O.V →  symbol of shame and defeat, until Hitler erased provisions after ‘34

Humiliation of ’23 Ruhr occupation and devastation of hyperinflation

Misfortunes in Germany after 1918 →  weakened confidence of Germans

Germany humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler and the Nazi Party exploited this hatred through propaganda

Goebbels’ propaganda campaign, “We will not rest until they give us the power.”

Played on the failure of government

Anger about the First World War. Treaty of Versailles created long term bitterness felt by many of the German people

Hitler created a policy that appealed to the bitterness of the German people

Ineffective Weimar constitution. Proportional voting made it impossible to have a majority in the Reichstag. Longest govt lasted only two years. The political chaos caused many to lose faith in the new political system. Army not under full government control

This is a preview of the whole essay

After hyperinflation of 23, Germany went into a period of economic stability under Gustav Stresemann. Meant that many Nazi policies became irrelevant so its message became less appealing and the party lost support.

In these years, Hitler created the SS, merged with other right winged parties and took them over, and put Goebbels in charge of propaganda.

Depression of 1929 allowed the Nazi party to appeal to a more diverse range of German society

The economic depression of 1929 and the rising unemployment rate allowed for Hitler to provide hope and a secure government to the German people.

German prosperity after 1924 was financed mostly by borrowed US loans, 23 billion makrs from the USA alone

Weakness of economy as the country used short term loans to fund long term projects

Decline in the flow of foreign investment. Production slowed and unemployment began to rise.

US banks recalled their loans, which left Germany with no money.

Number of unemployed soared to over six million

Hitler and other leaders attacked the weaknesses and inefficiency of the government, the divided political parties, the threat of communism and the social and economic consequences of the depression

Hitler carried a message of hope and recovery to the German people.

Appealed to the middle class

During the crisis, people wanted someone to blame and looked to extreme solutions- Hitler gave them both.

Nazi representation in the Reichstag rose from 12 in 1928 to receiving 37.4 percent of the vote in July 1932.

Divisiveness of political parties on the left between the KPD and the SPD.

Hitler’s great skill as an orator and his brilliant thinking and strategy allowed for his rise to power in 1933, appealing to different aspects of the uncertain German population.

Movement displayed great skill in playing on a variety of emotions and appealing to particular groups

Many in rural Germany →  promise of agrarian reform

Unemployed →  promise of relief

Army →  promise of rearmament

Industrialists and business interests →  Nazis = only group that actively opposed communists

Young people →  attracted by idealism and the hope for a better Germany

Nationalists →  supported pledge to restore German honour and greatness

The middle class  (suffered through inflation and depression, saw the Nazis as promoting middle-class values and returning stability, order and security

Nazism seemed to provide the answer to personal and national frustration. The emotionalism and the irrationalism of the movement had strong appeal to those who were disillusioned by decay of German society.

Offered strong leadership. “The only solution was to found in a strong leader”

Hitler described as  a “baffling figure- so intelligent and so commonplace, so terrifyingly mad in his long-term goals and basic assumptions, so astute and skilful in his diplomacy and success”

Force of his personality drove the movement

Sought power with a ruthless will and determination

Had a passion to dominate

Absolute belief in himself as a man destined by fate to lead the German people

Outstanding oratory skills

Ability to move the masses

He was clever and calculating politician →  constantly underestimated by opponents

Master of tactics and an opportunist who took full advantage of the weakness of his enemies

Most severely, it was the miscalculation of Hitler and his aims by his opponents that allowed him to achieve power in 1933, where the strength and appeal of Hitler’s movement was aimed to be used to establish their own authority and power.

Nazis were given power in January 1933 by the deliberate action of the conservative elite groups who were actually Hitlers opponents.

They all underestimated both Hitler and his movement

Conservatives did not support the concept of parliamentary democracy and sought to use the strength and appeal of Hitler’s movement to entrench their own authority and power. Did not want or expect triumph of Nazism.

The Nazi party was losing support in 1932

Economy was showing signs of recovery and the threat from the communists was never great and the threat of the army was out of the question.

If the army had been called upon it would have supported Hindenburg and not Hitler however the miscalculation of Hitler and his movement meant that he was summoned by his opponents and given the chancellorship.

“His adversaries were the ones to make it possible.” J. Fest

The Nazi rise to power took place for many reasons, most notably that Hitler and the Nazi party greatly appealed to the German people by providing them with hope and the promise of a stable government, with a campaign designed to exploit all weaknesses within the German government. Their policies were heavily supported by many, inclusive of the removal of the Treaty of Versailles, a stable government, opportunities for employment and the appeal of Hitler as a leader himself.

Document Details

• Author Type Student
• Word Count 1058
• Page Count 3
• Subject History
• Type of work Coursework

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