Adolf Hitler Essay, Research Paper
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th, 1889 in Braunau, Austria. He was the fourth child of Alois Schickelgruber and Klara Hitler. The couple?s first three offsprings died as children, but more two more were born later, in addition to Adolf?s half siblings from his father?s previous marriage. A housemaid described Adolf?s father as a strict but comfortable man, and his mother was known to give Adolf much love and affection.
As a child, Adolf was very skilled at artwork, and even went to a special school for awhile, but he didn?t do well there. His father died in 1903 of a pleural hemorrhage, and his mother died in 1907 of breast cancer. Hitler spent six years in Vienna, Austria, the center of anti-Semitism. He was virtually penniless. These years helped him develop prejudices about Jews, and an interest in politics. At the time, two of his closest friends were Jewish and he admired many Jewish art dealers and operatic performers and producers.
Hitler later was arrested for avoiding military service for World War I. When he was eventually caught, he was found ?unfit?too weak?and unable to bear arms.?1 Later, he served four years. Near the end of the war, Hitler was partially blinded when he was exposed to poison gas.
In 1919, Adolf joined the German Workers? Party (later renamed National Socialist German Workers? ? or Nazi ? Party). In 1921, he was elected as the party?s chairman, or F?hrer. Later in 1923, Hitler led an uprising against the Weimar Republic, the German government. Unfortunately for him, the uprising failed, and he was sentenced to five years in prison. He only served nine moths of this sentence though, during which he dictated his auto-biography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).
“[The Jews'] ultimate goal is the denaturalization, the promiscuous bastardization of other peoples, the lowering of the racial level of the highest peoples as well as the domination of his racial mishmash through the extirpation of the folkish intelligentsia and its replacement by the members of his own people,” he wrote.2
A second volume of Mein Kampf was published in 1927, and more than five million copies of the book were sold before the beginning of World War II.
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1. http://remember.org/Facts.root.hitler.html Hitler?s Early Life.
2. http://remember.org/Facts.root.hitler.html Mein Kampf
Picture:
“And so I believe to-day that
my conduct is in accordance
with the will of the Almighty
Creator. In standing guard
against the Jew I am defending
the handiwork of the Lord.”
~Mein Kampf
Hitler made many famous speeches during his rise to power. A few are quoted in certain areas of this report. His goal was to create a new empire that would last for one thousand years. He ran for president in 1932 and became chancellor in January, 1933. In November, 1937, he outlined his master plan as described in Mein Kampf at ?F?hrer Conference.?
World War II began in September of 1939, when Germany attacked Poland. By then, Germany had already taken over Austria and Czechoslovakia. In 1940, Hitler conquered Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, and almost Britain. His next move would be attacking the Soviet Union, even though he had recently made a non-aggression pact with them in 1939. His attempt took place in June of 1941, but the Soviet armies were ready for attack, and turned the momentum of the war against Germany. Soon after, Hitler ordered that all Jews be destroyed. The Nazis called this die Endl?sung (”the Final Solution”). Jews were shot on the spot, wherever they might have been found. Extermination camps and concentration camps were set up to speed up the process to rid the world of the Jewish faith. ?By the end of the war, approximately six million Jews had been shot, gassed, or worked to death.?3
By April, 1945, Hitler realized that his attempt to take over the world was now useless. The war was virtually lost for Germany. Part of his goal had been accomplished though. He had killed two-thirds of all the Jews in Europe. Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide on April 30th, 1945.
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1. http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/adolf-hitler.shtml Who Was Adolf Hitler?
A Speech By Adolf Hitler
“My first and foremost task…”
“Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows – at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example – as many as traffi
“Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.” (1)
…and:
“When I now broached the question of what the source of his so strongly felt hatred for the Jews was, and why he wanted to destroy this so undeniably intelligent race – a race to which the Germans and all other Aryans, if not the entire world, owed an incalculable debt in virtually all fields of art and knowledge, research and economics – Hitler suddenly calmed down and gave this unexpectedly sober and almost dispassionate explanation:”
“It is manifestly clear and has been proven in practice and by the facts of all revolutions that a struggle for ideals, for improvements of any kind whatsoever, absolutely must be supplemented with a struggle against some social class or caste.
“My object is to create first-rate revolutionary upheavals, regardless of what methods and means I have to use in the process. Earlier revolutions were directed either against the peasants, or the nobility and the clergy, or against dynasties and their network of vassals, but in no case has revolution succeeded without the presence of a lightning rod that could conduct and channel the odium of the general masses.
“With this very thing in mind I scanned the revolutionary events of history and put the question to myself against which racial element in Germany can I unleash my propaganda of hate with the greatest prospects of success? I had to find the right kind of victim, and especially one against whom the struggle would make sense, materially speaking. I can assure you that I examined every possible and thinkable solution to this problem, and, weighing every imaginable factor, I came to the conclusion that a campaign against the Jews would be as popular as it would be successful.
“There are few Germans who have not been vexed with the behavior of Jews or else have not suffered losses through them in some way or other. Disproportionately to their small number they account for an immense share of the German national wealth, which can just as easily be put to profitable use for the state and the general public as could the holdings of the monasteries, bishops, and nobility.
“Once the hatred and the battle against the Jews have been really stirred up, their resistance will necessarily crumble in the shortest possible time. They are totally defenseless, and no one will stand up to protect them.”(2)
Footnotes
1. Josef Hell, “Aufzeichnung,” 1922, ZS 640, p. 5, Institute fuer Zeitgeschichte. The retired Major Josef Hell was a journalist in the twenties and in the beginning of the thirties, during which time he also collaborated with Dr. Fritz Gerlich, the editor of the weekly newspaper Der Gerade Weg, as cited in Fleming, Gerald. Hitler and the Final Solution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. p. 17
2. Ibid., as cited in Fleming, pp. 28-29
Found at:
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/hitler-1922.html
Adolf Hitler Quotes
Great liars are also great magicians.
Adolf Hitler
The only people I have been able to use are those who fought.
Adolf Hitler
My will decides.
Adof Hitler
“The German people is not warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war but does not fear it. It loves peace but it also loves its humor and freedom.”
“Nature is cruel; therefore we are also entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?”
(Adolf Hitler, cited in Joachim Fest’s 1975 “Hitler”)
Found at:
http://www.chesco.com/~artman/hitler.html
1. http://encarta.msn.com/index/conciseindex/13/013CA000.htm?z=1&pg=2&br=1
2. http://remember.org/Facts.root.hitler.html
3. http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/index.htm
4. http://www.chesco.com/~artman/hitler.html
5. http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/hitler-1922.html
6. http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/adolf-hitler.shtml