Hiter

Adolf Hitler was best known as the ultimate fascist dictator. He was the leader of Nazi Germany and orchestrated WWII and the Holocaust. Being one of the most well known figures in history, he left the world in shambles. His actions are still affecting people’s everyday lives to this day. While he was Antidemocratic, antiforeign, anti-intellectual, anti-Bolshevik, and anti-Semitic, he led an effective economic recovery, and by the late 1930’s he developed powerful emotional and political control over most Germans by using propaganda. Most historians deem Hiter to be the main reason for World War II and the holocaust, his name represents a lot of evil (Parkinson).

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn. He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pölzl. As he grew older he struggled in secondary school and eventually dropped out. He didn’t want to follow his fathers footsteps as a civil servant, he wanted to be an artist. He tried to enter Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, but got rejected. After his mother died in 1908, he moved to Vienna to sell images and try to start his life as an artist without going to school. When in Vienna he got interested in politics and this interest would soon be created into the Nazi ideology (Britannica).

Hitler moved to Munich, Germany, in May 1913. He served in World War I and was wounded two times. Once in the leg at The Battle of Somme in 1916 and the second time near Ypres in 1918 in which he was blinded by tear gas. He was rewarded many medals during his time in the war and was known to be a brave soldier. Little did anyone know, this was infiltrating him to become one of the biggest monsters in human history. “World War I propaganda influenced the young Hitler, who was a frontline soldier from 1914 to 1918. Like many, Hitler believed Germany lost the war because of enemy propaganda, not defeat on the battlefield” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).

In 1918 when Hitler returned to Munich, The Nazi party was starting to be created. In 1920 he left the army and took charge of its propaganda efforts. Numerous extremist political parties arose, among them Hitler’s Bavarian movement, which in 1921 took the name National Socialist German Workers Party with Hitler as its spokesman. It became the well known name, the Nazi party. Hitler’s chosen symbol was the swastika; an ancient sacred symbol of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. It would then be printed in a white circle with a red background and will be the most feared symbol in history. (Nyomarkay)

The rise of Hiter began when he was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933. From there, the country’s social and political transformation was swift (Parkinson). During the first six years of Hitler’s rule, German Jews felt the effects of legislation that transformed them from “citizens” to “outcasts.” Then, on September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland which unleashed World War II. Nazi leaders were trying to eliminate the Jewish people in Europe and German authorities in occupied Poland established ghettos for Jews. In early 1942 Germany was at its height of power. The SS had established special killing centers with large gas chambers, expanding the “Final Solution,” the mass murder of European Jews (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).

More than four hundred antisemitic laws were enacted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1938. Hundreds of jews were being tortured and arrested from their homes in these years. One of the main events in World War II was The Holocaust. The Holocaust killed over 6 million Jews, people with disabilities, and homosexual men. It ran between the years of 1941-1945. There were five different types of camps, concentration camps, forced labor camps, transit camps, prisoner of war camps, and killing centers. People were taken from their homes and put on a train to one of the 44,000 incarceration sites and placed randomly. Men and women were typically separated and so were their children. The day on the train was the last day that most families were ever together. The first Nazi concentration camp was Dachau, established in March 1933, near Munich. “The major purpose of the earliest concentration camps during the 1930s was to incarcerate and intimidate the leaders of political, social, and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to be a threat to the survival of the regime” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Many of the concentration camps had installed gas chambers to kill groups of people at a time. In the forced labor camps jews we worked to death as they suffered starvation, exhaustion and exposure. In some camps they did medical experiments on the prisoners. The killing centers were strictly for exterminating to carry out “The Final Solution ” Killing centers were designed for efficient mass murder and were located in German occupied territory in Poland. Chelmno was the first one to open and other camps averaged 6,000 deaths a day from gas chambers. Only a small number of prisoners in these camps survived. Hiter caused all of these things to happen. He was one of very few people who knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it. The Nazis controlled all of Poland and were wiping out a big chunk of the Jewish population.

After six years since the invasion of Poland, The War ended. The United States drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. September 2, 1945 Having agreed in principle to unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, Japan formally surrenders, ending World War II. After this Hitler became increasingly unwell he was isolated and dependent on his medications. There were many occasions where other people tried to end his life. Col. Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that exploded during a conference at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia but he did not succeed (Gilbert).

“As Soviet soldiers scoured the burning streets of Berlin above his head searching for him, on April 30, 1945 Adolf Hitler began his normal work routine that morning deep in the bunker under the Reich Chancellery building.” (The National WWII Museum). Adolf Hitler died just 45 minutes after getting married to his wife. On April 30, 1945, Hitler killed himself by shooting himself in the head while his wife next to him, took poison. Their bodies were then burned due to his instruction. 

Hitler, a name that is a synonym for evil, who could get any worse. Everything that happened in World War II was because of his first actions to invade Poland. He was unremorseful and cruel. He left a lasting effect on today’s world. On September 1st of every year there is a feeling that reminds people of the beginning of the war. It brings them back to family, opportunities, and love they lost. There’s nothing Hitler could have done to let anyone forgive him. He was not the guy to apologize and had no sympathy. The reason he’s so notorious is because he was so awful. So many people were hurt by his actions and they are still affected to this day. Hitler is pure evil and the most monstrous human being to have ever existed.

Works Cited

A&E Television Networks. (2023, June 29). Adolf Hiter: Rise to power, Impact & Death. History.com. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/adolf-hitler-1# 

Bergen, Doris L. War and Genocide, A Concise History of the Holocaust. Rowan and Littlefield, 2016.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “9 Things You Might Not Know About Adolf Hitler”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 May. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/list/9-things-you-might-not-know-about-adolf-hitler

Dor Saar-Man / Great History in a Nutshell. (2017, November 15). What happened to Nazi germany after Hitler’s suicide? Haaretz.com. https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2017-11-15/ty-article/what-happened-to-nazi-germany-after-hitlers-suicide/0000017f-e891-dc7e-adff-f8bd117d0000 

Gilbert, Adrian. “Invasion of Poland”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Nov. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/event/Invasion-of-Poland. 

Kater, Michael H. Hitler Youth. Cambridge, President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2004. 

Knapp, Wilfrid F. , Lukacs, John , Bullock, Alan and Bullock, Baron. “Adolf Hitler”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Nov. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler

Nyomarkay, Joseph. The Nazi Party. Minneapolis, The University of Minnesota, 1967.

Parkinson, S. E., Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins, Daniel S. Hamilton and Angela Stent, Wright, D. R. and L., & Obadare, A. (2022, August 22). Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/lists/hitlers-rise-power-germany 

Serena, K. (2023, March 14). The Hitler family is alive and well – but they’re determined to end the bloodline. All That’s Interesting. https://allthatsinteresting.com/hitlers-descendants 

Smilde, K. (2023, April 24). What is the Holocaust?. Anne Frank Website.  https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/what-is-the-holocaust/