brief biography of adolf hitler

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Adolf Hitler

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 30, 2024 | 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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Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany. His fascist agenda led to World War II and the deaths of at least 11 million people, including some six million Jews.

(1889-1945)

Who Was Adolf Hitler?

Hitler’s fascist policies precipitated World War II and led to the genocide known as the Holocaust , which resulted in the deaths of some six million Jews and another five million noncombatants.

The fourth of six children, Hitler was born to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl . As a child, Hitler clashed frequently with his emotionally harsh father, who also didn't approve of his son's later interest in fine art as a career.

Following the death of his younger brother, Edmund, in 1900, Hitler became detached and introverted.

Young Hitler

Hitler showed an early interest in German nationalism, rejecting the authority of Austria-Hungary. This nationalism would become the motivating force of Hitler's life.

In 1903, Hitler’s father died suddenly. Two years later, Hitler's mother allowed her son to drop out of school. After her death in December 1907, Hitler moved to Vienna and worked as a casual laborer and watercolor painter. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts twice and was rejected both times.

Lacking money outside of an orphan's pension and funds from selling postcards, he stayed in homeless shelters. Hitler later pointed to these years as the time when he first cultivated his anti-Semitism, though there is some debate about this account.

In 1913, Hitler relocated to Munich. At the outbreak of World War I , he applied to serve in the German army. He was accepted in August 1914, though he was still an Austrian citizen.

Although Hitler spent much of his time away from the front lines (with some reports that his recollections of his time on the field were generally exaggerated), he was present at a number of significant battles and was wounded at the Battle of the Somme . He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross First Class and the Black Wound Badge.

Hitler became embittered over the collapse of the war effort. The experience reinforced his passionate German patriotism, and he was shocked by Germany's surrender in 1918. Like other German nationalists, he purportedly believed that the German army had been betrayed by civilian leaders and Marxists.

He found the Treaty of Versailles degrading, particularly the demilitarization of the Rhineland and the stipulation that Germany accepts responsibility for starting the war.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S ADOLF HITLER FACT CARD

Nazi Germany and Speeches

After World War I, Hitler returned to Munich and continued to work for the German military. As an intelligence officer, he monitored the activities of the German Workers’ Party (DAP) and adopted many of the anti-Semitic, nationalist and anti-Marxist ideas of party founder Anton Drexler.

In September 1919, Hitler joined the DAP, which changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) — often abbreviated to Nazi.

Hitler personally designed the Nazi party banner, appropriating the swastika symbol and placing it in a white circle on a red background. He soon gained notoriety for his vitriolic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, Marxists and Jews. In 1921, Hitler replaced Drexler as the Nazi party chairman.

Hitler's fervid beer-hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. Early followers included army captain Ernst Rohm, the head of the Nazi paramilitary organization the Sturmabteilung (SA), which protected meetings and frequently attacked political opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch

On November 8, 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting featuring Bavarian prime minister Gustav Kahr at a large beer hall in Munich. Hitler announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government.

After a short struggle that led to several deaths, the coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch failed. Hitler was arrested and tried for high treason and sentenced to nine months in prison.

'Mein Kampf'

During Hitler’s nine months in prison in 1924, he dictated most of the first volume of his autobiographical book and political manifesto, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), to his deputy, Rudolf Hess.

The first volume was published in 1925, and a second volume came out in 1927. It was abridged and translated into 11 languages, selling more than five million copies by 1939. A work of propaganda and falsehoods, the book laid out Hitler's plans for transforming German society into one based on race.

In the first volume, Hitler shared his Anti-Semitic, pro-Aryan worldview along with his sense of “betrayal” at the outcome of World War I, calling for revenge against France and expansion eastward into Russia.

The second volume outlined his plan to gain and maintain power. While often illogical and full of grammatical errors, Mein Kampf was provocative and subversive, making it appealing to the many Germans who felt displaced at the end of World War I.

Rise to Power

With millions unemployed, the Great Depression in Germany provided a political opportunity for Hitler. Germans were ambivalent to the parliamentary republic and increasingly open to extremist options. In 1932, Hitler ran against 84-year-old Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency.

Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, garnering more than 36 percent of the vote in the final count. The results established Hitler as a strong force in German politics. Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor in order to promote political balance.

Hitler as Führer

Hitler used his position as chancellor to form a de facto legal dictatorship. The Reichstag Fire Decree, announced after a suspicious fire at Germany's parliament building, suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial.

Hitler also engineered the passage of the Enabling Act, which gave his cabinet full legislative powers for a period of four years and allowed for deviations from the constitution.

Anointing himself as Führer ("leader") and having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his political allies embarked on a systematic suppression of the remaining political opposition.

By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated into disbanding. On July 14, 1933, Hitler's Nazi Party was declared the only legal political party in Germany. In October of that year, Hitler ordered Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations .

Night of the Long Knives

Military opposition was also punished. The demands of the SA for more political and military power led to the infamous Night of the Long Knives , a series of assassinations that took place from June 30 to July 2, 1934.

Rohm, a perceived rival, and other SA leaders, along with a number of Hitler's political enemies, were hunted down and murdered at locations across Germany.

The day before Hindenburg's death in August 1934, the cabinet had enacted a law abolishing the office of president, combining its powers with those of the chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government and was formally named leader and chancellor. As the undisputed head of state, Hitler became supreme commander of the armed forces.

Hitler the Vegetarian

Hitler’s self-imposed dietary restrictions towards the end of his life included abstinence from alcohol and meat.

Fueled by fanaticism over what he believed was a superior Aryan race, he encouraged Germans to keep their bodies pure of any intoxicating or unclean substances and promoted anti-smoking campaigns across the country.

Hitler’s Laws and Regulations Against Jews

From 1933 until the start of the war in 1939, Hitler and his Nazi regime instituted hundreds of laws and regulations to restrict and exclude Jews in society. These anti-Semitic laws were issued throughout all levels of government, making good on the Nazis’ pledge to persecute Jews.

On April 1, 1933, Hitler implemented a national boycott of Jewish businesses. This was followed by the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of April 7, 1933, which excluded Jews from state service.

The law was a Nazi implementation of the Aryan Paragraph, which called for the exclusion of Jews and non-Aryans from organizations, employment and eventually all aspects of public life.

Additional legislation restricted the number of Jewish students at schools and universities, limited Jews working in medical and legal professions, and revoked the licenses of Jewish tax consultants.

The Main Office for Press and Propaganda of the German Student Union also called for "Action Against the Un-German Spirit,” prompting students to burn more than 25,000 “Un-German” books, ushering in an era of censorship and Nazi propaganda. By 1934, Jewish actors were forbidden from performing in film or in the theater.

On September 15, 1935, the Reichstag introduced the Nuremberg Laws, which defined a "Jew" as anyone with three or four grandparents who were Jewish, regardless of whether the person considered themselves Jewish or observed the religion.

The Nuremberg Laws also set forth the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour," which banned marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which deprived "non-Aryans" of the benefits of German citizenship.

In 1936, Hitler and his regime muted their Anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions when Germany hosted the Winter and Summer Olympic Games , in an effort to avoid criticism on the world stage and a negative impact on tourism.

After the Olympics, the Nazi persecution of Jews intensified with the continued "Aryanization" of Jewish businesses, which involved the firing of Jewish workers and takeover by non-Jewish owners. The Nazis continued to segregate Jews from German society, banning them from public school, universities, theaters, sports events and "Aryan" zones.

Jewish doctors were also barred from treating "Aryan" patients. Jews were required to carry identity cards and, in the fall of 1938, Jewish people had to have their passports stamped with a "J."

Kristallnacht

On November 9 and 10, 1938, a wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms swept Germany, Austria and parts of the Sudetenland. Nazis destroyed synagogues and vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses. Close to 100 Jews were murdered.

Called Kristallnacht , the "Night of Crystal" or the "Night of Broken Glass," referring to the broken window glass left in the wake of the destruction, it escalated the Nazi persecution of Jews to another level of brutality and violence. Almost 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps, signaling more horrors to come.

Persecution of Homosexuals and People with Disabilities

Hitler's eugenic policies also targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities, later authorizing a euthanasia program for disabled adults.

His regime also persecuted homosexuals, arresting an estimated 100,000 men from 1933 to 1945, some of whom were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. At the camps, gay prisoners were forced to wear pink triangles to identify their homosexuality, which Nazis considered a crime and a disease.

The Holocaust and Concentration Camps

Between the start of World War II, in 1939, and its end, in 1945, Nazis and their collaborators were responsible for the deaths of at least 11 million noncombatants, including about six million Jews, representing two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe.

As part of Hitler's "Final Solution," the genocide enacted by the regime would come to be known as the Holocaust.

Deaths and mass executions took place in concentration and extermination camps including Auschwitz -Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Treblinka, among many others. Other persecuted groups included Poles, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and trade unionists.

Prisoners were used as forced laborers for SS construction projects, and in some instances they were forced to build and expand concentration camps. They were subject to starvation, torture and horrific brutalities, including gruesome and painful medical experiments.

Hitler probably never visited the concentration camps and did not speak publicly about the mass killings. However, Germans documented the atrocities committed at the camps on paper and in films.

• World War II

In 1938, Hitler, along with several other European leaders, signed the Munich Pact. The treaty ceded the Sudetenland districts to Germany, reversing part of the Versailles Treaty. As a result of the summit, Hitler was named Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.

This diplomatic win only whetted his appetite for a renewed German dominance. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, sparking the beginning of World War II. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later.

In 1940 Hitler escalated his military activities, invading Norway, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium. By July, Hitler ordered bombing raids on the United Kingdom, with the goal of invasion.

Germany’s formal alliance with Japan and Italy, known collectively as the Axis powers, was agreed upon toward the end of September to deter the United States from supporting and protecting the British.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler violated the 1939 non-aggression pact with Joseph Stalin , sending a massive army of German troops into the Soviet Union . The invading force seized a huge area of Russia before Hitler temporarily halted the invasion and diverted forces to encircle Leningrad and Kiev.

The pause allowed the Red Army to regroup and conduct a counter-offensive attack, and the German advance was stopped outside Moscow in December 1941.

On December 7, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Honoring the alliance with Japan, Hitler was now at war against the Allied powers, a coalition that included Britain, the world's largest empire, led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill ; the United States, the world's greatest financial power, led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt ; and the Soviet Union, which had the world's largest army, commanded by Stalin.

Stumbling Toward Defeat

Initially hoping that he could play the Allies off of one another, Hitler's military judgment became increasingly erratic, and the Axis powers could not sustain his aggressive and expansive war.

In late 1942, German forces failed to seize the Suez Canal , leading to the loss of German control over North Africa. The German army also suffered defeats at the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-43), seen as a turning point in the war, and the Battle of Kursk (1943).

On June 6, 1944, on what would come to be known as D-Day , the Western Allied armies landed in northern France. As a result of these significant setbacks, many German officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that Hitler's continued rule would result in the destruction of the country.

Organized efforts to assassinate the dictator gained traction, and opponents came close in 1944 with the notorious July Plot , though it ultimately proved unsuccessful.

Hitler's Bunker

By early 1945, Hitler realized that Germany was going to lose the war. The Soviets had driven the German army back into Western Europe, their Red Army had surrounded Berlin and the Allies were advancing into Germany from the west.

On January 16, 1945, Hitler moved his center of command to an underground air-raid shelter near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Known as the Führerbunker, the reinforced concrete shelter had about 30 rooms spread out over some 2,700 square feet.

Hitler's bunker was furnished with framed oil paintings and upholstered furniture, fresh drinking water from a well, pumps to remove groundwater, a diesel electricity generator and other amenities.

At midnight, going into April 29, 1945, Hitler married his girlfriend, Eva Braun , in a small civil ceremony in his underground bunker. Around this time, Hitler was informed of the execution of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini . He reportedly feared the same fate could befall him.

Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, fearful of being captured by enemy troops. Hitler took a dose of cyanide and then shot himself in the head. Eva Braun is believed to have poisoned herself with cyanide at around the same time.

Their bodies were carried to a bomb crater near the Reich Chancellery, where their remains were doused with gasoline and burned. Hitler was 56 years old at the time of his death.

Berlin fell to Soviet troops on May 2, 1945. Five days later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

A 2018 analysis of the exhumed remains of Hitler's teeth and skull , secretly preserved for decades by Russian intelligence agencies, have confirmed that the Führer was killed by means of cyanide and a gunshot wound.

Hitler's political programs brought about a horribly destructive world war, leaving behind a devastated and impoverished Eastern and Central Europe, including Germany.

His policies inflicted human suffering on an unprecedented scale and resulted in the death of tens of millions of people, including more than 20 million in the Soviet Union and six million Jews in Europe.

Hitler's defeat marked the end of Germany's dominance in European history and the defeat of fascism. A new ideological global conflict, the Cold War , emerged in the aftermath of the devastating violence of World War II.

Winston Churchill

Benito Mussolini

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Joseph Stalin

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Adolf Hitler
• Birth Year: 1889
• Birth date: April 20, 1889
• Birth City: Braunau am Inn
• Birth Country: Austria
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany. His fascist agenda led to World War II and the deaths of at least 11 million people, including some six million Jews.
• World Politics
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Adolf Hitler wanted to be a painter in his youth, but his applications to obtain proper schooling were rejected.
• Hitler personally designed the Nazi party banner, appropriating the swastika symbol and placing it in a white circle on a red background.
• Hitler avoided multiple assassination attempts by chance.
• Death Year: 1945
• Death date: April 30, 1945
• Death City: Berlin
• Death Country: Germany

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Adolf Hitler Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/adolf-hitler
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 26, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
• We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was 'legal.'” (Martin Luther King Jr.)
• It is not truth that matters, but victory.
• History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.
• Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.
• All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.
• We will meet propaganda with propaganda, terror with terror, and violence with violence.
• By shrewd and constant application of propaganda, heaven can be presented to the people as hell and, vice versa, the wretchedest existence as a paradise.
• And what nonsense it is to aspire to a Heaven to which, according to the Church's own teaching, only those have entry who have made a complete failure of life on earth!
• But there's one thing I can predict to eaters of meat, that the world of the future will be vegetarian!
• Strength lies not in defense but in attack.
• I don't see much future for the Americans. In my view, it's a decayed country.
• Germany will either be a world power or will not be at all.
• I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.
• If you want to shine like sun first you have to burn like it.

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Your guide to Adolf Hitler: key facts about the Nazi dictator

He's one of the most well known – but reviled – figures in history. But how much do you know about German dictator Adolf Hitler? Here's everything you need to know about the Nazi leader, from his rise to power to the truth about his death in Berlin in 1945...

• Rachel Dinning
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Adolf Hitler is one of the most well-known – and despised – figures in history. He was the chief architect of the Second World War , following his rise to power as the leader of the Nazi Party in the 1920s. His anti-Semitic policies lead to the deaths of more than six million Jews during the Holocaust, cementing his reputation as one of the most infamous men in history.

Here's your guide to the German dictator – from his early life growing up in Austria to his rise to power and eventual death during the Second World War...

Hitler: key facts

Born: Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria.

Died: Hitler died by suicide in a Berlin bunker, age 56, on 30 April 1945

Known for: Being the leader of the the Nazi Party and initiating the Second World War. Adolf Hitler replaced Anton Drexler as party chairman of the Nazi Party in July 1921, and soon after he acquired the title führer (“leader”). He was chancellor of Germany from 30 January, 1933, and Führer and chancellor combined from 2 August 1934. His rise to power led to the Second World War and the deaths of more than six million Jews in the Holocaust.

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Family: Adolf Hitler was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler (1837–1903) and his third wife, Klara (1860–1907). His full siblings are: Gustav, Ida, Otto, Edmund and Paula, but he also had two half-siblings – Alois Jr and Angela – from his father’s previous marriages. Alois, who was illegitimate, bore his mother’s name Schicklgruber for some time, but by 1876 had established his family claim to the surname 'Hitler'. Adolf Hitler himself never used any other surname.

Early childhood: Most of Hitler’s childhood was spent in Linz, Austria. He had a difficult relationship with his father, with many of their arguments focusing on Hitler’s refusal to behave at school. However he was very fond of his mother, who died in 1907.

Education: Hitler had a mixed education and has generally been considered a mediocre student by many historians. Although his father wished for his son to follow a career in his own footsteps, at a customs office, Hitler had other ideas. Tensions rose when Alois sent Hitler to the Realschule (a type of secondary school) in Linz in September 1900 and Hitler performed poorly. Hitler later suggested that this was an intentional act on his behalf: he deliberately performed badly to show his father that he should be allowed to pursue his dream of becoming an artist.

The narrative doesn't entirely hold up if you consider that, following Alois’s death in January 1903, Hitler’s educational performance deteriorated even more. He went on to study at another school in Steyr, where he had to retake his final exams before leaving without any intentions to take his education any further.

Are we more fascinated with Hitler than any other dictator?

Hitler has been memorialised in countless books, tv shows and films. so why are we fascinated with the nazi dictator, was hitler a good painter.

While leaders including Winston Churchill and George W Bush took up painting as a post-politics hobby, a young Adolf Hitler paid the bills as a jobbing artist from 1910–14. He focused mainly on postcards and advertisements – and earned enough to sustain a living, moving around hostels in Vienna.

He was, however, technically mediocre. He failed the examination for the General School of Painting at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts, partly down to his struggle to capture the human form. The second time he applied, his sample drawings were considered of such poor quality that he was not even admitted to the entrance examination.

Some might argue that Hitler's art was also oddly pedestrian in a radical era of Picasso and Van Gogh. As a voracious reader of history and mythology, and with a mind bubbling over with political thoughts, it’s somewhat surprising that this angry outsider painted bland postcard scenes of buildings and landscapes.

• When Hitler took cocaine

If painting was not his forte, Hitler's real strength could be found in his oratory skills. "He was, of course, a masterly demagogue – the basis of his early dominance within the Nazi Party," explains Professor Kershaw. "More than any other contemporary German politician, he spoke in a language that gave voice to the anger and prejudice of his audience."

He was also, Kershaw notes, very widely read: "His excellent memory enabled him to recall information on many subjects. This impressed not only those around him and others who were already susceptible to his message."

What did Hitler do during World War One?

Although Adolf Hitler was in his mid-20s at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he initially tried to avoid conscription. Then, when made to enlist, he failed the medical. He still ended up in uniform, joining the Bavarian (part of the German) army instead.

Hitler served in this army at the First Battle of Ypres . According to Hitler, his regiment of 3,600 was reduced to 611 during the battle and he was one of only 42 survivors from his 250-strong company. One of his roles was that of a trench runner . He was also wounded at the Somme and was twice awarded the Iron Cross for bravery, once on the recommendation of a Jewish comrade.

Then, on the night of 13–14 October 1918, Corporal Hitler got caught in a mustard gas attack by the British. He spent the rest of the war recovering from temporary blindness, learning of Germany’s surrender in a military hospital, although there is some suggestion that this story was made up by Hitler and that he was in fact being treated for 'hysterical amblyopia', a psychiatric disorder known as 'hysterical blindness'. It was during this time, Hitler later claimed in his political manifesto Mein Kampf (first published in 1925), that “the idea came to me that I would liberate Germany, that I would make it great”.

When did Hitler first become involved with politics?

Hitler first emerged on the political scene in the German city of Munich in late 1919 as a speaker for the right-wing German Workers’ Party (DAP). The DAP changed its name to NSDAP ( Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ) in February 1920, before Hitler officially took over as party chairman in July 1921. The party, which Hitler felt lacked direction, was also referred to as ‘Hitler’s Nazi Party’ at this time, however Hitler himself was not really known outside of Bavaria until much later.

• The dark charisma of Adolf Hitler

During the early 1920s, Hitler purposefully maintained a degree of mystery around himself. He refused to let unofficial photographers take his picture, instead opting to employ his own personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, who produced a series of bestselling books of pictures that portrayed the Nazi leader as an aloof intellectual. "They aimed to show Hitler as a man of the people and, at the same time, the political philosopher of genius in lofty isolation, among the mountains that surrounded his Alpine retreat near the town of Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, as he pondered Germany’s future and bore the entire burden of responsibility on his shoulders," explains Professor Kershaw. The creation of the 'Hitler mystery' was a masterful move of PR, utilised at a time when other politicians did not pay too much attention to such tactics.

How did Hitler rise to power?

Hitler’s first official grasp for power took place in November 1923. He and his supporters attempted to seize political power in Munich, as a prelude to a takeover in Berlin. Around 2,000 Nazis took part in the violent daytime coup, which became known as the Munich Beer Hall Putsch .

What happened during the Beer Hall Putsch?

When the coup collapsed, Hitler was arrested and charged with treason. The subsequent trial was a complex affair – as historian Roger Moorhouse explains: "Hitler probably should have been sent for trial to the constitutional court at Leipzig, but Munich’s political establishment was keen to keep the matter ‘in house’, for fear of giving oxygen to the rumours of official complicity with the Nazis. So, with a tame, sympathetic judge – Georg Neithardt – presiding, the trial opened in the Munich infantry school on 26 February.

"Those hoping for Hitler’s political demise were to be disappointed. He expertly played the court, assisted by Neithardt, and so reached a much wider audience than he had ever reached before. By the end of the trial, he had a national following for the first time, and had emerged as the undisputed leader of the German radical right."

• Hitler’s millionaire backers: how Germany’s elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis

Hitler served just nine months of his five-year prison sentence at Landsberg Prison. Following his release, he was forbidden from making public speeches but continued speaking to private audiences and gained a reputation as a formidable orator. By the 1930s he had cultivated an elaborate public profile, selling a “novel vision” to his followers and the wider German public. “Hitler was offering national redemption, a ‘new Germany’, a ‘new man’, a ‘new Jerusalem’,” says Moorhouse.

The Nazi party gradually grew in numbers throughout the late 1920s – and by July 1932, they had transformed from a small, revolutionary party to the largest elected party in the Reichstag (German parliament). They did this primarily through the use of effective propaganda, with support from the from the Sturmabteilung (SA), otherwise known as the Brownshirts, a paramilitary wing of the NSDAP.

Rise to dictator

Once Hitler had established himself as a key player in the German political scene of the 1930s, consolidation of his power as a dictator happened rather quickly. He achieved this with a “twin-track approach”, according to historian Richard J Evans.

The first track involved convincing the right-wing government that Hitler should rule Germany by decree. This was agreed by conservatives who were largely motivated by a desire to crush the Communist Party. “In November 1932, the Social Democrats and Communists together had more votes and seats than the Nazis, but they were also deadly enemies of each other and couldn’t get their act together to stop the Nazis. Hitler used legal or quasi-legal powers of the government, particularly the president’s power to rule by decree in a state of emergency,” explains Evans.

• Listen | Historian Frank McDonough discusses the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany, covering the period from the start of the Third Reich to the early months of World War Two

On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag was persuaded by Hitler – through a mixture of threats and inducements – to vote for an Enabling Law that meant that the cabinet (Hitler and the ministers) had the power to issue legislation without reference to the president or to the Reichstag, thereby giving them dictatorial powers.

The second track involved “mass, brutal violence” on the streets. During this time, between 100,000–200,000 people were put into concentration camps or ‘roughed up’ and released on condition of not engaging in politics.

Read more about how Hitler rose to power

Where did Hitler get his ideas?

According to historian Richard J Evans, Hitler drew his political ideas from a variety of sources: “from a version of Social Darwinism that saw society and international relations as a sort of struggle of races for the survival of the fittest; from Arthur de Gobineau, a French theorist who invented the pseudoscientific idea of race theory; from Russian émigrés from the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, who brought with them the idea that Bolshevism and communism were creations of the Jewish race; from a certain amount of what's called ‘geopolitics’, which was invented by an American.”

Why did Hitler hate the Jews?

Anti-Semitism was at the heart of Nazi ideology, but what inspired Hitler’s hatred of the Jews and prompted the creation of a system that ultimately led to the systematic rounding up and killing of some six million people?

Hitler obviously did not invent modern anti-Semitism, which has roots in the Middle Ages . By the 13th century, for example, rules enacted across Europe obliged Jews to wear an identifying badge to distinguish them from non-Jews’. And in medieval Europe specifically, anti-Jewish hostility was exemplified by the concept of ‘the blood libel’, the accusation that Jews were murdering Christian children as part of their Passover rituals.

Although we don’t know how early Hitler formed his opinions of Jewish people, he himself states that he felt anti-Jewish while working as a painter in Vienna – a city with a large Jewish population – before the First World War. “For me this was a time of the greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through,” he writes in Mein Kampf . “I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-Semite.” Some historians have since suggested that Hitler created this narrative of himself as an early anti-Semite retrospectively – and Mein Kampf should certainly be understood in the context of its purpose as propaganda. Perhaps rather curiously, one of Hitler most loyal patrons while he lived in Vienna as a young artist was a Jew called Samuel Morgenstern.

• Your guide to the Holocaust

What is clearer is that Hitler’s anti-Semitism intensified following Germany’s defeat during the First World War, in which he served as an ordinary soldier on the western front and was decorated for bravery. The defeat had come as a shock to many Germans, who believed that they had been on course to win following the Spring Offensive and victory over Russia in 1918. Following the Allied victory, harsh penalties were imposed on Germany including the loss of certain territories and reparations were demanded, through the Treaty of Versailles .

Like many of his contemporaries, Hitler decided that the reason Germany lost the war was the weak will of the Kaiser, who was deposed in 1918. According to Richard J Evans, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast , “Hitler believed that the Weimar Republic, which succeeded the Kaiser’s Germany, was a Jewish creation, and democracy was something Jewish. These were all complete fantasies. But the effect of the First World War was decisive, including on Hitler's anti-Semitism and his belief the Jews were to blame for everything bad that had happened.”

Was Hitler Christian?

What was hitler’s relationship with eva braun.

Eva Braun (1912–1945) was the long-term companion of Adolf Hitler. The pair married on 29 April 1945 – just one day before they both died by suicide.

German historian Heike B Görtemaker notes that Braun was much more than a passive figure in the Nazi regime. “All members of the Berghof circle, including Eva Braun, were not just witnesses, but convinced of the Nazi ideology,” she writes. “Although it cannot be verified that Braun knew about the Holocaust – and all surviving members of Hitler’s inner circle later denied knowledge – Braun, like all others, was at least informed about the persecution of the Jews, depriving them of any civil rights.”

Was Braun in love with Hitler? It is almost impossible to identify her true feelings, says Görtemaker. However Braun’s closest friend, Herta Schneider, “declared in 1949 that Braun had been in love with Hitler”.

• Why did Hitler choose the swastika, and how did a Sanskrit symbol become a Nazi emblem?

Where did Hitler live?

How did hitler die.

During the last months of the Second World War – and as the prospect of losing the war became ever more apparent – Hitler withdrew into his bunker in Berlin. It was “the last station in his flight from reality”, wrote the Führer’s favoured architect, Albert Speer. Hitler continued to deliver orders from the bunker, including one that dictated his body should be incinerated upon the event of his death (he had heard about the treatment of fellow dictator Benito Mussolini’s body, who had been strung up in a public square in Milan).

• Georg Elser: the man who nearly assassinated Hitler

On 20 April 1945, Hitler’s 56th birthday, the first enemy shell hit Berlin. Soviet troops soon entered the city – and by 30 April 1945, Hitler was dead.

It is generally accepted that Hitler shot himself, although accounts differ as to whether he also bit down on a cyanide capsule. Following his death by suicide, Hitler’s body and that of his long-term mistress Eva Braun, whom he had married a day earlier and who had herself injected cyanide, were removed from the bunker, doused in petrol and set alight.

Rachel Dinning is the Premium Content Editor at HistoryExtra, website of BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed.

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Biography of Adolf Hitler, Leader of the Third Reich

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The First World War

Hitler enters politics, the beer hall putsch, president and führer, world war ii and the failure of the third reich.

• M.A., Medieval Studies, Sheffield University
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Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was the leader of Germany during the Third Reich (1933–1945). He was the primary instigator of both the Second World War in Europe and the mass execution of millions of people deemed to be "enemies," or inferior to the Aryan ideal. He rose from being a talentless painter to the dictator of Germany and, for a few months, emperor of much of Europe. His empire was crushed by an array of the world's strongest nations; he killed himself before he could be tried and brought to justice.

Fast Facts: Adolf Hitler

• Known For : Leading the German Nazi party and instigating World War II
• Born : April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria
• Parents : Alois Hitler and Klara Poelzl
• Died : April 30, 1945 in Berlin, Germany
• Education : Realschule in Steyr
• Published Works : Mein Kampf
• Spouse : Eva Braun
• Notable Quote : "In starting and waging a war it is not right that matters but victory."

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889 to Alois Hitler (who, as an illegitimate child, had previously used his mother’s name of Schickelgruber) and Klara Poelzl. A moody child, he grew hostile towards his father, especially once the latter had retired and the family had moved to the outskirts of Linz. Alois died in 1903 but left money to take care of the family. Adolf was close to his mother, who was highly indulgent of him, and he was deeply affected when she died in 1907. He left school at age 16 in 1905, intending to become a painter. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't a very good one.

Hitler went to Vienna in 1907 where he applied to the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts but was twice turned down. This experience further embittered the increasingly angry Hitler. He returned to Vienna again when his mother died, living first with a more successful friend (Kubizek) and then moving from hostel to hostel as a lonely, vagabond figure. He recovered to make a living selling his art cheaply as a resident in a community "Men's Home."

During this period, Hitler appears to have developed the worldview that would characterize his whole life, and which centered on hatred for Jews and Marxists. Hitler was well-placed to be influenced by the demagogy of Karl Lueger, Vienna’s deeply anti-Semitic mayor and a man who used hate to help create a party of mass support. Hitler had previously been influenced by Schonerer, an Austrian politician against liberals, socialists, Catholics, and Jews. Vienna was also highly anti-Semitic; Hitler's hate was not unusual, it was simply part of the popular mindset. What Hitler went on to do was present these ideas more successfully than ever before.

Hitler moved to Munich in 1913 and avoided Austrian military service in early 1914 by virtue of being unfit for service. However, when the First World War broke out in 1914, he joined the 16th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, serving throughout the war, mostly as a corporal after refusing promotion. He proved to be an able and brave soldier as a dispatch runner, winning the Iron Cross on two occasions (First and Second Class). He was also wounded twice, and four weeks before the war ended he suffered a gas attack that temporarily blinded and hospitalized him. It was there he learned of Germany’s surrender, which he took as a betrayal. He especially hated the Treaty of Versailles , which Germany had to sign after the war as part of the settlement.

After WWI, Hitler became convinced he was destined to help Germany, but his first move was to stay in the army for as long as possible because it paid wages, and to do so, he went along with the socialists now in charge of Germany. He was soon able to turn the tables and drew the attention of army anti-socialists, who were setting up anti-revolutionary units. In 1919, working for an army unit, he was assigned to spy on a political party of roughly 40 idealists called the German Workers Party. Instead, he joined it, swiftly rose to a position of dominance (he was chairman by 1921), and renamed it the Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). He gave the party the Swastika as a symbol and organized a personal army of "storm troopers" (the SA or Brownshirts) and bodyguards of black-shirted men, the Schutzstaffel (SS), to attack opponents. He also discovered, and used, his powerful ability for public speaking.

In November 1923, Hitler organized Bavarian nationalists under a figurehead of General Ludendorff into a coup (or "putsch"). They declared their new government in a beer hall in Munich; a group of 3,000 marched through the streets, but they were met by police who opened fire, killing 16.

Hitler was arrested in1924 and used his trial to spread his name and his ideas widely. He was sentenced to just five years in prison, a sentence often described as a sign of tacit agreement with his views.

Hitler served only nine months in prison, during which he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a book outlining his theories on race, Germany, and Jews. It sold five million copies by 1939. Only then, in prison, did Hitler come to believe he was destined to be a leader. The man who thought he was paving the way for a German leader of genius now thought he was the genius who could take and use power.

After the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler resolved to seek power through subverting the Weimar government system, and he carefully rebuilt the NSDAP, or Nazi, party, allying with future key figures like Goering and propaganda mastermind Goebbels. Over time, he expanded the party’s support, partly by exploiting the fears of socialists and partly by appealing to everyone who felt their economic livelihood threatened by the depression of the 1930s.

Over time, he gained the interest of big business, the press, and the middle classes. Nazi votes jumped to 107 seats in the Reichstag in 1930. It's important to stress that Hitler wasn't a socialist . The Nazi party that he was molding was based on race, not the idea of socialism, but it took a good few years for Hitler to grow powerful enough to expel the socialists from the party. Hitler didn't take power in Germany overnight and took years for him to take full power of his party overnight.

In 1932, Hitler acquired German citizenship and ran for president, coming in second to von Hindenburg . Later that year, the Nazi party acquired 230 seats in the Reichstag, making them the largest party in Germany. At first, Hitler was refused the office of Chancellor by a president who distrusted him, and a continued snub might have seen Hitler cast out as his support failed. However, factional divisions at the top of government meant that, thanks to conservative politicians believing they could control Hitler, he was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Hitler moved with great speed to isolate and expel opponents from power, shutting trade unions and removing communists, conservatives, and Jews.

Later that year, Hitler perfectly exploited an act of arson on the Reichstag (which some believe the Nazis helped cause) to begin the creation of a totalitarian state, dominating the March 5 elections thanks to support from nationalist groups. Hitler soon took over the role of president when Hindenburg died and merged the role with that of chancellor to become führer ("leader") of Germany.

Hitler continued to move with speed in radically changing Germany, consolidating power, locking up “enemies” in camps, bending culture to his will, rebuilding the army, and breaking the constraints of the Treaty of Versailles. He tried to change the social fabric of Germany by encouraging women to breed more and bringing in laws to secure racial purity; Jews were particularly targeted. Employment, high elsewhere in a time of depression, fell to zero in Germany. Hitler also made himself head of the army, smashed the power of his former brownshirt street warriors, and expunged the socialists fully from his party and his state. Nazism was the dominant ideology. Socialists were the first in the death camps.

Hitler believed he must make Germany great again through creating an empire and engineered territorial expansion, uniting with Austria in an Anschluss and dismembering Czechoslovakia. The rest of Europe was worried, but France and Britain were prepared to concede limited expansion with Germany, taking within it the German fringe. Hitler, however, wanted more.

It was in September 1939, when German forces invaded Poland, that other nations took a stand and declared war. This was not unappealing to Hitler, who believed Germany should make itself great through war, and invasions in 1940 went well. Over the course of that year, France fell and the Third Reich expanded. However, his fatal mistake occurred in 1941 with the invasion of Russia, through which he wished to create lebensraum, or "living room." After initial success, German forces were pushed back by Russia, and defeats in Africa and West Europe followed as Germany was slowly beaten.

During the last years of the war, Hitler became gradually more paranoid and divorced from the world, retreating to a bunker. As armies approached Berlin from two directions, Hitler married his mistress Eva Braun and on April 30, 1945, he killed himself. The Soviets found his body soon after and spirited it away so it would never become a memorial. A piece remains in a Russian archive.

Hitler will forever be remembered for starting the Second World War, the most costly conflict in world history, thanks to his desire to expand Germany’s borders through force. He will equally be remembered for his dreams of racial purity, which prompted him to order the execution of millions of people , perhaps as high as 11 million. Although every arm of German bureaucracy was turned to pursuing the executions, Hitler was the chief driving force.

In the decades since Hitler’s death, many commentators have concluded that he must have been mentally ill and that, if he wasn’t when he started his rule, the pressures of his failed wars must have driven him mad. Given that he ordered genocide and ranted and raved, it is easy to see why people have come to this conclusion, but it’s important to state that there is no consensus among historians that he was insane, or what psychological problems he may have had.

“ Adolf Hitler .” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 14 Feb. 2019.

Alan Bullock, Baron Bullock, et al. “ Adolf Hitler .” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 19 Dec. 2018.

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• Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch
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• Rudolf Hess, Nazi Who Claimed to Bring Peace Offer From Hitler
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• Biography of Benito Mussolini, Fascist Dictator of Italy
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Biography Online

Adolf Hitler Biography

Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 to relatively humble beginnings. His early life gave few hints as to his future destiny. He was a comparative failure and something of a loner. He was twice rejected from his application to study art, and after struggling to survive in Vienna, in 1913, he moved to Munich. In his early life, he imbibed the anti-semitic feelings which were common for the times but displayed little political interest. On the outbreak of the First World

On the outbreak of the First World War, he joined the German army and got promoted to Corporal. He survived the war and in 1918 – like many other German officers – was bitterly disappointed with the perceived ‘betrayal’ of the German surrender and the harsh retribution meted out by the Versailles Treaty.

Against this backdrop of defeat and threat of turmoil within Germany, Hitler turned to politics and set up a fledgeling political party – the NSDAP (Nazi party) with its mixture of nationalistic and fascist policies.

In 1923, Hitler led his small Nazi party in an attempted seizure of power – known as the Munich beer hall putsch. The putsch failed, and Hitler was sentenced to a lenient jail sentence. It was in prison that he wrote ‘ Mein Kampf ‘ a rambling exposition of his philosophy which included his growing anti-semitic ideology and ideas of an idealised Aryan race.

“the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”

– Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf , Chapter 11.

Hitler giving speech

On his release, Hitler then turned his attentions to gaining electoral support and contesting the elections of Weimar Germany. The onset of the Great Depression provided fertile ground for his radical and extremist policies. Against a backdrop of six million unemployed people – many in Germany – felt there was a clear choice between Communism and the Nationalism of Hitler’s Nazi party. With the help of his powerful rhetoric and his own private militia, Hitler led the Nazi party to victory in the 1933 elections. He was made Chancellor and in 1934, on the death of Hindenburg, he was made the President in 1934, Hitler declared himself the supreme leader and ended all pretence to democracy.

Hitler also sought to regain territory lost in the Treaty of Versailles. This was the justification for the Anschluss with Austria and later the reclamation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. But, Hitler’s ambitions did not merely rest on regaining lost territory. He also began eyeing new territories and, in 1938, successfully gained the whole of Czechoslovakia. Anxious to avoid war, Allied leaders, such as Neville Chamberlain pursued a policy of appeasement and gave into Hitler’s demands.

“I want war. To me all means will be right. My motto is not “Don’t, whatever you do, annoy the enemy.” My motto is “Destroy him by all and any means.” I am the one who will wage the war!”

– Adolf Hitler

However, when it came to Poland, Britain and France decided to oppose Hitler’s intentions, and when Hitler invaded Poland, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany. Yet, it soon became apparent that Germany had built one of the most powerful armies ever created and were technically and tactically superior to the Allied armies.

Until the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, Hitler’s war machine appeared unstoppable. A parade of stunning military victories led to one of the most successful military conquests in history. Yet, by invading the Soviet Union, combined with the entry of the US into the war, even Hitler’s Germany had overstretched itself. Slowly the tide of war turned, and in 1944, the Soviets in the East, and the Allies in the West began their long liberation through occupied Europe to eventually meet in Berlin.

Almost until the end, Hitler retained a fantasy of gaining a last minute victory through imaginary weapons and now imaginary armies. It was not until Soviet troops were within earshot of his Bunker, that Hitler finally admitted the inevitable and committed suicide.

During the war, Hitler met with his other Nazi henchman to agree on a plan for the ‘final solution’ of the Jewish problem. This involved the systematic and complete elimination of the Jewish population. Over six million Jewish people died in various concentration and extermination camps. These camps also saw the deaths of millions of other undesirables, from Russian prisoners of war to Communists, homosexuals and Gipsies. It remains a crime of unprecedented scale and horror.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Adolf Hilter”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net , Published 1st March 2008. Last updated 17th March 2017.

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Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust.

• Introduction to the Holocaust
• Antisemitism
• How Many People did the Nazis Murder?
• Book Burning
• German Invasion of Western Europe, May 1940
• Voyage of the St. Louis
• Genocide of European Roma (Gypsies), 1939–1945
• The Holocaust and World War II: Key Dates
• Liberation of Nazi Camps

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was the undisputed leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party—known as Nazis—since 1921. In 1923, he was arrested and imprisoned for trying to overthrow the German government. His trial brought him fame and followers. He used the subsequent jail time to dictate his political ideas in a book, Mein Kampf —My Struggle. Hitler’s ideological goals included territorial expansion, consolidation of a racially pure state, and elimination of the European Jews and other perceived enemies of Germany.

After his release from prison in 1924, Hitler began seeking political power through legal means, such as elections, rather than through violent attempts to overthrow the government.

Modern propaganda techniques—including strong images and simple messages—helped propel Austrian-born Hitler from a little known extremist to a leading candidate in Germany’s 1932 presidential elections.

A common misconception about Hitler’s rise to power is that he was voted into office. In January 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor, the head of the German government.

• perpetrators
• Nazi rise to power
• World War I
• Weimar Germany

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Early years and world war i.

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was born on April 20, 1889, in the Upper Austrian border town Braunau am Inn. In 1898, the Hitler family moved to Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. Seeking a career in the visual arts, Hitler fought bitterly with his father, who wanted him to enter the Habsburg civil service.

In October 1918, after he was partially blinded in a mustard gas attack near Ypres in Belgium, Hitler was sent to a military hospital in Pasewalk. News of the November 11, 1918, armistice reached him there as he was recuperating. Released from the hospital in November 1918, Hitler returned to Munich.

In 1919, he joined the Information Office of the Bavarian Military Administration. This office gathered intelligence on civilian political parties and provided anti-Communist “political education” for the troops. In August 1919, as a course instructor, Hitler made his first virulent antisemitic speeches. A month later, he first expressed an antisemitic, racist ideology on paper, advocating removal of Jews from Germany.  

Leader of the Nazi Party

Hitler joined what would become the Nazi Party in October 1919. He helped devise the party political program in 1920. The program was based on racist antisemitism, expansionist nationalism, and anti-immigrant hostility. By 1921, he was the absolute Führer (Leader) of the Nazi Party. Membership in the Nazi Party swelled in two years to 55,000, supported by more than 4,000 men in the paramilitary SA ( Sturmabteilung ; Storm Troopers).  

Imprisonment

Rejecting political participation in Weimar elections, Hitler and the Nazi Party leadership sought to overthrow the government of Bavaria, a state in the Weimar Republic. The Beer Hall Putsch took place on November 9, 1923. After the putsch collapsed, a Munich court tried Hitler and other ringleaders on charges of high treason. Hitler used the trial as a stage to attack the system of parliamentary democracy and promote xenophobic nationalism. Hitler was found guilty, but received a light sentence and was released after serving just one year in detention. He used his time in prison to begin writing Mein Kampf (My Struggle), his autobiography, published in 1926. In the book, he unveiled an explicitly, race-based Nationalist, social Darwinist, and antisemitic vision of human history. He advocated dictatorship at home, military expansion, and seizure of “living space” ( Lebensraum ) in the East. This living space was where the Germans intended to cleanse the east of indigenous and “inferior” populations.   

Political Strategy

After his release from prison, Hitler reorganized and reunified the Nazi Party. He changed its political strategy to incorporate engagement in electoral politics, programs targeting new and alienated voters, and bridge building to overcome traditional conflicts in German society.  

Using language fashioned to reflect the fears and hopes of potential voters, the Nazis campaigned for

• Renewing national defense capacity
• Restoring national sovereignty
• Annihilating Communism
• Overturning the Versailles Treaty
• Eliminating foreign and Jewish political and cultural influence in Germany and reversing the moral depravity that it allegedly created
• Generating economic prosperity and creating jobs

Testing this strategy in the national parliamentary elections of 1928, the Nazis received a disappointing 2.6% percent of the vote.  

With the onset of the Great Depression in 1930, Nazi agitation began to have increasing impact in the German population. When the majority coalition government collapsed in March, the three middle-class parties invoked emergency constitutional provisions to hold extraordinary parliamentary elections, hoping to manufacture a governing majority that would permanently exclude the Social Democrats and the political Left from governing. When this maneuver failed, German governments in 1930-1932 resorted to ruling by presidential decree rather than parliamentary consent.     

Electoral Breakthroughs

The Nazis made their electoral breakthrough in 1930 by combining modern technology, modern political market research, and intimidation through violence for which the leadership could deny responsibility. The party’s youthful energy untainted by past association with democratic governments also helped them break through electoral barriers. They captured nearly a fifth of the popular vote, attracting new, unemployed, and alienated voters.   

Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. The Nazi appeal grew steadily in 1931 and 1932, creating a sense of inevitability that Hitler would come to power and save the country from political paralysis, economic impoverishment, cultural atrophy, and Communism. After running for President of the Republic in spring 1932, Hitler and the Nazis captured 37.3% of the vote in the July 1932 elections. They became the largest political party in Germany. Constant electioneering after 1930, accompanied by politically-motivated street violence, swelled the membership of the Nazi Party to 450,000, the SA to more than 400,000, and the SS to more than 50,000 in 1932.  

Chancellor of Germany

Following his appointment as chancellor, Adolf Hitler began laying the foundations of the Nazi state . He seized every opportunity to turn Germany into a one-party dictatorship.

German president Paul von Hindenburg died in August 1934. Hitler had secured the support of the army with the Röhm purge of June 30, 1934. He abolished the presidency and proclaimed himself Führer of the German people ( Volk ). All military personnel and all civil servants swore a new oath of personal loyalty to Hitler as Führer. Hitler also continued to hold the position of Reich Chancellor (head of government).

Series: Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler: Key Dates

Making a Leader

Adolf Hitler: Early Years, 1889–1913

Adolf Hitler and World War I: 1913–1919

Adolf Hitler: 1919-1924

Adolf hitler: 1924-1930.

Adolf Hitler: 1930-1933

The July 20, 1944, Plot to Assassinate Adolf Hitler

Series: the weimar republic.

The Weimar Republic

World War I: Aftermath

World War I and its Aftermath: Key Dates

Treaty of versailles.

Paul von Hindenburg

Beer Hall Putsch (Munich Putsch)

Nazi party platform.

The Police in the Weimar Republic

Science as Salvation: Weimar Eugenics, 1919–1933

What conditions, ideologies, and ideas made the Holocaust possible?

Switch series, critical thinking questions.

• What qualities and characteristics of leadership did Hitler seem to have and to demonstrate?
• What other societal factors and attitudes contributed to the rise of Hitler?
• How can knowledge of the events in Germany and Europe before the Nazis came to power help citizens today respond to threats of genocide and mass atrocity?

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Adolf Hitler: Biography

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in the small Austrian town of Braunau to Alois Hitler who later became a senior customs official and his wife Klara, who was from a poor peasant family.

Hitler did not do particularly well in school , leaving formal education in 1905. Unable to settle into a regular job, he drifted. He wished to become an artist but was rejected from the Academy in Vienna.

At primary school, Hitler showed great intellectual potential and was extremely popular with fellow pupils as well as being admired for his leadership qualities. However, competition at secondary school was tougher and Hitler stopped trying as a result.

He also lost his popularity among his fellow students and instead preferred to re-enact battles from the Boer war with younger children. At the age of 15, he failed his exams and was told to repeat the year but he left without a formal education instead.

At the age of 18, he moved to Vienna with money inherited after his father's death in 1903, in order to pursue a career in art, as this was his best subject at school. However his applications for both the Vienna Academy of Art and the School of Architecture were rejected.

It was supposedly at this time that Hitler first became interested in politics and how the masses could be made to respond to certain themes. He was particularly impressed with the anti-Semitic, nationalist Christian-Socialist party.

During the First World War he volunteered to fight for the German Army and gained the rank of corporal, earning accolades as a dispatch-runner. He won several awards for bravery, including the Iron Cross First Class.

In October 1918, he was blinded in a mustard gas attack. Germany surrendered while Hitler was in hospital and he went into a state of great depression, spending lots of time in tears. After the war ended, Hitler's future seemed uncertain.

In 1919, Hitler attended his first meeting of the German Workers' party, an anti-Semitic, nationalist group as a spy for the German Army. However, he found he agreed with Anton Drexler's German nationalism and anti-Semitism. He disagreed with how they were organised leading him to make a passionate speech. Hitler quickly cemented his reputation as an engaging orator through his passion about the injustices faced by Germany as a result of the Treaty of Versailles .

It soon became clear that people were joining the party just to see Hitler make his speeches, which would leave the audience in a state of near hysteria and willing to do whatever he suggested.

Read more about WW2

10 things you didn't know about Hitler

He quickly rose through the ranks and, by 1921, was the leader of the re-named National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) .

With terrible economic conditions and rapid inflation, support for Hitler's party grew. By 1923, the Nazi's had 56,000 members and many more supporters.

On 8 and 9 November 1923, Hitler staged the Nazi Beer Hall Putsch. He hoped to force the Bavarian government to work with the Nazis and march together on Berlin. The attempt failed but, although Hitler was tried for treason, the judge gave him a very light sentence.

While in prison, Hitler wrote 'Mein Kampf', which formulated his political ideas. He reorganised his party on his release from jail, but it was not until the world depression hit Germany that the Nazis were able to attract significant followers.

By 1930, the Nazis were polling around 6.5 million votes. In the presidential elections of 1932, Hitler came second. On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg was forced to appoint Hitler as Chancellor , given his popular support.

In office, Hitler set about consolidating his power, appointing Nazis to government and gaining control of emergency powers. He eliminated all opposition, in the name of emergency control and, with the death of Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler's power was secured.

Hitler put Germany's unemployed to work on a massive rearmament programme, using propaganda and manufacturing enemies, such as the Jews , to prepare the country for war. Initially, Hitler's actions were ignored by his powerful neighbours, as they believed appeasement was the only way to avoid a war.

In 1936, Hitler invaded the Rhineland, which had been demilitarised at Versailles . He then proceeded to annex Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. Under the Munich Agreement of 1938, the West accepted this.

In 1939, Hitler made an alliance with Russia (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) and with Italy (Pact of Steel). On 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and the Second World War began as a result. In April 1940, Denmark and Norway were also taken. France quickly followed .

Hitler had conquered much of Western Europe, now he turned his sights East . In 1941, despite the alliance, Germany invaded Russia under Operation Barbarossa . It was one of his greatest mistakes. With the German advance slowed by the Russians 'scorched earth' policy, the German army found themselves in the Russian winter without an adequate supply line. In 1943, they started their long retreat.

At the same time, the Western Allies were pushing hard, and began to advance on Germany. In response, Hitler withdrew almost entirely. It was reported he was increasingly erratic and out-of-touch.

In 1944, there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt and, in response, Hitler stepped up the atmosphere of suspicion and terror.

Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, with his long term girlfriend Eva Braun , who he is thought to have perhaps married at the last minute. Germany's surrender followed soon after.

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Adolf Hitler: His Life, Ideology, Rise, and Downfall

Adolf Hitler, German politician, leader of the Nazi Party, and by near-universal accounts the most monstrous and terrifying leader in the twentieth century, led his nation into a disastrous war and triggered the extermination of millions of his own citizens due to his anti-Semitic ideology.

This page features a comprehensive resource on Adolf Hitler’s background, beliefs, religious ideology, and explanations of his rise to power.

Click here to see more articles in this category.

Overview of Adolf Hitler And His Life

(See Main Article: Hitler — Historical People )

Famous for being fascist Dictator of Germany Born – 20th April 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria Parents – Alois Hitler, Klara Hitler Siblings – Edmund, Paula Married – Eva Braun Children – None Died – 30th April 1945, Berlin, Germany committed suicide

Adolf Hitler was born in the Austrian town of  Braunau-am-Inn on 20th April 1889. The town was close to the Austro-German border and his father, Alois, worked as a border control clerk. His mother, Klara, was a housekeeper.

As a child he got on very well with his mother but he didn’t get on well with his father, a strict authoritative disciplinarian. He attended school from the age of six years but did not do well in academic subjects. His school record showed reasonable grades for PE and some artistic talent.

Adolf Hitler left school at the age of sixteen and went to Vienna where he hoped to enter the Academy and become a painter. His application to enter the academy was rejected when he was 17 years old and a year later his mother died from cancer. His father had died four years earlier and with no relatives willing to support him, Adolf Hitler found himself living rough on the streets of Vienna. He became interested in politics and was heavily influenced by the climate of anti-Semitism that existed in Austria at that time.

In 1914, Hitler crossed the border to Germany and joined the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. He fought on the Western Front and was awarded the Iron Cross for his bravery in battle. In 1918 he was temporarily blinded from a gas attack and was invalided out of the war. Hitler was dismayed when Germany lost the war and hated the Versailles Treaty and the Weimar government for signing the treaty. He dreamed of a return to the days of the Kaiser.

After the war he stayed in the army, but in intelligence. His activities led him to the German Worker’s Party led by Anton Drexler. He liked the ideas of the party and joined in 1919. Drexler realised that Adolf Hitler was something special and put him in charge of the political ideas and propaganda of the party.

In 1920, the party announced its 25-point program and was renamed the National Socialist German Worker’s Party – NAZIs.

In 1921, Hitler became leader of the party and soon began attracting attention, especially for his powerful speeches. Hitler stirred up Nationalist passion giving the people something to blame for Germany’s problems. Hitler’s opponents tried to disrupt the meetings so for protection Hitler set up the SA – Stormtroopers. Although the actual membership of the NAZI party remained quite low in this period, Hitler, through his meetings and speeches had given them a very high profile.

In March 1924, Adolf Hitler was imprisoned for his part in the Munich Putsch, which failed to overthrow the Bavarian government. While in prison he wrote his book Mein Kampf which set out his thoughts and philosophies. The book was published a year after Hitler’s release from prison.

The Great Depression, which saw a downturn in people’s lives, helped to gain support for the Nazi party and by 1932 the Nazi party was the largest party in the Reichstag but did not have a majority. On January 30th 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. A month later on February 27th, the Reichstag building was set alight. The fire was blamed on the Communists and the Communist party was banned in Germany. This gave the Nazis a clear majority in the government.

On 23rd March 1933 the Enabling Act gave Adolf Hitler power to make laws without consulting the Reichstag for a period of four years. Over the next four months Hitler took steps towards dictatorship – trade unions and all other political parties were banned, the Nazis took control of all local government and Germany withdrew from the League of Nations. When President Hindenburg died in August 1934 Hitler combined the position of Chancellor and President and made himself Fuhrer of Germany.

As Fuhrer, Hitler began building his Third Reich. Ignoring the terms of the Treaty of Versailles he began building up the army and weapons. The Nuremburg Laws passed in 1935 defined Hitler’s ideal pure Aryan German citizen and barred Jews from holding any form of Public office. In March 1936 Hitler began reclaiming land taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles by re-occupying the Rhineland. The move was unopposed by Britain and France. Anschluss with Austria in Spring 1938 was followed in the Autumn by the reclaiming of the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia.

Although he had agreed by the terms of the Munich Agreement not to make further territorial claims, in March 1939 Hitler invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia. His subsequent invasion and occupation of Poland on 1st September 1939 led to the outbreak of World War Two. Despite the outbreak of war, Hitler continued his policy of aggression and by May 1940 Britain was the only western European country that had not been invaded and occupied by the Nazis. The loss of the Battle of Britain led Hitler to abandon plans to invade Britain in favour of an invasion of Russia.

Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, communists and other ‘undesirables’ from Germany and Nazi-controlled countries were forced to wear identification badges. Jews were sent to concentration camps where the fit and healthy were put to forced labour while the young, old and sick were exterminated in gas chambers. In January 1942 plans to exterminate the entire Jewish population known as ‘The Final Solution’ were approved.

Defeat at the second battle of El Alamein in November 1942 was followed by defeat at Stalingrad. Adolf Hitler’s refusal to allow soldiers to retreat and blind perusal of his goals led some Nazi members to question his leadership. In July 1944 an attempt was made to assassinate Hitler. The attempt failed and the perpetrators were executed.

Throughout late 1944 and early 1945 the Germans were pushed back towards Berlin by the Allies in the west and the Russians in the East. On April 29th, 1945, Adolf Hitler married his long-term mistress Eva Braun, and a day later the pair committed suicide.

Adolf Hitler And His Childhood

(See Main Article: Where Was Hitler Born? )

Interestingly enough, Adolf  Hitler  was not born in Germany, but in a small village in Austria, Braunau am Inn. The building where he was born has been used as a workshop, school, library, home for the disabled and a bank through the years, but as of 2014 there are plans to turn it into a “House of Responsibility” museum.

Adolf Hitler Could Have Had a Different Surname

Another interesting piece of trivia relating to Hitler’s ancestry is that his surname would have been “Schicklgruber,” had his father, Alois, not decided to have a name change. Alois was an illegitimate child and went by his mother’s name until he changed it to “Hiedler” later in life. The spelling was somehow changed to “Hitler” in the record book. Today, it is very hard to imagine crowds of people yelling “Heil Schicklgruber” instead of “Heil Hitler.”

Childhood Years

Adolf Hitler’s childhood years were not particularly happy. He was Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl’s fourth child, but all of his older siblings died during infancy. The family moved to Germany when Adolf was three years old, and this is where he got his Bavarian accent. Adolf Hitler clashed a lot with his father, who wanted him to become a customs officer, while he was more interested in the arts. Hitler did not do very well in school and left school early. He also drifted between jobs, unable to settle and was rejected from the arts academy in Vienna as well as the School of Architecture.

An Interest in Politics

He discovered an interest in politics and the anti-Semitic climate in Austria  at that time  heavily influenced his views. Hitler volunteered for the German army in 1914 and his bravery in battle on the Western Front earned him the Iron Cross award. In 1918 he had to stop fighting due to temporary blindness caused by a gas attack and was very disappointed when Germany lost the war. Hitler hated the Treaty of Versailles and despised the Weimar Government for signing it in the first place. In his eyes, Germany needed a Kaiser again.

(See Main Article: What Is Mein Kampf? )

Mein Kampf, which means “My Struggle” or “My Fight” is Adolf Hitler’s autobiography in which he outlines his ideology and political plans for Germany. After the failure that was the Beer Hall Putch in which Hitler and a group of men tried to overthrow the Bavarian government, he was sentenced to 5 years in jail for treason. He used this time to dictate his book to Rudolf Hess and it was eventually published in two volumes, respectively in 1925 and 1926. Hitler’s views were popular at the time, his book sold close to 9,500 copies within its first year. He originally wanted to call the book “4 ½ years of struggle against lies stupidity and cowardice” but was advised to rather keep the name short.

Contents of Hitler’s Autobiography

Apart from an autobiography about Hitler’s youth and upbringing, Mein Kampf was also a bit of a blueprint of what Hitler had in store for what he called the Third Reich. If other European countries had taken Hitler seriously at the time and read this book they would have known what plans Hitler had for the expansion of Germany .

Hitler’s Jewish Conspiracy Theory

He painted the Jews as a threat, with a conspiracy to take over the world. He also emphasizes that before he went to Vienna, he was very tolerant toward Jews as he had not met any Jews previously. He claims to have only changed his mind later on and then describes his Aryan philosophy in detail.

Types of Humans

Adolf Hitler divided humans into several categories, depending on physical appearance, to determine the different types of humans. The Aryan race (Germanic, fair-skinned, blond hair and blue eyes) is, according to him, the master race and culturally superior.

Doing People a Favor By Conquering their Lands

Hitler also argues in his book that lower people actually benefit if they are conquered by Aryans, as they learn from them and start to develop culture. Aryans were also not to inter-marry with other, lowly human types, a philosophy that later resulted in the passing of certain marriage laws in Germany.

Hatred of Communism and Judaism

Hitler believed that Communism and Judaism were the world’s two greatest evils. Hitler also described the goal to create a “living space” for German people to live up to their “historic destiny” in his book and openly stated that Germany had to acquire land in the East by invading parts of Russia.

Flawed Parliamentary System

In his book, Adolf Hitler blames the Weimar Republic’s parliament, the Social Democrats, the Marxists and the Jews for Germany’s demise. He wanted to destroy the parliamentary system, which he thought to be corrupt in essence, calling the people who come to power opportunists.

Was Hitler Jewish?

(See Main Article: Was Hitler Jewish? )

For someone  so obsessed with “ethnic cleansing” and ancestry, Adolf Hitler was quite vague about his own descent. In the years following the war, and the ascent of Freudian psychoanalysis in the mid-twentieth century, many rumors circulated that Hitler might have been related to the very people he despised and persecuted; it was a form of self loathing and projection that sadly culminated in the nearly-successful attempt to destroy those people he hated to belong to.

However, none of these rumors have been proven true beyond doubt. Hitler was definitely not a Jew in the true sense of word, but there is a faint possibility that one of his ancestors might have been Jewish.

Paternal Grandfather Theory

The identity of Adolf Hitler’s paternal grandfather is not known, because Hitler’s father has been registered as an illegitimate child. Hans Frank, a former Nazi official stated that Hitler’s grandmother used to work as a housekeeper for a Jewish family named Franken berger, in Graz. He claimed that Alois, Hitler’s father, was the result of a sexual relationship with Leopold Frankenberger, the family’s 19-year old son. With further investigation, no records of the existence of a Leopold Frankenberger in Graz have been found, causing historians to dismiss this theory.

DNA Test Theory

The Daily Telegraph, a British paper reported in 2010 on a DNA study that was conducted on 39 known relatives of Hitler. Samples showed that these family members of the Fuhrer had a chromosome that is not commonly found in Western Europe. Apparently 18 to 20 percent of carriers of this chromosome (Haplogroup E1b1b1) are Ashkenazi Jews, making this scientific study largely inconclusive. DNA tests of hair found on the hair brush Eva Braun (Hitler’s mistress) also pointed to the same chromosome, suggesting that she, too, may have had Jewish ancestry.

How Did Hitler Come to Power?

(See Main Article: How Did Hitler Come to Power? )

The process occurred over multiple decades. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power started when he became politically involved and joined the Deutsche Arbeiterspartei. From there he worked himself up in the party, which later became the Nazi Party , through charm, violence and cunning negotiations. He was an excellent speaker and surrounded himself with people who, like him, were not afraid to use violence to fulfil their political objectives. At one stage, Hitler recognized that he was one of the best speakers in the Nazi party and demanded that they make him party leader or he would walk out. They conceded and he became party leader.

Rise of the Nazi Party

The grim atmosphere of the early 1930s greatly contributed to the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Party as it left the Germans desperate for a strong leader. They considered the German government to be weak and the actions of Bruning, the chancellor only added to the bitterness of the German nation. They suffered due to the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression left many with huge financial problems, which were only worsened by the chancellor’s decision to cut unemployment pay and wages. Thanks to a very successful propaganda campaign focused on the poor and the suffering, the Nazi Party rose from only 12 seats in Reichstag in 1928 to becoming the largest party in 1932 with 230 seats.

Hitler’s Takeover

Although the Nazi Party had become very powerful, they lost close to two million votes in the November 1932 Reichstag elections, which meant that they only had 33 percent of the vote, and not the majority they needed. Papen, who wanted the position of vice chancellor and thought he could control Hitler, convinced Hindenburg to form a coalition with the Nazis and appoint Hitler as chancellor.  Hindenburg finally gave in and appointed Hitler as chancellor. Hitler’s final grab for power was when he negotiated with the Reichstag members to give him temporary “emergency” powers for four years, enabling him to act without the consent of parliament or the German constitution. While negotiations were taking place, his large military force was surrounding parliament with the threat of war, should they refuse. They didn’t have much of a choice but grant him what he wanted and Hitler became absolute ruler of Germany.

(See Main Article: What Does Führer Mean? )

Before Adolf Hitler claimed it as his personal title, Führer simply meant “leader” or “guide” in German. It was also used as a military title for commanders who lacked the qualifications to hold permanent command. Since its connotation to Nazi Germany, führer is not used in political context anymore, but may be combined with other words to mean “guide.” For instance, a mountain guide would be called a Bergführer, with “berg” meaning “mountain.”

Führer as Hitler’s Title

Adolf Hitler claimed the word “Führer” as an unique name for himself and started using it when he became chairman of the Nazi Party. It was at the time not uncommon to call party leaders “Führer” but usually the word had an addition to indicate which party the leader belonged to. When adopting it as a single title, Hitler may have been inspired by Austrian politician, Georg von Schonerer who also used the word without a qualification and whose followers also made use of the “Sieg Heil” greeting.

After the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act which gave Hitler absolute power for four years, he dissolved the  president’s office and made himself the successor of Paul von Hindenburg. This was however in breach of the Enabling Act, and Hitler did not use the title as “president” but called himself “Führer and Chancellor of the Reich.” He would, after that often make use of the title in combination with other political leadership positions he took, for instance ” Germanic Führer” or “Führer and Supreme Commander of the Army”

The Enabling Act: Hitler Seizes Absolute Power

(See Main Article: The Enabling Act: Hitler Seizes Absolute Power)

The Enabling Act ( Ermächtigungsgesetz ) of 1933 gave the German Cabinet power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat, the legislative bodies of the Weimar government. It gave Adolf Hitler complete and absolute power.

The passage of the Enabling Act required Hitler to gain support from a quorum from a super-majority of the entire Reichstag; this process was made easier by nearly all Communist and some Social Democrat deputies being arrested under the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended civil liberties after the burning of the Reichstag under the auspices of the beginning of a Communist revolution. But to win the rest of the votes, he needed to convince religious parliamentarians that Germany’s religious life would be kept secure and that its civil society would not vanish.

Immediately before and after the opening of parliament, Hitler negotiated with the Center Party to get their support for the Enabling Act, which needed a two-thirds margin to pass. The legislation set aside parts of the Weimar Constitution, granting Hitler and his cabinet the right to rule by decree. Hitler personally negotiated with the leaders of the Center Party on March 20 and 22, promising that he would respect their rights and freedoms. He gave the following assurances to entice them to vote for the Enabling Act:

• the state governments would continue to function
• church schools could continue to operate
• the concordats already in force with the German states of Prussia, Bavaria, and Baden would be honored
• judges would remain inviolable
• the parliament would continue to exist

The promises helped secure the Center Party’s votes for the Enabling Act. Unfortunately for the Center Party, Adolf Hitler would use the power they bestowed on him to violate every one of these promises.

Over the next few months, Hitler swept away all political opposition—including the Catholic Center Party—while simultaneously negotiating a concordat with the Catholic Church. Hitler claimed he only wanted to eliminate political Catholicism, not the religious functions of the Catholic Church. In a meeting with Bishop Wilhelm Berning on April 26, and in other meetings with Catholic leaders, he insisted that his regime would not restrict organizations sponsored by the Catholic Church. He also feigned being offended by accusations that he would attack Christianity. On the contrary, he lied, he would never think of intervening in the rights of the Church and would not touch the Catholic youth organizations nor interfere with religious education. Two days later, Hitler wrote to Cardinal Adolf Bertram, assuring him that Catholic organizations had nothing to fear. Hitler again expressed his desire to live in peace with the Catholic Church when he met with the papal nuncio, Cesare Orsenigo, on May 8.

How Hitler used Christianity to pass the Enabling Act

Another reason Adolf Hitler needed to reassure Germans in 1933 that his regime supported Christianity was to deflect growing unease over the anticlerical elements of the Nazi Party. By early 1933, German Catholic bishops had even banned Catholics from joining the Nazi Party (though this ban was lifted in late March 1933). To allay the growing criticism of Nazism as anti-Christian in 1933, Hitler stressed his regime’s commitment to Christianity. In his first radio speech to the nation after becoming chancellor, Hitler promised to protect Christianity, since it was the basis for Germany’s morality and family life, though in the speech, he did not explicitly claim that he or his party was Christian.

Indeed, most of his speeches between 1933–34 that mentioned his support for Christianity stopped short of professing any personal faith in it or Jesus. The closest he came during that time to professing Christian faith publicly was during a mid-February speech in 1933. As in his 1922 profession of faith, he was responding to criticism from the Center Party that Nazism was a danger to Christianity. Adolf Hitler countered this opposition by proclaiming that with his regime “Christians and not international atheists” were leading the nation.

Even this was not a clear-cut profession of personal faith, though it implied he was a Christian. In his speech to the German parliament on March 23, 1933, he acknowledged the Christian churches as important institutions in the preservation of the German people, and he called it the basis of morality; still, he stopped short of identifying himself or his party as essentially Christian.

Hitler’s Antisemitism

(See Main Article: Why did Hitler hate the Jews? )

Looking at the horrible way Jews were treated during the Holocaust, Hitler’s hate for them must have been really extreme and apparently there were enough Germans supporting his notion that Jews needed to be eradicated. But what caused all of this?

Historians today still debate the reasons for the Nazi hate for Jews, as there are many factors that might have played a role.

Factors That May Have Contributed

Religious Conflict

• –  Conflicts between Christianity and Judaism have existed for years, which partly helped create an atmosphere of anti-semitism in Europe.

Anti-semitism in Vienna

• – Hitler spent a part of his youth in Vienna, Austria, where anti-semitism was very prevalent and highly advocated. He may have been influenced by some of the ideological ideas of that environment.

Jewish Economic Power

• – At the time when World War 1 broke out, a majority of financial institutions, banks and large companies were controlled by Jewish people. Hitler blamed the loss of the war, the economic downfall of Germany and the bad decisions of the Weimar Republic on Jewish capitalism.

Conspiracy theory

• – Hitler believed that the Jewish had some conspiracy to control the world and that they would stab Germans in the back whenever it would suit them.

Biological differences

These factors are only explain part of the answer to the question. For more information on this topic, we recommend listening to an interview with European History Richard Weikart, who discusses the religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler. A cursory look at Hitler’s value system goes a long way toward explaining why he thought it was in the best interest of the German people to murder millions of its own fellow citizens.

Adolf Hitler and His Ideology

(See Main Article: What Did Hitler Believe In? )

When Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture Him was placed in the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial in December 2012, it provoked considerable contention and even ire. In that exhibit, only the back of the kneeling supplicant is visible. In earlier displays of Him at art galleries around the world, visitors usually approached the praying figure from the back and received a jolt when they walked around to the front and recognized the face: a youthful rendition of Adolf Hitler. According to the notes accompanying one exhibition of Him , the “dictator is represented in the act of pleading for forgiveness.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish organization, roundly criticized the statue’s display at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial as “a senseless provocation which insults the memory of the Nazis’ Jewish victims.”

There is certainly no evidence he ever sought forgiveness from God, for he was convinced to the end of his life that he was obeying his God. However, in his unreliable memoir, Mein Kampf , Adolf Hitler claimed he did kneel in prayer, at least on one occasion. To atheists, they argue that what Hitler believed in was Christianity. When World War I broke out, he wrote, “Overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.” After Hitler came to power, he enjoined his fellow Germans in a 1936 speech, “Let us fall down upon our knees and beg the Almighty to grant us the strength to prevail in the struggle for freedom and the future and the honor and the peace of our Volk, so help us God!” Hitler intentionally cultivated an image of piety and righteousness that served him well in his climb to power and in maintaining popularity after achieving power. He wanted people to see him as a kneeling, devout supplicant.

Some people still believe in the image of Adolf Hitler the Pious and use it as a weapon against religion, while others recoil in horror at the thought that Hitler could have been religious. One of the most famous atheists in the world, Richard Dawkins, crossed swords intellectually with Pope Benedict XVI over the religious identity of Hitler and Nazism. On his papal visit to Britain in September 2010, Benedict harshly criticized atheism and secularism while lauding Britain for having fought “against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society.” Dawkins was livid. In his article “Ratzinger [i.e., Benedict] Is an Enemy of Humanity,” Dawkins reminded readers that Benedict was a former member of the Hitler Youth; thus, Dawkins maintained, Benedict should be more circumspect. Dawkins insisted that Hitler was not an atheist but a Catholic who sincerely believed in God. He even quoted a 1922 speech where Hitler called himself a Christian and referred to Jesus as “my Lord and Savior.”

Adolf Hitler: Part 1- Divergent views

This controversy over Adolf Hitler’s religion—as well as the relationship between religion and Nazism in general—has raged since Hitler emerged as a significant political figure in Munich in the early 1920s. Otto Strasser, a leader in the early Nazi movement who broke away from Hitler in 1930, told his brother in the late 1920s why he was increasingly dissatisfied with Hitler: “We are Christians; without Christianity Europe is lost. Hitler is an atheist.” Despite the fact that Hitler never renounced his membership in the Catholic Church, before he seized power in 1933 and for about two months thereafter, the Catholic hierarchy forbade Catholics from joining the Nazi Party because they viewed Hitler’s movement as fundamentally hostile to their faith. In 1937, Pope Pius XI condemned the Nazi regime, not only for persecuting the Catholic Church and harassing its clergy, but also for teaching ideology that conflicted with Catholic doctrines. The White Rose, a student resistance movement at the University of Munich that espoused Catholicism, wrote in a 1942 anti-Nazi pamphlet, “Every word that issues from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace he means war and when he most sinfully names the name of the Almighty, he means the force of evil, the fallen angel, Satan.” Hans and Sophie Scholl and other White Rose activists were guillotined after they were caught distributing leaflets denouncing the German atrocities in Eastern Europe and encouraging their fellow Germans to oppose the regime.

And yet, Hitler was incredibly popular during the Third Reich, almost to the very end. Most Germans who voted for Hitler or joined his party considered themselves good Christians, and many of them hailed Hitler as a protector of Christianity from the godless communists. Some Protestant pastors and Catholic priests joined the Nazi Party and cheered Hitler on, and some internationally respected Protestant theologians climbed aboard the Nazi juggernaut, too. By the mid-1930s, about 600,000 German Protestants had joined the German Christian movement, which synthesized Nazi ideology and liberal Protestant theology. In 1933, Hitler publicly promoted the German Christian candidates in the Protestant Church elections, giving encouragement to those who hoped for an amalgamation of Christianity and Nazism.

Some argue that what Hitler believed in were more nefarious beliefs. The conflicting views of Hitler as atheist or Hitler as devout Christian are further complicated by the widespread view of Hitler as a disciple of the occult. Hitler’s evil was so intense and inexplicable that some suspect he must have had supernatural connections with the underworld that enabled him to sway the masses and rise to power in Germany. Myriads of books and films purport to prove Hitler was a follower of the black arts.

So what did Adolf Hitler believe in? Was he an atheist, a Christian, or an occultist? He was none of these three. He was not an atheist, because he sincerely believed in the existence of God. He was not a Christian, because the God he believed in was not Jesus Christ or the God of the Christian Bible. He was not an occultist, because he overtly rejected occult beliefs and mystical practices.

What Adolf Hitler believed in was pantheism—or, if not pantheism, at least close to it. He believed that nature, or the entire cosmos, is God. At first glance, it might seem that Hitler’s pantheistic worship of nature is incidental, a bit of trivia that does little or nothing to help us understand the man and the atrocities that he committed. But to suppose this would be a mistake. Hitler’s devotion to nature as a divine being had a grim corollary: the laws of nature became his infallible guide to morality. Whatever conformed to the laws of nature was morally good, and whatever contravened nature and its ways was evil.

When Hitler explained how he hoped to harmonize human society with the scientific laws of nature, he emphasized principles derived from Darwinian theory, especially the racist forms of Darwinism prominent among Darwin’s German disciples. These laws included human biological inequality (especially racial inequality), the human struggle for existence, and natural selection. In the Darwinian struggle for existence, multitudes perish, and only a few of the fittest individuals survive and reproduce. If this is nature’s way, Hitler thought, then he should emulate nature by destroying those destined for death. Thus, in his twisted vision of religion, Hitler believed he was serving his God by annihilating the allegedly inferior humans and promoting the welfare and prolific reproduction of the supposedly superior Aryans.

Adolf Hitler: Part 2- Nazism as a political religion

Another debate that has exercised historians is whether the Nazi regime itself should be characterized as a “political religion.” Most of those interpreting Nazism as such construe it as a secular substitute for the dominant religion in early twentieth-century Germany (i.e., Christianity). There are some historians who interpret Nazism as a purely political movement and thus question the analytical helpfulness of the idea of political religion. On the other extreme, historians insist that Nazism was not merely quasi-religious or pseudo-religious, but a full-blown religion. Since the debate influences perceptions of what did Adolf  Hitler believe in, I will address it briefly in this introduction.

What Hitler did believe in was the use of religious symbols. There is no doubt Hitler and the Nazi Party appropriated religious symbols, terminology, and emotions in their speeches, mass rallies, and ceremonies. For instance, at the 1936 Nuremberg Party Congress, about 100,000 political leaders in the party gathered at the Zeppelin Field on Friday night. One hundred fifty powerful spotlights arranged in a rectangle around the crowd shined heavenward, creating pillars of light. The Nazis dubbed this spectacle a “cathedral of light,” and before Hitler stepped up to the tribune to deliver his speech, the German Labor Front leader Robert Ley led the Nazi leadership in what he called a “confession of faith,” stating, “In this hour of consecration, where an unending cathedral arches over us, proceeding into infinity, we vow: We believe in a Lord God in heaven, who created us, who guides and protects us, and who has sent you, my Führer, to us, so that you may liberate Germany. That is what we believe, my Führer .”

According to the official Nazi report, this “confession of faith” was greeted with a roar of approval. From the Nazi perspective, the beauty of this minimalist confession of faith in the outdoor cathedral was that it could potentially appeal to anyone who believed in any kind of God, whether Christian or anti-Christian, theist, deist, or pantheist. Indeed, the Nuremberg Party Rally continued through the weekend, and when it came time for the normal Sunday morning worship services for the Christian God, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy conspicuously participated in Nazi Party festivities instead of going to church. Instead of celebrating the Lord’s Day, Sunday at the Nuremberg Party Rally was SA Day, a time to honor the SA, or Nazi stormtroopers.

In his speech immediately after Ley’s “confession of faith,” Adolf Hitler gave this faith a slightly different twist, exhorting the party leaders to put their faith in the German Volk. He first rehearsed the way that Germany had risen up from its position of weakness and degradation since he had come to power four years earlier. This “miracle of renewal in our people (Volk),” Hitler suggested, came about not as a “gift from heaven for unworthy people” but because they had fanatically sacrificed for the “resurrection of a Volk.” “It is the faith in our Volk that has made us small people (Menschen) great,” Hitler pronounced. The future, he believed, was auspicious because the German Volk was “ born again .” The speech was saturated with religious terminology, most of it directed not toward God, but toward the German Volk. Nonetheless, Hitler closed his speech by promising the young people in Germany that if they would do their duty, “then God the Lord will never forsake our Volk.” This 1936 speech was not unusual, as Hitler often invoked religious themes to arouse consecration to the German Fatherland while simultaneously appealing to God as the providential creator and sustainer of the German Volk.

Apparently, Adolf Hitler liked the effects of the “cathedral of light,” for the Nazis repeated it the following two years (the last party rallies held because of the advent of World War II). In his closing speech at the 1937 rally, Hitler reflected on the quasi-religious experience of that eventful week, stating, “What almost shook us several times this week was the confession of faith in a volkisch (nationalist-racist) worldview of a new generation, and more than once hundreds of thousands stood here, no longer under the impression of a political rally, but under the spell of deep prayer!” At the “cathedral of light” at the 1938 Nuremberg Rally, Ley took matters a step further by almost deifying Hitler before the Führer came to the podium. During the Second German Empire (1871–1918), a common nationalist slogan had been “One Volk—one Empire—one God.” Just about every German would have recognized this saying, since it was emblazoned on many postcards and even on a German postage stamp during the Second Empire. Ley used an altered version of that saying when he introduced Hitler to about 140,000 Nazi political leaders:

One Volk—one Empire—one Führer! How often in the last decade and above all in the last years has this call of all Germans resounded upward again and again. This battle cry of all Germans is jubilation and joy for some, confession and faith for others, and pride and power for the entire German nation. Young and old, rich and poor, without distinction all Germans repeat it again and again, and so we also want to let this confession of Germans ring out in this solemn hour in the cathedral of light: One Empire—One Volk—One Führer!

In this new slogan, which was widely disseminated in the Third Reich on posters and a postage stamp, the Führer had replaced God. Just two years earlier, Ley had led the gathered Nazi Party officials in confessing faith in a God who had sent the Führer. By 1938, the confession of faith did not even mention God and seemed to imply that Hitler was now filling His shoes.

To be sure, Adolf Hitler likely never thought he was God. But as many historians have suggested, he reveled in Messianism and often portrayed himself as the man chosen by Providence to liberate Germany and lead it to greatness. Derek Hastings concludes in his detailed examination of Hitler’s early religious identity that by the time Hitler left prison in late 1924, he had come “to see his political mission in increasingly all-encompassing messianic terms.” In The “Hitler Myth , ” Ian Kershaw does not use the term Messianism, as Hastings and some other historians do, but he does note that a “pseudo-religious motivation . . . obviously lay for many behind the Hitler cult.” Indeed, plenty of Germans looked upon their Führer as a quasi-deity, elevating him high above mere mortals. After Goebbels finished reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf in October 1925, he raved in his diary, “Who is this man? Half plebeian, half God! Actually the Christ or only John [the Baptist]?” The messianic thrust of the Hitler cult manifested itself frequently, as in this Hitler Youth song at the 1934 Nuremberg Party Rally:

We are the joyful Hitler Youth We need no Christian virtue For our Führer Adolf Hitler Is ever our Mediator. No pastor, no evil one, can hinder Us from feeling as Hitler’s children. We follow not Christ but Horst Wessel, Away with incense and holy water. The church can be taken away from me,

The swastika is redemption on the earth,

It will I follow everywhere,

Baldur von Schirach [leader of the Hitler Youth], take me along!

Not only was this a clear expression of a desire to replace Christianity with Nazism, but it also exalted Hitler to a position that the Christian churches gave Jesus, who is often called the Mediator in the Bible and Christian theology.

In the end, if all one means by “political religion” is the political appropriation of religious symbols, terminology, rites, ceremonies, and emotions, then clearly the Nazis excelled at this. However, is this enough for Nazism to qualify as a religion, a political religion, or a secular religion, all terms used at times to describe Nazism?

Moreover, what did Adolf Hitler believe in regarding Nazism as a religion? This is easier to decipher, since he explicitly answered this question more than once. In Mein Kampf , he explicitly rejected the idea that he should become a religious reformer, insisting that Nazism was a political, not a religious movement. In fact, throughout his career, Hitler urged neutrality on purely religious questions, and he tolerated a variety of views about religion within the Nazi Party. Some leading Nazis considered themselves Christians, while others were staunchly and forthrightly anti-Christian. Some Nazis embraced occultism, while others scoffed at it. Some promoted neo-paganism, while others considered pagan rites and ceremonies absurd. Hitler really did not care what they believed about the spiritual realm as long as it did not conflict with Nazi political and racial ideology. In October 1941, in the midst of a diatribe against the Christian churches, Hitler admitted that Nazism could never be a complete substitute for religion because it did not offer anyone a coherent position on metaphysics. Thus he counseled toleration for those who had a heartfelt desire for religion. He remarked that someone feeling a need for metaphysics cannot simply be handed the Party Program.

Though Adolf Hitler dismissed the idea that Nazism was a religion, he did consider it more than just a political party or movement. He often presented Nazism as a fundamental worldview that provided a foundation for his political ideology and policies. The second volume of Mein Kampf contains two chapters on Weltanschauung, or worldview (rendered as “philosophy” in the standard English translation), in which Hitler argued that any successful political movement must be built on a coherent worldview. Hitler expressed the kernel of this worldview in one of these chapters:

The folkish worldview [i.e., Hitler’s own position] finds the importance of mankind in its basic racial elements. In the state it sees in principle only a means to an end and construes its end as the preservation of the racial existence of man. Thus, it by no means believes in an equality of the races, but along with their difference it recognizes their higher or lesser value and feels itself obligated, through this knowledge, to promote the victory of the better and stronger, and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker in accordance with the eternal will that dominates this universe. Thus, in principle, it serves the basic aristocratic idea of Nature and believes in the validity of this law down to the last individual. It sees not only the different value of the races, but also the different value of individuals. . . . But it cannot grant the right to existence even to an ethical idea if this idea represents a danger for the racial life of the bearers of a higher ethics.

In this passage, Adolf Hitler hinted at his pantheism by equating the “eternal will that dominates the universe” with the “aristocratic idea of Nature.” However, he clearly enunciated the central tenet of his worldview: the primacy of race. This racial worldview attempted to explain the essence of human existence and the meaning of history, while also providing moral guidance. Therefore, what did Hitler believe in regarding pantheism? Though this does not make Hitler’s ideology a religion per se, his comprehensive philosophy of life inevitably came into conflict with many religions, because most religions also claim to provide answers to these fundamental questions. Hitler recognized this problem, maintaining in Mein Kampf that a worldview such as his own must be intolerant toward any other worldview that conflicts with it—and here he specifically mentioned Christianity as a rival.

He knew that converting Germans to his worldview of what Hitler believed in would not leave the religious landscape unchanged. In an August 1933 speech, Hitler stated, “The unity of the Germans must be guaranteed by a new worldview, since Christianity in its present form is no longer equal to the demands being placed on the bearers of national unity.” Three years later, in his cultural speech to the Nuremberg Party Rally, he told the party faithful, “ A Christian era can only possess a Christian art, a National Socialist era only a National Socialist art .” Hitler believed that the triumph of his worldview would transform the entire culture of Germany, whereupon it would no longer reflect previous religious concerns.

What did Adolf Hitler believe in regarding secularism? Did Hitler’s desire to supplant Christian culture with Nazi culture mean he was intent on secularizing German society? This is hotly debated. Already in 1947, the German theologian Walter Künneth argued that Nazism was the result of religious decay and secularization. The roots of Nazi ideology, he thought, were found in Darwin, Nietzsche, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Oswald Spengler, whose ideas he considered products of secularization. Many scholars today agree with Künneth that Nazism is a manifestation of secularization. Detlev Peukert, for instance, argued in his seminal essay, “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science,” for the importance of a secularized version of science in shaping Nazi ideology. Claudia Koonz explicitly calls Nazis “modern secularists” and interprets the Nazi conscience as a “secular ethos.” Richard Steigmann-Gall, meanwhile, strenuously objects to this interpretation, arguing instead that “Nazism was not the result of a ‘Death of God’ in secularized society, but rather a radicalized and singularly horrific attempt to preserve God against secularized society.” And Todd Weir, while admitting that the Nazi stance toward secularism was ambiguous and even paradoxical, nevertheless argues that the Nazi’s espousal of “positive Christianity” made them opponents of secularism.

Scholars and especially popular works on Hitler, in fact, have identified him with just about every major expression of religion present in early twentieth-century Germany: Catholic Christianity, non-Catholic Christianity, non-Christian monotheism, deism, pantheism, occultism, agnosticism, and atheism. One reason for this confusion is that Hitler consciously obfuscated his position whenever he thought he could gain political capital needed to secure power or retain popularity. While many of his long-term goals were fixed, he was flexible about short-term policies, and he was not averse to concealing his goals if he knew they would not be popular.

Another problem creating confusion about what Hitler believed in is that some people (though usually not historians, who know better) think the Nazis had a coherent religious position. Some wrongly assume that because Rosenberg or Himmler embraced neo-paganism, this must have been the official Nazi position. However, there was no official Nazi position on religion, except perhaps for the rather vague and minimalist position that some kind of God existed.

Was Adolf Hitler a Christian?

(See Main Article: Was Hitler a Christian? )

Was Adolf Hitler a Christian? This question has been asked by historians and World War Two aficionados for decades. During Hitler’s lifetime, some observers warned that he was the Antichrist. In 1942, Arthur Szyk, a Polish Jew living in the United States, drew a caricature of Hitler as the Antichrist bringing death and destruction to humanity. Many Christian leaders in the 1930s and 1940s, both within and outside Germany, recognized Hitler was no friend to their religion. In 1936, Karl Spiecker, a German Catholic living in exile in France, detailed the Nazi fight against Christianity in his book Hitler gegen Christus ( Hitler against Christ ). The Swedish Lutheran bishop Nathan Soderblom, a leading figure in the early twentieth-century ecumenical movement, was not so ecumenical that he included Hitler in the ranks of Christianity. After meeting with Hitler sometime in the mid-1930s, he stated, “As far as Christianity is concerned, this man is chemically pure from it.”

Reasons to Believe

Many Germans, however, had quite a different image of their Führer. They rarely asked if Adolf Hitler was a Christian. Aside from those who saw him as a Messiah worthy of veneration and maybe even worship, many regarded him as a faithful Christian. Rumors circulated widely in Nazi Germany that Hitler carried a New Testament in his vest pocket, or that he read daily a Protestant devotional booklet. Though these rumors were false, at the time many Germans believed them.

Indeed, savvy politician that he was, Hitler often cultivated the image of being a Christian. One of the more spectacular examples was the striking photograph that Heinrich Hoffmann captured on April 23, 1932, as Hitler was exiting the Marienkirche (Mary’s Church) in Bremerhaven. In that photo, a bright cross is hovering directly over Hitler’s head, giving him a halo effect. This photo was included in Hoffmann’s popular book of Hitler photographs, Hitler wie ihn keiner kennt ( Hitler as no one knows him ) . The caption reinforced the image: “A photographic chance event becomes a symbol: Adolf Hitler, the supposed ‘heretic,’ leaving the Marinekirche [sic] in Wilhelmshaven.”

Hoffmann’s claim that this was a “chance event” is rather suspicious, as the photo looks too good to be true. The caption, meanwhile, implied that Hitler was not a heretic, as some presumed, because here he was at church. The photo was such brilliant propaganda that the historian Richard Steigmann-Gall used it on the dust jacket of his 2003 book, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919 –1945 , in which he tries to show the affinities of Nazism and Christianity. Apparently, it still convinces some that Hitler is a Christian.

In any case, sometime between 1935 and 1938, Adolf Hitler apparently decided that he no longer needed to pander to the Christian sensibilities of the German public. In the 1938 edition of Hitler wie ihn keiner kennt, Hoffmann altered the photo by removing the cross) (apparently, Hitler no longer wanted to be associated with this symbol). Hoffmann also changed the caption: “Adolf Hitler after sightseeing at the historic Marinekirche [sic] in Wilhelmshaven.” While Germans viewing the version with the cross would likely think Hitler was leaving a church service, the later caption made clear Hitler was not attending a worship service, but merely visiting a historic site.

Most historians today agree that Adolf Hitler was not a Christian in any meaningful sense. Neil Gregor, for instance, warns that Hitler’s “superficial deployment of elements of Christian discourse” should not mislead people to think that Hitler shared the views of “established religion.” Michael Burleigh argues that Nazism was anticlerical and despised Christianity. He recognizes that Hitler was not an atheist, but “Hitler’s God was not the Christian God, as conventionally understood.” In his withering but sober analysis of the complicity of the Christian churches in Nazi Germany, Robert Ericksen depicts Hitler as duplicitous when he presented himself publicly as a Christian.

Hitler’s anti-Christian outlook remained largely submerged before 1924, because—as Hitler himself explained in Mein Kampf — he did not want to offend possible supporters. In August 1924, while he was in Landsberg Prison, Hitler privately told Hess about having to camouflage his opposition to religion, just as he had to hide his enmity toward alcohol. Hitler had remained silent while Hess and fellow Nazis discussed their positions vis-à-vis the Protestant Church, but later he told Hess how he felt. Even though Hitler found playing a religious hypocrite distasteful, he dared not criticize the church, because he knew this might alienate people.

Hitler’s tirade against Christianity in Mein Kampf , including the threat to demolish it, diverged remarkably from his normal public persona. He was usually more circumspect, refraining from open criticism of Christianity. However, many of his colleagues testified that Hitler’s personal opinion about Christianity did not match his hypocritical public stance; Hitler, for his part, thought religion itself was hypocritical. According to Wagener, who accompanied Hitler from 1929 to 1933, Hitler honored Jesus as a great socialist but believed the Christian churches had completely perverted His teachings and were, in fact, teaching the exact opposite.

In reading through Goebbels’ Diaries , Adolf Hitler’s monologues, and Rosenberg’s Diarie s, it is rather amazing how often Hitler discussed religion with his entourage, especially during World War II. He was clearly obsessed with the topic. On December 13, 1941, for example, just two days after declaring war on the United States, he told his Gauleiter (district leaders) that he was going to annihilate the Jews, but he was postponing his campaign against the church until after the war, when he would deal with them. According to Rosenberg, both on that day and the following, Hitler’s monologues were primarily about the “problem of Christianity.” In a letter to a friend in July 1941, Hitler’s secretary Christa Schroeder claimed that in Hitler’s evening discussions at the headquarters, “the church plays a large role.” She added that she found Hitler’s religious comments very illuminating, as he exposed the deception and hypocrisy of Christianity. Hitler’s own monologues confirm Schroeder’s impression.

Reasons to Disbelieve

In fact, Adolf Hitler contemptuously called Christianity a poison and a bacillus and openly mocked its teachings. In a long diatribe ridiculing many core Christian teachings, Hitler told his colleagues that the Christian concept of heaven was insipid and undesirable. After scoffing at doctrines such as the Fall, the Virgin Birth, and redemption through the death of Jesus, Hitler stated, “Christianity is the most insane thing that a human brain in its delusion has ever brought forth, a mockery of everything divine.” He followed this up with a hard right jab to any believing Catholic, claiming that a “Negro with his fetish” is far superior to someone who believes in transubstantiation.

Hitler, in his own twisted mind, believed black Africans were subhumans intellectually closer to apes than to Europeans, so to him, this was a spectacular insult to Catholics. In February 1942, Hitler again scoffed at the basic teachings of Christianity, sarcastically relating the story of humanity from a Christian standpoint. He implied that God was responsible for original sin and commented that God’s method of redemption by sending his Son was a “murderous subterfuge.” Then, according to Hitler, when others did not accept these strange teachings, the church tortured them into submission. In the course of this anti-Christian diatribe, Hitler called the Catholic Church a form of idolatry and “Satanic superstition.”

Another theme that surfaced frequently in Adolf Hitler’s monologues of 1941–42 was that the sneaky first-century rabbi Paul was responsible for repackaging the Jewish worldview in the guise of Christianity, thereby causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. In December 1941, Hitler stated that although Christ was an Aryan, “Paul used his teachings to mobilize the underworld and organize a proto-Bolshevism. With its emergence the beautiful clarity of the ancient world was lost.” In fact, since Christianity was tainted from the very start, Hitler sometimes referred to it as “Jew-Christianity.” While Hitler often associated Jesus with Aryan traits and socialism, he consistently lambasted Christianity as Jewish and communist. He denigrated the “Jew-Christians” of the fourth century for destroying Roman temples and even called the destruction of the Alexandrian library a “JewishChristian deed.” Hitler thus construed the contest between Christianity and the ancient pagan world as part of the racial struggle between Jews and Aryans.

In the end, the evidence is preponderant against Hitler embracing any form of Christianity for most of his adult life. Was Hitler a Christian? No.

Even though he tried to palm himself off as a Christian when it served his political purposes, none of his friends and comrades considered him one. Even though he never officially left the Catholic Church, Schroeder claimed he promised to withdraw from the church immediately after the war to symbolize the dawn of a new historical era. All of Adolf Hitler’s close associates agreed with Schroeder, testifying that he was antagonistic toward Christianity. He admired the whip-wielding Jesus, whom he considered a fellow Aryan warrior fighting against the allegedly infernal Jews, but he had utter contempt for the Jesus who told His followers to love their enemies and turn the other cheek.

He also did not believe that Jesus’s death had any significance other than showing the perfidy of the Jews, nor did he believe in Jesus’s resurrection. In private conversations and monologues he railed at Christianity because it had followed the lead of that insidious Jewish rabbi Paul. Despite Hitler’s disingenuous public statements, and despite his esteem for (his anti-Semitic version of) Jesus, it is abundantly clear that Hitler did not consider himself a Christian.

“Adolf Hitler Didn’t Survive WW2 or Secretly Flee to Argentina. Here’s Why So Many Think He Did” For the full “History Unplugged” podcast, click here !

Adolf Hitler and His Religion

(See Main Article: Hitler’s Religion: Christianity, Atheism, Pantheism? )

In mid-January of 1940, Adolf Hitler was discussing with his colleagues a rather frequent topic of his conversations and monologues: the church. After he sarcastically imitated Niemöller, the Confessing Church leader who was incarcerated in a concentration camp, someone in his entourage indicated to him that posterity might not be able to figure out what Hitler’s religion was, because he never openly stated his beliefs. The person who brought this to Hitler’s attention had clearly noticed the discrepancy between his private expressions of intense antipathy to Christianity and his public religious image. Since many in Hitler’s entourage were also intensely anti-Christian, perhaps they were trying to provoke him to state his personal religious views publicly. In any case, this observation about the inscrutability of Hitler’s religious views still has merit today— even though we have far more information about Hitler available to us than most of his contemporaries had.That, of course, does not mean everyone draws the same conclusion. As we have seen, some people today interpret Hitler as an atheist, while others insist he was a Christian. In fact, he has been described as an adherent of just about every major religious position in twentieth-century European society (excepting Judaism, of course), which included agnosticism, pantheism, panentheism, occultism, deism, and non-Christian theism.

Interestingly, when he was confronted in January 1940 with the observation that people might not know Hitler’s religion, he suggested that, on the contrary, it should not be difficult for people to figure it out. After all, he asserted, he had never allowed any clergy to participate in his party meetings or even in funerals for party comrades. He continued, “The Christian-Jewish pestilence is surely approaching its end now. It is simply dreadful, that a religion has even been possible, that literally eats its God in Holy Communion.” Hitler clearly thought that anyone should be able to figure out that he was not a Christian. Nonetheless, Rosenberg reported in his diary later that year that Hitler had determined that he should divulge his negative views about Christianity in his last testament “so that no doubt about his position can surface. As head of state he naturally held back—but nevertheless after the war clear consequences will follow.” Many times, Hitler told his colleagues that he would reckon with Christianity after the successful conclusion of the war.

Interestingly, even in these conversations, Adolf Hitler only indicated what he did not  believe. He did not explain at that time what he  did  believe about God, the after-life, or other religious issues. Indeed, it is much easier to figure out what Hitler did not believe than to figure out Hitler’s religion and feelings. Probably, this is partly because Hitler considered God ineffable. Hitler’s God was not one who revealed himself clearly to humanity, but a mysterious being who superseded human knowledge.

Adolf Hitler: What he did not believe

So, what did Adolf Hitler not believe? He continually rejected Christianity, calling it a Jewish plot to undermine the heroic ideals of the (Aryan-dominated) Roman Empire. He did not accept the deity of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, or indeed any of the miracles of Jesus. There is no evidence that he believed in a triune God. Though he esteemed Jesus as an Aryan fighter against Jewish materialism who was martyred for his anti-Jewish stance, he did not ascribe to Jesus’s death any significance in human salvation. Indeed, he did not believe in salvation at all in the Christian sense of the term, because he denied a personal afterlife. Despite his public invocations to God, Hitler also did not believe in the efficacy of prayer. His God responded to people and judged them according to their works, not their words. Although he spurned Christianity, this did not lead him to disbelieve in every form of deity, however. He overtly rejected atheism, associating it with “Jewish-Bolshevism.” Further, he explicitly condemned mysticism, occultism, and neo-paganism. Thus, it is evident Hitler was neither a Christian, atheist, occultist, nor neo-paganist.

While this narrows the range of options of Hitler’s religion slightly, it still leaves us with agnosticism, pantheism, panentheism, deism, and non-Christian theism. A reasonable case could be made for more than one of these options. In order solve this puzzle, however, one must not only examine the full panoply of his religious statements but also decipher how to weigh those statements on Hitler’s religion. Are his private statements more revealing of his true convictions than his public speeches? Probably, but even his private statements must be used cautiously. Are his books a better indication of his personal beliefs than his speeches? This is likely, because he seemed to be more systematic in explaining his worldview in  Mein Kampf  and in his  Second Book . However, they also served propaganda purposes and must be used carefully as well. There also remains the question of whether Hitler even had a coherent metaphysic; if not, perhaps there is no single answer to what Hitler’s religion was.

One problem is that Adolf Hitler often portrayed God as an impersonal force, yet sometimes he implied God did take a personal interest in humanity, or at least in the German people’s destiny. Though he usually insisted that God does not intervene in the natural cause-and-effect relationships in the universe, at times he seemed to ascribe a role to Providence in history. When he survived assassination attempts, for instance, he took it as a sign from Providence that he was specially chosen to fulfill a divine mission. Until the very end of World War II, he thought his God would not fail to bring victory to the German people.

One of the reasons it is unlikely that Hitler was a theist is because he did not seem to think God could contravene the laws of nature. Hitler often called the laws of nature eternal and inviolable, thus embracing determinism. He interpreted history as a course of events determined by the racial composition of people, not by their religion or other cultural factors. The way to understand humanity and history, according to Hitler, was to study the laws of nature. He considered science, not religious revelation, the most reliable path to knowledge. What Hitler thought science revealed was that races are unequal and locked in an ineluctable struggle for existence, which would determine the future destiny of humanity.

Whether Hitler construed the laws of nature as the creation of a deistic or theistic God, or the emanation of a pantheistic God, he clearly grounded his morality on the laws of nature, which he consistently portrayed as the will of God. Since nature brought about biological improvement through struggle, Hitler defined moral goodness as whatever contributed to biological progress. Evil or sin, in Hitler’s opinion, was anything that produced biological degeneration. Thus, Hitler thought he was operating in complete harmony with God’s will by sterilizing people with disabilities and forbidding the intermarriage of Germans and Jews. Killing the weak to make way for the strong was part of the divine plan revealed in nature, in Hitler’s view.

Thus, even murdering disabled Germans, launching expansionist wars to wrest territory from allegedly inferior races, and murdering millions of Jews, Sinti, Roma, Slavs, and others defined as subhumans, was not only morally permissible but also obedience to the voice of God and aspects of Hitler’s religion. After all, that was how nature operated, producing superabundantly and then destroying most of the progeny in the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler often reminded his fellow Germans that even if this seemed ruthless, it was actually wise. In any case, he warned that they could not moralize about it, because humans were completely subject to the laws of nature.

Adolf Hitler: Pantheism and brutal power politics

In the end, while recognizing that Adolf Hitler’s religion was somewhat muddled, it seems evident his religion was closest to pantheism. He often deified nature, calling it eternal and all-powerful at various times throughout his career. He frequently used the word “nature” interchangeably with God, Providence, or the Almighty. While on some occasions he claimed God had created people or organisms, at other times (or sometimes in the same breath) he claimed nature had created them. Further, he wanted to cultivate a certain veneration of nature through a reinvented Christmas festival that turned the focus away from Christianity. He also hoped to build an observatory-planetarium complex in Linz that would serve as a religious pilgrimage site to dazzle Germans with the wonders of the cosmos. Overall, it appears a pantheist worldview was where Hitler felt closest to home.

Since it is so difficult to pinpoint exactly what Hitler’s religion was, it might seem his religion was historically inconsequential. However, hopefully this study of Hitler’s religion sheds light on a number of important issues. First, his anti-Christianity obviously shaped the persecution of the Christian churches during the Third Reich. Second, his religious hypocrisy helped explain his ability to appeal to a broad constituency. Third, his trust that his God would reward his efforts and willpower, together with his sense of divine mission, imbued him with hope, even in hopeless circumstances. This helps us understand why he was so optimistic until the very end, when it should have been obvious much earlier that the game was up.

Finally, and most importantly, his religion did not provide him any transcendent morality. Whatever Hitler’s stance on other religious issues, his morality was entirely of this world, derived from his understanding of the workings of nature. This was the most pernicious element of his religion. Adolf Hitler followed what he considered the dictates of nature by stealing, killing, and destroying.

Hitler’s Views on Eugenics and Aryan Supremacy

(See Main Article: Hitler’s Views on Eugenics and Aryan Supremacism )

Adolf Hitler’s views on eugenics were based on social policies that placed the biological improvement of the Aryan Race, or the Germanic “master race” through eugenics at the center of Nazi belief. But Hitler did not create these views. He merely put into policy ideas that circulated throughout the western world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The roots of Nazi ideology were found in Darwin, Nietzsche, and philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain. They made their way to Hitler by way of Julius Friedrich Lehmann, a Munich publisher specializing in medical texts, as well as works disseminating scientific racism and eugenics. Lehmann befriended Hitler in the early 1920s and sent him inscribed copies of many of the racist books churned out by his publishing house, including books that popularized racist anthropology. Lehmann also published the journal Deutschlands Erneuerung ( Germany’s Renewal ), which was filled with articles promoting racism and eugenics. In a March 1922 circular, Hitler recommended that Nazi Party members read this journal, and in 1924 he published an article in it himself (in part because the Nazi press had been banned in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch).

Adolf Hitler and his views of eugenics

In his two books, Adolf Hitler discussed evolutionary theory as vital to his theory of racial struggle and eugenics. Several times throughout Mein Kampf , he specifically employs the term “struggle for existence” (“Kampf um das Dasein”); in fact, the phrase or its plural appears three times in a passage several pages long where Hitler described why the Germans should be both pro-natalist and expansionist. Historian Robert Richards, however, inexplicably claims that Hitler’s views in this passage are un-Darwinian, because—according to Richards— a Darwinian should supposedly want population expansion only within restricted borders, which would allow the fit to triumph over the unfit.

One of the most important factors in Hitler’s reasoning was the living space ( Lebensraum ) is to be taken from allegedly inferior races. Thus, expanding is part of the Darwinian racial struggle that allows the allegedly fitter Nordic race to outcompete allegedly inferior races. Contra Richards, Hitler’s discussion makes perfect sense in a Darwinian world if unequal races are waging a struggle for existence. In fact, the whole idea of Lebensraum was first formulated by Friedrich Ratzel, a Darwinian biologist who later became a geographer. In addition, many pro-natalist eugenicists with impeccable Darwinian credentials, such as Alfred Ploetz or Max von Gruber, agreed with Hitler’s position on expansionism (indeed, they may have influenced Hitler in this matter).

Later in Mein Kampf , in the chapter on “Nation and Race,” Adolf Hitler discussed biological evolution in the context of racial purity. He argued that racial mixing is deleterious to biological organisms, precisely because it would stymie biological evolution. His reasoning was thus: If two organisms at different levels mate, this will result in offspring below the level of the higher parent—“consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level.” Hitler did not use the term “struggle for existence” here, but he described this struggle as a contest between organisms in which the stronger prevail and the weaker are eliminated. He then stated, “If this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher evolution ( Höherentwicklung ) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.

Adolf Hitler did indeed believe in human evolution. It was not a peripheral element of his worldview, either. It helped shape his understanding of the human struggle for existence, natural selection among humans and human races, eugenics, pronatalism, killing the disabled, and expansionism. Of course, Hitler’s evolutionary views were synthesized with many other influences, such as anti-Semitism and nationalism; it was by no means the sole influence on his ideology or policies. But in addition to all the times Hitler explicitly broached the topic of human evolution, he even more frequently discussed the racial struggle for existence, the struggle for existence within the Nordic race, natural selection, and many other Darwinian themes.

Hitler often abbreviated these terms as “racial struggle,” “struggle,” and “selection,” just as many of his contemporaries, including biologists and eugenicists, did, but key issue here is the concept, not the exact terminology. When Hitler spoke about the “selection” of the strongest organisms and the elimination of the weakest, it did not matter whether he used the exact term “natural selection” (though he did at times). He was obviously describing it, and that is the crucial issue.

Adolf Hitler: Eugenics as a scientific policy

After coming to power, Adolf Hitler continued to prioritize science over religion. When meeting with Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, Hitler reminded him that the world was changing, and he thought the Catholic Church should change with it. He reminded the cardinal of the Church’s past conflicts with science over its belief in a six-day creation and the geocentric theory of the solar system. Then he told Faulhaber that the Church must abandon its opposition to Nazi racial and eugenics legislation, because such policies “rest on absolute scientific research.” Strange as it may seem to us today, Hitler saw his racial and eugenics agenda as scientific and all opposition to it as the product of benighted, outmoded religion.

In April 1940, Goebbels reported that, in Hitler’s view, Catholicism was “setting itself in ever sharper contrast to the exact sciences. Its [Catholicism’s] end will be accelerated by this.” In November 1941, Hitler overtly dismissed the teachings of Catholicism and any other religion that contradicted the findings of science. He stated, “Today no one who is familiar with natural science can any longer take seriously the teaching of the church. What stands in contradiction to natural laws cannot be from God.” Again, Hitler was not discounting all religion, but he clearly thought science had a superior claim to knowledge. As Michael Burleigh argues, Hitler “subscribed to the view that science had largely supplanted Christianity, without rationalism eradicating the need for belief, or undermining the existence of a creator God in whom he continued to believe.

Core tenets of Adolf Hitler’s worldview were that the primacy of race in determining historical developments, Aryan superiority (with the Aryans being the sole creators of culture), the Darwinian racial struggle, the need for eugenics policies, and the evils of racial mixing. Hitler also held a view that Aryans had developed an ancient civilization in the mythical Atlantis. In a passage of Mein Kampf that decries racial mixing  writings, Hitler admonished the state to elevate the status of marriage, which under the present system was supposedly contributing to biological decline. By hindering the marriages of those he dubbed inferior, he hoped marriages could “produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.

This post is part of our collection of resources on Nazi Germany.  Click here for our comprehensive information resource on the society, ideology, and key events in Nazi Germany.

Bibliography

Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler

World War Two Casualty Figures

Hitler on his plans to exterminate the Jews

Declassified CIA documents on the personality of Hitler

Additional Resources About Adolf Hitler

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How Did Hitler Come to Power? His Rise and Takeover

Hitler’s religion: christianity, atheism, pantheism, cite this article.

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Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler   Biography

Adolf Hitler was a military leader, politician, and German writer. Hitler was born in Austria on April 20, 1889. Adolf Hitler rose to power in German politics as a leader of the German National Socialist Workers Party, also known as the Nazi Party. Hitler was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945. His policies will trigger World War II and led to the genocide known as the Holocaust, resulting in the death of approximately 6 million Jews and another 5 million combatants.

On April 30, 1945, Hitler seeing himslef defeated committed suicide with his wife Eva Braun, in his bunker in Berlin.

THE BEGINNING

The military dictator Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria on April 20, 1889, and was the fourth of the six children of Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl. Alois Hitler was a very strict father and did not agree with the interest of his son Adolf in the fine arts.

Alois died in 1903 and two years later, Adolf’s mother allowed him to leave school. After Hitler’s mom died, in December 1907, he decided to move to Vienna and worked as a casual laborer and watercolorist. Hitler applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and was rejected twice. The lack of money made him live in shelters. Also, he showed an early interest in German nationalism and the rejection of the authority of Austria-Hungary. This nationalism would become the motivating force of Hitler’s life.

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich and with the outbreak of World War I, he enlisted to serve in the German army. He was accepted in August 1914, although he was still an Austrian citizen. Hitler spent much of his time outside the front line that was present in a series of important battles and was wounded in the Somme battle. He was decorated for his bravery and receives the Wounded Medal (in German Verwundetenabzeichen) which was a German military decoration for soldiers affected by injuries of various magnitudes or by freezing effects while battling.

The experience reinforced his passionate German patriotism and he was surprised by the surrender of Germany in 1918 and he believed, like other German nationalists, that the German army had been betrayed by civilian and Marxist leaders.

POLITICS AND INCARCERATION

After the First World War, Hitler returned to Munich and continued working for the army as an intelligence officer. During the supervision of the activities of the German Workers’ Party (DAP), Hitler adopted many of the anti-Semitic, nationalist and anti-Marxist ideas of the party’s founder, Anton Drexler. Hitler joined the DAP in September 1919.

The DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) often abbreviated as Nazi. Hitler personally designed the party’s flag, appropriating the symbol of the swastika and placing it in a white circle on a red background. He soon became famous for his speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, Marxists, and Jews. In 1921, Hitler replaced Drexler as president of the NSDAP.

On November 8, 1923, Hitler and the SA, the Nazi paramilitary organization Sturmabteilung, broke into a public meeting of the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Gustav Ritter von Kahr. Hitler announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government. After a brief fight that resulted in several deaths, the coup d’etat, known as the “Putsch” had failed.

Hitler was arrested and judged for high treason. He was nine months in prison, during which time most of the first volume of Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) was dictated to his second, Rudolf Hess. A work of propaganda and lies, the book presented Hitler’s plans for the transformation of German society into one based on a race.

RISING TO POWER

With millions of unemployed, the Great Depression in Germany provided a political opportunity for Hitler. In 1932, Hindenburg was re-elected in the presidential elections, easily defeating Adolf Hitler, his main contender. Hitler came in second in the two rounds of the election, getting more than 36 percent of the votes in the final count. The results established Hitler as a major force in German politics. Hindenburg appoints Hitler as chancellor in order to promote political balance.

Hitler used his position as chancellor to form a legal dictatorship. The Decree of the Reichstag fire, whose official name was the Decree of the President of the Reich for the Protection of the People and the State (in German: Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat) announced after a suspicious fire on 27 February 1933 in Parliament, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. Hitler also designed and approved the Law of Habilitation, which gave his cabinet full legislative powers for a period of four years and allowed deviations from the constitution.

Having full control in the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his political allies embarked on a systematic suppression of the remaining political opposition. By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated in the dissolution. On July 14, 1933, Hitler’s Nazi Party was declared the only legal political party in Germany. In October, Hitler ordered the withdrawal of Germany from the League of Nations. The day before Hindenburg’s death in August 1934, the cabinet had promulgated a law abolishing the president’s office, combining his powers with those of the chancellor. Therefore, Hitler became head of state, as well as head of government and was formally appointed leader and chancellor. As head of state, Hitler became supreme commander of the armed forces.

ANTI-SEMITISM

From 1933 until the start of the war in 1939, Hitler and his Nazi regime instituted hundreds of laws and regulations to restrict and exclude Jews in society. Anti-Semitic laws were issued through all levels of government, enforcing the promise of the Nazis to persecute Jews if the party came to power. On April 1, 1933, Hitler implemented a national boycott to Jewish businesses, followed by the introduction of the “Law for the Restoration of Professional Public Function” of April 7, 1933, which was one of the first laws to persecute the Jews through exclusion from the state service.

The “Law for the Restoration of Professional Public Function” was a Nazi application of the Aryan paragraph, a clause that established the exclusion of Jews and non-Aryans from organizations, employment and all aspects of public life.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND HOLOCAUST

In 1938, Hitler, alongside with several other European leaders, signed the Munich Agreement. The treaty ceded the Sudeten districts (Sudetenland in German) to Germany, reversing part of the Treaty of Versailles. As a result of the summit, Hitler was appointed by Time magazine, Man of the Year in 1938. This diplomatic victory had only sharpened his appetite for a renewed German dominance.

The Nazis continued to segregate Jews from German society, banning them from public schools, universities, theaters, sporting events and “Aryan” zones. Jewish doctors were also forbidden to treat “Aryan” patients.

Jews were forced to carry identity cards and, in the autumn of 1938, the Jews had to have their passports stamped with a “J”.

On November 9th and 10th, 1938, a wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms swept Germany, Austria, and parts of the Sudetenland. Nazis destroyed synagogues, acts of vandalism to Jewish houses, schools, businesses and about 100 Jews were killed these days. Called Kristallnacht, the “Crystal Night” or the “Night of broken glass” making reference to the broken glass as a result of the destruction, the pogroms intensified the persecution of the Jews to another level of brutality and violence and nearly 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazis and their collaborators were responsible for the deaths of at least 1 million combatants, including nearly six million Jews, who represented two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe. As part of Hitler’s “final solution,” the genocide promulgated by the regime would come to be known as the Holocaust. Mass killings and executions took place in the concentration and extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Treblinka, among many others. Other persecuted groups including Poles, Communists, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and trade unionists. The prisoners were used as forced laborers for construction projects of the SS, and in some cases, they were forced to build and expand the concentration camps.

The prisoners were exposed to hunger, torture and horrible brutalities including having to endure horrible and painful medical experiments. Hitler probably never visited the concentration camps and did not speak publicly about the mass murders, but the Germans documented the atrocities committed in the camps on paper and in films. Hitler intensified his military activities in 1940 when invading Norway, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, Netherland, and Belgium.

In July, Hitler would order bombings in the United Kingdom, with the aim of invasion. Germany’s formal alliance with Japan and Italy, collectively known as the Axis powers, was agreed at the end of September to dissuade the United States from appearing and protect the British. On June 22, 1941, Hitler violated the 1939 pact of non-aggression with Joseph Stalin , sending a massive army of German troops to the Soviet Union (Operation Redbeard). The invading force seized a huge area of ​​Russia before Hitler temporarily halted the invasion and diverted forces to encircle Leningrad and Kiev. The pause allowed the Red Army to regroup and carry out a counter-offensive attack, and the German advance was stopped outside of Moscow in December 1941.

On December 7, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In honor of the alliance with Japan, Hitler was at war with the allied powers, a coalition that included Britain, the world’s largest empire, led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the United States, the world’s largest economic power, led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; and the Soviet Union which had the largest army in the world, commanded by Stalin .

Militarily Hitler became increasingly erratic, and the Axis powers could not sustain their aggressive and expansive war. At the end of 1942, German forces failed in the Operation Felix in the Suez Canal, leading to the loss of German control over North Africa. The German army also suffered defeats at the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-1943) considered a turning point in the war and the Battle of Kursk (1943).

On June 6th, 1944, on what would come to be known as D-Day, the Western-allied armies landed in northern France. As a result of these major setbacks, many German officers came to the conclusion that defeat was inevitable and if Hitler continued it would result in the destruction of the country. Organized efforts to assassinate the dictator were gained strength, and the opponents approached with an attack on July 20, 1944. However, it was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, carried out by a group of Wehrmacht officers organized by the Colonel Count. Claus von Stauffenberg as part of a coup d’etat based on the so-called Operation Valkyrie.

Early in 1945, Hitler realized that Germany was going to lose the war. The Soviets had led the German army back to Western Europe and the allies were advancing towards Germany from the west. At midnight, on April 29, 1945, Hitler married his girlfriend, Eva Braun, at a small civil ceremony in his Berlin bunker. Hitler was informed of the execution of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and fearing to fall into the hands of enemy troops, Hitler and Braun committed suicide the day after their wedding, on April 30, 1945. Their bodies were taken to a bombed area outside the Reich Chancellery, where they were burned.

Berlin fell on May 2, 1945. Five days later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the allies. The defeat of Hitler marked the end of Germany’s domination in European history and the defeat of fascism. A new global ideological conflict, the Cold War, arose as a result of the devastating violence of World War II.

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Robert Oppenheimer

Robert Oppenheimer Biography

Julius Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was a physicist widely acknowledged as the father of atomic bomb . He was born in New York City, United States. Oppenheimer is renowned for his pivotal role in the development of the Manhattan Project during World War II, which culminated in the creation of the first atomic bombs.

Early years

Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist, scientist, and university professor. He was the son of German-born Julius S. Oppenheimer and artist Ella Friedman. Coming from a wealthy and educated family in New York, his father was a Jewish owner of a significant fortune amassed through his textile factory. This allowed Oppenheimer to enjoy certain comforts and attend the best schools in the city.

In this regard, he was educated at the Ethical Culture School in New York, where he excelled as the top student, with some teachers even asserting that he was better than many of them. Upon graduating from school, he enrolled at Harvard University , where he stood out in all areas, from chemistry to Eastern philosophy, Greek, and Latin, completing his studies at the age of 21.

After some time, Robert Oppenheimer decided to delve into the world of physics, capitalizing on both his aptitude for the subject and its burgeoning prominence across Europe. He moved to England, where he worked with Ernest Rutherford and J. J. Thomson. Alongside these two great scientists, he felt somewhat inadequate, as he believed his performance did not meet the required standards. However, Oppenheimer did not give up.

With the passage of time, he learned from his mentors, and by 1925, feeling more adapted, he began researching atomic energy and secondary-atomic particle energy processes at the Cavendish Laboratory.

A year later, he was at the University of Göttingen , collaborating with Max Born to develop his classical contribution to molecular quantum theory, known in physics as the “Born-Oppenheimer method”. He returned to his home country to teach theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Berkeley between 1929 and 1942. Oppenheimer was a highly political person. Therefore, in the 1930s, he decided to align himself with communist students to support the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, but certain actions led to the demise of his sympathy for the Communist Party.

Contribution to the Manhattan Project

General Leslie Groves alongside Oppenheimer in the development of the Manhattan Project (Circa 1944)

The civil and political situation in Europe was becoming increasingly dangerous. By 1939, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard warned the U.S. government about the dangers of nuclear energy falling into the hands of the Nazis. In response, President Franklin Roosevelt initiated the project for creating the atomic bomb, which was initially under military control, led by General Leslie Groves, an engineer known for overseeing construction projects, including the Pentagon. Later, Oppenheimer was brought on board to manage the administration of the project, which culminated in the construction of the atomic bomb by 1945.

Oppenheimer’s most significant contribution to the Manhattan Project was his leadership and effective coordination among diverse teams of scientists. His vision and problem-solving skills were crucial in overcoming the scientific and technological challenges involved in building an atomic bomb. He supervised the design and testing of the first atomic bombs, including the successful detonation of the plutonium bomb at the Trinity test site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.

This American physicist had the support of many prominent figures in science, such as the great scientist Werner Heisenberg , Erwin Schrödinger, Max Born, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, and Enrico Fermi , with whom he also developed close friendships. The work carried out by these scientists on quantum physics provided significant support for his own research. He gained valuable insights into quantum and relativistic physics, which kept him abreast of new scientific developments. He made contributions to the application of quantum theory to the concept of electron spin.

In his role as the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he fostered discussion and research in quantum and relativistic physics. In 1953, his past ties with the Communist Party led to certain defamation issues. As a result, he was called to a security hearing where the accusation was dismissed, but his access to military secrets was still prohibited. One of the institutions that attacked the scientist the most was the Federation of American Scientists. Oppenheimer was humiliated, and his communications were monitored. Nine years later, President John F. Kennedy , in an effort to rectify this mistake, awarded him the Enrico Fermi Award , granted by the Atomic Energy Commission , which he received from President Johnson himself.

“Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”.

Oppenheimer, confessed to President Harry Truman, that he was not entirely comfortable with the fate of the atomic bomb. After some time, the Cold War erupted, and the Soviet Union announced its possession of an atomic weapon. In response, the United States decided to develop an even more powerful weapon. They approached Oppenheimer to lead the Atomic Energy Commission, but he declined the offer, resulting in his removal from the position. However, he remained the director at the Institute for Advanced Study, thanks to the support given by Einstein , Von Neumann , and Bohr.

After this event, his life took a different turn as he decided to distance himself from the laboratories and leaned towards writing about the studies conducted throughout his scientific career. Notable works include “Science and the Common Understanding” (1954) and a book related to electrodynamics (published posthumously in 1970). In the aftermath of the events in Japan and the grave consequences the atomic bomb had on humanity, he made several proposals aimed at internationally regulating the use of atomic energy to ensure peace.

He staunchly opposed the creation of the hydrogen bomb. However, despite his efforts and those of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission , its development continued. Disheartened, Oppenheimer made the decision to retire from Princeton in 1966 . A year later, on February 18, 1967, he passed away from throat cancer.

Filmography

Visual works inspired by Robert Oppenheimer:

• “Fat Man and Little Boy” (1989): Oppenheimer was portrayed by Dwight Schultz in this film.
• “One Day” (1989): The scientist was portrayed by David Strathairn.
• “Oppenheimer” (2023): The biography of Julius Robert Oppenheimer was brought to the screen in this movie, based on the biographical work “American Prometheus” by author Kai Bird. The character of Julius Robert Oppenheimer was played by Cillian Murphy and directed by Christopher Nolan.

History of Threads

Threads (July 5, 2023) is an application and social media developed by the Meta group, designed to compete with Twitter. While it shares some features with Twitter, it has its own distinctive approach. This application has been specifically designed to share text-based updates and engage in interactive public conversations.

What is Threads?

Threads is a new application and social network created by the Instagram team, which is part of the Meta group, led by billionaire entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg . The launch of Threads has had a positive impact on the market, as Meta’s stocks experienced an increase of nearly 3% during an unfavorable session on Wall Street. Furthermore, in after-hours trading, the stocks continued to rise, increasing by almost 1%. This indicates a favorable reception from investors and the market.

The application has been specifically designed to share moments through text-based updates. It provides a unique and standalone space for real-time posting and engaging in public conversations. With the new application, you have the opportunity to follow and connect with friends and creators who share your same or similar interests, including the people you follow on Instagram.

Threads has been developed with the aim of competing with Twitter and presents features and similarities that go beyond simple text sharing. Just like on Twitter, in this new app, users can create threads, share photos, videos, and links. The application is currently available for launch on iOS and Android devices. It is worth noting that currently, an Instagram account is required to access the app.

Mark Zuckerberg and his Meta team have taken advantage of the recent changes in Twitter following the acquisition by Elon Musk . Twitter has reduced some of its security options, reserving them exclusively for users who purchase Twitter Blue. Meta has identified this gap and has seized the opportunity to attract users to join Threads. The new application stands out for maintaining a wide variety of security controls and providing a safe experience for users.

“The idea is to build an open and friendly space for communities”- Adam Mosseri.

Differences between Threads and Twitter

• Threads currently follows the same security policies as Instagram.
• In Threads , it is not possible to save posts as drafts. You must share posts immediately or delete them.
• Threads does not have a set limit on the number of posts that can be viewed. There is no maximum limit on viewed posts in Threads, unlike the recent limitation imposed by Twitter of 600 posts.
• The new social media does not yet have direct messaging, unlike Twitter.

How to create an account on Threads?

To get started, you need to go to the mobile device’s app store and search for “Instagram Threads”. Once found, click on download and install the application. Once installed, open the app and access Threads using your Instagram username.

Next, complete your personal information and adjust the security options according to your preferences. Once this process is done, you will be ready to explore the application, change your profile picture, and start following people and topics that interest you.

It should be noted that automatically, anyone under the age of 16, or under the age of 18 in certain countries, their profile will be set to private when joining Threads.

When Instagram users sign up for this new social network, they receive a Threads badge on their Instagram profile. This badge displays a number indicating the sequence in which they created their account on this new app.

How is Threads used?

Threads offers a user interface similar to that of Twitter, allowing users to interact with other users’ posts from the “Home” section. Additionally, through the search icon, it is possible to find other users on this red social.

In the “Home” section, you will find posts from the people you follow, as well as recommended content from new creators that you have yet to discover. Posts have a limit of 500 characters and can include links, photos, and videos up to five minutes in length. Additionally, you have the option to easily share a Threads post to your Instagram Story or share it as a link on the platform of your choice.

To create a thread in this app, simply click on the notebook icon. Once you have written your message, publish it and continue with the text at the bottom. Just like on Instagram, the heart icon shows recent activity on your account, allowing you to see feedback and interaction with your posts.

Similarly, it is important to note that if you block an account on Threads, the same account will also be blocked on Instagram. This means that blocking actions are applied collectively on both platforms.

How to delete an account on Threads?

It is important for users to note that if they wish to delete their account on Threads, it is likely that their Instagram account will also be deleted. Currently, the only available option is to temporarily deactivate the account on this application, but it can only be permanently deleted if you delete your Instagram account.

Metallica history

Metallica is an American thrash metal band from Los Angeles and based in San Francisco. It is considered one of the leading groups in the subgenre and throughout its 35-year career it has won numerous awards, including 9 Grammys, 2 American Music Awards, 2 MTV awards, 2 Billboard awards, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1980 – Beginnings

The history of the band begins in 1980 when Lars Ulrich, the son of tennis player Torben Ulrich, placed an ad in the magazine Recycler looking for a guitarist for a metal band influenced by the British New Wave of Heavy Metal. James Hetfield responded to the ad and joined Ulrich as the first members of the band. Ron McGovney joined as bassist and Lloyd Grant as lead guitarist. With this first formation, the band recorded its first demo, Hit the Lights, considered one of the first thrash metal songs. However, they soon realized that the lineup was not working and Lloyd was replaced by Dave Mustaine.

Despite the early disastrous performances due to the lack of experience of the members, the band continued and released No Life ’till Leather, showing a more aggressive sound. Additionally, Ron McGovney was replaced by Cliff Burton as bassist and Dave Mustaine was replaced by Kirk Hammett due to his alcohol addiction. Since then, James Hetfield has taken on both the role of rhythm guitarist and singer.

1983 – Release of ‘Kill ‘Em All’

With this new lineup and having Johnny Zazula as their manager, t he band released in 1983 Kill ‘Em All, which gained notoriety in the metal scene and sold more than 300,000 copies. After a tour of the United States and a concert in Holland where they reached their largest audience to date, with 5,000 people, the band released the album Ride the Lightening with Megaforce Records in 1984, which received critical acclaim for its melodic sound.

“1991 – Release of the ‘The Black Album'”

After this work, the band released Master of Puppets in 1986 and embarked on a promotional tour that was cut short by an accident in which the bassist Cliff Burton died. After reflecting on their future, the band incorporated Jason Newsted and recorded …And Justice for All, an album with a denser sound that, despite its commercial success and a Grammy nomination, received criticism for being unoriginal and moving away from heavy metal. However, it wouldn’t be until the release of their album Metallica in 1991, known as The Black Album, that they reached great success, selling half a million copies in the first week of sales in the United States and reaching the top of the Billboard chart. This work led to two similar albums, Load in 1996 and ReLoad in 1997, which received negative reviews for their proximity to alternative rock and their distance from traditional heavy metal, disappointing their older fanbase.

“2001 – Documentary, Tours, Awards”

In 2001, Jason Newsted left the band and Metallica struggled to find a suitable replacement for some time. Therefore, they had to record their next album, St. Anger, with their producer Bob Rock playing bass. However, Robert Trujillo soon joined the band’s lineup. Three years later, the documentary Some Kind of Monster was released, which portrays the recording process of the last album and the internal conflicts that the band had with Dave Mustaine. After a tour in 2006 in which they played Master of Puppets again to celebrate its 20th anniversary, and the release of a compilation of their videos titled The Videos, Metallica was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Later, they released Death Magnetic in 2008 and the conceptual album Lulu in 2011, which was poorly received by their fans. In 2012, the band founded their own record label, Blackened, and performed a concert in Antarctica to raise awareness about polar melting and environmental crisis . In 2016, they released Hardwired… to Self-Destruct. Currently, the band is still active.

Biography of Cleopatra

Cleopatra (69 BC – August 12, 30 BC) was the last Queen of Egypt, belonging to the Ptolemaic dynasty. She was born in Alexandria, Egypt. Her father was Ptolemy XII and her mother was Cleopatra V Tryphena. Cleopatra married her brother Ptolemy XIII, as a strategy to maintain the reign, then they both inherited the throne in 51 BC. Cleopatra is said to have possessed exceptional beauty. Her father was not well-liked by his people as he showed little interest in the problems of the Egyptian people, He was a corrupt ruler who squandered the kingdom’s money on lavish parties.

She was able to maintain her throne thanks to the Roman help she received in exchange for her continuous bribes and promises of various tributes. The Romans supported the king because he promised them easy access to the gold and wealth of Egypt. In each conflict, Rome played the role of arbitrator in the popular uprising, Ptolemy, went to Rome in search of military aid to suppress it. His wife Cleopatra and one of her daughters were left as regents of the country, then his wife died. The Alexandrians placed Queen Berenice IV on the throne and sent a delegation to Rome to arbitrate the conflict between father and daughter.

Soon after, Ptolemy XII was able to defeat the army of Archelaus, second husband of Berenice IV, and was returned to the throne. To ensure power, he had his daughter Berenice executed, it was the year 55 BC. The king died four years later, leaving the throne to his daughter Cleopatra VII Philopator and his son Ptolemy XIII Dionysus II. Cleopatra was the first of this dynasty to learn to speak the Egyptian language; she also learned Greek, Hebrew, Syrian and Aramaic and possibly Latin. She was also educated in literature, music, political science, mathematics, astronomy and medicine.

The situation in Egypt was becoming worse, farmers suffered severe famines, the Egyptian currency was weakening and the slow bureaucracy was hindering recovery: the country was becoming increasingly dependent on Rome. In response, farmers staged uprisings and created bands of outlaws that caused great harm; Additionally, the royal family also did not have good relations. Her younger sister Arsinoe, disagreed with her policy of helping the Romans and wanted to reach the throne. Ptolemy XIII, very young and manipulable, was practically handled by three advisors who forced him to expel his sister from the throne by overthrowing her with a command led by his advisors Potino and Aquilas.

Cleopatra attempted to regain power, gathering a good army for this purpose, although she did not succeed. Soon conflicts broke out between the two brothers and spouses, which led to the overthrow of Cleopatra. However, when the Roman civil wars began: Julius Caesar went to Egypt and helped Cleopatra in the conflict with her brother. During the Alexandrian War, both Pompey and Ptolemy XIII died, and the legendary Alexandria Library was burned.

Cleopatra was first and foremost a solution for Julius Caesar, and also his lover, she tried to use her influence over Caesar to restore Egypt’s hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean as an ally of Rome; the situation intensified when she had a son with Julius Caesar: Caesarion. When Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, Cleopatra attempted to seduce his immediate successor: consul Mark Antony. Being allies, they imposed their force in the East, creating a new Hellenistic kingdom that managed to conquer Armenia in 34.

Cleopatra, in addition to being a skilled ruler, was also known for her beauty and intelligence. She was fluent in several languages, including Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, Syrian, and Aramaic, and was well-educated in literature, music, politics, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. She used her charm and wit to strategically seduce powerful men in order to maintain control of her kingdom. She had a son, Cesarian, with Julius Caesar and later became the lover of Mark Antony. However, after the defeat of their alliance and the death of Antony, she was captured by Augustus and brought to Rome as a war trophy.

In the face of this situation, Cleopatra had herself bitten by an asp to end her life. Augustus took advantage of the situation to also murder her son Cesarión, thus extinguishing the Ptolemaic dynasty and later annexing Egypt to the Roman Empire. Cleopatra’s life inspired many writers, painters, sculptors and filmmakers. For example, between 1540 and 1905, over 200 plays, five operas and five ballets emerged. Let’s mention some important literary works: Cleopatra and Mark Antony (1606) by William Shakespeare, All for Love (1678) by the Englishman John Dryden and Caesar and Cleopatra (1901) by George Bernard Shaw. Even one of the comics of the popular Asterix the Gaul was dedicated to her.

Cleopatra has been the subject of many paintings and sculptures. Additionally, her life has been depicted in films, such as Cléopâtre (1899) and the famous and controversial 1963 production directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz: Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor. Another production, Marco Antonio y Cleopatra was released in 1972. A more recent, less ambitious film was Cleopatra (1999). Later, the British Museum dedicated an exhibition to Cleopatra, sparking an interesting debate about her beauty.

Grupo Firme

History of Grupo Firme

Grupo Firme is a musical group of Mexican regional music from Tijuana . It was created in 2014 and its members are: Eduin Cazares (leader and vocalist); Joaquín Ruiz (bass guitar); Jhonny Caz (vocalist), Abraham Hernández (second voice); Christian Téllez (bass); Dylan Camacho (accordion); and Fito Rubio (drums). Initially they made themselves known on social networks with some covers and in 2017 they made their debut with their first album Past, Present, Future. In 2018, their first hits, Pídeme, El Roto and Juro Por Dios came out and a year later they became famous with the hit El Amor No Fue Pa’ Mi, among other hits. Currently they are seen as the new fashionable group.

The beginnings

United by their love of music and coming from different parts of Mexico, the seven members of the group met in Tijuana. They grew up and began their careers in this city as members of different groups, although they knew each other from their work in the artistic industry. The founders of the group were Eduin and Joaquín , who coincidentally joined various groups before founding the group in early 2013 or 2014.

Joaquín and Eduin started in the group Reto Sierreño, then moved on to the groups Aventado2 de Tijuana and Los 4 de la frontera, and finally coincidentally joined the group Fuerza Oculta. This last group became, after some changes, the Grupo Firme , although it was initially called Grupo Fuerza. Because many groups had the same name, the members decided to opt for a synonym and chose “Firme”.

This is how Grupo Firme was born, with Eduin as the vocalist and leader, Joaquín on the bass guitar, Abraham and Jhonny as second voice, Christian on the bass, Dylan on the accordion, and Fito on the drums.

With the help of their manager and representative Isael Gutiérrez, who is also the head of the Music VIP Entertainment label, the group took its first steps in bars and events. At the same time, they made themselves known on social networks and other platforms by uploading covers of recognized artists, such as Los Tigres del Norte , José Alfredo Jiménez, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, and others. Often, the group uploaded songs at the request of the public, so they didn’t take long to have their own fanbase.

Grupo Firme: debut and career

In April 2017, after three years of performances and covers on social media, the group released its debut album, “Past, Present, Future” . This album consisted of twelve songs, highlighting “De Sol a Sol”, “Metas Cumplidas”, “Perdóname”, and “El de los Huaraches”. Although the album was not very successful, it managed to make the group known. A few months later, the group returned with “El Barco” (2017) , a fifteen-song album with the tracks “El Bueno de Tijuana”, “Dile”, “Gente de Verdad”, and “La Interezada”.

In addition, that year, the group collaborated with Los Buitres de Culiacán Sinaloa on the album “En Vivo Desde Tijuana los Buitrones y los Firmes” (2017). Success finally arrived in 2018 with the singles “Pídeme”, “El Roto”, and “Juro Por Dios”. That year, the group was quite active, releasing singles, collaborations, and making several appearances. They even went to Colombia, where they were well received and recorded their “En Vivo desde Medellín Colombia” (2018). The album, which included the tracks “El Teclas”, “El Peña”, and “El Flaquito”, was quite popular within and outside of Mexico.

The group finally achieved fame in 2019 thanks to the releases of “Me Cansé de Amarte” and the hit “El Amor No Fue Pa’ Mí” (ft. Banda Coloso). Later came the successful “El Muelas”, “En Realidad” with Banda Coloso, “Lujos y Secretos” with Quinto V Imperio, and “Porque Te Quiero” with Luis Alfonso Partida “El Yaki”. They also released that year the singles “Qué Me Vas A Dar Si Vuelvo”, “El Panal”, and “A Ti Te Conviene” with Calibre 50 .

The successes continued in 2020. The group began the year by releasing the single “La Estoy Pasando Mal” , and later collaborating with Enigma Norteño on the song “Mi Pretexto de Borracho”. Later they appeared on the single “Yo Diría” by Uziel Payan and collaborated with Marca MP on “El Güero”. In March, “Acábame de Matar” was released and in April they premiered “Quiero Pistear” with Luis Ángel “El Flaco”.

Their second live album, “En Vivo Desde Anaheim, CA”, was released in July of this year , including their biggest hits: “Pídeme”, “Que Me Vas a Dar Si Vuelvo”, “El Roto”, “Descuide”, “Porque Te Quiero”, “El Amor No Fue Pa’ Mí”, among others.

In 2022, the news is released that the band, Grupo Firme, breaks the attendance record with more than 280,000 people in Mexico City’s Zócalo. In this way, this renowned band surpasses the record that belonged to Vicente Fernández, who had 217,000 people. Prior to these last two, Justin Bieber and Shakira had the record, with the attendance of 210,000 people present in the Zócalo.

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Adolf Hitler: Man and monster

BBC Teach > Secondary Resources > KS3 History / GCSE History > World War Two - The most destructive global conflict in human history

Age of extremes

Few names from history inspire such immediate and emphatic revulsion as that of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. His hands are stained with the blood of millions killed in the devastation of the Second World War and the horror of the Holocaust.

But Hitler was not born a brutal tyrant, he became one. Explore Hitler's life and discover the road that led to destruction.

WW2: What would you have done when the bombs fell? document WW2: What would you have done when the bombs fell?

The Blitz of WW2, sometimes known as the London Blitz, was the German bombing campaign that lasted eight months and targeted 16 British cities.

Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer? document Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?

Stalin’s name meant "man of steel" and he lived up to it. He oversaw the war machine that helped defeat Nazism and was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. Learn about the man that began life as the son of an alcoholic cobbler and a doting mother who sent him to study to be a priest.

May 9, 2024

Life Story of Famous People

Short Bio » Politician » Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian born politician. German Adolf Hitler was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen. There is no doubt he reshaped the entire world with his deeds. He was at the centre of World War II. Adolf Hitler always sought Lebensraum (living space) for the German people. This is believed to be the main reason for the World War II outbreak. He was and always will be a monumental figure in history.

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889. He was born in a town in Austria-Hungary. His birthplace is modern-day Austria. His father Alois Hitler and mother Klara Pölzl moved to Germany when Adolf Hitler was 3 years old. Since childhood, he was a German Nationalist. He sang the German national anthem with his friends. After the death of his father, he lived a bohemian lifestyle. He worked as a painter in 1905. Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts rejected Adolf Hitler twice. After his mother died Hitler ran out of money. He was forced to live in homeless shelters. He returned to Munich in 1914. In 1994, World War I broke out. He volunteered to serve in the Bavarian Army. In the army, he was a brave and decorated soldier. After the war, Adolf Hitler entered politics. Hitler designed the Swastika logo for NSDWP. Hitler was involved in the unsuccessful coups d’état in 1923. Erich Ludendorff was his ally in this failed attempt to overthrow the government in Munich. He was arrested for treason in 1923. He served only one year of his five-year sentence. After the New York Stock Market Crash in 1929 NSDWP took the opportunity to gain support from the German people. The Nazi Party promised to provide jobs for the unemployed and rebuild the economy. In 1932 Adolf Hitler ran for the presidency. In 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed as the Chancellor of Germany. After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler took over Germany as Führer und Reichskanzler. In 1938 he formed an alliance with the new modern and powerful Japan. In 1931 he invaded Poland. Due to this Britain and France declared war on Germany. In 1941 The Nazis invaded The Soviet. He failed to defeat the Soviets. The entry of the United States of America into the war forced The Nazi Germany to the blink of defeat. The war ended with the Battle of Berlin in 1945. At the end, Hitler was responsible for the genocide of at least 5.5 million Jews. He was also responsible for the death of more than 19 million other people.

Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun on 29th April 1945. He committed suicide on 30th April to avoid being captured by the RED Army. His wife also committed suicide alongside him. He despised the Jews and other racially inferior people (slaves, blacks and gypsies). Hitler did not believe in God He believed in the theory “Survival of the fittest”.

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Adolf Hitler

• Occupation: Dictator of Germany
• Born: April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary
• Died: April 30 1945 in Berlin, Germany
• Best known for: Starting World War II and the Holocaust

• Hitler loved the circus, especially the acrobats.
• He never took his coat off, no matter how hot it got.
• He didn't exercise and didn't like sports.
• Only one of Hitler's 5 siblings survived childhood, his sister Paula.
• Hitler was temporarily blind from a mustard gas attack during World War I.
• He had a cat named Schnitzel.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:

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• HISTORY & CULTURE

What lies beneath Hitler's war lair? Explorers just found out.

Researchers are trying to determine the fate of the five people—all missing their hands and feet—buried in Hermann Göring’s residence at Hitler’s top-secret military quarters.

Amateur archaeologists in Poland recently unearthed five human skeletons—each missing hands or feet—from beneath a house once occupied by Hermann Göring. The Nazi field marshal was second-in-command, after Adolf Hitler, of the Third Reich.

The macabre discovery was made in late February at the Wolf’s Lair, or Wolfsschanze, near the town of Kętrzyn in northeast Poland; in 1940 Hitler ordered a secret military headquarters built at the remote spot to prepare for his invasion of the Soviet Union.

While the remains have not yet been conclusively dated, the burials appear to be those from a family who fell victim to the tumultuous history of the region in the early 20-century.

Into the Wolf’s Lair

Gdansk engineer Adrian Kostrzewa, the member of Poland’s Latebra Foundation who discovered the first skeleton, says his volunteer group was working over a winter weekend to recover any artifacts, such as nails or building materials, from the ruins of Göring’s house at the site, which still stands near what’s left of Hitler’s bunker.

Members of the Latebra Foundation have worked at the Wolf’s Lair site—now in a state forest park—for more than five years, authorized by the site’s management and government officials.

Kostrzewa says he was excavating beneath what was once the floor of the Göring’s house when he found what he thought was a plumbing pipe, but which turned out to be a human skull.

For Hungry Minds

After the first discovery, the excavation team called the police, who unearthed the skeletons of four more people—including a teenager and a newborn baby—all buried in a line.

It’s not clear why they were buried there, but a police investigation has now determined from their obvious age that the skeletons are probably from before 1945, Kostrzewa says. The police have now concluded their investigation, which means the group can now talk about the finds, he adds.

A difficult history

The Latebra Foundation has existed for 30 years and specializes in unearthing archaeological artifacts from different periods in Poland’s storied and difficult history, often by using metal detectors—an activity that requires permits in the country. According to the group’s website , all their work is legal, carried out with consent, and usually published for transparency.

The Wolf’s Lair is fenced off from treasure hunters, and the Latebra Foundation has exclusive access; everything it recovers is displayed in the site’s museum, Kostrzewa says.

The group’s videos on YouTube show it has mainly recovered small items—uniform buttons, tools, and machine parts, for example—which Kostrzewa says can help “uncover the truth about what happened in this place."

But the 30 volunteers of the Latebra Foundation had never seen anything like these skeletons before, he says: “It’s a sad story.”

Operation Barbarossa

Hitler and many other Nazi leaders, including Göring —the commander of the Luftwaffe, and ostensibly Hitler’s successor—spent many months at the Wolf’s Lair between 1941 and 1944.

But despite his middle-class background, Göring styled himself as a Prussian aristocrat, and his lavish lifestyle included the acquisition of several homes, including his sprawling Carinhall estate near Berlin. As a result, his stays at his residence in the Wolf’s Lair were probably limited to essential meetings.

The complex of about 200 buildings—including bunkers, shelters, barracks, a power plant and a railway station—was staffed by more than 2,000 people at its peak, when it served as the Nazi headquarters for Operation Barbarossa—the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

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The Wolf’s Lair was partially destroyed by the retreating Nazis and largely ignored during the Cold War years; it opened for tourism after the fall of Communism in Poland in the 1990s.

Today the site attracts tens of thousands of tourists a month; and it recently underwent a makeover to reconstruct the conference room where the German army office Claus von Stauffenberg detonated a suitcase bomb in an attempt to kill Hitler in 1944. The blast killed four people and injured twenty more; but Hitler, who was shielded by a leg of the conference room table, emerged almost unscathed.

Investigation closed?

The skeletons were buried in the floor just a few inches below the surface and right next to 1940s-era plumbing pipes for the house, meaning that if they were indeed buried before Göring moved in, construction workers would have found the remains—and must have left them where they were.

Among the other peculiarities of the burials is that no evidence of clothing was found (although it may have rotted away with time), and each of the skeletons is missing its hands and feet, except one with a few toes. Some archaeologists have suggested the hands and feet may have decayed before the rest of the bodies. But just why all five bodies would be found in such an odd manner has not been explained: “It’s creepy,” Kostrzewa concedes.

Rafał Jackowski, a spokesperson for the Warmian-Masurian Provincial Police in charge of the area, says the discoveries at the Wolf’s Lair were investigated by officers and a medical examiner from Kętrzyn. According to the medical examiner, the skeletons appear from their age to be from the “interwar” years between 1918 and 1939, and the poor condition of the remains means it is now impossible to determine the causes of their deaths.

As a result, the police have no reason to think that a crime has been committed and have closed their investigation.

Dating the bones

The next step will be for the Latebra Foundation to sample the remains and send them radiocarbon dating , which could establish to within a few years just when the people died. The foundation will also undertake other methods try to determine who the people were. Until then, the many theories about why they were buried beneath Hermann Göring’s house at the Wolf’s Lair can only be speculation.

Some newspapers have speculated that the skeletons beneath Göring’s house were the result of human sacrifices. Some leading Nazis, especially SS head Heinrich Himmler, indulged in what they thought were German pagan religious beliefs.

An unknown number of dart-shaped stones called belemnites were found near the bodies during the police investigations, according to Kostrzewa. Since ancient Greek times, the distinctive stones were believed to be created by lightning striking the ground and were sometimes placed in pagan burials as good-luck charms. But belemnites— actually the fossilized remains of prehistoric squid —also occur naturally in the region. Kostrzewa adds there is no other evidence of paganism or any other sort of ritual practices.

For his part, however, Kostrzewa thinks the five skeletons were all from members of a single family—as well as the newborn, there is evidence that another victim was very elderly when they died. “That’s the most probable idea,” Kostrzewa says. “Rather less probable is that someone made a building right over an old cemetery.”

Polish war historian Paweł Machcewicz of the Polish National Academy’s Institute of Political Studies, who wasn’t involved in the discoveries, suggests the remains might be from laborers forced to build the Wolf’s Lair complex, but that idea doesn’t explain the presence of a newborn in the burials.

Machcewicz also speculates they could be from people killed by the Red Army after it overran the Wolf’s Lair in 1944, when Soviet soldiers committed terrible atrocities on civilians; or that the people had been victims of violence after World War II.

Historian Robert Traba , an expert on the region also with the Institute of Political Studies and who also wasn’t involved, adds that little professional research has been carried out at the Wolf’s Lair site, and so it is unsurprising that there are still discoveries there.

The skeletons add further mystery to the story of the Wolf’s Lair, Traba says: “The Wolfsschanze hides many puzzles and problems.”

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Sunken submarine was Nazi u boat that 'helped Hitler flee Germany'

Posted: May 9, 2024 | Last updated: May 9, 2024

A sunken submarine at the bottom of the South Atlantic Ocean has been confirmed as a Nazi World War II U-boat - that could have helped Adolf Hitler flee Germany. Underwater excavations of the vessel began two years ago after it was on the seabed off the coast of Quequen in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Many historians and Nazi hunters believe it was used to evacuate Hitler and other leading Nazis while Allied troops were conquering Germany. Now divers, it has emerged, have positively identified clear signs of the 80ft long submarine's origins. Nazi-era weapons specialist Fabio Bisciotti, from the Italian Naval League, confirmed it as a U-boat after a new dive last month April. Veteran Nazi hunter Abel Basti said: 'The difficulty has always been that this submarine is semi-buried up to the deck and destroyed by explosives. 'Then we have to do a very detailed reconstruction task of the pieces that can be observed. 'But the experts clearly identify the corresponding pieces on a German submarine.' The sub's turret and periscope are said to be the exact dimensions of those found on captured intact U-boats and manufactured in the same way. Mysteriously, divers also found scrap metal that had been dumped on the wreck in an apparent attempt to thwart the discovery. The information contradicts previous conclusions by the Argentine Commission to Clarify Nazi Activities in Argentina, reports local media. In the 1990s it denied the presence of German submarines off the Argentine coast after the war. But the new investigation, led by the Nazi-hunting Lost Link group, is said to show that German leaders like Hitler could have escaped to South America. Abel Basti explained: 'In my research, most are direct testimonies, that some are uploaded to my YouTube channel and my last book presents photos of Hitler after the war, that is, in exile in South America,' Basti said that Hitler did not commit suicide in 1945 but died aged 80 in South America travelling around the continent to Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia and Paraguay. He said: 'He had a life of travel and meetings with his old comrades, with politicians, with the military, with businessmen living as a retiree with high purchasing power, so to speak. 'Because silver was not lacking, so part of his life was dedicated to travelling.'

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Contest Seeking Short Stories for Film and TV Adaptation Launched by Roadmap Writers, Barry Josephson

By Matt Donnelly

Matt Donnelly

Senior Film Writer

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Roadmap Writers, a screenwriting education and training platform based in Los Angeles, is partnering with Hollywood producer Barry Josephson to identify short stories fit for film and television adaptation.

The competition, open now and running through June 14, seeks commercial-leaning work and carries a cash prize of $7,000. The top three stories will be published on Roadmap Writers.

Popular on Variety

Josephson is behind hits like the long-running television procedural “Bones,” the Disney film “Enchanted” and the raunchy comedy “Dirty Grandpa.” He is currently at work on the anticipated film adaptation of the musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” starring Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna. The film, based on the original 1976 novel by Argentine author Manuel Puig and the 1993 Broadway show, is written and directed by Bill Condon. Josephson has also acquired the rights to David King’s gripping historical account “The Trial of Adolf Hitler,” with an eye to develop the critically acclaimed novel into a limited series.

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For Whitey Herzog, managing the Rangers was ‘the worst decision of my life’

Whitey Herzog’s first job, a stint with the Texas Rangers that lasted less than a season, provided a colorful start to a Hall of Fame managerial career.

Whitey Herzog, who died last month at 92 , is best known for leading the St. Louis Cardinals to three National League pennants and a World Series title in the 1980s with an explosively fast team that stole bases at will. Mostly forgotten, however, is his humbling managerial debut a decade earlier in Texas, when he was fired after less than one season and replaced by Billy Martin. It was, he would later say, an experience he regretted, but it provided a colorful start to what became a Hall of Fame managerial career.

Texas Rangers owner Bob Short hired Herzog to be his manager in November 1972 after Herzog helped build the 1969 World Series champion New York Mets as the team’s director of player development. Many thought Herzog would be the next Mets manager, but when skipper Gil Hodges died before the 1972 season, New York hired Yogi Berra instead.

Unlike the Mets, who would win the NL pennant in 1973, the Rangers were not considered a plum franchise. They started as the expansion Washington Senators in the 1960s, managing just one winning record in 11 seasons, before moving to Arlington, Tex., for the 1972 season. In their first year there, under Manager Ted Williams, the renamed Rangers finished an MLB-worst 54-100. With four games remaining in the season, Williams announced he would not return the following year .

When Herzog, 40, was named the new manager about a month later, he said he would ditch some of Williams’s “by-the-book” rules and might reverse his predecessor’s reliance on platoons.

“I don’t want to criticize Ted, but Biittner can hit left‐handed pitching,” he said, referring to young first baseman Larry Biittner, who was mostly limited to batting against righties.

“I had a good job. It paid well and the Mets are a heck of an organization, but everybody who was ever a player wants to manage in the big leagues,” said Herzog, who played for eight seasons, starting with the original Senators in 1956. “I talked with Ted Williams in September, and he said he wasn’t going to come back. He said why didn’t I send Mr. Short a wire. So I did.”

Years later, Herzog clearly had second thoughts. He recalled Williams touting the Rangers as a team on the rise.

“And I probably made the worst decision of my life. I went to Texas,” he recalled with a laugh during an interview that St. Louis radio station KFNS aired in a memorial tribute last month. “I want to tell you something: I called them the Texas Strangers after I was there for about two months. I mean, it’s the damnedest club I’ve ever seen.”

He blasted Short for having promotions such as pantyhose night — a tradition the owner started in D.C. — at the expense of fielding a competitive team.

“Bob Short was a big entrepreneur and he always would promote and he didn’t think about winning,” Herzog said. “And our team that I managed was so bad that the women would buy a general admission ticket for [$2.50], walk through the turnstiles, pick up their pantyhose and leave while they’re playing the national anthem. Nobody wanted to see us play.”

In his sole season, the Rangers repeated as the worst team in baseball. Herzog had a .341 winning percentage, even worse than Williams’s .351 mark the previous year.

Short blasted both managers on their way out the door, expressing buyer’s remorse.

“I thought I needed Ted four years ago to create interest in Washington,” he said shortly before Williams resigned at the end of the 1972 season. “And I thought I needed him this year to create interest in Texas. But I don’t need him as much as I thought.”

About halfway through the 1973 season, the owner called Herzog “the best damn manager in baseball,” United Press International reported. At the end? “I understand now I made a mistake when I asked Whitey to manage the club. Last year I deliberately avoided choosing a man with managerial experience. This time I’m looking for a person with that experience.”

Williams, too, had never managed when Short chose him to lead the Senators in 1969, and it worked out well for one season. Williams led the Senators to their only winning record that year, and he was the American League manager of the year.

‘I’ve got to call the shots’

Herzog came to Texas with high hopes — and a few raised eyebrows.

“There was some surprise expressed when Herzog left the high security of his job with the Mets for the high-risk role as manager of the Texas Rangers,” Shirley Povich wrote in a March 4, 1973, column in The Washington Post.

Herzog told Povich that he had wanted to be a major league manager for a long time but insisted: “I’ve got to call the shots. I took this job because the best young players I saw in the Florida Instructional League belonged to the Rangers. In a couple of years, I’m going to have a pretty good ball team or Whitey’s going to be fired.”

Despite his burning desire to manage, he had turned down two attempts by Athletics owner Charlie Finley to hire him as manager. “I coached for his Kansas City team in 1965,” Herzog told Povich. “Charlie doesn’t want a manager. What he wants is a caretaker for his silly mule mascot while he runs the team himself.”

Yet that’s pretty much what he got in Short, minus the mule.

Nothing demonstrated that better than how Short micromanaged the team’s No. 1 draft pick that season, David Clyde. The Rangers had him start a game less than three weeks after his last pitch in high school, where he had gone 18-0 with a 0.18 ERA his senior year. As the Dallas Morning News wrote in a 2013 retrospective , the plan was for him to make two or three starts and then get seasoning in the minors. But after the team averaged around 34,000 fans for his first two starts — more than quadruple the Rangers’ typical gate of 8,470 — Short changed the plan and kept him on the roster, overruling Herzog’s pleas to send him down to develop.

“A travesty,” Herzog told the newspaper. “As an 18-year-old kid, he might have been as good or better than anybody I’d ever seen.”

After two good starts, Clyde unraveled. He finished the season 4-8 with a 5.01 ERA, and his MLB career lasted just five seasons.

“It was the dumbest thing you could ever do to a high school pitcher,” Clyde’s teammate Tom Grieve said in 2013. “In my opinion, it ruined his career. Bob Short did it because he needed the money. It’s as simple as that.”

Clyde was more diplomatic: “Bob Short, God rest his soul, was in it for the quick turn rather than the long-term investment.”

Meanwhile, Herzog didn’t even last the two seasons he had given himself. His fate was sealed when the Detroit Tigers fired Martin as manager in early September, a year after he led them to the AL East title. Short fired Herzog less than a week later. Although the owner didn’t immediately name a replacement, Herzog read the situation with clear eyes.

“I think he has already hired Martin,” Herzog said, according to a UPI story at the time. “If he hasn’t, then why did he fire me? I think he’s got to grab Martin before he goes somewhere else.”

Despite the Rangers’ poor record, the firing came as a shock. Herzog “had developed a rapport with his players, the fans and the news media,” UPI reported. That also would describe Herzog’s reputation in more successful stints with Kansas City and St. Louis.

The very next day, Short announced he had signed Martin to a long-term contract. The new skipper came with a ton of baggage; AL President Joe Cronin had just suspended him for two games for ordering his pitchers to throw “illegal greaseballs” larded with saliva and petroleum jelly. It was one of many run-ins that would foreshadow his tumultuous reign as the New York Yankees’ manager.

At his introductory news conference in Arlington, Martin vowed to maintain his obsession with winning.

“The players may not like you some of the time, but I’ve always made the statement I’d play Adolf Hitler to win,” he said.

Over the remaining 23 games, Martin went 9-14, but he turned the team around the next year. The Rangers had their first winning season and finished in second place in 1974.

By then, Short was pretty much gone. Just before the 1974 season, he announced he was selling a controlling interest of the team. AL owners approved the sale May 29.

Redemption in Missouri

With a poor record in his first managerial job, Herzog could have faded into obscurity. But in July 1975, the Kansas City Royals gave him another chance, and he guided the team to a .621 winning percentage over the final two months of the season. Then he led them to three consecutive AL West titles, although they lost the AL Championship Series to the Yankees each time — twice with Martin at the helm.

Herzog would make an even bigger mark with the Cardinals in the 1980s — including stints as both general manager and manager — highlighted by the 1982 World Series title. In St. Louis, he perfected his entertaining “Whiteyball” philosophy that took advantage of Busch Stadium’s deep dimensions and fast artificial turf. Those teams flooded the gaps with doubles and triples, stole a ton of bases and played outstanding defense.

In a 2011 interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , Herzog reflected on his time working for Short. It was the eve of a World Series pitting his first and last managerial stops — Texas and St. Louis. He said Short had claimed he would fire his own grandmother to hire Martin. ( Short actually said , “If my mother were managing the Rangers and I had the opportunity to hire Billy Martin, I’d fire my mother” — but you get the idea.)

“Well, I was the grandma,” Herzog said. “The next damn day, I was gone.”

But he added: “It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me realize I wasn’t so damn smart.”