HITLER AND NAZISM.

Early life.

Adolf Hitler was born in Branau am Inn, Austria, a village close to German-Austrian border,

on April 20, 1889, and was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl. When

Hitler was 3 years old, the family moved from Austria to Germany.

As a child, Hitler clashed frequently with his father. His father did

not approve of his interest in Arts. Hitler's father died suddenly in

1903. Hitler left school at 16 with no qualifications and struggled to

make a living as a painter in Vienna. In Vienna he worked as a

casual laborer and a watercolor painter. Hitler applied to the

Academy of Fine Arts twice and was rejected both times. Out of

money, he moved into a homeless shelter, where he remained for

several years. Hitler later pointed to these years as the time when he first cultivated his anti-

Semitism.

World War I.

At the beginning of World War I, Hitler applied to serve in the German army. He was

accepted in August 1914, though he was still an Austrian citizen. Although he spent much of his

time away from the front lines. He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross First Class.

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 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 accept responsibility for starting the war.

Freikorps.

The Freikorps was the name adopted by some right wing nationalists after World War One

had ended. Members of the Freikorps could be described as conservative, nationalistic, anti-

Socialism/Communism and once it had been signed, anti-the Treaty of Versailles. Many members of

the Freikorps had fought in World War One and had military experience. They did not believe that

Germany had suffered a military defeat in World War One and members of the Freikorps were very

vocal supporters of the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend.

The Freikorps was used to put down the German Revolution of 1918-1919 and it crushed the

Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919. A Freikorps unit in Berlin attempted to overthrow Ebert’s

government (first president of the German Republic from 1919 to 1925, member of the Socialist

Party).

Members of the Freikorps also murdered leading communists Karl Liebknicht and Rosa

Luxemburg. Many of the Freikorps escaped without punishment for their crimes or sentenced to

only brief periods in jail.

The Freikorps officially disbanded in 1920 but many members joined the Nazi Party and

became the party’s original enforcers.

Political Activity: NSDAP.

After World War I, Hitler returned to Munich and continued to work for the military as an

intelligence officer. While monitoring the activities of the German Workers’ Party (DAP), Hitler

adopted many of the anti-Semitic, nationalist and anti-Marxist ideas of DAP founder Anton Drexler.

Drexler invited Hitler to join the DAP, which he did in 1919.

To increase its appeal, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche

Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP). Hitler personally designed the party banner, featuring a swastika in a

white circle on a red background. Hitler soon gained notoriety for his speeches against the Treaty of

Versailles, rival politicians, Marxists and Jews. In 1921, Hitler replaced Drexler as NSDAP party

chairman.

Beer Hall Putsch (1923).

Hitler's 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.

On November 8th and 9

to attempt an overthrow of the regional

government in Munich in prelude to the

takeover of the national government. This

incident is generally known as the Beer Hall

Putsch.

On November 8th 1923, the Bavarian Prime Minister, Gustav Kahr, was

around 3000 businessmen at a beer hall in

Munich. Kahr was joined by some of the most

senior men in Bavarian politics including Seisser, Bavaria’s police chief, and Lossow, the local

army commander. Then, Hitler and the 600 SA stormed the public meeting. Hitler announced that

the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government. After a short

struggle including 20 deaths, the coup, known as the "Beer Hall Putsch," failed.

Imprisonment.

Hitler was arrested three days later and tried for high treason.

He served a year in prison, during which time he dictated most of the

first volume of Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") to his deputy, Rudolf

Hess. The book laid out Hitler's plans for transforming German society into one based on race.

Economic Crisis.

The Weimar Republic was devastated by Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and the Great

Depression that followed. After 1924 American banks supported the german economy with huge

loans. When the Depressión began in the US, American banks withdrew their money invested in

Europe, especially in Germany.

Companies throughout Germany went bankrupt and workers were laid off. In september

1928 about 600.000 workers were unemployed in Germany; by January 1933 6 million people were

unemployed.

The government failed to respond effectively to the crisis. Heinrich Bruning, who became

chancellor in March 1930, feared inflation and budget deficits more than unemployment. Rather

than spending to stimulate the economy and create jobs, Bruning opted to increase taxes (to reduce

the budget deficit) then implemented wage cuts and spending reductions (to lower prices).

Bruning’s measures failed, and probably increased German unemployment and public suffering

rather than easing it.

In the 1930 Reichstag election, the Nazis gained 143 seats, a vast improvement on their

previous election. Hitler only expected between 50 to 60

seats. A senior Nazi official, Gregor Strasser, claimed that

what was a disaster for the Republic was "good, very good

for us."

In the July 1932 Reichstag election, the Nazis

gained 230 seats making them the largest party in the

Reichstag.

Rise to the power.

The Great Depression in Germany provided a political opportunity for Hitler. Germans were

increasingly open to extremist options. In 1932, Hitler ran against Paul von Hindenburg for the

presidency. Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, obtaining more than 35 percent of

the vote in the final election. The election established Hitler as a strong force in German politics.

Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor in order to promote political balance.

Hitler used his position as chancellor to form a de facto legal dictatorship.

Reichstag Fire (Parliament).

On the night of February 27th Hitler and Goebbels

were having dinner at Goebbel’s Berlin home. There,

Goebbels received a phone call informing him that the

Reichstag building was on fire. Hitler declared that the fire

was the work of the Communists and Socialists and the SA

was put on alert to maintain order if and when the communist

insurrection started.

The Nazis captured the alleged perpetrator of the

crime, a Dutch communist. The Reichstag ceased all its

activities after the fire and it could not be used. The March 5 th

election went ahead as planned but now in the shadow of the ‘attempted communist revolt’. Even

so, the Nazis only obtained 288 seats out of 647. But Hitler had already decided that the Reichstag

as a properly working entity should cease to exist and be

replaced by himself.

The Reichstag Fire Decree 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 deviations from the constitution.

Having achieved full control over the legislative

and executive branches of government, Hitler and his

political allies embarked on a systematic suppression of

the political opposition. On July 14, 1933, Hitler's Nazi

Party was declared the only legal political party in

Germany.

The Night of Long Knives.

By the summer of 1934, the SA' had two million men. They were under the control of Ernst

Röhm, a loyal follower of Hitler since the early days of the Nazi Party. The SA had given the Nazi's

an iron fist with which to disrupt other political parties meetings before January 1933. The SA was

also used to enforce law after Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. There is no evidence that

Röhm was ever planning anything against Hitler.

However, Röhm had made enemies within the Nazi Party. Himmler, Goering and Goebbels

were angered by the power he had gained and convinced Hitler that this

was a threat to his position. On the night of June 29th - June 30th 1934,

units of the SS arrested the leaders of the SA and other political

opponents.

The Night of the Long Knives, which took place from June 30 to

July 2, 1934. Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders, along with a number of

Hitler's political enemies, were arrested, shot or executed. After this date,

the SS lead by Heinrich Himmler was to become far more powerful

in Nazi Germany.

The Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht).

On November 7, in Paris, a 17-year-old German Jewish refugee shot and killed the third

secretary of the German embassy. He had intended to avenge the deportation of his father to Poland

and the ongoing persecution of Jews in Germany by killing the German ambassador.

As revenge for this shooting, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda, and Reinhard

Heydrich, second in command of the SS after Heinrich Himmler, ordered "spontaneous

demonstrations" of protest against the Jewish citizens of Munich. They ordered the destruction of

Jewish homes and businesses. The local police were not to interfere with the rioting stormtroopers,

and as many Jews as possible were to be arrested

and deported to concentration camps.

In Heydrich's report to Hermann Goering

after Kristallnacht, the damage was assessed:

"...815 shops destroyed, 171 houses set on fire or

destroyed... 119 synagogues were set on fire, and

another 76 completely destroyed... 20,000 Jews

were arrested, 91 deaths were reported and those

seriously injured were also numbered at 36..."

The extent of the destruction was actually

greater than reported. Later estimates were that as many as 7,500 Jewish shops were looted, and

there were several incidents of rape. This, in the ideology of Nazism, was worse than murder,

because the racial laws forbade intercourse between Jews and gentiles. The rapists were expelled

from the Nazi Party and handed over to the police for prosecution. And those who killed Jews?

They "cannot be punished," according to authorities, because they were merely following orders.

To add insult to massive injury, those Jews who survived the monstrous pogrom were forced

to pay for the damage inflicted upon them.

Insurance firms teetered on the verge of

bankruptcy because of the claims. Hermann

Goering came up with a solution: Insurance

money due the victims was to be confiscated by

the state, and part of the money would revert

back to the insurance companies to keep them

afloat.

Nazist Racial Measures.

After president Hindenburg's death in August 1934, Hitler became head of state as well as

head of government, and was formally named as leader and chancellor. As head of state, Hitler

became supreme commander of the armed forces. He began to

mobilize for war. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations, and

Hitler announced a massive expansion of Germany’s armed forces.

A main Nazi concept was the notion of racial hygiene. New laws

banned marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans, and

deprived "non-Aryans" of the benefits of German citizenship. Hitler's

early eugenic policies targeted children with physical and

developmental disabilities, and later authorized a euthanasia

program for disabled adults. The Holocaust was also conducted under

the auspices of racial hygiene. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazis and

their collaborators were responsible for the deaths of 11 million to 14

million people, including about 6 million Jews, representing two-thirds of the Jewish population in

Europe. Deaths took place in concentration and extermination camps and through mass executions.

Other persecuted groups included Poles, communists, homosexuals,

Jehovah's Witnesses and trade unionists, among others.

Nazi Leaders.

Hermann Goering.

A WW1 veteran, he was head of the luftwaffe, and the founder

of the Gestapo. After the fall of France he stole hundreds of pieces of

Arts from Jews, and amassed a personal fortune. Goering took part in the beer hall putsch of 1923

and was wounded in the groin. Subsequently, taking morphine for pain relief, he became addicted to

the drug for the rest of his life. In 1940, the Marshal ordered the bombing of the civilian population

of Britain and was involved in planning the holocaust. Goering was the highest ranking defendant

during the Nuremberg Trials. Sentenced to hang, he committed suicide in his cell the night before

his execution by cyanide ingestion.

Joseph Goebbels.

Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels was the Reich Minister of Propaganda.

Goebbels speeches of hatred against Jews initiated the final solution.

A sufferer of polio, Goebbels had a club foot, but this did not effect his

standing as the second best orator in The Reich. At the end of the war,

a devoted Goebbels stayed in Berlin with Hitler and killed himself,

along with his wife Magda and their six young children.

Heinrich Himmler.

Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the holocaust and considered to be the biggest

ever, by some (although it’s really Josef Stalin). The holocaust

would not have happened if not for this man. He tried to breed a

master race of Nordic appearance, the Aryan race. He executed

plans for racial purity. Himmler was captured after the war. He

unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with the west, and was genuinely

shocked to be treated as a criminal upon capture. He committed

suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule.

Rudolf Hess.

Rudolf Hess was born in 1894 and died in Spandau Prison

in 19. Rudolf Hess was Hitler's deputy leader in the Nazi Party. Hess

had been involved with the Nazi Party from its earliest days and was

on the march to the Beer Hall that lead to his and Hitler's

imprisonment at Landsberg Prison from 1923 to 1924.It was in

prison that Hitler dictated "Mein Kampf" to Hess who acted as

Hitler's personal secretary while in prison. In fact, Hess was seen by

many to be Hitler's most loyal follower.

In May 1941, Hess did something that took everybody by

surprise. On May 10th, he took a plane and flew it to Scotland

where he crash landed the plane. It seems that Hess took it upon

himself to secure a negotiated peace between the British government and Germany. Hess was

found by a Scots farmer and arrested.

He was sent to trial at Nuremburg in 1946 where he was sent to prison for life. With other

Nazi leaders, he was sent to Spandau Prison and from 1966 on, he was the only prisoner there. His

death while in prison is a bit of a mystery. It appears that Hess committed suicide by hanging

himself.

Reynhard Heydrich.

Heydrich was appointed Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Heydrich

chaired the 1942 Wannsee Conference, which discussed plans for the

deportation and extermination of all Jews in German occupied

territory, thus being the mastermind of the holocaust. He was attacked

by British trained Czech agents on 27 May, 1942, sent to assassinate

him in Prague. He died slightly over a week later from complications

arising from his injuries. The foundations of genocide were laid by

Heydrich.

Adolf Eichman.

Eichmann was the organizational talent of the mass deportation of

Jews from their countries into waiting ghettos and extermination

camps. He is sometimes referred to as “the architect of the Holocaust”.

He learned Hebrew and studied all things Jewish in order to

manipulate Jews. He fled Germany at the end of the war via a ratline

to south America, and was captured by the Mossad (Israel Intelligence

Service) in Argentina. He was judged in Israel and executed by

hanging in 1962, after a highly publicized trial.

Joseph Mengele.

Mengele initially gained notoriety for being one of the SS

physicians who supervised the selection of arriving transports of

prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a

forced laborer, but is far more infamous for performing human

experiments on camp inmates, for which Mengele was called the

“Angel of Death”. His crimes were evil and of many. Mengele used

Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his research on heredity,

using inmates for human experimentation. He was particularly

interested in identical twins. Mengele’s experiments included attempts

to take one twin’s eyeballs and attach them to the back of the other twin’s head, changing eye color

by injecting chemicals into children’s eyes, various amputations of limbs, and other brutal

surgeries. He survived the war, and after a period living incognito in Germany, he fled to South

America, where he evaded capture for the rest of his life, despite being hunted as a Nazi war

criminal.

Holocaust.

Soon after they took power, the Nazis began their persecutions with several anti-Jewish

laws, including the Nuremberg Laws (1935), which defined Jews according to 'racial' criteria and

stripped them of citizenship. However, the Nazis at first refrained from major acts of violence.

By late 1938, the Nazis could claim an impressive series of successes. Germany had staged

the 1936 Olympics, annexed Austria and part of Czechoslovakia, and was in the midst of a strong

economic recovery fuelled by rearmament. These triumphs had increased the Nazis' popularity and

their confidence. President Hindenburg had died and all opposition parties had been abolished. The

last conservatives in the cabinet had been replaced by Nazis. The way was clear for radical action.

On the night of 9-10 November 1938, Nazi Propaganda Minister Dr Josef Goebbels

organised the violent “Night of

broken glass”. Nazi

stormtroopers in civilian

clothes burned down

synagogues and broke into

Jewish homes throughout

Germany and Austria,

terrorising and beating men,

women and children. Ninety-

one Jews were murdered and

over 20,000 men were arrested

and taken to concentration

camps. Afterwards the Jewish

community was fined one

billion Reichsmarks to pay for

the damage.

After that, Jewish

businesses were expropriated,

private employers were urged

to sack Jewish employees, and

offices were set up to speed

emigration. Imprisoned Jews could buy freedom if they promised to leave the country. By

September 1939, half of Germany's 500,000 Jews had fled, as had many Jews from Austria and the

German-occupied parts of Czechoslovakia.

Organised killing began with the beginning of war in September 1939, but the first victims

were not Jews. The Nazis set about killing people with physical and mental disabilities, whom they

regarded as a burden on the state and a threat to the nation's 'racial hygiene'. About 170,000

people were eventually killed under this so-called Euthanasia programme.

When the Nazis occupied western Poland in 1939, two-thirds of Polish Jews, Europe's

largest Jewish community, fell into their hands. The Polish Jews were rounded up and placed in

ghettos, where it is estimated that 500,000 people died of starvation and disease.

With the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22 1941, the Nazis launched a crusade against

'Judaeo-Bolshevism', the supposed Jewish-Communist conspiracy. Behind the front lines, four

police battalions called Einsatzgruppen (operations groups) moved from town to town in the

occupied Soviet territories, rounding up Jewish men and suspected Soviet collaborators and

shooting them. Using local volunteers, the Einsatzgruppen targeted Jewish women and children as

well. In total, the Einsaztgruppen murdered some two million people, almost all Jews.

The Final Solution

While these massacres were happening, the Nazis elsewhere were laying plans for an overall

'solution to the Jewish question'. Death camp operations began in December 1941 at Semlin in

Serbia and Chelmno in Poland, where people were killed by exhaust fumes in specially modified

vans, which were then driven to nearby sites where the bodies were plundered and burnt. 250,000

Jews were killed this way at Chelmno and 15,000 at Semlin.

More camps opened in the spring and summer of 1942, when the Nazis began systematically

clearing the ghettos in Poland and rounding up Jews in western Europe for 'deportation to the East'.

The killing of the Polish Jews was carried out in three camps: Treblinka, near Warsaw (850,000

victims); Belzec, in south-eastern Poland (650,000 victims); and Sobibor, in east-central Poland

(250,000 victims). Some Jews from western Europe were sometimes taken to these camps as well,

but most were killed at the biggest and most advanced of the death camps, Auschwitz.

Industrial killing: Auschwitz-Birkenau

Originally a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners, Auschwitz was greatly

expanded in 1941 with the addition of a much larger camp at nearby Birkenau. In all, Auschwitz-

Birkenau and its sub-camps held 400,000 registered prisoners including 205,000 Jews, 137,000

Poles, 21,000 Gypsies, 12,000 Soviet soldiers and 25,000 others (including a few British soldiers).

But Auschwitz-Birkenau became more than a concentration camp. In the spring of 1942 gas

chambers were built at Birkenau and mass transports of Jews began to arrive. The great majority

of the Jews were gassed immediately. These gassing operations were greatly expanded in the spring

of 1943 with the construction of four new gas chamber and crematorium complexes. Each

crematorium could handle 2,000 victims daily. In a nearby group of barracks, nicknamed 'Canada'

by the prisoners, victims' belongings were sorted for transportation to the Reich. The victims' hair

was used to stuff mattresses; gold teeth were melted down and the gold deposited to an SS

account.

In all about 900,000 people were gassed at Birkenau without ever being registered as

prisoners, almost all of them Jews. This brought the total death toll of the Auschwitz complex to

about 1.1 million, of whom one million were Jewish.

The end of the Holocaust.

As Allied forces began to close in on Germany in 1944, Germans began digging up and

burning the bodies of those killed by the Einsatzgruppen. Prisoners remaining in Auschwitz and

other concentration camps were transported or force-marched to camps within Germany. Thousands

of prisoners on these death marches died of starvation, exhaustion and cold, or were shot for not

keeping up the pace. Jewish

prisoners were concentrated at

Bergen-Belsen.

When British troops came

across the camp on 15 April 1945,

they encountered 10,000 unburied

corpses, a typhus epidemic and

60,000 sick and dying prisoners

into overcrowded barracks

without food or water.