Words: 2119
Planes flew in the air as soldiers marched forward; they held blood red flags with a yellow symbol upon them. It was the Soviet Union. A man with gray hair and a mustache scurried to a tent as he held a woman in his hand. They both held hand guns at the ready. The troops had already begun infiltrating their camp. Both of them saw what was happening, and knew what must be done. At the same time they held the guns to their head and pulled the trigger. That was the end of Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun.
Hitler was the man responsible for the destruction of numerous countries, the suffering of many Europeans, and the disgrace of his country. During this time, over 4 million Jews were slaughtered in gas chambers. This time was known as the Holocaust. Why would Hitler do such horrible things? What was his incentive in killing so many people? Though Hitler was considered a mad man as an adult, his childhood was ordinary. Therefore, Adolf Hitler had a fascinating life. In 1889, Hitler was born into a peasant family, with five other siblings, only he and his sister Karla survived.
As a father, Alois Hitler was always hard on his son constantly beating him and telling him to succeed in school. He made his father proud all throughout grade school; he was popular among his classmates and had strong leadership qualities. As a child he also picked many of his father’s religious qualities. As Adolf went into secondary school and competition increased, Hitler fell into despair as his grades dropped and he lost his popularity among his peers. His father, now at the age of 61, died from a heart attack. His death did not emotionally harm Hitler in any way.
As he continued school, his grades never improved; in fact they dropped even more. Although he had bad grades, he had taken a liking tp art and architecture. At 15, he convinced his mom to let him drop out of secondary school. His primary plan was to move to Vienna and apply for an art or architecture college. He was immediately rejected. Shortly after, his mother died devastating Hitler. He spent the next year wandering Vienna and spending the money he inherited from his father. When World War 1 began, he joined the German Army rather than the Austrian. He enjoyed the war and putting himself in precarious positions for the army.
Other soldiers often considered him strange and abnormal. Soldiers often said Hitler would usually sit in a corner and stare into space for hours. They also mentioned Hitler would sometimes stand up and give hate driven emotional speeches about how the Jews are lazy and not working hard enough in the army. Eventually, Hitler was hired as a dispatch runner to carry messages from the front lines to the German army’s headquarters. In the peak of the war 8 dispatch runners were sent to deliver a vital message to German army’s headquarters. The dispatch runners were caught in a British attack and only 3 out of 8 survived.
Hitler was able to successfuly deliver his message. Due to his success, he was awarded 5 medals. This was his first accomplishment in a long time and it greatly boosted his morale (Adolf Hitler pg 1-3). Though he won medals, due to his abnormal personality and his introverted nature, he was only given the rank of Corporal. At the end of the war, Hitler was blinded by a British gas attack; he was rushed to the army hospital. While Hitler was regaining his vision, he was told that Germany lost the war, this news sent Hitler into deep depression, and he spent hours on end sobbing. He felt his effort tin the war had been for nothing.
After a month he recovered fully and was re-stationed in Munich where an upcoming socialist evolution began. Hitler absolutely hated the socialists; he thought that equality was a Jewish conspiracy and needed to be ended. In 1919, as the revolution was at its peak, Germany invaded Munich. Hitler was arrested as a conspirator. He told the Germany army officials that he was on their side. Eventually, German soldiers let him go in a contract of catching traitors from the German army. Hitler was beaming with pride as he caught numerous conspirators. Shortly afterwards, Hitler was promoted to Political Officer.
He began lecturing soldiers about politics and the situation in Germany. It was here where he began preaching his bigoted ideas of the Jews. By the end of the year he was sent to spy on the German Workers Party (GWP). He joined as a normal member with the task of taking notes and reporting to the general. As he began attending meeting he could not help but observe that the party, led by Anton Dexter, had ideas similar to his own. Hitler often found himself preaching to the party even though he was a spy. In 1920, he left the army and became the party’s propaganda manager and party speaker.
When they held meetings Hitler would often arrive to GWP meetings late causing increased tension and more anticipation from the party. As the party began to grow the party had the idea of adding socialist to their party’s name in preparation to join the German government as a primary electoral party. Hitler was against the idea of socialism from the start. He claimed that he would only accept socialism with National in front of it resulting in Hitler’s idea of the all German people being equal under one government. This gave the GWP’s party the name, National Socialist German Worker’s Party, standing for Nazi (Adolf Hitler. g4-5). As the Nazi party grew in popularity Hitler organized the Sturm Abteilung more commonly known as Hitler’s Storm Troopers. They often made attacks on Jews eventually ending in the arrest of Hitler (Adolf Hitler pg5). Hitler, after being thrown in jail, wrote a book called Mein Kampf, translating to My Struggle; this book was ignored worldwide. In this book, Hitler expressed his opinions against the Jews and stated the plan he had for a Germany, total world conquest. Hitler also wrote about how he would create the master race that is superior to all known as the Aryan race.
Hitler considered all with blonde hair and blue eyes to fall under this category and the rest inferior. (McKale, Donald M. pg1). Subsequent to Hitler’s release in 1924, Hitler decided he would let go some of his chauvinistic beliefs until he could win the presidency. Though he was in the ballot he only received 1% of Germany’s votes. After failing in the 1924 election he changed strategy until the 1930 election. Hitler often used fiery speeches about how Germany’s pride fell at the end of World War 1 causing the end of their economy and the start of a wide scale depression.
He often blamed the Jews as he did when he was fighting in the war for not working hard enough. Due to the depression in Germany, the lower income social classes of Germany were more easily reeled in by his passionate beliefs, while the richer business class knew that he was trouble and gave him no support (Adolf Hitler pg. 6. In the 1929, Hitler met Eva Braun, the only women he ever fell in love with. His wife was kept away from the public eye for safety (Sydnor, Charles W. pg1). Due to Eva Braun’s concealment many women liked Hitler and his middle aged bachelor appearance also gained many votes.
When the 1930’s election began Hitler was able to win the primaries. In the main election against Paul Von Hindenburg, Hitler lost. For four years he was kept in the secondary position of chancellor until Paul von Hindenburg died in 1934. Finally Hitler stepped up as Germany’s new leader, eliminated all other opponents and coroneted himself Fuehrer. As Fuehrer, Hitler began to change a series of policies in the government. Hitler made every business rely on manual labor to slowly pull Germany out of their tough economical situation.
As business slowly began sprouting up he advised all Jews to emigrate, for the handful that did decide to emigrate they did not suffer the calamity that occurred to the rest of the Jews. Soon Hitler passed the Nuremberg laws limiting the freedoms the Jews were given. Eventually on 1935, over 7200 Jewish shops were ransacked and 400 synagogues burnt. Thus began the slow processes of moving the Jews into ghettos away from all non-Jews. In the meantime, Hitler had annexed Austria prior to expansion of German territory. Before Hitler decided to invade any other country’s he asked Britain to form an alliance.
Britain felt that the Versailles treaty was harsh on Germany though Britain did not dare make an alliance with their previous enemy’s. On the other hand France was feeling uneasy about Germany’s slight expansion. Though the refrained from doing anything rash. Over in USA the government decided not to meddle in European affairs. When Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, countries started making alliances with each other as well as Germany uniting with many small European nations and the Soviet Union. When Germany invaded Poland World War 2 began.
By this time Hitler had come up with the “final solution” to the Jew problem or the fact that there were still Jews in Europe. He began using concentration camps to hold Jews and kill them in. Around 1942 Hitler had been winning the war with the help of the Soviet Union and had conquered much of Europe and Africa. Though when Japan bombed us springing it into action and Germany betrayed the Soviet Union did they start losing the war. As Germany failed to take over the Soviet Union, Allied troops along with soviet troops began closing in on Germany. Hitler began falling into depression.
He rarely left his house to make public announcements he would often sleep in until 12 noon and take naps at 3pm. Hitler would not accept defeat. He began ordering troops to fight suicide mission without any regret. Though, when he did feel remorse he would always say, guilty conscience is a Jewish invention. Soon The Soviet Union began taking over Germany, when Hitler did make public appearances people were shocked by how much he had aged over the last few years, many described him to have gray hair, a tired look, drool falling from the side of his mouth, and always walked with a slump.
The end of the war soon came Hitler and his wife Eva Braun had gone to a safer military camp as the Soviet Union began taking over Berlin, it was there they had finally gotten married. Soon after the soviet infiltrated there camp where the couple shot themselves. As a direct consequence of Hitler’s actions, communism, which he had attempted to raze, covered the whole of Eastern Europe, including half of Germany. The Jewish race, which he had tried to obliterate, had formed their own state and became a powerful strength in world politics. Hitler left a distraught Europe and with it an admonition for the future.
His regime had illustrated the dangers of nationalism, the obscenity of racism and the importance of democracy. In summation, Hitler grew up with such an intriguing life for he was able to spawn so much chaos. Though the world suffered a lot, his existence provided the basis for a better future. Works Cited “Adolf Hitler. ” Spartacus Educational. 05 Feb 2008. Spartacus Educational. 02 Feb 2008 ;http://www. spartacus. schoolnet. co. uk/GERhitler. htm;. “CONFESSIONS OF A GERMAN SOLDIER. ” History Today 57. 12 (Dec. 2007): 20-28. MasterFILE Select. EBSCO. West High Library, Painted Post, NY. 31 January 2008. ;http://search. ebscohost. om/login. aspx? direct=true=mfh=28044638=ehost-live;. Hitler, Adolf. “Mein Kampf, by Adlf Hitler. ” Adolf Hitler. Hitler Historical Museum . 6 Feb 2008 ;http://www. hitler. org/writings/Mein_Kampf/;. Hoffmann, Peter. “Hitler, Adolf. ” World Book Online Reference Center. 2008. West High Library. 6 Feb. 2008 ;http://www. worldbookonline. com/wb/Article? id=ar258000;. Kornblum, Aaron T. “Concentration camp. ” World Book Online Reference Center. 2008. West High Library. 6 Feb. 2008 ;http://www. worldbookonline. com/wb/Article? id=ar128020;. McKale, Donald M. “Mein Kampf. ” World Book Online Reference Center. 008. West High Library. 6 Feb. 2008 ;http://www. worldbookonline. com/wb/Article? id=ar353960;. Nolan, Mary. “Nazism. ” World Book Online Reference Center. 2008. West High Library. 6 Feb. 2008 ;http://www. worldbookonline. com/wb/Article? id=ar385180;. Payne, Stanley G. “Fascism. ” World Book Online Reference Center. 2008. West High Library. 6 Feb. 2008 ;http://www. worldbookonline. com/wb/Article? id=ar192260;. Sydnor, Charles W. , Jr. “Braun, Eva. ” World Book Online Reference Center. 2008. West High Library. 6 Feb. 2008 ;http://www. worldbookonline. com/wb/Article? id=ar074670;.