Hitler: A Very Brief History

No significant decisions could be taken without his authorisation. Crucial German panzer divisions which may have delayed the Allied invasion could not be moved until Hitler woke up. The landings were a success. Germany was now fighting and losing a war on two fronts. Yet Hitler had met the news with enthusiasm, believing his forces could finally take the US and Britain out of the war.

The news couldn't be better. As long as they were in Britain we couldn't get at them. Now we have them where we can destroy them. The conference room where Hitler had been sitting was destroyed by Stauffenberg's bomb. As Germany's military situation deteriorated, opposition to Hitler grew among the army elite. Many of his previously loyal commanders wanted him dead.

Hitler was increasingly paranoid, and frequently modified his schedule at the last moment. But on 20 July an opportunity came at last. Hitler was meeting with top military aides at the Wolf's Lair field headquarters. A senior army officer, Lt Col Claus von Stauffenberg, left a bomb in a briefcase in the conference room. A stenographer and three officers died. Hitler was lucky to escape with only minor injuries, shielded from the full force of the blast by an oak table.

As Soviet troops closed in on his bunker in Berlin, Hitler accepted the inevitability of his defeat. He set into action his plan to take his own life. Hours beforehand, he married Eva Braun, who had remained by his side for 11 years. They were wed early on the morning of 29 April. The next day, at a little after 3. Hitler then shot himself through the head.

The man responsible for untold suffering, who had almost single-handedly brought the world to the very brink of destruction, was dead. Presented by John Sergeant. This page is no longer being updated. Age of extremes Few names from history inspire such immediate and emphatic revulsion as that of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler, pictured as a child circa Aug Fighting for the Fatherland Getty. Hitler and his distinctive toothbrush moustache.

Nov 'Stabbed in the back' Getty. Jun Treaty of Versailles Getty. Protests in Germany against the Treaty of Versailles. We could use him. Hitler giving a speech during his election campaign. Nov Beer Hall Putsch Getty. Hitler poses with the "blood flag" from Beer Hall Putsch. What a tremendous chap, this Hitler! Jul Mein Kampf Getty. All who are not of a good race are chaff. Pittsburgh to Pop to MTV. Oct Wall Street Crash Getty. A timeline of science fiction literature.

The story of the Fifa World Cup. The long journey into British life. Jan Leader of Germany Getty. Sep Appeasement and expansion Getty. German troops march into Czechoslovakia, occupying the Sudetenland. Sep The gambler Getty. Signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in Moscow. Jun Hitler's revenge Getty. Feb A wrong turn Getty.

Adolf Hitler planning the offensive on Stalingrad. History's most savage and devastating war. GIs in Northern Ireland: Jun Asleep at the wheel Getty. Landing of the Allied troops in Normandy. Apr Defeat and death Getty.

In February , Hitler was recalled to Austria to sit a medical examination for compulsary military service. It has been claimed that he was regarded as too weak and unfit to bear arms, but when war broke out in August , he wrote to the King of Bavaria and asked to serve in his army. Until , he served as an orderly and then later as a dispatch bearer. Hitler was wounded twice whilst serving at the front. Hitler recieved the Iron Cross 1st Class award for delivering an important dispatch to a front line trench command post under heavy fire.

Though in Nazi controlled history lessons German school children would be given a more romantic version of events i. Even though Hitler did well on the Front, he never was promoted above the rank of corporal. He blamed the Jews and Marxists at home for Germanys defeat. Hitler was kept on the regimental roster and was assigned to spy on post-war political parties.

In , he was assignged to investigate a small radical group calling themselves the'Deutscher Arbeiterparie' German Workers Party The party had no program or no plan of action, but the rhetoric they spun, caught Hitler's attention and he soon resigned his role within the regiment and enlisted into the'Deutscher Arbeiterparie' Membership number He soon found himself on the party's Executive Committee and within two years he advanced to the leadership of the party.

With this he changed the partys name to the National Socialist Deutscher Arbeitparty. In He believed that the Weimar Republic was ripe to overthrow and he helped organise a purge which became known as the Beer Hall Putsch, on November 8 The Putsch was a complete failure in terms of overthrowing the German government, but it did achieve in giving Him and his party a platform of high media attention.

Hitler was sentenced to five years imprisonment for high treason for which he served only nine months in Landsberg Prison. It was whilst he was serving his sentence, that he dictated his biography, which he called 'Mien Kampf' My Struggle. On 1 September , Germany invaded western Poland under the pretext of having been denied claims to the Free City of Danzig and the right to extraterritorial roads across the Polish Corridor , which Germany had ceded under the Versailles Treaty. The fall of Poland was followed by what contemporary journalists dubbed the " Phoney War " or Sitzkrieg "sitting war".

Hitler instructed the two newly appointed Gauleiters of north-western Poland, Albert Forster of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Arthur Greiser of Reichsgau Wartheland , to Germanise their areas, with "no questions asked" about how this was accomplished. Greiser soon complained that Forster was allowing thousands of Poles to be accepted as "racial" Germans and thus endangered German "racial purity".

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On 9 April, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. On the same day Hitler proclaimed the birth of the Greater Germanic Reich , his vision of a united empire of Germanic nations of Europe in which the Dutch, Flemish, and Scandinavians were joined into a "racially pure" polity under German leadership. These victories prompted Mussolini to have Italy join forces with Hitler on 10 June. France and Germany signed an armistice on 22 June.

Britain, whose troops were forced to evacuate France by sea from Dunkirk , [] continued to fight alongside other British dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler made peace overtures to the new British leader, Winston Churchill , and upon their rejection he ordered a series of aerial attacks on Royal Air Force airbases and radar stations in south-east England. On 7 September the systematic nightly bombing of London began.

The nightly air raids on British cities intensified and continued for months, including London, Plymouth , and Coventry. Hitler's attempt to integrate the Soviet Union into the anti-British bloc failed after inconclusive talks between Hitler and Molotov in Berlin in November, and he ordered preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union. In February, German forces arrived in Libya to bolster the Italian presence. In April, Hitler launched the invasion of Yugoslavia , quickly followed by the invasion of Greece.

Hitler ordered Army Group Centre to temporarily halt its advance to Moscow and divert its Panzer groups to aid in the encirclement of Leningrad and Kiev. Four days later, Hitler declared war against the United States. In late , German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein , [] thwarting Hitler's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. Overconfident in his own military expertise following the earlier victories in , Hitler became distrustful of his Army High Command and began to interfere in military and tactical planning, with damaging consequences.

Over , Axis soldiers were killed and , were taken prisoner. Marshal Pietro Badoglio , placed in charge of the government, soon surrendered to the Allies. On 6 June , the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord.

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Between and , there were many plans to assassinate Hitler , some of which proceeded to significant degrees. Hitler narrowly survived because staff officer Heinz Brandt moved the briefcase containing the bomb behind a leg of the heavy conference table, which deflected much of the blast. Recognising the strength and determination of the Red Army, Hitler decided to use his remaining mobile reserves against the American and British troops, which he perceived as far weaker. Roosevelt on 12 April , but contrary to his expectations, this caused no rift among the Allies.

In the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery, he awarded Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth , who were now fighting the Red Army at the front near Berlin. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the salient , while the German Ninth Army was ordered to attack northward in a pincer attack.

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During a military conference on 22 April, Hitler asked about Steiner's offensive. He was told that the attack had not been launched and that the Soviets had entered Berlin. Hitler asked everyone except Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl , Hans Krebs , and Wilhelm Burgdorf to leave the room, [] then launched into a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders, culminating in his declaration—for the first time—that "everything was lost".

By 23 April the Red Army had surrounded Berlin, [] and Goebbels made a proclamation urging its citizens to defend the city. On 30 April , when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler shot himself in the head and Braun bit into a cyanide capsule. Berlin surrendered on 2 May. Records in the Soviet archives obtained after the fall of the Soviet Union state that the remains of Hitler, Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels , the six Goebbels children , General Hans Krebs , and Hitler's dogs were repeatedly buried and exhumed.

The remains from the boxes were burned, crushed, and scattered into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the Elbe. If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! The Holocaust and Germany's war in the East were based on Hitler's long-standing view that the Jews were the enemy of the German people and that Lebensraum was needed for Germany's expansion.

He focused on Eastern Europe for this expansion, aiming to defeat Poland and the Soviet Union and then removing or killing the Jews and Slavs. The genocide was organised and executed by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. The records of the Wannsee Conference , held on 20 January and led by Heydrich, with fifteen senior Nazi officials participating, provide the clearest evidence of systematic planning for the Holocaust.

On 22 February, Hitler was recorded saying, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews". Between and , the Schutzstaffel SS , assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, was responsible for the deaths of at least eleven million non-combatants, [] [] including 5. Many victims of the Holocaust were gassed to death, while others died of starvation or disease or while working as slave labourers. Food supplies would be diverted to the German army and German civilians. Cities would be razed and the land allowed to return to forest or resettled by German colonists.

Hitler's policies resulted in the killing of nearly two million non-Jewish Poles , [] over three million Soviet prisoners of war , [] communists and other political opponents, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, [] [] Jehovah's Witnesses , Adventists , and trade unionists. Hitler did not speak publicly about the killings, and seems never to have visited the concentration camps. The Nazis embraced the concept of racial hygiene.

The laws banned sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and Jews and were later extended to include "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring". The principle relied on absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors; thus he viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself—the infallible leader —at the apex. Rank in the party was not determined by elections—positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank, who demanded unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader. His cabinet never met after , and he discouraged his ministers from meeting independently.

Hitler dominated his country's war effort during World War II to a greater extent than any other national leader. He strengthened his control of the armed forces in , and subsequently made all major decisions regarding Germany's military strategy. His decision to mount a risky series of offensives against Norway, France, and the Low Countries in against the advice of the military proved successful, though the diplomatic and military strategies he employed in attempts to force the United Kingdom out of the war ended in failure.



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Nevertheless, he continued to believe that only his leadership could deliver victory. For peace, freedom and democracy never again fascism millions of dead remind [us]. Hitler's suicide was likened by contemporaries to a "spell" being broken. Hitler's actions and Nazi ideology are almost universally regarded as gravely immoral; [] according to Kershaw, "Never in history has such ruination—physical and moral—been associated with the name of one man".

Germany itself suffered wholesale destruction, characterised as Stunde Null Zero Hour. Rummel , the Nazi regime was responsible for the democidal killing of an estimated Historian Friedrich Meinecke described Hitler as "one of the great examples of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life". Roberts , Hitler's defeat marked the end of a phase of European history dominated by Germany. He contends that without Hitler, the de-colonisation of former European spheres of influence would have been postponed.

Hitler was born to a practising Catholic mother and an anticlerical father; after leaving home Hitler never again attended Mass or received the sacraments. Conway states that Hitler was fundamentally opposed to the Christian churches. Hitler viewed the church as an important politically conservative influence on society, [] and he adopted a strategic relationship with it that "suited his immediate political purposes".

Speer wrote that Hitler had a negative view of Himmler's and Alfred Rosenberg 's mystical notions and Himmler's attempt to mythologise the SS. Hitler was more pragmatic, and his ambitions centred on more practical concerns. Researchers have variously suggested that Hitler suffered from irritable bowel syndrome , skin lesions , irregular heartbeat , coronary sclerosis , [] Parkinson's disease , [] [] syphilis , [] giant-cell arteritis , [] and tinnitus.

Langer of Harvard University described Hitler as a "neurotic psychopath ". Adolf Hitler , historian Robert G. Waite proposes that he suffered from borderline personality disorder. Hitler followed a vegetarian diet. He occasionally drank beer and wine in private, but gave up drinking because of weight gain in Prescribed 90 medications during the war years by his personal physician, Theodor Morell , Hitler took many pills each day for chronic stomach problems and other ailments.

Hitler created a public image as a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the nation. It was rumoured among contemporaries that Geli was in a romantic relationship with him, and her death was a source of deep, lasting pain. Hitler exploited documentary films and newsreels to inspire a cult of personality. He was involved and appeared in a series of propaganda films throughout his political career—such as Der Sieg des Glaubens and Triumph des Willens —made by Leni Riefenstahl , regarded as a pioneer of modern filmmaking. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For other uses, see Hitler disambiguation. Leader of Germany from to Military career of Adolf Hitler. Political views of Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Enabling Act of Economy of Nazi Germany. Axis powers , Tripartite Pact , and German re-armament. Causes of World War II. Death of Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler

Hitler on 20 April in his last public appearance, in the garden of the Reich Chancellery, ten days before he and Eva Braun committed suicide. The Holocaust and Final Solution. Consequences of Nazism and Neo-Nazism. Religious views of Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler's health and Psychopathography of Adolf Hitler. Hitler family and Sexuality of Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler in popular culture and List of speeches given by Adolf Hitler. He first wrote about the need to sizable core of Germandom in central Europe and subsequently set out to achieve this. Hitler took this title after the death of Paul von Hindenburg , who had been serving as President. Kershaw , p. Aspects of the Third Reich. Doyle, D February Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Bendersky, Joseph W A History of Nazi Germany: Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion. Retrieved 28 March Bracher, Karl Dietrich Translated by Jean Steinberg.

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University Press of New England. The Nazi Death Camps. World Almanac Library of the Holocaust. World War II Databook: The Coming of the Third Reich. The Third Reich in Power. The Third Reich At War. The Face of the Third Reich. Fromm, Erich []. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic. Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany. Giblin, James Cross The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler. Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. The Meaning of Hitler. War, Peace, and All That Jazz.

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Hitler, Adolf []. Hitler, Adolf; Trevor-Roper, Hugh []. Hitler's Conversations Recorded by Martin Bormann. Hitler, Adolf [—]. Hitler's Table Talk, — Study of a Revolutionary? Jetzinger, Franz []. Joachimsthaler, Anton []. The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth. The Mask of Command: A Study of Generalship.

The Story of a Lifelong Rampage ] in German. Kershaw, Ian []. Kershaw, Ian a []. Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation 4th ed. Hitler's Germany, —45 Paperback ed. Kolb, Eberhard []. Kubizek, August []. The Young Hitler I Knew. Stackpole Military History series. The Mind of Adolf Hitler: