Adolf Hitler Essay, Research Paper

Adolf Hitler, a strict and cruel man who was the cause of the Holocaust became the

leader of the Nazi party. Hitler started off as a calm child in Austria, but as he got older

he became more power hungry and powerful in Germany.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th, 1889 in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria. His father,

Alois, worked as a customs officer on the border crossing and his mother, Klara, had

previously given birth to two other children , Gustav and Ida, but they both died in their

infancy. In 1896, Klara gave birth to Adolf?s sister, Paula, who survived longer than

Adolf. Adolf?s mother gave birth to two other children but they died very early on also.

(http://www.stokesey.demon.co.uk/wwii/ahitler.html).

Adolf?s father died in 1903 after suffering a pleural hemorrhage when Adolf was

at the age of only 14. Now that Alois was dead, Klara had to take care of Adolf and Paula

all by her self. Only four years after the death of Alois, Adolf?s mother died from the

development of terminal breast cancer. She was treated and taken care of by a Jewish

doctor named Dr. Edward Bloch, who treated the poor. (www.AdolfHitler.com).

In 1906 Adolf wanted to go to Vienna to take up art school after he saw that he

was going no where in school. During his first year in Vienna he applied for a fine arts

school but was quickly rejected. After two years in Vienna he became virtually penniless

and homeless. He then wandered the streets, sleeping on park benches and on street

sidewalks begging for money from other people. During this period was when he first

developed his prejudices for Jews, his interests in politics, and he began to learn about the

skill he had for debating.(http://remember.org/guide/Facts.root.hitler.html).

In May of 1913, Adolf, looking to avoid military services for Austria, left Vienna

for Munich, which is the capital of Bavaria. In Munich, Hitler went to and aunts house

who was dying, and stayed there for a little while. In January of the next year, the police

came to his door with the draft notice from the Austrian government. The paper said that

Adolf would have to go to be a year in prison and fine if he was guilty of leaving his

home land to escape military services. Adolf was then arrested on the spot. He was

brought to the Austrian Consulate and was found unfit, too weak, and incapable of

bearing arms and then went back to Munich, Germany.

(http://remember.org/guide/Facts.root.hitler.html).

Adolf Hitler had a great pride in Germany and in August of 1914, he volunteered

for the German army to help them fight in World War I. As Hitler heard of the first news

of the begining of World War I, he sank to his knees and thanked heaven for being alive.

(http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/homeless.htm).

After living homeless and poor for many years in Vienna, Hitler had finally found

himself a home in the trenches and on the battle field of the ?War to end all wars.? Many

teenage boys eagerly volunteered for the war, thinking it was going to be a short war, but

just long enough for them to see some action and to participate in the ?great adventure.? It

turned out to be a very long war in which millions died and an entire generation of young

men got wiped out. (http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/warone.htm).

During World War I, Hitler escaped death many times, but still kept volunteering

for the dangerous jobs. Adolf during most of the war was a dispatch runner, taking

messages back and forth from the command staff in the rear to the fighting units near the

battlefield. Adolf, unlike most of the other men around him during the war, didn?t

complain about the bad food or conditions, and liked to talk about art and history.

On October 7, 1916, Adolf?s luck of avoiding injury during battle has run out. He

was hit and wounded from a shell fragment. He was hospitalized in Germany and it was

his first time from being away from the front of the war in two years. After recovery,

Adolf was assigned to light duty in Munich. He did like the anti-war conspiracy going

around German civilians and blamed it all on the Jews. To get away from the anti-war

German civilians, Hitler asked to go back to the front of the war and was sent back in

March of 1917. (http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/warone.htm).

In 1918, after Adolf returned to the front of the war, he was blinded by poison gas

and was in the hospital recovering from his illness. While he was recovering, he heard

about Germany?s defeat in World War I and was devastated.

In January 1919, after the wars ending, Corporal Adolf Hitler returned to Munich

and was searching for political groups for the Germans army. In September, 1919 Hitler

was investigating the German?s Worker?s Party and attended one of their meetings. While

at this meeting Adolf was aloud to stand up and talk to the party. Anton Drexler, the

leader of the party liked the speech so much that he invited Adolf to join the party. So,

Adolf decided to join. At this very moment, Adolf learned where his true talent was. He

learned that he was good at speeches. A short time after joining the party, in February

1920, Adolf took over the party and renamed it the ?Nationalsozialistische Deutsche

Arbeiter-Partie? or National Socialist German Workers’ Party and adopted the red flag

with the swastika. Shortly after becoming the leader of the National Socialist German

Workers? Party, Adolf left the German army to concentrate on the party.

(www.AdolfHitler.com).

Adolf and some of the party staff came up with a party program consisting of

twenty-five points. The platform they made was presented at a public meeting on

February 24, 1920 with over 2,000 people. In this speech and the twenty-five points,

Adolf brought up the issues of the Versailles Treaty, confiscating war profits,

expropriating land without compensation for use by the state, revoking civil rights for

Jews, and expelling those Jews who had emigrated into Germany after the war began.

(http://remember.org/guide/Facts.root.hitler.html).

The Bavarian government defied the Weimer republic. Adolf endorsed the fall of

the Weimer republic and declared at a public rally on October 30, 1923 that he was ready

to march into Berlin and get the communist and Jews out of the government. On

November 8th, 1923, Hitler held a rally at a Munich beer hall and declared a revolution.

The next day he lead 2,000 armed men in an attempt to take over the Bavarian

government but was stooped by the police, 12 men were killed in the fighting, Adolf

broke his arm, and was arrested and sentenced to five years in Landsberg. (The Concise

Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia)

Of his five year sentence in jail, Adolf served only nine months. During prison,

Adolf spent his time writing the first volume of Mein Kampf. Mein Kampf was partly an

autobiography. The book also showed, in detail, his views of the future of the German

people. The worst part of the book, Adolf saved for the Jews. In this part he blamed the

Jews for democracy, communism, and internationalism. He also blamed the defeat in

World War I on the Jews. He stated that Jews were the German?s nation true enemy and

that they were not a race but and anti-race.

(http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/warone.htm).

A second volume of Mein Kampf was published in 1927 which included the

history of the Nazi party, and also a primer on how to get political power, and how to

build a political organization. Mein Kampf also stated that the Jews wanted to take over

the world and the only way to stop them is to eliminate them. The book struck the

German?s that it was their destiny to dominate the world. The book sold over five million

copies by the outbreak of World War II.

(http://remember.org/guide/Facts.root.hitler.html)

After being imprisoned, Adolf decided to get power with words rather than with

force. He now began speaking to mass numbers of people and told them to resist the

influences of the Jews and of communism and to build and empire that would rise to

power and rule the world for 1,000 years. (www.Adolfhitler.com)

Hitler?s Nazi party captured 18% of the popular vote in the 1930 elections, and in

1932 Adolf ran for president and got 30% of the popular vote, and in 1933 Hitler was

named chancellor of Germany in exchange for his sapport.

In 1934, the current dictator Hindenburg had died and now Hitler had taken that

position. Now that he was in this position he was free of other political parties and of

government institutions. As soon as he became dictator he began building the army for

war, and by 1937 he was confident enough to put his master plan into action, which was

world domination. He called together his top military aides and stated the plan to them

and whomever disagreed with the plan was dismissed from the meeting.

(http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/warone.htm).

On September 1,1939 Hitler launches the war by invading Poland and that making

France and England declare war on Germany. Hitler used the war tactic called a

Blitzkrieg, otherwise known as a lighting war. Using this tactic, Hitler swept through

most of Western Europe.

In 1939 Hitler ignored a non-aggression pact he had signed with the Soviet Union.

Hitler was winning battles in many place until the United States entered the war on the

Allies side in December, 1941. The Allies had started bombing Germany and Italy

(Germany?s biggest allied force). Italy had fallen out of the war and on to the Allies side

in 1944 and German cities were being destroyed terribly.