Hitler Essay, Research Paper

Hitler’s Road to Defeat

Adolf Hitler’s statement “there shall never again be a November 1918” clarifies his fierce rage by the abortive November 1918 revolution in Germany and as well as the humiliating defeat in WWI. His career focus was to rescue a humiliated German nation from democratic ideology, the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles and “eliminate ‘internationalism’, by which he meant the Jews within the German Empire” (Haffner: 10), to create a Greater-German nationalism under despotic rule.

The Weimar constitution, “modeled on that of the parliamentary German Empire,” (Haffner: 53) embodied the beaurocratic system of which Hitler was so adamantly opposed. Hitler blamed the Weimar Republic and it’s far-leftist philosophy for the socio-economic crisis that hit Germany in the early 1900’s. Desperate situations require a strong sense of leadership to overcome extenuating circumstances. The Weimar Republic was neither prepared nor capable of ending Germany’s depression. Hitler credited this incompetence to Democracy and capitalized on the failure. During the depression, Germany experienced mass unemployment, social dissolution, fear and indignation. Hitler played on national resentments, feeling of revolt and the desire for strong leadership in order to occupy the “vacuum which the disappearance of the monarchy had left behind, and which the Weimar Republic was unable to fill since it was neither accepted by the revolutionaries of November 1918 nor their opponents.” (Haffner: 15) This began the abolition of what Hitler believed to be the first mistake of early twentieth century Germany, Democracy.

Amid this political and economic turmoil, on June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was ratified by the German democratic government. This forced Germany to accept responsibility for the war, and to pay large war reparations. The German army was reduced to a mere 100,000 men and was forbidden the possession of submarines or military aircraft. The disgraceful effect this treaty had on the German nation sparked passion and desire in many Germans, including Hitler, “to make Germany the absolute, irresistible leading power in Europe.” (Haffner: 64) In all actuality, the German public never truly accepted the Treaty of Versailles as a reality, because it was formed and signed under forced coercion, and therefore, erroneous in their minds. “It was not, as other European peace treaties in the past had been negotiated and agreed between victors and vanquished.” (Haffner: 63) “The Treaty really was just what the insulted Germans called it- a Diktat, a dictated peace.” (Haffner: 63) Versailles became the ultimate symbol of German degradation. This unstable emotional state promoted the enactment of Hitler’s program for the rearmament and re-militization of Germany and by “1938 it was the strongest military and air power in Europe.” (Haffner: 30) Thus the intention to ‘shake off the fetters of Versailles’ was accomplished.

The “Final Solution” for the creation of Hitler’s Greater-German nationalism was the extermination of the entire Jewish “race”. For Hitler, the “Jew” was the cause of all chaos, corruption and destruction in culture, politics and the economy. Their underlying motive was to exploit and disable the German nation and the purity and perfection of the Aryan race. “The Jew’ is everybody’s enemy: ‘His ultimate aim is the de-nationalization, the inter-bastardization of the other nations, the lowering of the racial level of the noblest, as well as domination over that racial jumble through the extermination of national intelligentsia’s and their replacement by members of his own nation.” (Haffner: 83) Hitler revered himself as a champion for mankind, and truly believed that the genocide of the Jewish race would create a utopian society. Hitler’s philosophy was kill or be killed, in that, “if the Jew with the aid of the Marxist creed remains victorious over the nations of this world, then his crown will be the wreath on the graves of mankind.” (Haffner: 82) From the Hitlerist perspective, the Jews were infiltrating the “Aryan” nations in order to weaken them and eventually dominate the world. Because of this ‘internationalism’, they had to be exterminated.

In the end “Hitler achieved the opposite of what he aimed at.” (Haffner: 101) His relentless persecution and tyrannical actions in the pursuit of a nation, which only existed in the delusional framework of his mind, turned upon him and unraveled before his eyes. He transformed a once powerful nation into a mere skeleton of its former self, at the tragic cost of human life. “Germans were his chosen people because his inborn power instinct pointed to them like a compass needle as to the greatest potential power in Europe in his day-which in fact they were, and it was only as an instrument of power that he was ever genuinely interested in them.” (Haffner: 164) Hitler’s need for power served only to satisfy his cryptic indulgences. It was power for the sake of power, to which there is no purpose, and therefore no acceptable outcome.