Adolf Hitler Essay, Research Paper

William L. Shirer was born February 23, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois. He went to Europe after graduating from Coe College in 1925. He stayed for nearly two decades. Working for the Chicago Tribune he covered Lindbergh ’s landing in Paris in 1927, the 1928 Winter Olympics in St Moritz, and League of Nations meetings in Geneva. Then he spent two years in India covering Mahatma Ghandi before returning to Europe in 1932. He arrived in Berlin in 1934 as Chief of Universal News Service’s Berlin Office reporting first-hand the Hitler taking over of Germany. He began broadcasting from Berlin in 1937 for the American CBS network. His reports covered the Anschluss with Austria in March 1938, the Munich Crisis over Czechoslovakia in September that year, and Hitler’s road to war in Poland in 1939. In 1940 he went into France with the German Sixth Army, entering Paris with the victorious Germans in June and covering the French surrender at Compiegne. Shirer left Germany in December 1940, returning as a war correspondent to England in 1943, France in 1944, and Germany in 1945. He was at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco, and the Nuremberg trials in 1946. His most remembered work was on Hitler’s Germany – ‘The Rise and Fall of the Adolf Hitler’ published in 1961. He died in December 1993 at aged 89.

The Beginning

At six thirty on April 20th, 1889 a child was born in the little town of Branau, Austria. The child?s name was Adolf Hitler. He was the son a Customs official Alois Hitler, and his third wife Klara. He was a pretty good student, getting pretty good grades, but one of the teachers in his high school classified young Hitler as “notorious, cantankerous, willful, arrogant, and irascible. He has an obvious difficulty in fitting in at school.” He dropped out of school at the age of 16. . From childhood one it was his dream to become an artist. He had moved to Vienna, the capital of Austria where the Academy of Arts was located but they would not except him. Some think had he been excepted the Holocaust might never have happened. In 1913 Hitler decided to move to Munich. Although he was Austrian by birth, Hitler believed himself a German and did not like Austria because of all the Slavs. Then in 1914, when WWI began, Hitler volunteered for the Imperial Army. Hitler received awards of bravery and courage and held the rank of corporal but was wounded one day when some British soldiers lobbed explosives at them while they were getting food rations. One day September 12, 1919, Hitler was sent to investigate a small group which called itself the German Workers Party or Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. His natural ability to speak impressed the leader of the group and at the end of the meeting he initiated him. He later was put in charge of Propaganda. The party was small at first but Hitler’s took a liking to it and it?s ideas , and with his great skill at speaking attracted more and more listeners and it soon became the Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or National Socialist Worker?s Party. A man name Ernst Rohm organized a group of Storm Troopers (Storm Abtcilung) for Hitler. The storm troopers would beat up any hecklers or critics and when there weren?t any they would find Jews to beat up. By the summer of 1923, the Nazi party had grown to 150,000. Hitler captured the government leaders and forced them to join him. His 3,000 men then marched to Berlin in an attempt to take it over. The German police were waiting. Shots were fired and sixteen Nazis and two policemen died. He was arrested and sentenced to five years in jail although he only served nine months of it and was allowed large adjoining cells and to have visitors. There, in jail he wrote Mein Kampf or my struggle. This book went on to become the second best seller ever in Germany.

The End

The Great Depression caused the economy in Germany to fall and thus giving the Nazis two million more votes than the communist party. This put them just under the democratic party and Hitler planned on running against Paul Von Hinderburg, a social democrat. Although he did not win he was made Chancellor. Next, He forced Hindenburg to abolish the freedom of speech, press, and assembly. In 1934 President Hindenburg died. Using his unlimited powers, he combined President and Chancellor. At the end of the war, on April 30, 1945, Hitler shot himself to avoid capture. He ordered his elite SS troops to take his body and set it on fire with gasoline. Hitler?s Reich was over, millions gassed, millions shot. Hitler could have saved his armies had he listened to his generals and not tried to run the entire army by himself. The German forces were stretched too far into Russia and the cold was too much. Stalin gathered his men and attacked. His men surrounded German fortifications and Hitler?s Field Marshal Paulus gave up. By this time Hitler?s mind had completely lost contact with reality. To think that so many people could be suckered into believing and following Hitler. He has come to be the most mysterious yet well known person in the history of mankind and he also has the number two best-seller.

I believe William Shirer wrote a very good book, and I believe I understand Hitler a lot better after having read it. He really made Hitler out to be an amazing extraordinary man, even though it was not hard because Hitler was pretty amazing to begin with. I like how he talks first about Hitler?s beginning conquests of politic, and then later of blood. William Shirer did a good job of putting all the emphasis on Hitler, while still telling how WW II began and all the important battles in Europe as well as Germany. I believe I learned a lot of the in?s and out?s of WW II better than I would ever have known had I not read this book. Shirer did not talk about the horrible ghettos, and death camps. His main focus was on ?The Rise and Fall of Hitler,? and although definitely did not try to make him out to be a good guy, they did not talk about the dirt very much just the politics and battles. From my own interpretation of what I?ve heard about Adolf Hitler, I believe he was a sinister devil of a man and I hope there is never another man like him again. I have German roots and it scares me to think what the Germans have done in WW II.