Born in 1889 in the Austrian city of Braunau, Upper Austria, adolf hitler he was the son of Alois Hitler, a customs official. His mother, Klara Hitler was his father's cousin and went to Alois' house to take care of his wife, who was already sick and about to die. After becoming widowed, Louis decided to marry Klara. For this, he had to ask permission from the Catholic Church, which only allowed the marriage after Klara's pregnancy.
From the marriage of Louis and Klara two children were born: Adolf and Paula. During the early years of his youth, Adolf was known as an intelligent and moody boy. As a teenager, he failed the Linz School entrance exam twice. During this same period he began to formulate his first ideas of an anti-Semitic character, being strongly influenced by a professor named Leopold Poetsch.
Hitler's relationship with his parents was quite ambiguous. To his mother, he devoted extreme affection and dedication. With his father he had a conflicting relationship, marked mainly by Louis' opposition to Adolf's interest in the arts and architecture. Frustrated by his failure following his studies, Hitler moved to Vienna at the age of 21, living off small shifts. Living in precarious conditions, he moved to Munich when he was 25 years old.
With the explosion of First World War, he decided to voluntarily enlist in the German Army, incorporating the 16th Bavarian Infantry Regiment. Fighting bravely on the battlefields, he won awards for bravery during his military performance and recommendations from a superior of Jewish origin. After recovering from temporary blindness, he returned to Munich working in the press and propaganda department of the Fourth Command of the Armed Forces.
In 1919, after witnessing the German military defeat, he joined a small political group called the German Labor Party. Amidst the ills that the German people were facing, this party discussed extreme solutions through the problems of Germany. Among other points, they preached the extinction of the First World War treaties, the socioeconomic exclusion of the Jewish population, improvements in the economic field and the equality of political rights.
Using his great oratorical gifts, Hitler began to rally new supporters and proposed to change the party to the name of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The renewal of the name accompanied the creation of a new symbology to the party (a red flag with a gaudy cross) and the incorporation of militias committed to defending the party's ideal. The so-called Sections of Assault (SA) were charged with disrupting the meetings of Marxist, foreign and communist groups.
Two years after joining the party, hitler he had become supreme head of the Nazi Party (contraction of the German term “Nationalsozialist”). Grouped with a small group of supporters, Hitler staged a political coup that was contained by the German authorities. In the year 1923 he was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he only served eight months. In the meantime, he wrote the first lines of his work (a mix of autobiography and political manifesto) called “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle).
Freed, he resolved to reshape his party policy by incorporating fascist guidelines, notions of strict discipline, and the formation of paramilitary groups. Adopting a racist theory, Hitler said that the German people were descended from the Aryan race, destined to undertake the construction of a strong and prosperous nation. For this, they should veto the ethnic diversity in their territory, which would lose its productive forces to races that are not committed to the Aryans.
In the political field, Hitler's party was against the definition of a multi-party political regime. The ideological difference of the parties only served to disunite a nation that should have been engaged in higher ideals. In this way, democratic freedoms were vetoed in favor of a single party led by a only authority (in this case, Hitler) who would be committed to the constitution of a nation sovereign. Among other things, Hitler advocated the construction of a “living space” necessary for the Aryan nation to fulfill its destiny.
The Nazi ideology, promising prosperity and an end to the misery of the German people, achieved great popularity with the 1929 crisis. You Nazis they organized large public demonstrations where attacks on Jews, Marxists, Communists and Democrats were systematically criticized. By promising work and an end to the impositions of the Treaty of Versailles, the Nazis seemed to promise the German people everything they most needed. Before long, business groups financed the Nazi Party.
By the early 1930s, the party had achieved an expressive victory which was manifested in the predominant presence of Nazi deputies occupying the seats of the German Legislative Power. In the year 1932, Hitler lost the presidential election to Marshal Hindenburg. The following year, not withstanding the pressures of the German economic crisis, the president summoned Hilter to occupy the chair of chancellor. In a short time, Hitler managed to undertake successive political coups that gave him absolute control of Germany.
After annihilating dissidents within the party, in the so-called Night of the Long Daggers, Hitler began to put into practice the set of measures advocated by him and the Nazi party. By organizing several interventions in the economy, with the so-called Quadrennial Plans, Hitler managed to expand the work fronts and reheat German industry. The rapid economic rise was followed by the expansion of raw materials and consumer markets. It was at this point that the theory of vital space was put into practice.
Hitler, becoming a great charismatic leader and ardent strategist, imposed the needs of the Nazi state on Europe. After demanding domination of the Sudetenland region and signing non-aggression agreements with the Russians, the Nazi government was fully capable of implementing its great expansionist project. With the beginning of World War II, Hitler obtained great victories that seemed to guarantee him control of a wide territory, his prophecies seemed to be fulfilled.
Only after the invasion of Russia and the US entry into the conflict, the domination of the Nazi forces could be reversed. The Allied victory between 1943 and 1944 placed Hitler in an extremely difficult situation. Resisting defeat, Hitler decided to take refuge in his bunker in Berlin. Himmler, one of the top Nazi generals, tried to sign a surrender term without the consent of Adolf Hitler. The deal was rejected by the Allies, who continued to attack German troops.
Indignant, Hilter decided to replace Himmler with Commander Hermann Gering, who soon asked to take over the German government. Irritated at his men, in a final act Hilter named Karl Doenitz as president of Germany and Joseph Goebbeles as chancellor. On April 30, 1945, without offering any kind of military resistance, Goebbeles, Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide.
By Rainer Sousa
Master in History