Adolf Hitler was a military politician, an imperial chancellor, and a "Führer". He was
born on April 20th 1889 in Braunau Am Inn, in the middle of the former Austro-Hungarian
empire, now Austria.
Coming from a catholic middle class family, his father Aloís Hitler, a customs officer,
and his mother, Klara Ponsel, were cousins. Hitler was the third of seven children, but
only him and his little sister Paula reached adulthood.
Always a mediocre student, Adolf only got good grades in drawing. His father was pretty
strict, unlike his mother who was very kind and loving. They both wanted Adolf to become
a customs officer just like his father, but Adolf preferred arts.
When Alois passed away on January 3rd 1903, 16 year old Adolf decided to leave his studies
to devote himself to painting. He moved to Vienna to enroll in the Academy of Fine Arts,
but never managed to become accepted. Years later Adolf's mother passed away due to cancer
while he was scraping by, selling his paintings in the Austrian capital.
Adolf then moved to Munich, Germany, and avoided being drafted into the military for years.
Eventually he was located and conscripted, but was declared unfit to serve in the army.
On July 28th 1914 World War I broke out. Adolf voluntarily enrolled in the army marching
to the western front, and was designated as a messenger for the 16th Bavarian Reserve
Infantry Regiment. Due to a mustard gas attack he lost his vision temporarily, and later
on he was bestowed the iron cross for military merit, which he would proudly flaunt years
later.
Once the war was over with Germany's defeat, Adolf suffered a devastating blow. When he
recovered, he kept working in the army as an educator for the troops, devoted to predicating
nátionalism and giving many conferences related to that ideology. Over time his ideas became
more and more fanatical, disillusioned with the new democratic regime of the Weimar Republic,
and whose politicians he accused of betraying Germany by accepting the humiliating conditions
of the Treaty of Versailles.
By 1919 Adolf was a spy for the army. One of his missions was investigating a small
German political party directed by Anton Drexler, which promoted nationalist and far right-wing
ideologies. Adolf didn't take long to become the main leader of the party, renaming it
"National-Socialist German Workers' Party", or "Nazi" party for short. His ideology was
fueled with the fears of the German middle class facing the uncertainty of the modern
world.
Shortly after he created the "Sturmabteilung", also known as the "SA" or the "Brownshirts",
an assault group made up of war veterans who started to violently attack opposing political
groups as well as Jewish people. That same year, Adolf adopted the swastika, as well
as the Italian fascist salute of raising the arm.
At the beginning of 1921 Adolf, as the great public speaker that he was, managed to increase
the ranks of his party thanks to his polemic speeches against Marxist groups and Jewish
people, accusing them of being the cause of losing the war and the current economic crisis,
using them as scapegoats.
Encouraged by this growth, he decided to try and subjugate the national government by force
to take their power… but failed.
He was arrested, judged, and sentenced to 5 years in prison for high treason, although
he actually spent only 9 months in jail, time he used to materialize his authoritarian political
ideas in a book titled "My Struggle" ("Mein Kampf"), an auto-biography that would provide
an outline for his future actions.
When he was released from prison, Adolf rebuilt the Nazi Party by working with a group of
loyal followers and collaborators, as well as creating different institutions for the
party.
Due to the great depression of 1929, and the political difficulties the Weimar Republic
was going through, the Nazi party's promises of jobs and abolishing the Treaty of Versailles
provided them with a growing audience willing to listen to their demagóic propaganda, wrapped
in a paraphernalia of parades, flags, anthems and uniforms. Skillfully combining politics
with the illegitimate use of violence on the streets, the Nazis started to gain voting
weight until Adolf was appointed as head of government by president Hindenburg in 1933.
After Hindenburg's death, Adolf proclaimed himself Germany's "Führer". With little impact
at first, he slowly pulled the strings to eventually obtain complete power. He declared
new parliamentary elections, and with the burning of the Reichstag, he declared the
state of emergency in the country… and he was successful.
In March 21st 1933, Adolf Hitler inaugurated the first parliament of the Third Reich, and
two days later a law was approved, which granted him almost absolute power over the country.
With all that power at hand, Adolf rearmed the military and increased its capacity. He
then signed alliances with the Italian, Japanese, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Romanian governments,
commonly known as the Axis powers.
In 1936 the Spanish Civil War broke out, and Adolf would use Spain as the testing grounds
for his new airplanes, with the pretext of helping Francisco Franco carry out a coup
d'état against the Republic. That would be the first time in history where civilian areas
were bombarded.
After annexing Austria and the Sudetenland with the invasion of Poland, Adolf starts
World War II. His army invades France, the Netherlands and Belgium, and he persuades
Mussolini to join the war. After each victory of his army, more and more deported people
are taken in trains to concentration camps, or are executed in place. The Nazi army then
bombards the main cities of Great Britain, and the military bases at the south of the
country. They also tried to invade Russia, but failed mainly due to the early winter.
In 1941 Adolf Hitler declares war to the United States after Japan bombarded Pearl Harbor.
This leads to the governments of Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union, to
form an alliance against the axis powers. From that point on, Hitler's expansionist
future started to lose steam, with the Soviet army gaining ground through the eastern front,
and the Battle of Normandy's beaches through the western front.
Some of Hitler's less fanatical officials decided to conspire against him to end the
war. In July 20th 1944 Claus Von Stauffenberg placed a bomb in Adolf's "wolf's den". However,
the attack failed, and it only slightly injured the Führer.
This resulted in unprecedented repression, with more than 5.000 people arrested and more
than 200 executed, including the entire families of the main conspirators.
With the Soviets only a few kilometers away from Berlin, Adolf gave his last orders from
his underground bunker under the German chancellery. In April 29th 1945 he married Eva Braun, his
official lover, and finally, on April 30th he commits suicide with his wife by shooting
himself in the head. Their bodies were cremated by the Führer's request.
Adolf Hitler is one of the most sinister men of the 20th century, responsible for one of
the most brutal times in human history, and responsible for the deaths of millions of
innocents. We hope that these horrible events never, ever happen again.