Adolf Hitler (born April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria, died April 30, 1945, Berlin, Germany)

leader of the Nazi Party (from 1920/21) and chancellor (Kanzler) and Führer of Germany (1933–
45). Hitler’s worldview revolved around two concepts: territorial expansion and racial
supremacy. Those themes informed his decision to invade Poland, which marked the start
of World War II, as well as the systematic killing of six million Jews and millions of others during
the Holocaust.

Hitler’s father, Alois (born 1837), was illegitimate. For a time he bore his mother’s name,
Schicklgruber, but by 1876 he had established his family claim to the surname Hitler. Adolf
never used any other surname.

Early life
After his father’s retirement from the state customs service, Adolf Hitler spent most of his
childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. It remained his favourite city throughout his life,
and he expressed his wish to be buried there. Alois Hitler died in 1903 but left an
adequate pension and savings to support his wife and children. Although Hitler feared and
disliked his father, he was a devoted son to his mother, who died after much suffering in 1907.
With a mixed record as a student, Hitler never advanced beyond a secondary education. After
leaving school, he visited Vienna, then returned to Linz, where he dreamed of becoming an
artist. Later, he used the small allowance he continued to draw to maintain himself in Vienna.
He wished to study art, for which he had some faculties, but he twice failed to secure entry to
the Academy of Fine Arts. For some years he lived a lonely and isolated life, earning a
precarious livelihood by painting postcards and advertisements and drifting from one municipal
hostel to another. Hitler already showed traits that characterized his later life: loneliness and
secretiveness, a bohemian mode of everyday existence, and hatred of cosmopolitanism and of
the multinational character of Vienna.

In 1913 Hitler moved to Munich. Screened for Austrian military service in February 1914, he
was classified as unfit because of inadequate physical vigour; but when World War I broke out,
he petitioned Bavarian King Louis III to be allowed to serve, and one day after submitting that
request, he was notified that he would be permitted to join the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry
Regiment. After some eight weeks of training, Hitler was deployed in October 1914 to Belgium,
where he participated in the First Battle of Ypres. He served throughout the war, was wounded
in October 1916, and was gassed two years later near Ypres. He was hospitalized when the
conflict ended. During the war, he was continuously in the front line as a headquarters runner;
his bravery in action was rewarded with the Iron Cross, Second Class, in December 1914, and
the Iron Cross, First Class (a rare decoration for a corporal), in August 1918. He greeted the war
with enthusiasm, as a great relief from the frustration and aimlessness of civilian life. He
found discipline and comradeship satisfying and was confirmed in his belief in the heroic virtues
of war.
Rise to power of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler, 1930s.
Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany’s defeat, Hitler took
up political work in Munich in May–June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small
German Workers’ Party in Munich (September 1919). In 1920 he was put in charge of the
party’s propaganda and left the army to devote himself to improving his position within the
party, which in that year was renamed the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
(Nazi). Conditions were ripe for the development of such a party. Resentment at the loss of
the war and the severity of the peace terms added to the economic woes and brought
widespread discontent. This was especially sharp in Bavaria, due to its traditional separatism
and the region’s popular dislike of the republican government in Berlin. In March 1920 a coup
d’état by a few army officers attempted in vain to establish a right-wing government.

Munich was a gathering place for dissatisfied former servicemen and members of the Freikorps,
which had been organized in 1918–19 from units of the German army that were unwilling to
return to civilian life, and for political plotters against the republic. Many of these joined the
Nazi Party. Foremost among them was Ernst Röhm, a staff member of the district army
command, who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler and who was of great help
in furthering Hitler’s rise within the party. It was he who recruited the “strong arm” squads
used by Hitler to protect party meetings, to attack socialists and communists, and to
exploit violence for the impression of strength it gave. In 1921 these squads were formally
organized under Röhm into a private party army, the SA (Sturmabteilung). Röhm was also able
to secure protection from the Bavarian government, which depended on the local army
command for the maintenance of order and which tacitly accepted some of his terrorist tactics.

Conditions were favourable for the growth of the small party, and Hitler was
sufficiently astute to take full advantage of them. When he joined the party, he found it
ineffective, committed to a program of nationalist and socialist ideas but uncertain of its aims
and divided in its leadership. He accepted its program but regarded it as a means to an end.
His propaganda and his personal ambition caused friction with the other leaders of the party.
Hitler countered their attempts to curb him by threatening resignation, and because the future
of the party depended on his power to organize publicity and to acquire funds, his opponents
relented. In July 1921 he became their leader with almost unlimited powers. From the first he
set out to create a mass movement, whose mystique and power would be sufficient to bind its
members in loyalty to him. He engaged in unrelenting propaganda through the party
newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter (“Popular Observer,” acquired in 1920), and through
meetings whose audiences soon grew from a handful to thousands. With
his charismatic personality and dynamic leadership, he attracted a devoted cadre of Nazi
leaders, men whose names today live in infamy—Johann Dietrich Eckart (who acted as a
mentor for Hitler), Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Julius Streicher.
The climax of this rapid growth of the Nazi Party in Bavaria came in an attempt to seize power
in the Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch of November 1923, when Hitler and General Erich
Ludendorff tried to take advantage of the prevailing confusion and opposition to the Weimar
Republic to force the leaders of the Bavarian government and the local army commander to
proclaim a national revolution. In the melee that resulted, the police and the army fired at the
advancing marchers, killing a few of them. Hitler was injured, and four policemen were killed.
Placed on trial for treason, he characteristically took advantage of the immense publicity
afforded to him. He also drew a vital lesson from the Putsch—that the movement must achieve
power by legal means. He was sentenced to prison for five years but served only nine months,
and those in relative comfort at Landsberg castle. Hitler used the time to dictate the first
volume of Mein Kampf, his political autobiography as well as a compendium of his
multitudinous ideas.

Hitler’s ideas included inequality among races, nations, and individuals as part of an
unchangeable natural order that exalted the “Aryan race” as the creative element of mankind.
According to Hitler, the natural unit of mankind was the Volk (“the people”), of which the
German people was the greatest. Moreover, he believed that the state existed to serve
the Volk—a mission that to him the Weimar German Republic betrayed. All morality and truth
were judged by this criterion: whether it was in accordance with the interest and preservation
of the Volk. Parliamentary democratic government stood doubly condemned. It assumed the
equality of individuals that for Hitler did not exist and supposed that what was in the interests
of the Volk could be decided by parliamentary procedures. Instead, Hitler argued that the unity
of the Volk would find its incarnation in the Führer, endowed with perfect authority. Below the
Führer the party was drawn from the Volk and was in turn its safeguard.
The greatest enemy of Nazism was not, in Hitler’s view, liberal democracy in Germany, which
was already on the verge of collapse. It was the rival Weltanschauung, Marxism (which for him
embraced social democracy as well as communism), with its insistence on internationalism and
economic conflict. Beyond Marxism he believed the greatest enemy of all to be the Jew, who
was for Hitler the incarnation of evil. There is debate among historians as to when anti-
Semitism became Hitler’s deepest and strongest conviction. As early as 1919 he wrote,
“Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition. Its final objective must be the
removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he described the Jew as the “destroyer of
culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”

During Hitler’s absence in prison, the Nazi Party languished as the result of internal dissension.
After his release, Hitler faced difficulties that had not existed before 1923.
Economic stability had been achieved by a currency reform and the Dawes Plan had scaled back
Germany’s World War I reparations. The republic seemed to have become more respectable.
Hitler was forbidden to make speeches, first in Bavaria, then in many other German states
(these prohibitions remained in force until 1927–28). Nevertheless, the party grew slowly in
numbers, and in 1926 Hitler successfully established his position within it against Gregor
Strasser, whose followers were primarily in northern Germany.

The advent of the Depression in 1929, however, led to a new period of political instability. In
1930 Hitler made an alliance with the Nationalist Alfred Hugenberg in a campaign against
the Young Plan, a second renegotiation of Germany’s war reparation payments. With the help
of Hugenberg’s newspapers, Hitler was able for the first time to reach a nationwide audience.
The alliance also enabled him to seek support from many of the magnates of business and
industry who controlled political funds and were anxious to use them to establish a strong
right-wing, antisocialist government. The subsidies Hitler received from the industrialists placed
his party on a secure financial footing and enabled him to make effective his emotional appeal
to the lower middle class and the unemployed, based on the proclamation of his faith that
Germany would awaken from its sufferings to reassert its natural greatness. Hitler’s dealings
with Hugenberg and the industrialists exemplify his skill in using those who sought to use him.
But his most important achievement was the establishment of a truly national party (with its
voters and followers drawn from different classes and religious groups), unique in Germany at
the time.
How did Joseph Goebbels's use of propaganda and terror aid Adolf Hitler's campaign for
chancellor?
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler in Brunswick, Germany, 1931.
Know about Hitler's rise to power as Head of Government
Unremitting propaganda, set against the failure of the government to improve conditions
during the Depression, produced a steadily mounting electoral strength for the Nazis. The party
became the second largest in the country, rising from 2.6 percent of the vote in the national
election of 1928 to more than 18 percent in September 1930. In 1932 Hitler
opposed Hindenburg in the presidential election, capturing 36.8 percent of the votes on the
second ballot. Finding himself in a strong position by virtue of his
unprecedented mass following, he entered into a series of intrigues with conservatives such
as Franz von Papen, Otto Meissner, and President Hindenburg’s son, Oskar. The fear of
communism and the rejection of the Social Democrats bound them together. In spite of a
decline in the Nazi Party’s votes in November 1932, Hitler insisted that the chancellorship was
the only office he would accept. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg offered him the
chancellorship of Germany. His cabinet included few Nazis at that point.
Hitler’s life and habits
Hitler’s personal life had grown more relaxed and stable with the added comfort that
accompanied political success. After his release from prison, he often went to live on the
Obersalzberg, near Berchtesgaden. His income at this time was derived from party funds and
from writing for nationalist newspapers. He was largely indifferent to clothes and food but did
not eat meat and gave up drinking beer (and all other alcohols). His rather irregular working
schedule prevailed. He usually rose late, sometimes dawdled at his desk, and retired late at
night.
At Berchtesgaden, his half sister Angela Raubal and her two daughters accompanied him. Hitler
became devoted to one of them, Geli, and it seems that his possessive jealousy drove her
to suicide in September 1931. For weeks Hitler was inconsolable. Some time later Eva Braun, a
shop assistant from Munich, became his mistress. Hitler rarely allowed her to appear in public
with him. He would not consider marriage on the grounds that it would hamper his career.
Braun was a simple young woman with few intellectual gifts. Her great virtue in Hitler’s eyes
was her unquestioning loyalty, and in recognition of this he legally married her at the end of his
life.

Dictator, 1933–39
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler addressing a rally, 1930s.
Learn about the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the anti-Semitism they fomented in pre-
WWII Germany
In 1933 Adolf Hitler's National Socialists were voted into power, and the campaign of terror began. From The
Second World War: Prelude to Conflict (1963).
Discover how the Jews were discriminated, excluded and systematically disposed of their rights
during Hitler's Reich
Overview of the discrimination and exclusion of Jews in Germany following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the
1930s.(more)

Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler addressing a rally in Germany, c. 1933.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler addressing a Nazi Party rally in Munich, Germany, in the 1930s.(more)

How did Adolf Hitler speak at the 1934 Nürnberg Rally?

Learn about Adolf Hitler's public speaking style by listening to him delivering the closing address at the 1934
Nürnberg Rally. Footage of this speech served as the climax of Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph des
Willens (1935; Triumph of the Will). This excerpt is translated as “The movement [National Socialism] is a
living expression of our people and, therefore, a symbol of eternity. Long live the National Socialist
movement! Long live Germany!”
Once in power, Hitler established an absolute dictatorship. He secured the president’s assent
for new elections. The Reichstag fire, on the night of February 27, 1933 (apparently the work of
a Dutch Communist, Marinus van der Lubbe), provided an excuse for a decree overriding all
guarantees of freedom and for an intensified campaign of violence. In these conditions, when
the elections were held (March 5), the Nazis polled 43.9 percent of the votes. On March 21 the
Reichstag assembled in the Potsdam Garrison Church to demonstrate the unity of National
Socialism with the old conservative Germany, represented by Hindenburg. Two days later
the Enabling Bill, giving full powers to Hitler, was passed in the Reichstag by the combined votes
of Nazi, Nationalist, and Centre party deputies (March 23, 1933). Less than three months later
all non-Nazi parties, organizations, and labor unions ceased to exist. The disappearance of the
Catholic Centre Party was followed by a German Concordat with the Vatican in July. (See Adolf
Hitler addressing the Reichstag.)
Ernst Röhm
Ernst Röhm, 1933.

Ernst Röhm
Ernst Röhm (right) with SS leaders Kurt Daluege (left) and Heinrich Himmler (centre), August 1933.(more)
Hitler had no desire to spark a radical revolution. Conservative “ideas” were still necessary if he
was to succeed to the presidency and retain the support of the army; moreover, he did not
intend to expropriate the leaders of industry, provided they served the interests of the Nazi
state. Ernst Röhm, however, was a protagonist of the “continuing revolution”; he was also, as
head of the SA, distrusted by the army. Hitler tried first to secure Röhm’s support for his
policies by persuasion. Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler were eager to remove Röhm,
but Hitler hesitated until the last moment. Finally, on June 29, 1934, he reached his decision.
On the “Night of the Long Knives,” Röhm and his lieutenant Edmund Heines were executed
without trial, along with Gregor Strasser, Kurt von Schleicher, and others.

German soldiers swearing allegiance to Adolf Hitler

German soldiers swearing an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler at the Rathenower Strasse barracks in Berlin,
August 2, 1934.(more)
The army leaders, satisfied at seeing the SA broken up, approved Hitler’s actions. When
Hindenburg died on August 2, the army leaders, together with Papen, assented to the merging
of the chancellorship and the presidency—with which went the supreme command of the
armed forces of the Reich. Now officers and men took an oath of allegiance to Hitler personally.
Economic recovery and a fast reduction in unemployment (coincident with world recovery, but
for which Hitler took credit) made the regime increasingly popular, and a combination of
success and police terror brought the support of 90 percent of the voters in a plebiscite.

Hitler devoted little attention to the organization and running of the domestic affairs of the Nazi
state. Responsible for the broad lines of policy, as well as for the system of terror that upheld
the state, he left detailed administration to his subordinates. Each of these exercised arbitrary
power in his own sphere; but by deliberately creating offices and organizations with
overlapping authority, Hitler effectively prevented any one of these particular realms from ever
becoming sufficiently strong to challenge his own absolute authority.

Foreign policy claimed his greater interest. As he had made clear in Mein Kampf, the reunion of
the German peoples was his overriding ambition. Beyond that, the natural field of expansion lay
eastward, in Poland, the Ukraine, and the U.S.S.R.—expansion that would necessarily involve
renewal of Germany’s historic conflict with the Slavic peoples, who would be subordinate in the
new order to the Teutonic master race. He saw fascist Italy as his natural ally in this
crusade. Britain was a possible ally, provided that it would abandon its traditional policy of
maintaining the balance of power in Europe and limit itself to its interests overseas. In the
west France remained the natural enemy of Germany and must, therefore, be cowed or
subdued to make expansion eastward possible.
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini
Adolf Hitler (right) with Benito Mussolini.
Before such expansion was possible, it was necessary to remove the restrictions placed on
Germany at the end of World War I by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler used all the arts
of propaganda to allay the suspicions of the other powers. He posed as the champion of Europe
against the scourge of Bolshevism and insisted that he was a man of peace who wished only to
remove the inequalities of the Versailles Treaty. He withdrew from the Disarmament
Conference and from the League of Nations (October 1933), and he signed a nonaggression
treaty with Poland (January 1934). Every repudiation of the treaty was followed by an offer to
negotiate a fresh agreement and insistence on the limited nature of Germany’s ambitions. Only
once did the Nazis overreach themselves: when Austrian Nazis, with the connivance of German
organizations, murdered Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss of Austria and attempted a revolt (July
1934). The attempt failed, and Hitler disclaimed all responsibility. In January 1935 a plebiscite in
the Saarland, with a more than 90 percent majority, returned that territory to Germany. In
March of the same year, Hitler introduced conscription. Although this action provoked protests
from Britain, France, and Italy, the opposition was restrained, and Hitler’s peace diplomacy was
sufficiently successful to persuade the British to negotiate a naval treaty (June 1935)
recognizing Germany’s right to a considerable navy. His greatest stroke came in March 1936,
when he used the excuse of a pact between France and the Soviet Union to march into the
demilitarized Rhineland—a decision that he took against the advice of many generals.
Meanwhile the alliance with Italy, foreseen in Mein Kampf, rapidly became a reality as a result
of the sanctions imposed by Britain and France against Italy during the Ethiopian war. In
October 1936, a Rome–Berlin axis was proclaimed by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini; shortly
afterward came the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan; and a year later all three countries joined
in a pact. Although on paper France had a number of allies in Europe, while Germany had none,
Hitler’s Third Reich had become the principal European power.

Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler reviewing German troops in Vienna, 1938.
In November 1937, at a secret meeting of his military leaders, Hitler outlined his plans for
future conquest (beginning with Austria and Czechoslovakia). In January 1938
he dispensed with the services of those who were not wholehearted in their acceptance of Nazi
dynamism—Hjalmar Schacht, who was concerned with the German economy; Werner von
Fritsch, a representative of the caution of professional soldiers; and Konstantin von Neurath,
Hindenburg’s appointment at the foreign office. In February Hitler invited the
Austrian chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, to Berchtesgaden and forced him to sign an
agreement including Austrian Nazis within the Vienna government. When Schuschnigg
attempted to resist, announcing a plebiscite about Austrian independence, Hitler immediately
ordered the invasion of Austria by German troops. The enthusiastic reception that Hitler
received convinced him to settle the future of Austria by outright annexation (Anschluss). He
returned in triumph to Vienna, the scene of his youthful humiliations and hardships. No
resistance was encountered from Britain and France. Hitler had taken special care to secure the
support of Italy; as this was forthcoming he proclaimed his undying gratitude to Mussolini.
Munich Agreement
German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (left) and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (third from left) in
Munich, Germany, shortly before the signing of the Munich Agreement, 1938.

Munich Agreement: Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Neville Chamberlain

(From left) Italian leader Benito Mussolini, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, a German interpreter, and British
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain meeting in Munich, September 29, 1938.
In spite of his assurances that Anschluss would not affect Germany’s relations
with Czechoslovakia, Hitler proceeded at once with his plans against that country. Konrad
Henlein, leader of the German minority in Czechoslovakia, was instructed to agitate for
impossible demands on the part of the Sudetenland Germans, thereby enabling Hitler to move
ahead on the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Britain’s and France’s willingness to accept
the cession of the Sudetenland areas to Germany presented Hitler with the choice between
substantial gains by peaceful agreement or by a spectacular war against Czechoslovakia. The
intervention by Mussolini and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain appear to have
been decisive. Hitler accepted the Munich Agreement on September 30. He also declared that
these were his last territorial demands in Europe.
Only a few months later, he proceeded to occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia. On March 15,
1939, he marched into Prague declaring that the rest of “Czechia” would become a German
protectorate. A few days later (March 23) the Lithuanian government was forced to cede
Memel (Klaipeda), next to the northern frontier of East Prussia, to Germany.

Immediately Hitler turned on Poland. Confronted by the Polish nation and its leaders, whose
resolution to resist him was strengthened by a guarantee from Britain and France, Hitler
confirmed his alliance with Italy (the “Pact of Steel,” May 1939). Moreover, on August 23, just
within the deadline set for an attack on Poland, he signed a nonaggression pact with Joseph
Stalin’s Soviet Union—the greatest diplomatic bombshell in centuries. Hitler still disclaimed any
quarrel with Britain, but to no avail; the German invasion of Poland (September 1) was followed
two days later by a British and French declaration of war on Germany.

In his foreign policy, Hitler combined opportunism and clever timing. He showed astonishing
skill in judging the mood of the democratic leaders and exploiting their weaknesses—in spite of
the fact that he had scarcely set foot outside Austria and Germany and spoke no foreign
language. Up to this point every move had been successful. Even his anxiety over British and
French entry into the war was dispelled by the rapid success of the campaign in Poland. He
could, he thought, rely on his talents during the war as he relied on them before.

World War II
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (centre) in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris shortly after signing an armistice with France, June
1940.
Germany’s war strategy was assumed by Hitler from the first. When the successful campaign
against Poland failed to produce the desired peace accord with Britain, he ordered the army to
prepare for an immediate offensive in the west. Bad weather made some of his reluctant
generals postpone the western offensive. This in turn led to two major changes in planning. The
first was Hitler’s order to forestall an eventual British presence in Norway by occupying
that country and Denmark in April 1940. Hitler took a close personal interest in this daring
operation. From this time onward his intervention in the detail of military operations grew
steadily greater. The second was Hitler’s important adoption of General Erich von Manstein’s
plan for an attack through the Ardennes (which began May 10) instead of farther north. This
was a brilliant and startling success. The German armies reached the Channel ports (which they
had been unable to reach during World War I) in 10 days. Holland surrendered after 4 days
and Belgium after 16 days. Hitler held back General Gerd von Rundstedt’s tanks south
of Dunkirk, thus enabling the British to evacuate most of their army, but the western campaign
as a whole was amazingly successful. On June 10 Italy entered the war on the side of Germany.
On June 22 Hitler signed a triumphant armistice with the French on the site of the Armistice of
1918.
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (left) touring the Eastern Front with German dictator Adolf Hitler (second
from right) during World War II. Walking with them are the German Nazi leaders Hermann Göring (between
Mussolini and Hitler) and Wilhelm Keitel (right).
Hitler hoped that the British would negotiate an armistice. When this did not happen, he
proceeded to plan the invasion of Britain, together with the elimination of British air power. At
the same time preparations were begun for the invasion of the Soviet Union, which in Hitler’s
view was Britain’s last hope for a bulwark against German control of the continent. Then
Mussolini invaded Greece, where the failures of the Italian armies made it necessary for
German forces to come to their aid in the Balkans and North Africa. Hitler’s plans were further
disrupted by a coup d’état in Yugoslavia in March 1941, overthrowing the government that had
made an agreement with Germany. Hitler immediately ordered his armies to subdue
Yugoslavia. The campaigns in the Mediterranean theatre, although successful, were limited,
compared to the invasion of Russia. Hitler would spare few forces from Operation Barbarossa,
the planned invasion of the Soviet Union.
Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler
Heinrich Himmler (left) and Adolf Hitler reviewing an assembly of Hitler's personal guard.
The attack against the U.S.S.R. was launched on June 22, 1941. The German army advanced
swiftly into the Soviet Union, corralling almost three million Russian prisoners, but it failed to
destroy its Russian opponent. Hitler became overbearing in his relations with his generals. He
disagreed with them about the object of the main attack, and he wasted time and strength by
failing to concentrate on a single objective. In December 1941, a few miles before Moscow, a
Russian counteroffensive finally made it clear that Hitler’s hopes of a single campaign could not
be realized.

On December 7, the next day, the Japanese attacked U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor. Hitler’s
alliance with Japan forced him to declare war on the United States. From this moment on his
entire strategy changed. He hoped and tried (like his idol Frederick II the Great) to break what
he deemed was the unnatural coalition of his opponents by forcing one or the other of them to
make peace. (In the end, the “unnatural” coalition between Stalin and Winston
Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt did break up, but too late for Hitler.) He also ordered the
reorganization of the German economy on a full wartime basis.

Meanwhile, Himmler prepared the ground for a “new order” in Europe. From 1933 to 1939 and
in some instances even during the first years of the war, Hitler’s purpose was to expel
the Jews from the Greater German Reich. In 1941 this policy changed from expulsion to
extermination. The concentration camps created under the Nazi regime were thereby
expanded to include extermination camps, such as Auschwitz, and mobile extermination
squads, the Einsatzgruppen. Although Catholics, Poles, homosexuals, Roma (Gypsies), and the
handicapped were targeted for persecution, if not outright extermination, the Jews of
Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union were by far the most numerous among the victims; in
German-occupied Europe some six million Jews were killed during the war. The sufferings of
other peoples were only less when measured in their numbers killed.
At the end of 1942, defeat at El-Alamein and at Stalingrad and the American landing in
French North Africa brought the turning point in the war, and Hitler’s character and way of life
began to change. Directing operations from his headquarters in the east, he refused to visit
bombed cities or to allow some withdrawals, and he became increasingly dependent on his
physician, Theodor Morell, and on the large amounts and varieties of medicines he ingested.
Yet Hitler had not lost the power to react vigorously in the face of misfortune. After the arrest
of Mussolini in July 1943 and the Italian armistice, he not only directed the occupation of all
important positions held by the Italian army but also ordered the rescue of Mussolini, with the
intention that he should head a new fascist government. On the eastern front, however, there
was less and less possibility of holding up the advance. Relations with his army commanders
grew strained, the more so with the growing importance given to the SS (Schutzstaffel)
divisions. Meanwhile, the general failure of the U-boat campaign and the bombing of Germany
made chances of German victory very unlikely.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini after the July Plot failed
Adolf Hitler (right) and Benito Mussolini (left) at the damaged Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) field headquarters in
Rastenburg, East Prussia, after an assassination attempt on Hitler, July 1944.
Learn about the White Rose and the scholls, a secret student group who stood up against the
Nazi rule

What is the significance of the July Plot of 1944?

Learn about the July Plot of 1944, in which Claus, Count Schenk von Stauffenberg, and others tried to
assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime.
Desperate officers and anti-Nazi civilians became ready to remove Hitler and negotiate a peace.
Several attempts on Hitler’s life were planned in 1943–44; the most nearly successful was made
on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg exploded a bomb at a conference being
held at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia. But Hitler escaped with superficial injuries, and,
with few exceptions, those implicated in the plot were executed. The reduction of the army’s
independence was now made complete; National Socialist political officers were appointed to
all military headquarters.

Thereafter, Hitler was increasingly ill; but he did not relax or lose control, and he continued to
exercise an almost hypnotic power over his close subordinates, none of whom wielded any
independent authority. The Allied invasion of Normandy (June 6, 1944) marked the beginning
of the end. Within a few months, eight European capitals
(Rome, Paris, Brussels, Bucharest, Sofia, Athens, Belgrade, Helsinki) were liberated by
the Allies or surrendered to them. In December 1944 Hitler moved his headquarters to the west
to direct an offensive in the Ardennes aimed at splitting the American and the British armies.
When this failed, his hopes for victory became ever more visionary, based on the use of
new weapons (German rockets had been fired on London since June 1944) or on the breakup of
the Allied Powers.

Learn about the Soviet attack on Berlin, leading to Hitler's suicide

As Soviet troops entered Berlin and the Battle of Berlin raged on, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in April 1945.
See all videos for this article
After January 1945 Hitler never left the Chancellery in Berlin or its bunker, abandoning a plan to
lead a final resistance in the south as the Soviet forces closed in on Berlin. In a state of extreme
nervous exhaustion, he at last accepted the inevitability of defeat and thereupon prepared to
take his own life, leaving to its fate the country over which he had taken absolute command.
Before this, two further acts remained. At midnight on April 28–29 he married Eva Braun.
Immediately afterward he dictated his political testament, justifying his career and appointing
Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of the state and Joseph Goebbels as chancellor.

On April 30 he said farewell to Goebbels and the few others remaining, then retired to his suite
and shot himself. His wife took poison. In accordance with his instructions, their bodies were
burned.

Hitler’s success was due to the susceptibility of postwar Germany to his unique talents as a
national leader. His rise to power was not inevitable; yet there was no one who equalled his
ability to exploit and shape events to his own ends. The power that he wielded was
unprecedented, both in its scope and in the technical resources at its command. His ideas and
purposes were accepted in whole or in part by millions of people, especially in Germany but
also elsewhere. By the time he was defeated, he had destroyed most of what was left of
old Europe, while the German people had to face what they would later call “Year Zero,” 1945.
Alan Bullock, Baron BullockWilfrid F. KnappThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Hitler’s place in history

Adolf Hitler
At the turn of the 21st century more books had been written about Hitler since his death than
about Napoleon during the half-century after the latter’s demise. Time and distance from the
events of World War II have also affected the historical interpretation of Hitler.

There is a general consensus about his historical importance (a term that does not imply a
positive judgment). Hitler was principally, and alone, responsible for starting World War II. (This
was different from the various responsibilities of rulers and of statesmen who had
unleashed World War I). His guilt for the implementation of the Holocaust—that is, the shift of
German policy from the expulsion to the extermination of Jews, including eventually Jews of all
of Europe and of European Russia, is also obvious. Although there exists no single document of
his order to that effect, Hitler’s speeches, writings, reports of discussions with associates and
foreign statesmen, and testimony by those who carried out the actions have often been cited as
evidence of his role. Many of his most violent statements were recorded by his minions during
his “Table Talks” (including the not entirely authentic “Bormann remarks” of February–April
1945). For example, on January 30, 1939, to celebrate the sixth anniversary of his rule, Hitler
told the Reichstag: “Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers
in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more in a world war, then
the result will not be the Bolshevization of the Earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the
annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

In his final will and testament, written just before his suicide in April 1945, he charged the
Germans to continue the struggle against the Jews: “Above all, I enjoin the government and the
people to uphold the race laws to the limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoner of all nations,
international Jewry.”

Despite the immense mass of surviving German documents (and the large volume of his
recorded speeches and other statements) Hitler was, as he himself said on a few occasions, a
secretive man; and some of his views and decisions differed at times from his public
expressions.

Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf

A copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf on exhibit at the former Stutthof concentration camp, near Sztutowo,
Poland.
For a long time historians and other commentators took it for granted that Hitler’s wishes and
ambitions and ideology were clearly (and frighteningly) set forth in Mein Kampf. In the first,
autobiographical, portion of Mein Kampf, however, he twisted the truth in at least three
matters: his relationship to his father (which was very different from the filial affection he had
set forth in Mein Kampf); the conditions of his life in Vienna (which were less marked
by abject poverty than he had stated); and the crystallization of his worldview, including
his anti-Semitism, during his Vienna years (the evidence now suggests that this crystallization
occurred much later, in Munich).
The popular view of Hitler often involves assumptions about his mental health. There has been
a tendency to attribute madness to Hitler. Despite the occasional evidences of his furious
outbursts, Hitler’s cruelties and his most extreme expressions and orders suggest a cold
brutality that was fully conscious. The attribution of madness to Hitler would of course absolve
him from his responsibility for his deeds and words (as it also absolves the responsibility of
those who are unwilling to think further about him). Extensive researches of his medical
records also indicate that, at least until the last 10 months of his life, he was not profoundly
handicapped by illness (except for advancing symptoms of Parkinson disease). What is
indisputable is that Hitler had a certain tendency to hypochondria; that he
ingested vast amounts of medications during the war; and that as early as 1938 he convinced
himself that he would not live long—which may have been a reason for speeding up his
timetable for conquest at that time. It should also be noted that Hitler possessed mental
abilities that were denied by some of his earlier critics: these included an astonishing memory
for certain details and an instinctive insight into his opponents’ weaknesses. Again, these
talents increase, rather than diminish, his responsibility for the many brutal and evil actions he
ordered and committed.

His most amazing achievement was his uniting the great mass of the German (and Austrian)
people behind him. Throughout his career his popularity was larger and deeper than the
popularity of the National Socialist Party. A great majority of Germans believed in him until the
very end. In this respect he stands out among almost all of the dictators of the 19th and 20th
centuries, which is especially impressive when we consider that the Germans were among the
best-educated peoples in the 20th century. There is no question that the overwhelming
majority of the German people supported Hitler, though often only passively. Their trust in him
was greater than their trust in the Nazi hierarchy. Of course, what contributed to this support
were the economic and social successes, for which he fully took credit, during his early
leadership: the virtual disappearance of unemployment, the rising prosperity of the masses, the
new social institutions, and the increase of German prestige in the 1930s—achievements
unparalleled in the histories of other modern totalitarian dictatorships. In spite of the spiritual
and intellectual progenitors of some of his ideas there is no German national leader to whom
he may be compared. In sum, he had no forerunners—another difference between him and
other dictators.

By 1938 Hitler had made Germany the most powerful and feared country in Europe (and
perhaps in the world). He achieved all of this without war (and there are now some historians
who state that had he died in 1938 before the mass executions began, he would have gone
down in history as the greatest statesman in the history of the German people). In fact, he
came very close to winning the war in 1940; but the resistance of Britain (personified
by Winston Churchill) thwarted him. Nevertheless, it took the overwhelming, and in many ways
unusual, Anglo-American coalition with the Soviet Union to defeat the Third Reich; and there
are reasons to believe that neither side would have been able to conquer him alone. At the
same time it was his brutality and some of his decisions that led to his destruction, binding the
unusual alliance of capitalists and communists, of Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin together.
Hitler thought he was a great statesman, but he did not realize the unconditional
contemptibility of what he had unleashed; he thought that the coalition of his enemies would
eventually break up, and then he would be able to settle with one side or the other. In thinking
thus he deceived himself, though such wishes and hopes were also current among many
Germans until the end.

Open and hidden admirers of Hitler continue to exist (and not only in Germany): some of them
because of a malign attraction to the efficacy of evil; others because of their admiration of
Hitler’s achievements, no matter how transitory or brutal. However, because of the brutalities
and the very crimes associated with his name, it is not likely that Hitler’s reputation as the
incarnation of evil will ever change.