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When Hitler was eleven, his six-year-old brother, Edmund, died from measles. This greatly affected Hitler, who was formerly an outgoing, confident, and conscientious young boy; after Edmund’s death, he became a morose, detached child who fought with his father and teachers regularly.
At the time, spurred on by fears of being overrun by immigrants, Vienna’s mayor Karl Lueger spouted virulent anti-Semitic rhetoric to great political effect.
It was in prison where Hitler dictated the majority of the first volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The book was originally titled, “Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice.”
“Society wants to believe it can identify evil people, or bad or harmful people, but it’s not practical. There are no stereotypes.” —Ted Bundy
Paula was the only one of Hitler’s full siblings to survive childhood. She died in 1960. She characterized her childhood relationship with her now infamous brother as one of “constant bickering and strong affection.” While there is evidence she shared her brother’s strong German nationalist beliefs, she never joined the Nazi Party, and after the war, she refused to comment any further on her political views except to say that she knew nothing of the Holocaust perpetrated by her brother.
Hitler’s half-sister, Angela, was reportedly very close to her brother, though she too denied any knowledge of the Holocaust following the war. Angela was the only one of Hitler’s siblings that he mentioned in Mein Kampf.
Some scholars argue that though Hitler continued to espouse a belief in Christianity throughout his life, he did so mainly for political reasons.
“Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.” —Adolf Hitler
Hitler made good use of his time as a regimental runner. For him, the regimental headquarters became a classroom. He had access to and was allowed to read incoming orders, directives, and outgoing orders. He took advantage of the relative safety of the position to study military history and theory, and since he had access to numerous officers, he was able to discuss his ideas with them.
Hitler adopted a stray dog in 1915 which he named Foxl, meaning “little fox.” He referred to the dog as a “proper circus dog” and taught it many tricks. The dog became a beloved companion, and Hitler was said to be heartbroken when the dog was stolen, along with his sketches and paintings, in August 1917.
Hitler was outraged by the Treaty of Versailles in which Germany had to admit it started the war and was stripped of various territories. It also had to demilitarize the Rhineland, and damaging economic sanctions were imposed.
The value of the German mark against the U.S. dollar had already fallen from 4.2 to 7.9 marks per dollar during the war, but the Treaty of Versailles accelerated the decline of the mark against the dollar, and by 1919, the rate was 48 marks to one dollar.
By November 1923, the value of the mark against the U.S. dollar was 4,210,500,000,000 to 1. In this environment of economic catastrophe, political destabilization and violence followed.
The attempted coup became known as the Beer Hall Putsch, and Hitler’s subsequent trial and imprisonment would provide him with a national platform to present his ideas.
Throughout his book, he called Jewish people parasites, liars, and a series of other insulting descriptions.
At the first big meeting of the newly re-established party, however, Hitler got carried away in his speech to some 4,000 Nazi members and began to make some of the same threats against the democratic republic. Because of this, the Bavarian government banned him from public speaking for two years. It was a major setback for the gifted speaker who was able to virtually mesmerize an audience, but rather than being discouraged, he set about reorganizing the party.
During the mid-1920s, Hitler wanted to make the German people more aware of his goals. He wrote a second book toward this effort, but it was not discovered and released until after his death. It was called Zweites Buch.
Hitler was a gifted speaker, powerful and spellbinding, and he attracted a large following of Germans who were, by that time, desperate for change. He promised them a better life and that Germany would once again be a great country.
Hitler was successful in getting Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended the basic rights of Germany’s citizens and allowed for detention without trial. The decree was legal under the Weimar Constitution, which allowed the president to take emergency actions in the name of public safety.
When Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, a law that had been passed only the previous day by Hitler’s cabinet, the Law Concerning the Highest State Office in the Reich, went into effect, eliminating the office of the president and providing that its powers be merged with those of the chancellor.
As a result of his efforts, unemployment fell from six million in 1932 to one million in 1936. Hitler also began one of the largest infrastructure improvement campaigns in German history, which resulted in the construction of dams, highways, and railroads as well as other civil works. The average workweek increased, as Germany prepared for a war economy, to between 47 and 50 hours a week. Additionally, wages dropped slightly and the cost of living increased by 25%.
Though the League of Nations condemned these actions, they did nothing to stop them.
After trying for a number of years to create an Anglo-German alliance that included Britain, Hitler abandoned that plan, blaming inadequate British leadership for its failure.
He took great care to make sure that his dictatorship appeared legal, basing many of his decisions to remove or replace government officials on the Reichstag Fire Decree.
Despite assurances Hitler received prior to the invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Thus began World War II.
Germany had, however, conquered a large amount of Russian territory, and when asked what should be done with the Jews of Russia, Hitler responded, “exterminate them as partisans.” Historians note this remark is the closest to a definitive order from Hitler regarding the genocide carried out during the Holocaust.
Hitler, who believed that because of Germany’s military failures, it had forfeited its right to exist as a nation, ordered the destruction of the German infrastructure so that it wouldn’t fall into Allied hands. His Minster for Armaments, Albert Speer, was supposed to execute the scorched earth policy, but he disobeyed the order.
On April 29, 1945, Hitler married his long-time companion, Eva Braun, in a civil ceremony in his bunker, and he dictated his last will to his secretary Traudl Junge. Later in the day, he was informed of Mussolini’s execution, which many believe increased his will to avoid capture. On April 30, with Soviet forces within blocks of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler shot himself, and his wife Eva Braun bit into a cyanide capsule.
Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, with the assistance of collaborating governments and recruits from occupied countries, killed at least 11 million people, including between 5.5 and 6 million Jews, some two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. Killed also were between 200,000 and 1,500,000 Romani people.
When these deaths are added to the war casualties, over 60 million people, or 3% of the world’s population, died during World War II.
Perhaps the sentiment was best expressed by noted Holocaust survivor turned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal: “For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” More than anything else, Hitler proved that monsters do exist, but sadly, they aren’t as obvious as how they are depicted in horror movies. They have very human faces and often have lived all too human lives, sometimes marked by conflict and pain, but as was the case with Hitler’s relationship with his mother and his sisters, not always devoid of love.
