Adolf Hitler
The Beginning of Hitler's Life
In Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889, Hitler was the son of a fifty two year old Austrian custom official, Alois schickelgruber Hitler, and his third wife, a young peasant girl, Klara Poelzl. The young Hitler was a resentful, discontented child. Moody, lazy, of unstable temperament, he was deeply hostile towards his strict, authoritarian father and strongly attached to his indulgent mother whose death from cancer in December 1908was a shattering blow to the adolescent Hitler. After spending four years in the Realschule in Linz, he left school at the age of sixteen with dreams of becoming a painter. Embittered at his rejection by the Viennese academy of fine arts, he was to spend “five years of misery and woe” in Vienna as he later recalled, shaped as it was by a pathological hatred of Jews and Marxists, liberalism and the cosmopolitan Hapsburg monarchy.
The young Hitler compensated for the frustrations of a lonely bachelor’s life in miserable male hostels by political harangues in cheap cafes to anyone who would listen and indulging in grandiose dreams of a Greater Germany. In Vienna he acquired his first education in politics and picked up the stereotyped, obsessive anti-Semitism with its brutal, violent sexual connotations and concern with the “purity of blood” that remained with him to the end of his career. The young Hitler learned to discern in the “eternal Jew” the symbol and cause of all chaos, corruption and destruction in a culture, politics and the economy. The press, prostitution, syphilis, capitalism, Marxism, democracy and pacifism all, where so many means which “the Jew” exploited in his conspiracy to undermine the German nation and the purity of the creative Aryan race.
World War II
On September 1, 1939, German armed forces invaded Poland and henceforth Hitler's main energies were devoted to the conduct of a war he had unleashed to dominate Europe and secure Germany's "living space." The first phase of World War II was dominated by German Blitzkrieg tactics: sudden shock attacks against airfields, communications, military installations, using fast mobile armor and infantry to follow up on the first wave of bomber and fighter aircraft. After the fall of France in June 1940 only Great Britain stood firm. The Battle of Britain, in which the Royal Air Force prevented the Luftwaffe from securing aerial control over the English Channel, causing the planned invasion of the British Isles to be postponed. Hitler turned to the Balkans and North Africa where his Italian allies had suffered defeats, his armies rapidly overrunning Greece. The crucial decision of his career, the invasion of Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941, was rationalized by the idea that its destruction would prevent Great Britain from continuing the war with any prospect of success. As the war widened — the United States by the end of 1941 had entered the struggle against the Axis powers — Hitler identified the totality of Germany's enemies with "international Jewry," who supposedly stood behind the British-American-Soviet alliance.
The widening of the conflict into a world war by the end of 1941, the refusal of the British to accept Germany's right to continental European hegemony (which Hitler attributed to "Jewish" influence) and to agree to his "peace" terms, the racial-ideological nature of the assault on Soviet Russia, finally drove Hitler to implement the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" which had been under consideration since 1939. At first the German armies carried all before them, overrunning vast territories, overwhelming the Red Army, encircling Leningrad and reaching within striking distance of Moscow. Underestimating the depth of military reserves on which the Russians could call the caliber of their generals and the resilient, fighting spirit of the Russian people, Hitler prematurely proclaimed in October 1941 that the Soviet Union had been "struck down and would never rise again. The disaster before Moscow in December 1941 led him to dismiss his Commander-in-Chief von Brauchitsch, and many other key commanders who sought permission for tactical withdrawals, including Guderian, Bock, Hoepner, von Rundstedt and Leeb, found themselves cashiered. Hitler now assumed personal control of all military operations, refusing to listen to advice, disregarding unpalatable facts and rejecting everything that did not fit into his preconceived picture of reality. His neglect of the Mediterranean theatre and the Middle East, the failure of the Italians, the entry of the United States into the war. Hitler became more prone to outbursts of blind, hysterical fury towards his generals, when he did not retreat into bouts of misanthropic brooding. His health, too, deteriorated under the impact of the drugs prescribed by his quack physician.
© 1999-2013, John Menszer
web site designed by dave cash
In Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889, Hitler was the son of a fifty two year old Austrian custom official, Alois schickelgruber Hitler, and his third wife, a young peasant girl, Klara Poelzl. The young Hitler was a resentful, discontented child. Moody, lazy, of unstable temperament, he was deeply hostile towards his strict, authoritarian father and strongly attached to his indulgent mother whose death from cancer in December 1908was a shattering blow to the adolescent Hitler. After spending four years in the Realschule in Linz, he left school at the age of sixteen with dreams of becoming a painter. Embittered at his rejection by the Viennese academy of fine arts, he was to spend “five years of misery and woe” in Vienna as he later recalled, shaped as it was by a pathological hatred of Jews and Marxists, liberalism and the cosmopolitan Hapsburg monarchy.
The young Hitler compensated for the frustrations of a lonely bachelor’s life in miserable male hostels by political harangues in cheap cafes to anyone who would listen and indulging in grandiose dreams of a Greater Germany. In Vienna he acquired his first education in politics and picked up the stereotyped, obsessive anti-Semitism with its brutal, violent sexual connotations and concern with the “purity of blood” that remained with him to the end of his career. The young Hitler learned to discern in the “eternal Jew” the symbol and cause of all chaos, corruption and destruction in a culture, politics and the economy. The press, prostitution, syphilis, capitalism, Marxism, democracy and pacifism all, where so many means which “the Jew” exploited in his conspiracy to undermine the German nation and the purity of the creative Aryan race.
World War II
On September 1, 1939, German armed forces invaded Poland and henceforth Hitler's main energies were devoted to the conduct of a war he had unleashed to dominate Europe and secure Germany's "living space." The first phase of World War II was dominated by German Blitzkrieg tactics: sudden shock attacks against airfields, communications, military installations, using fast mobile armor and infantry to follow up on the first wave of bomber and fighter aircraft. After the fall of France in June 1940 only Great Britain stood firm. The Battle of Britain, in which the Royal Air Force prevented the Luftwaffe from securing aerial control over the English Channel, causing the planned invasion of the British Isles to be postponed. Hitler turned to the Balkans and North Africa where his Italian allies had suffered defeats, his armies rapidly overrunning Greece. The crucial decision of his career, the invasion of Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941, was rationalized by the idea that its destruction would prevent Great Britain from continuing the war with any prospect of success. As the war widened — the United States by the end of 1941 had entered the struggle against the Axis powers — Hitler identified the totality of Germany's enemies with "international Jewry," who supposedly stood behind the British-American-Soviet alliance.
The widening of the conflict into a world war by the end of 1941, the refusal of the British to accept Germany's right to continental European hegemony (which Hitler attributed to "Jewish" influence) and to agree to his "peace" terms, the racial-ideological nature of the assault on Soviet Russia, finally drove Hitler to implement the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" which had been under consideration since 1939. At first the German armies carried all before them, overrunning vast territories, overwhelming the Red Army, encircling Leningrad and reaching within striking distance of Moscow. Underestimating the depth of military reserves on which the Russians could call the caliber of their generals and the resilient, fighting spirit of the Russian people, Hitler prematurely proclaimed in October 1941 that the Soviet Union had been "struck down and would never rise again. The disaster before Moscow in December 1941 led him to dismiss his Commander-in-Chief von Brauchitsch, and many other key commanders who sought permission for tactical withdrawals, including Guderian, Bock, Hoepner, von Rundstedt and Leeb, found themselves cashiered. Hitler now assumed personal control of all military operations, refusing to listen to advice, disregarding unpalatable facts and rejecting everything that did not fit into his preconceived picture of reality. His neglect of the Mediterranean theatre and the Middle East, the failure of the Italians, the entry of the United States into the war. Hitler became more prone to outbursts of blind, hysterical fury towards his generals, when he did not retreat into bouts of misanthropic brooding. His health, too, deteriorated under the impact of the drugs prescribed by his quack physician.
© 1999-2013, John Menszer
web site designed by dave cash