Biography
Austrian-German politician who became the Dictator of Germany in 1933,
retaining power until 1945. He gained political character and purpose in
WW I, joining the Worker's Party after the war was over. He was appointed
Chancellor in January 1930 and quickly rose to power, becoming Führer of
the resurgent National Socialist Party by the fall of 1931. He became
Reichschancellor, his first political office, in 1933 and by 1939,
over-ran Europe. His infamous dictatorship, lasting for only 13 years,
created a permanent shift in world politics and was directly responsible
for the death of over 30 million people.
Of the seven children conceived by Hitler's mother, Klara Pölzl (born
in Spital, 08/12/1860), four died prematurely, one was moronic, and
another was hidden from public view as an idiot. Her marriage was so close
to being labeled incestuous that the pope had to give the couple a special
dispensation, and all of her life, she called her 20-year-older husband
"uncle." The inbreeding led Hitler to feel that his own blood
was "tainted," and he used leeches to "purify"
himself. He had an abiding, and secret, fear all of his life. His
grandmother, Anna Maria Schicklgruber, while an unmarried servant girl,
had produced Hitler's father, Alois. It was never really known whether or
not the child was the result of a seduction by her employer's student son
– a Jew.
Hitler's first goal was to be an artist but he flunked the application
twice, 1907 and 1908, to Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts. In the early 20th
century, bitter about the rejection of his application, he was scratching
out a living selling postcards he painted of local landmarks. During the
Great War he joined the army on 8/01/1914 and served in a Bavarian
infantry regiment. He survived four years of front-line combat, winning
the Iron Cross twice for bravery. It was not until after Corporal Hitler
returned to his adopted Munich and became leader of the National Socialist
Party that he began to take the shape of his future.
In 1920 Hitler joined the German Workers' party and turned the tiny,
ineffective group into a formidable paramilitary organization. At Munich
on 11/08/1923, he tried to force the Bavarian government into a
full-scaled resolution against the Weimar Republic but his beer hall
putsch failed. He was tried and spent nine months in prison, where he
wrote the first volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle), his plan for
Germany's dominion over the world. Aided by Germany's internal chaos and
worsening economic condition, Hitler schemed his way into authority and in
1933 was named Chancellor. It was a time of economic depression in Germany
with a third of the country out of work. Hitler's speaking power was
awesome, winning him the support of the masses. He built a private army of
100,000 men, the brown-shirted Storm Troopers and purged potential threats
to his leadership, murdering or jailing political rivals on the infamous
"Night of the Long Knives," 6/30/1934. His policy of Aryan
supremacy sent over six million European Jews, Gypsies and political
dissidents to the gas chambers. He had "immoral books" burned in
his police state. He offered national pride and jobs, holding out hope for
an economic recovery.
Hitler re-armed Germany, re-occupied the Rhineland, took over Austria
and seized Czechoslovakia as his first steps toward conquering Europe –
then the world. In November 1938 he ordered a huge pogrom with Jewish
arrests all over Germany for his demonic vision of Aryan dominion. On
9/01/1939, his armored columns rolled across the Polish border, triggering
WW II. When battlefield casualties numbering in the millions provoked an
unsuccessful assassination plot on his life in 1944, he condemned the men
responsible to death. They were hung on meat hooks and strangled with
piano wire – but short of death. They were revived and rehung,
repeatedly, the episodes filmed for Hitler's later enjoyment.
Toward the last days, and particularly after injuries suffered in the
bomb plot of June 1944, Adolf Hitler showed marked signs of physical
deterioration. His shoulders were bowed and his face deeply lined, his
gait was shuffling and there was a tremor in his left hand. After the
failure of his Ardennes offensive, he and his mistress Eva Braun took up
quarters in the chancellery in Berlin. Early on 4/29/1945, yielding to her
wishes, they were married in a civil ceremony in the bunker under the
chancellery. Immediately after, he dictated his will in which he blamed
the war and most other human woes on Jewry. At 3:30 PM on April 30, he and
his bride committed suicide. The dictator shot himself through the mouth
and Eva took poison. Their bodies were carried to the courtyard where they
were doused with gasoline and torched.
The women in Hitler's life had uniformly tragic fates. Geli Raubal,
Hitler's 20-year-younger half-niece and romantic obsession, was found dead
in her bed on 9/19/1931 with a bullet through her chest and Hitler's gun
by her side, in the Berlin apartment that she shared with her uncle.
"A mysterious darkness surround the death of this unusual
beauty," the newspapers wrote. Whether the death was a murder or
suicide has never been resolved. There was a hasty attempt to cover up the
death with the announcement of suicide "that she was nervous about an
upcoming recital." The Munchner Post wrote that "Herr Hitler and
his niece had yet another fierce quarrel." The report continued that
the 23-year old girl wanted to go to Vienna, where she intended to become
engaged.
Hitler first was captivated by Geli (short for Angela) in 1925, when
she was 17. He persuaded her and her mother, his half-sister, to serve as
his live-in housekeepers, first at his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden.
Before long "Uncle Alf" had ensconced the girl into an apartment
building next to his in Munich and was escorting her to cafes and cinemas.
He hovered at her side, the picture of an infatuated adolescent. In 1929,
he moved her into his apartment. Historians have debated the nature of
their relationship ever since, debating the assertion that Hitler was
entirely asexual to the belief that he led a normal sexual life, to
stories of perversions and phobias. It has been established that Hitler
had one testicle and that he had a huge pornographic collection. Whatever
the explicit form Hitler's affections took, it seemed evident that Geli
was increasingly confined and resistant to her position.
Was this one death meaningless in the face of the millions to come? Or
was it the cornerstone, the symbol of the ultimate power of a madman, the
power of death itself?
In the mid-'30s, Hitler met Renate Muller, then 29 and an established
star in German movies. The petite, blue-eyed blonde accepted a command
invitation to the private quarters of Der Führer. In October 1937, the
meetings ended abruptly. Renate Muller either jumped 40 feet from her
Berlin apartment window – or was thrown out by the Gestapo, after being
charged with having a Jewish lover.
Hitler met 17-year-old Eva Braun when he was 40; she was working
part-time in a photography shop. Braun became his mistress the following
year in an "open secret," and remained loyal to him for 15 years
from the glory days to the bitter end of Nazi Germany. She had no
political interest or social conscience, but enjoyed her home, garden,
dogs, movies and clothes. Braun wrote in her diary the observations that
any light-minded young girl might make.
The dark side of her role apparently made its mark, as she attempted
suicide twice, once on 11/01/1932 and once on 5/29/1935. When the Allies
closed in during the last days, Braun joined Hitler in Berlin and followed
him into death the following day.
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