Adolf Hitler

"Hitler" redirects here. For other uses, see Hitler (disambiguation).

Adolf Hitler
Born	20 April 1889 Braunau am Inn, Upper Austria, Austria-Hungary
Died	30 April 1945 (aged 56) Berlin, Gau Berlin, Nazi Germany
Cause of death	Suicide by gunshot
Nationality	Austrian (1889–1925) Stateless (1925–1932) German (1932–1945)
Political orientation	Fascism Nazism Anti-communism Settler colonialism Capitalism
Political party	Nazi Party

Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German far-right politician and the leader of the Nazi Party who ruled Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. Hitler's reign was characterised by the suppression of communists and other political dissidents, the transformation of Weimar Germany from a bourgeois democracy into a fascist dictatorship, the remilitarisation of Germany (in violation of the Treaty of Versailles), the annexation of foreign countries and territories, the initiation of the European theatre of World War II in 1939, the colonisation of Eastern Europe by ethnic Germans, and the industrialised mass murder of 6 million Jews commonly referred to as the Holocaust.

Hitler also bears the blame for the deaths of many others, including soldiers and civilians (on both sides, as he made a conscious decision to throw their lives away), Slavs, Roma, LGBT+ people, people with disabilities, people of colour, political prisoners, resistance fighters, so-called "asocials," freemasons, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Overall, Hitler's regime was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Early life

Adolf Hitler was born at 18:30 on 20 April 1889 at the Gasthof zum Pommer (a pub at Nr. 15. Salzburger Vorstadt Straße) in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary. He was the third child of Alois Hitler, Sr., a civil servant; and Klara Hitler, a housekeeper. Hitler was sick from a young age, and given the fate of his two siblings who came before him, his mother constantly fretted over his health.

Hitler was baptised on 22 April 1889 at the Parish Church of St. Stephen, a Roman Catholic church also located in Braunau, by priest Ignaz Probst.

Fascist activism

Hitler joined the German Workers' Party (a fringe, far-right, antisemitic, and anti-Marxist party), led by Chairman Anton Drexler, in September 1919. His membership card listed him as having joined the party on 1 January 1920 as the 7th member, but in the earliest-surviving list of party members, written on 2 February 1920, he was listed as the 555th member. Both numbers are false; the membership card was a forgery and the list began at 500 to create the impression that the party was much larger than it actually was. Historian Ian Kershaw claims that in 1940, Drexler wrote the following in an unsent letter:

"No one knows better than you yourself, my Führer, that you were never the seventh member of the party, but at best the seventh member of the committee, which I asked you to join as recruitment director. And a few years ago I had to complain to a party office that your first proper membership card of the DAP, bearing the signatures of Schüssler and myself, was falsified, with the number 555 being erased and number 7 entered."

On 24 February 1920, the German Workers' Party was renamed to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), or the Nazi Party for short. Stalin said "The party of the Hitlerites is a party of imperialists, moreover, the most predatory and plunderous imperialists among all the imperialists of the world". In 1923 the Hitlerites made a failed coup attempt in Munich (the Beer Hall Putsch). A rivalry in the party began between the Hitlerites and the Strasserites, led by Gregor Strasser. Hitler won out eventually, with Strasser being one of the other Reactionaries killed in the Knight of the Long Knives.

Hitler glorified the United States and its "unprecedented inner strength" in Mein Kampf. In 1928, he praised Americanism (Amerikanertum) and compared U.S. expansion against indigenous peoples to German expansion into Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages.

In 1933, in a deep economic and political crisis in Germany, the German imperialists called the Hitlerites to power.

Rule

After the Nazi Party failed to win a majority of seats in parliament, Hitler took a different route to power and was appointed as chancellor in January 1933.

With the approval of the ruling circles of England, France and the USA and with the assistance of the leaders of the German Social Democracy,^{[citation needed]} Hitler established a terrorist dictatorship in Germany. After the staged Reichstag fire in February 1933, Hitler invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and then passed the Enabling Act to center executive power under himself. Over the course of 1933 and 1934, the Nazis incorporated the rest of the state and civil society under their rule. During the Night of Long Knives from 30 June to 2 July, Hitler purged his opponents within the Nazi Party.

International reaction bet on Fascist Germany as the main force in the fight against the USSR and the revolutionary movement in order to strengthen the capitalist system and, on this basis, assisted Hitler. monopolies and using the support of the reactionary governments of England, France and the USA, which pursued a policy of collusion with aggressors, Hitlerites eliminated by a unilateral act the military limitations set by the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919 and came to acts of direct aggression. Together with Italian Fascists they carried out an armed intervention against Republican Spain (1936-39), formed a block of aggressive states, invaded Austria (1938) and Czechoslovakia (1938-39), and unleashed the Second World War.

Second World War

After capturing a number of European countries, Hitler's Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. "It is very likely," Stalin pointed out as early as 1942, "that a war to liberate the Soviet land will lead to the expulsion or destruction of the Hitler clique. We would welcome such an outcome. But it would be ridiculous to identify the Hitler clique with the German people, with the German state. The experience of history tells us that Hitlers come and go, but the German people and the German state remain".

Hitler and his clique, Stalin pointed out in 1942, "are the chain dogs of German bankers, putting the interests of the latter above all other interests".

The Soviet Union decisively defeated Hitler's Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, freed the German people from Hitlerism, ensured the preservation of national independence of the German people and opened the way to freedom and democracy.

Death

Out of fear of a fair trial of the nations, Hitler committed suicide, as reported on May 1, 1945 by the German High Command.

Ideology

See main article: National Socialism

See also

• Benito Mussolini
• Francisco Franco
• Oswald Mosley