Adolf Hitler was born into this world, whose generations will never forget nor forgive him. He was the third (of the five) child of Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl, born in the small Austrian village of Braunau Am Inn just across the border from German Bavaria, instilling a strong patriotic feeling for the German fatherland.
1895 to 1903
His boyhood was spent under strict discipline and regimentation of his then retired civil-servant father. This source of much trauma had left an everlasting impression on his mind. A born leader, artist and a voracious reader, he read books by James Feuimore Cooper and especially the German writer Karl May, whose books he eagerly read and re-enacted.
JANUARY 3, 1903
The death of his father made him the head of the Hitler household.
OCTOBER, 1907
To make career of his choice, he moved to Vienna to join academy of Fine Arts. Repeated failures to clear entrance exams at Arts Academy shattered his dream of becoming an artist.
DECEMBER 21, 1907
What shattered him totally was the death of his over-indulgent mother, a personality adored throughout his life and was highly influenced by.
FEBRUARY, 1908
He became dirty, smelly unshaven young man, wearing tattered cloths, sleeping on park benches and eating at charity soup kitchens.
MAY, 1913
To avoid mandatory military service in the Austrian Army, he moved to the German fatherland and settled in Munich, where he made a living by selling painted pictures of landmarks to local shops.
AUGUST 1, 1914
Germany declared war. Two days later, Hitler volunteered for German Army, enlisting in Bavarian Regiment. Always eager for action, Hitler, by all accounts, was an unusual soldier with a sloppy manner and bearing, never complaining about the bad foods, horrible conditions or talking about women, preferred to discuss art or history.
OCTOBER 7, 1916
Hitler ran out of luck and was wounded in the leg by a shell fragment. During his hospitalization in Germany, he developed a hatred for the Jews & Marxists whom he held responsible for conspiring to spread unrest and undermine the German war efforts.
MARCH, 1917
Hitler was back at the war front AND
In AUGUST, 1918
Hitler received "Iron-Cross first class", a rarity for foot-soldiers.
OCTOBER, 1918
Hitler was temporarily blinded during a British Chlorine-gas attack.
NOVEMBER 10, 1918
Germany was defeated and war was over. Hitler was convinced that the Jews & Marxist were responsible for bringing shameful defeat unto Germany.
SUMMER, 1919
Hitler continued to serve in the army as an informer, weeding-out Marxist influence within the ranks and investigating subversive political organizations, and he came to the attention of his superiors. His anti-semitic outbursts impressed his superiors.
AUGUST, 1919
Hitler was given the job of lecturing to returning weary German Soldiers, where he delivered tirades against the Jews and blamed them for all the misfortune brought to Germany. He was now referred to as a ''Born Orator" who could speak effectively in front of strange audience, hold their attention and sway them to his point of view.
1926 to 1929
The quiet and happiest time for Adolf Hitler, began, living in a scenic mountain village in German Bavaria. He had overcome all remaining rivals within the Nazi Party and assumed the title of supreme leader (Fuhrer). During this, he met Joseph Goebbels, a highly educated man with Ph.D. in literature, who used good and even bad publicity to get the party noticed and grow membership. In summer of 1928, at the age of 39, Hitler settled in to the little country house with a magnificent view of the Bavarian mountains and invited his stepsister, Angela, to leave Vienna and come to take over the daily chores. Angela arrived with her two daughters Friedl and Geli. Geli was a lively twenty year old with dark blond hair and Viennese charm, qualities that were appealing to Hitler, who quickly fell in love with her, and spent their happy days in shopping and visiting theatres, cafes, concerts and even party meetings. In the late 1929, she was the object of Hitler's affection.
OCTOBER 1929
When the Wall Street stock market crumbled with disastrous worldwide effect, and companies went bankrupt, banks failed, people lost their life savings. Unemployment soared and poverty and starvation hit everyone. The people panicked. Government seemed powerless against the worldwide economic collapse. The great Depression had begun. Government stood on the brink. Adolf Hitler knew, his time had come.
Year 1930
Adolf Hitler and Nazi's waged a modern whirlwind campaign unlike anything ever seen in Germany. Hitler traveled the country delivering dozens of speeches, attending meetings, shaking hands, signing autographs, posing for pictures and even kissing babies. Joseph Goebbels brilliantly organized thousands of meetings, torchlight parades, and plastered posters everywhere and printed millions of copies of special editions of Nazi newspapers. Hitler, the master speechmaker, took great advantage of this downtrodden people. He encouraged them and offered something to everyone, work to the unemployed, prosperity to failed business people, profits to industry, expansion to the Army and restoration of German glory to those in despair. He appealed to all classes of Germans by giving heaps of vague promises.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1930
All these were intelligent tactics and tireless exercise was rewarded in Election and Nazis got 6371000 votes, entitled for 107 seats making them the second largest party. It propelled Hitler to solid national and international prestige.
SEPTEMBER 1931
Back home, young Geli enjoyed the attention of Hitler who was becoming famous, but she had a tendency to flirt with young people. Hitler's jealousy and possessiveness made Geli shoot herself and commit suicide. Hitler lost the only woman he ever loved and he was never the same again.
YEAR 1935
In Hitler's upward journey, 1935 was very eventful year. It was well stuffed with such important landmarks as the Saar Plebiscite and the Anglo-German Naval Treaty was done.
AUTUMN 1936
A shock was administered to the world that put even the German shocks in the shade. Mussolini invaded Abyssinia and Ethiopia in July, 1936. Hitler was approaching Mussolini since 1934, regarding the ultimate fate of Austria, but Mussolini was not prepared for any assistance, hence in July 1936, Hitler signed an Austro-German Treaty, which had effectively placed Austria out of Mussolini's clutches.
JULY, 1936
On March 7th 1936 a small force of German troops marched across the Rhine bridge into the demilitarian areas of Germany towards Aachen. Hitler once again preached in public, his was desire for peace throughout Europe and offered to negotiate new non-aggression pacts with several countries including France and Belgium. Hitler's popularity within Germany was boosted, his position as leader was strengthened and his control over the army generals was secured.
JULY, 1936
Hitler and Mussolini joined hands to aid Franco in civil war in Spain, and thus Rome-Berlin Axis was born, which was officially ratified in 1937. Hitler was using Spain as a rehearsal room as in that civil war, they were to test the quality of their men and the efficacy of their equipment's, aircraft's and arms. This was to provide them the most valuable information in the light of struggle that was lying ahead.
DURING THE
YEAR 1934 - 1937
From a very early stage, Hitler geared the German economy towards war. He appointed Dr. Hjalmar Schacht minister of economics with instructions to secretly increase armaments production. In September 1936, Goering took over most of Schacht's duties in preparing the war economy and instituted the Four-Year Plan, which was intended to make Germany self-sufficient in four years. Hitler's word was the law when it came to the judicial system and had the ultimate say over legal action of any kind. Hitler ordered the army to be trebled in size, from the 1,00,000 men Versailles Treaty limit, 3,00,000 men by October of 1934. In March 1935 Hitler decided to take a gamble and test the resolve of Britain and France by authorizing Goering to reveal to a British official the existence of the Luftwaffe. A few days later, Hitler took a further gamble and declared openly the introduction of military service and the creation of an army with 36 divisions. Hitler was increasing the strength of the armed forces, he was also following a policy of making speeches proclaiming a desire for peace and the folly of war. He was prepared to mutually disarm the heaviest of weapons and limit the strength of the German. He said, ''Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos."
Year 1938
During 1938 Dictator Mussolini was only a decidedly junior partner in the firm of Hitler & Mussolini, Inc. His noisy agitation to get Corsica and Tunis from France was rated, as a weak bluff whose immediate objectives were no more than cheaper tolls for Italian ships in the Suez Canal and control of the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railroad. But the figure of Adolf Hitler strode over a cringing Europe with all the swagger of a conqueror. Not the mere fact that he Fuhrer brought 10,500,000 more people (7,000,000 Austrians, 3,500,000 Sudetens) under his absolute rule made him the Man of the 1938. Hitler became in 1938 the greatest threatening force. His shadow fell far beyond Germany's frontier. Small, neighboring States (Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, the Balkans, Luxembourg, The Netherlands) feared to offend him. In France Nazi pressure was partly responsible for some of the post-Munich anti-democratic decrees. Fascism had intervened openly in Spain, had fostered a revolt in Brazil, and was covertly aiding revolutionary movements. In Rumania, Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania. In Finland a foreign minister had to resign under Nazi pressure. Throughout Eastern Europe after Munich the trend was toward less freedom, more dictatorship.
Hitler had himself become the world's No.1 International Revolutionary - so much so that if the oft-predicted struggle between Fascism and Communism took place, it could be only because two revolutionary dictators, Hitler and Stalin, were too big to let each other live in the same world. But Fuhrer Hitler did not regard himself as a revolutionary; he had become so, only by force of circumstances. Fascism had discovered that freedom - of press, speech, and assembly - is a potential danger to its own security.
The Russian Communist Revolution promoted the evil of class war. Hitler topped it by another, race war. Fascism and Communism both resurrected religious war. These multiple forms of barbarism gave shape in 1938 to an issue over which men may again, perhaps soon, shed blood: the issue of civilized liberty v. barbaric authoritarianism.
Orson Welles who, in his famous The War of the World's broadcast, scared fewer people than Hitler, but more than had ever been frightened by radio before, demonstrating that radio can be a tremendous force in whipping up mass emotions. Playwright of the Year was Thornton Wilder.
His political career began in 1919 when he became Member No.7 of the midget German Labor Party. Discovering his powers of oratory, Hitler soon became the party's leader, changed its name to the National Socialist German Labor Party, wrote its anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, authoritarian program. The party's first mass meeting took place in Munich Beer Hall.
TIME's cover, showing Organist Adolf Hitler playing his hymn of hate in a desecrated cathedral while victims dangle on a St. Catherine's wheel and the Nazi hierarchy looks on, was drawn by Baron Rudolph Charles Von Ripper, a Catholic who found Germany intolerable. Meanwhile, Germany had become a nation of uniforms, goose-stepping to Hitler's tune, where boys of ten were taught to throw hand grenades, where women were regarded as breeding machines. Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from radicalism.
Hitler was being driven to give the German people another diverting circus. The Nazi controlled press, jumping the rope at the count of Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels, shrieked insults at real and imagined enemies. And the pace of the German dictatorship quickened as more and more guns rolled from factories and little more butter was produced.
In five years under the Man of 1938, regimented German had made itself one of the great military powers of the world of the day.
Meanwhile an estimated 1,133 streets and squares, notably Rathaus Platz in Vienna, acquired the name of Adolf Hitler. He delivered 96 public speeches, attended eleven opera performances (way below par), vanquished two rivals (Benes and Kurt Von Schuschnigg, Austria's last Chancellor), and sold 900,000 new copies of Mein Kampf in Germany besides selling it widely in Italy and insurgent Spain. His only loss was in eyesight: he had to begin wearing spectacles for work. Once Herr Hitler entertained at a Christmas party 7,000 workmen building Berlin's new mammoth Chancellery, told them: ''The next decade will show those countries with their patent democracy where true culture is to be found."
But other nations had emphatically joined the armaments race and among military men the poser is: "Will Hitler flight when it becomes definitely certain that he is losing that race?" The dynamics of dictatorship are such that few who have studied Fascism and its leaders can envision sexless, restless, instinctive Adolf Hitler rounding out a mellow middle age in his mountain chalet at Berchtesgaden while satisfied German people drink beer and sing folk songs. There is no guarantee that the 'have-not' nations will go to sleep when they have taken what they want from the 'haves'. To those who watched the closing events of the year it seemed more than probable that the Man of 1938 may make 1939 a year to be remembered.
Adolf Hitler declared that he wanted to die in Berlin. He repeated this 10 or 20 times in various phrases. He said: "I will fall here" or "I will fall before the Chancellery" or "I must die here in Berlin." "We will fight to the last tip of the German Reich."
YEAR 1938
Hitler sent troops into Austria on March 12, the day before the scheduled Austrian referendum on union with Germany was to take place.
YEAR 1939
On September 3, both, Britain and France declared war on Germany. On September 17 the USSR invaded Poland. The Auschwitz Concentration Camp is formed in Poland. World War II began in 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland to begin his unification of all German-speaking people.
Hitler was stopped in 1945 by the allied countries, he had caused the extermination to over 12 million people. Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945 and seven days later, Germany surrendered.
OCTOBER, 1931
Adolf Hitler met the eighty four year old President of Germany Paul Von Hindenburg for the first time. He tried to impress him but failed. Elected Nazis now started regularly disrupting government proceeding with vulgar, rowdy behavior to help undermine democracy in Germany.
EARLY 1932
Adolf Hitler received a telegram from chancellor Bruening inviting him to Berlin to discuss possibility of extending Hindenburg's term as president.
MARCH 13, 1932
Hitler contested Presidential Election against Hindenburg.
APRIL 10, 1932
Twice won and got good 30% and 36% votes, but failed to get absolute majority. Hindenburg got 53% votes.
JULY 31, 1932
The Nazi Party became the largest and most powerful party in elections getting 37% votes - 230 seats, but for Hitler chancellorship was still away.
DECEMBER 2, 1932
Kurt Von Schleicher became new Chancellor of Germany and started splitting tactics in Nazi party to weaken Adolf Hitler.
JANUARY 30, 1933
Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of German Nation. Within weeks, Hitler, to be an absolute dictator of Germany, set in motion a chain of events resulting in the second world war and the eventful deaths of nearly 50 million human beings through that war and deliberate extermination.
FEBRUARY, 1933
The Nazis hatched a plan to end democracy once for all, because Adolf Hitler had no intentions of abiding by the rules of democracy. He intended only to use these rules to legally establish himself as dictator as quickly as possible, and then begin the Nazi revolution. President Hindenburg had now fallen under Hitler's spell and was signing just about anything put in front of him.
FEBRUARY 22, 1933
Goring and Goebbels, with Hitler's approval, set up an auxiliary police force of 50000 men, the vulgar, brawling, murderous Nazi storm troopers now had the powers of police. Anybody being harassed, beaten or even murdered by Nazis.
MARCH, 1933
After the elections of March 5, Nazis began systematic takeover of the state governments throughout Germany, by using the state of emergency decree as a protest to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners. Political enemies were arrested and put into Nazi concentration camps where they were often beaten and tortured to death.
MARCH 21, 1933
Hitler got two decrees signed by President Hindenburg. The first offered full pardons to all Nazis in prison. The second allowed the arrest of anyone suspected of maliciously criticizing the government and the Nazi Party. The third decree was signed only by Hitler and his Vice-Chancellor, Papeu, allowing the establishment of special courts to try political offenders, in the military style court martial without a jury and no counsel for defense.
MARCH 23, 1933
By passing the Enabling Act, Hitler became the official Dictator and brought down the German Democratic Republic legal status. He did not seize the power; he was jobbed into office by a backstairs intrigue.
MARCH 31, 1933
Hitler and Frick issued a law dissolving the Diets of all the other states and ordered them to be re-constituted without fresh elections. A week later, Hitler nominated Reich Governor in every state and gave them the powers to appoint and remove state governments, to dissolve the Diets, to prepare and publish state Laws, and to appoint and dismiss state officials. All eighteen of the new Reich Governors were Nazis.
MARCH & APRIL, 1934
Hitler abolished the Trade-unions. Their officials were arrested, beaten and thrown into concentration camps. All the unions had merged into a new German Labor Front.
JULY, 1934
The Government Gazette enacted a Law signed by Hitler that the National Socialist German Workers' Party constituted the only political party in Germany and whoever tried to form another political party would be punished with an imprisonment for three years.
AUGUST, 1934
By now, the balance of power in Germany had shifted decisively in Hitler's favor. Between March 1933 to August 1934, he had mastered the machinery of states, suppressed the opposition, dispensed with his allies, asserted his authority over the party and secured for himself the prerogatives of the Head of the State and Commander-in-Chief of Armed Forces. The Nazi revolution was complete. Hitler had become the dictator of Germany.
OCTOBER 1933 to 1934
Hitler was now preparing to set fire to something much more important than the Reichstag, namely Europe. And securing of arms was the first step, started in October at Geneva; and in next year, 1934, German re-armament began in earnest.
• We want honestly to earn the resurrection of our people through our industry, our perseverance and our will. We ask not of the Almighty 'Lord, make us free'!
• We want to be active, to work, to agree together as brothers, to strive in rivalry with one another to bring about the hour when we can come before him and when we may ask of him.
• Become strong again in spirit, strong in will, strong in endurance, strong to bear all sacrifices.
• We desire that the fight in the religious camps should come to an end.
