Adolf Hitler Man Or Menace Research Paper

Hitler: Man or Menace?

Hitler is most commonly known for the horrible deeds that he committed in his lifetime. Those acts were terrible and left a scar on the world that can never be mended. However, Hitler did possess extreme intelligence. He was innovative and smart, but as his mind was tainted and as he turned against non-Aryans over time, the possibility of using his brilliance to be an artist slowly drifted from his mind. He was originally a young man who moved to Vienna to become an artist, but his dreams changed to something completely different.

On April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary. He was the fourth child of the marriage of Alois Hitler, a custom official who was 51 years old at the date of

Adolf’s birth and his wife was 28. Adolf had a sister, Paula; a half brother, Alois; and a half sister, Angela.
Six years after Adolf’s birth, his father retired and moved to Linz, Austria where Adolf received good marks in elementary school, but he did not do well in high school.

Adolf’s harsh, short-tempered father was angry about how poorly he did and wanted him to become a civil servant, not an artist like his son wanted to. Later, he wrote: “I yawned and grew sick to my stomach at the thought of sitting in an office, deprived of my liberty; ceasing to be the master of my own time and being compelled to force the content of a whole life into blanks that had to be filled out”(Haugen, 20). In 1903, Alois died and Adolf was able to convince his mother to let him drop out at the age of sixteen 2 ½ years later. Hitler’s mother drew a widow’s pension and owned some property. Adolf did not have to work, spending his days daydreaming, drawing pictures, and

reading.
Hitler went to Vienna, the capital of Austria-Hungary, in 1907, to continue to pursue his dream of being an artist.

The first time he attempted to get into art school, the art he showed the Academy of Fine Arts was considered good but he was unable to get into the school nonetheless. On his second time he was not allowed to even take an entrance examination to see if he could enter. On December 21 of that year, Hitler’s mother died from cancer and Hitler never told his mother he wasn’t admitted into the art school. Later, Adolf wrote “The death of my mother put a sudden end to all my high-flown plans.…It was a dreadful blow, particularly for me. I had honored my father, but my mother I had loved” (Haugen, 25). Adolf lived in Vienna with his best friend, August Kubizek, who were both there to study music. As he spent time in Vienna he developed a growing hatred toward non-Aryans, a supposedly perfect race of non-Jewish, pure blooded Germans with blue eyes and blond hair.

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, Germany, where the Austrian Army called him for a physical examination and was found unfit for service, but Hitler volunteered immediately to become a messenger and was accepted. He was in the Western front for the majority of the war, taking part in some of the most gruesome battles. He had a few near death experiences, such as the time a bullet went through the sleeve of his shirt and didn’t even hit his actual body, which convinced him that he was part of some bigger purpose

in life.
When Germany surrendered in November 1918, Hitler was very disturbed by the news of the armistice when he was in a military hospital recovering from temporary blindness and believed that he must try to save Germany since the unity of the German nation was jeopardized. The German people were shocked that they were defeated in World War I and the army found a bankrupted country run by a socialist-liberal republic in which millions of Germans could not find word when it returned. Following the war, Germany had to sign the Treaty of Versailles which held Germany responsible for the war and took much of Germany’s territory. The German Army was restricted to a hundred thousand men and provided for a fifteen year foreign occupation of a part of western Germany called the Rhineland; the worst part was the demand Germany pay huge reparations which made peace difficult. It was demanded that the “criminals” who signed the treaty were punished, Hitler included.
Hitler returned to Munich following his recovery from the blindness caused by the mustard gas and served in the army until March 1920. In the fall of 1919, he began to attend meetings of a small nationalist group called the German Workers’ Party, which he joined. When he was part of it, he renamed it the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and the group soon became known as the Nazi party. The Nazis called the union of all Germans, including the Austrians and German minorities in Czechoslovakia and other countries, and demanded that German citizenship be taken away from those who were of non-German or Jewish origin. The cancellation of the Treaty of Versailles was demanded as well.
Adolf was a great politician and organizer who became leader of the Nazis and quickly increased the number of Nazi members. Hitler said in his speeches that the Nazi party could restore the economy, assure work for all, and restore Germany to its greatness once again. He also organized a private army that he called the storm troopers. Brown shirted uniforms and the swastika emblem were used to give his party and the storm troopers a sense of unity and power. The SA fought the armies of the Communist, Social Democratic, and other parties who were against the ideas of the Nazis or tried to break up Nazi Party rallies. By October 1923 the storm troopers consisted of 15,000 and had a considerable amount of firepower.
By 1923, France and Belgium had sent troops to occupy the Ruhr District, German’s main industrial region. In response, the German workers there went on strike, which resulted in a crisis in Germany’s economy that had already been weakened by the reparation payments. German money was of hardly any value at this time. Communist and national revolts arose throughout the country, and the state of Bavaria was in open conflict with the central government in Berlin. Hitler saw this time as an opportunity to overthrow both the Bavarian and the national government. At a rally in Munich beer hall on November eighth in 1923, Hitler proclaimed a Nazi revolution, or
Putsch.
The following day, he tried to seize the Bavarian government by leading over 2,000 storm troopers on a march against the Bavaria, but their attempt was ruined when the state police opened fire and killed sixteen marchers. This action is now known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison, and he started writing Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a book that stated his beliefs and the ideas he had for the future of Germany.
In his book, Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote his plan of conquering Europe in which territories lost in World War I would be Germany’s once more and Austria as well as parts of Czechoslovakia where Germans lived would be part of the country. Living space would be taken from Poland, the Soviet Union, and other countries to the east. His book also stated that Germans represented the highest form of humanity and how they must stay “pure” by avoiding marriage to Jews and Slavs. Hitler blamed the Jews for the evils of the world and said that they corrupt everything of ethical and national value. In it he said, “By defending myself against the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work.” He believed that democracy would ultimately lead to Communism and that a dictatorship was the only way in which Germany could be saved from the threats of Communism and Jewish treason.
When Hitler was released in December 1924, nine months after his trial, he discovered that great changes had occurred previously that year: a schedule for Germany’s reparations payments helped stabilize the country’s currency and the nation showed signs of recovery. The government had banned the Nazi party following the Beer Hall Putsch and many members had joined other political groups. Following his release from prison, Hitler began to rebuild his party and got the ban on the Nazi party lifted by gradually convincing the government that the party would not act illegally again. In small towns, labor unions, among farmers, and a few business people and industrialists, Hitler won people over. He set up an elite party guard, the Schutzstaffel, known as the SS; by 1929 the Nazis had made an important minority party, regardless of the fact that they had not yet gained significant voter support.
By this time, Hitler had assembled some of the people who would help him rise to power: Joseph Goebbels, the chief Nazi propagandist; Hermann Goring, who became second in command to Hitler; Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s faithful private secretary; Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS; Ernst Rohm, the chief of the Storm Troopers; and Alfred Rosenberg, the party philosopher. In 1930, the worldwide Great Depression hit Germany, workers once again being faced with unemployment and hunger, and Germany agreed to the Young Plan of 1929, against which Hitler had launched a nationwide campaign the year before, to reschedule reparations.