Hitler, Adolf

Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945), German leader, Führer (leader) of the Nazi empire.Born in Austria, Hitler fought in the German Army as a corporal in World War I. Self‐styled Führer (leader) of the Nazi Party (NSDAP, or National Socialist German Workers' Party) after 1921, he was briefly imprisoned by the Weimar Republic following a failed coup d’état in Munich in 1923, during which time he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle, 1924). The book sketched out Hitler's belief that the noble “Aryan” or Germanic race was engaged in a life‐and‐death battle with other inferior races, of which the Jews were the most insidious and dangerous. It called for the creation of a racially pure Reich (empire), ruled by a dictatorship, which would impose the German “master race” over the rest of “subhumanity.” In the wake of the Great Depression, the NSDAP became the largest party in Germany in 1932. Appointed Reich chancellor in 1933, Hitler soon assumed dictatorial powers, dismantled all other political parties, introduced conscription, and promulgated the racial “Nuremberg Laws” of 1935. Meeting little international or domestic opposition, Hitler reoccupied the demilitarized Rhineland, annexed Austria and the Czech Sudetenland, purged the leadership of the German Army, and set loose a widespread anti‐Jewish pogrom in 1938.

Having signed a nonaggression treaty with the Soviet Union, Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, conquered Western Europe in spring 1940, occupied southeastern Europe, and attacked Russia in the summer of 1941. The fighting was accompanied by untold atrocities against enemy soldiers and civilians, and the Nazi regime simultaneously implemented the “Final Solution,” the genocide of European Jewry. Yet the reverses of the so‐called Third Reich multiplied with the Soviet counteroffensive and the entry of the United States into the war in December 1941, the German debacles at Stalingrad and El Alamein the following winter, the Allied invasion of Italy in summer 1943, and the invasion of Normandy, France, in June 1944. A failed assassination attempt on Hitler's life in July 1944 led to a widespread purge of the plotters; but as American and Soviet troops met on the Elbe River on 25 April 1945 and the Red Army entered Berlin, he committed suicide on 30 April, only days before Germany capitulated on 7–9 May 1945.

Historians debate the extent to which Hitler forged Germany's fate during his twelve‐year dictatorship. Some, like Eberhard Jäckel, argue that his totalitarian regime held Germany under complete control, and that Hitler personally had set his goals and decided as early as the 1920s on the means to achieve those goals. Others, such as Martin Broszat, assert that Hitler had far less control over events, that his regime was based on a chaotic struggle of power between competing agencies, and that his policies were largely the function of circumstances rather than careful, farsighted planning. Nevertheless, most historians agree that Hitler strove to achieve two major goals: the winning of additional “living space” for the German people, mainly in the East; and the destruction of the Jews. There is little doubt that he was obsessed with questions of race and social Darwinian “struggle for existence.” What is still unclear is how much of the population shared his ideas, and whether the main engine for the implementation of the war of expansion and extermination that Germany unleashed in 1939 was only his personal obsession or the outcome of much more widespread prejudices, phobias, and aspirations at least among the German political, economic, and military elites.

There is also some debate on Hitler's role in the conduct of military operations. Though German generals subsequently claimed they were only following Hitler's orders and that he had a detrimental effect on operations, evidence shows that they shared his urge for conquest and subjugation, and utilized his popularity among the soldiers to boost the troops' morale and motivate them in fighting. This applies also to the popular view that Hitler was a raving madman who somehow seized control of a civilized nation that could liberate itself from his hold only with the assistance of others. As historians such as Ian Kershaw have shown, the “Hitler myth” was a potent political force during much of the regime. Whether or not Hitler was insane, for a long time he seems to have been supported by much of the population of Germany.
[See also Holocaust, U.S. War Effort and the; World War II: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

Joachim C. Fest , Hitler, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, 1974.
Martin Broszat , The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich, trans. John W. Hiden, 1981.
Eberhard Jäckel , Hitler's World View: A Blueprint for Power, trans. Herbert Arnold, 1981.
Ian Kershaw , The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich, 1987.
Ian Kershaw , Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris, 1999.

Omer Bartov