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The Flood / Re: originally written for my tumblr. wanted to post it here too.

« on: January 21, 2015, 04:20:01 PM »

Quote from: Eתוber on January 21, 2015, 04:15:56 PM

i appear to have started what you youngsters refer to as a "meme" in this thread

Quote

A meme (/ˈmiːm/ meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.[3]

The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαι mimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμος mimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.[6]

Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.[7]

A field of study called memetics[8] arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that academic study can examine memes empirically. However, developments in neuroimaging may make empirical study possible.[9] Some commentators in the social sciences question the idea that one can meaningfully categorize culture in terms of discrete units, and are especially critical of the biological nature of the theory's underpinnings.[10] Others have argued that this use of the term is the result of a misunderstanding of the original proposal.[11]

Dawkins's own position is somewhat ambiguous: he obviously welcomed N. K. Humphrey's suggestion that "memes should be considered as living structures, not just metaphorically"[12] and wanted to regard memes as "physically residing in the brain".[13] Later, he argued that his original intentions, presumably before his approval of Humphrey's opinion, had been simpler.[14] At the New Directors' Showcase 2013 in Cannes, Dawkins's opinion on memetics was deliberately ambiguous.[15]

Contents [hide]
1 Origins
2 Memetic lifecycle: Transmission, retention
3 Memes as discrete units
4 Evolutionary influences on memes
5 Memetics
6 Criticism of meme theory
7 Applications
8 Religion
9 Memetic explanations of racism
10 Architectural memes
11 Internet culture
12 Meme maps
13 See also
14 Notes
15 References
16 External links
Origins[edit]
The word meme originated with Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins cites as inspiration the work of geneticist L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, anthropologist F. T. Cloak [16] and ethologist J. M. Cullen.[17] Dawkins wrote that evolution depended not on the particular chemical basis of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replicating unit of transmission—in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplified another self-replicating unit with potential significance in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.

"Kilroy was here" was a piece of graffiti that became popular in the 1940s, and existed under various names in different countries, illustrating how a meme can be modified through replication.[18]
Dawkins used the term to refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator. He hypothesised that one could view many cultural entities as replicators, and pointed to melodies, fashions and learned skills as examples. Memes generally replicate through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient copiers of information and behaviour. Because humans do not always copy memes perfectly, and because they may refine, combine or otherwise modify them with other memes to create new memes, they can change over time. Dawkins likened the process by which memes survive and change through the evolution of culture to the natural selection of genes in biological evolution.[6]

Dawkins defined the meme as a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation and replication, but later definitions would vary. The lack of a consistent, rigorous, and precise understanding of what typically makes up one unit of cultural transmission remains a problem in debates about memetics.[14] In contrast, the concept of genetics gained concrete evidence with the discovery of the biological functions of DNA. Meme transmission requires a physical medium, such as photons, sound waves, touch, taste or smell because memes can be transmitted only through the senses.

Memetic lifecycle: Transmission, retention[edit]
See also: Diffusion of innovations
Memes, analogously to genes, vary in their aptitude to replicate; successful memes remain and spread, whereas unfit ones stall and are forgotten. Thus memes that prove more effective at replicating and surviving are selected in the meme pool.

Memes first need retention. The longer a meme stays in its hosts, the higher its chances of propagation are. When a host uses a meme, the meme's life is extended.[19] The reuse of the neural space hosting a certain meme's copy to host different memes is the greatest threat to that meme's copy.[20]

A meme which increases the longevity of its hosts will generally survive longer. On the contrary, a meme which shortens the longevity of its hosts will tend to disappear faster. However, as hosts are mortal, retention is not sufficient to perpetuate a meme in the long term; memes also need transmission.

Life-forms can transmit information both vertically (from parent to child, via replication of genes) and horizontally (through viruses and other means). Memes can replicate vertically or horizontally within a single biological generation. They may also lie dormant for long periods of time.

Memes reproduce by copying from a nervous system to another one, either by communication or imitation. Imitation often involves the copying of an observed behaviour of another individual. Communication may be direct or indirect, where memes transmit from one individual to another through a copy recorded in an inanimate source, such as a book or a musical score. Adam McNamara has suggested that memes can be thereby classified as either internal or external memes (i-memes or e-memes).[9]

Some commentators have likened the transmission of memes to the spread of contagions.[21] Social contagions such as fads, hysteria, copycat crime, and copycat suicide exemplify memes seen as the contagious imitation of ideas. Observers distinguish the contagious imitation of memes from instinctively contagious phenomena such as yawning and laughing, which they consider innate (rather than socially learned) behaviors.[22]

Aaron Lynch described seven general patterns of meme transmission, or "thought contagion":[23]

Quantity of parenthood: an idea that influences the number of children one has. Children respond particularly receptively to the ideas of their parents, and thus ideas that directly or indirectly encourage a higher birthrate will replicate themselves at a higher rate than those that discourage higher birthrates.
Efficiency of parenthood: an idea that increases the proportion of children who will adopt ideas of their parents. Cultural separatism exemplifies one practice in which one can expect a higher rate of meme-replication—because the meme for separation creates a barrier from exposure to competing ideas.
Proselytic: ideas generally passed to others beyond one's own children. Ideas that encourage the proselytism of a meme, as seen in many religious or political movements, can replicate memes horizontally through a given generation, spreading more rapidly than parent-to-child meme-transmissions do.
Preservational: ideas that influence those that hold them to continue to hold them for a long time. Ideas that encourage longevity in their hosts, or leave their hosts particularly resistant to abandoning or replacing these ideas, enhance the preservability of memes and afford protection from the competition or proselytism of other memes.
Adversative: ideas that influence those that hold them to attack or sabotage competing ideas and/or those that hold them. Adversative replication can give an advantage in meme transmission when the meme itself encourages aggression against other memes.
Cognitive: ideas perceived as cogent by most in the population who encounter them. Cognitively transmitted memes depend heavily on a cluster of other ideas and cognitive traits already widely held in the population, and thus usually spread more passively than other forms of meme transmission. Memes spread in cognitive transmission do not count as self-replicating.
Motivational: ideas that people adopt because they perceive some self-interest in adopting them. Strictly speaking, motivationally transmitted memes do not self-propagate, but this mode of transmission often occurs in association with memes self-replicated in the efficiency parental, proselytic and preservational modes.
Memes as discrete units[edit]
Dawkins initially defined meme as a noun that "conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation".[6] John S. Wilkins retained the notion of meme as a kernel of cultural imitation while emphasizing the meme's evolutionary aspect, defining the meme as "the least unit of sociocultural information relative to a selection process that has favourable or unfavourable selection bias that exceeds its endogenous tendency to change."[24] The meme as a unit provides a convenient means of discussing "a piece of thought copied from person to person", regardless of whether that thought contains others inside it, or forms part of a larger meme. A meme could consist of a single word, or a meme could consist of the entire speech in which that word first occurred. This forms an analogy to the idea of a gene as a single unit of self-replicating information found on the self-replicating chromosome.

While the identification of memes as "units" conveys their nature to replicate as discrete, indivisible entities, it does not imply that thoughts somehow become quantized or that "atomic" ideas exist that cannot be dissected into smaller pieces. A meme has no given size. Susan Blackmore writes that melodies from Beethoven's symphonies are commonly used to illustrate the difficulty involved in delimiting memes as discrete units. She notes that while the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (About this sound listen (help·info)) form a meme widely replicated as an independent unit, one can regard the entire symphony as a single meme as well.[14]

The inability to pin an idea or cultural feature to quantifiable key units is widely acknowledged as a problem for memetics. It has been argued however that the traces of memetic processing can be quantified utilizing neuroimaging techniques which measure changes in the connectivity profiles between brain regions."[9] Blackmore meets such criticism by stating that memes compare with genes in this respect: that while a gene has no particular size, nor can we ascribe every phenotypic feature directly to a particular gene, it has value because it encapsulates that key unit of inherited expression subject to evolutionary pressures. To illustrate, she notes evolution selects for the gene for features such as eye color; it does not select for the individual nucleotide in a strand of DNA. Memes play a comparable role in understanding the evolution of imitated behaviors.[14]

The 1981 book Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process by Charles J. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson proposed the theory that genes and culture co-evolve, and that the fundamental biological units of culture must correspond to neuronal networks that function as nodes of semantic memory. They coined their own term, "culturgen", which did not catch on. Coauthor Wilson later acknowledged the term meme as the best label for the fundamental unit of cultural inheritance in his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which elaborates upon the fundamental role of memes in unifying the natural and social sciences.[25]

Evolutionary influences on memes[edit]
Dawkins noted the three conditions that must exist for evolution to occur:[26]

variation, or the introduction of new change to existing elements;
heredity or replication, or the capacity to create copies of elements;
differential "fitness", or the opportunity for one element to be more or less suited to the environment than another.
Dawkins emphasizes that the process of evolution naturally occurs whenever these conditions co-exist, and that evolution does not apply only to organic elements such as genes. He regards memes as also having the properties necessary for evolution, and thus sees meme evolution as not simply analogous to genetic evolution, but as a real phenomenon subject to the laws of natural selection. Dawkins noted that as various ideas pass from one generation to the next, they may either enhance or detract from the survival of the people who obtain those ideas, or influence the survival of the ideas themselves. For example, a certain culture may develop unique designs and methods of tool-making that give it a competitive advantage over another culture. Each tool-design thus acts somewhat similarly to a biological gene in that some populations have it and others do not, and the meme's function directly affects the presence of the design in future generations. In keeping with the thesis that in evolution one can regard organisms simply as suitable "hosts" for reproducing genes, Dawkins argues that one can view people as "hosts" for replicating memes. Consequently, a successful meme may or may not need to provide any benefit to its host.[26]

Unlike genetic evolution, memetic evolution can show both Darwinian and Lamarckian traits. Cultural memes will have the characteristic of Lamarckian inheritance when a host aspires to replicate the given meme through inference rather than by exactly copying it. Take for example the case of the transmission of a simple skill such as hammering a nail, a skill that a learner imitates from watching a demonstration without necessarily imitating every discrete movement modeled by the teacher in the demonstration, stroke for stroke.[27] Susan Blackmore distinguishes the difference between the two modes of inheritance in the evolution of memes, characterizing the Darwinian mode as "copying the instructions" and the Lamarckian as "copying the product."[14]

Clusters of memes, or memeplexes (also known as meme complexes or as memecomplexes), such as cultural or political doctrines and systems, may also play a part in the acceptance of new memes. Memeplexes comprise groups of memes that replicate together and coadapt.[14] Memes that fit within a successful memeplex may gain acceptance by "piggybacking" on the success of the memeplex. As an example, John D. Gottsch discusses the transmission, mutation and selection of religious memeplexes and the theistic memes contained.[28] Theistic memes discussed include the "prohibition of aberrant sexual practices such as incest, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, castration, and religious prostitution", which may have increased vertical transmission of the parent religious memeplex. Similar memes are thereby included in the majority of religious memeplexes, and harden over time; they become an "inviolable canon" or set of dogmas, eventually finding their way into secular law. This could also be referred to as the propagation of a taboo.

Memetics[edit]
Main article: Memetics
The discipline of memetics, which dates from the mid-1980s, provides an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer based on the concept of the meme. Memeticists have proposed that just as memes function analogously to genes, memetics functions analogously to genetics. Memetics attempts to apply conventional scientific methods (such as those used in population genetics and epidemiology) to explain existing patterns and transmission of cultural ideas.

Principal criticisms of memetics include the claim that memetics ignores established advances in other fields of cultural study, such as sociology, cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. Questions remain whether or not the meme concept counts as a validly disprovable scientific theory. This view regards memetics as a theory in its infancy: a protoscience to proponents, or a pseudoscience to some detractors.

Criticism of meme theory[edit]
An objection to the study of the evolution of memes in genetic terms (although not to the existence of memes) involves a perceived gap in the gene/meme analogy: the cumulative evolution of genes depends on biological selection-pressures neither too great nor too small in relation to mutation-rates. There seems no reason to think that the same balance will exist in the selection pressures on memes.[29]

Luis Benitez-Bribiesca M.D., a critic of memetics, calls the theory a "pseudoscientific dogma" and "a dangerous idea that poses a threat to the serious study of consciousness and cultural evolution". As a factual criticism, Benitez-Bribiesca points to the lack of a "code script" for memes (analogous to the DNA of genes), and to the excessive instability of the meme mutation mechanism (that of an idea going from one brain to another), which would lead to a low replication accuracy and a high mutation rate, rendering the evolutionary process chaotic.[30]

British political philosopher John Gray has characterized Dawkins' memetic theory of religion as "nonsense" and "not even a theory... the latest in a succession of ill-judged Darwinian metaphors", comparable to Intelligent Design in its value as a science.[31]

Another critique comes from semiotic theorists such as Deacon[32] and Kull.[33] This view regards the concept of "meme" as a primitivized concept of "sign". The meme is thus described in memetics as a sign lacking a triadic nature. Semioticians can regard a meme as a "degenerate" sign, which includes only its ability of being copied. Accordingly, in the broadest sense, the objects of copying are memes, whereas the objects of translation and interpretation are signs.[clarification needed]

Fracchia and Lewontin regard memetics as reductionist and inadequate.[34] Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr disapproved of Dawkins' gene-based view and usage of the term "meme," asserting it to be an "unnecessary synonym" for "concept," Mayr reasoning that concepts are not restricted to an individual or a generation, may persist for long periods of time, and may evolve.[35]

Applications[edit]
Opinions differ as to how best to apply the concept of memes within a "proper" disciplinary framework. One view sees memes as providing a useful philosophical perspective with which to examine cultural evolution. Proponents of this view (such as Susan Blackmore and Daniel Dennett) argue that considering cultural developments from a meme's-eye view—as if memes themselves respond to pressure to maximise their own replication and survival—can lead to useful insights and yield valuable predictions into how culture develops over time. Others such as Bruce Edmonds and Robert Aunger have focused on the need to provide an empirical grounding for memetics to become a useful and respected scientific discipline.[36][37]

A third approach, described[by whom?] as "radical memetics", seeks to place memes at the centre of a materialistic theory of mind and of personal identity.[38]

Prominent researchers in evolutionary psychology and anthropology, including Scott Atran, Dan Sperber, Pascal Boyer, John Tooby and others, argue the possibility of incompatibility between modularity of mind and memetics.[citation needed] In their view, minds structure certain communicable aspects of the ideas produced, and these communicable aspects generally trigger or elicit ideas in other minds through inference (to relatively rich structures generated from often low-fidelity input) and not high-fidelity replication or imitation. Atran discusses communication involving religious beliefs as a case in point. In one set of experiments he asked religious people to write down on a piece of paper the meanings of the Ten Commandments. Despite the subjects' own expectations of consensus, interpretations of the commandments showed wide ranges of variation, with little evidence of consensus. In another experiment, subjects with autism and subjects without autism interpreted ideological and religious sayings (for example, "Let a thousand flowers bloom" or "To everything there is a season"). People with autism showed a significant tendency to closely paraphrase and repeat content from the original statement (for example: "Don't cut flowers before they bloom"). Controls tended to infer a wider range of cultural meanings with little replicated content (for example: "Go with the flow" or "Everyone should have equal opportunity"). Only the subjects with autism—who lack the degree of inferential capacity normally associated with aspects of theory of mind—came close to functioning as "meme machines".[39]

In his book The Robot's Rebellion, Stanovich uses the memes and memeplex concepts to describe a program of cognitive reform that he refers to as a "rebellion". Specifically, Stanovich argues that the use of memes as a descriptor for cultural units is beneficial because it serves to emphasize transmission and acquisition properties that parallel the study of epidemiology. These properties make salient the sometimes parasitic nature of acquired memes, and as a result individuals should be motivated to reflectively acquire memes using what he calls a "Neurathian bootstrap" process.[40]

Religion[edit]
See also: Evolutionary psychology of religion
Although social scientists such as Max Weber sought to understand and explain religion in terms of a cultural attribute, Richard Dawkins called for a re-analysis of religion in terms of the evolution of self-replicating ideas apart from any resulting biological advantages they might bestow.

As an enthusiastic Darwinian, I have been dissatisfied with explanations that my fellow-enthusiasts have offered for human behaviour. They have tried to look for 'biological advantages' in various attributes of human civilization. For instance, tribal religion has been seen as a mechanism for solidifying group identity, valuable for a pack-hunting species whose individuals rely on cooperation to catch large and fast prey. Frequently the evolutionary preconception in terms of which such theories are framed is implicitly group-selectionist, but it is possible to rephrase the theories in terms of orthodox gene selection.

—Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
He argued that the role of key replicator in cultural evolution belongs not to genes, but to memes replicating thought from person to person by means of imitation. These replicators respond to selective pressures that may or may not affect biological reproduction or survival.[6]

In her book The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore regards religions as particularly tenacious memes. Many of the features common to the most widely practiced religions provide built-in advantages in an evolutionary context, she writes. For example, religions that preach of the value of faith over evidence from everyday experience or reason inoculate societies against many of the most basic tools people commonly use to evaluate their ideas. By linking altruism with religious affiliation, religious memes can proliferate more quickly because people perceive that they can reap societal as well as personal rewards. The longevity of religious memes improves with their documentation in revered religious texts.[14]

Aaron Lynch attributed the robustness of religious memes in human culture to the fact that such memes incorporate multiple modes of meme transmission. Religious memes pass down the generations from parent to child and across a single generation through the meme-exchange of proselytism. Most people will hold the religion taught them by their parents throughout their life. Many religions feature adversarial elements, punishing apostasy, for instance, or demonizing infidels. In Thought Contagion Lynch identifies the memes of transmission in Christianity as especially powerful in scope. Believers view the conversion of non-believers both as a religious duty and as an act of altruism. The promise of heaven to believers and threat of hell to non-believers provide a strong incentive for members to retain their belief. Lynch asserts that belief in the Crucifixion of Jesus in Christianity amplifies each of its other replication advantages through the indebtedness believers have to their Savior for sacrifice on the cross. The image of the crucifixion recurs in religious sacraments, and the proliferation of symbols of the cross in homes and churches potently reinforces the wide array of Christian memes.[23]

Although religious memes have proliferated in human cultures, the modern scientific community has been relatively resistant to religious belief. Robertson (2007) [41] reasoned that if evolution is accelerated in conditions of propagative difficulty,[42] then we would expect to encounter variations of religious memes, established in general populations, addressed to scientific communities. Using a memetic approach, Robertson deconstructed two attempts to privilege religiously held spirituality in scientific discourse. Advantages of a memetic approach as compared to more traditional "modernization" and "supply side" theses in understanding the evolution and propagation of religion were explored.

Memetic explanations of racism[edit]
In Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology, Jack Balkin argued that memetic processes can explain many of the most familiar features of ideological thought. His theory of "cultural software" maintained that memes form narratives, social networks, metaphoric and metonymic models, and a variety of different mental structures. Balkin maintains that the same structures used to generate ideas about free speech or free markets also serve to generate racistic beliefs. To Balkin, whether memes become harmful or maladaptive depends on the environmental context in which they exist rather than in any special source or manner to their origination. Balkin describes racist beliefs as "fantasy" memes that become harmful or unjust "ideologies" when diverse peoples come together, as through trade or competition.[43]

Architectural memes[edit]
In A Theory of Architecture, Nikos Salingaros speaks of memes as "freely propagating clusters of information" which can be beneficial or harmful. He contrasts memes to patterns and true knowledge, characterizing memes as "greatly simplified versions of patterns" and as "unreasoned matching to some visual or mnemonic prototype".[44] Taking reference to Dawkins, Salingaros emphasizes that they can be transmitted due to their own communicative properties, that "the simpler they are, the faster they can proliferate", and that the most successful memes "come with a great psychological appeal".[45]

Architectural memes, according to Salingaros, can have destructive power. "Images portrayed in architectural magazines representing buildings that could not possibly accommodate everyday uses become fixed in our memory, so we reproduce them unconsciously."[46] He lists various architectural memes that circulated since the 1920s and which, in his view, have led to contemporary architecture becoming quite decoupled from human needs. They lack connection and meaning, thereby preventing "the creation of true connections necessary to our understanding of the world". He sees them as no different from antipatterns in software design – as solutions that are false but are re-utilized nonetheless.[47]

Internet culture[edit]
Main article: Internet meme
See also: List of Internet phenomena
An "Internet meme" is a concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the Internet, largely through Internet-based E-mailing, blogs, forums, imageboards like 4chan, social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, instant messaging, and video hosting services like YouTube.[48]

In 2013 Richard Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as one deliberately altered by human creativity, distinguished from Dawkins's original idea involving mutation by random change and a form of Darwinian selection.[49]

Meme maps[edit]
One technique of meme mapping represents the evolution and transmission of a meme across time and space.[50] Such a meme map uses a figure-8 diagram (an analemma) to map the gestation (in the lower loop), birth (at the choke point), and development (in the upper loop) of the selected meme. Such meme maps are nonscalar, with time mapped onto the y-axis and space onto the x-axis transect. One can read the temporal progression of the mapped meme from south to north on such a meme map. Paull has published a worked example using the "organics meme" (as in organic agriculture).[50]

Robertson (2010) [51] used a second technique of meme mapping to create two-dimensional representations of the selves of eleven participants drawn from both individualist and collectivist cultures. Participant narratives were transcribed, segmented and coded using a method similar to grounded theory. Coded segments exhibiting referent, connotative, affective and behavioral dimensions were declared to be memes. Memes that shared connotative, affective or behavioral qualities were linked. All of the maps in Robertson's sample evidenced volition, constancy, uniqueness, production, intimacy, and social interest. This method of mapping the self was successfully used in therapy to treat a youth who had attempted suicide on five occasions (Robertson 2011).[52] The youth and psychotherapist co-constructed a plan to change the youth's presenting self, and her progress in making those changes was tracked in subsequent self-maps.

Somewhat related.

12587

The Flood / Re: originally written for my tumblr. wanted to post it here too.

« on: January 21, 2015, 04:11:53 PM »

Adolf Hitler
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Adolf Hitler
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S33882, Adolf Hitler retouched.jpg
Adolf Hitler in 1937
Führer of Germany
In office
2 August 1934 – 30 April 1945
Deputy
Rudolf Hess (1933–41)
Position vacant
Preceded by   Paul von Hindenburg
(as President)
Succeeded by   Karl Dönitz
(as President)
Reich Chancellor of Germany
In office
30 January 1933 – 30 April 1945
President   Paul von Hindenburg (until 1934)
Deputy
Franz von Papen (1933–34)
Position vacant
Preceded by   Kurt von Schleicher
Succeeded by   Joseph Goebbels
Leader of the Nazi Party
In office
29 June 1921 – 30 April 1945
Deputy   Rudolf Hess
Preceded by   Anton Drexler
Succeeded by   Martin Bormann
Personal details
Born   20 April 1889
Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary
Died   30 April 1945 (aged 56)
Berlin, Germany
Nationality
Austrian citizen until 7 April 1925[1]
Citizen of Brunswick after 25 February 1932
Citizen of the German Reich after 1934
Political party   National Socialist German Workers' Party (1921–45)
Other political
affiliations   German Workers' Party (1920–21)
Spouse(s)   Eva Braun
(29–30 April 1945)
Parents
Alois Hitler (father)
Klara Pölzl (mother)
Occupation   Politician
Religion   See: Religious views of Adolf Hitler
Awards
Iron Cross First Class
Iron Cross Second Class
Wound Badge
Signature
Military service
Allegiance    German Empire
Service/branch    Bavarian Army
Years of service   1914–20
Rank
Gefreiter
Verbindungsmann
Unit
16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment
Reichswehr intelligence
Battles/wars   World War I
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ]; 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP); National Socialist German Workers Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler was at the centre of Nazi Germany, World War II in Europe, and the Holocaust.

Hitler was a decorated veteran of World War I. He joined the German Workers' Party (precursor of the NSDAP) in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy.

Hitler's Nazi Party became the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, leading to his appointment as chancellor in 1933. Following fresh elections won by his coalition, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of National Socialism. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the denunciation of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War I, and the annexation of territories that were home to millions of ethnic Germans, actions which gave him significant popular support.

Hitler actively sought Lebensraum ("living space") for the German people. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the primary cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on 1 September 1939 invaded Poland, resulting in British and French declarations of war on Germany. In June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and their European allies occupied most of Europe and North Africa. Failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, Eva Braun. On 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two committed suicide to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Under Hitler's leadership and racially motivated ideology, the regime was responsible for the genocide of at least 5.5 million Jews, and millions of other victims whom he and his followers deemed racially inferior.

Contents [hide]
1 Early years
1.1 Ancestry
1.2 Childhood and education
1.3 Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich
1.4 World War I
2 Entry into politics
2.1 Beer Hall Putsch
2.2 Rebuilding the NSDAP
3 Rise to power
3.1 Brüning administration
3.2 Appointment as chancellor
3.3 Reichstag fire and March elections
3.4 Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act
3.5 Removal of remaining limits
4 Third Reich
4.1 Economy and culture
4.2 Rearmament and new alliances
5 World War II
5.1 Early diplomatic successes
5.1.1 Alliance with Japan
5.1.2 Austria and Czechoslovakia
5.2 Start of World War II
5.3 Path to defeat
5.4 Defeat and death
5.5 The Holocaust
6 Leadership style
7 Legacy
8 Religious views
9 Health
10 Family
11 In propaganda films
11.1 List of propaganda and film appearances
12 See also
13 Notes
14 References
14.1 Citations
14.2 Sources
15 External links
Early years
Ancestry
Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, Sr. (1837–1903), was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber.[2] Because the baptismal register did not show the name of his father, Alois initially bore his mother's surname, Schicklgruber. In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois's mother, Maria Anna. After she died in 1847 and Johann Georg Hiedler in 1856, Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler.[3] In 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Alois's father (recorded as Georg Hitler).[4][5] Alois then assumed the surname Hitler,[5] also spelled as Hiedler, Hüttler, or Huettler. The Hitler surname is probably based on "one who lives in a hut" (Standard German Hütte for hut) or on "shepherd" (Standard German hüten for to guard); alternatively, it might be derived from the Slavic words Hidlar or Hidlarcek (small cottager or small holder).[6]

Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Alois's mother had been employed as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Graz and that the family's 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger, had fathered Alois.[7] Because no Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record of Leopold Frankenberger's existence has been produced,[8] historians dismiss the claim that Alois's father was Jewish.[9][10]

Childhood and education

Adolf Hitler as an infant (c. 1889–90).
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (in present day Austria), close to the border with the German Empire.[11] He was the fourth of six children to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl (1860–1907). Hitler's older siblings—Gustav, Ida, and Otto—died in infancy.[12] When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany.[13] There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, rather than Austrian German, which marked his speech throughout his life.[14][15][16] In 1894 the family relocated to Leonding (near Linz), and in June 1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld, near Lambach, where he farmed and kept bees. Hitler attended Volksschule (a state-owned school) in nearby Fischlham.[17][18]

The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father-son conflicts caused by Hitler's refusal to conform to the strict discipline of his school.[19] Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and in 1897 the family moved to Lambach. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even considered becoming a priest.[20] In 1898 the family returned permanently to Leonding. The death of his younger brother Edmund, who died from measles in 1900, deeply affected Hitler. He changed from a confident, outgoing, conscientious student to a morose, detached, sullen boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.[21]

Hitler's mother, Klara
Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps.[22] Hitler later dramatised an episode from this period when his father took him to visit a customs office, depicting it as an event that gave rise to an unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed.[23][24][25] Ignoring his son's desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist, Alois sent Hitler to the Realschule in Linz in September 1900.[26] Hitler rebelled against this decision, and in Mein Kampf revealed that he intentionally did poorly in school, hoping that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to my dream".[27]

Like many Austrian Germans, Hitler began to develop German nationalist ideas from a young age.[28] He expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg Monarchy and its rule over an ethnically variegated empire.[29][30] Hitler and his friends used the German greeting "Heil", and sang the "Deutschlandlied" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem.[31]

After Alois's sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's performance at school deteriorated and his mother allowed him to leave.[32] He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in September 1904, where his behaviour and performance showed some improvement.[33] In 1905, after passing a repeat of the final exam, Hitler left the school without any ambitions for further education or clear plans for a career.[34]

Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich

The house in Leonding where Hitler spent his early adolescence (photo taken c. 1984)
From 1905, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna, financed by orphan's benefits and support from his mother. He worked as a casual labourer and eventually as a painter, selling watercolours of Vienna's sights. Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts rejected him in 1907 and again in 1908, citing "unfitness for painting".[35][36] The director recommended that Hitler study architecture, which was also an interest, but he lacked academic credentials.[37] On 21 December 1907, his mother died of breast cancer at the age of 47. After the academy's second rejection, Hitler ran out of money and was forced to live in homeless shelters and men's hostels.[38] At the time Hitler lived there, Vienna was a hotbed of religious prejudice and racism.[39] Fears of being overrun by immigrants from the East were widespread, and the populist mayor, Karl Lueger, exploited the rhetoric of virulent antisemitism for political effect. Georg Schönerer's pan-Germanic antisemitism had a strong following in the Mariahilf district, where Hitler lived.[40] Hitler read local newspapers, such as the Deutsches Volksblatt, that fanned prejudice and played on Christian fears of being swamped by an influx of eastern Jews.[41] Hostile to what he saw as "Catholic Germanophobia", he developed an admiration for Martin Luther.[42]

The Alter Hof in Munich. Watercolour by Adolf Hitler, 1914
The origin and first expression of Hitler's antisemitism have been difficult to locate.[43] Hitler states in Mein Kampf that he first became an antisemite in Vienna.[44] His close friend, August Kubizek, claimed that Hitler was a "confirmed antisemite" before he left Linz.[45] Several sources provide strong evidence that Hitler had Jewish friends in his hostel and in other places in Vienna.[46][47] Historian Richard J. Evans states that "historians now generally agree that his notorious, murderous anti-Semitism emerged well after Germany's defeat [in World War I], as a product of the paranoid "stab-in-the-back" explanation for the catastrophe".[48]

Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich.[49] Historians believe he left Vienna to evade conscription into the Austrian army.[50] Hitler later claimed that he did not wish to serve the Austro-Hungarian Empire because of the mixture of races in its army.[49] After he was deemed unfit for service—he failed his physical exam in Salzburg on 5 February 1914—he returned to Munich.[51]

World War I
Main article: Military career of Adolf Hitler

Hitler (far right, seated) with his army comrades of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (c. 1914–18)
At the outbreak of World War I, Hitler was living in Munich and volunteered to serve in the Bavarian Army as an Austrian citizen.[52] Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (1st Company of the List Regiment),[53][52] he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium,[54] spending nearly half his time well behind the front lines.[55][56] He was present at the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele, and was wounded at the Somme.[57] He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914.[57] On a recommendation by Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, Hitler's Jewish superior, he received the Iron Cross First Class on 4 August 1918, a decoration rarely awarded to one of Hitler's Gefreiter rank. [58][59] He received the Black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918.[60]

Adolf Hitler as a soldier during the First World War (1914–1918)
During his service at headquarters, Hitler pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout.[61] Hitler spent almost two months in hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917.[62] On 15 October 1918, he was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk.[63] While there, Hitler learnt of Germany's defeat, and—by his own account—on receiving this news, he suffered a second bout of blindness.[64]

Hitler described the war as "the greatest of all experiences", and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery.[65] His wartime experience reinforced his German patriotism and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918.[66] His bitterness over the collapse of the war effort began to shape his ideology.[67] Like other German nationalists, he believed the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth), which claimed that the German army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" on the home front by civilian leaders and Marxists, later dubbed the "November criminals".[68]

The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany must relinquish several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland. The treaty imposed economic sanctions and levied heavy reparations on the country. Many Germans perceived the treaty—especially Article 231, which declared Germany responsible for the war—as a humiliation.[69] The Versailles Treaty and the economic, social, and political conditions in Germany after the war were later exploited by Hitler for political gain.[70]

Entry into politics
Main article: Political views of Adolf Hitler

A copy of Adolf Hitler's German Workers' Party (DAP) membership card
After World War I, Hitler returned to Munich.[71] With no formal education or career prospects, he remained in the army.[72] In July 1919 he was appointed Verbindungsmann (intelligence agent) of an Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance commando) of the Reichswehr, assigned to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP). While monitoring the activities of the DAP, Hitler was attracted to the founder Anton Drexler's antisemitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas.[73] Drexler favoured a strong active government, a non-Jewish version of socialism, and solidarity among all members of society. Impressed with Hitler's oratory skills, Drexler invited him to join the DAP. Hitler accepted on 12 September 1919,[74] becoming the party's 55th member.[75]

At the DAP, Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the party's founders and a member of the occult Thule Society.[76] Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and introducing him to a wide range of Munich society.[77] To increase its appeal, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party – NSDAP).[78] Hitler designed the party's banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background.[79]

Hitler was discharged from the army on 31 March 1920 and began working full-time for the NSDAP.[80] The party headquarters was in Munich, a major hotbed of anti-government German nationalists determined to crush Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic.[81] In February 1921—already highly effective at speaking to large audiences—he spoke to a crowd of over 6,000.[82] To publicise the meeting, two truckloads of party supporters drove around Munich waving swastika flags and throwing leaflets. Hitler soon gained notoriety for his rowdy polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, and especially against Marxists and Jews.[83]

Hitler poses for the camera
In June 1921, while Hitler and Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin, a mutiny broke out within the NSDAP in Munich. Members of its executive committee wanted to merge with the rival German Socialist Party (DSP).[84] Hitler returned to Munich on 11 July and angrily tendered his resignation. The committee members realised that the resignation of their leading public figure and speaker would mean the end of the party.[85] Hitler announced he would rejoin on the condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman, and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich.[86] The committee agreed, and he rejoined the party on 26 July as member 3,680. Even then, Hitler still faced some opposition within the NSDAP: Opponents of Hitler in the leadership had Hermann Esser expelled from the party and printed 3,000 copies of a pamphlet attacking Hitler as a traitor to the party.[86][a] In the following days, Hitler spoke to several packed houses and defended himself and Esser, to thunderous applause. His strategy proved successful, and at a general membership meeting, he was granted absolute powers as party chairman, with only one vote against.[87]

Hitler's vitriolic beer hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. He became adept at using populist themes, including the use of scapegoats, who were blamed for his listeners' economic hardships.[88][89][90] Psychiatrist Carl Jung commented in 1938 that Hitler is the "first man to tell every German what he has been thinking and feeling all along in his unconscious about German fate, especially since the defeat in the World War".[91] Hitler used personal magnetism and an understanding of crowd psychology to advantage while engaged in public speaking.[92][93] Historians have noted the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups.[94] The historian Alfons Heck, a former member of the Hitler Youth describes the reaction to a speech by Hitler:

We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil! From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul."[95]
— Alfons Heck
Although Hitler's oratory skills and personal traits were generally received well by large crowds and at official events, some who met Hitler privately noted that his appearance and demeanour failed to make a lasting impression.[96][97]

Early followers included Rudolf Hess, former air force ace Hermann Göring, and army captain Ernst Röhm. Röhm became head of the Nazis' paramilitary organisation, the Sturmabteilung (SA, "Stormtroopers"), which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. A critical influence on his thinking during this period was the Aufbau Vereinigung,[98] a conspiratorial group of White Russian exiles and early National Socialists. The group, financed with funds channelled from wealthy industrialists, introduced Hitler to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy, linking international finance with Bolshevism.[99]

Beer Hall Putsch
Main article: Beer Hall Putsch
In 1923 Hitler enlisted the help of World War I General Erich Ludendorff for an attempted coup known as the "Beer Hall Putsch". The NSDAP used Italian Fascism as a model for their appearance and policies. Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini's "March on Rome" (1922) by staging his own coup in Bavaria, to be followed by a challenge to the government in Berlin. Hitler and Ludendorff sought the support of Staatskommissar (state commissioner) Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler. However, Kahr, along with Police Chief Hans Ritter von Seisser and Reichswehr General Otto von Lossow, wanted to install a nationalist dictatorship without Hitler.[100]

On 8 November 1923 Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people organised by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich. Interrupting Kahr's speech, he announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government with Ludendorff.[101] Retiring to a back room, Hitler, with handgun drawn, demanded and got the support of Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow.[101] Hitler's forces initially succeeded in occupying the local Reichswehr and police headquarters, but Kahr and his cohorts quickly withdrew their support. Neither the army nor the state police joined forces with Hitler.[102] The next day, Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government, but police dispersed them.[103] Sixteen NSDAP members and four police officers were killed in the failed coup.[104]

Dust jacket of Mein Kampf (1926–27)
Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl and by some accounts contemplated suicide.[105] He was depressed but calm when arrested on 11 November 1923 for high treason.[106] His trial before the special People's Court in Munich began in February 1924,[107] and Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the NSDAP. On 1 April, Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison.[108] There, he received friendly treatment from the guards, and he was allowed mail from supporters and regular visits by party comrades. Pardoned by the Bavarian Supreme Court, he was released from jail on 20 December 1924, against the state prosecutor's objections.[109] Including time on remand, Hitler served just over one year in prison.[110]

While at Landsberg, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle; originally entitled Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice) to his deputy, Rudolf Hess.[110] The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an autobiography and exposition of his ideology. The book laid out Hitler's plans for transforming German society into one based on race. Some passages implied genocide.[111] Published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, it sold 228,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. One million copies were sold in 1933, Hitler's first year in office.[112]

Rebuilding the NSDAP
At the time of Hitler's release from prison, politics in Germany had become less combative and the economy had improved, limiting Hitler's opportunities for political agitation. As a result of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the NSDAP and its affiliated organisations were banned in Bavaria. In a meeting with Prime Minister of Bavaria Heinrich Held on 4 January 1925, Hitler agreed to respect the authority of the state and promised that he would seek political power only through the democratic process. The meeting paved the way for the ban on the NSDAP to be lifted on 16 February.[113] Hitler was barred from public speaking by the Bavarian authorities, a ban that remained in place until 1927.[114][115] To advance his political ambitions in spite of the ban, Hitler appointed Gregor Strasser, Otto Strasser, and Joseph Goebbels to organise and grow the NSDAP in northern Germany. A superb organiser, Gregor Strasser steered a more independent political course, emphasising the socialist elements of the party's programme.[116]

The stock market in the United States crashed on 24 October 1929. The impact in Germany was dire: millions were thrown out of work and several major banks collapsed. Hitler and the NSDAP prepared to take advantage of the emergency to gain support for their party. They promised to repudiate the Versailles Treaty, strengthen the economy, and provide jobs.[117]

Rise to power
Main article: Adolf Hitler's rise to power
NSDAP election results[118]
Election   Total votes    % votes   Reichstag seats   Notes
May 1924   1,918,300   6.5   32   Hitler in prison
December 1924   907,300   3.0   14   Hitler released from prison
May 1928   810,100   2.6   12
September 1930   6,409,600   18.3   107   After the financial crisis
July 1932   13,745,000   37.3   230   After Hitler was candidate for presidency
November 1932   11,737,000   33.1   196
March 1933   17,277,180   43.9   288   Only partially free; During Hitler's term as chancellor of Germany
Brüning administration
The Great Depression provided a political opportunity for Hitler. Germans were ambivalent to the parliamentary republic, which faced strong challenges from right- and left-wing extremists. The moderate political parties were increasingly unable to stem the tide of extremism, and the German referendum of 1929 helped to elevate Nazi ideology.[119] The elections of September 1930 resulted in the break-up of a grand coalition and its replacement with a minority cabinet. Its leader, chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party, governed through emergency decrees from President Paul von Hindenburg. Governance by decree would become the new norm and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government.[120] The NSDAP rose from obscurity to win 18.3 per cent of the vote and 107 parliamentary seats in the 1930 election, becoming the second-largest party in parliament.[121]

Hitler and NSDAP treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz at the dedication of the renovation of the Palais Barlow on Brienner Straße in Munich into the Brown House headquarters, December 1930
Hitler made a prominent appearance at the trial of two Reichswehr officers, Lieutenants Richard Scheringer and Hans Ludin, in late 1930. Both were charged with membership in the NSDAP, at that time illegal for Reichswehr personnel.[122] The prosecution argued that the NSDAP was an extremist party, prompting defence lawyer Hans Frank to call on Hitler to testify.[123] On 25 September 1930, Hitler testified that his party would pursue political power solely through democratic elections,[124] which won him many supporters in the officer corps.[125]

Brüning's austerity measures brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular.[126] Hitler exploited this by targeting his political messages specifically at people who had been affected by the inflation of the 1920s and the Depression, such as farmers, war veterans, and the middle class.[127]

Hitler had formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925, but at the time did not acquire German citizenship. For almost seven years he was stateless, unable to run for public office, and faced the risk of deportation.[128] On 25 February 1932, the interior minister of Brunswick, who was a member of the NSDAP, appointed Hitler as administrator for the state's delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin, making Hitler a citizen of Brunswick,[129] and thus of Germany.[130]

In 1932, Hitler ran against Hindenburg in the presidential elections. The viability of his candidacy was underscored by a 27 January 1932 speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf, which won him support from many of Germany's most powerful industrialists.[131] Hindenburg had support from various nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, and republican parties, and some Social Democrats. Hitler used the campaign slogan "Hitler über Deutschland" ("Hitler over Germany"), a reference to his political ambitions and his campaigning by aircraft.[132] He was one of the first politicians to use aircraft travel for political purposes, and utilized it effectively.[133][134] Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, garnering more than 35 per cent of the vote in the final election. Although he lost to Hindenburg, this election established Hitler as a strong force in German politics.[135]

Appointment as chancellor
The absence of an effective government prompted two influential politicians, Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, along with several other industrialists and businessmen, to write a letter to Hindenburg. The signers urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties", which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people".[136][137]

Hitler, at the window of the Reich Chancellery, receives an ovation on the evening of his inauguration as chancellor, 30 January 1933
Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor after two further parliamentary elections—in July and November 1932—had not resulted in the formation of a majority government. Hitler headed a short-lived coalition government formed by the NSDAP and Hugenberg's party, the German National People's Party (DNVP). On 30 January 1933, the new cabinet was sworn in during a brief ceremony in Hindenburg's office. The NSDAP gained three posts: Hitler was named chancellor, Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior, and Hermann Göring Minister of the Interior for Prussia.[138] Hitler had insisted on the ministerial positions as a way to gain control over the police in much of Germany.[139]

Reichstag fire and March elections
As chancellor, Hitler worked against attempts by the NSDAP's opponents to build a majority government. Because of the political stalemate, he asked Hindenburg to again dissolve the Reichstag, and elections were scheduled for early March. On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Göring blamed a communist plot, because Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found in incriminating circumstances inside the burning building.[140] According to the British historian Sir Ian Kershaw, the consensus of nearly all historians is that Van der Lubbe actually set the fire.[141] Others, including William L. Shirer and Alan Bullock, are of the opinion that the NSDAP itself was responsible.[142][143] At Hitler's urging, Hindenburg responded with the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. The decree was permitted under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave the president the power to take emergency measures to protect public safety and order.[144] Activities of the German Communist Party were suppressed, and some 4,000 communist party members were arrested.[145]

In addition to political campaigning, the NSDAP engaged in paramilitary violence and the spread of anti-communist propaganda in the days preceding the election. On election day, 6 March 1933, the NSDAP's share of the vote increased to 43.9 per cent, and the party acquired the largest number of seats in parliament. Hitler's party failed to secure an absolute majority, necessitating another coalition with the DNVP.[146]

Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act
On 21 March 1933, the new Reichstag was constituted with an opening ceremony at the Garrison Church in Potsdam. This "Day of Potsdam" was held to demonstrate unity between the Nazi movement and the old Prussian elite and military. Hitler appeared in a morning coat and humbly greeted Hindenburg.[147][148]

Paul von Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler on the Day of Potsdam, 21 March 1933
To achieve full political control despite not having an absolute majority in parliament, Hitler's government brought the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) to a vote in the newly elected Reichstag. The act gave Hitler's cabinet full legislative powers for four years and (with certain exceptions) allowed deviations from the constitution.[149] The bill required a two-thirds majority to pass. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to keep several Social Democratic deputies from attending; the Communists had already been banned.[150]

On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag assembled at the Kroll Opera House under turbulent circumstances. Ranks of SA men served as guards inside the building, while large groups outside opposing the proposed legislation shouted slogans and threats toward the arriving members of parliament.[151] The position of the Centre Party, the third largest party in the Reichstag, was decisive. After Hitler verbally promised party leader Ludwig Kaas that Hindenburg would retain his power of veto, Kaas announced the Centre Party would support the Enabling Act. The Act passed by a vote of 441–84, with all parties except the Social Democrats voting in favour. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship.[152]

Removal of remaining limits
At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense I tell you that the National Socialist movement will go on for 1,000 years! ... Don't forget how people laughed at me 15 years ago when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. They laugh now, just as foolishly, when I declare that I shall remain in power![153]
— Adolf Hitler to a British correspondent in Berlin, June 1934
Having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his allies began to suppress the remaining opposition. The Social Democratic Party was banned and its assets seized.[154] While many trade union delegates were in Berlin for May Day activities, SA stormtroopers demolished union offices around the country. On 2 May 1933 all trade unions were forced to dissolve and their leaders were arrested. Some were sent to concentration camps.[155] The German Labour Front was formed as an umbrella organisation to represent all workers, administrators, and company owners, thus reflecting the concept of national socialism in the spirit of Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft (German racial community; literally, "people's community").[156]

In 1934, Hitler became Germany's head of state with the title of Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor of the Reich).
By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated into disbanding. This included the Nazis' nominal coalition partner, the DNVP; with the SA's help, Hitler forced its leader, Hugenberg, to resign on 29 June. On 14 July 1933, the NSDAP was declared the only legal political party in Germany, although the country had effectively been a one-party state since the passage of the Enabling Act four months earlier.[156][154] The demands of the SA for more political and military power caused anxiety among military, industrial, and political leaders. In response, Hitler purged the entire SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934.[157] Hitler targeted Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders who, along with a number of Hitler's political adversaries (such as Gregor Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher), were rounded up, arrested, and shot.[158] While the international community and some Germans were shocked by the murders, many in Germany believed Hitler was restoring order.[159]

On 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died. The previous day, the cabinet had enacted the "Law Concerning the Highest State Office of the Reich".[160] This law stated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of president would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government, and was formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor).[161] This law violated the Enabling Act; although it allowed Hitler to deviate from the constitution, the Act explicitly barred him from passing any law tampering with the presidency. In 1932, the constitution had been amended to make the president of the High Court of Justice, not the chancellor, acting president pending new elections. Nonetheless, no one objected.[162] With this action, Hitler eliminated the last legal remedy by which he could be removed from office.

As head of state, Hitler became Supreme Commander of the armed forces. The traditional loyalty oath of servicemen was altered to affirm loyalty to Hitler personally, rather than to the office of supreme commander or the state.[163] On 19 August, the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship was approved by 90 per cent of the electorate voting in a plebiscite.[164]

Hitler's personal standard
In early 1938, Hitler used blackmail to consolidate his hold over the military by instigating the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair. Hitler forced his War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, to resign by using a police dossier that showed that Blomberg's new wife had a record for prostitution.[165][166] Army commander Colonel-General Werner von Fritsch was removed after the Schutzstaffel (SS) produced allegations that he had engaged in a homosexual relationship.[167] Both men had fallen into disfavour because they objected to Hitler's demand to make the Wehrmacht ready for war as early as 1938.[168] Hitler assumed Blomberg's title of Commander-in-Chief, thus taking personal command of the armed forces. He replaced the Ministry of War with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command, or OKW), headed by General Wilhelm Keitel. On the same day, sixteen generals were stripped of their commands and 44 more were transferred; all were suspected of not being sufficiently pro-Nazi.[169] By early February 1938, twelve more generals had been removed.[170]

Hitler took care to give his dictatorship the appearance of legality. Many of his decrees were explicitly based on the Reichstag Fire Decree and hence on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag renewed the Enabling Act twice, each time for a four year period.[171] While elections to the Reichstag were still held, voters were presented with a single list of Nazis and pro-Nazi "guests" which carried with well over 90 percent of the vote.[172]

Third Reich
Main article: Nazi Germany
Economy and culture
Main article: Economy of Nazi Germany

Ceremony honouring the dead (Totenehrung) on the terrace in front of the Hall of Honour (Ehrenhalle) at the Nazi party rally grounds, Nuremberg, September 1934
In August 1934, Hitler appointed Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht as Minister of Economics, and in the following year, as Plenipotentiary for War Economy in charge of preparing the economy for war.[173] Reconstruction and rearmament were financed through Mefo bills, printing money, and seizing the assets of people arrested as enemies of the State, including Jews.[174] Unemployment fell from six million in 1932 to one million in 1936.[175] Hitler oversaw one of the largest infrastructure improvement campaigns in German history, leading to the construction of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. Wages were slightly lower in the mid to late 1930s compared with wages during the Weimar Republic, while the cost of living increased by 25 per cent.[176] The average working week increased during the shift to a war economy; by 1939, the average German was working between 47 and 50 hours a week.[177]

Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale. Albert Speer, instrumental in implementing Hitler's classicist reinterpretation of German culture, was placed in charge of the proposed architectural renovations of Berlin.[178] In 1936, Hitler opened the summer Olympic games in Berlin.

Rearmament and new alliances
Main articles: Axis powers, Tripartite Pact and German re-armament
In a meeting with German military leaders on 3 February 1933, Hitler spoke of "conquest for Lebensraum in the East and its ruthless Germanisation" as his ultimate foreign policy objectives.[179] In March, Prince Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), issued a statement of major foreign policy aims: Anschluss with Austria, the restoration of Germany's national borders of 1914, rejection of military restrictions under the Treaty of Versailles, the return of the former German colonies in Africa, and a German zone of influence in Eastern Europe. Hitler found Bülow's goals to be too modest.[180] In speeches during this period, he stressed the peaceful goals of his policies and a willingness to work within international agreements.[181] At the first meeting of his Cabinet in 1933, Hitler prioritised military spending over unemployment relief.[182]

On 25 October 1936, an Axis was declared between Italy and Germany.
Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference in October 1933.[183] In January 1935, over 90 per cent of the people of the Saarland, then under League of Nations administration, voted to unite with Germany.[184] That March, Hitler announced an expansion of the Wehrmacht to 600,000 members—six times the number permitted by the Versailles Treaty—including development of an air force (Luftwaffe) and an increase in the size of the navy (Kriegsmarine). Britain, France, Italy, and the League of Nations condemned these violations of the Treaty, but did virtually nothing to stop it.[185][186] The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) of 18 June allowed German tonnage to increase to 35 per cent of that of the British navy. Hitler called the signing of the AGNA "the happiest day of his life", believing that the agreement marked the beginning of the Anglo-German alliance he had predicted in Mein Kampf.[187] France and Italy were not consulted before the signing, directly undermining the League of Nations and setting the Treaty of Versailles on the path towards irrelevance.[188]

Germany reoccupied the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland in March 1936, in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler also sent troops to Spain to support General Franco after receiving an appeal for help in July 1936. At the same time, Hitler continued his efforts to create an Anglo-German alliance.[189] In August 1936, in response to a growing economic crisis caused by his rearmament efforts, Hitler ordered Göring to implement a Four Year Plan to prepare Germany for war within the next four years.[190] The plan envisaged an all-out struggle between "Judeo-Bolshevism" and German national socialism, which in Hitler's view required a committed effort of rearmament regardless of the economic costs.[191]

Count Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of Mussolini's government, declared an axis between Germany and Italy, and on 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. Britain, China, Italy, and Poland were also invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in 1937. Hitler abandoned his plan of an Anglo-German alliance, blaming "inadequate" British leadership.[192] At a meeting in the Reich Chancellery with his foreign ministers and military chiefs that November, Hitler restated his intention of acquiring Lebensraum for the German people. He ordered preparations for war in the east, to begin as early as 1938 and no later than 1943. In the event of his death, the conference minutes, recorded as the Hossbach Memorandum, were to be regarded as his "political testament".[193] He felt that a severe decline in living standards in Germany as a result of the economic crisis could only be stopped by military aggression aimed at seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia.[194][195] Hitler urged quick action before Britain and France gained a permanent lead in the arms race.[194] In early 1938, in the wake of the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair, Hitler asserted control of the military-foreign policy apparatus, dismissing Neurath as Foreign Minister and appointing himself Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht (supreme commander of the armed forces).[190] From early 1938 onwards, Hitler was carrying out a foreign policy ultimately aimed at war.[196]

World War II
Early diplomatic successes
Alliance with Japan
See also: Germany–Japan relations

Hitler and the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, at a meeting in Berlin in March 1941. In the background is Joachim von Ribbentrop.
In February 1938, on the advice of his newly appointed Foreign Minister, the strongly pro-Japanese Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler ended the Sino-German alliance with the Republic of China to instead enter into an alliance with the more modern and powerful Japan. Hitler announced German recognition of Manchukuo, the Japanese-occupied state in Manchuria, and renounced German claims to their former colonies in the Pacific held by Japan.[197] Hitler ordered an end to arms shipments to China and recalled all German officers working with the Chinese Army.[197] In retaliation, Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek cancelled all Sino-German economic agreements, depriving the Germans of many Chinese raw materials.[198]

Austria and Czechoslovakia
On 12 March 1938, Hitler declared unification of Austria with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss.[199][200] Hitler then turned his attention to the ethnic German population of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.[201]

On 28–29 March 1938, Hitler held a series of secret meetings in Berlin with Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten Heimfront (Home Front), the largest of the ethnic German parties of the Sudetenland. The men agreed that Henlein would demand increased autonomy for Sudeten Germans from the Czechoslovakian government, thus providing a pretext for German military action against Czechoslovakia. In April 1938 Henlein told the foreign minister of Hungary that "whatever the Czech government might offer, he would always raise still higher demands ... he wanted to sabotage an understanding by any means because this was the only method to blow up Czechoslovakia quickly".[202] In private, Hitler considered the Sudeten issue unimportant; his real intention was a war of conquest against Czechoslovakia.[203]

October 1938: Hitler (standing in the Mercedes) drives through the crowd in Cheb (German: Eger), part of the German-populated Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, which was annexed to Nazi Germany due to the Munich Agreement
In April Hitler ordered the OKW to prepare for Fall Grün ("Case Green"), the code name for an invasion of Czechoslovakia.[204] As a result of intense French and British diplomatic pressure, on 5 September Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš unveiled the "Fourth Plan" for constitutional reorganisation of his country, which agreed to most of Henlein's demands for Sudeten autonomy.[205] Henlein's Heimfront responded to Beneš' offer by instigating a series of violent clashes with the Czechoslovakian police that led to the declaration of martial law in certain Sudeten districts.[206][207]

Germany was dependent on imported oil; a confrontation with Britain over the Czechoslovakian dispute could curtail Germany's oil supplies. This forced Hitler to call off Fall Grün, originally planned for 1 October 1938.[208] On 29 September Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, and Mussolini attended a one-day conference in Munich that led to the Munich Agreement, which handed over the Sudetenland districts to Germany.[209][210]

Chamberlain was satisfied with the Munich conference, calling the outcome "peace for our time", while Hitler was angered about the missed opportunity for war in 1938;[211][212] he expressed his disappointment in a speech on 9 October in Saarbrücken.[213] In Hitler's view, the British-brokered peace, although favourable to the ostensible German demands, was a diplomatic defeat which spurred his intent of limiting British power to pave the way for the eastern expansion of Germany.[214][215] As a result of the summit, Hitler was selected Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.[216]

In late 1938 and early 1939, the continuing economic crisis caused by rearmament forced Hitler to make major defence cuts.[217] In his "Export or die" speech of 30 January 1939, he called for an economic offensive to increase German foreign exchange holdings to pay for raw materials such as high-grade iron needed for military weapons.[217]

On 15 March 1939, in violation of the Munich accord and possibly as a result of the deepening economic crisis requiring additional assets,[218] Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to invade Prague, and from Prague Castle he proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate.[219]

Start of World War II
In private discussions in 1939, Hitler declared Britain the main enemy to be defeated and that Poland's obliteration was a necessary prelude for that goal. The eastern flank would be secured and land would be added to Germany's Lebensraum.[220] Offended by the British "guarantee" on 31 March 1939 of Polish independence, he said, "I shall brew them a devil's drink".[221] In a speech in Wilhelmshaven for the launch of the battleship Tirpitz on 1 April, he threatened to denounce the Anglo-German Naval Agreement if the British continued to guarantee Polish independence, which he perceived as an "encirclement" policy.[221] Poland was to either become a German satellite state or be neutralised to secure the Reich's eastern flank and to prevent a possible British blockade.[222] Hitler initially favoured the idea of a satellite state, but upon its rejection by the Polish government, he decided to invade and made this the main foreign policy goal of 1939.[223] On 3 April, Hitler ordered the military to prepare for Fall Weiss ("Case White"), the plan for invading Poland on 25 August.[223] In a Reichstag speech on 28 April, he renounced both the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact. In August, Hitler told his generals that his original plan for 1939 was to "... establish an acceptable relationship with Poland in order to fight against the West".[224] Historians such as William Carr, Gerhard Weinberg, and Kershaw have argued that one reason for Hitler's rush to war was his fear of an early death.[225][226][227]

Hitler portrayed on a 42 pfennig stamp from 1944. The term Grossdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich) was first used in 1943 for the expanded Germany under his rule.
Hitler was concerned that a military attack against Poland could result in a premature war with Britain.[222][228] Hitler's foreign minister and former Ambassador to London, Joachim von Ribbentrop, assured him that neither Britain nor France would honour their commitments to Poland.[229][230] Accordingly, on 22 August 1939 Hitler ordered a military mobilisation against Poland.[231]

This plan required tacit Soviet support,[232] and the non-aggression pact (the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) between Germany and the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, included a secret agreement to partition Poland between the two countries.[233] Contrary to Ribbentrop's prediction that Britain would sever Anglo-Polish ties, Britain and Poland signed the Anglo-Polish alliance on 25 August 1939. This, along with news from Italy that Mussolini would not honour the Pact of Steel, prompted Hitler to postpone the attack on Poland from 25 August to 1 September.[234] Hitler unsuccessfully tried to manoeuvre the British into neutrality by offering them a non-aggression guarantee on 25 August; he then instructed Ribbentrop to present a last-minute peace plan with an impossibly short time limit in an effort to blame the imminent war on British and Polish inaction.[235][236]

Despite his concerns over a British intervention, Hitler continued to pursue the planned invasion of Poland.[237] On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded western Poland under the pretext of having been denied claims to the Free City of Danzig and the right to extraterritorial roads across the Polish Corridor, which Germany had ceded under the Versailles Treaty.[238] In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September, surprising Hitler and prompting him to angrily ask Ribbentrop, "Now what?"[239] France and Britain did not act on their declarations immediately, and on 17 September, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland.[240]

Hitler reviews troops on the march during the campaign against Poland. September 1939
The fall of Poland was followed by what contemporary journalists dubbed the "Phoney War" or Sitzkrieg ("sitting war"). Hitler instructed the two newly appointed Gauleiters of north-western Poland, Albert Forster of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Arthur Greiser of Reichsgau Wartheland, to Germanise their areas, with "no questions asked" about how this was accomplished.[241] Whereas Polish citizens in Forster's area merely had to sign forms stating that they had German blood,[242] Greiser carried out a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign on the Polish population in his purview.[241] Greiser complained that Forster was allowing thousands of Poles to be accepted as "racial" Germans and thus endangered German "racial purity". Hitler refrained from getting involved.[241] This inaction has been advanced as an example of the theory of "working towards the Führer": Hitler issued vague instructions and expected his subordinates to work out policies on their own.

Another dispute pitched one side represented by Himmler and Greiser, who championed ethnic cleansing in Poland, against another represented by Göring and Hans Frank, Governor-General of the General Government territory of occupied Poland, who called for turning Poland into the "granary" of the Reich.[243] On 12 February 1940, the dispute was initially settled in favour of the Göring–Frank view, which ended the economically disruptive mass expulsions.[243] On 15 May 1940, Himmler issued a memo entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East", calling for the expulsion of the entire Jewish population of Europe into Africa and reducing the Polish population to a "leaderless class of labourers".[243] Hitler called Himmler's memo "good and correct",[243] and, ignoring Göring and Frank, implemented the Himmler–Greiser policy in Poland.

Hitler visits Paris with architect Albert Speer (left) and sculptor Arno Breker (right), 23 June 1940
Hitler began a military build-up on Germany's western border, and in April 1940, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. On 9 April, Hitler proclaimed the birth of the Greater Germanic Reich, his vision of a united empire of the Germanic nations of Europe, where the Dutch, Flemish, and Scandinavians were joined into a "racially pure" polity under German leadership.[244] In May 1940, Germany attacked France, and conquered Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. These victories prompted Mussolini to have Italy join forces with Hitler on 10 June. France surrendered on 22 June.[245] Kershaw notes that Hitler's popularity within Germany—and German support for the war— reached its peak when he returned to Berlin on 6 July from his tour of Paris.[246] Following the unexpected swift victory, Hitler promoted twelve generals to the rank of field marshal during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony.[247][248]

Britain, whose troops were forced to evacuate France by sea from Dunkirk,[249] continued to fight alongside other British dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler made peace overtures to the new British leader, Winston Churchill, and upon their rejection he ordered a series of aerial attacks on Royal Air Force airbases and radar stations in South-East England. The German Luftwaffe failed to defeat the Royal Air Force in what became known as the Battle of Britain.[250] By the end of October, Hitler realised that air superiority for the invasion of Britain—in Operation Sea Lion—could not be achieved, and he ordered nightly air raids on British cities, including London, Plymouth, and Coventry.[251]

On 27 September 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin by Saburō Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Hitler, and Italian foreign minister Ciano,[252] and later expanded to include Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, thus yielding the Axis powers. Hitler's attempt to integrate the Soviet Union into the anti-British bloc failed after inconclusive talks between Hitler and Molotov in Berlin in November, and he ordered preparations for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union.[253]

In the Spring of 1941, German forces were deployed to North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. In February, German forces arrived in Libya to bolster the Italian presence. In April, Hitler launched the invasion of Yugoslavia, quickly followed by the invasion of Greece.[254] In May, German forces were sent to support Iraqi rebel forces fighting against the British and to invade Crete.[255]

Path to defeat
On 22 June 1941, contravening the Hitler–Stalin Non-Aggression Pact of 1939, 4-5 million Axis troops attacked the Soviet Union.[256] This large-scale offensive (codenamed Operation Barbarossa) was intended to destroy the Soviet Union and seize its natural resources for subsequent aggression against the Western powers.[257][258] The invasion conquered a huge area, including the Baltic republics, Belarus, and West Ukraine. After the successful Battle of Smolensk, Hitler ordered Army Group Centre to halt its advance to Moscow and temporarily diverted its Panzer groups north and south to aid in the encirclement of Leningrad and Kiev.[259] His generals disagreed with this change of targets, and his decision caused a major crisis among the military leadership.[260][261] The pause provided the Red Army with an opportunity to mobilise fresh reserves; historian Russel Stolfi considers it to be one of the major factors that caused the failure of the Moscow offensive, which was resumed only in October 1941 and ended disastrously in December.[259]

Hitler during his speech to the Reichstag attacking American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 11 December 1941
On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four days later, Hitler formally declared war against the United States.[262]

On 18 December 1941, Himmler asked Hitler, "What to do with the Jews of Russia?", to which Hitler replied, "als Partisanen auszurotten" ("exterminate them as partisans").[263] Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust.[263]

In late 1942, German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein,[264] thwarting Hitler's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. Overconfident in his own military expertise following the earlier victories in 1940, Hitler became distrustful of his Army High Command and began to interfere in military and tactical planning with damaging consequences.[265] In December 1942 and January 1943, Hitler's repeated refusal to allow their withdrawal at the Battle of Stalingrad led to the almost total destruction of the 6th Army. Over 200,000 Axis soldiers were killed and 235,000 were taken prisoner. Of the estimated 91,000 German soldiers captured in the city itself, only around 6,000 survived captivity and returned to Germany after the war.[266] Thereafter came a decisive strategic defeat at the Battle of Kursk.[267] Hitler's military judgment became increasingly erratic, and Germany's military and economic position deteriorated along with Hitler's health.[268]

The destroyed map room at the Wolf's Lair after the 20 July plot
Following the allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Mussolini was removed from power by Victor Emmanuel III after a vote of no confidence of the Grand Council. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, placed in charge of the government, soon surrendered to the Allies.[269] Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler's armies into retreat along the Eastern Front. On 6 June 1944 the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in what was one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord.[270] As a result of these significant setbacks for the German army, many of its officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that Hitler's misjudgement or denial would drag out the war and result in the complete destruction of the country.[271]

Between 1939 and 1945, there were many plans to assassinate Hitler, some of which proceeded to significant degrees.[272] The most well known came from within Germany and was at least partly driven by the increasing prospect of a German defeat in the war.[273] In July 1944, in the 20 July plot, part of Operation Valkyrie, Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in one of Hitler's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg. Hitler narrowly survived because staff officer Heinz Brandt moved the briefcase containing the bomb behind a leg of the heavy conference table. When the bomb exploded, the table deflected much of the blast away. It was also lessened by the open windows. Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals resulting in the execution of more than 4,900 people.[274]

Defeat and death
Main article: Death of Adolf Hitler
By late 1944, both the Red Army and the Western Allies were advancing into Germany. Recognising the strength and determination of the Red Army, Hitler decided to use his remaining mobile reserves against the American and British troops, which he perceived as far weaker.[275] On 16 December, he launched an offensive in the Ardennes to incite disunity among the Western Allies and perhaps convince them to join his fight against the Soviets.[276] The offensive failed. Hitler's hope to negotiate peace with the United States and Britain was buoyed by the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945, but contrary to his expectations, this caused no rift among the Allies.[277][276] Acting on his view that Germany's military failures had forfeited its right to survive as a nation, Hitler ordered the destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands.[278] Arms minister Albert Speer was entrusted with executing this scorched earth plan, but he secretly disobeyed the order.[278][279]

Front page of the US Armed Forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, 2 May 1945, announcing Hitler's death
On 20 April, his 56th birthday, Hitler made his last trip from the Führerbunker ("Führer's shelter") to the surface. In the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery, he awarded Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth, who were now fighting the Red Army at the front near Berlin.[280] By 21 April, Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the defences of German General Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights and advanced into the outskirts of Berlin.[281] In denial about the dire situation, Hitler placed his hopes on the undermanned and under-equipped Armeeabteilung Steiner (Army Detachment Steiner), commanded by Waffen SS General Felix Steiner. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the salient and the German Ninth Army was ordered to attack northward in a pincer attack.[282]

During a military conference on 22 April, Hitler asked about Steiner's offensive. He was told that the attack had not been launched and that the Soviets had entered Berlin. This prompted Hitler to ask everyone except Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Hans Krebs, and Wilhelm Burgdorf to leave the room.[283] Hitler then launched a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders, culminating in his declaration—for the first time—that "everything was lost".[256] Hitler then announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself.[284]

By 23 April the Red Army had completely surrounded Berlin,[285] and Goebbels made a proclamation urging its citizens to defend the city.[283] That same day, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden, arguing that since Hitler was isolated in Berlin, he, Göring, should assume leadership of Germany. Göring set a deadline after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated.[286] Hitler responded by having Göring arrested, and in his last will and testament, written on 29 April, he removed Göring from all government positions.[287][288] On 28 April Hitler discovered that Himmler, who had left Berlin on 20 April, was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies.[289][290] He ordered Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot.[291]

After midnight on 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in the Führerbunker. After a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife, he then took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his will.[292] The event was witnessed and documents signed by Krebs, Burgdorf, Goebbels, and Bormann.[293] Later that afternoon, Hitler was informed of the execution of Mussolini, which presumably increased his determination to avoid capture.[294]

On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler and Braun committed suicide; Braun bit into a cyanide capsule and Hitler shot himself.[295][296] Both their bodies were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were placed in a bomb crater and doused with petrol.[297] The corpses were set on fire as the Red Army shelling continued.[298][299]

Berlin surrendered on 2 May. Records in the Soviet archives, obtained after the fall of the Soviet Union, state that the remains of Hitler, Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, the six Goebbels children, General Hans Krebs, and Hitler's dogs were repeatedly buried and exhumed.[300] On 4 April 1970, a Soviet KGB team used detailed burial charts to exhume five wooden boxes at the SMERSH facility in Magdeburg. The remains from the boxes were burned, crushed, and scattered into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.[301] According to Kershaw the corpses of Braun and Hitler were fully burned when the Red Army found them, and only a lower jaw with dental work could be identified as Hitler's remains.[302]

The Holocaust
Main article: The Holocaust
If the international Jewish financiers outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe![303]
— Adolf Hitler addressing the German Reichstag, 30 January 1939

A wagon piled high with corpses outside the crematorium in the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp (April 1945)
The Holocaust and Germany's war in the East was based on Hitler's long-standing view that the Jews were the great enemy of the German people and that Lebensraum was needed for the expansion of Germany. He focused on Eastern Europe for this expansion, aiming to defeat Poland and the Soviet Union and on removing or killing the Jews and Slavs.[304] The Generalplan Ost ("General Plan East") called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to West Siberia, for use as slave labour or to be murdered;[305] the conquered territories were to be colonised by German or "Germanised" settlers.[306] The goal was to implement this plan after the conquest of the Soviet Union, but when this failed, Hitler moved the plans forward.[305][307] By January 1942, it had been decided to kill the Jews, Slavs, and other deportees considered undesirable.[308][c]

Hitler's order for Action T4, dated 1 September 1939
The Holocaust (also known as the "Endlösung der Judenfrage" or "Final Solution of the Jewish Question") was ordered by Hitler and organised and executed by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. The records of the Wannsee Conference, held on 20 January 1942 and led by Heydrich, with fifteen senior Nazi officials participating, provide the clearest evidence of systematic planning for the Holocaust. On 22 February, Hitler was recorded saying, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews".[309] Although no direct order from Hitler authorising the mass killings has surfaced,[310] his public speeches, orders to his generals, and the diaries of Nazi officials demonstrate that he conceived and authorised the extermination of European Jewry.[311][312] He approved the Einsatzgruppen—killing squads that followed the German army through Poland, the Baltic, and the Soviet Union[313]—and he was well informed about their activities.[311][314] By summer 1942, Auschwitz concentration camp was rapidly expanded to accommodate large numbers of deportees for killing or enslavement.[315] Scores of other concentration camps and satellite camps were set up throughout Europe, with several camps devoted exclusively to extermination.[316]

Between 1939 and 1945, the Schutzstaffel (SS), assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, was responsible for the deaths of at least eleven million people,[317][305] including 5.5 to 6 million Jews (representing two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe),[318][319] and between 200,000 and 1,500,000 Romani people.[320][319] Deaths took place in concentration and extermination camps, ghettos, and through mass executions. Many victims of the Holocaust were gassed to death, whereas others died of starvation or disease or while working as slave labourers.[321] In addition to eliminating Jews, the Nazis also planned to reduce the population of the conquered territories by 30 million people through starvation in an action called the Hunger Plan. Food supplies would be diverted to the German army and German civilians. Cities would be razed and the land allowed to return to forest or resettled by German colonists.[322] Together, the Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost would have led to the starvation of 80 million people in the Soviet Union.[323] These partially fulfilled plans resulted in the democidal deaths of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war.[324]

Hitler's policies also resulted in the killing of nearly two million Poles,[325] over three million Soviet prisoners of war,[326] communists and other political opponents, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled,[327][328] Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, and trade unionists. Hitler did not speak publicly about the killings, and seems never to have visited the concentration camps.[329]

The Nazis also embraced the concept of racial hygiene. On 15 September 1935, Hitler presented two laws—known as the Nuremberg Laws—to the Reichstag. The laws banned sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and Jews and were later extended to include "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring".[330] The laws also stripped all non-Aryans of their German citizenship and forbade the employment of non-Jewish women under the age of 45 in Jewish households.[331] Hitler's early eugenic policies targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities in a programme dubbed Action Brandt, and later authorised a euthanasia programme for adults with serious mental and physical disabilities, now referred to as Action T4.[332]

Leadership style
Hitler ruled the NSDAP autocratically by asserting the Führerprinzip ("Leader principle"). The principle relied on absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors; thus he viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself—the infallible leader—at the apex. Rank in the party was not determined by elections—positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank, who demanded unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader.[333] Hitler's leadership style was to give contradictory orders to his subordinates and to place them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped with those of others, to have "the stronger one [do] the job".[334] In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power. His cabinet never met after 1938, and he discouraged his ministers from meeting independently.[335][336] Hitler typically did not give written orders; instead he communicated them verbally, or had them conveyed through his close associate, Martin Bormann.[337] He entrusted Bormann with his paperwork, appointments, and personal finances; Bormann used his position to control the flow of information and access to Hitler.[338]

Hitler dominated his country's war effort during World War II to a greater extent than any other national leader. He assumed the role of supreme commander of the armed forces during 1938, and subsequently made all major decisions regarding Germany's military strategy. His decision to mount a risky series of offensives against Norway, France and the Low Countries in 1940 against the advice of the military proved successful, though the diplomatic and military strategies he employed in attempts to force the United Kingdom out of the war ended in failure.[339] Hitler deepened his involvement in the war effort by appointing himself commander in chief of the Army in December 1941; from this point forward he personally directed the war against the Soviet Union, while his military commanders facing the western Allies retained a degree of autonomy.[340] Hitler's leadership became increasingly disconnected from reality as the war turned against Germany, with the military's defensive strategies often hindered by his slow decision making and frequent directives to hold untenable positions. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that only his leadership could deliver victory.[339] In the final months of the war Hitler refused to consider peace negotiations, regarding the complete destruction of Germany as preferable to surrender.[341] The military did not challenge Hitler's dominance of the war effort, and senior officers generally supported and enacted his decisions.[342]

Legacy
Further information: Consequences of Nazism and Neo-Nazism

Outside the building in Braunau am Inn, Austria, where Hitler was born, is a memorial stone placed as a reminder of the horrors of World War II. The inscription translates as:
For peace, freedom
and democracy
never again fascism
millions of dead remind [us]

Hitler's suicide was likened by contemporaries to a "spell" being broken.[343][344] Public support for Hitler had collapsed by the time of his death and few Germans mourned his passing; Kershaw argues that most civilians and military personnel were too busy adjusting to the collapse of the country or fleeing from the fighting to take any interest.[345] According to historian John Toland National Socialism "burst like a bubble" without its leader.[346]

Hitler's actions and Nazi ideology are almost universally regarded as gravely immoral;[347] according to Kershaw, "Never in history has such ruination—physical and moral—been associated with the name of one man".[348] Hitler's political programme brought about a world war, leaving behind a devastated and impoverished Eastern and Central Europe. Germany itself suffered wholesale destruction, characterised as "Zero Hour".[349] Hitler's policies inflicted human suffering on an unprecedented scale;[350] according to R.J. Rummel, the Nazi regime was responsible for the democidal killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war.[317] In addition, 29 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European Theatre of World War II,[317] and Hitler's role has been described as "... the main author of a war leaving over 50 million dead and millions more grieving their lost ones ...".[348] The total number of civilians killed during the Second World War was an unprecedented development in the history of warfare.[351] Historians, philosophers, and politicians often use the word "evil" to describe the Nazi regime.[352] Many European countries have criminalised both the promotion of Nazism and Holocaust denial.[353]

Historian Friedrich Meinecke described Hitler as "one of the great examples of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life".[354] English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper saw him as "among the 'terrible simplifiers' of history, the most systematic, the most historical, the most philosophical, and yet the coarsest, cruelest, least magnanimous conqueror the world has ever known".[355] For the historian John M. Roberts, Hitler's defeat marked the end of a phase of European history dominated by Germany.[356] In its place emerged the Cold War, a global confrontation between the Western Bloc, dominated by the United States and other NATO nations, and the Eastern Bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union.[357] Historian Sebastian Haffner avows that without Hitler and the displacement of the Jews, the modern nation state of Israel would not exist. He contends that without Hitler, the de-colonization of former European spheres of influence would not have occurred as quickly and would have been postponed.[358] Further, Haffner claims that other than Alexander the Great, Hitler had a more significant impact than any other comparable historical figure, in that he too caused a wide range of worldwide changes in a relatively short time span.[359]

Religious views
Main article: Religious views of Adolf Hitler
Hitler was born to a practising Catholic mother and an anticlerical father, but after leaving home Hitler never again attended Mass or received the sacraments.[360][361][362] Speer states that Hitler made harsh pronouncements against the church to his political associates and though he never officially left it, he had no attachment to it.[363] He adds that Hitler felt that in the absence of the church the faithful would turn to mysticism, which he considered a step backwards.[363] According to Speer, Hitler believed that either Japanese religious beliefs or Islam would have been a more suitable religion for the Germans than Christianity, with its "meekness and flabbiness".[364]

Historian John S. Conway states that Hitler was fundamentally opposed to the Christian churches.[365] According to Bullock, Hitler did not believe in God, was anticlerical, and held Christian ethics in contempt because they contravened his preferred view of "survival of the fittest".[366] He favoured aspects of Protestantism that suited his own views, and adopted some elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchical organisation, liturgy, and phraseology in his politics.[367]

Hitler viewed the church as an important politically conservative influence on society,[368] and he adopted a strategic relationship with it that "suited his immediate political purposes".[365] In public, Hitler often praised Christian heritage and German Christian culture, though professing a belief in an "Aryan Jesus", one who fought against the Jews.[369] Any pro-Christian public rhetoric was at variance with his personal beliefs, which described Christianity as "absurdity"[370] and nonsense founded on lies.[371]

According to a U.S. Office of Strategic Services report, "The Nazi Master Plan", Hitler planned to destroy the influence of Christian churches within the Reich.[372][373] His eventual goal was the total elimination of Christianity.[374] This goal informed Hitler's movement very early on, but he saw it as inexpedient to express this extreme position publicly.[375] According to Bullock, Hitler wanted to wait until after the war before executing this plan.[376]

Speer wrote that Hitler had a negative view of Himmler's and Alfred Rosenberg's mystical notions and Himmler's attempt to mythologise the SS. Hitler was more pragmatic, and his ambitions centred on more practical concerns.[377][378]

Health
Researchers have variously suggested that Hitler suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat, coronary sclerosis,[379] Parkinson's disease,[268][380] syphilis,[380] and tinnitus.[381] In a report prepared for the Office of Strategic Services in 1943, Walter C. Langer of Harvard University described Hitler as a "neurotic psychopath".[382] In his 1977 book The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, historian Robert G. L. Waite proposes that Hitler suffered from borderline personality disorder.[383] Historians Henrik Eberle and Hans-Joachim Neumann consider that while Hitler suffered from a number of illnesses including Parkinson's disease, he did not experience pathological delusions and was always fully aware of, and responsible for, the decisions he was making.[384][256] Theories about Hitler's medical condition are difficult to prove, and placing too much weight on them may have the effect of attributing many of the events and consequences of the Third Reich to the possibly impaired physical health of one individual.[385] Kershaw feels that it is better to take a broader view of German history by examining what social forces led to the Third Reich and its policies rather than to pursue narrow explanations for the Holocaust and World War II based on only one person.[386]

Hitler followed a vegetarian diet.[387] At social events he sometimes gave graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make his dinner guests shun meat.[388] Bormann had a greenhouse constructed near the Berghof (near Berchtesgaden) to ensure a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for Hitler throughout the war.[389] Hitler publicly avoided alcohol, but occasionally drank beer and wine in private, but gave up drinking due to weight gain in 1943.[390] He was a non-smoker for most of his life, but smoked heavily in his youth (25 to 40 cigarettes a day). He eventually quit, calling the habit "a waste of money".[391] He encouraged his close associates to quit by offering a gold watch to any who were able to break the habit.[392] Hitler began using amphetamine occasionally after 1937 and became addicted to it in the autumn of 1942.[393] Speer linked this use of amphetamines to Hitler's increasingly inflexible decision making (for example, rarely allowing military retreats).[394]

Prescribed ninety medications during the war years, Hitler took many pills each day for chronic stomach problems and other ailments.[395] He suffered ruptured eardrums as a result of the 20 July plot bomb blast in 1944, and 200 wood splinters had to be removed from his legs.[396] Newsreel footage of Hitler shows tremors of his hand and a shuffling walk, which began before the war and worsened towards the end of his life. Hitler's personal physician, Theodor Morell, treated Hitler with a drug that was commonly prescribed in 1945 for Parkinson's disease. Ernst-Günther Schenck and several other doctors who met Hitler in the last weeks of his life also formed a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.[395][397][256]

Family
Main articles: Hitler family and Sexuality of Adolf Hitler

Hitler in 1942 with his long-time mistress, Eva Braun, whom he married on 29 April 1945
Hitler created a public image as a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the nation.[128][398] He met his mistress, Eva Braun, in 1929,[399] and married her in April 1945.[400] In September 1931, his half-niece, Geli Raubal, committed suicide with Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment. It was rumoured among contemporaries that Geli was in a romantic relationship with him, and her death was a source of deep, lasting pain.[401] Paula Hitler, the last living member of his immediate family, died in 1960.[402]

In propaganda films
See also: Adolf Hitler in popular culture and List of speeches given by Adolf Hitler
File:Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden.ogg
Film of Hitler at Berchtesgaden (c. 1941)
Hitler exploited documentary films and newsreels to inspire a cult of personality. He was involved and appeared in a series of propaganda films throughout his political career—such as Der Sieg des Glaubens and Triumph des Willens—made by Leni Riefenstahl, regarded as a pioneer of modern filmmaking.[403]

List of propaganda and film appearances
Der Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith, 1933)
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935)
Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht (Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces, 1935)
Olympia (1938)
See also
Portal icon   Biography portal
Portal icon   Nazi Germany portal
Portal icon   World War II portal
Portal icon   Fascism portal
Führermuseum
Adolf Hitler's adjutants
Hitler and Mannerheim recording
Julius Schaub – chief aide
Karl Mayr – Hitler's superior in army Intelligence 1919–1920
Karl Wilhelm Krause – personal valet
List of books by or about Adolf Hitler
Mein Kampf (online versions)
Poison Kitchen
Streets named after Adolf Hitler
Notes
Jump up ^ Hitler also won settlement from a libel suit against the socialist paper the Münchener Post, which had questioned his lifestyle and income. Kershaw 2008, p. 99.
Jump up ^ MI5, Hitler's Last Days: "Hitler's will and marriage" on the website of MI5, using the sources available to Trevor Roper (a World War II MI5 agent and historian/author of The Last Days of Hitler), records the marriage as taking place after Hitler had dictated his last will and testament.

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