Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf: My Struggle: (Volume I & Volume II)--(Complete & Illustrated Edition)

Adolph Hitler

[ Hitler in 1938 ]

A dolf Hitler (20 April 1889 30 April 1945) was an Austrian -born German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Fhrer ("leader") of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. He was effectively dictator of Nazi Germany, and was at the centre of World War II in Europe and the Holocaust .

Hitler was a decorated veteran of World War I . He joined the precursor of the NSDAP, the German Workers' Party , 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 dictated his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf (" My Struggle "). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism , anti-Semitism , and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi prop a ganda . 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 Nazi Germany , a one-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 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 the European Axis powers 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 Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of at least 5.5 million Jews and millions of other victims whom he and his followers deemed Untermenschen ("sub-humans") and socially undesirable. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 29 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European Theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in warfare, and constitutes the deadliest conflict in human history .

Early years

Ancestry

Adolf Hitler as an infant (c. 188990).

Hitler's father Alois Hitler, Sr. (1837 1903) was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber . The baptismal register did not show the n a me of his father, and Alois initially bore his mother's surname Schicklgruber . In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois's mother Maria Anna. She died in 1847 and Johann Georg Hiedler died in 1856. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler .

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 ). Alois then assumed the surname Hitler , also spelled as Hiedler , Httler , or Huettler . The Hitler surname is probably based on "one who lives in a hut" ( Standard German Htte for hut ) or on "shepherd" (Standard German hten for to guard ); alternatively, it might be derived from the Slavic words Hidlar or Hidlarcek ( small cottager or small holder ).

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. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenberger's existence, so historians dismiss the claim that Alois's father was Jewish.

Childhood & E ducation

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 . He was the fourth of six children to Alois Hitler and Klara Plzl (18601907). Hitler's older siblingsGustav, Ida, and Ottodied in infancy. When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau , Germany. There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect , rather than Austrian German , which marked his speech throughout his life. 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 .