Adolf Hitler: His Life and Effect on the World
...to a political rally and began shouting. Hitler tried to make the leaders join him but they wouldn’t. The police arrived and broke it up. Hitler was thrown in jail for his attempt to overthrow the government, but only served nine months of his five year sentence. While in jail Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (my struggles). In the book Hitler argued that the German (he wrongly described them as the Aryan race) was superior to all others. “Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science, and technical skill, which we see before our eyes today, is almost exclusively the product of Aryan creative power.” Hitler warned that the Aryan’s superiority was being threatened by intermarriage. If this happened, world civilization would decline. He believed the Aryan race had a duty to control the world. This would be difficult and force would have to be used, but it could be done. To support his view he gave the example of how the British had controlled a quarter of the world by being well- organized and having well-timed soldiers and sailors. Hitler believed that Aryan superiority was being threatened particularly by the Jewish race who, he argued, were lazy and had contributed little world civilization. According to Hitler, Jews were responsible for everything he did not like, including modern art, pornography, and prostitution. He believed the Jews were involved with communists in a joint conspiracy to take over the world. Hitler’s anti-Semitism did cause difficulties for him when he was trying to gain power in Germany. Jewish businessman in Germany and the rest of the world were occasionally able to use their influence to prevent anti-Semitic ideas being promoted. During the German depression the economy of West Germany wasn’t getting any better, but Hitler’s chance to gain political power was. In 1930, Hitler told the German people that Germany would not pay the reparations and would tear up the treaty of Versailles. He also made promises of getting businesses back on track. Nazi popularity grew and in 1933 Hitler was made chancellor. It only took one year before Hitler was made dictator of Germany. He quickly outlawed all political parties and made the Nazi way the new form of government. He began the reign as dictator by abolishing the freedom of speech, and he persecuted Christian churches and made trouble with the Jews. He ordered the murders of many Germans who did not agree with his ways, and had others taken to concentration camps to be annihilated. Many Germans and Jews tried to go to the United States but could not obtain the visas needed to enter. Americans were reluctant to welcome Jewish refugees. In the midst of the Great Depression, many Americans believed that refugees would compete with them for jobs and overburden social programs set up to assist those in need. In the summer of 1938, delegates from thirty two countries met at the French resort of Evian. During the nine day meeting, delegate after delegate rose to express sympathy for the refugees. But most countries, including the United States and Britain, offered excuses for not letting in more refugees. Responding to Evian, the German government was able to state with amazement how great it was that the foreign countries criticized Germany for their treatment of the Jews, but none of them wanted to open the doors to them when the opportunity presented itself. Even efforts by some Americans to rescue children failed: the Wagner-Rogers bill, an effort to admit 20,000 endangered Jewish refugee children, was not supported by congress. Widespread racial prejudices among Americans, including anti-Semitic attitudes held by the U.S. State department officials played a part in the failure to allow more refugees. Hitler began to arm Germany secretly against the peace treaty and to get ready for aggressive war. He became the commander in chief of the armed forces after he had full power of the political functions. He began threatening Austria and Got Herr Schuschnigg to sign Austria over to German control. Hitler did the same thing to Czechoslovakia. He followed that by taking Belgium and Holland to naval and air warfare. Hitler shortly after set an alliance with Italy and a deal that would keep Russia out of any war that involved Germany. The deal with Russia was set up so that when Hitler took Poland the land would be divided with Stalin. He planned to attack Poland on August 26, 1939 at 4:30 p.m. However, on August 25, Britain and Poland made there own separate pact for mutual assistance. So that Hitler would have to deal with Great Britain, and to make it worse Mussolini said that if Hitler attacked Poland, Italy would not join him in war despite their treaty. Hitler was forced to postpone his attack for September 1, 1939 at 4:45 a.m. On the 1st of September Hitler sent U-30 subs to attack the British liner Athena. Without warning they killed 1,400 passengers, 120 of them were Americans, in cold blood and World War II began. The T-4 Plan- In October 1939, Hitler authorized the killing of people with incurable diseases. The authorization document was backdated to September 1st because “the start of war seemed the propitious moment for inaugurating this still more radical eugenic program, which promised to yield much needed hospital space and to eliminate ‘useless eaters’” as compared to the 1933 “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring” (Lewy 263). The victims were selected by information disclosed by unaware doctors on questionnaires sent to the asylums. Patients were primarily killed in gas chambers that would later serve as prototypes for those used in the killing of millions of Jews and other Nazi targets. Notification of death was sent out to next of kin citing an unexpected cause of death and notification that the body had been cremated. A very high degree of purposeful bureaucratic confusion, the spreading of the “unfit to live,” and outright lying allowed the Nazi’s to carry out there Euthanasia Program. In the spring of 1940, Hitler’s armies conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands. He finished his victories with the defeat of France in 1940. He knew he could not defeat England so he set out to attack Russia, but before he did he took Yugoslavia and Greece. German troops moved into Russia but could not defend themselves against Moscow and Leningrad. Hitler refused to let his troops retreat from the battlefield and let them slowly die out in Stalingrad. On January 20, 1942, 15 high ranking Nazi party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and coordinate the implementation of the “final solution.” The “Final Solution” was the Nazis’ code name for the intentional, carefully planned destruction of European Jewry. The Wannsee Conference determined the way in which Hitler’s decision to solve the “Jewish Question” through systematic mass murder was to be transmitted to the appropriate ministries and bureaucracies. People in attendance at the conference did not deliberate whether such a plan should be implemented, but instead discussed the reality of a de...