– (Icarus Yuji)
ILLUSTRATES Icarus Yuji
1) Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) it wasn’t German. He was born in the Austrian village of Braunau Am Inn, on April 20, 1889. There are suspicions that his paternal grandfather was Jewish. His father, Alois, died aged 65 while drinking a glass of wine in a bar, leaving a government pension that supported his wife and child.
two) At the age of 16, still supported by his mother, Hitler moved to Vienna, a city of strong racial and religious prejudice in the 19th century. According to a childhood friend, it was the local intellectuals who influenced his anti-Semitism. He tried to get into Vienna Academy of Arts, but was rejected twice.
3) In 1916, serving as a corporal in the German Army in World War I, he took shrapnel from a bomb in his leg. In 1918, he received the medal iron Cross for his bravery in combat. In October of the same year, he left the conflict after being hospitalized due to a chemical weapons attack.
+ What if Hitler had won World War II?
+ How big was Hitler’s fortune?
4) At age 30, he became a mainstay of the German Labor Party, which amassed more than 3,000 members in less than a year thanks to strong print and word-of-mouth advertising. The group turned into Nazi Party when Hitler added “National Socialist” to the name
5) With his eloquence and manipulation skills, Hitler became a major threat to power. The German government accused him of treason, arresting him in 1923. It was in prison that he dictated to his cellmate Rudolf Hess the book My fightabout his life, his Aryan ideals and his plans for Germany.
6) Taking advantage of the people’s dissatisfaction with the poverty caused by the German economic depression after the 1st World War, Hitler managed to be elevated to the position of chancellor. He assumed totalitarian power after the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in 1934 and invested heavily in the weapons manufacturing.
7) Anti-Semitism was one of the hallmarks of the government. When a German diplomat was assassinated by a Polish Jew, Hitler launched the attack that became known as Kristallnacht («Night of Glasses»), killing 91 Jews, arresting hundreds and confiscating their property.
8) World War II started when Germany invaded Poland, in 1939. Thanks to a non-aggression pact, the Soviet Union did not interfere and even took part of Polish territory. Over the next six years, around 6 million Poles would die in the war – most of them civilians.
+ Why did the Nazis want to exterminate the Jews?
+ Who was Hitler’s right-hand man?
9) In 1940, he broke the pact and ordered a attack against the USSR. It was the beginning of the end. Having to fight the Allies (USA, England and France) on the western front and the numerous Russian army on the eastern front, the German war machine wore out and sealed the future defeat of the country.
10) With time running out, he decided to apply a more efficient method to eliminate the Jews, held in dozens of concentration camps: the gas chambers. The head of the SS (the Nazi secret police), Heinrich Himmler, coordinated the extermination and also took care of the destruction of the evidence of this holocaust.
11) With the entry of the Allies into German territory and the relentless advance of the Soviets in Berlin, he took refuge in his bunker under the chancellery. With no chance of winning, the dictator would have committed suicide with his companion, Eva Braun. The bodies were reportedly burned by a German soldier.
WHAT END DID IT TAKE?
In 2009, the Russian-held skull believed to be of Hitlerpassed a DNA test. It was proven to be a female skull.
SOURCES Books Adolf Hitlerby John Toland, Mein Kampfby Adolf Hitler, and Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubrisby Ian Kershaw, and documentaries Hitler: The Untold Story It is Swastika