Adolf Hitler
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn (Austria) - April 30, 1945 in Berlin) was the leader of Germany during World War II. He was a Nazi, which means that he thought that the government should be very powerful and should control how everyone lives. Nazis also thought that the German people were better than other groups of people.
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Life history
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 at Braunau am Inn, a small town near Linz in the province of Upper Austria, not far from the German border, in what was then Austria-Hungary.
Hitler failed high school admission tests in Linz twice. There, he became interested in the anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish), Pan-German teachings of Professor Leopold Poetsch.
In 1913, Hitler was 24 years old. At that time, all young Austrian men had to join the army. Hitler did not like the Austrian army, so he left Austria for Germany. He lived in a German city, Munich.
In 1914, Hitler joined the German army. He fought for Germany in the First World War. He was wounded in the war. The government gave him the Iron Cross as an award for fighting hard in the war.
In 1919, Hitler joined a small political party called the German Workers Party. He soon won the support of the party members. Two years later, he became the leader of the party. He renamed the party the National Socialist German Workers Party. It became known as the Nazi Party.
In 1923, Hitler tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic government (1918-36) in the Beer Hall Putsch. The putsch failed. The government killed 16 of his men (the 16 dead men were later declared saints in Nazi ideology). They also put Hitler in the Landsberg Prison. They said that he would stay in prison for 5 years, but they let him leave after 9 months. While he was in prison, he wrote a book with the help of his friend Rudolf Hess. At first, Hitler wanted to call the book Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. In the end, he called the book Mein Kampf or My Struggle. The book said that Germany would take land from Poland and Russia. It also had many anti-semitic comments, and called for the murder and expulsion of Jews from Germany.
In 1933 Hitler was elected into the German government. He ended freedom of speech, and put his enemies in jail or killed them. He did not allow any other party except the Nazi party. Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, spread extreme nationalism within Germany. All media had to praise the Nazis. Also, more people were born because Hitler wanted more people of the "master race" (by that he meant Aryan, or those with blue eyes and blond hair). He made Germany a totalitarian Nazi state. Aryanism was a myth, but Hitler and his friends believed it. They thought that people like the Jews and Slavs were inferior (less valuable) and should be killed.
Hitler started World War II by ordering the German Army to invade Poland. His army conquered most of Europe including Poland, France, and a large part of the Soviet Union. During the war he ordered the Germans to kill many people, including women and children. He killed 6 million Jews, in an event called The Holocaust. Other people that he killed were Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, Slavs (e.g. Russians), and his political opponents.
Finally the other countries in the world teamed up and defeated Germany. Hitler lost all of the land that he had taken, and millions of Germans were killed. At the end of the war Hitler wanted everyone to die, including himself. He committed suicide (killed himself) in Berlin in 1945.
Related articles
- Nazism
- Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
- Fascism
- World War II
- History of Austria
- History of Germany
- Mein Kampf
References and further reading
- Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, HarperCollins, 1991, ISBN 0679729941
- Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, ISBN 0060920203
- Michael FitzGerald, 'Adolf Hitler: A Portrait,' Spellmount, 2006, ISBN 1862273227
- Joachim Fest, Hitler, Harvest Books, 2002, ISBN 0156027542
- Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris, W W Norton, 1999, and Hitler 1937-1945: Nemesis, W W Norton, 2000, ISBN 0393320359
- Lothar Machtan, The Hidden Hitler (Basic Books, 2001, ISBN 0-465-04308-9; English translation by John Brownjohn)
