Historical Villains-Adolf Hitler

Der Führer

This is the third installment of my Historical Villains series, wherein I counterbalance the admirable figures whose biographies I summarized in my Historical Heroes series by summarizing the biographies of reprehensible historical figures. Since my third Historical Heroes installment, linked here, was about Churchill, my third Historical Villains installment is on Churchill’s nemesis.

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, in Austria-Hungary. His alcoholic father Alois beat him. He also beat Adolf’s mother Klara. In 1903, Alois died. In 1907, Klara came down with breast cancer, so their Jewish doctor Eduard Bloch treated her but failed to save her. Because the family was poor, Bloch charged reduced fees (and at times worked for free) and Adolf proclaimed his eternal gratitude. Adolf Hitler became an artist but was denied entry into art school.

In 1913, Hitler left Austria to avoid getting conscripted and got in trouble with the law. He then failed his physical examinations and moved to Germany. One year later, Germany declared war on Britain, France and Russia. Hitler then voluntarily enlisted in the German army. After the war, he was employed as a government spy to infiltrate the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. Whilst there, Hitler was impressed by the party’s anti-Semitism, anti-Capitalism, and anti-Communism. He became the party’s propaganda chief and co-wrote a twenty-point platform advocating the exclusion of Jews from citizenship, the end of the post-war treaty, the nationalization of the media, and the creation of government health care, education, and employment programs. This also led to the party renaming itself the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. Hitler declared to the party “If we are Socialists, then we must definitely be anti-Semites and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose. How, as a Socialist, can you not be an anti-Semite?”

Then Mussolini violently seized power in Italy. Impressed, Hitler and General Ludendorff led two thousand Nazis against a Munich city center seeking to overthrow the government. They lost and Hitler was jailed. While in prison, he wrote a book titled Mein Kampf. It was published upon Hitler’s release and announced his plan to destroy the German parliamentary system, establish a new world order, and destroy Communism to expose and undermine a supposed Jewish conspiracy. It also declared “Aryans” to be a superior race.

In 1932, Hitler ran for president and narrowly lost to Paul von Hindenburg. When Hindenburg’s Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher resigned, Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor. Then an alleged Communist set the Parliament on fire. So, Hitler ordered mass arrests of Communists (and Socialists) and established camps for their continued internment. He convinced Hindenburg to declare an emergency state and drastically reduce civil liberties. Hindenburg then died of lung cancer, so Hitler fused the presidency and the chancellorship into a single position. He then issued the Nuremberg laws, stripping Jews of citizenship, banning marriage between Jews and “Aryans”, barring Jews from several professions, and mandating boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses. (He later expanded the laws to Roma and Black people).

Hitler then killed off all party members who weren’t personally loyal to him, remilitarized Germany, seized control of the Rhineland and sent the Condor Legion to Spain to help Franco take over. When Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, Hitler supported Mussolini’s decision, hoping it would bring Black people to their knees. He then annexed Austria. The Nazis forced Austrian Jews to scrub the country’s toilets and streets, barehanded, and initiated pogroms against them. (Though Hitler ordered that Bloch not be targeted.) Claiming that ethnic Germans were being mistreated in the Sudetenland, Hitler invaded it. The Czechoslovakian government sent word to Britain and France asking for military aid. Instead, the British and French signed a peace agreement.

A Jew then shot and killed a Nazi diplomat in France. Hitler blamed all Jews. So, the Nazis enacted a series of pogroms against the Jews of Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. They shattered the windows of Jewish homes, stores, and synagogues, plundered Jews of their possessions, destroyed Torah scrolls, and killed at least 91 Jews. Hitler then had tens of thousands of Jews arrested and deported to slave labour camps. He also made a secret deal with the Soviets, offering them eastern Poland in exchange for a Non-Aggression Pact. The Nazis and Soviets then invaded Poland, prompting Britain and France to declare war.

Hitler then established ghettos, legally forced Jews to live in them, and mandated that Jews outside of ghettos wear yellow Star of David badges on their clothing. He also had the physically and mentally disabled euthanized and used poison gas to kill them. Hitler ordered that labour camps become extermination camps and then determined that gas chambers were the most efficient method with which to exterminate non-Aryans, primarily Jews, such that he could easily kill millions. He also conspired with Vidkun Quisling to orchestrate a Nazi coup in Norway. Hitler conquered Denmark, Holland, and France and imposed his murderous policies there. He also ordered mass bombings of English cities.

Hitler then invaded Russia, prompting Soviet retaliation. The Nazis also sent submarines to attack American ships, despite American neutrality, leading to President Roosevelt issuing orders to shoot and sink the submarines on sight. So, when the Japanese bombed Hawaii, Hitler declared war on the Americans. He also launched rockets into space and crashed them into London, killing about 9,000 people. Meanwhile, the Soviets beat the Nazis at Stalingrad, forcing them to fight a war on two fronts. Allied disinformation convinced Hitler to focus on Calais but the Allies attacked Normandy, thus turning the tables against the Nazis.

Hitler saw which way the wind was blowing, so he had resources reallocated from the battlefield to the camps and accelerated the murder rate, to assure all the Jews were killed before the war’s end. Then the Soviets invaded Germany, so Hitler married his lover Eva Braun, persuaded her to take cyanide, and shot himself. The Americans then invaded Germany and the Nazis surrendered.

I have only scratched the surface of how evil Hitler was. Is it any wonder why I consider him a Historical Villain?