Hitler & Nazis Take Over Germany

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, in Austria (a country south of Germany). He dropped out of school and, dreaming of becoming an artist. He failed at this and it is believed that this is where Hitler first developed his extreme hatred toward Jewish people. In World War One, Hitler fought in the German army on the Western Front. During the war, Hitler won several awards for bravery and was wounded several times. Hitler was in a military hospital recovering from his wounds when he heard that Germany had signed the armistice that ended the war.

After the war, Hitler joined the National Socialist German Workers Party, called the Nazis. He became its most well-known speaker in the party and became the Fuhrer, or leader, of the party. Hitler described his goals in his book, Mein Kampf or “My Struggle”. He said that he thought Germany should build itself into an empire and become a racially pure society – it would only be for ethnic Germans.

Hitler and the Nazis took over Germany in 1932 during the Great Depression. After taking power, Hitler began to enact his plans by preparing Germany for war by putting millions of unemployed people to work on rebuilding the German military. In addition, Hitler began to turn Germany into racially pure country by creating laws that banned Jews from doing professional work and from attending school as well as ordering his supporters to attack Jews in the Night of Broken Glass in 1938. The goal of these actions was to force Jewish people Germany to leave the country.

World War Two in Europe was part of Hitler's plan for building a German empire. Hitler wanted to build a German empire by taking over most of Europe and turning it into “living space” for the Germans. Hitler said that the non-German people would either be killed or forced to work as slave labor for the Germans. In the late 1930’s, Hitler took over Austria and Czechoslovakia without having to fire a single shot. Then, in 1939, he began World War Two by attacking Poland. The next year, he conquered France and began to bomb Britain. The year after that, he attacked the Soviet Union and his army got all the way to Moscow, the Soviet capital city. By the end of 1942, it looked to the world as if Hitler might achieve his goal of building a Nazi Empire. In the areas that Germany had taken over, Hitler ordered the Nazi forces to round up people to be used as slave labor and send out death squads to kill Jews.

However, at that point the war began to turn against Hitler. Both Britain and the Soviet Union recovered from their earlier defeats and began to push back the German army. Second, Hitler had declared war on the United States and the United States joined with Britain and the Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany. Beginning in 1943, the Allies began to win victories on all fronts and began to push the Nazi forces back. However, even in the face of defeat, Hitler did not give up his dream of creating a racially pure Germany and ordered the speeding up of killing Jews in specially-built death camps.

As the war turned against Hitler, he became more isolated. He did not appear in public, and he refused to listen to his military advisers. In 1944, a group of military officers tried to kill Hitler with a bomb. Unfortunately, the failed and Hitler became increasing paranoid and determined to fight to the bitter end of the war. Under the slogan of "total victory or total ruin," Hitler ordered the German army to destroy everything as it retreated and that all men, even school boys and old men, be drafted into the army. Hitler spent the last few months of his life living in a bunker in the center of the bombed ruins of Berlin. As the Soviet Army attacked Berlin, Hitler recognized that all was lost and wrote his will, in which he blamed the Jews for starting the war. After this, he married his long-time mistress Eva Braun and then committed suicide.

Source # 2 - Video of Nazi Rule of Germany in the 1930's - click here