WWll+Hitler+Page+LAHR

=﻿The Rise and Reign of Hitler=

//﻿Hitler's Early Life//
In Braunau-am-Inn, Austria, the man who would become Europe's biggest dictator of the 20th century was born on April 20, 1889. His name was Adolf Hitler and his father, Alois Hitler, was a strict and abusive customs official. His mother, Klara Hitler, had been a maid in the Hitler household, and they had both died before he reached the age of twenty. When he did not finish his secondary education, he moved to Vienna as a young man in hopes of becoming an artist. Adolf Hitler was rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and moved again to Munich in 1913, joining the German army. Hitler found success for the first time in his young life by volunteering for service in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment in World War I. Winning two Iron Cross medals for his performance in battle; Adolf Hitler had found his niche. Although he was wounded during the war and sent to a military hospital, he later became a military instructor for the army. Hitler left the army in April 1920 to work full time for the German Worker's Party propaganda.

//The Ending of World War I//
World War I was ended on June 28, 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles, which was drafted during the Paris Peace Conference and was heavily correctional. Representatives of thirty-seven countries negotiated the peace treaty to be presented to Germany. Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, the four major Allied powers, were amongst those who attended along with other nations who sought recognition for their contributions to the war. Because they had officially surrendered, Germany, the successor states to Austria-Hungary, and Turkey were not invited. The recently established Soviet government in Russia was excluded from the negotiations, as well.

President Woodrow Wilson, who led the U.S. delegation, was welcomed as a hero to France. The decision making of the Treaty of Versailles was made by the "Big Four," consisting of David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Vittoria Orlando of Italy. Although Wilson had envisioned a treaty with a fair and balanced settlement, he was not able to persuade his Allies to agree to his terms of peace. The treaty began with the League of Nations and then continued to the war reparations that formed the majorities of its priorities. Germany's population and territory were reduced by approximately ten percent by its terms. At the same time, the Treaty of Versailles created new nations such as Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, and Estonia from the Russian Empire. The "war guilt clause" declared Germany as the aggressor, and its army and navy were reduced. Germany was held responsible to pay the reparations to the Allied nations, which were far beyond what the nation could afford, eventually upsetting international economics and leading to World War II.

//Rise of Hitler and the Nazis//
By August 1920, Adolf Hitler transformed the German Worker's Party into the Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or Nazi Party. After being elected president of the party in July 1921, Hitler became a streetcorner orator, loudly assaulting the enemies of Germany, principally Communists and Jews. He was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for leading the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in an attempt to seize control of the Barvarian government on November 8-9, 1923. There, he wrote //Mein Kampf// ("My Struggle"), which outlined the political philosophy of Nazism. He proclaimed eternal opposition to Jews, Communists, effete liberals, and exploitive capitalists. It also commending racial purity in a newborn Germany and unstoppable national will. When he was released from prison after serving just nine months, Hitler returned to strengthening his Nazi Party and recruited the men who would lead Germany into mass atrocity and all-consuming war: Hermann Georing, Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Julius Streicher. The Nazis became the second largest party in Germany when they forged an alliance with the Nationalist Party after the worldwide economic collapse of 1929 and the depression that followed. They favored racial supremacy, believing that the "Aryan" race was above all others and would soon after be responsible for the genocides of millions and the Second World War.

//Hitler Becomes Leader//
Hitler lost in a close election when he ran for president of Germany against Paul von Hindenberg in 1932. However, the Nazis became the largest party represented when they gained thirty-seven percent of the votes and 230 Reichstag seats in the July election. On January 30, 1933, Hindenberg was compelled to appoint Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler then worked vibrantly to condense his power, forming himself into an appalling dictator. The Reichstag was destroyed on February 27, 1933. Hitler was granted four years of absolute dictorial powers by manipulating passage of the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933. He then proclaimed the Nazis as Germany's only legal political party and ordered the construction of the first concentration camps. Systematically, all government offices were brought under the direct control of the Nazis by dismantling all German parties and dismissing Jews from all government institutions.

//Additional Points//
Adolf Eichmann was an Austrian Nazi and an SS official who was responsible for the genocides of Jews and others during the Holocaust. He was in charge of the Gestapo department and organized the deportation of Jews to concentration camps in Poland in 1941. Adolf Eichmann also organized the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference in 1942.

The Gestapo was the name of the political police in Nazi Germany. Agents of the Gestapo were responsible for suppressing resistance and underground movements and for arresting and executing the mass arrest of Jews.

Hitler Youth was an organization of German children that was at first meant to ensure recruits for the Storm troopers, training them for battle in what would later be World War II. In July 1926 Hitler Youth was officially established as a unit of the Nazi Party.

Blitzkrieg is a new type of warfare that introduced by the Germans over the Poles during World War II. The term "blitzkrieg" means lightening war, and it consisted of speed, surprise, and rapidly advancing tanks and motorized infantry.

Propaganda is the persuading of a population, either through the written or spoken word, to adhere to a particular point of view. Adolf Hitler, a master propagandist, spoke through lies to the Germans to get them to applaud anti-Semitism and the thought that they were the "master race."

//Primary Documents//
"But the dreams of empire of the Japanese and Fascist leaders were modest in comparison with the gargantuan aspirations of Hitler and his Nazis. Even before they came to power in 1933, their plans for that conquest had been drawn. Those plans provided for ultimate domination, not of any one section of the world, but of the whole earth and all the oceans on it." -This is an excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt's State of the Union Address on January 6, 1942, one month after the Japanese attack on U.S. ships at Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II. FDR recognizes the wrong that had been done by Japan, but explains how this is only infinitesimal compared to what Hitler's Nazi party had been doing the rest of the world. Throughout the speech, he described the conflict as a battle between tyranny and freedom.

"The German Government undertakes to bear the expense of all civil and military pensions which had been earned in Alsace. Lorraine on date of November 11, 1918, and the maintenance of which was a charge on the budget of the German Empire. The German Government shall furnish each year the funds necessary for the payment in francs, at the average rate of exchange for that year, of the sums in marks to which persons resident in Alsace-Lorraine would have been entitled if Alsace-Lorraine had remained under German jurisdiction." -In Article 62 of the lengthy Treaty of Versailles, it is shown that Germany is responsible for paying back the costs of World War I. These are only a minute portion of the reparations that Germany had to pay, all of which they could not afford, putting the nation into a deep economic suffrage. The treaty ended World War I and was written in 1919 by mainly the "Big Four."

//Sources//
Axelrod, Alan, and Charles Phillips. "Hitler, Adolf." //Dictators and Tyrants: Absolute Rulers and Would-Be Rulers in World History// (1995): n. pag. //American History Online//. Web. 14 September 2011. [].

"Treaty of Versailles (1919)." //Daily Life through History//.ABC-CLIO, 2011. Web. 15 Sept. 2011. []

Witherbee, Amy. "ADOLF HITLER." //Adolf Hitler// (2009): 1. //Biography Collection Complete//. EBSCO. Web. 17 September 2011. [|http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=a1660420-293e-477e-a5b5-e029adebb6f6%40sessionmgr114&vid=1&hid=111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=b5h&AN=15259513].