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N0KFQ > TODAY 02.08.13 18:34l 142 Lines 7211 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Aug 2
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Sent: 130802/1556Z 2519@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.55
Aug 2, 1934:
Hitler becomes fuhrer
With the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg,
Chancellor Adolf Hitler becomes absolute dictator of Germany
under the title of Fuhrer, or "Leader." The German army took an
oath of allegiance to its new commander-in-chief, and the last
remnants of Germany's democratic government were dismantled to
make way for Hitler's Third Reich. The Fuhrer assured his people
that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years, but Nazi
Germany collapsed just 11 years later.
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, in 1889. As a
young man he aspired to be a painter, but he received little
public recognition and lived in poverty in Vienna. Of German
descent, he came to detest Austria as a "patchwork nation" of
various ethnic groups, and in 1913 he moved to the German city of
Munich in the state of Bavaria. After a year of drifting, he
found direction as a German soldier in World War I, and was
decorated for his bravery on the battlefield. He was in a
military hospital in 1918, recovering from a mustard gas attack
that left him temporarily blind, when Germany surrendered.
He was appalled by Germany's defeat, which he blamed on "enemies
within"--chiefly German communists and Jews--and was enraged by
the punitive peace settlement forced on Germany by the victorious
Allies. He remained in the German army after the war, and as an
intelligence agent was ordered to report on subversive activities
in Munich's political parties. It was in this capacity that he
joined the tiny German Workers' Party, made up of embittered army
veterans, as the group's seventh member. Hitler was put in charge
of the party's propaganda, and in 1920 he assumed leadership of
the organization, changing its name to Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers'
party), which was abbreviated to Nazi.
The party's socialist orientation was little more than a ploy to
attract working-class support; in fact, Hitler was fiercely
right-wing. But the economic views of the party were overshadowed
by the Nazis' fervent nationalism, which blamed Jews, communists,
the Treaty of Versailles, and Germany's ineffectual democratic
government for the country's devastated economy. In the early
1920s, the ranks of Hitler's Bavarian-based Nazi party swelled
with resentful Germans. A paramilitary organization, the
Sturmabteilung (SA), was formed to protect the Nazis and
intimidate their political opponents, and the party adopted the
ancient symbol of the swastika as its emblem.
In November 1923, after the German government resumed the payment
of war reparations to Britain and France, the Nazis launched the
"Beer Hall Putsch"--an attempt at seizing the German government
by force. Hitler hoped that his nationalist revolution in Bavaria
would spread to the dissatisfied German army, which in turn would
bring down the government in Berlin. However, the uprising was
immediately suppressed, and Hitler was arrested and sentenced to
five years in prison for treason.
Imprisoned in Landsberg fortress, he spent his time there
dictating his autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a bitter
and rambling narrative in which he sharpened his anti-Semitic and
anti-Marxist beliefs and laid out his plans for Nazi conquest. In
the work, published in a series of volumes, he developed his
concept of the Fuhrer as an absolute dictator who would bring
unity to German people and lead the "Aryan race" to world
supremacy.
Political pressure from the Nazis forced the Bavarian government
to commute Hitler's sentence, and he was released after nine
months. However, Hitler emerged to find his party disintegrated.
An upturn in the economy further reduced popular support of the
party, and for several years Hitler was forbidden to make
speeches in Bavaria and elsewhere in Germany.
The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 brought a new
opportunity for the Nazis to solidify their power. Hitler and his
followers set about reorganizing the party as a fanatical mass
movement, and won financial backing from business leaders, for
whom the Nazis promised an end to labor agitation. In the 1930
election, the Nazis won six million votes, making the party the
second largest in Germany. Two years later, Hitler challenged
Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency, but the 84-year-old
president defeated Hitler with the support of an anti-Nazi
coalition.
Although the Nazis suffered a decline in votes during the
November 1932 election, Hindenburg agreed to make Hitler
chancellor in January 1933, hoping that Hitler could be brought
to heel as a member of his cabinet. However, Hindenburg
underestimated Hitler's political audacity, and one of the new
chancellor's first acts was to exploit the burning of the
Reichstag (parliament) building as a pretext for calling general
elections. The police under Nazi Hermann Goering suppressed much
of the party's opposition before the election, and the Nazis won
a bare majority. Shortly after, Hitler took on dictatorial power
through the Enabling Acts.
Chancellor Hitler immediately set about arresting and executing
political opponents, and even purged the Nazis' own SA
paramilitary organization in a successful effort to win support
from the German army. With the death of President Hindenburg on
August 2, 1934, Hitler united the chancellorship and presidency
under the new title of Fuhrer. As the economy improved, popular
support for Hitler's regime became strong, and a cult of Fuhrer
worship was propagated by Hitler's capable propagandists.
German remilitarization and state-sanctioned anti-Semitism drew
criticism from abroad, but the foreign powers failed to stem the
rise of Nazi Germany. In 1938, Hitler implemented his plans for
world domination with the annexation of Austria, and in 1939
Germany seized all of Czechoslovakia. Hitler's invasion of Poland
on September 1, 1939, finally led to war with Germany and France.
In the opening years of World War II, Hitler's war machine won a
series of stunning victories, conquering the great part of
continental Europe. However, the tide turned in 1942 during
Germany's disastrous invasion of the USSR.
By early 1945, the British and Americans were closing in on
Germany from the west, the Soviets from the east, and Hitler was
holed up in a bunker under the chancellery in Berlin awaiting
defeat. On April 30, with the Soviets less than a mile from his
headquarters, Hitler committed suicide with Eva Braun, his
mistress whom he married the night before.
Hitler left Germany devastated and at the mercy of the Allies,
who divided the country and made it a major battlefield of Cold
War conflict. His regime exterminated nearly six millions Jews
and an estimated 250,000 Gypsies in the Holocaust, and an
indeterminable number of Slavs, political dissidents, disabled
persons, homosexuals, and others deemed unacceptable by the Nazi
regime were systematically eliminated. The war Hitler unleashed
upon Europe took even more lives--close to 20 million people
killed in the USSR alone. Adolf Hitler is reviled as one of
history's greatest villains.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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