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Who was Adolf Hitler ?
We
can find clues about Hitler's personality, beliefs and his appeal
by looking at his past. Additionally Hitler's early life enables
us to get ideas about what he might try to do if he were to win
power.
Background
Who
was Hitler?
In 1939, after Germany had taken over Austria, the village of Dollersheim
was wiped from the map. Its inhabitants were forcibly removed and
the village destroyed by artillery and tanks. Dollersheim was the
birthplace of Alois Schicklgruber, father of Adolf Hitler. In this
manoeuvre, Hitler was trying to obliterate traces of his ancestry,
as he feared that his grandmother may have been made pregnant by
a Jew. For Hitler, obsessed with hatred of Jews, the terrible suspicion
that he was one-quarter Jewish had to be suppressed.
Character
- Shy, awkward,
moody; unable to form loving ties (due to repressive father, pampered
by mother?)
- Profoundly
lonely, isolated
- Contemptuous
of mankind, suspicious
- Admired
strength and success
- Absorbed
in fantasies, became convinced he was destined to play a great
role
General
skills, abilities
- Commitment
- Tremendous
energy
- Remarkable
willpower
- Single-minded
fanatic
Propaganda
skills
- Great orator
- Had hypnotic
effect on audience
- Supreme master
of psychology of mass politics
- Put into
words what crowd was longing to hear
Hitler's
basic ideas
- Anti-semitism.
The purity of German blood was being defiled by Jews. They should
be excluded from Germany.
- Social Darwinism/survival
of the fittest. Germans should form a Herrenovolk or Master Race
to dominate others.
- Pan-Germanism.
All Germans should join together
- LEBENSRAUM.
Germany must expand to take over more territory (living space)
to feed her population.
- Anti-Marxism.
Hostile to the ideas of Karl Marx, the German philosopher, economist
and revolutionary. Marx was a non-religious Jew.
- Anti-democracy/Fuhrerprinzip.
Democracy provided weak government; it should be replaced by a
one-party state based on the principle of an all-powerful leader.
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