Adolf Hitler, the man responsible for the barbaric horrors of the Holocaust and devastation of the Second World War, is known to be one of the most notorious dictators of the 20th century. A tyrant, Hitler used political infighting and economic woes to strengthen his rein over Germany in the beginning of 1933. An autocratic leader of the Nazi party, Hitler had staunch anti-Semitism beliefs and an obsessive pursuit of Aryan supremacy.
His warped belief system led to the genocide of 6 million Jews – a perspective that was evident in his self-authored book ‘Mein Kampf’. In the book, he declared the superiority of a white Aryan race, while he reserved his hatred for the Jews who he viewed as "parasites". The Nazis had a belief that Jews, Roma ('gypsies'), black people and other ethnic groups were inferior to Aryans. Their elimination, he said, "must necessarily be a bloody process". After the book’s publication in July 1925, Hitler’s view became more apparent to the public. It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler’s rise to power it became Germany’s best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there.
Rise to Power
In the early 1930s, the economic condition in Germany was grim. The worldwide economic depression had hit the country particularly hard, and millions of people were out of work. Such grim conditions provided the chance for the rise of a new leader, Adolf Hitler, and his party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, AKA Nazi party. Known to be a powerful and influential speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for improvement, he promised the masses a better life a new and glorious Germany. His rhetoric appealed especially to the unemployed, young people, and members of the lower middle class (craftsmen, farmers, etc.)
The party's rise to power was quick. Before the economic depression gripped the nation, the Nazis were virtually unknown. In January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor, the head of the German government, and many Germans believed that they had found a savior for their country.
The Start of Jewish Persecution
On September 15, 1935, passage of the Nuremberg Laws denied Jews of German citizenship, and prohibited them from marrying or even maintaining relations with persons of “German or related blood.” Essentially a new phase began in 1935 - enforced biological segregation. The Nazis tried to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to appease the international community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics (where German-Jewish athletes were barred from competing), additional laws over the next few years further marginalized Jews and took away their political and civil rights.
The Nazis also killed other groups of people, including 'gypsies and disabled people. They also arrested and took away the rights of other individuals, like gay people and political opponents. Many of them died as a result of the Nazi’s treatment.
Extermination Camps
By early 1940s, the Nazis were looking for a way they could kill more people in a short amount of time in order to get rid of the Jewish population in Germany. They came up with the idea of extermination camps in which they could kill lots of people. This is what they called the 'the final solution'.
They began to set up concentration camps where they could send group of people they believed to be "enemies of the state" to be imprisoned and forced in to labor. The first camp, Dachau, was opened in March 1933 just outside of Munich. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis created more than 40,000 camps in areas they reigned over. The party also set out to take control of people’s lives. Eventually, Jazz music was banned, textbooks were rewritten to contain Nazi ideas, pictures of Hitler were put up everywhere, and books were destroyed that were not written in ways that the Nazis preferred. Eventually, the discovery of Nazi concentration camps towards the end of WW2 revealed the complete extent of Hitler's plans to exterminate Jews and other minorities.
Hitler’s Fall
As soldiers fighting against Germany in World War II - Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and their allies - made their way across regions controlled by the Nazis, they began to discover the concentration camps. The Nazis were not able to hide what they had done, and it wasn't long before the world learned the complete extent of the Holocaust. Nearing the end and fearing capture, Adolf Hitler killed himself before the end of the war.
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