Adolf Hitler (redirected from Hitler, Adolph)

Hitler, Adolf 

(real surname, Schickelgruber). Born Apr. 20, 1889, in Braunau, Austria; died Apr. 30, 1945, in Berlin. Leader of the German fascist (National Socialist) party and head of the German fascist state (1933-45); major war criminal.

Hitler was born into the family of a customs official. Even prior to World War I, he was already an ardent proponent of antisocialist, nationalistic, and anti-Semitic “theories.” In 1913 he moved to Munich; during World War I, he was a corporal in the German Army. From 1919 he was one of the leading members of the so-called National Socialist German Workers’ Party, becoming its head in 1921. On Nov. 8 and 9, 1923, together with General E. von Ludendorff, Hitler attempted a fascist coup d’état in Munich; it failed. In the struggle for power, Hitler made use of unrestrained demagogy, provocation, blackmail, and murder. Hitler and his henchmen, financed by the German monopolies, conducted revanchist propaganda under the banner of a struggle against the Versailles Treaty of 1919 and succeeded in kindling chauvinism in the country and engendering massive support for themselves among the population. On Jan. 30, 1933, President P. von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor. After Hindenburg’s death, Hitler concentrated all legislative and executive power in his own hands, merging the posts of president and chancellor (August 1934).

Hitler and his henchmen established a bloody terrorist regime in the country and turned Germany into an armed camp. Fascist Germany, with Hitler at its head, carried out an armed intervention into the Spanish Republic (1936-39), seized Austria (1938), occupied Czechoslovakia (1938-39), and, having put together a bloc of aggressor countries, unleashed World War II. On June 22, 1941, fascist Germany attacked the USSR. In December 1941, Hitler became commander in chief of the German armed forces.

Hitler was the inspirer and one of the principal organizers of the massive extermination of innocent civilians and prisoners of war and of the monstrous atrocities committed by the fascists in German-occupied countries and especially in the temporarily seized territories of the USSR. In 1945, amid the defeat of fascist Germany, the disintegration of the fascist state, and the entry of Soviet troops into Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in the bunker of the Berlin imperial chancellery.

REFERENCES

Rozanov, G. L. “Krushenie fashistskoi Germanii.” Addendum to the book Poslednie dni Gitlera. Moscow, 1963.
Koval’, V. S. Pravda o zagovore protiv Gitlera 20 iiulia 1944. Kiev, 1960.
Mel’nikov, D. Zagovor 20 iiulia 1944 g. v Germanii. Moscow, 1962.
Heiden, K. Adolf Hitler, vols. 1-2. Zurich, 1936-37.

V. D. KUL’BAKIN