Nazism (''Nationalsozialismus'', National Socialism; alternatively spelled Naziism; historically also Hitlerism, ''Hitlerismus'') was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany. It is a unique variety of fascism that incorporates biological racism and antisemitism.

Nazism was founded out of elements of the far-right and racist German ''völkisch'' nationalist movement and the violent anti-communist ''Freikorps'' paramilitary culture that fought against the uprisings of communist revolutionaries in post-World War I Germany. The ideology was created by Anton Drexler as a means to draw workers away from communism and into ''völkisch'' nationalism. Initially Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, though such aspects were later downplayed in the 1930s to gain the support from industrial owners for the Nazis, focus was shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes. Nazism presented itself as politically syncretic, incorporating policies, tactics and philosophies from right- and left-wing ideologies, though a majority of scholars identify it as a far right form of politics.

Nazism believed in the supremacy of an Aryan master race over all other races. Nazis viewed the progress of humanity as depending on the Aryans and believed that it could maintain its dominance only if it retained its purity and instinct for self-preservation. They claimed that Jews were the greatest threat to the Aryan race. They considered Jews a parasitic race that attached itself to various ideologies and movements to secure its self-preservation, such as: capitalism, democracy, the Enlightenment, industrialisation, liberalism, Marxism, parliamentary politics, and trade unionism. To maintain the purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate or impose exclusionary segregation upon "degenerate" and "asocial" groups that included: Jews, homosexuals, Romani, blacks, the physically and mentally handicapped, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents.

Journalist George Bailey terms the Nazi economy a form of right-wing socialism. The economic system rejected egalitarianism and instead supported a stratified economy with classes based on merit and talent, retaining private property, freedom of contract, and promoted the creation of national solidarity that would transcend class distinction. Under these conditions the economy was to be subordinate to the goals of the political leadership of the state.

Etymology

The self-identification term, used by exponents of the ideology past and present is ''National Socialism'' and adherents describe themselves as ''National Socialists''. For instance the best known organisation espousing this system, the German party led by Adolf Hitler was called the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German abbreviation: NSDAP). Similarly, the second volume of ''Mein Kampf'' is entitled ''The National Socialist Movement''. According to Joseph Goebbels in an official exposition of the ideology, the logic behind the synthesis of ''National''ism and ''Socialism'' as represented in the name, was to "counter the Internationalism of Marxism with the nationalism of a German Socialism".

The term ''Nazi'' derives from the first two syllables of ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei''. Members of the Nazi Party identified themselves as ''Nationalsozialisten'' (National Socialists), rarely as ''Nazis''. The German term ''Nazi'' parallels the analogous political term ''Sozi'', an abbreviation for a member of the ''Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands'' (Social Democratic Party of Germany). The term was originally used by southern German opponents of the NSDAP and may have been influenced by the Bavarian term "Nazi" being a familiar form of the proper name Ignatz (German form of Ignatious) which was used colloquially to mean a "clumsy or awkward person". The earlier German abbreviation for "Internationale", ''Inter-Nazi'', may have also contributed to the adoption of the term. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler assumed power of the German government, usage of the term ''Nazi'' diminished in Germany, although Austrian anti-Nazis used it as an insult.

History

Ideological origins

The ideological origins of Nazism derive from Romanticism, nineteenth-century idealism, and a eugenic interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concepts of “breeding upwards” — towards the ''Übermensch'' (“Superman”). Such ideas, as espoused by the Ariosophical ''Germanenorden'' (German Order) and the Thule Society much influenced Adolf Hitler’s world-view.

Phillip Wayne Powell writes that "in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a powerful surge of German patriotism was stimulated by the disdain of Italians for German cultural inferiority and barbarism, which led to a counter-attempt, by German humanists, to laud German qualities." M.W. Fodor wrote in ''The Nation'' in 1936, "No race has suffered so much from an inferiority complex as has the German. National Socialism was a kind of Coué method of converting the inferiority complex, at least temporarily, into a feeling of superiority".

Among the most significant ideological influence on the Nazis came from German nationalist figure Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose works Hitler read, and who was recognized by other Nazi members including Dietrich Eckart and Arnold Fanck. In ''Speeches to the German Nation'' (1808), written amid Napoleonic France's occupation of Berlin, Fichte called for a German national revolution against the French occupiers, making passionate public speeches, arming his students for battle against the French, and stressed the need of the deed of action by the German nation to free itself.

Fichte's nationalism was populist and opposed to traditional elites and spoke of the need of a "People's War" (''Volkskrieg''), putting forward concepts much like those the Nazis adopted. Fichte promoted German exceptionalism and stressed the need for the German nation to be purified. This priority included purging the German language of French words, a policy that the Nazis undertook upon rising to power. Fichte was anti-Semitic and accused Jews in Germany of having been, and inevitably continuing to be a "state within a state" in Germany that Fichte claimed was a threat to German national unity. Fichte promoted two options to address the Jewish problem: the first was the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine to impel the Jews to leave Europe. The other option was violence against Jews, saying that this goal would be "To cut off all their heads in one night, and set new ones on their shoulders, which should not contain a single Jewish idea".

The Nazis claimed that their ideology was influenced by the leadership and policies of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the founder of the German Empire. The Nazis declared that they were dedicated to continuing the process of creating a unified German nation state that in their view Bismarck had begun and desired to achieve. The Nazis claimed that Bismarck was unable to complete German national unification owing to Jewish infiltration of the German parliament, and that their abolition of parliament ended the obstacle to unification that Bismarck faced. While Hitler was supportive of Bismarck's creation of the German Empire, he was critical of Bismarck's "moderate" domestic policies. On the issue of Bismarck's support of a ''Kleindeutschland'' ("Lesser Germany", excluding Austria) versus the pan-German ''Großdeutschland'' ("Greater Germany") of the Nazis, Hitler claimed that Bismarck's attainment of ''Kleindeutschland'' was the "highest achievement" that Bismarck could have achieved "within the limits possible of that time". In ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler presented himself as a "second Bismarck".

The concept of the Aryan race that was utilized by the Nazis stems from racial theories asserting that Europeans are the descendants of Indo-Iranian settlers, people of ancient India and ancient Persia. Proponents of this theory based their assertion on the similarity of European words and their meaning to those of Indo-Iranian languages. Johann Gottfried Herder, a prominent proponent of this theory, maintained that the Germanic peoples held close racial connections with the ancient Indians and ancient Persians who he claimed were advanced peoples possessing a great capacity for wisdom, nobility, restraint, and science. Contemporaries of Herder utilized the concept of the Aryan race to draw a distinction between what they deemed "high and noble" Aryan culture versus that of "parasitic" Semitic culture. The notions of white supremacism and Aryan racial superiority combined in the nineteenth century, with white supremacists maintaining that whites were members of an Aryan "master race" —— that is, a race of higher civilization, superior to all other races and particularly superior to the Semitic race that they associated with "cultural sterility". Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ''ancien régime'' in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, destroying in his perception the purity of the Aryan race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany, emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan and Jewish cultures. Aryan mysticism claimed that Christianity originated in Aryan religious tradition and that Jews had usurped the legend from Aryans.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an English proponent of racial theory, supported notions of Germanic supremacy and anti-Semitism in Germany. Chamberlain's work, ''Foundations of the Nineteenth Century'' (1899) praised Germanic peoples for their creativity and idealism while asserting that the Germanic spirit was threatened by a "Jewish" spirit of selfishness and materialism. Chamberlain went on to use his thesis to promote monarchical conservatism while denouncing democracy, liberalism, and socialism. The book became highly popular, especially in Germany. Chamberlain stressed the need of a nation to maintain racial purity in order to prevent degeneration, and argued that racial intermingling with Jews should never be permitted. In 1923 Chamberlain personally met Hitler whom he admired as a leader of the rebirth of the free spirit.

''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' (1912) was an anti-Semitic forgery created by police of the Russian Empire. Anti-Semites believed it was real and the Protocol surged in popularity after World War I. ''The Protocols'' claimed that there was an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Hitler had been introduced to ''The Protocols'' by Alfred Rosenberg, and from 1920 onward Hitler focused his attacks on claiming that Judaism and Marxism were directly connected and that Jews and Bolsheviks were one and the same and that Marxism was a Jewish ideology. Hitler believed that ''The Protocols'' were authentic.

During World War I, sociologist Johann Plenge spoke of the rise of a "National Socialism" in Germany within what he termed the "ideas of 1914" that were a declaration of war against the "ideas of 1789"—the French Revolution. According to Plenge, the "ideas of 1789" that included rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism were being rejected in favour of "the ideas of 1914" that included "German values" of duty, discipline, law, and order. Plenge believed that ethnic solidarity (''volksgemeinschaft'') would replace class division and that "racial comrades" would unite to create a socialist society in the struggle of "proletarian" Germany against "capitalist" Britain. He believed that the "Spirit of 1914" manifested itself in the concept of the "People's League of National Socialism". This National Socialism was a form of state socialism that rejected the "idea of boundless freedom" and promoted an economy that would serve the whole of Germany under the leadership of the state. This National Socialism was opposed to capitalism due to the components that were against "the national interest" of Germany, but insisted that National Socialism would strive for greater efficiency in the economy. Plenge advocated an authoritarian rational ruling elite to develop National Socialism through a hierarchical technocratic state.

Plenge's arguments at the time were recognized by a diverse group of people as an important argument in favour of social justice promoted within a strong state, including: right-wing Social Democrats Konrad Haenisch, Heinrich Cunow, Paul Lench and Kurt Schumacher; Conservative Revolutionaries including Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and Max Hildebert Boehm; and Nazis including Ernst Krieck, Gottfried Feder and Eduard Stadtler. Plenge's ideas formed the basis of Nazism.

Oswald Spengler, a German cultural philosopher, was a major influence on Nazism, although after 1933 Spengler became alienated from Nazism and later condemned by the Nazis for criticizing Hitler. Spengler's views were also popular amongst Italian Fascists, including Benito Mussolini. Spengler's book ''The Decline of the West'' (1918) written during the final months of World War I in which he addressed the claim of decadence of modern European civilization that he claimed was caused by atomizing and irreligious individualization and cosmopolitanism. In ''Decline of the West'', Spengler's major thesis was that a law of historical development of cultures existed involving a cycle of birth, maturity, aging, and death when it reaches its final form of civilization. Upon reaching the point of civilization, a culture will lose its creative capacity and succumb to decadence until the emergence of "barbarians" create a new epoch. Spengler considered the Western world as having succumbed to decadence of intellect, money, cosmopolitan urban life, irreligious life, atomized individualization, and the end of biological fertility as well as "spiritual" fertility. He believed that the "young" German nation as an imperial power would inherit the legacy of Ancient Rome and lead a restoration of value in "blood" and instinct, while the ideals of rationalism would be revealed as absurd.

In ''Preussentum und Sozialismus'' ("Prussiandom and Socialism", 1919), Spengler described socialism outside of a class conflict perspective and said "The meaning of socialism is that life is controlled not by the opposition between rich and poor, but by the rank that achievement and talent bestow. That is ''our'' freedom, freedom from the economic despotism of the individual." Spengler claimed that socialistic Prussian characteristics existed across Germany that included creativity, discipline, concern for the greater good, productivity, and self-sacrifice. Spengler's definition of socialism did not advocate change in property relations. Spengler denounced Marxism for seeking to train the proletariat to "expropriate the expropriator", the capitalist, and then to let them live a life of leisure on this expropriation. He claimed that "Marxism is the capitalism of the working class" and not true socialism. True socialism according to Spengler would be in the form of corporatism, stating that "local corporate bodies organized according to the importance of each occupation to the people as a whole; higher representation in stages up to a supreme council of the state; mandates revocable at any time; no organized parties, no professional politicians, no periodic elections." In ''Preussentum und Sozialismus'' Spengler prescribed war as a necessity, saying "War is the eternal form of higher human existence and states exist for war: they are the expression of the will to war." Spengler's conception of socialism and a number of his political views were shared by the Nazis as well as the Conservative Revolutionary movement.

The foundation of the Nazi party

On 5 January 1919, the locksmith Anton Drexler, and five other men, founded the ''Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP — German Workers' Party), the predecessor of the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (NSDAP — National Socialist German Workers’ Party). In July 1919, the ''Reichswehr'' intelligence department despatched Corporal Adolf Hitler, as a ''Verbindungsmann'' (police spy) to infiltrate and subvert the DAP. His oratory so impressed the DAP members, they asked him join the party, and, in September 1919, the police spy Hitler became the party's propagandist. On 24 February 1920, the DAP was renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, against Hitler’s preferred “Social Revolutionary Party” name. Later, in consolidating his control of the NSDAP, Hitler ousted Drexler from the party and assumed leadership on 29 July 1921.

The post-war crises of Weimar Germany (1919–33) consolidated Nazism as an ideology: military defeat in the First World War (1914–18), capitulation with the Treaty of Versailles, economic depression, and the consequent societal instability. In exploiting, and excusing, the military defeat, Nazism proffered the political ''Dolchstosslegende'' (“Legend of the Dagger-stab in the Back”) claiming that the Imperial German war effort was internally sabotaged, by Jews, socialists, and Bolsheviks. Proposing that, because the ''Reichwehr''’s defeat did not occur in Germany, the sabotage included a lack of patriotism among their political antagonists, specifically the Social Democrats and the Ebert Government, whom the Nazis accused of treason.

Using the “stab in the back” legend, the Nazis accused German Jews, and other populaces it considered non-German, of possessing extra-national loyalties, thereby exacerbating German anti-semitism about the ''Judenfrage'' (the Jewish Question), the perennial far right political canard popular when the ethnic Völkisch movement and their politics of Romantic nationalism for establishing a ''Großdeutschland'' were strong. The seminal ideas of Nazism originated in the German cultural past of the ''Völkisch'' (folk) movement and the superstitions of Ariosophy, an occultism that proposed the Germanic peoples as the purest examples of the Aryan race, whose cultures feature runic symbols and the swastika. From among the Ariosophs, only the ''Thule-Gesellschaft'' (Thule Society) in Munich, features in the origin of Nazism; they sponsored the DAP.

Fascism was a major influence on Nazism. The seizure of power by Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the March on Rome in 1922 drew admiration by Hitler who less than a month after the March had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists. After the March on Rome, Hitler presented the Nazis as a German fascism. The Nazis attempted a "March on Berlin" modelled upon the March on Rome that resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923. Although Hitler strongly admired Mussolini and fascism, other Nazis — especially more radical Nazis such as Gregor Strasser, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler — rejected Italian Fascism, accusing it of being too conservative or capitalist. Alfred Rosenberg condemned Italian Fascism for being racially confused and having influences from philo-Semitism. Strasser criticized the policy of ''Führerprinzip'' as being created by Mussolini, and considered its presence in Nazism as a foreign import. Throughout the relationship between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a number of lower-ranking Nazis scornfully viewed fascism as a conservative movement that lacked a full revolutionary potential.

Nazism after World War II

Although the defeat of Germany in World War II discredited Nazism as a mass ideology, fringe groups of National Socialists exist in many countries. These are usually referred to as Neo-nazis. Holocaust denial is an important part of this movement, and nostalgia or a desire to glorify Nazi Germany also can play a part.

Ideology

The Nazis advocated a strong, central government under the Führer, for defending Germany and the ''Volksdeutsche'' (ethnic Germans), against communism and Jewish subversion. To the end of establishing ''Großdeutschland'' (Greater Germany), the German peoples must acquire ''Lebensraum'' (living space) from Russia.

The original National Socialists, the 1919 German Workers’ Party (DAP) said there would be no program binding upon them, thus rejecting any ''Weltanschauung''. Nonetheless, when Adolf Hitler assumed command of its successor, the Nazi Party, political substance of Nazism concorded with his political beliefs — man and idea as political entity, the ''Führer''.

Hitler had concluded that ethnic and linguistic diversity had weakened the Austro–Hungarian Empire, and had resulted in contemporary political dissent. He disliked democracy because it allowed political power to ethnic minorities and to liberal political parties, who “weakened and destabilized” the empire with internal division. Hitler’s cultural, historical, and political beliefs were tempered in combat during World War I; by Germany’s loss of the war, and by the Bolsheviks’ successful October Revolution of 1917 that installed Marxist communism in Russia. From 1920 to 1923, Hitler formulated his ideology, then published it in 1925–26, as ''Mein Kampf'' , a two-volume, biography and political letter-of-intent.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Nazism was ideologically heterogeneous, comprising two sub-ideologies, those of Otto Strasser and of Hitler. As leftists, the Strasserites fell afoul of Hitler, who expelled Otto Strasser from the Nazi Party when he failed to establish the Black Front, an oppositional, anti-capitalist bloc, in 1930. Though Hitler for "tactical" reasons had rhetorically declared a 1920 party platform with socialist platitudes "unshakable," actually "many paragraphs of the party program were obviously merely a demagogic appeal to the mood of the lower classes at a time when they were in bad straits and were sympathetic to radical and even socialist slogans...Point 11, for example...Point 12...nationalization...Point 16...communalization.... put in at the insistence of Drexler and Feder, who apparently really believed in the 'socialism' of National Socialism." In actual practice, such points were mere slogans, "most of them forgotten by the time the party came to power.... the Nazi leader himself was later to be embarrassed when reminded of some of them."

The conflicting philosophies of leading Nazis of the early years were visible at times: in 1930 "Strasser, Feder and Frick introduced a bill in the Reichstag on behalf of the Nazi Party calling for (interest rate limits, expropriation of large bank-holdings)... and the nationalization of the big banks.... Hitler was horrified; this not was only Bolshevism, it was financial suicide for the party." Many Strasserites who remained in the Nazi Party, mostly in the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA), were assassinated in the Night of the Long Knives purge.

Relation with fascism

Nazism is a politically syncretic variety of fascism, which incorporates policies, tactics and philosophic tenets from left and right-wing politics. Italian fascism and German Nazism reject liberalism, democracy and Marxism. Usually supported by the far right, fascism is historically anti-communist, anti-conservative and anti-parliamentary. The Nazis' rise to power was assisted by the Fascist government of Italy that began to financially subsidize the Nazi party in 1928.

Hitler admired Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascists, and after Mussolini's successful March on Rome in 1922, presented the Nazis as a German version of Italian Fascism. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's chief propagandist, credited Italian Fascism with starting a conflict against liberal democracy, saying:

The march on Rome was a signal, a sign of storm for liberal-democracy. It is the first attempt to destroy the world of the liberal-democratic spirit[...] which started in 1789 with the storm on the Bastille and conquered one country after another in violent revolutionary upheavals, to let... the nations go under in Marxism, democracy, anarchy and class warfare...

Hitler remained impressed by Mussolini and Fascist Italy for many years in spite of resentments towards Italy by other Nazis and resentments by Italian Fascists towards Germany. During the period of positive outlook towards Fascist Italy, Hitler became an Italophile. Hitler like Mussolini profoundly admired Ancient Rome, and repeatedly mentioned it in ''Mein Kampf'' as being a model for Germany. In particular, Hitler admired ancient Rome's authoritarian culture, imperialism, town planning, and architecture, which were incorporated by the Nazis. Hitler considered the ancient Romans to have been a master race.

In an unpublished sequel to ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler declared that he held no antagonism towards Italy for having waged war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I, saying that Italy went to war with Germany only because of Germany's alliance with Austria Hungary, on which Italy had territorial claims. Hitler declared his sympathy to the Italians for desiring to regain Italian-populated lands held by Austria-Hungary, claiming it was naturally in Italians' national interest to wage war to regain those lands.

Hitler made controversial concessions to gain Fascist Italy's approval and alliance, such as abandoning territorial claims on the South Tyrol region of Italy that had a dense population of hundreds of thousands of Germans. In ''Mein Kampf'' Hitler declared that it was not in Germany's interest to have war with Italy over South Tyrol. Ethnic Germans from South Tyrol were resettled into Germany by force in exchange for Mussolini's pledge to restrict the rights of Jews in Italy.

Nazism differs from Italian fascism in that it does not view a nation as being created and developed by a state, but that a nation is created and developed outside a state. This difference is based upon the different histories of development of the German and Italian nations that formed the basis of Nazism's and Italian Fascism's respective nationalisms; the German national identity developed outside a state while Italian national identity developed through a state. The Nazis conception of the origins of the Aryan race in Europe included the ancient Romans and ancient Greeks as members of the Aryan race. However, contemporary Italy was deemed by the Nazis to not be racially pure, in that the Aryan Roman heritage had been diluted by multiple racial influences. Hitler believed that northern Italians were members of the Aryan race. However he believed that Italians as a whole had been racially tainted by intermixing, especially with the black race. Nazi claims of racial impurity of Italians evoked resentment and rebuke by the Italian Fascists. At the height of antagonism between the Nazis and Italian Fascists over race, Mussolini condemned Nazi racial theory as flawed, claiming that the Germans themselves were not a pure race and noted with irony that Nazi theory on German superiority was based on the theory of non-German foreigners, such as Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau.

As hostility by Fascist Italy towards Nazi Germany increased in the early 1930s, Mussolini claimed that Italy's heritage to ancient Rome linked Italians to a great civilization, while claiming that the ancient Germans of that time were uncivilized tribes that were "ignorant of writing" at a time "when Rome had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus". Mussolini in an interview with German interviewer Roland Strunk in January 1936, stated that the problems in Italo-German relations were caused by "Hitler's Nordic gospel" and Italian Fascists denounced Nordicism as flawed. However Mussolini did not reject racism, and said in 1936, "As you know, I am a racist."

Italian Fascism did not have a strong attachment to anti-Semitism. A number of Italian Fascists were Jews such as Ettore Ovazza. There were also a number of Italian Fascists who supported anti-Semitism, most notably Julius Evola, Roberto Farinacci, Paolo Orano, Giovanni Preziosi, and Gino Sottochiesa. Issues concerning Jews in Italy were addressed by the Fascist regime, one in particular was alarm by the Fascist over the presence of the Zionist movement in Italy, exemplified in Italian Fascist reactions to the creation of the Zionist newspaper ''Israel''. In 1934 Farinacci addressed the issue of Zionism by denouncing Zionist Jews who did not identify as Italians, saying:

We do not exclude the possibility that there are good Jews, but it is also our right to demand clarity. Does there or does there not exist a Zionist movement in Italy? To deny it would be to lie. The existence of a newspaper in Florence [the Zionist magazine, Israel] should cut short any discussion. And so these others who claim to be anti-Zionists, what are they doing to fight the other Jews who believe that they have another Fatherland that is not Italy? So far nothing. Therefore it is necessary to decide. We have reached a point at which everyone must take a position. Because he who declares himself a Zionist has no right to hold any responsibilities or honors in our country. ''Roberto Farinacci, 1934.''

In spite of differences between the Nazis and the Italian Fascists over Italy's racial heritage, Italian Fascists and the Nazis held similar positions on race issues. Mussolini in his 1920 autobiography spoke of the importance of race to fascism, saying: "Race and soil are strong influences upon us all", and said of World War I: "There were seers who saw in the European conflict not only national advantages but the possibility of a supremacy of race". In a 1921 speech in Bologna, Mussolini stated that "Fascism was born... out of a profound, perennial need of this our Aryan and Mediterranean race". Mussolini also warned of racial competition between the white race and coloured races such as in 1928:

[When the] city dies, the nation — deprived of the young life — blood of new generations — is now made up of people who are old and degenerate and cannot defend itself against a younger people which launches an attack on the now unguarded frontiers[...] This will happen, and not just to cities and nations, but on an infinitely greater scale: the whole White race, the Western race can be submerged by other coloured races which are multiplying at a rate unknown in our race.

Many Italian fascists held anti-Slavist views, especially against neighbouring Yugoslav nations, whom the Italian fascists saw as being in competition with Italy, which had claims on territories of Yugoslavia, particularly Dalmatia. Mussolini claimed that Yugoslavs posed a threat after Italy did not receive the territory along the Adriatic coast at the end of World War I, as promised by the 1915 Treaty of London. He said: "The danger of seeing the Jugo-Slavians settle along the whole Adriatic shore had caused a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions. Students, professors, workmen, citizens—representative men—were entreating the ministers and the professional politicians. Italian fascists accused Serbs of having "atavistic impulses", and of being part of a "social democratic, masonic Jewish internationalist plot". The fascists accused Yugoslavs of conspiring together on behalf of "Grand Orient masonry and its funds".

Nazism, however, emphasized the Aryan race ''Herrenvolk'' concept until reducing the German state to mere means to an ideologic end. Furthermore, blond-blue-eyed-Aryanism was unpopular with Italians, who are not such a ''volk''; nonetheless, the Italian Fascist government exercised a variety of nationalist racism and genocide in its concentration camps, antedating Nazi Germany.

Political scientist and historian Zeev Sternhell proposes that the varieties of fascism are unique, despite the schematic resemblance between Italian fascism and German Nazism — greater than resemblances among the Eastern Bloc Communist states of the Cold War, and among European liberal democracies.

Militarism

Nazi militarism was based upon the belief that great nations grow from military power, and maintain order in the world. The Nazi Party exploited irredentist and revanchist sentiments, and cultural aversions to aspects of Modernism, (despite the ''Reich'' embracing modernism by their admiration for engine power), thus conflating (fusing) nationalism and militarism into the ultra-nationalism necessary to establishing ''Großdeutschland'' (Greater Germany).

Anti-communism

Historians Ian Kershaw and Joachim Fest argue that in post-World War I Germany, the Nazis were one of many nationalist and fascistic political parties contending for the leadership of Germany’s anti-communist movement, and of the German state. The Nazis claimed that communism was dangerous to the well-being of nations because of its intention to dissolve private property, its support of class conflict, its aggression against the middle class, its hostility to small businessmen, and its atheism. Nazism rejected class conflict-based socialism and economic egalitarianism, favouring instead a stratified economy with classes based on merit and talent, retaining private property, and the creation of national solidarity that transcends class distinction.

During the late 1930s and the 1940s, several other anti-communist regimes and groups supported Nazism: the Falange in Spain; the Vichy regime and the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism (''Wehrmacht'' Infantry Regiment 638) in France; and the Cliveden set, Lord Halifax, and associates of Neville Chamberlain in Britain.

Anti-capitalism

The Nazis argued that capitalism damages nations due to international finance, the economic dominance of big business, and Jewish influences within it. Adolf Hitler, both in public and in private, held strong disdain for capitalism; he accused modern capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class. He opposed free-market capitalism's profit-seeking impulses and desired an economy where community interests would be upheld. He distrusted capitalism for being unreliable, due to it having an egotistic nature, and he preferred a state-directed economy. On the issue of capitalist materialism, Hitler said "It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will bow down before a higher god. Many things owe their existence solely to the longing for money and wealth, but there is very little among them whose non-existence would leave humanity any the poorer." Hitler told one party leader in 1934, "The economic system of our day," referring to capitalism, "is the creation of the Jews." In a discussion with Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Hitler said that "Capitalism had run its course". Hitler was disgusted by the bourgeoisie and in one conversation stated that business bourgeoisie "know nothing except their profit. 'Fatherland' is only a word for them." Hitler admired Napoleon as a rolemodel for his anti-conservative, anti-capitalist, and anti-bourgeois attitudes.

To Hitler, the economy must be subordinated to the interests of the Volk and its state. In ''Mein Kampf'', Hitler effectively supported mercantilism, in the belief that economic resources from their respective territories should be seized by force; he believed that the policy of lebensraum would provide Germany with such economically valuable territories. He believed that the only means to maintain economic security was to have direct control over resources rather than being forced to rely on world trade. He claimed that war to gain such resources was the only means to surpass the failing capitalist economic system. He believed that private ownership was useful in that it encouraged creative competition and technical innovation, but insisted that it had to conform to national interests and be "productive" rather than "parasitical".

A number of Nazis held strong revolutionary socialist and anti-capitalist beliefs, most prominently Ernst Röhm, the leader of the Nazis' main paramilitary group, the Sturmabteilung (SA). Röhm claimed that the Nazis' rise to power constituted a national revolution, but insisted that a socialist "second revolution" was required for Nazi ideology to be fulfilled. Röhm's SA began attacks against individuals deemed to be associated with conservative reaction. Hitler saw Röhm's independent actions as violating and possibly threatening his leadership, as well as jeopardizing the regime by alienating the conservative President Paul von Hindenburg and the conservative-oriented German army. This resulted in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA.

Joseph Goebbels adamantly stressed the socialist character of Nazism, and claimed in his diary that if he were to pick between Bolshevism and capitalism, he said "in final analysis", "it would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism."

In 1920, the Nazi Party published the ''National Socialist Program'', an ideology that in 25 points demanded:

During the 1920s, Nazi Party officials variously attempted either to change or to replace the ''National Socialist Program''. In 1924, the Nazi Party economist theoretician Gottfried Feder proposed a new, 39-point program, retaining some old and introducing some new ideas. Hitler did not directly mention the program in ''Mein Kampf''; he only mentioned "the so-called programme of the movement". Also during the 1920s, however, Hitler urged disparate Nazi factions to unite in opposition to "Jewish Marxism." Hitler asserted that the "three vices" of "Jewish Marxism" were democracy, pacifism, and internationalism.

In 1927, Hitler said: "We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions." Yet two years later, in 1929, Hitler backtracked, saying that ''socialism'' was "an unfortunate word altogether" and that "if people have something to eat, and their pleasures, then they have their socialism." Historian Henry A. Turner reports Hitler’s regret at having including the word ''socialism'' in the Nazi Party name.

The Nazi Party’s early self-description as "socialist" caused conservative opponents, such as the Industrial Employers Association, to describe it as "totalitarian, terrorist, conspiratorial, and socialist".

In 1930, Hitler said: "Our adopted term ‘Socialist’ has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not." In 1931, during a confidential interview with influential editor Richard Breiting of the ''Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten'', a pro-business newspaper, Hitler said:

I want everyone to keep what he has earned, subject to the principle that the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State ... The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners.

In 1932, Nazi Party spokesman Joseph Goebbels said that the Nazi Party was a "workers’ party", "on the side of labour, and against finance."

Nazi propaganda posters in working-class districts emphasized anti-capitalism, such as one that said: "The maintenance of a rotten industrial system has nothing to do with nationalism. I can love Germany and hate capitalism."

Philosopher Stephen Hicks writes: "The issue about how socialist the Nazis were is, in part, a judgment call about long-term principles and short-term pragmatism." Hicks argues that the Nazis claimed to be more devoted to socialism than the Soviet Bolsheviks: the Russians were preoccupied with economics while the Nazis thought socialism should control not only economics but breeding, religion and other intimate details of life.

Working class and middle class appeal

In 1922, to ensure German public perception of the Nazi Party as politically unique, Adolf Hitler discredited other nationalist and racialist political parties as disconnected from the mass populace, especially lower- and working-class young people:

Despite many working-class supporters and members, the appeal of the Nazi Party to the working class was neither true nor effective, because its politics mostly appealed to the middle-class, as a stabilizing, pro-business political party, not a revolutionary workers’ party. Adolf Hitler’s political biography, ''Mein Kampf'' (''My Struggle'') formulates the ''Weltanschauung'' of Nazism with the ideologic trinity of: history as a struggle for world supremacy among the human races, conquered only by a master race, the ''Herrenvolk''; the decisive, autocratic ''Führerprinzip'' (leader principle); and anti-Semitism targeting the Jews as the universal source of socio-cultural and economic discord.

The Jewish–Bolshevism conspiracy theory derives from anti-Semitism and anti-communism; Adolf Hitler claimed to have first developed his worldview from living and observing Viennese life from 1907 to 1913, concluding that the Austro–Hungarian Empire comprised racial, religious, and cultural hierarchies; per his interpretations, atop were the “Aryans”, the ultimate, white master race, whilst Jews and Gypsies were at bottom.

However, recent research strongly suggests that Hitler’s virulent antisemitism was mostly a post war development, product of influences from the Russian civil war and that in his Vienna years it played little part in his thinking. The idea of the Russian roots of Nazism has been explored by Walter Laqueur and more recently filled out in much more detail by Michael Kellogg from archive material only available since the fall of communism. Aufbau Vereinigung was a organisation of White Russian émigrés and early National Socialists which exerted a critical influence upon Hitler and Nazi ideology in the years before the Hitler Ludendorff putsch in 1923.

Fundamental to Nazism is the unification of every German tribe that was “unjustly” divided among different nation states The racialist philosophy of Nazism derived from the seminal white supremacist works of: the French Arthur de Gobineau (''An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races''); the Briton Houston Stewart Chamberlain (''The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century''); and of the American Madison Grant (''The Passing of The Great Race: or, The Racial Basis of European History'').

Their ideas were synthesized by the Reichstag Secretary, Alfred Rosenberg, in ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'', a pseudoscientific treatise proposing that: “[F]rom a northern centre of creation which, without postulating an actual submerged Atlantic continent, we may call Atlantis, swarms of warriors once fanned out, in obedience to the ever-renewed and incarnate Nordic longing for distance to conquer and space to shape”. According to Terrence Ball and Richard Bellamy, ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' is the second-most important book to Nazism, after ''Mein Kampf''.

In establishing Nazi German racial superiority, Adolf Hitler defined “the Nation” as the highest creation of a race, and that that great nations were the creations of homogeneous populations of great races working together. These nations developed cultures that naturally grew from races with “natural good health, and aggressive, intelligent, courageous traits”. Whereas the weakest nations were those of “impure” or “mongrel races”, because they were disunited. Hitler claimed that lowest races were the parasitic ''Untermenschen'' (subhumans), principally the Jews, who were living ''lebensunwertes Leben'' (“life-unworthy life”) owing to racial inferiority, and their wandering, nationless invasions of greater nations, such as Germany — thus, either permitting or encouraging national plurality is an obvious mistake.

Hitler declared that racial conflict against Jews was necessary to save Germany from suffering under them and dispensed concerns about such conflict being inhumane or an injustice, saying:

We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have achieved the greatest deed in the world. We may work injustice, but if we rescue Germany then we have removed the greatest injustice in the world. We may be immoral, but if our people is rescued we have opened the way for morality.

During World War II, when faced with occupying too much territory with too-few German soldiers, Nazism expanded the Master Race definition to include Dutch and Scandinavian men as superior, German-stock ''Herrenvolk'', in order to recruit them into the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS).

Hitler argued that nations who could not defend their territories did not deserve a country. He said that “slave races”, such as the Slavic peoples, had less of a right to life than did the master races — especially concerning ''Lebensraum''. He claimed that the ''Herrenvolk'' had the right to vanquish inferior indigenous races from their countries.

Hitler argued that “races without homelands” were “parasitic races”, and that the richer the parasite race, the more virulent their parasitism. A master race could, therefore, easily strengthen themselves by killing the parasite races in the ''Heimat''. The ''Herrenvolk'' philosophic tenet of Nazism rationalized ''Die Endlösung'' (the Final Solution), extermination of Jews, Gypsies, Czechs, Poles, the mentally retarded, the crippled, the handicapped, homosexuals and others deemed undesirable. During the Holocaust, the Waffen-SS, Wehrmacht soldiers, and right-wing paramilitary civilian militias killed some 11 million people in Nazi-occupied lands via concentration camps, prisoner-of-war camps, labor camps, and death camps, such as the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Treblinka extermination camp.

In Germany, the master-race populace was realised by purifying the ''Deutsche Volk'' via (see: eugenics; the culmination was involuntary euthanasia of disabled people, and the compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded. The ideologic justification was Adolf Hitler’s consideration of Sparta(11th c.–195 BC) as the original ''Völkisch'' state; he praised their dispassionate destruction of congenitally deformed infants in maintaining racial purity: "Sparta must be regarded as the first ''Völkisch'' State. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent, and, in truth, a thousand times more humane, than the wretched insanity of our day, which preserves the most pathological subject."

Nazi cultural perception of the Jews, based upon the anti-Semitic ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', emphasized that Jews throve on fomenting division among Germans, and among nation-states. Yet Nazi anti-Semitism was also physical and racial. Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels said: “The Jew is the enemy and destroyer of the purity of blood, the conscious destroyer of our race ... As socialists, we are opponents of the Jews, because we see, in the Hebrews, the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation’s goods.”

Nazi Germany was ideologically based upon the racially defined ''Deutsche Volk'' (German People), which denied the limitations of nationalism. The Nazi Party and the German people were consolidated in the ''Volksgemeinschaft'' (People’s Community), a late-nineteenth-century neologism defining the citizens’ communal duty is to the ''Reich'', rather than to civil society, the citizen-nation basis of Nazism; the ''socialism'' would be realized via common duty to the ''volk'', by service to the Third Reich in establishing ''Großdeutschland'', the embodying locus of the peoples’ will. Hence, Nazism encouraged ultra-nationalism, to establish a world-dominating, Aryan ''Volksgemeinschaft''. The précis of this central tenet of ''Mein Kampf'' is the motto ''Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer'' (One People, One Empire, One Leader).

Opposition to homosexuality

In late February 1933, as the moderating influence of Ernst Röhm — the homosexual leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA) — diminished, the Nazi Party purged the homophile clubs, where gay, lesbian and bisexual Berliners congregated. It also outlawed academic and pornographic sexual publications. In March 1933, Kurt Hiller, the organizer of Magnus Hirschfeld's ''Institut für Sexualwissenschaft'' (Institute of Sex Research), was imprisoned to a concentration camp. On 6 May 1933, Hitler Youth members attacked the Institute of Sex Research and publicly incinerated its library and archives in the streets. They destroyed some 20,000 books and journals, as well as some 5,000 images. They also seized the Institute’s rosters of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender patients.

Initially, Hitler had protected Röhm from Nazis who considered his homosexuality a violation of the Party’s anti-homosexual policy. When Röhm proved to be a politically viable challenger to Hitler's leadership of the Nazi Party, Hitler ordered that he be assassinated in 1934, along with other Nazi political opponents. This purge became known as the Night of the Long Knives. To suppress outrage in the SA ranks, the Nazi leaders justified Röhm’s killing on the basis that he was homosexual.

Schutzstaffel (SS) Chief Heinrich Himmler, initially a supporter of Röhm, defended him against charges of homosexuality, arguing they were the fabrications of a Jewish character assassination conspiracy. After the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler promoted Himmler, who then zealously suppressed homosexuality, saying: "We must exterminate these people root and branch ... the homosexual must be eliminated.” In 1936, Himmler established the "Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und Abtreibung" ("Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion"). The Nazis officially declared that homosexuality was contrary to "wholesome popular sentiment", identifying gay men as "defilers of German blood". The Nazi régime incarcerated some 100,000 homosexuals during the 1930s. As concentration camp prisoners, homosexual men were forced to wear pink triangle badges.

Nazi anti-homosexual laws did not persecute lesbians much because the Nazis considered female homosexuals easier to persuade or to compel to conformity with the heterosexual mores of patriarchy. Nonetheless, the Nazis considered lesbians to be a cultural threat to family values, and legally identified them as anti-social. Concentration camp prisoners who were lesbian were forced to wear black triangle badges.

Church and state

Hitler extended his rationalizations into a religious doctrine supported by his criticism of traditional Roman Catholicism. In particular, and closely related to Positive Christianity, he objected to Catholicism because it was not the religion of an exclusive race and its culture. Simultaneously, the Nazis integrated to Nazism the community elements of Lutheranism, from its organic pagan past. Hitlerian theology integrated militarism by proposing that his was a true, master-religion, because it would create mastery by avoiding comforting lies. About religions that preached love, tolerance, and equality “in contravention to the facts”, Hitler said they were false, slave religions, and that the man who recognized said “truths” was a “natural leader”, whilst deniers were “natural slaves”; hence, slaves, especially the intelligent, continually hindered their masters with false religions.

Although the “National Socialist leaders and dogmas were basically, uncompromisingly antireligious”, Nazi Germany usually did not directly attack the Churches, the exceptions being clerics who refused accommodation with the Nazi régime. Martin Bormann, a prominent Nazi official, said: "Priests will be paid by us and, as a result, they will preach what we want. If we find a priest acting otherwise, short work is to be made of him. The task of the priest consists in keeping the Poles quiet, stupid, and dull-witted." To demoralize Poland, the Nazis killed almost 16 per cent of the Polish Catholic clergy; 13 of 38 Bishops were sent to concentration camps. These actions, and the closing of churches, seminaries and other religious institutions, almost succeeded in exterminating the Polish clergy.

In pro-Nazi countries, fascist anti-clericalism was unofficial, and was usually manifested in the arrests of select clergy via false charges of immorality, and secret harassment by Gestapo and SD ''agents provocateur''. A notable case was that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran Pastor and theologian who fought Nazism in the German Resistance. Nonetheless, the Nazis often used the Church to justify their politics, by using Christian symbols as ''Reich'' symbols, and, in other cases, replacing Christian symbols with ''Reich'' symbols, Nazism thus conflated Church and State as an ultra-nationalist political entity — the Nazi Germany embodied in the motto ''Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer'' (“One People, One Empire, One Leader”).

Several of the founders and leaders of the Nazi Party were members of the ''Thule-Gesellschaft'' (Thule Society), who romanticized Aryan race superstitions with ritual and theology. Originally, derived from the ''Germanenorden'', the Thule Society shared the racist superstitions of Ariosophy that were common to such pan-German groups; Rudolf von Sebottendorf, and a man named Wilde, lectured the Thule Society on occultism. Generally, the society’s lectures and excursions comprised anti-Semitism and Germanic antiquity, yet it is historically notable for having fought as a paramilitary militia against the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Dietrich Eckart, an associate of the Thule Society, coached Adolf Hitler as a public speaker, and Hitler later dedicated ''Mein Kampf'' to Eckart. The DAP was initially supported by the Thule Society — but Hitler quickly excluded them in favour of a mass movement political party, by denigrating their superstitious approach to politics. In contrast, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler was much interested in the occult.

Regarding the persecution of Jews, the contemporary, historical perspective is that in the period between the Protestant Reformation and the Holocaust, Martin Luther's treatise ''On the Jews and their Lies'' (1543), exercised a major and persistent intellectual influence upon the German practice of anti-Semitism against Jewish citizens. The Nazis publicly displayed an original of ''On the Jews and their Lies'' during the annual Nuremberg rallies, and the city also presented a first edition of it to Julius Streicher, the editor of ''Der Stürmer'', which described Luther’s treatise as the most radically anti-Semitic tract ever published.

Protestant Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther’s writings shortly after Kristallnacht; in the introduction, he approved of the burning of synagogues and mentioned the coincidental date: “On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.” He urged Germans to heed the words “of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.” Theologian Johannes Wallmann, however, said Luther’s anti-Semitic tract exercised no continual influence in Germany, that it was mostly ignored during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Nonetheless, Prof. Diarmaid MacCulloch said that ''On the Jews and Their Lies'' was the blueprint for Kristallnacht.

Other ideologies

Strasserism

Before Hitler orchestrated the operation known as the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, whereby a substantial base of the Nazi Party's left-wing block such as the Sturmabteilung was purged of radical and disruptive elements, two former Freikorps and Social Democratic Party activists named Otto and Gregor Strasser united their left-leaning ideals to form a distinctly socialist strand of Nazism known as Strasserism.

Strasserist ideology engaged in overt critique of Hitler's Fuhrerprinzip, his affinities to the conservative establishment, and began attacking his policies through the ''National Socialist Newsletters'' and later ideological literature like ''Cabinet Seat or Revolution'', while upholding aggressive anti-capitalist ideals. The Strasser brothers considered capitalism stained by Jewish finance, and called for a working-class, genuinely socialist and ultra-nationalist revolution following Hitler's rise to power (which they called a half-revolution), emphasizing the ''socialist'' component of National Socialism and proposing a cooperative economic ministry to direct Germany's economy in a more left-wing and guild-based direction.

Arab nationalism

National Socialist threads were also popular with Arab nationalists at roughly the same time as in Europe and even continued beyond World War II.

During the British Mandate in Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husayni was appointed as Mufti of Jerusalem by High Commissioner Herbert Samuel. He was the principal leader of the Arab national movement in Palestine and a popular personality in the Arab world during most of the years of British rule. Amin met with Hitler and other Nazi officials on various occasions and attempted to coordinate Nazi and Arab policies to solve the "Jewish problem" in Palestine. Due to al-Husayni's role of leadership and his association with the Nazi leader, he was sometimes referred to as the "fuhrer of the Arab world". In one of the mufti's speeches he said: "Kill the Jews wherever you find them—this pleases Allah."

In the 1930s, wealthy Arab youths, educated in Germany and having witnessed the rise of fascist paramilitary groups, began returning home with the idea of creating an "Arab Nazi Party". The atmosphere of the 1930s Arab movement was described by one of the leaders of the Syrian Ba'ath Party, Sami al-Jundi: "We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought..." In 1935, Jamal al-Husayni (Haj Amin's brother) established the Palestine Arab Party, the party was used to create the "fascist-style" youth organization, al-Futuwwa; also sometimes called the "Nazi Scouts". The organization recruited children and youth, who took the following oath: "Life -- my right; independence -- my aspiration; Arabism -- my country, and there is no room in it for any but Arabs. In this I believe and Allah is my witness." The British expressed concern at the situation in Palestine, stating in a report that "the growing youth and scout movements must be regarded as the most probable factors for the disturbance of the peace."

Indian national socialism

National Socialist ideas were even advocated by some in India such as the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (and its various factions) in seeking a "Nagalim for Christ" as opposed to being a minority in a country of other religions.

Economics

Regarding international finance, Nazism postulated an international banking Jewish conspiracy headed by a cabal of financiers responsible for the Great Depression. The Nazis claimed that controllers of the cabal, who had manœuvred themselves into economically controlling the United States and Europe, were a powerful Jewish élite. The Nazis believed that the cabal was integral to a greater, long-term Jewish conspiracy, wherein Jews would establish global domination via the New World Order. The banks that the cabal allegedly controlled exerted political influence upon nation-states by granting or withholding credit.

Nazi economic practice first concerned the immediate domestic economy of Germany, then international trade. To eliminate Germany’s poverty, domestic policy was narrowly concerned with four major goals: (i) elimination of unemployment, (ii) rapid and substantial re-armament, (iii) fiscal protection against resurgent hyper-inflation, and (iv) expansion of consumer-goods production, to raise middle- and lower- class living standards. The intent was correcting the Nazi-perceived short-comings of the Weimar Republic, and to solidify domestic support for the Nazi Party; between 1933 and 1936, the German (Gross National Product) annually increased 9.5 per cent, and the industrial rate increased 17.2 per cent.

The expansion propelled the German economy from depression to full employment in less than four years. Public consumption increased 18.7 per cent, and private consumption increased 3.6 per cent annually. Historian Richard Evans reports that before the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the German economy "had recovered from the Depression faster than its counterparts in other countries. Germany’s foreign debt had been stabilized, interest rates had fallen to half their 1932 level, the stock exchange had recovered from the Depression, the gross national product had risen by 81 per cent over the same period ... Inflation and unemployment had been conquered."

Private property

Private property rights were conditional upon the economic mode of use; if it did not advance Nazi economic goals, the state could nationalize it. Nazi government corporate takeovers, and threatened takeovers, encouraged compliance with government production plans, even if unprofitable for the firm. For example, the owner of the Junkers aeroplane factory refused the government’s directives, whereupon the Nazis occupied the factory and arrested Hugo Junkers, but paid him for his nationalized business. Although the Nazis privatised public properties and public services, they also increased economic state control. Under Nazi economics, free competition and self-regulating markets diminished; nevertheless, Adolf Hitler’s social Darwinist beliefs made him reluctant to entirely disregard business competition and private property as economic engines. In 1942, Hitler privately said: “I absolutely insist on protecting private property ... we must encourage private initiative”.

To the proposition that businesses were private property in name but not in substance, in ''The Journal of Economic History'' article "The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry", Christoph Buchheim and Jonas Scherner counter that despite state control, business had much production and investment planning freedom — while the economy was still to a larger degree politically controlled it "does not necessarily mean that private property of enterprises was not of any significance [...] For despite extensive regulatory activity by an interventionist public administration, firms preserved a good deal of their autonomy even under the Nazi regime", a system which they term "command-capitalism".

Centralization

Agricultural and industrial central planning was a prominent feature of Nazi economics. To tie farmers to the land, selling agricultural land was prohibited; farm ownership was nominally private, but discretion over operations and residual income were proscribed. That was achieved by granting business monopoly rights to marketing boards, to control production and prices with a quota system. Quotas also were established for industrial goods, such as pig iron, steel, aluminium, magnesium, gunpowder, explosives, synthetic rubber, fuels, and electricity. A compulsory cartel law was enacted in 1936, allowing the minister of economics to make existing cartels compulsory and permanent, and compel industries to form cartels, where none existed, although disestablished by decree, by 1943, they were replaced with more authoritarian economic agencies.

Finance

In place of ordinary profit-incentive determining the economy, financial investment was regulated per the needs of the state. The profit incentive for businessmen remained, but was greatly modified: “Fixing of profits, not their suppression, was the official policy of the Nazi party”; however, Nazi agencies replaced the profit-motive that automatically allocated investment, and the course of the economy. Nazi government financing eventually dominated private financial investment, which the proportion of private securities issued falling from over half of the total in 1933–34 to approximately 10 per cent in 1935–38. Heavy business-profit taxes limited self-financing of firms. The largest firms were mostly exempt from taxes on profits, however, government control of these were extensive enough to leave “only the shell of private ownership”. Taxes and financial subsidies also directed the economy; the underlying economic policy — terror — was incentive to agree and comply. Nazi language indicated death or concentration camp for any business owner who pursued his own self-interest, instead of the ends of the State. The official decree was stamped into the rim of the silver Reichsmark coins between 1933 through the end of WWII "Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz" or "The common good before self-interest.".

Ideological competition

After World War I, German Nazism and Bolshevik communism emerged as the two main political contenders for the government of Germany, especially because the Weimar Republic government was unstable. What became the Nazi movement arose from far right business and political resistance to the Bolshevik-inspired insurgencies occurring in Germany during the post-war political instability. Moreover, because the Russian Revolution of 1917 legitimised Leninism, Vladimir Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism, which inspired many German socialists. To suppress the 1919 Spartacist uprising general strike in Berlin, and the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich, the Weimar Republic government used Freikorps (Free Corps), right-wing paramilitary groups composed of ex-soldiers. Many Freikorps leaders, including Ernst Röhm, later became Nazi Party leaders.

Nazism successfully competed for voters against communism because Nazism appealed to the anti-Bolshevik German establishment — by promising socio-economic stability — and to the working class — by promising jobs. The Nazis particularly appealed to the lumpenproletariat, whom leftists had dismissed as politically inconsequential. Nazi pro-labour rhetoric appealed to workers disaffected with capitalism, by promoting profit limitations, rent abolition, and increased social benefits (for German gentiles, only), whilst simultaneously proposing a politico-economic model that divested Marxist socialism of ideologic tenets dangerous to capitalism, i.e. class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat, and worker-controlled means of production. Sociologist Michael Mann defined fascism as a “transcendent and cleansing nation statism through paramilitarism”, with the word ''transcendent'' denoting the abolishment of social classes, in order for the birth of a new, organic, and pure people: all classes are abolished by transition, all “others” (approximately two-thirds of the German populace).

The Nazis sought to distinguish and separate themselves from conservative nationalist competitors such as the German National People's Party (DNVP) by officially denouncing conservatism, and attacking conservative nationalists for being reactionary, bourgeois enemies of the German nation who were equal in blame alongside Marxism for Germany's downfall in 1918. The Nazis made alliances with the DNVP, but they claimed that these were tactical in nature and that the two parties had significant ideological differences.

Nazism in popular culture

In popular American and English culture, the terms ''Nazi'', ''Führer'', ''fascist'', ''Gestapo'', and ''Hitler'', are terms of abuse used in describing authoritarian people; hence the American usages ''grammar Nazi'' and ''Feminazi'', (see Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies). Moreover, the blackletter typefaces Fraktur and Schwabacher are associated with Nazi propaganda, despite the Nazis having proscribed them in 1941. In cinema, the Indiana Jones series offers Nazi villains; and the video game website IGN declared Nazis as the most memorable video game villains.

See also

Brown House, Munich, Germany

Consequences of German Nazism

Denazification

Fascism

Fascism and ideology

Final Solution

Functionalism versus intentionalism

Jingoism

List of Adolf Hitler books

Nationalism

Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen

Nazi Foreign Policy (debate)

Nazi occultism

Neo-Nazism

New Order (Nazism)

State Capitalism

Statolatry

Women in the Third Reich

References

Bibliography

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (1985). ''The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935''. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press. ISBN 0-85030-402-4. (Several reprints. Expanded with a new Preface, 2004, I.B. Tauris & Co. ISBN 1-86064-973-4.)

——— (2002). ''Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity''. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3124-4. (Paperback, 2003. ISBN 0-8147-3155-4.)

Victor Klemperer (1947). LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii.

David Redles (2005). ''Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation''. New York: University Press. ISBN 0-8147-7524-1.

Wolfgang Sauer “National Socialism: Totalitarianism or Fascism?” pages 404–424 from ''The American Historical Review'', Volume 73, Issue #2, December 1967

Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003). ''The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Notes

External links

Hitler’s National Socialist Party platform

NS-Archiv, a large collection of scanned original Nazi documents.

WWII: Nazi Thugs and Thinkers - slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Exhibit on Hitler and the Germans - slideshow by ''The New York Times''

Jonathan Meades (1994): Jerry Building - Unholy Relics of Nazi Germany (in 4 parts)

Category:Ideologies Category:History of Germany Category:Politics of Germany Category:Nationalism Category:Fascism Category:Antisemitism Category:Racism Category:Jewish German history

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name	Alpha Blondy
background	solo_singer
birth name	Seydou Koné
born	January 01, 1953Dimbokro, Côte d'Ivoire
band	The Solar System
genre	Reggae
occupation	Singer/Songwriter
years active	1981–present
website	AlphaBlondy.info
notable instruments	}}

Alpha Blondy (born January 1, 1953) is a reggae singer and international recording artist. Alpha Blondy was born Seydou Koné in Dimbokro, Côte d'Ivoire. He sings mainly in his native language of Dioula, in French and English, and sometimes in Arabic or Hebrew. His lyrics convey serious political attitudes and a sense of humor.

Early years

Childhood

First son of a family of 9 children, Seydou Kone was raised by his grandmother, growing up in what he described as "among elders", which later was to have a big impact on his career. In 1962, Alpha Blondy went to join his father in Odienné, where he spent ten years, attending the Sainte Elisabeth high school, and getting involved in the Ivory Coast students movement. Here he formed a band. But, this hobby affected his schooling and Alpha Blondy was expelled due to poor attendance. His parents then sent him to study English in Monrovia in the neighboring country of Liberia in 1973. He spent thirteen months there and then moved to the United States of America to improve his English.

First stay in the USA

In 1973 Seydou moved to New York (also briefly Texas), where he studied English at Hunter College in New York, and later in the Columbia University American Language Program. He majored in English because he wanted to become an English teacher. He had to work part-time, and sometimes at night, and became ill. In New York he met Rastafarians for the first time, and was also able to see concerts by Jamaican artists such as Burning Spear. At this time he was recording Christian music but never stopped writing his own songs. Eventually he got into various scrapes in New York and returned to the Ivory Coast, where he got into even more trouble until he met up with one of his childhood friends, Fulgence Kassi, who had become a noted television producer. This was the beginning of his real career as a singer, and he began to use the name 'Alpha Blondy'.

Musical career

After various TV shows for Kassi, Blondy recorded his first solo album in 1982, entitled 'Jah Glory'. This album was to have enormous success and would become later a symbol of resistance because of the song 'Brigadier Sabari', where Alpha criticized the harassment by the police. Some of this was based on personal experience, as Alpha himself had seen police violence. Alpha Blondy became a big star in Abidjan with his own African twist of Reggae music, becoming in the eyes of his fans 'the Bob Marley of Africa'. Alpha Blondy is spiritual, political and positive just like Marley himself, and even recorded a cover of Bob Marley's song 'War'. And he doesn't stop progressing; in order to reach more people with his message, he chose to sing in many languages: English, French, Baoule, and his own native language – Dioula. Later he also brought new instrumentation to his brand of reggae such as the violin and cello.

Soon the fame of Alpha Blondy spread to Europe. Following the success of an EP entitled “Rasta Poué” he went to Paris in 1984 to make his second album, 'Cocody Rock' with the label Pathe Marconi. The Bob Marley of Africa' traveled to the Island of Jamaica and recorded the title track of this album with Marley’s backing group: The Wailers.

Back home in 1985, Alpha went into the studio to record 'Apartheid is Nazism'. This album was more politically committed than ever. It is a call for the end of Apartheid and the freedom for all. In 1986 Blondy recorded “Jerusalem” at the legendary Tuff Gong studios in Jamaica, again with The Wailers featuring Bob Marley's legendary Bass Aston "Family Man" Barrett. Blondy tried to promote unity between the religion of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. He drew his arguments and inspiration from his own diverse knowledge of the Bible, the Quran and the Torah. That same year, Blondy sang in Hebrew during a concert in Morocco. At this point he was touring continuously. His new album 'Revolution' had a lighter, gentler sound; this was the album with cellos in the instrumentation, and the line-up included veteran Ivory Coast singer Aicha Kone. The album also included "Jah Houphouët parle", a long speech by the Ivory Coast president with only the most minimal beat behind it.

Blondy spent the years 1987–1989 giving concerts and recording 'SOS Guerre Tribale' in Abidjan. This was promoted by Blondy himself as he was distancing himself from Pathe Marconi at this stage. This was not to be a real success but this wasn't going to stop Blondy and in 1991 he returned to Europe for a concert tour and to record his famous album: 'Masada' with the help of musical legends such as Bocana Maiga and UK reggae producer Denis Bovell. The album, with its hit single 'Rendez Vous' was a huge success, and later, Blondy was to receive his first Gold Disc in Paris.

At the beginning of 1993, worn out from a world tour, Blondy succumbed to depression and was taken into an institution for psychiatric help. But as his health recovered he recorded the album 'Dieu' ('God'), where he appears more spiritual and religious, on tracks such as 'Heal Me', about his illness and recovery.

Blondy's psychiatric treatment continued but, on December 10, 1994, Blondy was back with the festival in memory of the late President Houphouet, and later he made his European comeback at a storming concert at Le Zenith in Paris. In 1996, Blondy released a hits compilation and went back into the studio to record the album 'Grand Bassam Zion', singing in six languages; Malinke, Arabic, French, English, Ashanti and Wolof.

After two more years in Paris, Blondy returned to his homeland in 1998, with a new album 'The Prophet'. Convinced his label was too much focused on the international market, he decided to create his own label. Since then Alpha has recorded albums and singles, such as: 'Yitzhak Rabin' in memory of the Israeli prime minister who was assassinated in 1995 (this was accompanied by yet another grueling tour of Europe), the single 'Journaliste en Danger' from his album 'Elohim' in 2000.

Alpha Blondy celebrated 20 years as a recording artist, with the release of his CD "MERCI", in 2002 featuring Ophelie Winter and Saian Supa Crew, which earned him a 2003 Grammy Awards Nomination for "BEST REGGAE ALBUM". However due to the political situation in his home country of Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), he was unable to personally attend the prestigious award ceremony in New York City. In an unprecedented move, the Grammy Awards permitted him to send his representative in his place of honor. In 2005 'Akwaba' was released. His latest CD is entitled "Jah Victory" and was released July 2007. It features Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare as well as Tyrone Downie formerly of Bob Marley and the Wailers. "Victory" is in honor of the peace agreement that was reached and implemented in his country in March 2007.

One of his most popular and successful songs was Sébé Allah Y'é.

Recently, July 19, 2009, Alpha Blondy performed at New York's Central Park before a crowd of many native Africans, Jamaicans, and Americans

June 13, 2010, a large crowd was allowed into a Blondy concert in the Ivory Coast to celebrate the peace and unity of the country, and at least 20 people were injured of which two died.

June 27, 2010, Alpha Blondy was closing act at Parkpop, The Hague, The Netherlands. He replaced Snoop Dogg and Beenie Man.

Blondy has also been an important influence on other African reggae artists such as Ismaël Isaac.

Faith

Alpha Blondy was born to a Muslim mother and a Christian father, and was brought up by a grandmother who taught him to love everyone. Alpha Blondy's respect for all religions and the spirituality he derives from them can be heard on the tracks “God is One” or “Jerusalem” where he sang for unity between all religions in 1986.

Humanitarian

Alpha Blondy (Seydou Kone) was named United Nations Ambassador of Peace for Côte d'Ivoire in 2005. He made great efforts to bring about a peaceful solution to his country's political and physical division which was a result of an attempted Coup in 2001. As of March 2007 a peace agreement was signed and implemented, due to the hard work of many people including Alpha Blondy. Alpha now reaches out further with the newly created Not-for-Profit, Non Government, Non Political, Charitable Foundation, Alpha Blondy Jah Glory Foundation, which purposely and deliberately work towards ending social injustice and generational poverty by giving people the tools that they need to help themselves. He strongly believes in helping the poor (Jah Glory), and also that it should not hurt to a child. The Foundation strives to create and implement grassroots programs at the village level such as the Women’s Self-Sufficiency Micro Loan Program, to teach women who are caring for multiple orphans how to start and manage their own business, to better provide for their families, as well as other sustainable projects, such as the Tafari-Genesis Retreat Camp for Children (Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso). It especially hopes to bring joy and hope to children who have been affected by civil wars, Former Child Soldiers, and those who suffer from chronic life threatening illnesses, such as sickle cell anemia, malaria, asthma, etc.

Talking about Alpha Blondy, people think usually of music and indeed since 1980 he has written at least 17 albums and 194 titles. This itself indicates the great value he represents for his fans. Alpha is no longer an Ivorian star but an International Mega Star because of his fight for peace and unity all around the world. One example was his single “Who Are You” with Ophelie Winter against antipersonnel mines. He has also participated at many humanitarian and charity concerts, such as the concert in Senegal in March 2006 for the eradication of Malaria in Africa (where he appeared along with many other celebrities). He has done much, much more of this type of work in the Ivory Coast itself, especially at his annual free concert at Bassam beach called “festa”.

Best known songs

His first success was ''Brigadier Sabari''. Some representative songs are :

''Sebe Allah Y'e''

''Jah Glory'' – in which he sings against poverty

''Apartheid is Nazism''

''Brigadier Sabari'' – satirical lyrics about police brutality.

''Cocody Rock'' – has become an Alpha Blondy anthem, which everyone knows and sings

''Guerre Civile'' – about civil war

''Jerusalem'' – a call for peace in Israel. The lyrics begins with a Hebrew prayer in Hebrew

''Journalistes en danger'' – about the assassination of Norbert Zongo

''Politiqui'' – about civilian / military government alternance

''Yitzhak Rabin'' – written in 1995, following the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and dedicated to him.

''Sweet Fanta Diallo''

''Téré''

''Blesser''

''Rasta Poué''

Discography

1980s

{|class=wikitable |- !Album/Released !!Track List !!Notes |- |''Jah Glory!'' (1983) || # "Jah Glory" # "The End" # "Bêbi Yêrê Yé" # "Bintou Wêrê-wêrê" # "Brigadier Sabari" # "Dou Nougnan" ||featuring The Natty Rebels |- |''Cocody Rock!'' (1984) || # "Cocody Rock" # "Tere" # "Super Powers" # "Interplanetary Revolution" # "Fangan Kameleba" # "Bory Samory" || |- |''Apartheid Is Nazism'' (1985) || # "Afriki" # "Jah Houphouet" # "Apartheid Is Nazism" # "Idjidja" # "Sahel" # "Sebe Allah Y'e" # "Kiti" # "Come Back Jesus" # "Djinamory" || |- |''Jerusalem'' (1986) || # "Jerusalem" # "Politiqui" # "Bloodshed In Africa" # "I Love Paris" # "Kalachnikov Love" # "Travailler C'est Trop Dur" # "Miva" # "Boulevard De La Mort" # "Dji" ||featuring Wailers Band |- |''Revolution'' (1987) || # "Sweet Fanta Diallo" # "Blesser" # "Jah Houphouet Boigny Nous Parle" # "Rock And Roll Remedy" # "Time" # "Election Koutcha" # "Miri" ||featuring The Solar System |- |''Rasta Poué'' (1988) || # "Rasta Poué" # "Bintou Wêrê-wêrê" # "Jah Glory" # "Dou Nougnan" # "Brigadier Sabari" # "The End" # "Bêbi Yêrê Yé" # "Rasta Fou" |- |''The Prophets'' (1989) || # "The Prophet (Allah Léka Netchi)" # "Banana" # "Coup D'etat" # "Kolombaria" # "Face To Face" # "Black Men Tears" # "Corinthiens" # "Jah Music" ||featuring The Solar System |}

1990s

{|class=wikitable |- !Album / Released !!Track List |- |''Masada'' (1992)featuring The Solar System || # "Masada" # "Multipartisme (Mediocratie)" # "Rendez-vous" # "God Is One" # "Yeye" # "Desert Storm" # "Houphouet Yako" # "Peace In Liberia" # "Papa Bakoye" # "Les Chiens" # "Sciences Sans Conscience" # "Fulgence Kassy" # "Ca Me Fait Si Mal" # "Mystic Night Move" |- |''SOS Guerre Tribale'' (1993) || # "Babylone Kêlê" # "Yagba Dimension" # "Cissê Kiri" # "Café Cacao" # "Sida In The City" # "Véto De Dieu" |- |''Live Au Zénith (Paris)'' (1993) || # "Intro: Jah Houphouët Boigny Nous Parle" # "Psaume 23" # "Jerusalem" # "Masada" # "Politiqui" # "Cocody Rock" # "Multipartisme (Médiocratie)" # "God Is One" # "Dji" # "Come Back Jesus" # "Bénédiction" |- |''Dieu'' (1994)featuring The Solar System || # "Abortion Is A Crime" # "Dieu" # "Wild Time" # "Amour Papier Longueur" # "La Guerre (d'après "War" de Bob Marley & The Wailers)" # "Mon Père Avait Raison" # "Rocking Time" # "Heal Me" # "Gorée (Sénégal)" # "Afrique-Antilles" # "Soukeina (Nangnele)" # "Dos Au Mur" |- |''Grand Bassam Zion Rock'' (1996)featuring The Solar System || # "Ragga Gangstar" # "Alpha Kaya" # "Zion Love" # "Course Au Pouvoir" # "Ya Fohi" # "Valérie" # "Grand Bassam" # "Mo" # "Cheik Amadou Bamba" # "Sefon Dance" # "Unité Nationale" # "Silence Houphouët D'or" # "N'kabourou" # "Mystère Naturel" |- |''The Best Of (Alpha Blondy album)'' (1997) || # "Cocody Rock" # "Apartheid Is Nazism" # "Come Back Jesus" # "Jerusalem" # "Politiqui" # "Sweet Fanta Diallo" # "Banana" # "Café Cacao" # "Masada" # "Rendez-vous" # "Yéyé" # "Fulgence Kassy" # "Amour Papier Longueur" # "Rendez-vous (Cool Summer Mix)" |- |''Yitzhak Rabin'' (1998)featuring The Solar System || # "New Dawn" # "Yitzhak Rabin" # "Assinie Mafia" # "Les Imbeciles" # "Armee Francaise" # "Hypocrites" # "Guerre Civile" # "Saraka" # "Les Larmes De Therese" # "Lalogo" # "Bakoroni" # "Maimouna" |- |''Elohim'' (1999) || # "Les Voleurs De La Republique" # "Monin" # "Journalistes En Danger (Democrature)" # "Waikiki Rock" # "When I Need You" # "Take No Prisoner (Cannibalistic)" # "Petini Go Gaou" # "Sabotage" # "Lune De Miel (Honeymoon)" # "Haridjinan" # "La Queu Du Diable" # "Dictature" # "Djeneba" # "Black Samourai" |}

2000s

{|class=wikitable |- !Album / Released !!Track List |- |''Paris Bercy'' (2001) ||

CD 1

# "Intro" # "New Dawn" # "Hypocrite" # "Jah Glory" # "La Queue Du Diable" # "Black Samourai" # "Samala" # "Sweet Fanta Diallo" # "Assinie Mafia" # "Guerre Civile" # "Las Iarmes De Thérèse" # "Peace In Liberia"

CD 2

# "Les Imbeciles" # "Unité Nationale" # "Medley: Afriki/Bintou/Idjidja/Samory/Rasta Poué" # "Haridjinan" # "Journalistes En Danger" # "Dou Nougnan" # "Tere" # "Brigadier Sabari " |- |''Merci'' (2002) || # "Wari" # "Who Are You" # "Quitte Dans Ça" # "Souroukou Logo" # "God Bless Africa" # "Zoukéfiez-moi Ça" # "Ato Afri Loué" # "Politruc" # "Hey Jack" # "Vanité" # "Si On M'avait Dit" # "Le Feu" |- |''Akwaba: The Very Best Of'' (2005)featuring The Solar System || # "Sweet Sweet (Mix)" # "Good Luck Is Africa" # "Yana De Fohi" # "Apartheid Is Nazism" # "Cocody Rock (Remix)" # "Jerusalem" # "Banana Poyo (Mix)" # "Black Samourai" # "Rasta Poué" # "Travailler C'est Trop Dur" # "Rendez-vous (Cool Summer Mix)" # "Assinie Mafia" # "Masada" # "Wari" # "Young Guns" # "Sweet Fanta Diallo" # "Afriki" # "Desert Storm" # "Bloodshed In Africa" # "Dieu" |- |''Jah Victory'' (2007) || # "I Wish You Were Here" # "Sankara" # "Ranita" # "Ne Tirez Pas Sur L'Ambulance" # "Demain T'Appartient" # "Bahia" # "Mister Grande Gueule" # "Africa Yako" # "Cameroun" # "Jah Light" # "Le Bal Des Combattus" # "Tampiri" # "Les Salauds" # "Sales Racistes" # "Ikafo" # "Jesus" # "Gban-gban" # "La Planete" # "La Route De La Paix" |}

2010s

{|class=wikitable |- !Album / Released !!Track List |- |''Vision'' (2011) || # "Rasta Bourgeois" # "Stewball" # "Trop Bon" # "Pinto (Mon Kôyoga Préféré)" # "C'est Magic" # "Tu Mens" # "Ma Tête" # "Vuvuzela" # "Bôgô" # "Ces Soi-Disant Amis" # "Massaya" # "Le Cha-Cha-Cha Du CFA" # "L'Autre Rive" # "Vuvuzela - Remix By Kore, Featuring Leslie" # "Vuvuzela Video"

References

External links

Official website

Sahel University, (2006). Alpha Blondy’s Actions.

Alpha Blondy Grammy Awards nomination; retrieved June 2007 from

PCCI Center, (2006). Alpha Blondy’s Engagements.

Alpha Blondy Music

Category:1953 births Category:Ivorian reggae musicians Category:Ivorian singers Category:Living people Category:People from Dimbokro

ar:ألفا بلوندي cs:Alpha Blondy de:Alpha Blondy el:Άλφα Μπλόντι es:Alpha Blondy fr:Alpha Blondy it:Alpha Blondy he:אלפא בלונדי sw:Alpha Blondy ht:Alpha Blondy hu:Alpha Blondy nl:Alpha Blondy ja:アルファ・ブロンディ pl:Alpha Blondy pt:Alpha Blondy ru:Альфа Блонди fi:Alpha Blondy sv:Alpha Blondy tr:Alpha Blondy

name	Charlie Chaplin
birth name
birth date	April 16, 1889
birth place	Walworth, London, United Kingdom
death date
death place	Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland
medium	Film, music, mimicry
nationality	British
active	1895–1976
genre	Slapstick, mime, visual comedy
influenced	Marcel MarceauThe Three StoogesFederico FelliniMilton BerlePeter SellersRowan AtkinsonJohnny DeppJacques Tati
spouse	1 child 2 children 8 children
Signature	Firma de Charles Chaplin.svg }}

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy ''Kid Auto Races at Venice'' in 1914. From the April 1914 one-reeler ''Twenty Minutes of Love'' onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing them, and from 1918 he was even composing the music for them. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, he co-founded United Artists in 1919.

Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the music hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s.

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th greatest male screen legend of all time. In 2008, Martin Sieff, in a review of the book ''Chaplin: A Life'', wrote: "Chaplin was not just 'big', he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I. Over the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler, he stayed on the job. ... It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most". George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin "the only genius to come out of the movie industry".

Biography

Early life in London (1889–1909)

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889, supposedly in East Street, Walworth, London, England. (In 2011, a letter, written to him in the 1970s, came to light, claiming that he had been born in a Gypsy caravan at Black Patch Park in Smethwick, Staffordshire.) His parents were entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father, Charles Spencer Chaplin Sr, was a vocalist and an actor while his mother, Hannah Chaplin, was a singer and an actress who went by the stage name Lilly Harley. They separated before Charlie was three. He learned singing from his parents. The 1891 census shows that his mother lived with Charlie and his older half-brother Sydney on Barlow Street, Walworth.

As a child, Chaplin also lived with his mother in various addresses in and around Kennington Road in Lambeth, including 3 Pownall Terrace, Chester Street and 39 Methley Street. His paternal grandmother's mother was from the Smith family of Romanichals, a fact of which he was extremely proud, though he described it in his autobiography as "the skeleton in our family cupboard". Charles Chaplin Sr. was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and his half-brother briefly lived with him and his mistress, Louise, at 287 Kennington Road. The half-brothers lived there while their mentally ill mother lived at Cane Hill Asylum at Coulsdon. Chaplin's father's mistress sent the boy to Archbishop Temple's Boys School. His father died of cirrhosis when Charlie was twelve in 1901. As of the 1901 Census, Chaplin resided at 94 Ferndale Road, Lambeth, as part of a troupe of young male dancers, The Eight Lancashire Lads, managed by William Jackson.

A larynx condition ended the singing career of Hannah Chaplin. After her re-admission to the Cane Hill Asylum, her son was left in the workhouse at Lambeth in south London, moving several weeks later to the Central London District School for paupers in Hanwell.

In 1903 Chaplin secured the role of Billy the pageboy in ''Sherlock Holmes'', written by William Gillette and starring English actor H. A. Saintsbury. Saintsbury took Chaplin under his wing and taught him to marshal his talents. In 1905 Gillette came to England with Marie Doro to debut his new play, ''Clarice'', but the play did not go well. When Gillette staged his one-act curtain-raiser, ''The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes'' as a joke on the British press, Chaplin was brought in from the provinces to play Billy. When ''Sherlock Holmes'' was substituted for ''Clarice'', Chaplin remained as Billy until the production ended on 2 December. During the run, Gillette coached Chaplin in his restrained acting style. It was during this engagement that the teenage Chaplin fell hopelessly in love with Doro, but his love went unrequited and Doro returned to America with Gillette when the production closed.

They met again in Hollywood eleven years later. She had forgotten his name but, when introduced to her, Chaplin told her of being silently in love with her and how she had broken his young heart. Over dinner, he laid it on thick about his unrequited love. Nothing came of it until two years later, when they were both in New York and she invited him to dinner and a drive. Instead, Chaplin noted, they simply “dined quietly in Marie’s apartment alone.” However, as Kenneth Lynn pointed out, “Chaplin would not have been Chaplin if he had simply dined quietly with Marie.”

First years in the United States (1910–1913)

Chaplin first toured the United States with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months in England, he returned to the U.S. for a second tour, arriving with the Karno Troupe on 2 October 1912. In the Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who later became known as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel shared a room in a boarding house. Laurel returned to England but Chaplin remained in the United States. In late 1913, Chaplin's act with the Karno Troupe was seen by Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee, and "Fatty" Arbuckle. Sennett hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company as a replacement for Ford Sterling. Chaplin had considerable difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After Chaplin's first film appearance, ''Making a Living'' was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Most historians agree it was Normand who persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance.

Sennett did not warm to Chaplin right away, and Chaplin believed Sennett intended to fire him following a disagreement with Normand. However, Chaplin's pictures were soon a success, and he became one of the biggest stars at Keystone.

Chaplin was given over to Normand, who directed and wrote a handful of his earliest films. Chaplin did not enjoy being directed by a woman, and they often disagreed. Eventually, the two worked out their differences and remained friends long after Chaplin left Keystone.

The Tramp (1914–1915)

The Tramp debuted during the silent film era in the Keystone comedy ''Kid Auto Races at Venice'' (released on 7 February 1914). However, Chaplin had devised the tramp costume for a film produced a few days earlier but released later (9 February 1914), ''Mabel's Strange Predicament''. Mack Sennett had requested that Chaplin "get into a comedy make-up". As Chaplin recalled in his autobiography: }}

"The Tramp" is a vagrant with the refined manners, clothes, and dignity of a gentleman. Arbuckle contributed his father-in-law's bowler hat ('derby') and his own pants (of generous proportions). Chester Conklin provided the little cutaway tailcoat, and Ford Sterling the size-14 shoes, which were so big, Chaplin had to wear each on the wrong foot to keep them on. He devised the moustache from a bit of crepe hair belonging to Mack Swain. The only thing Chaplin himself owned was the whangee cane.

Chaplin, with his Little Tramp character, quickly became the most popular star in Sennett's company of players. He immediately gained enormous popularity among cinema audiences. "The Tramp", Chaplin's principal character, was known as "Charlot" in the French-speaking world, Italy, Spain, Andorra, Portugal, Greece, Romania and Turkey, "Carlitos" in Brazil and Argentina, and "Der Vagabund" in Germany.

Chaplin continued to play the Tramp through dozens of short films and, later, feature-length productions (in only a handful of other productions did he play characters other than the Tramp). He portrayed a Keystone Kop in ''A Thief Catcher'' filmed 5–26 Jan 1914.

The Tramp was closely identified with the silent era, and was considered an international character; when the sound era began in the late 1920s, Chaplin refused to make a talkie featuring the character. The 1931 production ''City Lights'' featured no dialogue. Chaplin officially retired the character in the film ''Modern Times'' (released 5 February 1936), which appropriately ended with the Tramp walking down an endless highway toward the horizon. The film was only a partial talkie and is often called the last silent film. The Tramp remains silent until near the end of the film when, for the first time, his voice is finally heard, albeit only as part of a French/Italian-derived gibberish song.

Chaplin's early Keystones use the standard Mack Sennett formula of extreme physical comedy and exaggerated gestures. Chaplin's pantomime was subtler, more suitable to romantic and domestic farces than to the usual Keystone chases and mob scenes. The visual gags were pure Keystone, however; the tramp character would aggressively assault his enemies with kicks and bricks. Moviegoers loved this cheerfully earthy new comedian, even though critics warned that his antics bordered on vulgarity. Chaplin was soon entrusted with directing and editing his own films. He made 34 shorts for Sennett during his first year in pictures, as well as the landmark comedy feature ''Tillie's Punctured Romance''.

The Tramp was featured in the first film trailer to be exhibited in a U.S. cinema, a slide promotion developed by Nils Granlund, advertising manager for the Marcus Loew theatre chain, and shown at the Loew's Seventh Avenue Theatre in Harlem in 1914. In 1915, Chaplin signed a much more favourable contract with Essanay Studios, and further developed his cinematic skills, adding new levels of depth and pathos to the Keystone-style slapstick. Most of the Essanay films were more ambitious, running twice as long as the average Keystone comedy. Chaplin also developed his own stock company, including ingénue Edna Purviance and comic villains Leo White and Bud Jamison.

Chaplin's popularity continued to soar in the early years following the start of WW1. He started to become noticed by stars of the legitimate theatre. Minnie Maddern Fiske, one of the legends of the stage endorsed Chaplin's artistry in an article in Harper's Weekly(6 May 1915). At the start of her article Mrs. Fiske spoke, "...To the writer Charles Chaplin appears as a great comic artist, possessing inspirational powers and a technique as unfaltering as Rejane's. If it be treason to Art to say this, then let those exalted persons who allow culture to be defined only upon their own terms make the most of it..." In the following years Chaplin would make many friends from the world of the Broadway stage.

Chaplin was emerging as the supreme exponent of silent films, an emigrant himself from London. Chaplin's Tramp enacted the difficulties and humiliations of the immigrant underdog, the constant struggle at the bottom of the American heap and yet he triumphed over adversity without ever rising to the top, and thereby stayed in touch with his audience. Chaplin's films were also deliciously subversive. The bumbling officials enabled the immigrants to laugh at those they feared.

Pioneering film artist and global celebrity (1916–1918)

In 1916, the Mutual Film Corporation paid Chaplin US$670,000 to produce a dozen two-reel comedies. He was given near complete artistic control, and produced twelve films over an eighteen-month period that rank among the most influential comedy films in all cinema. Of his Mutual comedies, the best known include: ''Easy Street'', ''One A.M.'', ''The Pawnshop'', and ''The Adventurer''. Edna Purviance remained the leading lady, and Chaplin added Eric Campbell, Henry Bergman, and Albert Austin to his stock company; Campbell, a Gilbert and Sullivan veteran, provided superb villainy, and second bananas Bergman and Austin would remain with Chaplin for decades. Chaplin regarded the Mutual period as the happiest of his career, although he also had concerns that the films during that time were becoming formulaic owing to the stringent production schedule his contract required. Upon the U.S. entering World War I, Chaplin became a spokesman for Liberty Bonds with his close friend Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.

Most of the Chaplin films in circulation date from his Keystone, Essanay, and Mutual periods. After Chaplin assumed control of his productions in 1918 (and kept exhibitors and audiences waiting for them), entrepreneurs serviced the demand for Chaplin by bringing back his older comedies. The films were recut, retitled, and reissued again and again, first for theatres, then for the home-film market, and in recent years, for home video. Even Essanay was guilty of this practice, fashioning "new" Chaplin comedies from old film clips and out-takes. The twelve Mutual comedies were revamped as sound films in 1933, when producer Amadee J. Van Beuren added new orchestral scores and sound effects.

At the conclusion of the Mutual contract in 1917, Chaplin signed a contract with First National to produce eight two-reel films. First National financed and distributed these pictures (1918–23) but otherwise gave him complete creative control over production. Chaplin now had his own studio, and he could work at a more relaxed pace that allowed him to focus on quality. Although First National expected Chaplin to deliver short comedies like the celebrated Mutuals, Chaplin ambitiously expanded most of his personal projects into longer, feature-length films, including ''Shoulder Arms'' (1918), ''The Pilgrim'' (1923) and the feature-length classic ''The Kid'' (1921).

United Artists (1919–1939)

In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the United Artists film distribution company with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, all of whom were seeking to escape the growing power consolidation of film distributors and financiers in the developing Hollywood studio system. This move, along with complete control of his film production through his studio, assured Chaplin's independence as a film-maker. He served on the board of UA until the early 1950s.

All Chaplin's United Artists pictures were of feature length, beginning with the atypical drama in which Chaplin had only a brief cameo role, ''A Woman of Paris'' (1923). This was followed by the classic comedies ''The Gold Rush'' (1925) and ''The Circus'' (1928).

After the arrival of sound films, Chaplin continued to focus on silent films with a synchronised recorded score, which included sound effects and music with melodies based in popular songs or composed by him; ''The Circus'' (1928), ''City Lights'' (1931), and ''Modern Times'' (1936) were essentially silent films. ''City Lights'' has been praised for its mixture of comedy and sentimentality. Critic James Agee, for example, wrote in ''Life'' magazine in 1949 that the final scene in ''City Lights'' was the "greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid".

While ''Modern Times'' (1936) is a non-talkie, it does contain talk—usually coming from inanimate objects such as a radio or a TV monitor. This was done to help 1930s audiences, who were out of the habit of watching silent films, adjust to not hearing dialogue. ''Modern Times'' was the first film where Chaplin's voice is heard (in the nonsense song at the end, which Chaplin both performed and wrote the nonsense lyrics to). However, for most viewers it is still considered a silent film.

Although "talkies" became the dominant mode of film making soon after they were introduced in 1927, Chaplin resisted making such a film all through the 1930s. He considered cinema essentially a pantomimic art. He said: "Action is more generally understood than words. Like Chinese symbolism, it will mean different things according to its scenic connotation. Listen to a description of some unfamiliar object—an African warthog, for example; then look at a picture of the animal and see how surprised you are".

It is a tribute to Chaplin's versatility that he also has one film credit for choreography for the 1952 film ''Limelight'', and another as a singer for the title music of ''The Circus'' (1928). The best known of several songs he composed are "Smile", composed for the film ''Modern Times'' (1936) and given lyrics to help promote a 1950s revival of the film, famously covered by Nat King Cole. "This Is My Song" from Chaplin's last film, ''A Countess from Hong Kong'', was a number one hit in several different languages in the late 1960s (most notably the version by Petula Clark and discovery of an unreleased version in the 1990s recorded in 1967 by Judith Durham of The Seekers), and Chaplin's theme from ''Limelight'' was a hit in the 1950s under the title "Eternally." Chaplin's score to ''Limelight'' won an Academy Award in 1972; a delay in the film premiering in Los Angeles made it eligible decades after it was filmed. Chaplin also wrote scores for his earlier silent films when they were re-released in the sound era, notably ''The Kid'' for its 1971 re-release.

''The Great Dictator'' (1940)

Chaplin's first talking picture, ''The Great Dictator'' (1940), was an act of defiance against Nazism. It was filmed and released in the United States one year before the U.S. entry into World War II. Chaplin played the role of "Adenoid Hynkel", Dictator of Tomainia, modelled on German dictator Adolf Hitler, who was only four days his junior and sported a similar moustache. The film also showcased comedian Jack Oakie as "Benzino Napaloni", dictator of Bacteria, a jab at Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Paulette Goddard filmed with Chaplin again, depicting a woman in the ghetto. The film was seen as an act of courage in the political environment of the time, both for its ridicule of Nazism, for the portrayal of overt Jewish characters, and the depiction of their persecution. In addition to Hynkel, Chaplin also played a look-alike Jewish barber persecuted by the regime. The barber physically resembled the Tramp character.

At the conclusion, the two characters Chaplin portrayed swapped positions through a complex plot, and he dropped out of his comic character to address the audience directly in a speech denouncing dictatorship, greed, hate, and intolerance, in favour of liberty and human brotherhood.

The film was nominated for Academy awards for Best Picture (producer), Best Original Screenplay (writer) and Best Actor.

McCarthy era

Although Chaplin had his major successes in the United States and was a resident from 1914 to 1953, he always maintained a neutral nationalistic stance. During the era of McCarthyism, Chaplin was accused of "un-American activities" as a suspected communist and J. Edgar Hoover, who had instructed the FBI to keep extensive secret files on him, tried to end his United States residency. FBI pressure on Chaplin grew after his 1942 campaign for a second European front in the war and reached a critical level in the late 1940s, when Congressional figures threatened to call him as a witness in hearings. This was never done, probably from fear of Chaplin's ability to lampoon the investigators.

In 1952, Chaplin left the US for what was intended as a brief trip home to the United Kingdom for the London premiere of ''Limelight''. Hoover learned of the trip and negotiated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke Chaplin's re-entry permit, exiling Chaplin so he could not return for his alleged political leanings. Chaplin decided not to re-enter the United States, writing: "Since the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America's yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States."

That Chaplin was unprepared to remain abroad, or that the revocation of his right to re-enter the United States by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was a surprise to him, may be apocryphal: An anecdote in some contradiction is recorded during a broad interview with Richard Avedon, celebrated New York portraitist.

Avedon is credited with the last portrait of the entertainer to be taken before his departure to Europe and therefore, the last photograph of him as a singularly “American icon.” According to Avedon, Chaplin telephoned him at his studio in New York City, while on a layover for transportation connections before the final leg of his travel to England. The photographer considered the impromptu self-introduction a prank and angrily answered his caller with the riposte, “If you’re Charlie Chaplin, I’m Franklin Roosevelt!” To mollify Avedon, Chaplin assured the photographer of his authenticity and added the comment, “If you want to take my picture, you better do it now. They are coming after me and I won’t be back. I leave ... (imminently).” Avedon interrupted his production commitments to take Chaplin’s portrait the next day, and never personally saw Chaplin again.

Chaplin then made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife, to receive an Honorary Oscar, and also to discuss how his films would be re-released and marketed.

Final works (1957–1976)

Chaplin's final two films were made in London: ''A King in New York'' (1957) in which he starred, wrote, directed and produced; and ''A Countess from Hong Kong'' (1967), which he directed, produced, and wrote. The latter film stars Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando, and Chaplin made his final on-screen appearance in a brief cameo role as a seasick steward. He also composed the music for both films with the theme song from ''A Countess From Hong Kong,'' "This is My Song", reaching number one in the UK as sung by Petula Clark. Chaplin also compiled a film ''The Chaplin Revue'' from three First National films ''A Dog's Life'' (1918), ''Shoulder Arms'' (1918) and ''The Pilgrim'' (1923) for which he composed the music and recorded an introductory narration. As well as directing these final films, Chaplin also wrote ''My Autobiography,'' between 1959 and 1963, which was published in 1964.

In his pictorial autobiography ''My Life In Pictures'', published in 1974, Chaplin indicated that he had written a screenplay for his daughter, Victoria; entitled ''The Freak'', the film would have cast her as an angel. According to Chaplin, a script was completed and pre-production rehearsals had begun on the film (the book includes a photograph of Victoria in costume), but were halted when Victoria married. "I mean to make it some day," Chaplin wrote. However, his health declined steadily in the 1970s which hampered all hopes of the film ever being produced.

From 1969 until 1976, Chaplin wrote original music compositions and scores for his silent pictures and re-released them. He composed the scores of all his First National shorts: ''The Idle Class'' in 1971 (paired with The Kid for re-release in 1972), ''A Day's Pleasure'' in 1973, ''Pay Day'' in 1972, ''Sunnyside'' in 1974, and of his feature length films firstly ''The Circus'' in 1969 and ''The Kid'' in 1971. Chaplin worked with music associate Eric James whilst composing all his scores.

Chaplin's last completed work was the score for his 1923 film ''A Woman of Paris'', which was completed in 1976, by which time Chaplin was extremely frail, even finding communication difficult.

Death (1977)

Chaplin's robust health began to slowly fail in the late 1960s, after the completion of his final film ''A Countess from Hong Kong'', and more rapidly after he received his Academy Award in 1972. By 1977, he had difficulty communicating, and was using a wheelchair. Chaplin died in his sleep in Vevey, Switzerland on Christmas Day 1977.

Chaplin was interred in Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery, Switzerland. On 1 March 1978, his corpse was stolen by a small group of Swiss mechanics in an attempt to extort money from his family. The plot failed; the robbers were captured, and the corpse was recovered eleven weeks later near Lake Geneva. His body was reburied under of concrete to prevent further attempts.

Filmmaking techniques

Chaplin never spoke more than cursorily about his filmmaking methods, claiming such a thing would be tantamount to a magician spoiling his own illusion. In fact, until he began making spoken dialogue films with ''The Great Dictator'' in 1940, Chaplin never shot from a completed script. The method he developed, once his Essanay contract gave him the freedom to write for and direct himself, was to start from a vague premise—for example "Charlie enters a health spa" or "Charlie works in a pawn shop." Chaplin then had sets constructed and worked with his stock company to improvise gags and "business" around them, almost always working the ideas out on film. As ideas were accepted and discarded, a narrative structure would emerge, frequently requiring Chaplin to reshoot an already-completed scene that might have otherwise contradicted the story. Chaplin's unique filmmaking techniques became known only after his death, when his rare surviving outtakes and cut sequences were carefully examined in the 1983 British documentary ''Unknown Chaplin''.

This is one reason why Chaplin took so much longer to complete his films than his rivals did. In addition, Chaplin was an incredibly exacting director, showing his actors exactly how he wanted them to perform and shooting scores of takes until he had the shot he wanted. Animator Chuck Jones, who lived near Charlie Chaplin's Lone Star studio as a boy, remembered his father saying he watched Chaplin shoot a scene more than a hundred times until he was satisfied with it. This combination of story improvisation and relentless perfectionism—which resulted in days of effort and thousands of feet of film being wasted, all at enormous expense—often proved very taxing for Chaplin, who in frustration would often lash out at his actors and crew, keep them waiting idly for hours or, in extreme cases, shutting down production altogether.

Comparison with other silent comics

Since the 1960s, Chaplin's films have been compared to those of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd (the other two great silent film comedians of the time), especially among the loyal fans of each comic.

The three had different styles: Chaplin had a strong affinity for sentimentality and pathos (which was popular in the 1920s), Lloyd was renowned for his everyman persona and 1920s optimism, and Keaton adhered to onscreen stoicism with a cynical tone more suited to modern audiences.

Commercially, Chaplin made some of the highest-grossing films in the silent era; ''The Gold Rush'' is the fifth with US$4.25 million and ''The Circus'' is the seventh with US$3.8 million. However, Chaplin's films combined made about US$10.5 million while Harold Lloyd's grossed US$15.7 million. Lloyd was far more prolific, releasing twelve feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just three. Buster Keaton's films were not nearly as commercially successful as Chaplin's or Lloyd's even at the height of his popularity, and only received belated critical acclaim in the late 1950s and 1960s.

There is evidence that Chaplin and Keaton, who both got their start in vaudeville, thought highly of one another: Keaton stated in his autobiography that Chaplin was the greatest comedian that ever lived, and the greatest comedy director, whereas Chaplin welcomed Keaton to United Artists in 1925, advised him against his disastrous move to MGM in 1928, and for his last American film, ''Limelight'', wrote a part specifically for Keaton as his first on-screen comedy partner since 1915.

Composer and songwriter

Chaplin wrote or co-wrote the scores and songs for many of his films. "Smile", which he composed for his film, ''Modern Times'', hit number 2 on the UK charts when sung by Nat King Cole in the 1950s. It was also Michael Jackson's favourite song. "This Is My Song", written and composed by Chaplin for his film, ''A Countess from Hong Kong'', hit number 1 on the UK charts when sung by Petula Clark in the 1960s. In 1973, Chaplin won the Oscar for Best Film Score for his film, ''Limelight''. Chaplin was not the only member of his family with musical talent; his nephew, Spencer Dryden was the drummer for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted band, Jefferson Airplane.

Politics

Chaplin's political sympathies always lay with the left. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression typically did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from the Tramp's plight in poverty and his run-ins with the law, but his 1930s films were more openly political. ''Modern Times'' depicts workers and poor people in dismal conditions. The final dramatic speech in ''The Great Dictator'', which was critical of following patriotic nationalism without question, and his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II were controversial.

Chaplin declined to support the war effort as he had done for World War I which led to public anger, although his two sons saw service in the Army in Europe. For most of World War II he was fighting serious criminal and civil charges related to his involvement with actress Joan Barry (see below). After the war, his 1947 black comedy, ''Monsieur Verdoux'' showed a critical view of capitalism. Chaplin's final American film, ''Limelight'', was less political and more autobiographical in nature. His following European-made film, ''A King in New York'' (1957), satirised the political persecution and paranoia that had forced him to leave the U.S. five years earlier.

On religion, Chaplin wrote in his autobiography, “In Philadelphia, I inadvertently came upon an edition of Robert Ingersoll's Essays and Lectures. This was an exciting discovery; his atheism confirmed my own belief that the horrific cruelty of the Old Testament was degrading to the human spirit.”

Other controversies

During World War I, Chaplin was criticised in the British press for not joining the Army. He had in fact presented himself for service, but was denied for being too small at 5'5" and underweight. Chaplin raised substantial funds for the war effort during war bond drives not only with public speaking at rallies but also by making, at his own expense, ''The Bond'', a comedic propaganda film used in 1918. The lingering controversy may have prevented Chaplin from receiving a knighthood in the 1930s. A 1916 propaganda short film ''Zepped'' with Chaplin was discovered in 2009.

For Chaplin's entire career, some level of controversy existed over claims of Jewish ancestry. Nazi propaganda in the 1930s and 40s prominently portrayed him as Jewish (named Karl Tonstein) relying on articles published in the U.S. press before, and FBI investigations of Chaplin in the late 1940s also focused on Chaplin's ethnic origins. There is no documentary evidence of Jewish ancestry for Chaplin himself. For his entire public life, he fiercely refused to challenge or refute claims that he was Jewish, saying that to do so would always "play directly into the hands of anti-Semites." Although baptised in the Church of England, Chaplin was thought to be an agnostic for most of his life.

Chaplin's lifelong attraction to younger women remains another enduring source of interest to some. His biographers have attributed this to a teenage infatuation with Hetty Kelly, whom he met in Britain while performing in the music hall, and which possibly defined his feminine ideal. Chaplin clearly relished the role of discovering and closely guiding young female stars; with the exception of Mildred Harris, all of his marriages and most of his major relationships began in this manner.

Personal life and family

Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Glendale, California, seven years after she was brought to the U.S. by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden (1892–1957), was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.

The South African duo Locnville, Andrew and Brian Chaplin, are related to Chaplin (their grandfather was Chaplin's first cousin).

Relationships

Hetty Kelly was Chaplin's first love, a dancer with whom he fell in love when she was fifteen and almost married when he was nineteen, in 1908. It is said Chaplin fell madly in love with her and asked her to marry him. When she refused, Chaplin suggested it would be best if they did not see each other again; he was reportedly crushed when she agreed. Years later, her memory would remain an obsession with Chaplin. He was devastated in 1921 when he learned that she had died of influenza during the 1918 flu pandemic.

thumb|left|Chaplin with Edna Purviance in ''The Immigrant'' (1917) Edna Purviance was Chaplin's first major leading lady after Mabel Normand. Purviance and Chaplin were involved in a close romantic relationship during the production of his Essanay and Mutual films in 1916–1917. The romance seems to have ended by 1918, and Chaplin's marriage to Mildred Harris in late 1918 ended any possibility of reconciliation. Purviance would continue as leading lady in Chaplin's films until 1923, and would remain on Chaplin's payroll until her death in 1958. She and Chaplin spoke warmly of one another for the rest of their lives.

right|thumb|upright|Mildred Harris, c. 1918–1920 Mildred Harris: On 23 October 1918, Chaplin, age 29, married the popular child actress, Harris, who was 16 at the time. They had one son, Norman Spencer "The Little Mouse" Chaplin, born on 7 July 1919, who died three days later and is interred under the name ''The Little Mouse'' at Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood California. Chaplin separated from Harris by late 1919, moving back into the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The couple divorced in November 1920, with Harris getting some of their community property and a US$100,000 settlement. Chaplin admitted that he "was not in love, now that [he] was married [he] wanted to be and wanted the marriage to be a success." During the divorce, Chaplin claimed Harris had an affair with noted actress of the time Alla Nazimova, rumoured to be fond of seducing young actresses.

Pola Negri: Chaplin was involved in a very public relationship and engagement with the Polish actress, Negri, in 1922–23, after she arrived in Hollywood to star in films. The stormy on-off engagement was halted after about nine months, but in many ways it foreshadowed the modern stereotypes of Hollywood star relationships. Chaplin's public involvement with Negri was unique in his public life. By comparison he strove to keep his other romances during this period very discreet and private (usually without success). Many biographers have concluded the affair with Negri was largely for publicity purposes.

Marion Davies: In 1924, during the time he was involved with the underage Lita Grey, Chaplin was rumoured to have had a fling with actress Davies, companion of William Randolph Hearst. Davies and Chaplin were both present on Hearst's yacht the weekend preceding the mysterious death of Thomas Harper Ince. Charlie allegedly tried to persuade her to leave Hearst and remain with him, but she refused and stayed by Hearst's side until his death in 1951. Chaplin made a rare cameo appearance in Davies' 1928 film ''Show People'', and by some accounts supposedly continued an affair with her until 1931.

Lita Grey: Chaplin first met Grey during the filming of ''The Kid''. Three years later, at age 35, he became involved with the then 16-year-old Grey during preparations for ''The Gold Rush'' in which she was to star as the female lead. They married on 26 November 1924, after she became pregnant (a development that resulted in her being removed from the cast of the film). They had two sons, the actors Charles Chaplin, Jr. (1925–1968) and Sydney Chaplin (1926–2009). The marriage was a disaster, with the couple hopelessly mismatched. The couple divorced on 22 August 1927. Their extraordinarily bitter divorce had Chaplin paying Grey a then-record-breaking US$825,000 settlement, on top of almost one million dollars in legal costs. The stress of the sensational divorce, compounded by a federal tax dispute, allegedly turned his hair white. The Chaplin biographer Joyce Milton asserted in ''Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin'' that the Grey-Chaplin marriage was the inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov's 1950s novel ''Lolita''.

Merna Kennedy: Lita Grey's friend, Kennedy was a dancer who Chaplin hired as the lead actress in ''The Circus'' (1928). It is rumoured that the two had an affair during shooting. Grey used the rumoured infidelity in her divorce proceedings.

Georgia Hale was Lita Grey's replacement on ''The Gold Rush''. In the documentary series, ''Unknown Chaplin'', (directed and written by film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill), Hale, in a 1980s interview states that she had idolised Chaplin since childhood and that the then-19-year-old actress and Chaplin began an affair that continued for several years, which she details in her memoir, ''Charlie Chaplin: Intimate Close-Ups.'' During production of Chaplin's film ''City Lights'' in 1929–30, Hale, who by then was Chaplin's closest companion, was called in to replace Virginia Cherrill as the flower girl. Seven minutes of test footage survives from this recasting, and is included on the 2003 DVD release of the film, but economics forced Chaplin to rehire Cherrill. In discussing the situation in ''Unknown Chaplin'', Hale states that her relationship with Chaplin was as strong as ever during filming. Their romance apparently ended sometime after Chaplin's return from his world tour in 1933.

Louise Brooks was a chorine in the ''Ziegfeld Follies'' when she met Chaplin. He had gone to New York for the opening there of ''The Gold Rush''. For two months in the summer of 1925, the two cavorted together at the Ritz, and with film financier A.C. Blumenthal and Brooks' fellow Ziegfeld girl Peggy Fears in Blumenthal's penthouse suite at the Ambassador Hotel. Brooks was with Chaplin when he spent four hours watching a musician torture a violin in a Lower East Side restaurant, an act he would recreate in ''Limelight''.

May Reeves was originally hired to be Chaplin's secretary on his 1931–1932 extended trip to Europe, dealing mostly with reading his personal correspondence. She worked only one morning, and then was introduced to Chaplin, who was instantly infatuated with her. May became his constant companion and lover on the trip, much to the disgust of Chaplin's brother, Syd. After Reeves also became involved with Syd, Chaplin ended the relationship and she left his entourage. Reeves chronicled her short time with Chaplin in her book, "The Intimate Charlie Chaplin".

thumb|right|Chaplin and Paulette Goddard in ''The Great Dictator'' (1940) Paulette Goddard: Chaplin and actress Goddard were involved in a romantic and professional relationship between 1932 and 1940, with Goddard living with Chaplin in his Beverly Hills home for most of this time. Chaplin gave her starring roles in ''Modern Times'' and ''The Great Dictator''. Refusal to clarify their marital status is often claimed to have eliminated Goddard from final consideration for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in ''Gone with the Wind''. After the relationship ended in 1940, Chaplin and Goddard made public statements that they had been secretly married in 1936; but these claims were likely a mutual effort to prevent any lasting damage to Goddard's career. In any case, their relationship ended amicably in 1942, with Goddard being granted a settlement. Goddard went on to a major career in films at Paramount in the 1940s, working several times with Cecil B. DeMille. Like Chaplin, she lived her later life in Switzerland, dying in 1990.

Joan Barry (1920–1996): In 1942, Chaplin had a brief affair with Barry, whom he was considering for a starring role in a proposed film, but the relationship ended when she began harassing him and displaying signs of severe mental illness (not unlike his mother). Chaplin's brief involvement with Barry proved to be a nightmare for him. After having a child, she filed a paternity suit against him in 1943. Although blood tests proved Chaplin was not the father of Barry's child, Barry's attorney, Joseph Scott, convinced the court that the tests were inadmissible as evidence, and Chaplin was ordered to support the child. The injustice of the ruling later led to a change in California law to allow blood tests as evidence. Federal prosecutors also brought Mann Act charges against Chaplin related to Barry in 1944, of which he was acquitted. Chaplin's public image in America was gravely damaged by these sensational trials. Barry was institutionalised in 1953 after she was found walking the streets barefoot, carrying a pair of baby sandals and a child's ring, and murmuring: "This is magic". Chaplin's second wife, Lita Grey, later asserted that Chaplin had paid corrupt government officials to tamper with the blood test results. She further stated that "there is no doubt that she [Carol Ann] was his child." Oona O'Neill: During Chaplin's legal trouble over the Barry affair, he met O'Neill, daughter of Eugene O'Neill, and married her on 16 June 1943. He was fifty-four; she had just turned eighteen. The marriage produced eight children; their last child, Christopher, was born when Chaplin was 73 years old. Oona survived Chaplin by fourteen years, and died from pancreatic cancer in 1991.

Children

! Child	! Birth	! Death	! Chaplin's Age at Time of Birth	! Mother	! Grandchildren
Norman Spencer Chaplin	7 July 1919	10 July 1919	30	Mildred Harris
	5 May 1925	20 March 1968	36		Susan Maree Chaplin (b 1959)
	31 March 1926	3 March 2009	36	Stephan Chaplin (b 19xx)
Carol Ann Barry Chaplin (Disputed)	2 October 1943		54		Unknown
	31 July 1944		55		Shane Saura Chaplin (b 1974) Oona Castilla Chaplin (b 1986)
	7 March 1946		56	Kathleen Chaplin (b. 1975) Dolores Chaplin (b. 1979) Carmen Chaplin (b 19xx) George Chaplin (b 19xx)
	28 March 1949		59	Julien Ronet (b. 1980)
Victoria Chaplin	19 May 1951		62	Aurélia Thiérrée (b. 1971) James Thiérrée (b. 1974)
	23 August 1953		64	Kiera Chaplin (b. 1982)
Jane Cecil Chaplin	23 May 1957		68
Annette Emily Chaplin	3 December 1959		70	Orson Salkind (b. 1986) Osceola Salkind (b. 1994)
	6 July 1962		73

Awards and recognition

Chaplin was knighted in 1975 at the age of 85 as a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. The honour had been first proposed in 1931. Knighthood was suggested again in 1956, but was vetoed after a Foreign Office report raised concerns over Chaplin's purported "communist" views and his moral behaviour in marrying two 16 year girls; it was felt that honouring him would damage both the reputation of the British honours system and relations with the United States.

Among other recognitions, Chaplin was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1970; that he had not been among those originally honoured in 1961 caused some controversy. Chaplin's Swiss mansion is to be opened as a museum tracing his life from the music halls in London to Hollywood fame.

A statue of Charlie Chaplin was made by John Doubleday, to stand in Leicester Square in London. It was unveiled by Sir Ralph Richardson in 1981. A bronze statue of him is at Waterville, County Kerry.

Academy Awards

Chaplin received three Academy Awards in his lifetime: one for Best Original Score, and two Honorary Awards. However, during his active years as a filmmaker, Chaplin expressed disdain for the Academy Awards; his son Charles Jr wrote that Chaplin invoked the ire of the Academy in the 1930s by jokingly using his 1929 Oscar as a doorstop. This may help explain why ''City Lights'' and ''Modern Times,'' considered by several polls to be two of the greatest of all motion pictures, were not nominated for a single Academy Award.

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony: When the first Oscars were awarded on 16 May 1929, the voting audit procedures that now exists had not yet been put into place, and the categories were still very fluid. Chaplin's ''The Circus'' was set to be heavily recognised, as Chaplin had originally been nominated for Best Production, Best Director in a Comedy Picture, Best Actor and Best Writing (Original Story). However, the Academy decided to withdraw his name from all the competitive categories and instead give him a Special Award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing ''The Circus''". The only other film to receive a Special Award that year was ''The Jazz Singer''.

The 13th Academy Awards ceremony: In 1941, ''The Great Dictator'' was nominated for five awards, including two for Chaplin: Best Writing and Best Actor. Chaplin lost out on both counts. For writing, he lost to Preston Sturges for ''The Great McGinty'', and for acting to James Stewart for ''The Philadelphia Story''.

The 20th Academy Awards ceremony: In 1948, Chaplin's screenplay for ''Monsieur Verdoux'' was nominated, but the award went instead to Sidney Sheldon for ''The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer''.

The 44th Academy Awards ceremony: Chaplin's second Oscar was awarded forty-three years after his first, in 1972. Chaplin came out of exile to accept the Honorary Award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century". Stepping onto the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Chaplin received the longest standing ovation in Academy Award history, lasting a full twelve minutes.

The 45th Academy Awards ceremony: In 1973, Chaplin's film ''Limelight'' was honoured with an Oscar for Best Original Score. Though the film had originally been released in 1952, due to Chaplin's political difficulties at the time, the film did not play for one week in Los Angeles, and thus did not meet the criterion for nomination until it was re-released in 1972.

Legacy

Chaplin's "tramp" character is possibly the most imitated on all levels of entertainment. Chaplin once entered a "Chaplin look-alike" competition and didn't even make the final round. The influence of his 'Tramp' character could be seen on other artists and media providers. Beginning early on there were many tributes, and parodies made. Early examples include; E. C. Segar's 1916 comic strip "Charlie Chaplin's Comedy Capers". Segar would later become famous for his character Popeye, and his 'Chaplin' comics would later be collected in 1917 into five books, precursors of the later comic book format. Two different animated cartoon series also starred 'Charlie' a tramp character, the first a series of nine shorts from 1916 by Movca Film Service. And later ten films by the Pat Sullivan Studio from 1918–1919, which would later use the 'Charlie/Charley' gestures to create Felix the Cat, the character made one later appearance in one of Felix's 1923 cartoons "Felix in Hollywood". From 1917 to 1918, silent film actor Billy West made more than 20 films as a comedian precisely imitating Chaplin's tramp character, makeup and costume.

The third of composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann's 1929–30 composition ''Wachsfigurenkabinett: Fünf kleine Opern (Waxworks: Five Little Operas)'' is entitled 'Chaplin-Ford-Trot', and features the character of Charlie Chaplin (in a speaking rather than operatic role).

Kamal Haasan moulded his character "Chaplin Chellappa" on Chaplin in the Tamil film Punnagai Mannan

In 1985, Chaplin was honoured with his image on a postage stamp of the United Kingdom, and in 1994 he appeared on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

IBM ran a series of commercials for their personal computers during the 1980s featuring a Chaplin impersonator.

John Woo directed a parody film of Chaplin's "The Kid" called Hua ji shi dai (1981), also known as "Laughing Times."

A minor planet, 3623 Chaplin, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina in 1981, is named after Chaplin.

In 1992, a film was made about Chaplin's life entitled ''Chaplin'', directed by Oscar-winner Richard Attenborough, and starring Robert Downey, Jr., in an Oscar-nominated performance, and Geraldine Chaplin playing the part of Charlie Chaplin's mother, her own grandmother.

In 2001, British comedian Eddie Izzard played Chaplin in Peter Bogdanovich's film, ''The Cat's Meow'', which speculated about the still-unsolved death of producer Thomas H. Ince during a yachting party thrown by William Randolph Hearst, of which Chaplin was a guest.

On 15 April 2011, a day before his 122nd birthday anniversary, Google celebrated this with a special Google Doodle video on its global and other country-wide homepages.

Filmography and current rights issues

Chaplin wrote, directed, and starred in dozens of feature films and short subjects. Highlights include ''The Immigrant'' (1917), ''The Gold Rush'' (1925), ''City Lights'' (1931), ''Modern Times'' (1936), and ''The Great Dictator'' (1940), all of which have been selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry. Three of these films made the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies and AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) lists: ''The Gold Rush'', ''City Lights'', and ''Modern Times''.

A listing of the dozens of Chaplin films and alternate versions can be found in the Ted Okuda-David Maska book ''Charlie Chaplin at Keystone and Essanay: Dawn of the Tramp''. Thanks to The Chaplin Keystone Project, efforts to produce definitive versions of Chaplin's pre-1918 short films have come to a successful end: after ten years of research and clinical international cooperation work, 34 Keystone films have been fully restored and published in October 2010 on a 4-DVD box set. All twelve Mutual films were restored in 1975 by archivist David Shepard and Blackhawk Films, and new restorations with even more footage were released on DVD in 2006.

Today, nearly all of Chaplin's output is owned by Roy Export S.A.S. in Paris, which enforces the library's copyrights and decides how and when this material can be released. French company MK2 acts as worldwide distribution agent for the Export company. In the U.S. as of 2010, distribution is handled under license by Janus Films, with home video releases from Criterion Collection, affiliated with Janus.

See also

List of people on the cover of Time magazine (1920s)

References

Further reading

Charles Chaplin: ''My Autobiography''. Simon & Schuster, 1964.

Charles Chaplin: ''Die Geschichte meines Lebens''. Fischer-Verlag, 1964. (germ.)

Charlie Chaplin ''Die Wurzeln meiner Komik'' in: Jüdische Allgemeine Wochenzeitung, 3 March 1967, gekürzt: wieder ebd. 12.4. 2006, S. 54 (germ.)

''Chaplin: A Life'' by Stephen Weissman Arcade Publishing 2008.

Charles Chaplin: ''My Life in Pictures''. Bodley Head, 1974.

Alistair Cooke: ''Six Men''. Harmondsworth, 1978.

S. Frind: Die Sprache als Propagandainstrument des Nationalsozialismus, in: Muttersprache, 76. Jg., 1966, S. 129–135. (germ.)

Georgia Hale, ''Charlie Chaplin: Intimate Close-Ups'', edited by Heather Kiernan. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 1995 and 1999. ISBN 978-1-57886-004-3 (1999 edition).

Victor Klemperer: ''LTI – Notizbuch eines Philologen.'' Leipzig: Reclam, 1990. ISBN 978-3-379-00125-0; Frankfurt am Main (19. A.) 2004 (germ.)

''Charlie Chaplin at Keystone and Essanay: Dawn of the Tramp'', Ted Okuda & David Maska. iUniverse, New York, 2005.

''Chaplin: His Life and Art'', David Robinson. McGraw-Hill, second edition 2001.

''Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema'', Jeffrey Vance. Abrams, New York, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8109-4532-6

''Charlie Chaplin: A Photo Diary'', Michel Comte & Sam Stourdze. Steidl, first edition, hardcover, 359pp, ISBN 978-3-88243-792-8, 2002.

''Chaplin in Pictures'', Sam Stourdze (ed.), texts by Patrice Blouin, Christian Delage and Sam Stourdze, NBC Editions, ISBN 978-2-913986-03-9, 2005.

''Double Exposure: Charlie Chaplin as Author and Celebrity'', Jonathan Goldman. M/C Journal 7.5.

''Charlie Chaplin's World of Comedy'', Wes D. Gehring, 1980.

External links

Official sites

* Charlie Chaplin Website

* Charlie Chaplin Comedy Film Festival Website

* The Charlie Chaplin Archive

Biography

* Charlie Chaplin Biography

* Charlie Chaplin's Golden Silence

* Chaplin A Life: 40 Photo-Essays

* Works by or about Charlie Chaplin at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)

Filmography

* Films by, about or starring Charlie Chaplin at the Internet Archive

** More Chaplin films at the Internet Archive

Others

* Obituary, NY Times, 26 December 1977 ''Chaplin's Little Tramp, an Everyman Trying to Gild Cage of Life, Enthralled World''

* The TIME 100: Charlie Chaplin

* Chaplin films at ednapurviance.org

* About Chaplin UK

* Top 10 Charlie Chaplin Movies

Category:1889 births Category:1977 deaths Category:19th-century English people Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:Actors awarded British knighthoods Category:Actors from London Category:Articles containing video clips Category:Autobiographers Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:British expatriates in the United States Category:British Romani people Category:Cinema pioneers Category:English agnostics Category:English child actors Category:English comedians Category:English expatriates in Switzerland Category:English film actors Category:English film directors Category:English screenwriters Category:English silent film actors Category:English socialists Category:Erasmus Prize winners Category:Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:McCarthyism Category:Mimes Category:Music hall performers Category:Romani actors Category:Romani film directors Category:Short film directors Category:Silent film comedians Category:Slapstick comedians Category:Vaudeville performers Category:Children of Entertainers

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This is a list of people whose names in English are commonly appended with the phrase "''the Great''", or who were called that or an equivalent phrase in their own language. Other languages have their own suffixes such as ''e Bozorg'' and ''e azam'' in Persian and Urdu respectively.

In Persia, the title "the Great" at first seems to be a colloquial version of the Old Persian title "Great King". This title was first used by the conqueror Cyrus II of Persia.

The Persian title was inherited by Alexander III of Macedon (336–323 BC) when he conquered the Persian Empire, and the epithet "Great" eventually became personally associated with him. The first reference (in a comedy by Plautus) assumes that everyone knew who "Alexander the Great" was; however, there is no earlier evidence that Alexander III of Macedon was called "''the Great''".

The early Seleucid kings, who succeeded Alexander in Persia, used "Great King" in local documents, but the title was most notably used for Antiochus the Great (223–187 BC).

Later rulers and commanders began to use the epithet "the Great" as a personal name, like the Roman general Pompey. Others received the surname retrospectively, like the Carthaginian Hanno and the Indian emperor Ashoka the Great. Once the surname gained currency, it was also used as an honorific surname for people without political careers, like the philosopher Albert the Great.

As there are no objective criteria for "greatness", the persistence of later generations in using the designation greatly varies. For example, Louis XIV of France was often referred to as "The Great" in his lifetime but is rarely called such nowadays, while Frederick II of Prussia is still called "The Great". A later Hohenzollern - Wilhelm I - was often called "The Great" in the time of his grandson Wilhelm II, but rarely later.

Rulers

Abbas I of Persia (1571-1629), Shah of Iran

Akbar (1542-1605), ruler of the Mughal Empire of South Asia, mainly India

Alain I of Albret (1440-1522), French aristocrat

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), King of Macedonia, Persia, Greece, Egypt, and all of Mesopotamia

Alexander I of Georgia (1386–1446), King of Georgia

Alfonso III of León (c. 848-910), King of León, Galicia and Asturias

Alfred the Great (848/849-899), King of Wessex

Antiochus III the Great (c. 241–187 BC), ruler of the Seleucid Empire

Ashoka the Great (c. 304–232 BC), Indian emperor of the Maurya dynasty

Ashot I of Iberia “the Great”(died 826/830), presiding prince of Iberia (modern Georgia),

Askia Mohammad I (c. 1442–1538), ruler of the Songhai Empire

Bhumibol Adulyadej (born 1927), King of Thailand

Bolesław I Chrobry (967-1025), sometimes called "the Great", first King of Poland

Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lotharingia (also listed in the following section)

Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (1736-1809), founder and ruler of the Rattanakosin Kingdom (in what is now Thailand)

Cnut the Great (c. 985 or 995-1035), King of Denmark, England, Norway and parts of Sweden

Casimir III the Great (1310-1370), King of Poland

Catherine the Great (1729-1796), Empress of Russian

Chandragupta II (reigned 375-413/415), also known as Vikramaditya, ruler of the Gupta empire in India

Charlemagne (died 814), King of the Franks and Emperor of the Romans

Chulalongkorn (1853-1910), King of Siam (now Thailand)

Chlothar II (584-629), King of Neustria and King of the Franks

Conrad, Margrave of Meissen (c. 1097-1157), Margrave of Meissen

Constantine I (c. 272-337), Roman Emperor

Cyrus the Great (c. 600 BC or 576 BC–530 BC), founder and ruler of the Persian or Achaemenid Empire

Darius the Great (550 – 486 BC), third ruler of the Persian Empire

Devapala (died 850), ruler of the Pala Empire in the Indian subcontinent

Dionysius I, Greek tyrant of Syracuse

Ferdinand I of León and Castile (c. 1015–1065), King of León and Count of Castile

Frederick the Great (1712-1786), King of Prussia

Genghis Khan (1162?-1227), founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire

Gero (c. 900–965), ruler of Marca Geronis, a very large march in Europe

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1594-1632), King of Sweden, founder of the Swedish Empire, and noted military leader

Gwanggaeto the Great, King of Goguryeo, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea

Hanno the Great, the name of three leaders of Carthage, in the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd centuries BC

Henry I, Duke of Burgundy (946–1002)

Henry IV of France (1553-1610), King of France and King of Navarre

Herod the Great (73/74 BC-4 BC), King of Judea

Hugh the Great (898-956), Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris

Hugh Magnus of France (1007-1025), co-King of France

Hugh I, Count of Vermandois (1057-1101)

Humphrey I de Bohun (died c. 1123), Anglo-Norman aristocrat

Ivan III of Russia (1440-1505), Tsar of Russia

John I of Portugal (1358-1433), King of Portugal and the Algarve

John II of Aragon (1398-1479), King of Aragon and, through his wife, King of Navarre

Justinian I (483-565), Byzantine Emperor

Kamehameha I (c. 1758-1819), first King of Hawai'i

Kanishka (died c. 127), ruler of the Kushan Empire in Central Asia and parts of India

Kvirike III of Kakheti (1010-1029), King of Kakheti in eastern Georgia

Kublai Khan (1215-1294), Mongol ruler in the 13th century and Emperor of China; founder of the Yuan Dynasty

Llywelyn the Great (c. 1172–1240), Prince of Gwynedd and de facto ruler of most of Wales

Louis I of Hungary (1326-1382), King of Hungary, Croatia and Poland

Mangrai the Great (1238-1317), Lanna, northern Thailand

Emperor Meiji (1852-1912), Emperor of Japan

Mircea I of Wallachia (1355–1418)

Mithridates II of Parthia (died 88 BC), ruler of the Parthian Empire (in present day Iran)

Mithridates VI of Pontus (134 BC–63 BC), ruler of Pontus and the Bosporan Kingdom

Mstislav I of Kiev (1076-1132), Grand Prince of Kievan Rus

Narai (1633-1688), King of Ayutthaya (in what is now modern Thailand)

Naresuan (1555-1605), King of Ayutthaya

Odo the Great (died c. 735), Duke of Aquitaine

Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (912-973)

K'inich Janaab' Pakal (603-683), ruler of the Mayan city-state of Palenque

Parakramabahu I of Polonnaruwa (1123–1186), King of Sri Lanka

Peter Krešimir IV of Croatia (died 1075), King of Croatia

Peter the Great (1672-1725), Tsar of Russia

Peter III of Aragon (1239-1285), King of Aragon and King of Sicily

Pompey (106 BC-48 BC), military and political leader of the late Roman Republic, rival of Julius Caesar

Radama I (1793–1828), first king of greater Madagascar

Raja Raja Chola I (c. 947-1014), Indian emperor of the Cholas.

Rajendra Chola I (reigned 1014-1044), Tamil King of India

Ramesses II (reigned 1279 BC – 1213 BC), considered the greatest pharaoh of Ancient Egypt

Ram Khamhaeng (around 1237 to 1247-1298), King of Sukhothai (in present day Thailand)

Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona (1082-1131), also Count of Provence and various other counties

Rhodri the Great (c. 820–878), King of Gwynedd (in present day Wales)

Roman the Great (after 1160-1205), Grand Prince of Kiev

Samudragupta (c. 335–375), ruler of the Gupta empire in the Indian subcontinent

Sancho III of Navarre (c. 992-1035), King of Kingdom of Navarre

Sargon of Akkad (died c. 2215 BC), ruler of the Akkadian Empire

Sejong the Great (1397-1450), Korean king

Shapur II (309-379), king of the Sassanid Empire, Persia

Simeon I of Bulgaria (864/865-927), ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire

Stephen III of Moldavia (1433-1504), Prince of Moldavia (Romania)

Stephen Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia (c. 1308-1355), King of Serbia and Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks

Taksin (1734-1782), King of the Thonburi Kingdom (Thailand)

Timur (1336-1405), better known as Tamerlane, founder of the Timurid Dynasty

Theobald II, Count of Champagne (1090–1151), Count of Blois and of Chartres as Theobald IV, Count of Champagne and of Brie

Theodoric the Great (454-526), King of the Ostrogoths, regent of the Visigoths and a viceroy of the Byzantine Empire

Theodosius I (347-395), Roman emperor

Tigranes the Great (140-55 BC), Emperor of Armenia

Tiridates III of Armenia (285-339), King of Armenia

Umar (c. 586 to 590–644), second caliph of the Muslim Empire

Valdemar I of Denmark (1131-1182), King of Denmark

Valentinian I (364-375), Roman Emperor

Vladimir I of Kiev (c. 958-1015), ruler of Kievan Rus

Vytautas (c. 1350-1430), archduke of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy

William I, Count of Burgundy (1020-1087), Count of Burgandy and Mâcon

William V, Duke of Aquitaine (969-1030), also Count of Poitou

Xerxes I (519-465 BC), King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire (Persia)

Yu the Great (c. 2200-2100 BC), legendary ruler in ancient China

Religious figures

Abraham the Great of Kashkar (ca. 492-586), monk and saint of the Assyrian Church of the East

Abraham Kidunaia (died c. 366, hermit, priest, and Christian saint of Mesopotamia

Albertus Magnus (1193/1206–1280), medieval German philosopher and theologian

Anthony the Great (c. 251–356), early Christian saint of Egypt

Babai the Great (c. 551–628), Assyrian church leader

Basil of Caesarea (330-379), Greek bishop and theologian

Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lotharingia (also listed in the previous section)

Euthymius the Great (377-473), abbot and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox saint

Gertrude the Great (1256-c. 1302), German Benedictine, mystic, theologian and Roman Catholic saint

Pope Gregory I (c. 540-604)

Hiyya the Great, 3rd-century rabbi, Palestine

Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)

Pope Leo I (c. 391 or 400-461)

Macarius of Egypt (c. 300-391), Egyptian hermit

Pope Nicholas I (c. 800-867)

Photius I of Constantinople (c. 810–c. 893), Eastern Orthodox saint and Patriarch of Constantinople

William of Maleval (died 1157), founder of the Catholic congregation of Williamites

Other

Beli Mawr, a figure in medieval Welsh literature and genealogies

Emmy the Great, folk singer

Matteo Rosso the Great, Roman politician and father of Pope Nicholas III

Prokop the Great, Hussite general in Bohemia

See also

Epithet

List of monarchs by nickname

List of nicknames of European Royalty and Nobility: G-I

James, son of Zebedee, also known as James the Greater, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus

Ajax (mythology), called Ajax the Greater

Notes

Category:Monarchs Great, List of people known as The Category:Greatest Nationals Category:Epithets

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Name	Adolf Hitler
Nationality	Austrian citizen until 7 April 1925German citizen after 25 February 1932
Birth date	April 20, 1889
Birth place	Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary
Death date	April 30, 1945
Death place	Berlin, Germany
Death cause	Suicide
Party	National Socialist German Workers' Party (1921–1945)
Otherparty	German Workers' Party (1920–1921)
Religion	See Adolf Hitler's religious views
Spouse	Eva Braun(29–30 April 1945)
Occupation	Politician, soldier, artist, writer
Order	Führer of Germany
Term start	2 August 1934
Term end	30 April 1945
Chancellor	Himself
Predecessor	Paul von Hindenburg(as President)
Successor	Karl Dönitz(as President)
Order2	Chancellor of Germany
Term start2	30 January 1933
Term end2	30 April 1945
President2	Paul von HindenburgHimself (''Führer'')
Deputy2	Franz von PapenVacant
Predecessor2	Kurt von Schleicher
Successor2	Joseph Goebbels
Signature	Hitler Signature2.svg
Allegiance
Branch	''Reichsheer''
Unit	16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment
Serviceyears	1914–1918
Rank	''Gefreiter''
Battles	World War I
Awards	Iron Cross First ClassWound Badge }}

Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (, abbreviated NSDAP, commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state (as ''Führer und Reichskanzler'') from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is most commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II and the Holocaust.

A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the precursor of the Nazi Party (DAP) in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, Hitler attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, at the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, ''Mein Kampf'' (''My Struggle''). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained support by promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and propaganda. He was appointed chancellor in 1933, and transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism.

Hitler's avowed aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe. His foreign and domestic policies had the goal of seizing ''Lebensraum'' (''living space'') for the Germanic people. This included the rearmament of Germany, resulting in the invasion of Poland by the ''Wehrmacht'' in September 1939, leading to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

Under Hitler's direction, German forces and their European allies at one point occupied most of Europe and North Africa, reversed in 1945 when the Allied armies defeated the German army. Hitler's racially motivated policies resulted in the systematic annihilation of as many as 17 million civilians, including an estimated six million Jews targeted in the Holocaust and between 500,000 and 1,500,000 Roma.

In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. To avoid capture by the Red Army, the two committed suicide less than two days later on 30 April 1945 and their corpses were burned.

Early years

Ancestry

Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, was an illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. Therefore, the name of Alois' father was not listed on Alois' birth certificate, and he bore his mother's surname. In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Maria, and in 1876 Alois testified before a notary and three witnesses that Johann was his father. Despite his testimony, the question of Alois' paternity remained unresolved. Hans Frank claimed—after receiving an extortionary letter from Hitler's nephew William Patrick Hitler threatening to reveal embarrassing information about Hitler's family tree—to have uncovered letters revealing that Alois' mother was employed as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Graz and that the family's 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger, had fathered Alois. However, Frank's claim remained unsupported, and Frank himself did not believe that Hitler had Jewish ancestry. Claims of Alois' father being Jewish were doubted by historians in the 1990s. Ian Kershaw dismissed the Frankenberger story as a "smear" by Hitler's enemies, noting that all Jews had been expelled from Graz in the 15th century and were not allowed to return until after Alois' birth.

At age 39, Alois assumed the surname ''Hitler'', variously spelled also as ''Hiedler'', ''Hüttler'', or ''Huettler'', and was probably regularized to its final spelling by a clerk. The origin of the name is either "one who lives in a hut" (Standard German ''Hütte''), "shepherd" (Standard German ''hüten'' "to guard", English ''heed''), or is from the Slavic word ''Hidlar'' and ''Hidlarcek''.

Childhood

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 at around 6:30 pm at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Ranshofen, a village annexed to the municipality of Braunau am Inn, Upper Austria in 1938. He was the fourth of six children to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl. All of Adolf's older siblings  – Gustav, Ida, and Otto – died before reaching three years of age.

At the age of three, his family moved to Kapuzinerstrasse 5 in Passau, Germany. There, Hitler would acquire a Bavarian dialect of Austro-Bavarian rather than an Austrian dialect. In 1894, the family relocated to Leonding near Linz, and in June 1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld near Lambach, where he tried his hand at farming and beekeeping. Adolf attended school in nearby Fischlham, and in his free time, he played "Cowboys and Indians". Hitler became fixated on warfare after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War among his father's belongings.

Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and in 1897 the family moved to Lambach. Hitler attended a Catholic school in an 11th-century Benedictine cloister, the walls of which bore engravings and crests that contained the symbol of the swastika. In Lambach the eight-year-old Hitler also sang in the church choir, took singing lessons, and even entertained thoughts of one day becoming a priest. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding.

On 2 February 1900 Hitler's younger brother, Edmund, died of measles, deeply affecting Hitler, whose character changed from being confident and outgoing and an excellent student, to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought his father and his teachers.

Hitler was attached to his mother, but he had a troubled relationship with his father, who frequently beat him, especially in the years after Alois' retirement and failed farming efforts. Alois was a Austrian customs official who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, which caused much conflict between them. Ignoring his son's wishes to attend a classical high school and become an artist, in September 1900 his father sent Adolf to the Realschule in Linz, a technical high school of about 300 students. Hitler rebelled against this decision, and in ''Mein Kampf'' revealed that he failed his first year, hoping that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to the happiness I dreamed of."

German Nationalism became an obsession for Hitler, and a way to rebel against his father, who proudly served the Austrian government. Most residents living along the German-Austrian border considered themselves German-Austrians, whereas Hitler expressed loyalty only to Germany. In defiance of the Austrian monarchy, and his father who continually expressed loyalty to it, Hitler and his friends used the German greeting "Heil", and sang the German anthem "Deutschland Über Alles" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem.

After Alois' sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's behaviour at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave in 1904. He enrolled at the ''Realschule'' in Steyr in September 1904, but upon completing his second year, he and his friends went out for a night of celebration and drinking. While drunk, Hitler tore up his school certificate and used its pieces as toilet paper. The stained certificate was brought to the attention of the school's principal who "... gave him such a dressing-down that the boy was reduced to shivering jelly. It was probably the most painful and humiliating experience of his life." Hitler was expelled, never to return to school again.

Aged 15, Hitler took part in his First Communion on Whitsunday, 22 May 1904, at the Linz Cathedral. His sponsor was Emanuel Lugert, a friend of his late father.

Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich

From 1905, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna with financial support from orphan's benefits and his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907–1908), because of his "unfitness for painting", and was recommended to study architecture. Following this recommendation, he intended to pursue architectural studies, yet he lacked the academic credentials required for architecture school:

In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy's architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfillment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible.

On 21 December 1907, Hitler's mother died of breast cancer at age 47; Hitler was devastated, and carried the grief from her death with him for the rest of his life. Ordered by a court in Linz, Hitler gave his share of the orphan's benefits to his sister Paula, and at the age of 21, he inherited money from an aunt. He struggled as a painter in Vienna, copying scenes from postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists. After being rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909, he lived in a shelter for the homeless, and by 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men on Meldemannstraße. Another resident of the shelter, Reinhold Hanisch, sold Hitler's paintings until the two men had a bitter falling-out.

Hitler stated that he first became an antisemite in Vienna, which had a large Jewish community, including Orthodox Jews who had fled the pogroms in Russia. According to childhood friend August Kubizek, however, Hitler was a "confirmed antisemite" before he left Linz. Brigitte Hamann wrote that “of all those early witnesses who can be taken seriously Kubizek is the only one to portray young Hitler as an anti-Semite and precisely in this respect he is not trustworthy.” Vienna at that time was a hotbed of traditional religious prejudice and 19th century racism. Hitler may have been influenced by the occult writings of the antisemite Lanz von Liebenfels in his magazine ''Ostara''; he probably read the publication, although it is uncertain to what degree he was influenced by von Liebenfels' writings.

{{bquote|There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanised in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic antisemitism.

Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?}}

Martin Luther's ''On the Jews and Their Lies'' may have also shaped Hitler's views. In ''Mein Kampf'', he refers to Martin Luther as a great warrior, a true statesman, and a great reformer, alongside Richard Wagner and Frederick the Great. Wilhelm Röpke concluded that "without any question, Lutheranism influenced the political, spiritual and social history of Germany in a way that, after careful consideration of everything, can be described only as fateful."

However, at the time Hitler apparently did not act on his views. He was a frequent dinner guest in a wealthy Jewish house, and he interacted well with Jewish merchants who tried to sell his paintings.

Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich. He wrote in ''Mein Kampf'' that he had always longed to live in a "real" German city. In Munich, he further pursued his interest in architecture and the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Moving to Munich also helped him avoid military service in Austria, but the Munich police in cooperation with the Austrian authorities eventually arrested him for dodging the draft. After a physical exam and a contrite plea, he was deemed unfit for service and allowed to return to Munich. However, when Germany entered World War I in August 1914, he successfully petitioned King Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to serve in a Bavarian regiment, and enlisted in the Bavarian army.

World War I

Hitler served as a runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium in the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16. He experienced major combat, including the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras and the Battle of Passchendaele.

Hitler was twice decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914 and Iron Cross, First Class on 4 August 1918. He also received the Wound Badge. Hitler's First Class Iron Cross was recommended by Hugo Gutmann, and although the latter decoration was rarely awarded to a ''Gefreiter'', it may be explained by Hitler's post at regimental headquarters where he had more frequent interactions with senior officers than other soldiers of similar rank. The regimental staff, however, thought Hitler lacked leadership skills, and he was never promoted.

While serving at regimental headquarters Hitler pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. In October 1916, he was wounded either in the groin area or the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dug-out during the Battle of the Somme. Hitler spent almost two months in the Red Cross hospital at Beelitz. He returned to his regiment on 5 March 1917.

On 15 October 1918, Hitler and several comrades were temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack, but it has also been suggested that he suffered from conversion disorder, then known as "hysteria". He was hospitalized in Pasewalk. Hitler became embittered over the collapse of the war effort. It was during this time that Hitler's ideological development began to firmly take shape. Some scholars, notably Lucy Dawidowicz, argue that Hitler's intention to exterminate Europe's Jews was fully formed at this time.

Hitler described the war as "the greatest of all experiences" and he was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery. The experience made Hitler a passionate German patriot, and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918. Like many other German nationalists, Hitler believed in the ''Dolchstoßlegende'' (Stab-in-the-back legend), which claimed that the army, "undefeated in the field," had been "stabbed in the back" by civilian leaders and Marxists back on the home front, later dubbed the ''November Criminals''.

The Treaty of Versailles, citing Germany's responsibility for the war, stipulated that Germany relinquish several of its territories, demilitarisation of the Rhineland, and imposed economic sanctions and levied reparations on the country. Many Germans perceived the treaty, especially Article 231 on the German responsibility for the war, as a humiliation, and its economic effects on the social and political conditions in Germany were later exploited by Hitler.

Entry into politics

After World War I, Hitler remained in the army and returned to Munich, where he attended the funeral march for the murdered Bavarian prime minister Kurt Eisner. After the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he took part in "national thinking" courses organized by the ''Education and Propaganda Department'' of the Bavarian ''Reichswehr'' under Captain Karl Mayr.

In July 1919, Hitler was appointed ''Verbindungsmann'' (intelligence agent) of an ''Aufklärungskommando'' (reconnaissance commando) of the ''Reichswehr'', both to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP). While he studied the activities of the DAP, Hitler became impressed with founder Anton Drexler's antisemitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist ideas. Drexler favoured a strong active government, a "non-Jewish" version of socialism and solidarity among all members of society. Drexler was impressed with Hitler's oratory skills and invited him to join the DAP, which Hitler accepted on 12 September 1919, becoming its 55th member.

At the DAP, Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of its early founders and member of the occult Thule Society. Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and introducing Hitler to a wide range of people in Munich's society. Hitler thanked Eckart and paid tribute to him in the second volume of ''Mein Kampf''. To increase the party's appeal, the party changed its name to the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (National Socialist German Workers Party - NSDAP). Hitler also designed the party's banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background to make a visual impact.

Hitler was discharged from the army in March 1920 and began participating full time in the party's activities. By early 1921, Hitler had become highly effective at speaking in front of large crowds. In February 1921, Hitler spoke to a crowd of over six thousand in Munich. To publicize the meeting, two truckloads of party supporters drove around waving swastikas and throwing leaflets. Hitler soon gained notoriety for his rowdy, polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, and especially directed against Marxists and Jews. At the time, the NSDAP was centred in Munich, a major hotbed of anti-government German nationalists which was determined to crush Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic.

In June 1921, while Hitler was on a trip to Berlin (with Eckart) for a fund-raising mission, there was a mutiny among the DAP in Munich, most notably within the executive committee whose members who wanted to merge with the rival German Socialist Party (DSP) and considered Hitler to be too overbearing. Hitler returned to Munich and in anger tendered his resignation from the party on 11 July 1921. However, committee members realized that Hitler's resignation would mean the end of the party. Hitler announced he would only return on the conditions that he replace Drexler as party chairman and the party headquarters would remain in Munich. The committee agreed to his demands and Hitler rejoined the party as member 3,680. However, the conflict was not over. Hermann Esser and his allies printed 3,000 copies of an anonymous pamphlet attacking Hitler as a traitor to the party. In the days which followed, Hitler spoke to a several packed houses and defended himself to thunderous applause. At the general membership meeting which followed, only one no vote was cast in relation to granting Hitler dictatorial powers with his chairmanship being officially and unanimously accepted.

Hitler's vitriolic beer hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. Early followers included Rudolf Hess, the former air force pilot Hermann Göring, and the army captain Ernst Röhm. The latter became head of the Nazis' paramilitary organization the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA, "Storm Division"), which protected meetings and frequently attacked political opponents. A critical influence on his thinking at this period was the Aufbau Vereinigung, a conspiratorial group formed of White Russian exiles and early National Socialists. The group, financed with funds channeled from wealthy industrialists like Henry Ford, introduced him to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy, linking international finance with Bolshevism. Hitler also attracted the attention of local business interests, was accepted into influential circles of Munich society, and became associated with wartime General Erich Ludendorff during this time.

Beer Hall ''Putsch''

Encouraged by his new support, Hitler recruited Ludendorff for an attempted coup known as the "Beer Hall ''Putsch''" (also known as the "Hitler ''Putsch''" or "Munich ''Putsch''"). The Nazi Party had used Italy's fascists as an example for its appearance and policies, and in 1923, Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini's "March on Rome" by staging his own "Campaign in Berlin". Hitler and Ludendorff sought support of ''Staatskommissar'' (state commissioner) Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria's ''de facto'' ruler. However, Kahr along with Police Chief Hans Ritter von Seisser (Seißer) and Reichswehr General Otto von Lossow wanted to install a nationalist dictatorship without Hitler.

Hitler wanted to seize a critical moment for successful popular agitation and support. So on 8 November 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people, organized by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall in Munich. Hitler interrupted Kahr's speech and announced that the national revolution had begun, declaring the formation of a new government with Ludendorff. With his hand gun drawn, Hitler demanded the support of Kahr, Seisser and Lossow. Hitler's forces initially succeeded at occupying the local Reichswehr and police headquarters; however, neither the army nor the state police joined forces with Hitler. Kahr and his consorts quickly withdrew their support and fled to join the opposition to Hitler. The following day, Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government on their "March on Berlin", but the police dispersed them. Sixteen NSDAP members and four police officers were killed in the failed coup.

Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl where he contemplated suicide, but Hanfstaengl's wife Helene talked him out of it. He was soon arrested for high treason and tried before the special People's Court in Munich, and Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the NSDAP. During his trial, Hitler was given almost unlimited time to speak, and his popularity soared as he voiced nationalistic sentiments in his defence speech. His trial began on 26 February 1924 and on 1 April 1924 Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison. Hitler received friendly treatment from the guards and received a lot of mail from supporters. The Bavarian Supreme Court soon issued a pardon and he was released from jail on 20 December 1924, against the state prosecutor's objections. Including time on remand, Hitler had been imprisoned for just over one year for the attempted coup.

''Mein Kampf''

While at Landsberg, he dictated most of the first volume of ''Mein Kampf'' (''My Struggle'', originally entitled ''Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice'') to his deputy Rudolf Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an autobiography and an exposition of his ideology. ''Mein Kampf'' was influenced by ''The Passing of the Great Race'' by Madison Grant, which Hitler called "my Bible". ''Mein Kampf'' was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, selling about 240,000 copies between 1925 and 1934. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies had been sold or distributed. The copyright of ''Mein Kampf'' in Europe is claimed by the Free State of Bavaria and will end on 31 December 2015. In Germany, only heavily commented editions of ''Mein Kampf'' are available solely for academic studies.

Rebuilding of the NSDAP

At the time of Hitler's release from prison, politics in Germany had become less combative, and the economy had improved. This limited Hitler's opportunities for political agitation. As a result of the failed ''Beer Hall Putsch'', the NSDAP and its affiliated organisations were banned in Bavaria. However, Hitler—now claiming to seek political power only through the democratic process—succeeded in persuading Heinrich Held, Prime Minister of Bavaria, to lift the ban. The ban on the NSDAP was lifted on 16 February 1925, but Hitler was barred from public speaking. To be able to advance his political ambitions in spite of the ban, Hitler appointed Gregor Strasser along with his brother Otto and Joseph Goebbels to organize and grow the NSDAP in northern Germany. Strasser, however, steered a more independent political course, emphasizing the socialist element in the party's programme.

Hitler went on to establish a more autocratic rule of the NSDAP and asserted the ''Führerprinzip'' ("Leader principle"). Offices in the party were not determined by elections, but rather filled by appointment by higher ranks who demanded unquestioning obedience from the lower ranks they had appointed.

A key element of Hitler's appeal was his ability to evoke a sense of violated national pride as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. Many Germans strongly resented the terms of the treaty, especially the economic burden of having to pay large reparations to other countries affected by World War I. Nonetheless, attempts by Hitler to win popular support by blaming the demands and assertions in the treaty on "international Jewry" were largely unsuccessful with the electorate. Therefore, Hitler and his party began employing more subtle propaganda methods, combining antisemitism with an attack on the failures of the "Weimar system" and the parties supporting it.

Having failed in overthrowing the republic and gaining power by a coup, Hitler changed tactics and pursued a strategy of formally adhering to the rules of the Weimar Republic until he had gained political power through regular elections. His vision was to then use the institutions of the Weimar Republic to destroy it and establish himself as autocratic leader.

Rise to power

{|class="wikitable sortable" |- |+ Nazi Party election results |- !Date !Votes,total !Votes,percentage !Seats,Reichstag !class=unsortable|Background |- |May 1924 |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |Hitler in prison |- |December 1924 |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |Hitler is released from prison |- |May 1928 |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |  |- |September 1930 |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |After the financial crisis |- |July 1932 |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |After Hitler was candidate for presidency |- |November 1932 |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |  |- |March 1933 |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |style="text-align:right;"| |During Hitler's term as Chancellor of Germany |}

Brüning Administration

Hitler's political turning point came with the Great Depression in Germany in 1930. The Weimar Republic had difficulties taking firm roots in German society and faced strong challenges from right- and left-wing extremists. The moderate political parties committed to the democratic parliamentary republic were increasingly unable to stem the tide of extremism, and the German referendum of 1929 had helped to elevate the profile and prominence of Nazi ideology. In early elections in September 1930, the moderates lost their majority, leading to the break-up of a grand coalition and its replacement by a minority cabinet. Its leader, chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party, governed through emergency decrees from the president of state, Paul von Hindenburg. Tolerated by most parties, governance by decree would become the new norm and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government. Notably the NSDAP rose from relative obscurity to win 18.3% of the vote and 107 parliamentary seats in the 1930 election, growing from ninth- to second-largest party in the German parliament.

The increasing political clout of Hitler was also felt at the trial of two ''Reichswehr'' officers, ''Leutnants'' Richard Scheringer and Hans Ludin, in the autumn of 1930. Both were charged with membership of the NSDAP, which at that time was illegal for ''Reichswehr'' personnel. The prosecution argued that the NSDAP was a dangerous extremist party, prompting defence lawyer Hans Frank to call on Hitler to testify at the court. During his testimony on 25 September 1930, Hitler stated that his party was aiming to come to power solely through democratic elections and that the NSDAP was a friend of the ''Reichswehr''. Hitler's testimony won him many supporters in the officer corps.

Brüning's budgetary and financial austerity measures brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular. Hitler exploited this weakness by targeting his political messages specifically to the segments of the population that had been hard hit by the inflation of the 1920s and the unemployment of the Depression, such as farmers, war veterans, and the middle class.

Hitler formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925, but at the time did not acquire German citizenship. For almost seven years Hitler was stateless, so he was unable to run for public office and even faced the risk of deportation. Therefore, on 25 February 1932, the interior minister of Brunswick who was a member of the NSDAP appointed Hitler as administrator for the state's delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin, making Hitler a citizen of Brunswick, and thus of Germany as well.

In 1932, Hitler ran against the aging President Paul von Hindenburg in the presidential elections. The viability of his candidacy was underscored by a 27 January 1932 speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf, which won him support from a broad swath of Germany's most powerful industrialists. However, Hindenburg had broad support of various nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, and republican parties and even some social democrats. Hitler used the campaign slogan "''Hitler über Deutschland''" (Hitler over Germany), a reference to his political ambitions, and to his campaigning by aircraft. Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, garnering more than 35% of the vote in the final election. Although he lost to Hindenburg, this election established Hitler as a credible force in German politics.

In September 1931, Hitler's niece Geli Raubal committed suicide with Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment. Geli was believed to be in a romantic relationship with Hitler, and it is believed that her death was a source of deep, lasting pain for him.

Appointment as Chancellor

Because of the difficulties of forming a stable and effective government, two influential politicians, Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, as well as a number of industrialists and businessmen, including Hjalmar Schacht and Fritz Thyssen wrote to Hindenburg, urging him to appoint Hitler as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties" which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people."

After two parliament elections—in July and November 1932—had failed to result in a majority government, President Hindenburg eventually and reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler chancellor of a coalition government formed by the NSDAP and Hugenberg's party, the DNVP. The influence of the NSDAP in parliament was thought to be limited by an alliance of conservative cabinet ministers, most notably by von Papen as Vice-Chancellor and by Hugenberg as Minister of the Economy. The only other NSDAP member besides Hitler, Wilhelm Frick, was given the relatively powerless interior ministry. However, as a concession to the NSDAP, Göring, who was head of the Prussian police at the time, was named minister without portfolio. So although von Papen intended to install Hitler merely as a figurehead, the NSDAP gained key political positions.

On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor during a brief and simple ceremony in Hindenburg's office. Hitler's first speech as Chancellor took place on 10 February. The Nazis' seizure of power subsequently became known as the ''Machtergreifung'' or ''Machtübernahme''.

Reichstag fire and March elections

As chancellor, Hitler worked against attempts by his political opponents to build a majority government. Because of the political stalemate, Hitler asked President Hindenburg to dissolve the ''Reichstag'' again, and elections were scheduled for early March. On 27 February 1933, the ''Reichstag'' building was set on fire, and since a Dutch independent communist was found in the burning building, a communist plot was blamed for the fire. The central government responded with the ''Reichstag'' Fire Decree of 28 February, which suspended basic rights, including ''habeas corpus''. In particular, activities of the German Communist Party were suppressed, and communist party members were arrested, forced to flee, or murdered.

Besides political campaigning, the NSDAP used paramilitary violence and spread of anti-communist propaganda on the days preceding the election. On election day, 6 March 1933, the NSDAP increased its result to 43.9% of the vote, gaining the largest number of seats in parliament. However, Hitler's party failed to secure an absolute majority, thus again necessitating a coalition with the DNVP.

Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act

On 21 March 1933, the new ''Reichstag'' was constituted with an opening ceremony held at Potsdam's garrison church. This ''Day of Potsdam'' was staged to demonstrate reconciliation and unity between the revolutionary Nazi movement and ''Old Prussia'' with its elites and perceived virtues. Hitler appeared in a tail coat and humbly greeted the aged President Hindenburg.

In the Nazis' quest for full political control and because they had failed to gain an absolute majority in the prior parliamentary election, Hitler's government brought the ''Ermächtigungsgesetz'' (Enabling Act) to a vote in the newly elected ''Reichstag''. The aim of this move was to give Hitler's cabinet full legislative powers for a period of four years. Although such a bill was not unprecedented, this act was different since it allowed for deviations from the constitution. Since the bill required a ⅔ majority to pass, the government needed the support of other parties. The position of the Centre Party, the third largest party in the ''Reichstag'', turned out to be decisive: under the leadership of Ludwig Kaas, the party decided to vote for the Enabling Act. It did so in return for the government's oral guarantees of the Church's liberty, the concordats signed by German states, and the continued existence of the Centre Party.

On 23 March, the ''Reichstag'' assembled in a replacement building under extremely turbulent circumstances. Several SA men served as guards inside, while large groups outside the building shouted slogans and threats toward the arriving members of parliament. Kaas announced that the Centre Party would support the bill with "concerns put aside", while Social Democrat Otto Wels denounced the act in his speech. At the end of the day, all parties except Social Democrats voted in favour of the bill—the Communists, as well as several Social Democrats, were barred from attending the vote. The Enabling Act, along with the ''Reichstag'' Fire Decree, transformed Hitler's government into a ''de facto'' dictatorship.

Removal of remaining limits

Having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his political allies embarked on systematic suppression of the remaining political opposition. After the dissolution of the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was also banned and all its assets seized. The Steel Helmets were placed under Hitler's leadership with some autonomy as an auxiliary police force. On 1 May, demonstrations were held, and the SA stormtroopers demolished trade union offices. On 2 May 1933, all trade unions in the country were forced to dissolve, and were replaced with a new organisation of "trade unions", uniting workers, administrators, and company owners. This new trade union reflected the concept of ''national socialism'' in the spirit of Hitler's "Volksgemeinschaft" (community of all German people).

Also the Catholic Church, to which roughly 50 % of the German people belonged, was forced to support Hitler: there was an early "Concordat" with the Vatican, but nonetheless the large Centre Party of the catholics was dissolved, as most other ones. On 14 July 1933, Hitler's Nazi Party was declared the only legal party in Germany. Hitler used the SA to pressure Hugenberg into resigning, and proceeded to politically isolate Vice-Chancellor von Papen. The demands of the SA for more political and military power caused much anxiety among military, industrial and political leaders. Hitler was prompted to purge the entire SA leadership, including Ernst Röhm, and other political adversaries (such as, Gregor Strasser and former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher). These actions took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934, in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives. While some Germans were shocked by the killing, many others saw Hitler as the one who restored "order" to the country.

On 2 August 1934, President von Hindenburg died. In contravention to the Weimar Constitution, calling for presidential elections, and following a law passed the previous day in anticipation of Hindenburg's imminent death, Hitler's cabinet declared the presidency vacant and transferred the powers of the head of state to Hitler as ''Führer und Reichskanzler'' (leader and chancellor). This removed the last legal remedy by which Hitler could be dismissed, and nearly all institutional checks and balances on his power. Hitler's move also violated the Enabling Act, which had barred tampering with the office of the presidency.

On 19 August, the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship was approved by a plebiscite with support from 84.6% of the electorate.

As head of state, Hitler now became Supreme Commander of the armed forces. The traditional loyalty oath of soldiers and sailors was altered to affirm loyalty directly to Hitler rather than to the office of commander-in-chief.

In 1938, in the wake of two scandals Hitler brought the armed forces under his direct control by forcing the resignation of his War Minister (formerly Defence Minister), Werner von Blomberg on evidence that Blomberg's new wife had a criminal past. Hitler and his allies also removed army commander Werner von Fritsch on suspicion of homosexuality. Hitler replaced the Ministry of War with the ''Oberkommando der Wehrmacht'' (High Command of the Armed Forces, or OKW), headed by the pliant General Wilhelm Keitel.

Third Reich

Having consolidated and concentrated his political powers, Hitler proceeded to suppress or eliminate his opposition by a process termed ''Gleichschaltung'' ("bringing into line"). He also tried to gain additional public support by vowing to reverse the effects of the Depression and the Versailles treaty.

Economy and culture

Increased economic activities were enabled largely by debt flotation (refinancing long term debts into cheaper short term debts) and expansion of the military. For example, Hitler's reconstruction and rearmament were financed with currency manipulations by Hjalmar Schacht, including credits through the Mefo bills.

Nazi policies strongly encouraged women to bear children and stay at home. In a September 1934 speech to the National Socialist Women's Organization, Hitler argued that for the German woman her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home." The Cross of Honor of the German Mother was bestowed on women bearing four or more children. The unemployment rate fell substantially, mostly through arms production and women leaving the workforce.

Hitler oversaw one of the largest infrastructure-improvement campaigns in German history, leading to the construction of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. However, these programmes lowered the overall standard of living of workers who earlier had been unaffected by the chronic unemployment of the later Weimar Republic; wages were slightly reduced in pre–World War II years, while the cost of living was increased by 25%.

Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale, with Albert Speer becoming the first architect of the Reich, instrumental in implementing Hitler's classicist reinterpretation of German culture. In 1936, Hitler opened the summer Olympic games in Berlin. Hitler also made some contributions to the design of the Volkswagen Beetle and charged Ferdinand Porsche with its design and construction.

On 20 April 1939, a lavish celebration was held for Hitler's 50th birthday, featuring military parades, visits from foreign dignitaries, thousands of flaming torches and Nazi banners.

One question concerns the aspect of modernization in Hitler's economic policies. Historians such as David Schoenbaum and Henry Ashby Turner argue that Hitler's social and economic policies were modernization that had anti-modern goals. Others, including Rainer Zitelmann, have contended that Hitler had the deliberate strategy of pursuing a revolutionary modernization of German society.

Rearmament and new alliances

On 3 February 1933, in a meeting with German military leaders, Hitler spoke of "conquest for ''Lebensraum'' in the East and its ruthless Germanisation" as his ultimate foreign policy objectives. In March 1933, a major statement by the State Secretary at the ''Auswärtiges Amt'' (Foreign Office), Prince Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, of German foreign policy aims was issued. It advocated ''Anschluss'' with Austria, the restoration of Germany's national borders of 1914, rejection of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles, the return of the former German colonies in Africa, and a German zone of influence in Eastern Europe. Hitler found the goals in Bülow's memo to be too modest.

In his "peace speeches" in the mid-1930s, Hitler stressed the peaceful goals of his policies and willingness to work within international agreements. At the first meeting of his Cabinet in 1933, however, Hitler prioritised military spending over unemployment relief. In October 1933, Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference, and his Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath stated that the French demand for ''sécurité'' was a principal stumbling block. In March 1935, Hitler rejected Part V of the Versailles treaty by announcing an expansion of the German army to 600,000 members (six times the number stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles), including development of an Air Force (''Luftwaffe'') and increasing the size of the Navy (''Kriegsmarine''). Although Britain, France, Italy and the League of Nations condemned these plans, no country took actions to stop them.

On 18 June 1935, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) was signed, allowing German tonnage to increase to 35% of that of the British navy. Hitler called the signing of the AGNA "the happiest day of his life" as he believed the agreement marked the beginning of the Anglo-German alliance he had predicted in ''Mein Kampf''. France or Italy were not consulted before the signing, directly undermining the League of Nations and putting the Treaty of Versailles on the path towards irrelevance.

On 13 September 1935, Hitler ordered two civil servants, Dr. Bernhard Lösener and Franz Albrecht Medicus of the Interior Ministry to start drafting antisemitic laws for Hitler to bring to the floor of the ''Reichstag''. On 15 September, Hitler presented two laws—known as the Nuremberg Laws—before the ''Reichstag''. The laws banned marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans and the employment of non-Jewish women under the age of 45 in Jewish households. The laws also deprived so-called "non-Aryans" of the benefits of German citizenship. In March 1936, Hitler reoccupied the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland, thus again violating the Versailles treaty. In addition, Hitler sent troops to Spain to support General Franco after receiving an appeal for help from Franco in July 1936. At the same time, Hitler continued with his efforts to create an Anglo-German alliance.

In August 1936, in response to a growing economic crisis caused by his rearmament efforts, Hitler issued the "Four-Year Plan Memorandum", ordering Hermann Göring to carry out the Four Year Plan to have Germany ready for war within the next four years. Hitler's "Four-Year Plan Memorandum" laid out an imminent all-out struggle between "Judeo-Bolshevism" and German National Socialism, which in Hitler's view required a committed effort of rearmament regardless of the economic costs.

On 25 October 1936, Count Galeazzo Ciano foreign minister of Benito Mussolini's government declared an axis between Germany and Italy, and on 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. Britain, China, Italy and Poland were also invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in 1937. By late 1937, Hitler had abandoned his dream of an Anglo-German alliance, blaming "inadequate" British leadership.

On 5 November 1937, Hitler held a secret meeting at the Reich Chancellery with his war and foreign ministers and military chiefs. As recorded in the Hossbach Memorandum, Hitler stated his intention of acquiring ''Lebensraum'' ("living space") for the German people, and ordered to make preparations for war in the east no later than 1943. Hitler further stated that the conference minutes were to be regarded as his "political testament" in the event of his death. Hitler was also recorded as saying that the crisis of the German economy had reached a point that a severe decline in living standards in Germany could only be stopped by a policy of military aggression and seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia. Moreover, Hitler urged for quick action before Britain and France obtained a permanent lead in the arms race.

In early 1938, Hitler asserted his control of the military-foreign policy apparatus through the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair and the abolition of the War Ministry and its replacement by the OKW. He also dismissed Neurath as Foreign Minister on 4 February 1938, and assumed the role and title of the ''Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht'' (supreme commander of the armed forces). It has been argued that from early 1938 onwards, Hitler was not carrying out a foreign policy that increased the risk of war, but that he was carrying out a foreign policy that had war as its ultimate aim.

The Holocaust

One of Hitler's central and most controversial ideologies was the concept of so-called racial hygiene. Hitler's eugenic policies initially targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities in a programme dubbed Action T4.

Hitler's idea of ''Lebensraum'' espoused in ''Mein Kampf'', focused on acquiring new territory for German settlement in Eastern Europe. The ''Generalplan Ost'' ("General Plan for the East") provided that the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was to be partially deported to West Siberia, used as slave labour and eventually murdered; the conquered territories were to be colonized by German or "Germanized" settlers.

Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, systematically killed 11–14 million people, including about six million Jews representing two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe. These killings took place, for example, in concentration camps, ghettos, and through mass executions. Many victims of the Holocaust were gassed to death, whereas others died of starvation or disease while working as slave labourers.

Hitler's policies also resulted in the systematic killings of Poles and Soviet prisoners of war, communists and other political opponents, homosexuals, Roma, the physically and mentally disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, and trade unionists. One of the largest centres of mass-killing was the extermination camp complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hitler never appeared to have visited the concentration camps and did not speak publicly about the killings.

The Holocaust (the "''Endlösung der jüdischen Frage''" or "Final Solution of the Jewish Question") was organised and executed by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. The records of the Wannsee Conference—held on 20 January 1942 and led by Reinhard Heydrich with fifteen senior Nazi officials (including Adolf Eichmann) participating—provide the clearest evidence of the systematic planning for the Holocaust. On 22 February, Hitler was recorded saying to his associates, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews".

Although no specific order from Hitler authorising the mass killings has surfaced, he approved the ''Einsatzgruppen'', killing squads that followed the German army through Poland and Russia, and he was well informed about their activities. Evidence also suggests that in the fall of 1941, Himmler and Hitler decided to use gassing for the mass killings. During interrogations by Soviet intelligence officers declassified over fifty years later, Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, and his military aide, Otto Günsche, had stated that Hitler had a direct interest in the development of gas chambers."

World War II

Early diplomatic successes

Alliance with Japan

In February 1938, upon advice from his newly appointed Foreign Minister, the strongly pro-Japanese Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler ended the Sino-German alliance with the Republic of China to enter instead into an alliance with the more modern and powerful Japan. Hitler announced German recognition of Manchukuo, the Japanese-occupied state in Manchuria, and renounced German claims to the former colonies in the Pacific held by Japan. Hitler also ordered an end to arms shipments to China, and recalled all German officers working with the Chinese Army. In retaliation, Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek cancelled all Sino-German economic agreements, depriving the Germans of Chinese raw materials such as tungsten and limiting the efforts of German rearmament.

Austria and Czechoslovakia

On 12 March 1938, Hitler declared unification of Austria with Germany in the ''Anschluss''. Hitler then turned his attention to the ethnic Germans population of Sudetenland districts of Czechoslovakia.

On 28–29 March 1938, Hitler held a series of secret meetings in Berlin with Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten ''Heimfront'' (Home Front), the largest of the ethnic German parties of the Sudetenland. Both men agreed that Henlein would demand increased autonomy for Sudeten Germans from the Czechoslovakian government, thus providing a pretext for German military action against Czechoslovakia. In April 1938, Henlein told the foreign minister of Hungary that "whatever the Czech government might offer, he would always raise still higher demands ... he wanted to sabotage an understanding by all means because this was the only method to blow up Czechoslovakia quickly". In private, Hitler considered the Sudeten issue unimportant; his real intention was a war of conquest against Czechoslovakia. In April 1938, Hitler ordered the OKW to prepare for ''Fall Grün'' (Case Green), the codename for an invasion of Czechoslovakia. As a result of intense French and British diplomatic pressure, Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš unveiled on 5 September 1938, the "Fourth Plan" for constitutional reorganization of his country, which agreed to most of Henlein's demands for Sudeten autonomy. Henlein's ''Heimfront'' responded to Beneš' offer with a series of violent clashes with the Czechoslovakian police that led to the declaration of martial law in certain Sudeten districts.

In light of Germany's dependence on imported oil, and that a confrontation with Britain over the Czechoslovakian dispute could curtail Germany's oil supplies, Hitler called off ''Fall Grün'', originally planned for 1 October 1938. On 29 September 1938, a one-day conference was held in Munich attended by Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier and Mussolini that led to the Munich Agreement, which gave in to Hitler's ostensible demands by handing over the Sudetenland districts to Germany.

Chamberlain was satisfied with the Munich conference, calling the outcome "peace for our time", while Hitler was angered about his missed opportunity for war in 1938. Hitler expressed his disappointment over the Munich Agreement in a speech on 9 October 1938 in Saarbrücken. In Hitler's view, the British-brokered peace, although favourable to ostensible German demands, was a diplomatic defeat for him, which spurred Hitler's intent of limiting British power to pave the way for the eastern expansion of Germany. However, as a result of the summit, Hitler was selected ''Time'' magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.

In late 1938 and early 1939, the continuing economic crisis caused by the rearmament efforts forced Hitler to make major defence cuts. On 30 January 1939, Hitler made an "Export or die" speech, calling for a German economic offensive, to increase German foreign exchange holdings to pay for raw materials such as high-grade iron needed for military weapons.

"One thing I should like to say on this day which may be memorable for others as well for us Germans: In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and I have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance the Jewish race which only received my prophecies with laughter when I said I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and that of the whole nation, and that I would then among many other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of the face. Today I will be once more the prophet. If the international Jewish financiers outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"

On 15 March 1939, in violation of the Munich accord and possibly as a result of the deepening economic crisis requiring additional assets, Hitler eventually ordered the ''Wehrmacht'' to invade Prague, and from Prague Castle proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate.

Start of World War II

In private discussions in 1939, Hitler described Britain as the main enemy that had to be defeated. In his view, Poland's obliteration as a sovereign nation was the necessary prelude to that goal by securing the eastern flank and also adding to Germany's ''Lebensraum''. As part of his anti-British stance, Hitler wanted Poland to be either a German satellite state or otherwise neutralized to secure the ''Reich''s eastern flank and to evade the effects of a possible British blockade. Initially, Hitler favoured the idea of a satellite state, which was however rejected by the Polish government. Therefore, Hitler decided to invade and destroy Polish sovereignty and independence, and he made this the main German foreign policy goal of 1939. Hitler was offended by the British "guarantee" of Polish independence issued on 31 March 1939, and told his associates that "I shall brew them a devil's drink". In a speech in Wilhelmshaven for the launch of the battleship ''Tirpitz'' on 1 April 1939, Hitler first threatened to denounce the Anglo-German Naval Agreement if the British persisted with their "encirclement" policy he perceived by the British guarantee of Polish independence. On 3 April 1939, Hitler ordered the military to start preparing for ''Fall Weiss'' (Case White), the plan for a German invasion on 25 August 1939. This was followed by a speech before the ''Reichstag'' on 28 April 1939, in which Hitler renounced both the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact. In August 1939, Hitler spoke to his generals that his original plan for 1939 had to "... establish an acceptable relationship with Poland in order to fight against the West" but since Poland refused to become a German satellite, Hitler believed he had no choice other than wiping Poland off the map.

Hitler was initially concerned that a military attack against Poland could result in a premature war with Britain. However, Hitler's foreign minister—and former Ambassador to London—Joachim von Ribbentrop assured him that neither Britain nor France would honour their commitments to Poland, and that a German–Polish war would only be a limited regional war. Ribbentrop claimed that in December 1938 the French foreign minister, Georges Bonnet, had stated that France considered Eastern Europe as Germany's exclusive sphere of influence, and Ribbentrop also showed Hitler diplomatic cables that supported his analysis. The German Ambassador in London, Herbert von Dirksen, supported Ribbentrop's analysis with a dispatch in August 1939, reporting that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain knew "the social structure of Britain, even the conception of the British Empire, would not survive the chaos of even a victorious war", and so would back down. Accordingly, on 21 August 1939 Hitler ordered a military mobilization solely against Poland.

Hitler's plans for a military campaign in Poland in late August or early September required Soviet tacit support, resulting in the Munich agreement on 23 August 1939. The non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) between Germany and the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin, included secret protocols with an agreement to partition Poland between the two countries. In response to the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact—and contrary to the prediction of Ribbentrop that the newly formed pact would severe Anglo-Polish ties—Britain and Poland signed the Anglo-Polish alliance on 25 August 1939. This, along with news from Italy that Mussolini would not honour the Pact of Steel, caused Hitler to postpone the attack on Poland from 25 August to 1 September. In the days before the start of the war, Hitler tried to manoeuvre the British into neutrality by offering a non-aggression guarantee to the British Empire on 25 August 1939 and by having Ribbentrop present a last-minute peace plan with an impossibly short time limit in an effort to then blame the war on British and Polish inaction.

As a pretext for a military aggression against Poland, Hitler claimed the Free City of Danzig and the right for extra-territorial roads across the Polish Corridor, which Germany formerly had ceded under the Versailles treaty. Despite his concerns over a possible British intervention, Hitler was ultimately not deterred from his aim of invading Poland, and on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded western Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September. This surprised Hitler, prompting him to turn to Ribbentrop and angrily ask "Now what?" However, France and Britain did not act on their declarations immediately, and on 17 September, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland.

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The fall of Poland was followed by what contemporary journalists dubbed the "Phoney War," or ''Sitzkrieg'' ("sitting war"). Hitler meanwhile instructed the two newly appointed ''Gauleiters'' of north-western Poland, Albert Forster and Arthur Greiser, to "Germanize" the area, and promised them "There would be no questions asked" about how this "Germanization" was accomplished. Forster and Greiser held different views on how to interpret Hitler's orders. Whereas Forster had local Poles sign forms, stating that they had German blood with no further documentation, Greiser carried out a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign on the Polish population in his purview. Greiser then complained to Hitler that Forster was allowing thousands of Poles to be accepted as "racial" Germans thus, in Greiser's view, endangering German "racial purity". However, Hitler merely told Himmler and Greiser to take up their difficulties with Forster, and not to involve him. Hitler's handling of the Forster–Greiser dispute has been advanced as an example of Ian Kershaw's theory of "Working Towards the Führer", namely that Hitler issued vague instructions, and allowed his subordinates to work out policies on their own.

Another dispute broke out between different factions, with one represented by ''Reichsführer'' SS Heinrich Himmler and Arthur Greiser championing and carrying out ethnic cleansing in Poland, and another representing Hermann Göring and Hans Frank, calling for turning Poland into the "granary" of the ''Reich''. The dispute was initially settled in favour of the Göring-Frank view of economic exploitation, which ended economically disruptive mass expulsions, at a conference held at Göring's Karinhall estate on 12 February 1940. On 15 May 1940, however, Himmler presented Hitler with a memo entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East", which called for expulsion of the entire Jewish population of Europe into Africa and reducing the remainder of the Polish population to a "leaderless class of labourers". Hitler called Himmler's memo "good and correct", scuttling the so-called Karinhall agreement and implementing the Himmler–Greiser viewpoint as German policy for the Polish population.

Hitler commenced building up military forces on Germany's western border, and in April 1940, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. In May 1940, Hitler's forces attacked France, and also conquered Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium. These victories prompted Benito Mussolini to have Italy join forces with Hitler on 10 June 1940. France surrendered on 22 June 1940.

Britain, whose forces were forced to leave France by sea from Dunkirk, continued to fight alongside other British dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler made overtures for peace to the British, now led by Winston Churchill, and when these were rejected Hitler ordered bombing raids on the United Kingdom. Hitler's prelude to a planned invasion of the UK were widespread aerial attacks in the Battle of Britain on Royal Air Force airbases and radar stations in South-East England. However, the German ''Luftwaffe'' failed to defeat the Royal Air Force.

On 27 September 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin by Saburō Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Hitler, and Ciano, and was later expanded to include Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. They were collectively known as the Axis powers. The purpose of the pact was to deter the United States from supporting the British. By the end of October 1940, air superiority for the invasion Operation Sea Lion could not be achieved, and Hitler ordered the nightly air raids of British cities, including London, Plymouth, and Coventry.

In the Spring of 1941, Hitler was distracted from his plans for the East by military activities in North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. In February, German forces arrived in Libya to bolster Italian presence. In April, Hitler launched the invasion of Yugoslavia, quickly followed by the invasion of Greece. In May, German forces were sent to support Iraqi rebel forces fighting against the British and to invade Crete. On 23 May, Hitler released Führer Directive No. 30.

A major historical debate about Hitler's foreign policy preceding the war in 1939 centred on two contrasting explanations: one, by the Marxist historian Timothy Mason, suggested that a structural economic crisis drove Hitler into a "flight into war", while another, by economic historian Richard Overy, explained Hitler's actions with non-economic motives. Historians such as William Carr, Gerhard Weinberg and Ian Kershaw have argued that a non-economic reason for Hitler's rush to war was Hitler's morbid and obsessive fear of an early death, and hence his feeling that he did not have long to accomplish his work.

Path to defeat

On 22 June 1941, contravening the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact of 1939, three million German troops attacked the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. The invasion seized a huge area, including the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine. However, the German advance was stopped barely short of Moscow in December 1941 by the Russian Winter and fierce Soviet resistance. The invasion failed to achieve the quick success Hitler had wanted.

Some historians, such as Andreas Hillgruber, have argued that ''Operation Barbarossa'' was merely one stage of Hitler's ''Stufenplan'' (stepwise plan) for world conquest, which Hitler may have formulated in the 1920s. Others, such as John Lukacs, suggest that Hitler did not have a ''Stufenplan'', and that the invasion of the Soviet Union was an ''ad hoc'' move in response to Britain's refusal to surrender. Lukacs has argued that Winston Churchill had hoped that the Soviet Union might enter the war on the Allied side, and so to dash this hope and force a British surrender, Hitler had started Operation Barbarossa. On the other hand, Klaus Hildebrand has maintained that both Stalin and Hitler had planned to attack each other in 1941. Soviet troop concentrations on its western border in the spring of 1941 may have prompted Hitler to engage in a ''Flucht nach vorn'' ("flight forward", to get in front of an inevitable conflict). Viktor Suvorov, Ernst Topitsch, Joachim Hoffmann, Ernst Nolte, and David Irving have argued that the official reason for ''Barbarossa'' given by the German military was the real reason, i.e., a preventive war to avert an impending Soviet attack scheduled for July 1941. This theory, however, has been faulted; the American historian Gerhard Weinberg once compared the advocates of the preventive war theory to believers in "fairy tales".

The Wehrmacht invasion of the Soviet Union reached its peak on 2 December 1941 when the 258th Infantry Division advanced to within of Moscow, close enough to see the spires of the Kremlin. However, they were not prepared for the harsh conditions brought on by the first blizzards of winter, and Soviet forces drove German troops back over 320 kilometres (200 miles).

On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four days later, Hitler's formal declaration of war against the United States officially engaged him in war against a coalition that included the world's largest empire (the British Empire), the world's greatest industrial and financial power (the United States), and the world's largest army (the Soviet Union).

On 18 December 1941, the ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler met with Hitler, and in response to Himmler's question "''What to do with the Jews of Russia?''", Hitler's replied "''als Partisanen auszurotten''" ("exterminate them as partisans"). The Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust.

In late 1942, German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein, thwarting Hitler's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. In February 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad ended with the destruction of the German 6th Army. Thereafter came the Battle of Kursk. Hitler's military judgment became increasingly erratic, and Germany's military and economic position deteriorated along with Hitler's health. Ian Kershaw and others believe that Hitler may have suffered from Parkinson's disease. Syphilis has also been suspected as a cause of at least some of his symptoms.

Following the allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky) in 1943, Mussolini was deposed by Pietro Badoglio, who surrendered to the Allies. Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler's armies into retreat along the Eastern Front. On 6 June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in what was one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord. Objective observers in the German army then knew that defeat was inevitable, and some plotted to remove Hitler from power.

Attempted assassination

There were seventeen planned attempts or plans to assassinate Hitler from 1939–1945, some which proceeded to significant degrees. The most famous assassination attempt on Hitler's life came from within Germany during World War II and was at least partly driven by the prospect of an increasingly imminent defeat of Germany in the war.

In July 1944, as part of Operation Valkyrie or 20 July plot, Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in Hitler's headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) at Rastenburg. Hitler narrowly survived because someone had unknowingly moved the briefcase that contained the bomb by pushing it behind a leg of the heavy conference table. When the bomb exploded, the table deflected much of the blast away from Hitler. Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals, resulting in the executions of more than 4,900 people.

Defeat and death

By late 1944, the Red Army had driven the German army back into Western Europe, and the Western Allies were advancing into Germany. After being informed of the twin defeats in his Ardennes Offensive at his Adlerhorst command complex – Operation ''Wacht am Rhein'' and Operation ''Nordwind'' – Hitler realized that Germany was about to lose the war, but he did not permit an orderly retreat of his armies. His hope was to negotiate peace with America and Britain, buoyed by the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945. Hitler ordered the destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands; he also acted on his view that Germany's military failures had forfeited its right to survive as a nation. Execution of this scorched earth plan was entrusted to arms minister Albert Speer, who, however, quietly disobeyed the order.

On 20 April 1945, Hitler celebrated his 56th birthday in the ''Führerbunker'' ("Führer's shelter") below the ''Reichskanzlei'' (Reich Chancellery). The garrison commander of the besieged ''Festung Breslau'' ("fortress Breslau"), General Hermann Niehoff, had chocolates distributed to his troops in honour of Hitler's birthday.

By 21 April, Georgi Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the last defences of German General Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights. Facing little resistance, the Soviets advanced into the outskirts of Berlin. In denial of his increasingly dire situation, Hitler placed his hopes on the units commanded by Waffen SS General Felix Steiner, the ''Armeeabteilung Steiner'' ("Army Detachment Steiner"). Although "Army Detachment Steiner" was more than a corps it was less than an army. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the salient made up of of Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front. At the same time, the German Ninth Army, which had been pushed south of the salient, was ordered to attack northward in a pincer attack.

Late on 21 April, Gotthard Heinrici called Hans Krebs, chief of the ''Oberkommando des Heeres'' (Supreme Command of the Army or OKH), to inform him that Hitler's defence plans could not be implemented. Heinrici also told Krebs to impress upon Hitler the need to withdraw the 9th Army from its position.

On 22 April, during military conference, Hitler asked about Steiner's offensive. After a long silence, Hitler was told that the attack had never been launched and that the Russians had broken through into Berlin. This news prompted Hitler to ask everyone except Wilhelm Keitel, Hans Krebs, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Burgdorf, and Martin Bormann to leave the room. Hitler then launched a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders, culminating in Hitler's declaration—for the first time—that the war was lost. Hitler announced that he would stay in Berlin, to direct the defence of the city and then shoot himself.

Before the day ended, Hitler again found fresh hope in a new plan that included General Walther Wenck's Twelfth Army. This new plan had Wenck turn his army – currently facing the Americans to the west – and attack towards the east to relieve Berlin. The Twelfth Army was to link up with the Ninth Army and break through to the city. Wenck did attack and made temporary contact with the Potsdam garrison. But the link with the Ninth Army, like the plan in general, was unsuccessful.

On 23 April, Joseph Goebbels made the following proclamation to the people of Berlin:

Also on 23 April, Göring sent a telegram from ''Berchtesgaden'' in Bavaria, arguing that since Hitler was cut off in Berlin, he, Göring, should assume leadership of Germany. Göring set a time limit after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated. Hitler responded angrily by having Göring arrested, and when writing his will on 29 April, Göring was removed from all his positions in the government. Hitler appointed General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling as the commander of the Berlin Defence Area, replacing Lieutenant General (''Generalleutnant'') Helmuth Reymann and Colonel (''Oberst'') Ernst Kaether. Hitler also appointed Waffen-SS Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke the (Kommandant) Battle Commander for the defence of the government district (Zitadelle sector) that included the Reich Chancellery and Führerbunker.

On 27 April, Berlin became completely cut off from the rest of Germany. As the Soviet forces closed in, Hitler's followers urged him to flee to the mountains of Bavaria to make a last stand in the national redoubt. However, Hitler was determined to either live or die in the capital.

On 28 April, Hitler discovered that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies (through the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte). Hitler ordered Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot. Adding to Hitler's woes was Wenck's report that his Twelfth Army had been forced back along the entire front and that his forces could no longer support Berlin.

After midnight on 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker. Antony Beevor stated that after Hitler hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife, he then took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament. Hitler signed these documents at 4:00 am. The event was witnessed and documents signed by Hans Krebs, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Joseph Goebbels, and Martin Bormann. Hitler then retired to bed. That afternoon, Hitler was informed of the assassination of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, which presumably increased his determination to avoid capture.

On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler and Braun committed suicide; Braun by biting into a cyanide capsule and Hitler by shooting himself with his 7.65 mm Walther PPK pistol. Hitler had at various times contemplated suicide, and the Walther was the same pistol that his niece, Geli Raubal had used in her suicide. The lifeless bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery where they were placed in a bomb crater and doused with petrol. The corpses were set on fire as the Red Army advanced and the shelling continued.

On 2 May, Berlin surrendered, and there were conflicting reports about what happened to Hitler's remains. Records in the Soviet archives— obtained after the fall of the Soviet Union—showed that the remains of Hitler, Eva Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, the six Goebbels children, General Hans Krebs and Hitler's dogs, were repeatedly buried and exhumed. On 4 April 1970, a Soviet KGB team with detailed burial charts secretly exhumed five wooden boxes which had been buried at the SMERSH facility in Magdeburg. The remains from the boxes were thoroughly burned and crushed, after which the ashes were thrown into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.

According to the Russian Federal Security Service, a fragment of human skull stored in its archives and displayed to the public in a 2000 exhibition came from Hitler's remains. However, the authenticity of the skull fragment was challenged by historians and researchers, and DNA analysis conducted in 2009 showed the skull fragment to be that of a woman. Analysis of the sutures between the skull plates indicated that it belonged to a 20–40-year-old individual.

Legacy

Hitler's policies and orders resulted in the death of approximately 40 million people, including about 27 million in the Soviet Union. The actions of Hitler, and of the Hitler's ideology, Nazism, are almost universally regarded as gravely immoral. Historians, philosophers, and politicians have often applied the word ''evil'' to describe Hitler's ideology and its outcomes. Historical and cultural portrayals of Hitler in the west are overwhelmingly condemnatory. For example, the denial of the Holocaust along with the display of Nazi symbols such as swastikas, is prohibited by law in Germany and Austria.

Outside of Hitler's birthplace in Braunau am Inn, Austria, the Memorial Stone Against War and Fascism is engraved with the following message: }}

Loosely translated it reads: "For peace, freedom // and democracy // never again fascism // millions of dead remind [us]"

Following WWII the toothbrush moustache fell out of favour in the West because of its strong association with Hitler, earning it the nickname "Hitler moustache". The use of the name "Adolf" also declined in post-war years.

Hitler and his legacy are occasionally described in more neutral or even favourable terms. Former Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat spoke of his 'admiration' of Hitler in 1953, when he was a young man, but it is possible that Sadat's views were shaped mainly by his anti-British sentiments. Louis Farrakhan has referred to Hitler as a "very great man". Bal Thackeray, leader of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party in the Indian state of the Maharashtra, declared in 1995 that he was an admirer of Hitler. Friedrich Meinecke, the German historian, said of Hitler's life that "it is one of the great examples of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life".

Religious views

Hitler's parents were Roman Catholics, but after leaving home he never attended Mass or received the sacraments. Hitler favoured aspects of Protestantism that suited his own views. However, he also adopted some elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchical organization, liturgy and phraseology in his politics. After his move to Germany, where Catholic and Protestant churches are largely financed through a church tax, Hitler did not leave his church, leading the historian Richard Steigmann-Gall to conclude that Hitler "can be classified as Catholic", but that "nominal church membership is a very unreliable gauge of actual piety in this context."

In public, Hitler often praised Christian heritage, German Christian culture, and professed a belief in an "Aryan" Jesus Christ, a Jesus who fought against the Jews. In his speeches and publications, Hitler spoke of his interpretation of Christianity as a central motivation for his antisemitism, stating that "As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice." In private, Hitler was more critical of traditional Christianity, considering it a religion fit only for slaves; he admired the power of Rome but maintained a severe hostility towards its teaching. Hitler's critical views on Catholicism resonated with Streicher's contention that the Catholic establishment was allying itself with the Jews. In light of these private statements, for John S. Conway and many other historians, it is beyond doubt that Hitler held a "fundamental antagonism" towards the Christian churches. However, some researchers have questioned the authenticity of Hitler's private statements; for instance, Hermann Rauschning's ''Hitler speaks'' is considered by most historians to be an invention.

In the political relations with the churches in Germany, however, Hitler readily adopted a strategy "that suited his immediate political purposes". Hitler had a general plan, even before his rise to power, to destroy Christianity within the Reich. The leader of the Hitler Youth stated that "the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement" from the start, but "considerations of expedience made it impossible" publicly to express this extreme position. His intention was to wait until the war was over to destroy the influence of Christianity. a belief system purged of what he objected to in orthodox Christianity, and featuring racist elements. By 1940, however, Hitler had abandoned advocating even the syncretist idea of a positive Christianity. Hitler maintained that the "''terrorism in religion is, to put it briefly, of a Jewish dogma, which Christianity has universalized and whose effect is to sow trouble and confusion in men's minds.''"

Hitler articulated his view on the relationship between religion and national identity as, "We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany".

Attitude towards occultism

Some researchers suggest that Hitler did not follow esoteric ideas, occultism, or Ariosophy, Others have suggested that Hitler's views, particularly on race, had been strongly influenced by works that promulgated a mystical superiority of the Germans; these works included the occult and antisemitic magazine ''Ostara'', whose publisher Lanz von Liebenfels claimed that Hitler had visited him in 1909 and had praised his work. Historians are divided on the question of the reliability of von Liebenfels' claim. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke considers his account reliable, Brigitte Hamann leaves the question open and Ian Kershaw, although questioning the degree to which Hitler was influenced by it, notes that, "Most likely, Hitler did read ''Ostara'', along with other racist pulp which was prominent on Vienna newspaper stands." Kershaw notes that it is usually accepted that Hitler did read and was influenced by this occult publication, pointing to Hitler's account of his conversion to antisemitism after reading antisemitic pamphlets.

Health

Hitler's health frequently has been the subject of speculation. It has been suggested that he suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat, Parkinson's disease, syphilis, tinnitus, and Asperger syndrome. Hitler also had dental problems—his personal dentist, Hugo Blaschke, had fitted a large dental bridge to Hitler's upper jaw in 1933, and in 1944, Blaschke removed the left rear section of the bridge to treat an infection of Hitler's gums that coincided with a sinus infection.

From the mid-1930s, Hitler followed a largely vegetarian diet, and ate meat only occasionally. At social events, Hitler sometimes gave graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make his dinner guests shun meat. A fear of cancer (from which his mother died) is the most widely cited reason for Hitler's dietary habits. However, Hitler, an antivivisectionist, may have followed his selective diet out of a profound concern for animals. Martin Bormann had a greenhouse constructed near the ''Berghof'' (near ''Berchtesgaden'') to ensure a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for Hitler throughout the war.

Hitler was a non-smoker and promoted aggressive anti-smoking campaigns throughout Germany. (See Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany.) Hitler strongly despised alcohol.

Syphilis

During the last years of his life, Hitler suffered from tremors and irregular heartbeat, which could have been symptoms of tertiary (late-stage) syphilis. Theodor Morell (a specialist venereologist) and another physician diagnosed Hitler with syphilis in early 1945 in a joint report to SS head Heinrich Himmler. Some historians have noted Hitler's preoccupation with syphilis in ''Mein Kampf'', calling it a "Jewish disease" and leading to speculation he may have contracted the disease himself. Since the 1870s, however, it was common for the völkisch right to associate Jews with diseases such as syphilis. Historian Robert Waite claims that Hitler tested negative on a Wassermann test in 1939; however, the test was prone to false-negative results. Regardless of Hitler's infection status, he lived in constant fear of the disease, and took treatment for it ignoring his physician's opinions. For example, Hitler may have discovered in 1908 that he was syphilitic, and this may have influenced his views on prostitution and similar societal features and spurred his intent to eliminate these perceived ills. In ''Mein Kampf'', he wrote about the temptation of prostitution and the spreading of syphilis, specifically volume 1, chapter 10, "Causes of the Collapse".

The journalist Joseph Kessel reports that renowned masseur, Felix Kersten, in the winter of 1942 was shown a top-secret 26-page report that indicated that Hitler had contracted syphilis in his youth and was treated for it at a hospital in Pasewalk, Germany. In 1937, Hitler had first displayed late-stage symptoms, and by the start of 1942, progressive syphilitic paralysis (''Tabes dorsalis'') was occurring. Hitler was treated by Morell and his disease was kept as a state secret. The only people privy to the report's content were Martin Bormann and Hermann Göring.

Monorchism

It has been alleged that Hitler had monorchism, the medical condition of having only one testicle. Hitler's personal doctor, Johan Jambor, supposedly described this condition to a priest whose records were uncovered in 2008, 23 years after the doctor's death.

Soviet journalist, Lev Bezymensky, allegedly involved in the Soviet autopsy of Hitler's remains, stated in a 1967 book that Hitler's left testicle had been missing, but he later admitted to have falsified this claim. Hitler had been examined by many doctors throughout his life, and no mention of this clinical condition has been discovered. Records show that he was wounded in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, with some sources describing his injury as a wound to the groin.

Parkinson's disease

It has also been speculated Hitler had Parkinson's disease. Newsreel footage of Hitler show tremors of his hand and a shuffling walk, which began before the war and worsened towards the end of his life. Morell treated Hitler with a drug that was commonly used in 1945 to treat the condition.

Ernst-Günther Schenck, working as emergency doctor in the Reich Chancellery during April 1945, also claimed Hitler might have had Parkinson's disease. However, Schenck saw Hitler only briefly on two occasions, and his diagnosis was formed at a time of immense stress and exhaustion, as he had been working in the surgery for several days without much sleep.

Other complaints

From the 1930s, Hitler suffered from stomach pains. In 1936, a non-cancerous polyp was removed from his throat and he developed eczema on his legs. He also suffered ruptured eardrums as a result of the 20 July plot bomb blast in 1944, and two hundred wood splinters had to be removed from his legs. Hitler's otologist observed that Hitler had developed tinnitus after the Röhm-Putsch, and considered it psychogenic in origin. Hitler treated the condition with the prescription-free lipid lecithin.

Addiction to amphetamine

Hitler began using amphetamine occasionally after 1937 and became addicted to the drug after the late summer of 1942. Albert Speer has linked Hitler's use of amphetamines with his increasingly inflexible decision making (for example, never to allow military retreats).

Historians' views

The German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler dismisses theories that link the rise of Nazi Germany to Hitler's medical conditions and mental states. The theories about Hitler's medical condition are difficult to prove, and according them too much weight may have the effect of attributing many of the events and consequences of the Third Reich to the possibly impaired physical health of one individual. Ian Kershaw agrees that it is better to take a broader view of German history by seeking to examine what social forces led to the Third Reich and its policies rather than to pursue narrow explanations for the Holocaust and World War II based on only one person.

Sexuality

To the public, Hitler promoted his own image as that of a man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission. However, he was engaged to Mimi Reiter in the 1920s, and later had a partner, Eva Braun. He had a close bond with his half-niece Geli Raubal, which may have included sexual relations, though there is no evidence that conclusively supports such a relationship. All three women attempted suicide, which has led to speculation that Hitler may have had sexual fetishes that affected the mental well-being of his close partners. Otto Strasser, a political opponent of Hitler, claimed that Hitler had urolagnia (sexual arousal by urine or urination), but Mimi Reiter has disputed this claim. Hitler may have also had a sexual relationship with British fascist, Unity Mitford.

Family

Paula Hitler, the last living member of Adolf Hitler's immediate family, died in 1960.

The most prominent and longest-living closest relative was Adolf Hitler's nephew, William Patrick Hitler, the son of Adolf's half-brother, Alois Hitler Jr.

Over the years, various investigative reporters have attempted to track down other living relatives of Hitler. Many are presumed to be living inconspicuous lives and have changed their last name.

Klara Hitler, mother

Alois Hitler, father

Alois Hitler, Jr., half-brother

Angela Hitler Raubal, half-sister

Bridget Dowling, sister-in-law

Eva Braun, partner and then wife

Geli Raubal, niece

Gretl Braun, sister-in-law through Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun

Heinz Hitler, nephew

Hermann Fegelein, brother-in-law through Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun

Ilse Braun, sister-in-law through Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun

Johann Georg Hiedler, presumed grandfather

Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, maternal great-grandfather, presumed great uncle and possibly Hitler's true paternal grandfather

Leo Raubal Jr, nephew

Maria Schicklgruber, grandmother

Paula Hitler, sister

William Patrick Hitler, nephew

Hitler in media

Oratory and rallies

Hitler honed his oratory skills by giving speeches to military audiences in 1919 and 1920. He became adept at using populist themes targeted to his audience, including the use of popular scapegoats who could be blamed for the economic hardships of his listeners. Munitions minister and architect Albert Speer commented that Hitler was above all else an actor.

Recorded in private conversation

Hitler visited Finnish Field Marshal Mannerheim on 4 June 1942. During the visit, an engineer of the Finnish broadcasting company YLE, Thor Damen, recorded Hitler and Mannerheim in conversation. Damen did so secretly, since Hitler did not permit recordings of him off the record. The 11½ minutes-long recording is the only audio record of Hitler in casual conversation. Most of the recording is a monologue of Hitler, which he delivers in a slightly excited, but detached manner. Hitler concedes that he had underestimated the Soviet Union's ability to conduct effective warfare. Audio recordings of Hitler and Mannerheim's public and private talk (w/English text) are available online.

Documentaries during the Third Reich

Documentary films were another propaganda tool for Hitler. Hitler was involved and appeared in a series of films by the pioneering filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl via Universum Film AG (UFA):

''Der Sieg des Glaubens'' (''Victory of Faith'', 1933).

''Triumph des Willens'' (''Triumph of the Will'', 1934), co-produced by Hitler.

''Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht'' (''Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces'', 1935).

''Olympia'' (1938).

Hitler was the central figure of the first three films; they focused on the party rallies of the respective years and are considered propaganda films. For example, Leni Riefenstahl's ''Triumph of the Will'', shot during the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, shows Hitler from high and low angles, and only twice head-on. Some of the people in the film were paid actors, but most of the participants were not. Hitler also featured prominently in the ''Olympia'' film. Whether the latter is a propaganda film or a true documentary is still a subject of controversy, but it nonetheless perpetuated and spread the propaganda message of the 1936 Olympic Games, depicting Nazi Germany as a prosperous and peaceful country.

Television

As a prominent politician, Hitler was featured in many newsreels. His attendance at public functions, including the 1936 Olympic Games and Nuremberg Rallies, appeared on television broadcasts made between 1935 and 1939. These events, along with other programming that highlighted activity by public officials, were often repeated in public viewing rooms. Samples from a number of surviving television films from Nazi Germany were included in the 1999 documentary ''Das Fernsehen unter dem Hakenkreuz (Television Under the Swastika)''.

Documentaries post Third Reich

''The World at War'' (1974): a Thames Television series which contains much information about Hitler and Nazi Germany, including an interview with his secretary, Traudl Junge.

''Adolf Hitler's Last Days'': from the BBC series "Secrets of World War II" tells the story about Hitler's last days during World War II.

''The Nazis: A Warning From History'' (1997): six-part BBC TV series on how the cultured and educated Germans accepted Hitler and the Nazis up to its downfall. Historical consultant is Ian Kershaw.

''Cold War'' (1998): a CNN series about the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The series begins with World War II footage, including Hitler, and how the Cold War began after Germany surrendered.

''Im toten Winkel – Hitlers Sekretärin (Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary)'' (2002): an exclusive 90 minute interview with Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary. Made by Austrian Jewish director André Heller shortly before Junge's death from lung cancer, Junge recalls the last days in the Berlin bunker. Clips of the interview were used in ''Downfall (film)''.

''Undergångens arkitektur (The Architecture of Doom)'' (1989): documentary about the National Socialist aesthetic as envisioned by Hitler.

''Das Fernsehen unter dem Hakenkreuz (Television Under the Swastika)'' (1999): documentary by Michael Kloft about the domestic use of television in Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes from 1935 to 1944.

''Ruins of the Reich'' (2007): four-part series of the Rise and Fall of Hitler's Reich and its effects, created by Third Reich historian R.J. Adams

Films and series

East German actor Fritz Diez depicted Hitler in ''Ernst Thälmann – Führer seiner Klasse'' (East Germany, 1955), ''Frozen Flashes'' (East Germany, 1967), ''I, Justice'' (Czechoslovakia, 1967), ''Liberation'' (1970–1, Soviet Union), ''17 Moments of Spring'' (1973, TV production, Soviet Union), ''Take Aim'' (1974, Soviet Union) and ''Soldiers of Freedom'' (1977, Soviet Union).

''Hitler'' (1962) is a U.S. made film (it was later re-released with the title, ''Women of Nazi Germany''). The film stars Richard Basehart. The film depicts Hitler through the years and focuses mainly on his private life.

''The Death of Adolf Hitler'', a British (7 January 1973) made-for-television production, starring Frank Finlay. The movie depicts the last days of Hitler.

''Hitler: The Last Ten Days'' (1973): movie depicting the days leading up to Adolf Hitler's death, starring Sir Alec Guinness.

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's ''Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland'' ''(Hitler: A Film from Germany)'' (1977): a seven-hour work in four parts. The director uses documentary clips, photographic backgrounds, puppets, theatrical stages, and other elements.

''The Bunker'' (1981): a U.S. made-for-television movie describing the last days in the Führerbunker covering 17 January 1945 to 2 May 1945. The film stars Sir Anthony Hopkins.

''Europa, Europa'' (1990): based on the true story of a German Jew who joined the Hitler Youth to avoid capture. Hitler is portrayed by Ryszard Pietruski.

''Fatherland'' (1994): a hypothetical view of Germany in 1964, had Hitler won World War II, adapted from the novel by former journalist Robert Harris.

''The Empty Mirror'' (1996): a psychodrama which speculates on the events following Hitler (portrayed by Norman Rodway) surviving the fall of Nazi Germany.

''Moloch'' (1999): Hitler portrayed by Leonid Mozgovoy in a fictional drama set at his Berghof Retreat in the Bavarian Alps.

''Max'' (2002): fictional drama depicting a friendship between Jewish art dealer Max Rothman (John Cusack) and a young Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor) as a failed painter in Vienna.

''Hitler: The Rise of Evil'' (2003): two-part TV series about the early years of Adolf Hitler and his rise to power (up to 1933), starring Robert Carlyle.

''Der Untergang'' ''(Downfall)'' (2004): German movie about the last days of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, starring Bruno Ganz. This film is partly based on the autobiography of Traudl Junge, a favourite secretary of Hitler's. In 2002, Junge said she felt great guilt for "... liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived."

''Valkyrie'' (2008): Hitler, played by David Bamber, is portrayed as a target of the famous assassination plot by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.

''The Man Who Crossed Hitler'' (2011): BBC film dramatising the true story where Jewish lawyer Hans Litten subpoenas Hitler, played by Ian Hart, as a witness in the trial of some Nazi thugs in 1931.

Plays

''Dr Freud Will See You Now Mr Hitler'' (2008): radio drama by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran presenting an imagined scenario in which Sigmund Freud treats the young Hitler. Toby Jones played Hitler.

See also

Führermuseum

''Mein Kampf'' (online versions)

Poison Kitchen

Vorbunker

Footnotes

References

Further reading

External links

 – real life footage in documentaries  – as portrayed in film and TV

|years=1933–1945}} |years=1934–1945}} Category:1889 births Category:1945 deaths Category:Antisemitism in Germany Category:Attempted assassination survivors Category:Austrian anti-communists Category:Austrian emigrants Category:Austrian expatriates in Germany Category:Austrian Nazis Category:Austrian painters Category:Chancellors of Germany Category:Conspiracy theorists Category:German anti-communists Category:German founders of automobile manufacturers Category:German military leaders Category:German military personnel of World War I Category:German painters Category:German people of Austrian descent Category:German people of World War II Category:German political writers Category:German politicians who committed suicide Category:German presidential candidates Category:Historians of fascism Category:Hitler family Category:Holocaust perpetrators Category:Leaders of political parties in Germany Category:Nazi leaders Category:Nazis who committed suicide Category:Nazis who participated in the Beer Hall Putsch Category:People convicted of treason against Germany Category:People from Braunau am Inn Category:Persecution of homosexuals Category:Political writers who committed suicide Category:Presidents of Germany Category:Recipients of German pardons Category:Recipients of the Iron Cross Category:Suicides by firearm in Germany Category:Suicides by poison Category:World War II political leaders

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