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Alex Galvin Mrs. Wertz-O English 1103 20 November, 2013 The Man Who Sparked It All Most people in the world hear The Holocaust and immediately start to think of the camps and their terrible conditions, the death and horror that came with it, and the overall shock that was sent around the world from the death so many innocent people. Everyone knows about the Holocaust and they know what happened throughout it, but what many fail to realize is what seemingly insignificant events actually set it in motion. Im talking about how Adolf Hitler deviously worked his way into power with everything going perfectly for him to have his way in Germany. Some of the planets aligning, so to speak, for Hitler can be looked at as fate or even just a series of bad luck for the world; however, if you really step back and look you can see just how much Hitler forced those planets to go where he wanted them to. He played God and was the heart, sole, and driving force of the Holocaust. That is what intrigues me, how so many can take the pyre that was the Holocaust for face value without looking at how the father of it all was even put into place to spark it all to begin with. Personally I have always had a unique look at Adolf Hitler as opposed to many people. Everyone sees him as just this hate filled monster that wanted nothing more than to exterminate not just a whole religion but a plethora of different groups and races. I am not taking anything away from that because in some light it is accurate. But there was always another side and it showed in his dedication to climb the ranks of German politics and become as powerful as he

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managed to become. Even before his ascension to power he was a driven individual which you can see looking back to his early life. From a young age he was mentally preparing himself to be strong enough mentally to bend a nation to his liking. Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau, Austria(Rise to Power3) this is a seemingly unknown fact because everyone seems to think, because of his beliefs, that Hitler was a natural born German. But being born in Austria is one of the things that Hitler had to get around which in a way helped him. Though I do find it very ironic that he saw such a perfection in the German race while he was simply an Austrian which makes me wonder about how he was mentally? I think he had a disorder with his self-image and needed to project it onto another people that he would then try and assimilate with. He dropped out of high school after the death of his father and attempted to get into the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts he failed(Rise to Power5). This put him in a particularly peculiar position as a very influential age of 18. He tried on many of occasions to get into the academy and failed every time, even going as far to move sell all of his possessions and move to Vienna. He became a homeless drifter who slept on park benches and ate at soup kitchen(Rise to Power8) I think this is a major testament to his dedication to whatever cause he may put his mind to. To be willing to drop all that you know and essentially dedicate your entire life to one thing at just the age of nineteen takes a set of brass balls, determination, and quite a bit of stupidity. But he did it and looking back on it I think it is where he gets a lot of his drive to enforce the final solution on Germany from. Without knowing it he was mentally preparing himself for the takeover that would come in his later years.

He began to take in the beliefs that Jews, who he had been actually growing up with, were inferior to him. Even as a young, broke, homeless boy he had a very large ego which made

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it very easy for him to believe the thought that there was a whole group of people that was completely inferior to him. Now dont get me wrong, I am all for having an ego but to begin to put down others publicly at such a young age is exceptionally wrong and from here he would only elevate his disgust with not only the Jews but many others. It was not until after World War I that Hitler can be demonstrated to have adopted an anti-Semitic ideology.(USHMM Adolf). It makes sense to me growing up in Vienna as broke as Hitler was that he accepted and may have enjoyed the help given to him by surrounding Jewish people. So in my mind there was no way he was going to voice his anti-Semitic opinions about anyone until he found himself in a position of power or with something to gain from it. It was this time spent in Vienna during his impressionable years that would end up having a great influence on him. Hitler was genuinely influenced in Vienna by two political movements. The first was the German racist nationalism propagated by the Upper Austrian Pan-German politician Georg von Schnerer. The second key influence was that of Karl Lueger, Mayor of Vienna from 1897 to his death in 1910.(USHMM Adolf). These two men, Schnerer and Lueger, had a combined effect on Hitler but both in their own unique way. Schnerer was more of a leader of the lower-middle class and fraternities and developed an affinity for using force. In 1888, Schnerer was temporarily imprisoned for ransacking a Jewish-owned newspaper office and assaulting its employees. This action increased Schnerers popularity and helped members of his party get elected to the Austrian Parliament.(Whiteside) I found this almost comical because this is close to identical to a situation that Hitler will find himself in in the future but that may just be a mishap I am not to sure? Hitler drew his ideology in large part from Schnerer, but his strategy and tactics from Lueger(USHMM Adolf) I think this is primarily because Hitler watched how Lueger could influence a large city crowd made up of all sorts of people to

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join him with just his words. I think the two may have had the biggest impact on Hitler and that between the two of them set his conquest in motion and gave him the ideas for the proper tools to do it with. Adolf left Austria at the age of 24 to avoid mandatory military service that was required of all men(Rise to Power10) To me this is where his obsession with Germany takes a huge leap because he ends up signing with the German Bavarian unit during WWI anyway. I just dont see any reason to avoid service in Austria to go fight in a German unit? My only thought is that it was his excuse to go have some stronger ties to Germany as a whole. To me his time in the military was not as important to his rise as some might think. The highest rank he ever obtained was the rank of Corporal. He single handedly captured 4 French Soldiers(Rise to Power12) and was awarded the highest military honor Germany can bestow upon anyone, The Iron Cross, twice. This service helps him win favor with the people of Germany later but it is not a main point. But his dedication the country was demonstrated more by the fact that after he was removed from combat after being injured by gas, yeah assholes actually used chemical weapons back then, he was furious to hear that Germany lost the war. When he found out that the Germans not only lost but had surrendered he was appalled. He believed that there was an anti-war conspiracy that involved the Jews and Communists(Rise of Power13) this coupled with the fact that he did not believe they actually lost on the war-front sent him mad. I think this was the final breaking point for poor old Adolf, and I also believe that it is here that he finally decides he is going to do whatever it takes to make sure he, in his mind, gets back at the Jews and Commies *thats how envision him thinking it! Anyway he decided to make it his goal to weed out Communists as an undercover agent in the military while in the meantime giving lectures about that dangers of Communism and Jewish

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people. This I think is where everything in the world of Hitler is primed to go up in smoke and is only needing the right spark to set it off. Sure enough THAT SPARK COMES. And we can all thank the French because they insisted of being harsher with the Treaty of Versailles even though they are the worst player on the winning team. They are that guy, they just throw in their opinion where ever and quit early! Meanwhile President Wilson was determined to make his fourteen points stick which in reality was maybe not the best move either. Either way the treaty was made and its conditions imposed upon Germany were severe and wide ranging(Hickman2) it involved reparations to the tune of 6.6 billion euros and a military that was beyond limited. Their army was to be limited to 100,000 men(Hickman2) while their navy was reduced to no more than six battleships, 6 cruisers, 6 destroyers, and 12 torpedo boats(Hickman2). In addition, production of military aircraft, tanks, armored cars, and poison gas was prohibited.(Hickson2). Now I dont know about how smart this was, but do you think a country as proud as Germany at the time was going to roll over for this especially after giving up all the land they had as well? Hell NO, the country as a whole was fired up, none of them wanted this treaty signed. It got so bad that the elected leader, Philipp Scheidemann, stepped down so that he didnt have to sign off on the death of Germany. Hitler went to the call of the people and held the Beer Hall Putsch in which he rallied to overthrow the government and renounce the Treaty of Versailles. He was arrested and charged with treason. He in a spark of genius used his trial to speak on behalf of the Nazi platform and help it gain popularity(Rise to Power20) this may be the smartest political move of all time. In my opinion he could not have done anything better at the time, and to then follow it up by writing Mein Kampf and since everyone know knew who Adolf Hitler was what he stood for over 5 million copies of his book were sold(Rise to Power21). He was now rich, out of

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prison after nine months, and ready to make his run for absolute power. Genius move, I would honestly love it if it would have been a good person and not have led to him being able to spark the Holocaust and kill so many people. It is at this point in history that Hitler had made his way through the Nazi party through his charismatic speeches about his ideas that were growing evermore popular across the nation. He had climbed to the top of the Nazi party which was growing stronger and stronger each day as more people began to be infuriated by the Treaty and started to think that maybe it was not the fault of the military but rather due to a lack of support at home from anti-war politicians and the sabotaging of the war effort by Jews, Socialists, and Bolsheviks(Hickman2). This growing concerned helped the already popular anti-Semitic beliefs grow more and more popular. Personally I dont see why not, they were just eating up everything the Nazi protestors were feeding them, and being led by such a manipulative genius they were pretty much helpless zombies I think. Another problem created by the treaty was major hyperinflation, this was set into play when the country was destroyed economically. The majority of jobs for them around that time were open in the workshops for military so shutting down that production set in a huge drop in employment. That alongside the reparations destroyed the country economically. America had eased the reparations a little by loaning Germany money to the now Weimer Republic but after the American Stock Exchange collapsed, and caused an economic depression. America called in all its foreign loans(Hitlers Rise) this rendered over 6 million workers to unemployment. When Chancellor Brning cut government expenditure, wages and unemployment pay(Hitlers Rise) the Reichstag was not having it so President Hindenburg used Article 48 to pass the measures by decree(Hitlers Rise) essentially pissing off ever German citizen. Many decided to turn to Communism for work which scared the hell out of the

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wealthy businessmen who saw how Communism could ruin their business. They in turn decided to back Hitler and the Nazi party making them increasingly more influential. I dont understand how someone in charge of a country could make such a big mistake that Brning made. The people were also calling out for a strong government after the obvious failure of democracy and the hit taken by the treaty. Can you blame them, all hope had seemed lost, and no one had any idea that they were all about to be manipulated by in my opinion on of the cleverest conquerors of all time. Thanks to that manipulation The Nazi party becomes at this point the largest party in the German parliament(USHMM Hitler) and I cant even imagine where I would stand on the situation if I had been an average citizen at the time of this seemingly innocent party was emerging. One of the most scary statistics I have found is that In 1928, the Nazis had only 12 seats in the Reichstag; by July 1932 they had 230 seats(Hitlers Rise) this just shows the speed at which they began to take over which at that point is essentially unstoppable. It is just terrifying to know that all it takes is someone with a hidden evil agenda and some slick talking and you can find yourself in a position to obtain such power. I think a lot of how they obtained such power is because of the use of the Waffen SS and the SA to strong arm his way into votes and keep any Jews from voting against him.(Rise to Power24). After that I think there was no going back he had the perfect balance of finesse with his words and power with his money and storm-troopers numbering almost at 400,000 by the time they were fully developed. He was more than ready to launch his final solution and only needed one more piece of the puzzle.

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This shows how the Nazi Party could feed off the peoples hardships.

In January 1933, feeling their power slipping, Hindenburg and Papen came up with a plan to get the Nazis on their side by offering to make Hitler Vice Chancellor(Hitlers Rise) he effectively turned it down demanding to be made Chancellor. His wish was granted which I think was very dumb. I cant believe someone was that desperate and that stupid to think that giving such a power hungry individual such as Hitler that position could have anything good coming out of it. Why on earth could that even seem okay to them? Hitler promptly used Article 48 to assume the position as President as well. At this point he was Chancellor and Presidentyeah let that one sink in real quickhe had absolute total power of the country. He was a total Dictator and in 1933 outlawed any party that wasnt the Nazi Party(Rise to Power25). The thought one man and his minions having any and all the power he wants should be terrifying

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no matter who it is and it being someone like him is just disturbing. However; so many people loved and supported his rise and thought he could do no wrong. That may be even scarier that after all of that and everyone knowing how he feels that they could still support his rise. But he gave the people what they wanted and thats all they cared about. He broke the Treaty of Versailles by building up the German army again just like the people wanted, fixed the economy, and had no opposition politically(Rise to Power26) he did what he had promised, he had fixed the countries problems and developed his Third Reich and from there went after more land that thought the German people were destined to have. In 1933 he finally dropped the match in what was the pile of gasoline soaked timber that was Germany by opening the first concentration camp. From there the rest was history. This is what is always overlooked that the Holocaust could have never had happened had any of those events not lined up how they had. Though Hitler was so clever and so sneaky that I think it may have happened regardless. That is my inquiry and I am sticking to it.

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Hickman, Kennedy. "Aftermath of World War I: The Seeds of Future Conflict Sown." About.com Military History. N.p., 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. <http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/worldwarioverview/a/wwiiaftermath_2.htm>. "Hitler's Rise to Power." BBC News. BBC, 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/germany/hitlerpowerrev1.shtml>. "Playing the Devil's Advocate." Playing the Devils Advocate. N.p., 27 June 2011. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. <http://dissention.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/mass-unemployment-was-behind-hitlersunlikely-rise-to-power/>. Rise to Power Adolf Hitler. N.p.: SlideShare, 10 June 2010. PPT. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Adolf Hitler: Early Years, 18891913." Adolf Hitler: Early Years, 18891913. N.p., 10 June 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007430>. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Hitler Comes to Power." Hitler Comes to Power. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007671>. Whiteside, Andrew G. "Georg Von Schnerer - The Original Nazis - Austria's DAP." Georg Von Schnerer - The Original Nazis - Austria's DAP. N.p., 22 Nov. 2008. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. <http://original-nazis.wikifoundry.com/page/Georg von Schnerer>.

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