Adolf Hitler
From the Call of Duty Wiki
| Adolf Hitler | |
|---|---|
| |
| Rank | Führer |
| Affiliations | Nazi Germany |
| Birth | April 20th, 1889 |
| Death | April 30th, 1945 |
Adolf Hitler was the fascist dictator of Germany during World War II and the main antagonist in all the Call of Duty games taking place in the European Theater of WWII. Hitler was well known for his charisma, particularly in rallying crowds of Germans. Even after a failed attempt to seize power in the 1920s, Hitler managed to win control of Germany in 1933 under the Nazi (National-Socialist) party. During his twelve year reign, Hitler re-militarized Germany and annexed Czechoslovakia and Austria. He then agreed to the Non-Aggression Pact which allowed Germany to invade Poland without Soviet reprisal in 1939, starting World War II. Under his leadership, Nazi Germany began a conquest of Europe, invading Western Europe and capturing France in 1940 as well as the Scandinavian Peninsula. Hitler then betrayed the Soviet Union in 1941, creating the Eastern Front.
Behind the scenes, Hitler began a horrific genocide of Jews, homosexuals, communists, gypsies, and people with deformities. He thought that the master race was blonde hair and blue eyed Germans, known as Aryans. This is infamously known today as the Holocaust, which resulted in the death of roughly 12 million people, 6 million of which were Jews. During the Allies assault on Berlin in 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. Germany surrendered about a week later. Some people believe that he moved to South America after Germany surrendered, but it was clear that Hitler committed suicide in his bunker with his girlfriend, Eva Braun, who got married 24 hours before killing themselves.
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Childhood
Adolf Hitler was born at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary, the fourth of Alois and Klara Hitler's six children. At the age of three, his family moved to Kapuzinerstrasse 5 in Passau, Germany where the young Hitler would acquire Lower Bavarian rather than Austrian as his lifelong native dialect. In 1894 the family moved to Leonding near Linz, then in June 1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld near Lambach, where he tried his hand at farming and beekeeping. During this time, the young Hitler attended school in nearby Fischlham. He was a happy, carefree child who tirelessly played "Cowboys and Indians" and, by his own account, became fixated on war after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War in his father's things. He wrote in Mein Kampf: "It was not long before the great historic struggle had become my greatest spiritual experience. From then on, I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in any way connected with war or, for that matter, with soldiering." His father's efforts at Hafeld ended in failure and the family moved to Lambach in 1897. There, Hitler attended a Catholic school located in an 11th-century Benedictine cloister whose walls were engraved in a number of places with crests containing the symbol of the swastika. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding. His younger brother Edmund died of measles on February 2, 1900, causing permanent changes in Hitler. He went from a confident, outgoing boy who found school easy, to a morose, detached, sullen boy who constantly battled his father and his teachers. Hitler was close to his mother, but had a troubled relationship with his tradition-minded authoritarian father, who frequently beat him, especially in the years after Alois's retirement and disappointed farming efforts. Alois wanted his son to follow in his footsteps as an Austrian customs official, and this became a huge source of conflict between them. Despite his son's pleas to go to classical high school and become an artist, his father would not budge, and sent him to the technical high school in the city of Linz in September 1900. Hitler rebelled, and, in Mein Kampf confessed to failing his first year in hopes 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." But Alois never relented and Hitler became even more bitter and rebellious. For young Hitler, German Nationalism quickly became an obsession, and a way to rebel against his father, who proudly served the Austrian government. Most people that lived along the German-Austrian border considered themselves German-Austrians, but Hitler expressed loyalty only to Germany. In defiance of the Austrian Monarchy, and his father who continually expressed loyalty to it, Hitler and his young friends liked to use the German greeting, "Heil," and sing the German anthem "Deutschland Über Alles," instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem. After Alois' sudden death on January 3, 1903, Hitler's behavior at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave. He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in 1904, but upon completing his second year, he and his friends went out for a night of celebration and drinking, and an intoxicated Hitler tore his school certificate into four pieces and used it as toilet paper. When someone turned the stained certificate in to the school's director, he “... 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, and never to return to school again. Hitler became a Christian at age 15. He was confirmed on Whitsunday, 22 May 1904 at the Linz Cathedral. His sponsor was Emanuel Lugert, a friend of his late father.
World War I
Hitler served in France and Belgium in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment (called Regiment List after its first commander), ending the war as a Gefreiter (equivalent at the time to a lance corporal in the British and private first class in the American armies). He was a runner, one of the most dangerous jobs on the Western Front, and was often exposed to enemy fire. He participated in a number of major battles on the
Western Front, including the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras and the Battle of Passchendaele. The Battle of Ypres (October 1914), which became known in Germany as the Kindermord bei Ypern (Massacre of the Innocents) saw approximately 40,000 men (between a third and a half) of the nine infantry divisions present killed in 20 days, and Hitler's own company of 250 reduced to 42 by December. Biographer John Keegan has said that this experience drove Hitler to become aloof and withdrawn for the remaining years of war. Hitler was twice decorated for bravery. He received the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914 and Iron Cross, First Class, in 1918, an honour rarely given to a Gefreiter. However, because the regimental staff thought Hitler lacked leadership skills, he was never promoted to Unteroffizier (equivalent to a British corporal). Other historians say that the reason he was not promoted is that he was not a German citizen. His duties at regimental headquarters, while often dangerous, gave Hitler time to pursue his artwork. He drew cartoons and instructional drawings for an army newspaper. In 1916, he was wounded in either the groin area or the left thigh during the Battle of the Somme, but returned to the front in March 1917. He received the Wound Badge later that year. A noted German historian and author, Sebastian Haffner, referring to Hitler's experience at the front, suggests he did have at least some understanding of the military. On 15 October 1918, Hitler was admitted to a field hospital, temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack. The English psychologist David Lewis and Bernhard Horstmann suggest the blindness may have been the result of a conversion disorder (then known as hysteria). Hitler said it was during this experience that he became convinced the purpose of his life was to "save Germany." Some scholars, notably Lucy Dawidowicz,[31] argue that an intention to exterminate Europe's Jews was fully formed in Hitler's mind at this time, though he probably had not thought through how it could be done. Most historians think the decision was made in 1941, and some think it came as late as 1942. Two passages in Mein Kampf mention the use of poison gas: At the beginning of the Great War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas . . . then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain. These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human weakness and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty, unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas. The weaker natures must be told that here it is a case of to be or not to be. Hitler had long admired Germany, and during the war he had become a passionate German patriot, although he did not become a German citizen until 1932. Hitler found the war to be 'the greatest of all experiences' and afterwards he was praised by a number of his commanding officers for his bravery. He was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918 even while the German army still held enemy territory.[34] Like many other German nationalists, Hitler believed in the Dolchstoßlegende ("dagger-stab 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. These politicians were later dubbed the November Criminals. The Treaty of Versailles deprived Germany of various territories, demilitarized the Rhineland and imposed other economically damaging sanctions. The treaty re-created Poland, which even moderate Germans regarded as an outrage. The treaty also blamed Germany for all the horrors of the war, something which major historians such as John Keegan now consider at least in part to be victor's justice: most European nations in the run-up to World War I had become increasingly militarized and were eager to fight. The culpability of Germany was used as a basis to impose reparations on Germany (the amount was repeatedly revised under the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the Hoover Moratorium). Germany in turn perceived the treaty and especially, Article 231 the paragraph on the German responsibility for the war as a humiliation. For example, there was a nearly total demilitarization of the armed forces, allowing Germany only six battleships, no submarines, no air force, an army of 100,000 without conscription and no armoured vehicles. The treaty was an important factor in both the social and political conditions encountered by Hitler and his Nazis as they sought power. Hitler and his party used the signing of the treaty by the "November Criminals" as a reason to build up Germany so that it could never happen again. He also used the "November Criminals" as scapegoats, although at the Paris peace conference, these politicians had had very little choice in the
The Holocaust
One of the foundations of Hitler's social policies was the concept of racial hygiene. It was based on the ideas of Arthur de Gobineau, a French count; eugenics, a pseudo-science that advocated racial purity; and social Darwinism. Applied to human beings, "survival of the fittest" was interpreted as requiring racial purity and killing off "life unworthy of life." The first victims were children with physical and developmental disabilities; those killings occurred in a program dubbed Action T4. After a public outcry, Hitler made a show of ending this program, but the killings in fact continued (see Nazi eugenics). Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, systematically killed somewhere between 11 and 14 million people, including about six million Jews, in concentration camps, ghettos and mass executions, or through less systematic methods elsewhere. In addition to those gassed to death, many died as a result of starvation and disease while working as slave labourers (sometimes benefiting private German companies). Along with Jews, non-Jewish Poles, Communists and political opponents, members of resistance groups, homosexuals, Roma, the physically handicapped and mentally retarded, Soviet prisoners of war (possibly as many as three million), Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, trade unionists, and psychiatric patients were killed. One of the biggest centres of mass-killing was the extermination camp complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hitler never visited the concentration camps[citation needed] and did not speak publicly about the killing in precise terms. The Holocaust (the Endlösung der jüdischen Frage or "Final Solution of the Jewish Question") was planned and ordered by leading Nazis, with Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich playing key roles. While no specific order from Hitler authorizing the mass killing has surfaced, there is documentation showing that he approved the Einsatzgruppen killing squads that followed the German army through Poland and Russia, and that he was kept well informed about their activities. The evidence also suggests that in the fall of 1941 Himmler and Hitler decided upon mass extermination by gassing. During interrogations by Soviet intelligence officers declassified over fifty years later, Hitler's valet Heinz Linge and his military aide Otto Gunsche said Hitler had "pored over the first blueprints of gas chambers." His private secretary, Traudl Junge, testified that Hitler knew all about the death camps. To make for smoother cooperation in the implementation of this "Final Solution", the Wannsee conference was held near Berlin on 20 January 1942, with fifteen senior officials participating, led by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. The records of this meeting provide the clearest evidence of planning for the Holocaust. On 22 February, Hitler was recorded saying to his associates, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews".
Trivia
- Hitler received the Iron Cross, Second Class in 1914, and the Iron Cross First Class in 1918, for his bravery in combat.
- In the campaign mission Downfall you can hear one of Hitlers speeches close to the Reichstag. You can also hear the speech on the multiplayer maps Downfall and Dome.
- Many people said that Hitler looks exactly the same as Charlie Chaplin ( 'King of Comedy' ). They had the same year, month, and hour of birth.
- Adolf Hitler has not appeared in any Call of Duty games yet but is always mentioned mainly as The Fuhrer.
