Throughout all of history there is one name that rises above all the others possibly as the most depraved, heinous, vile human being ever to have walked the planet. Humans worldwide almost unanimously agree, some from the start but most in hindsight, that this man was pure evil. Yes, I am talking of course about the infamous dictator Adolf Hitler. BBC writes quote “Few names from history inspire such immediate and emphatic revulsion as that of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. His hands are stained with the blood of millions killed in the devastation of the Second World War and the horror of the Holocaust. But Hitler was not born a brutal tyrant, he became one,” end quote. He became one. Well that begs the question, of course, how did he become one? How does a normal Austrian boy born to a family of modest means come to take over another country’s government so fully that he acquires the power to engage the entire world in a bloody war while simultaneously murdering millions of innocent men, women, and children? Oh, what, you thought Hitler was German? Turns out, there’s a lot the masses don’t know about Adolf Hitler and his rise to power. And as we well know, to forget history is to risk repeating it. Let’s fix that. 

 

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I’ve been hearing a lot of mention of Adolf Hitler lately. You know, with recent changes to the US government, there’s been a lot of talk about fascism and oligarchies and threats to democracy. And, yes, Hitler was fascist and he was propped up by oligarchs and yes he did completely dismantle democracy in Germany in around 53 days. So, I think, I mean yeah, I think all the Hitler chatter is warranted. But I also think that the situation right now is very different from the situation back then. And it’s possible that all this Hitler talk just adds to the fear and the panic and the division and, I’m just going to say it, I don’t think many people know the first thing about Adolf Hitler. Not really. I mean I think everyone knows he was a monster, and he was, he was a monster. But the details matter. And if we’re going to learn from the past, to avoid another Hitler situation going forward, those details certainly matter. So what was the situation then? Let’s dive into the life of Adolf Hitler my friends to try to get to the bottom of how a true monster is made. And, just heads up, this is going to be a two parter. So get ready to tune back in next week for the conclusion. It’s worth it, trust me, you need to know about this. Neglecting to learn and remember this history comes with some very serious possible consequences.  

 

Hitler was born on April 20th, 1889 in the small Austrian town of Braunau am Inn. Going to butcher a lot of pronunciation this week, forgive me. So, this town is in Austria but it’s very close to the Austrian border with Germany. So Hitler was Austrian. But he was kind of like a wannabe German, you’ll see. His father Alois was a state customs official, right, he worked for the government. He was like a civil servant which Hitler thought was very uncool. And his mother, Klara, had come from a poor peasant family. BBC writes quote “Life was financially comfortable for the Hitler family but Alois was a domineering character and young Adolf frequently found himself on the wrong side of his father's short temper. At primary school Hitler was a clever, popular child. At secondary school he withdrew psychologically, preferring to re-enact battles from the Boer War than study. He left school with no qualifications at 16,” end quote. So he was a high school dropout with daddy issues essentially and also had a somewhat offputting interest in warfare at a young age. Now, I don’t think he was like abused. There’s certainly no evidence that he was abused by his father. I know that’s a common thread that a lot of other narcissistic psychopaths share, think like serial killers. They tend to have this really rough home life, this really rough upbringing. It seems like Hitler’s home wasn’t always the most peaceful place, he seemed to have butted heads with his father, but there doesn’t seem to have been actual abuse going on, at least physically. Just, of note. 

 

Somewhat surprisingly, Hitler wanted to be an artist. I know, I wouldn’t peg him for the artsy type. But he wanted to be an artist. His father didn’t support that dream. He wanted Hitler to follow him into civil service, but, as I already said, Hitler found that very uncool. Alois died in 1903 and Hitler was like “cool, now I can follow my dreams.” He applied for art school in Vienna in 1907. However, the art school, the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, promptly denied his application. He didn’t get in. The next year, 1908, his mother died. Okay so just quick recap here. Hitler is a 19 year old high school drop out, both of his parents have recently died, and he didn’t get into art school. So, you know, things aren’t great. He’s still determined to be an artist though. He moved to Vienna anyway and started painting and drawing buildings and monuments and scenes of Vienna and selling those as post cards, scraping by that way. And, honestly, they’re pretty good. I hate to say that. I hate to complement the man but he wasn’t a bad artist. But, you know, it’s just not working out for him. He’s selling post cards on the streets of Vienna and it’s just not sustainable. These aren’t the dreams he had of being some famous artist. 

 

While he’s in Vienna, according to BBC, he’s heavily influenced by the anti-Semitic politics of Vienna’s mayor Karl Leuger. And he starts to really come to hate the, what BBC calls the quote “multi-ethnic composition of Austria's ruling Habsburg Empire,” end quote. I know I’ve talked about the Habsburg family before, I’ve got it on my list of topic ideas so it’s coming some day. But they ruled over a lot of Europe for a really long time. And they were white, okay the Habsburgs were Austrio-German, they were super white and they were super inbred in order to keep it that way, but they ruled over this large area and so their empire included people and influences from, for example, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Italy, etc. And many of these people were Jewish. And Hitler isn’t digging all this diversity. So he actually moves to Munich in 1913. Munich is in Germany, it was in the German state of Bavaria. I told you he was kind of a wannabe German. He’s like “Austria is so uncool with their multi-ethnic Hapsburg empire. A white guy like me should really be living in Germany.” 

 

Now a year after Hitler moved to Germany, World War I broke out. And he wanted to prove his worth to Germany, his wannabe country. He’s not a German citizen so he can’t actually enlist in the military so instead he just volunteers. He volunteers to serve in the German army. He served throughout the war, in both France and Belgium, and won two decorations for bravery including the Iron Cross First Class which is apparently quite rare. According to History.com, he wore that medal for the rest of his life. So clearly, this time at war, fighting during World War I meant a lot to him. BBC writes quote “in the army, he finally found purpose; a cause with which he could wholly identify,” end quote. Which like, what even was the cause of World War I? Great question. Very complicated and seemingly nonsensical answer. But, whatever, Hitler wholly identified with it and he’s like “yeah, go war! Go Germany!” Doesn’t even know why he’s fighting I’m sure… for a country he isn’t even a citizen of. But he’s all for it. He was injured twice during the war. He was hit in the leg in 1916, recovered, and then in 1918 he was nearly blinded by a British gas attack. And it was while he was recovering from this second injury, you know he’s laid up recuperating in a hospital, and he gets word that Germany had surrendered and the war was over. They lost. And he was shocked and devastated by this. Yes, devastated that one of the bloodiest wars in history had come to an end. This war had given him purpose, he was all for it. He was good at it. And now they were taking it away from him. It had to have been like art school rejection all over again. He’s mad. How dare they surrender? And he’s looking for someone to blame. But he doesn’t blame the allied powers. He doesn’t blame their enemies in the war: France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States. He doesn’t blame the victors. He blames who he sees as traitors within Germany, those at home who had undermined the war efforts and sabotaged their victory. BBC writes quote “Before the surrender, facing serious discontent at home and the prospect of defeat at the front, Germany's High Command sought to shift the blame. The majority parties in the Reichstag were handed a poisoned chalice. They were given more power but implicated in the impending defeat. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated days before Armistice. Like others, Hitler was enraged by what he saw as the betrayal of an undefeated German Army by Jews and socialists at home. He resolved to go into politics,” end quote. And I read that probably like 5 times before I could make much sense of it. What they’re saying is, the powers that be in Germany were like “ok, this isn’t going well. We’re losing this war. I don’t want to get blamed for it. Let’s let the Reichstag, which is parliament, let’s let them make the call and then it’ll all be their fault instead of ours.” And so all the blame gets put on the Reichstag, on parliament which Hitler, and others, come to see as fundamentally flawed. Too many Jews, really, in Hitler’s mind.

 

And things certainly don’t improve after that. The blame game heats up to a fever pitch as Germany’s economy tanks following the end of the war. I talked about this a little bit in episode 54 about the Women of the SEO, but things got really really bad in Germany after World War I. They basically got blamed for the whole war in the Treaty of Versailles and the terms were not in their favor to say the least. According to the National WWII Museum, quote “[Hitler] and other patriotic Germans were outraged and humiliated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which the Allies compelled the new German government, the Weimar (vai-mar) Republic, to accept along with an obligation to pay $33 billion in war reparations. Germany also had to give up its prized overseas colonies and surrender valued parcels of home territory to France and Poland. The German army was radically downsized and the nation forbidden to have submarines or an air force,” end quote. They go on quote “Paying the crushing reparations destabilized the economy, producing ruinous, runaway inflation. By September 1923, four billion German marks had the equal value of one American dollar. Consumers needed a wheelbarrow to carry enough paper money to buy a loaf of bread,” end quote. And whose fault is this? In Hitler’s mind, of course it’s these traitors right here in Germany. How dare they surrender and make fools out of us in front of the entire world, ruin our economy. And so his anti-semitic, anti-Jewish, anti-non-Aryan views start to strengthen. They are what is wrong with Germany. They caused all of this. And that is really the hallmark of a narcissist isn’t it? It’s always someone else’s fault. And that blame becomes justification to abuse that person. 

 

BBC reports quote “Still in the army, Hitler was sent to report on an emerging far-right group, the German Workers' Party (later renamed the Nazi Party). Finding he agreed with their nationalist, anti-Semitic beliefs, he joined,” end quote. So I didn’t realize that. I always kind of thought Hitler started the Nazi party. He actually sort of stumbled upon it but then he did help shape and mold it into what it would later become. The full name of the party, this political party, was the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, Nazi is just a shortened version of the first bit National Socialist. In German, socialist is spelled with a Z so it’s like the first two letters of national and the middle two letters of socialist. Anyway, Hitler stumbles upon this group and he’s like “hey, they love Germany and hate Jewish people too,” and he joins the party. He starts giving speeches in front of party supporters and he’s such a charismatic speaker, he’s such a good orator, that he quickly rises through the ranks of the Nazi party in true cult leader fashion. And these are big speeches. This isn’t just like some guys in a pub. He’s speaking in front of crowds of up to 6,000 people. By 1920, he had left the German army and assumed control of propaganda for the Nazi party. They’re like “this guy’s good at brainwashing, let’s put him on propaganda.” It was during this time, while Hitler was heading the propaganda department that he suggested the party adopt the swastika as its symbol. Swastikas were already a thing long before Nazis. They are an ancient sacred symbol used in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, these super peaceful pacifist religions. So this is a symbol with a very positive connotation. In Hinduism, for example, it means good luck. So you can see how making this the symbol of the Nazi party, helps people to view it more favorably, it’s propaganda. It’s like making your symbol a thumbs up, right? Oh, wait, that’s Facebook. History.com says quote “Printed in a white circle on a red background, Hitler’s swastika would take on terrifying symbolic power in the years to come. By the end of 1921, Hitler had become leader of the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar (vai-mar) Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty. Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich would join the Nazis, notably Ernst Röhm (room), who recruited the “strong arm” squads—known as the Sturmabteilung (SA)—which Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents,” end quote. So the Sturmabteilung, they wore these brown uniforms, right, brown pants, brown collared shirt, swastika patch on the upper arm. They were also called storm troopers, like Star Wars style, the original storm troopers. Sometimes they were called Brownshirts because of the brown shirts. So these guys are the muscle, right. They’re Hitler’s army in the Nazi party. 

 

So, his party is growing. It’s still not like a big deal. It’s a major minority politically still but it’s gathering supporters using a very specific strategy that we have seen all too recently used in the United States. The Nazi party flourished by sowing fear and panic in the people, by pointing out how terrible everything was, how bad the economy was, how corrupt and inefficient the government was. Drain the swamp? Those are Hitler’s words. Historian Timothy W. Ryback writes for the Atlantic quote “Hitler had campaigned on the promise of draining the “parliamentarian swamp”—den parlamentarischen Sumpf” end quote. Yeah I don’t speak German, sorry. But so their strategy was just to point out how bad and messed up everything was. And then once they had everyone thoroughly freaked out, they offered the solution. The National WWII Museum explains that solution quote “Hitler, a mesmerizing public speaker, addressed political meetings in Munich calling for a new German order to replace what he saw as an incompetent and inefficient democratic regime… In the new Germany, all citizens would unselfishly serve the state, or Volk; democracy would be abolished; and individual rights sacrificed for the good of the führer state. The ultimate aim of the Nazi Party was to seize power through Germany’s parliamentary system, install Hitler as dictator, and create a community of racially pure Germans loyal to their führer, who would lead them in a campaign of racial cleansing and world conquest,” end quote. Racial cleansing and world conquest. Those were the ultimate goals, though they were sort of veiled at first under this guise of “oh everything is so terrible, we can fix it. We can fix the economy. Rally behind us working class, we got you.” 

 

The National WWII Museum explains the racial cleansing side of things writing quote “Hitler blamed the Weimar (vei-mar) Republic’s [which remember that’s just Germany] weakness on the influence of Germany’s Jewish and communist minorities, who he claimed were trying to take over the country. “There are only two possibilities,” he told a Munich audience in 1922. “Either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.” The young Hitler saw history as a process of racial struggle, with the strongest race—the Aryan race—ultimately prevailing by force of arms. “Mankind has grown great in eternal war,” Hitler wrote. “It would decay in eternal peace.” Jews represented everything the Nazis found repugnant: finance capitalism (controlled, the Nazis believed, by powerful Jewish financiers), international communism (Karl Marx was a German Jew, and the leadership of the German Communist Party was heavily Jewish), and modernist cultural movements like psychoanalysis and swing music,” end quote. Y’all when people start blaming musicians, that’s a red flag. Remember that was one of the reasons they banned cannabis? They were like Black people smoke weed and also their jazz music is evil. Okay. 

 

So things are bad, really really bad economically and, for a sec, Hitler goes all French Revolution in November of 1923 in an act that will come to be called the “Beer Hall Putsch.” Putsch is just the German equivalent of Coup. He storms into a beer hall, remember in France it was tennis courts, Hitler storms into a beer hall in Munich where the Bavarian Prime Minister was giving a speech. He storms in wielding a revolver and he’s like “this is it! It’s a revolution, we’re doing this.” He forces the Prime Minister to pledge support to the Nazi party at gunpoint. And he riles everybody up and he marches them, some 3,000 people, to the center of Munich to, I suppose, overthrow the government. The police are waiting for them and a gun fight ensues. 16 Nazis and 3 police officers are killed and Hitler is arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison for treason. Cause if that’s not treason, I don’t know what is. Feels a little January 6thish to me… just saying. But Hitler actually goes to prison for it. Sort of, I mean he only serves 9 months of the 5 year sentence. But while he’s there he writes his famous book Mein Kampf which means “My Struggle.” According to History.com quote “In it, Hitler expanded on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic views he had begun to develop in Vienna in his early twenties, and laid out plans for the Germany—and the world—he sought to create when he came to power… It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler’s rise it became Germany’s best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there,” end quote. 

 

So let’s talk about that rise to power because, by the time Hitler got out of prison, things were not looking good for the Nazis. The Beer Hall Putsch was a disaster and, worse than that, the economy had started to improve. And that was bad for Hitler because, remember, he relied on that fear mongering, on pointing out the flaws in the old system, on having someone else to blame, on needing to drain the swamp, this was how he gained support. And now, that support was turning back towards the Weimar (vai-mar) Republic, back towards the people running Germany. So over the next few years, Hitler sort of laid low. He established the Hitler Youth which was a way to brainwash kids into becoming Nazis. He also established the Schutzstaffel or SS which would eventually replace the storm troopers. Sounds like a breakfast food Schutzstaffel but no these guys, these were the bad guys. These were the enforcers. 

 

Also during this time of laying low, Hitler falls in love with an unlikely candidate. His niece. Yes, his niece, the daughter of his half sister Angela. Her name was Geli (Jeely, G-E-L-I, I have no idea if I’m saying that right, short of Angela) and she was 23 years old. According to History.com quote “After Hitler became infatuated with his beautiful blonde niece, Geli Raubal, his possessive jealousy apparently led her to commit suicide in 1931,” end quote. And this is straight up a whole nother episode. This is a total can of worms. She was found dead in Hitler’s apartment of a gunshot wound with Hitler’s gun laying nearby. It was a huge scandal that was promptly covered up to protect Hitler’s political career but of course there are questions about whether it was actually a suicide or a homicide. It doesn’t look good either way. He fell in love with his niece who wound up dead in his apartment, with his gun, under suspicious circumstances. Also, I didn’t mention this earlier but we may have a bit of a like father like son thing going on here. There is some question about who Hitler’s biological grandfather was, his father’s father. And a lot of experts believe that Hitler’s mother Klara was actually his father’s half niece as well. Either that or his cousin once removed, depending on who his father actually was. But yeah, Hitler’s parents were most likely closely related. So the niece infatuation thing seems to be genetic, I don’t know. Serious mini fix potential here. Anyway, he appears, at least, to be absolutely devastated by her death but soon after began a love affair with a shop assistant named Eva Braun whom he refused to marry.

 

So, weird twisted love life thing going on, clinging to the straws of the floundering Nazi party as Germany’s economy started to bounce back. But then, in 1929, the US stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression. And this affected the whole rest of the world too, including Germany. A lot of those financial, economic problems they had been having since the end of World War I returned and the Nazis, Hitler, once again had his fodder for fear mongering. The Nazi party starts gaining support again. Hitler wants to run for office, right, this is all part of the plan, he’s supposed to take office and eventually become the dictator, the supreme ruler of this new Germany they promised. But, remember. Hitler is not actually a German citizen. He had given up his Austrian citizenship back in 1925 so as not to be extradited back to Austria but he was not a German citizen and so he couldn’t actually run for office. And actually applying for German citizenship was complicated quite a bit by the fact that he had been convicted of treason not long ago. So to get around this little snafu, the Nazi party appointed him to a government position that he was allowed to have that came with German citizenship. It was like a package deal. So a bit of a loop hole there. 

 

In 1932, Hitler, now German, ran for office to become president of the Weimar (vai-mar) Republic, of Germany. Just became German like yesterday, he’s going after the presidency. But he ran against a wildly popular, though very old, he was in his 80s, war hero named Paul von Hindenburg who had already been serving as president since 1925. Hitler lost the election spectacularly with only 36.8 percent of the vote. He lost hard. Ryback writes quote “Hitler had his chief legal counsel, Hans Frank, go to court to have the election results overturned, claiming that there had been irregularities by state officials and that Hitler had been unfairly disadvantaged by not being permitted to speak on the radio. The presiding judge chided Frank for wasting the court’s time and dismissed the case, observing that 6 million votes was too large a margin for any of Hitler’s claims to have made a difference,” end quote. It is rumored that Hitler contemplated suicide after this defeat, that’s how crushing it was. His delusions of grandeur had been shattered once again, but not for long. Hindenburg becomes president, the country is in terrible shape, the government is chaos. He goes through 3 different chancellors who all completely blow it before finally, unbelievably, appointing Hitler as chancellor. So, some things to unpack there. Germany has a president and a chancellor. The president is the head of state but he’s more symbolic. He doesn’t have a ton of power. I mean he sort of does because he can actually dismiss his cabinet and the chancellor, he reserves the right to fire them. The Chancellor is more the acting head of the government because he gets to pick cabinet members and whatnot. He’s more like a Prime Minister. He’s calling the shots. And so Hindenburg hands Hitler this super powerful position of chancellor. Why did he do that? Hindenburg notoriously hated Hitler. According to Ryback quote “his disdain for Hitler was common knowledge. The previous August, he had declared publicly that, quote “for the sake of God, my conscience, and the country,” he would never appoint Hitler as chancellor. Privately, Hindenburg had quipped that if he were to appoint Hitler to any position, it would be as postmaster general, quote “so he can lick me from behind on my stamps.” In January, Hindenburg finally agreed to appoint Hitler, but with great reluctance—and on the condition that he never be left alone in a room with his new chancellor,” end quote. So, that doesn’t really explain why. BBC suggests quote “They believed they could control Hitler and get him to do what they wanted,” end quote. They also seemed to think it would keep communists from gaining power. Hitler was better than communism.

 

So, for whatever reason, they’ve given Hitler the keys to the castle. And I have to assume that his cult leader sort of tendencies must have helped with this, his way of captivating large audiences, of gaining support from the masses, all the propaganda work he’d done, all the brainwashing. And things were bad, remember, they were really bad and people were desperate and here was this guy professing that he could fix all of their problems and here’s Hindenburg, struggling tremendously in his mid 80s to run this floundering country, appointing 3 previous chancellors who had failed already and who is left? Hitler, the guy whose name everyone seems to be chanting. Why not give him a shot? This is a democracy after all. There are checks and balances. He doesn’t have that much control. He can’t just do whatever he wants. Not in a democracy. And so Hitler becomes chancellor. But democracy proves a weak shield against Hitler and the Nazi party’s plans for total control of the country and ultimately the world. And it is game on now. They don’t need a coup, a putsch, to make this happen. They plan to destroy democracy using democracy. If they play their cards right, Hitler will become supreme unchecked leader of Germany without actually breaking any laws or defying the constitution at all. But to set this all in motion, they need a spark. And that spark is a literal spark. Tune in next week to learn how a suspicious fire at a government building in Berlin transforms an unlikely underdog into a supreme leader who will unleash unfathomable atrocities upon our world. 

 

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to tune in next Sunday for part two of this story. You are not going to want to miss it. Also, be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix. 

 

Information used in this episode was sourced from The Atlantic, the National WWII Museum, History.com, BBC, Time Magazine, The Conversation, History Extra, The Globalist, Vanity Fair, The Jewish Virtual Library, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust Encyclopedia, Smithsonian Magazine and Wikipedia. Man I read a lot of articles for y’all this week. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.  

 

On the night of February 27th, 1933 around 9:00 pm, pedestrians strolling by the Reichstag building in Berlin, home to Germany’s parliament, were startled by the sound of glass shattering. Soon, flames erupted from the open window. Fire engines arrived and fire fighters spent hours trying to put out the fire in the nation’s legislative building, a fire that would ultimately cause over a million dollars in damage. This was clearly arson. But who would do such a thing? Well, maybe it was that guy? Because standing just outside the now smouldering building, as if waiting to be caught was a young man, breathless and sweating, with fightlighters in his possession. This man’s name was Marinus (ma-ree-nus) van der Lubbe (Loob) and he was an unemployed Dutch construction worker and communist. As Adolf Hitler, newly appointed chancellor of Germany arrived on the scene that night he announced quote “This is a God-given signal. If this fire, as I believe, is the work of the Communists, then we must crush out this murderous pest with an iron fist,” end quote. Van der Lubbe confessed to starting the fire in the Reichstag building and was sentenced to death. But was it really the work of a lone 24 year old Dutch communist? Or was there someone else possibly involved who had a lot to gain from stirring up panic and distrust? Let’s fix that. 

 

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you are listening to part two of a two part History Fix episode about Adolf Hitler. So if you missed part one, go back now and listen to that first. In that episode, I talked about Hitler’s childhood, his failure to realize his life’s dream of becoming an artist, his time spent fighting for Germany in World War I, his involvement in the Nazi Party, and his unlikely appointment as chancellor of Germany after a crushing political defeat. I left off right where this episode picked up with the burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin which was super significant. This was the literal spark that catapulted Hitler to supreme leader, dictator of Germany just a few years after losing a presidential election by over 6 million votes. 

 

As I said in the opener, this arson at the Reichstag building was pinned on a suspected Dutch communist rebel, some guy, right it’s his fault, he’s trying to take down the government, get him. And he actually confessed to starting the fire, of course. Now, later evidence suggests that it was actually the Nazis themselves who set the Reichstag building on fire, duh, and pinned it on the Dutch guy. Now why would they do that? Because remember, they rise up by stirring up fear and panic and paranoia. This was a problem. A Dutch communist had set their government building on fire. This was out of control. This was an emergency, the people were out of control, and desperate times call for desperate measures. The National WWII Museum explains quote “Hitler used this episode to convince President Hindenburg to declare an emergency decree suspending many civil liberties throughout Germany, including freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and the right to hold public assemblies. The police were authorized to detain citizens without cause, and the authority usually exercised by regional governments became subject to control by Hitler’s national regime. Almost immediately, Hitler began dismantling Germany’s democratic institutions and imprisoning or murdering his chief opponents. When Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler took the titles of führer, chancellor, and commander in chief of the army. He expanded the army tremendously, reintroduced conscription, and began developing a new air force—all violations of the Treaty of Versailles,” end quote. And just like that the man takes complete control of a government that should have been protected by checks and balances. This emergency decree was called the Reichstag Fire Decree and it suspended most civil liberties in an attempt to keep communists from rising up and destroying the country like van der Lubbe had supposedly tried to do. And I feel like this is a combo of fear and panic and paranoia, the people are out of control, we have to crack down, here pass this decree, using all of that to his advantage. And also, just, I don’t know, maybe an 86 year old man shouldn’t be president. I know Hindenburg was a war hero and all but dude was slippin at this point. He hated Hitler. Maybe, listen to those instincts, don’t make him chancellor. The Reichstag Fire Decree? Suspending civil liberties? How bout no Hindenburg? Would a younger Hindenburg have made better decisions? I don’t know. Later, after Hindenburg died, Hitler passed the Enabling Act and it rode on the coat tails of the Reichstag Fire decree and essentially gave full power to Hitler as dictator of Germany, combining the roles of president and chancellor and basically removing all checks and balances. Because once you do away civil liberties - no freedom of speech, no right to assemble, no free press, police can arrest people without cause, without a trial - at that point, there’s not a whole lot people can do to stop you. Your path has been cleared.  

 

So Hitler is now supreme leader of Germany, only took him 53 days after becoming chancellor to pull this off, to completely destroy and rework the government from the inside, allowing for something like this to happen. On June 29, 1934 ish gets real and his true colors start to show a little. This will become known as the Night of the Long Knives, very Game of Thrones sounding. On this night, Hitler had a bunch of people killed. That included many of his old cronies like Ernst Röhm, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, other now problematic members of his own party, and a bunch of the SA, those Nazi storm troopers, brownshirts, the guys who came before the SS. He has the SS now, the SA is just in the way. They gotta go. So he’s massacring all these people. 85 people definitely died this night but estimates reach up into the like 700 to 1,000 people killed range, his own people. And so this just goes to show, you know, how willing he is to backstab his own allies. These are people who helped him gain power and now that he has it, he doesn’t need them, and really, they’re just liabilities. So they gotta go. 

 

In September of 1935, Hitler passed the Nuremberg Laws which stripped German Jews of their citizenship and made it illegal for Jewish people to marry or have relations with people of quote “German or related blood.” This is also when the Nazi’s started burning books, forcing newspapers out of business, using the radio and movies to push anti-semitic propaganda, and forcing German teachers to join the Nazi party. Yes, when they start pushing their agenda on the teachers, you should be very worried. This is an attempt to groom the youth from an early age into supporting their cause. This is when the Geheime Staatspolizei (ge-hai-me shtats-pol-eets-ai) or GESTAPO emerges as well as like a branch of the SS, the Secret State Police. But up until now, to the rest of the world, they’re being all non-aggressive and saying they’re all about maintaining the peace. But really, I mean the ultimate plan is world domination. So despite what they’re saying, they’re shoring up their military and preparing to expand their empire. In March of 1936, Germany takes Austria, annexes Austria. It’s now part of Germany. This was a dream Hitler had since he was a child, right, born in Austria, wannabe German. Well now Austrians are German. He’s playing out a childhood fantasy here. Then he goes after Czechoslovakia and meanwhile the British and French Prime Ministers are like side eyeing what’s happening. All of this is in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. They’re like, what is this dude doing? But they don’t want to get involved. They can’t get involved. They are still licking their wounds after World War I. No one wants another war. And so they just sit idly by while he takes part of Czechoslovakia and while he forms an alliance with Italy. 

 

In 1939 he signs a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. He ultimately wants to take over the Soviet Union, that’s all part of the plan but for now he’s all we won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt us. That same year, he invades Poland, takes Poland. And this is the final straw for Great Britain and France. They can’t ignore this any longer and they declare war on Germany. This is the start of World War II. Over the next year, Hitler takes over Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and eventually France and Great Britain is like this lone duck, right, their allies have fallen. The Soviet Union is out for now; they signed that non-aggression pact. The US is pretending to not know what’s going on. No one wants a huge war like this, they just did this. Except Hitler. He wants a huge war like this, remember he was all “Mankind has grown great in eternal war.” He’s reliving his glory days. He loved World War I. He didn’t want it to end. He’s brought war back to Europe and he’s stoked. Sick freak. He’s attacking Great Britain, dropping bombs on London, killing civilians. They are scrambling to do something with no allies. No one is helping them. And then Hitler invades the Soviet Union in June 1941 despite their non-aggression pact. But remember, that was all part of the plan from the start. He was going to take over the Soviet Union and connect it to Germany with these new autobahn highways he was building everywhere. So now the Soviet Union joins Great Britain against Germany. Later that year, December of 1941, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. The US declares war on Japan which prompts Germany to declare war on the US per the terms of their alliance with Japan. And you might be thinking Japan? What? What does Japan have to do with anything? Great question. Apparently they shared a common opposition to communism and desire for territorial expansion. Yeah still doesn’t make much sense to me either but Japan had joined the Germany Italy alliance back in 1940 and so they attack the US in 1941 which was so stupid. They were apparently trying to cripple the US naval fleet in the Pacific so that the US wouldn’t interfere with their territory expansion plans in Asia. Which like who cares y’all do what you want over there. We weren’t messing with anybody until now. So now it’s mostly Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States against Germany, Italy, and Japan. And this war, for the most part, is all about territory expansion at this point. The allied powers are trying to stop the axis powers from taking over the world. But, behind the scenes, there is a whole nother secret war going on.

 

Behind the scenes, Hitler has reached his wit’s end with this Jewish problem, what he perceives as a problem. Remember he has blamed essentially everything wrong with Germany on Jewish people and communists. He passed laws stripping them of their citizenship and forbidding them from mixing with non-Jewish Germans. He said these laws were to quote “achieve the legislative regulation of a problem which, if it breaks down again, will then have to be transferred by law to the National Socialist Party for final solution,” end quote. Well I suppose it’s broken down again. Because, out of sight of the rest of the world, Hitler has enacted that final solution which involved the extermination of Jewish people and other undesirables. It started back in 1933 very soon after Hitler was appointed chancellor. He got right to work. The first concentration camp, Dauchau (Dock-how) opened that very same year, 1933. At first, these concentration camps were just places to hold Jewish people and other targets of the Nazi regime, detainment centers, essentially. But this soon changed. History.com explains quote “After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland. In addition to forced labor and mass execution, certain Jews at Auschwitz were targeted as the subjects of horrific medical experiments carried out by eugenicist Josef Mengele (Yo-sef Main-ga-lay), known as the “Angel of Death.” Mengele’s experiments focused on twins and exposed 3,000 child prisoners to disease, disfigurement and torture under the guise of medical research. Though the Nazis also imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma (gypsies) and the disabled, above all they targeted Jews—some 6 million of whom were killed in German-occupied Europe by war’s end,” end quote. 

 

It’s unfathomable. It is honestly unfathomable. It is hard to think about and it seems impossible that something like this could happen. How? How does this guy have so much power? How can he control so many people and make them do these truly horrific things? How can there be so many people complicit in this? We’re talking about a lot of people here. A lot of people were involved in this whether they were actively part of it or just letting it happen. Yes, Hitler was the mastermind. Yes, he made it all happen. He is ultimately to blame. But that’s a lot of people doing his bidding and allowing his bidding to be done. Certainly they knew this was wrong? Are they all just truly evil, terrible people? I mean no. No. That’s the scary truth. And if we put them in that box, that only an evil person would do something like that, we risk letting others slip right by us. People we don’t perceive as evil who would actually be complicit in something like this. It’s just not that black and white, good and evil. It’s not like that. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum explains quote “Motives ranged from pressures to conform and defer to authorities, to opportunism and greed, to hatred. In many places, the persecution of Jews occurred against a backdrop of centuries of antisemitism. In Germany, many individuals who were not zealous Nazis nonetheless participated in varying degrees in the persecution and murder of Jews and other victims. Following German occupation, countless people in other countries also cooperated in the persecution of Jews. Everywhere, there were witnesses on the sidelines who cheered on the active participants in persecution and violence. Most, however, remained silent,” end quote. But in this case, as we know, not acting is acting. By this point, the anti-semitism ran deep. That brainwashing was serious. The Nazis had been working on this for over a decade by now, training the youth, pushing propaganda that said that Jewish people were the problem and the only way to fix the problem was to eliminate Jewish people. And so, for a lot of these people involved in the holocaust, as unfathomable as it may be, they think they’re doing the right thing. They are that misguided. Hitler has infiltrated their minds that completely. We know this is possible. This is cult mentality. Hitler was a cult leader and his cult was far reaching. This is Jim Jones forcing people to drink cyanide laced punch. It’s the same thing. And for those not actively participating, not actively involved in rounding up and murdering Jewish people, the ones who aren’t drinking the punch. Well they have a lot of reasons to stay silent, to stay out of it. The Holocaust Memorial Museum writes quote “Varying motivations influenced responses to the persecution of Jews and created a climate of passivity or apathy. Motivations ranged from belief in Nazi ideology to fear to self-interest. For instance, Nazi propaganda efforts heightened longstanding antisemitic prejudices and led many people to view the Jews as “alien.” The Nazis were also in near-total control of public space. Government censorship prevented dissenting voices from being heard, and few Germans had the courage to speak out publicly against the persecution of Jews. They were aware of the risk that outspoken dissidents faced in a police state, where opponents of the regime could be arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps without trial. Pressures to defer to authority and obey laws and decrees were present even without the added intimidation by Nazi activists. Many people wanted to protect their jobs or advance their careers. Others did not want to “swim against the tide” by failing to conform to Nazi racist norms. Most cut off relations with Jewish friends and neighbors, in public if not in private,” end quote. 

 

By this time, Hitler had created a Germany that did not tolerate dissidence. You might realize this is wrong, what they’re doing. A lot of people probably did. But what are you going to do about it? Are you going to go protest in the street? They will just haul you off to a concentration camp too. Jewish or not, you are an enemy if you oppose their views and their mission. To act would be to martyr yourself for the cause and not everyone was willing to do that. Some people were. There are amazing stories of people who were willing to help Jews during the holocaust, hide them, feed them, help them escape. Truly, truly incredible selfless inspiring acts of bravery. But for most people, that was not a risk they were willing to take and so they kept their heads down and they swam with the current. How do you stop an all powerful dictator anyway? You stop him before he becomes all powerful. And it was too late for that. 

 

But the allied forces were trying. The war was in full swing over, remember, over territory expansion. They don’t even know about the final solution, the concentration camps and the mass executions. That information trickles out slowly, little by little. The Jewish Virtual Library explains how bits and pieces start to reach allied forces quote “As early as March 1942, reports of a Nazi plan to murder all the Jews – including details on methods, numbers, and locations – reached Allied and neutral leaders. The first is believed to be a dispatch from the Chilean consul in Prague that was written in November 1941 and obtained by British and American intelligence in March 1942. Information also came from the underground Jewish Socialist Bund party in the Warsaw ghetto in May; Gerhard Riegner’s cable from Switzerland in August; the eyewitness account of Polish underground courier Jan Karski in November; and the eyewitness accounts of 69 Polish Jews who reached Palestine in a civilian prisoner exchange between Germany and Britain in November,” end quote. So truly bits and pieces of what’s really going on coming through and not until 1942, nine years after the first concentration camp was opened at Dauchau. The Jewish Virtual Library goes on quote “On December 17, 1942, the Allies issued a proclamation condemning the extermination of the Jewish people in Europe [which like duh, why do we even have to publicly condemn that, that’s insane] and declared that they would punish the perpetrators. Notwithstanding this, it remains unclear to what extent Allied and neutral leaders understood the full import of their information. The utter shock of senior Allied commanders who liberated camps at the end of the war may indicate that this understanding was not complete,” end quote. Utter shock when the war is finally over and they go to liberate those concentration camps, those death camps. No one knew the extent of it. They had no idea it was that bad, it was on that large a scale. 

 

So let’s talk about the end of the war cause we need a victory here. A major turning point came in June of 1944 with the allied forces invasion of Normandy, France. Right, they storm the beaches at Normandy, they come in strong, and they start liberating cities all over Europe. And part of the reason they were successful at Normandy was because Hitler was asleep when they arrived. He was sleeping. And no one was allowed to give orders but him and everyone was afraid to wake him up. So they did nothing until it was too late. How silly is that? Serves him right Mr. All Powerful no one else can call the shots. Don’t sleep then dude. By January 1945, clearly losing the war now, Hitler holes up in an underground bunker in Berlin while the Soviet Union closes in on the city. By April it is clear that the Soviets are going to take Berlin and that’s it, they’ve lost. But rather than face defeat like a man, own up to his vile actions and surrender, Hitler takes the easy way out. First, he marries Eva Braun whom he’s been romantically involved with but refusing to marry for around 11 years. They get married at midnight on April 29th in the bunker under Berlin. BBC writes quote “The next day, at a little after 3.30 pm, they bit into thin glass vials of cyanide. Hitler then shot himself through the head. The man responsible for untold suffering, who had almost single-handedly brought the world to the very brink of destruction, was dead,” end quote. History.com writes quote “With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, 1945, bringing the war in Europe to a close.” But that sweet victory, that jubilation on the part of the allies was of course dampened by the discoveries that awaited them, the utter shock upon liberating those concentration camps and seeing the extent of what this man had done, a shock I don’t think we’ve come to terms with fully even today. Looking back and seeing the full extent of it, knowing what we know now, it’s unthinkably horrible but at the time, even when word of this mass extinction starts trickling out, we don’t want to believe it’s true. There’s an amount of denial there because we don’t want to face that. We don’t want to face reality. Denial is self preservation. We’re very good at convincing ourselves that everything is fine when it really really isn’t. It’s survival instincts. 

 

So how does a monster like Adolf Hitler come to be? He forms slowly and gradually. He doesn’t storm the capital, kill the leader, and take his place in a frantic coup, a putsch. The people don’t rally behind that. He tried that sort of thing with the Beer Hall Putsch. It landed him in prison. No, a monster like Hitler infiltrates the system silently, like a poison creeping little by little through your veins. He gradually gains your trust, your support by poisoning your mind with lies, by taking advantage of your fears and insecurities. He makes you afraid and then he offers to defeat those things that scare you. He will be your protector. He will fix all of these things, all of these problems created by them, the others, the outsiders, the Jews and the Catholics and the Homosexuals, these people who are not like us. They are the problem and he is the solution. Hitler was a cult leader and his control over cult members was so strong that they helped him do unthinkable things without batting an eye. And I often calm my own fears about, you know, about another Hitler rising to power by being like “well he was such a good public speaker, he was so charismatic, he had these special rare skills where he could just get people on board and he was so well respected and people just listened to him and not many people can do that. Not many people have those successful cult leader skills and abilities so what are the chances that another one is going to be able to achieve the sort of success that Hitler did? He was different. He was special.” But, come to find out, he really wasn’t. Hitler was kind of a joke to a lot of people. He wasn’t taken as seriously as I always thought he was, at least not by people who weren’t in the cult and that was a mistake that likely aided his cause. 

 

Timothy W. Ryback explains in another article for The Atlantic quote “Few public figures have provided as easy a target for ridicule and disparagement as Adolf Hitler. He was a high-school dropout, a failed artist, and a frontline soldier who never made it beyond the rank of corporal. He was a rabid anti-Semite who did not himself possess the Aryan credentials he demanded of his followers. His father had changed the family name from Schickelgruber… But even the name Hitler was cause for ridicule. Hitler can be translated as “man from the hut” and appears in various iterations… all of which convey a sense of quaint southern rusticism… Even in Bavaria, where Hitler had launched his political career, he was more disdained than feared. In March 1922, when Hitler was circulating on the right-wing fringe of Munich’s beer-hall political scene, Bavaria’s state interior minister considered deporting him to his native Austria, only to be allegedly told by a Social Democratic colleague that the National Socialist leader was a quote  “comical figure” who would soon “be hurtled back into the insignificance from which he originally came,” end quote. Man. It made me feel better thinking that he was always sort of viewed seriously This makes him like even sneakier. Like people didn’t see it coming because he was kind of a joke and they didn’t take him seriously. I guess that freaks me out because I kind of see that in American politics right now too, if I’m being honest. A handful of Americans interviewed Hitler during his rise to power and were not impressed by him at all. According to Ryback, he had an interview in 1931 with legendary American reporter Dorothy Thompson who said afterwards of it quote “When I walked into Adolf Hitler’s room, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something like 50 seconds, I was quite sure he was not. It took just about that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog,” end quote. She also wrote quote “He is inconsequent and voluble, ill-poised, insecure. He is the very prototype of the Little Man,” end quote. But Hitler wasn’t stoked on this interview either. He actually banished Dorothy Thompson from Germany later when he gained control. New York Times correspondent Harold Callendar interviewed Hilter soon after Thompson and reported that he quote “​​rose from his chair, walked about the room, sat upon the table, but was never at rest,” making “nervous gestures” and all the time speaking with rhetorical fury, only occasionally “checking his rapid flow of speech to make sure his words were carefully noted,” end quote. He’s a hot mess. They’re describing a hot mess, not a cool, calm, collected, respectable future leader. And that makes him even scarier to me. 

 

​​So do we need to be worried about another Hitler figure coming to power in the US or elsewhere? Yes and no. It’s a delicate balance. We don’t need to be so worried that we’re paralyzed with fear and willing to turn to anyone who will fix it for us. Hitler himself used this sort of fear mongering as his main weapon of control. His chief legal counsel Hans Frank said while on trial at Nuremburg after the war quote “The Führer was a man who was possible in Germany only at that very moment. He came at exactly this terrible transitory period when the monarchy had gone and the republic was not yet secure,” end quote. Different time, different situation, perfect storm of circumstances. But at the same time we do need to be on guard. Hitler’s rise to power and subsequent atrocities were not something the world saw coming. He was kind of a joke, a loser. Don’t underestimate the power of seemingly inane people with political authority. Don’t write them off. Especially when they’ve managed to gather the support of the masses in an almost cult leader sort of way. Especially when they’ve stirred up fear and panic over the state of things, the economy, whatever, cast blame on others, and then offered to solve everyone’s problems. Especially when they’ve tried to challenge election results that weren’t in their favor. Especially when they’ve accepted support from wealthy oligarchs who hope to get something in return. Especially when, once in power, they immediately began dismantling the government to serve their own purposes. Especially when they’ve threatened civil liberties and tried to turn people against the they, the others, the outsiders who ruined everything to begin with, or so they say. Especially when they try to control education, to meddle in what children can and can’t be taught. Even if they’re otherwise kind of a joke, watch out for these things. I’m talking about Hitler here, by the way. These are all things Adolf Hitler did that helped him rise to power. If it’s making you think of someone else, that’s all you, not me. The real takeaway here is that democracy is not as fool proof as we like to believe. Joseph Goebbels (Yosef Gebbles), who was Hitler’s right hand man, even remarked quote “The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction,” end quote. But only, I might add, only if we stop paying attention. The best way to defeat a monster is to keep him from becoming one. 

 

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix. 

 

Information used in this episode was sourced from The Atlantic, the National WWII Museum, History.com, BBC, Time Magazine, The Conversation, History Extra, The Globalist, Vanity Fair, The Jewish Virtual Library, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust Encyclopedia, Smithsonian Magazine and Wikipedia. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.