Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler (20 April, 1889-30 April 1945) was a German politician who ruled as Chancellor of Germany from January 1933, and Führer (Leader) of Germany from August 1934 until his death in 1945.

Hitler came to power as leader of the NSDAP or Nazi Party. He suppressed all opposition parties, and restored German prosperity. His emphasis on maintaining high living standards postponed the full mobilization of the national economy until 1942, years after the great rivals Britain, Russia and the U.S. had fully mobilized.

Hitler's aggressive foreign policy led to World War II in Europe in September 1939. His racial ideology of Aryan supremacy and hatred of the Jews inspired and facilitated the Holocaust.

Hitler took direct command of the armed forces, and spent most of the war years focused on military operations. At first his moves were brilliantly successful, as in the "blitzkrieg" invasions of Poland (1939), Norway (1940), the Low countries (1940),

Hitler was technologically oriented, and promoted a series of new secret weapons, such as the jet plane, the jet-powered missile (V-1), the rocket-powered missile (V-2), and vastly improved submarines. However he failed to support developemnt of nuclear weapons or proximity fuzes, and trailed the Allies in radar.

Early Life to 1919

Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria-Hungary to a devout Catholic family of working class status. Little is known of his ancestry. His father, Alois, was the illegitimate son of a servant girl, Marianne Schickelgruber in Graz. Alois used the name Schickelgruber until 1876, when he legally changed it to Alois Hitler. Alois married three times. His third wife, Klara Poelzl Hitler--who was 23 years his junior--bore him six children, only two of whom reached maturity: Adolf, and his younger sister Paula, who died in 1960.

Bibliography

Biography

• Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris. W. W. Norton, 1999. 700 pp. the leading scholarly biography, vol 1
• Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis. W. W. Norton, 2000. 832 pp. the leading scholarly biography, vol 2
• Kershaw, Ian. The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich. Oxford U. Press, 1987. 297 pp.
• Kershaw, Ian. Hitler (2002) short biography
• Nicholls, David. Adolf Hitler: A Biographical Companion. ABC-CLIO, 2000. 344 pp.
• Rosenbaum, Ron. Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil. Random House, 1998. 448 pp.
• Stone, Norman. Hitler. Little, Brown, 1980. 224 pp
• Toland, John. Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (1991); popular biography; Kershaw is much more definitive

Nazi State

• Abel, Theodore. Why Hitler Came into Power. Harvard U. Press, 1986. 315 pp.
• Burleigh, Michael. The Third Reich: A New History. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000. 864 pp.
• Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich: A History. Viking Penguin, 2004. 622 pp.
• Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939. Penguin, 2005. 800 pp.
• Overy, Richard J. War and Economy in the Third Reich. Oxford U. Press, 1994. 390 pp.
• Overy, Richard J. The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Third Reich (1997)
• Turner, Henry Ashby, Jr. Hitler's Thirty Days to Power: January 1933. Addison-Wesley, 1996. 272 pp.
• Weinberg, Gerhard L. Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History. Cambridge U. Press, 1995. 336 pp.
• Zentner, Christian and Bedürftig, Friedemann, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. 2 vol. Macmillan, 1991. 1120 pp.

Comparative

• Aronson, Shlomo. Hitler, the Allies, and the Jews. Cambridge U. Pr., 2004. 382 pp.
• Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. Knopf, 1992. 1081 pp.
• Englund, Steven. "Napoleon and Hitler." Journal of the Historical Society 2006 6(1): 151-169. Issn: 1529-921x Fulltext: in Ebsco
• Kershaw, Ian. "Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism." Journal of Contemporary History 2004 39(2): 239-254. Issn: 0022-0094 Fulltext: in Ebsco
• Lukacs, John. June 1941: Hitler and Stalin. Yale U. Pr., 2006. 192 pp.
• Richard Overy. The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (2005)
• Weinberg, Gerhard L. Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders. Cambridge U. Press, 2005. 292 pp.
• Wilt, Alan F. War from the Top: German and British Military Decision Making during World War II. Indiana U. Press, 1990. 390 pp.

Primary sources

• Heiber, Helmut and Glantz, David M., ed. Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences 1942-1945. 2 vol. New York: Enigma, 2003. 1100 pp.
• Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf (numerous edition)