Shaping History: Adolf Hitler

“Through their vision and integrity, passion and perseverance, as well as their willingness to take risks, they challenge beliefs and change the course of people’s lives.

Some are born into positions of power, others have leadership thrust upon them, but they all possess the ability to seize opportunities when they arise and the charisma to persuade others to follow where they lead.

Covering many different areas of life, Shaping History looks at some of the most renowned, the most notorious and the most unlikely leaders. It examines each individual’s skills and aptitude for leadership, and analyses the effects their lives had on history.

Not all the great leaders were worldly-wise, not all were virtuous and some were seriously flawed, but they all left their mark on the world and made a difference on how we live today.”

Brian Mooney

The name Hitler is synonymous with brutality and evil. One cannot hear the word ‘Hitler’ without conjuring up visions of SS men, gas chambers and swastikas. There is no doubt that he was a man of prodigious appetites for power and conquest with a great thirst for a powerful Germany. Yet, many modern historians have revised their attitudes towards Hitler as a great military leader and view him more as a great manipulator of people.

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1998 in Brunei, Austria, and then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a notorious drunkard and violent towards his wife and children. Hitler was therefore not unduly concerned when he died when Hitler was just 14 years old. Hitler was not an unintelligent pupil, but he was arrogant, argumentative, sly and lazy (Poland 1997). He was continually spoilt and supported by his overly indulgent mother, but ...

... middle of paper ...

...ver.

According to Hitler, everything outside Germany was a wasteland inhabited by sub-humans to be enslaved, part turned into a Nazi holiday camp, the remainder reserved for slave-labour and extermination. The ‘Final Solution’ began in 1941 and thus commenced one of the darkest periods in mankind’s history. It was for his cold, calculated treatment of millions of victims, including millions of Jews, that Hitler will forever remain a gruesome figure of historical significance. Poland was turned into an abattoir. Of the eighteen million victims of Nazi brutality in Europe, eleven million died on Polish soil. Of that eleven million, five million were Jews. The manner in which young and old of both sexes were systematically gassed, shot, tortured, starved and worked to death with complete indifference on the part of their German captors will never be forgotten.