The Complete Idiot's Guide to World War II, 3rd Edition: Get the Big Picture on the War That Changed the World

Introduction

World War II was the most destructive human endeavor in history. Battles were fought on almost every continent and involved more than 60 countries, affecting roughly three quarters of the world’s population. At least 57 million people were killed, more than half of them civilians.

Everything about the war was on a grand scale. The villains, from Adolf Hitler to Adolf Eichmann, were more evil than most. The feats of heroism of people such as Audie Murphy, Raoul Wallenberg, and the men who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima were truly extraordinary. The atrocities, from the Rape of Nanking to the Malmédy Massacre to the death camps, were more heinous than the crimes in any other wars. The destruction, from the firebombing of Dresden to the razing of Warsaw to the incineration of Hiroshima, was more devastating than in any conflict before or since.

It’s no wonder that World War II is the subject of hundreds of books and movies. The fascination with the war is also reflected in the popularity of both, with several books hitting the bestseller lists and films topping the box office charts and winning Oscars. Still, a mere half century since the end of the war, the memory of the conflict is fading fast. The generation that fought for our freedom, witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust, and influenced our history will soon be gone, and we will have to rely on the evidence they left behind.

For those of us who grew up in the Vietnam era or later, it is hard to conceive of a time when Americans willingly went to war and truly believed they were fighting for democracy and against evil. Not everyone was anxious to go to war, but the majority did not try to avoid service. Some of America’s peacetime heroes, such as baseball’s Ted Williams and Hollywood’s Jimmy Stewart, volunteered at the height of their civilian careers to be a part of the war effort.

Like every war, controversy also surrounds World War II. Historians disagree on the causes of the war. People debate whether the Holocaust could have been prevented. A national brouhaha erupted recently over an exhibition of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb, and whether the accompanying text should present evidence that the United States did not have to drop the bomb to defeat Japan and emphasize the destruction the bomb caused. Veterans’ groups wanted more of the focus to be on the lives the bomb likely saved by quickly ending the war and the death and destruction caused by the Japanese, which prompted the use of the bomb.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World War II, Third Edition, will take you from the depths of the ocean in Hitler’s submarine wolf packs to the skies above England, from the deserts of Egypt to the Hawaiian Islands, from the horrors of the gas chambers to the euphoria of V-E Day, and from the Manhattan Project to Operation Overlord. We’ll meet the famous and infamous characters of WW II.

This book cannot possibly cover every aspect of the war, but it will give you a good summary of what happened and why. Most general histories of the war do not spend much time on the treatment of prisoners of war or the Holocaust, but separate chapters on each are included here because those subjects are crucial to understanding the impact the war had on the lives of civilians and soldiers.

Part 1, Dark Clouds Form Over Europe, explores the causes of World War II and offers background on the men responsible for the conflict. The slow descent into war is chronicled, as is the Allies’ mistaken belief that Hitler could be appeased.

Part 2, Blitzkrieg, documents how Germany quickly overran most of Europe and took control of the Atlantic with its submarine wolf packs. Only the British succeed in beating back Hitler’s offensive, but only after the United States begins to provide vital supplies. Hitler’s Italian ally, Benito Mussolini, meanwhile makes his own bid for a North African empire.

Part 3, The Yanks Are Coming!, shows how the United States was shocked out of its isolationist shell by Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Once the United States is in the war, it begins to reverse Japanese gains in the Pacific, while Hitler becomes bogged down on the eastern front by the Russian winter.

Part 4, Allies Kick Axis, discusses the bloody combat in the Pacific, where the Japanese fought to the last man on even the smallest islands. The Soviets begin their counterattack against the German forces while the Allies drive the Axis out of North Africa.

Part 5, Let Freedom Ring, shows how the Allies finally won the war. In Europe, a massive invasion lands at Normandy on D day, and the Western Allies and Red Army meet in Berlin. In the Pacific, the United States battles its way within bombing range of Japan and then drops the atomic bomb, which is so devastating that Japan surrenders. This part also documents the fate of many POWs.

Part 6, The Smoke Clears, and the Reckoning Begins, gives an accounting of the material and human costs of the war. This part includes a discussion of the Holocaust and subsequent war crimes trials, as well as a look at the postwar world and the prospects for World War III.

Extras

In addition to the narrative, maps, and photographs, this book provides a number of sidebars to add some facts and trivia to the basic history.

Ask the General

This feature offers some tips on how to better understand different aspects of the war.

Words of War

These sidebars collect quotations from famous figures in the war.

Roll Call

Statistics that do not appear in the main text will be set aside for emphasis here.

War Lore

Some interesting aspects of the war do not always fit well into the main text and will appear in these longer sidebars. This feature will also include trivia about the war and stories that you may not have heard.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Gary Krebs for originally giving me the opportunity to work on this project and expand my horizons from the academic to the idiotic (so to speak). I’d also like to thank Phil Kitchel for his diligence in editing the first edition of the manuscript; Sue Moseson for tracking down the maps; Do You Graphics for delivering as promised on the photographs for the book; Lauren Levy for her assistance with various research tasks; editors Ginny Bess Munroe and Megan Douglass for putting all the elements together quickly and efficiently; copy editor Cari Luna for helping to make my prose more closely approximate the English language; and the technical editor, Williamson Murray, for making sure I got the players and the outcome of the war right. I also want to thank Gary Goldstein for giving me the first chance to revise the book, and the opportunity to tell friends who didn’t understand the need to update a book on World War II that this time I planned to have the other side win. I am grateful to Paul Dinas for giving me the opportunity to further revise this edition and add more material documenting the battles in the Pacific.

Special Thanks to the Technical Reviewer

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World War II, Third Edition, was reviewed by an expert who double-checked the accuracy of what you’ll learn here, to help us ensure that this book gives you everything you need to know about World War II. Special thanks are extended to Williamson Murray.

Trademarks

All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be or are suspected of being trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized. Alpha Books and Penguin Group (USA) Inc. cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Part 1

Dark Clouds Form Over Europe

This part looks at the causes of World War II and the men who were most responsible for the most destructive conflict in world history. Hitler’s rise to power is traced, and his decisions to annex Austria and the Sudetenland are covered. Spain breaks into civil war, while the Japanese and Italians try to build empires in Asia and Africa. The Allies appease Hitler at Munich and slowly realize their mistake. The United States, meanwhile, tries to pretend the events in Europe have nothing to do with America.

Chapter 1

The War That Didn’t End All Wars

In This Chapter

◆ Wasn’t one world war enough?

◆ The Germans are bad losers

◆ A League of Nations misses its star

◆ The Great Depression’s depressing consequences

◆ Gunning for a rematch

It would be easy to provide a recitation of the treaties and battles of World War II, as most history books do, but I hope to bring some of this history to life by introducing more of the human element—the good, the bad, and the ugly. This book is meant to be a general work of history and not a military history, so I will not go into great detail about the strategy and prosecution of individual battles. Others have written entire books on D day, the Battle of the Bulge, Pearl Harbor, and the rest, but I couldn’t hope to cover all the major events of the war and go into similar detail in a book of this length.

So where do we start? Even now, more than 60 years after the war began, historians debate the causes of World War II. Was it economics? Hitler’s megalomania?

Western appeasement? American isolationism? The mixture of action, reaction, and inaction in the years preceding the Second World War was much more complex than the cause of the first one, which was called the Great War.

Despite the disagreements about the precise reasons for what might be called the Greatest War, there’s no doubt that the seeds of the Second World War were sown as the first one ended. Alas, the war to end all wars served more as a catalyst to an even wider and bloodier conflagration. And that is where our story begins.

Winners and Losers

The armistice ending World War I was finally signed on November 11, 1918, which was 4 years, 3 months, and 14 days after the declaration of war by Austria-Hungary on Serbia on July 28, 1914. When the war ended, the global checkerboard had been rearranged. Russia was no longer a Great Power and the Habsburg monarchy had been dismantled, with the new nations of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia carved out of its remains. Poland, which had been partitioned between Russia and Prussia before the war, and overrun by Germany during the fighting, emerged as an independent state. Lithuania, which had also been occupied by Germany, also won its independence after the war. Two other nations, Latvia and Estonia, had been under the czar’s control and exploited the Russian Revolution to achieve independence.

Germany remained a power even after being defeated, primarily because Britain and France decided not to destroy its army, which had been routed and was retreating. The war also introduced a new power to the scene—the only one that has grown in stature since that time—the United States.

War Lore

In a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, President Wilson presented the 14 Points he believed should be the basis of a peace settlement. These included: ensuring freedom of the seas, removing economic barriers to international trade, reducing arms, and recognizing the self-determination of peoples. The fourteenth point called for the creation of an association of nations to guarantee the independence and territorial integrity of all nations.

The only other nation to emerge from the war stronger than before was Japan, which had demanded that Germany evacuate territory it held in northeastern China. When the Germans refused, Japan entered the war on the side of the Allies. During the war, Japan also exploited the chaos to extend its influence in East Asia and China.

The United States had no demands beyond Germany’s acceptance of Wilson’s 14 Points and the ousting of the kaiser. The other Allies, however, wanted to reverse the territorial gains of the Germans and to ensure that the Huns could not renew the war. The French demanded the return of their northeastern territories; the British wanted the elimination of the German fleet. Both countries insisted on the liberation of Belgium.

Ask the General

The Allies decided not to destroy the German army, thereby leaving the nucleus for it to rebuild and once again become a threat to its neighbors.

The Germans were prepared to accept these terms, so it was unnecessary to continue the war. The Allies had said all along that they were not interested in destroying Germany; their goal was only to prove that aggression would not be permitted. This goal was accomplished, and an armistice was signed.

Though national rivalries remained, few people believed another European war would be fought for a generation. After all, World War I had been the bloodiest conflict ever.

No Garden Party at Versailles

In an effort to guarantee future peace, 27 nations convened on January 18, 1919, in Versailles, France, the site of Louis XIV’s grand palace. The Paris Peace Conference, as it was called, was dominated by the Big Four: President Woodrow Wilson, French Premier Georges Clemenceau, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and Premier Vittorio Orlando of Italy. Their aim was to impose restrictions on Germany that would reduce the chance of it again threatening its neighbors. The terms included limits on the size of the German army and navy, geographical restrictions on its military installations, and demands for large sums of money (reparations) to pay for the damage Germany caused during the war.

The treaty signed at Versailles also resulted in a series of territorial compromises, fashioned in large part by the reluctant Wilson. To win support for his proposed League of Nations, Wilson was forced to accede to some of the victors’ demands. For example, in response to French insistence that it be given control over the German-inhabited Rhineland, the United States and Britain agreed to sign a security treaty that promised they would come to France’s aid if it were attacked by Germany. In return, France settled for the return of Alsace-Lorraine, the demilitarization of the Rhineland, and the placing of the Saar Valley under the League of Nations’ control for 15 years.

The German people did not believe the terms of the treaty were fair, but the chastened German government had little choice but to sign the agreement. As Wilson had foreseen, the Germans felt humiliated and seethed for the next 20 years.

Needed: An International Police Officer

The Allies could do little to enforce the treaty, particularly as the years passed. Initially, they could threaten to resume the war against Germany, but this threat became increasingly impractical. No one wanted to go back to the trenches. Besides, what good would further fighting do? The ultimate result would still be an agreement that would require German cooperation.

Words of War

It must be a peace without victory …. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last.

—Woodrow Wilson addressing the U.S. Senate, January 22, 1917

The winners of the Great War found themselves in the peculiar position of having to support the German government to ensure that it maintained the armistice. The Germans, meanwhile, longed for the day they could reverse the outcome. The other nations of Europe understood that an unrestrained Germany would soon become the dominant power in Europe because of its superior human and natural resources. Even in defeat, Germany remained the greatest power in Europe. After all, it took almost the entire world four years to defeat its armed forces.

A World Government for an Ungovernable World

The principal instrument designed to enforce the Versailles Treaty was the League of Nations. The League had been the brainchild of President Woodrow Wilson, the scholar and former president of Princeton University turned political reformer. Wilson had offered the plan of an association of nations in 1918 as part of his 14 Points summarizing Allied war objectives. The most important part of Wilson’s vision was to create an institution similar to the United Nations of today, that is, a forum where international disputes could be discussed and resolved and the membership could be collectively mobilized to keep the peace.

The covenant creating the League of Nations was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles. As the architect of the League and the world’s greatest power, the United States was expected to be the leader of the organization. This was not to be, in part because the treaty became embroiled in American domestic politics.

The Senate Spurns Wilson’s Baby

The commitments Wilson made for the United States in Paris had to be ratified by the U.S. Senate. Initially, ratification seemed assured. After all, Wilson was at the peak of his popularity and prestige when the war ended. However, a Republican majority took over Congress just before he went to the Paris peace talks, and the Republicans had little interest in cooperating with the Democratic president and vice versa.

The stage for a confrontation was set even before the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The Republicans were angry that Wilson had even gone to Europe (he was the first president ever to do so) and grew more furious when he excluded them from the U.S. peace delegation. Afterward, Republicans, particularly Conference Chairman (similar to today’s Majority Leader) Henry Cabot Lodge, focused their attacks on the League of Nations.

Interestingly, critics of the League stood on opposite poles. One group believed it would be too powerful and undermine U.S. leadership, the other thought the organization would do nothing but talk, and therefore be too weak to maintain peace. The principal complaint was a clause in the treaty that required all League members to preserve the territorial independence of all other members, and to take joint action against aggression. Isolationists, particularly those who became known in the debate as the irreconcilables, did not want any responsibility for defending Europe. The irreconcilables, also known as the Battalion of Death, were Senators Hiram Johnson of California and William Borah of Idaho. They opposed any permanent alliances or commitments between the United States and other nations and determined to prevent any American involvement in matters beyond U.S. borders. Even many League supporters were unwilling to allow a nonelected body—composed primarily of non-Americans—to make foreign-policy decisions for the United States and, more specifically, to usurp Congress’s constitutional power to declare war.

Senator Lodge formulated a series of amendments to the Treaty aimed at reserving U.S. freedom of action. These amendments were unacceptable to Wilson. The President, who had made a number of compromises in Paris to win European support for the League, was unwilling to accept any changes now, though such acceptance could have secured ratification. This all or nothing attitude, the highly partisan debate, and personal animosity between Wilson and Lodge were major factors in the defeat of the Treaty of Versailles.

A League of Their Own

Without the United States, the League was doomed. Whether a strong, American-led League could have prevented World War II is a question that can never be answered. As we will see, the members who did join the League were unwilling to use it to prevent aggression, and the organization’s impotence ultimately contributed to Adolf Hitler’s sense that he could act with impunity.

The participation of the United States in World War I was crucial to the Allied victory. The American failure to continue to support its Allies in their efforts to contain Germany helped undo the result. This behavior should not have been surprising. Being far removed from Europe, Americans did not feel threatened by Germany, and they naively believed that no one else would feel threatened either.

Without the United States, Great Britain and France were the dominant powers in the League, and each had different ideas of what the organization should do. Britain hoped the League would include Germany and serve as a catalyst for reconciliation. The French still felt threatened by the Germans and wanted the League to prevent German aggression.

Even before the weakness of the League became apparent, the French began to strengthen their border defenses and to forge alliances to bolster their morale and security. In 1921, they signed a defensive alliance with Poland. This was followed by similar agreements with Czechoslovakia (1924), Romania (1926), and Yugoslavia (1927). Later, in the 1930s, the French would construct the most elaborate fortifications ever devised, the Maginot Line, to prevent the Germans from launching a frontal assault against them.

Ask the General

Permanent fortifications had played an important defensive role in World War I, and France devised a line of such fortifications to forestall another assault from Germany.

The Maginot Line, named after War Minister André Maginot, extended roughly 200 miles along northeastern France from Switzerland almost to the Belgian border. It included antitank obstacles, gun emplacements, and an elaborate underground complex of railroads, hospitals, command posts, supply depots, and barracks.

A Hindenburg Without the Hot Air

While the French prepared for possible future conflict, the Germans took a number of specific steps in the mid-’20s to normalize relations with their former rivals. First, Germany signed an agreement with the other international pariah—the Soviet Union—the first major power to do so. The economic cooperation agreement signed at Rapallo on April 16, 1922, appeared to be aimed at providing mutual assistance to the two struggling nations, but both governments had more sinister intentions. These intentions would become clear to all two decades later.

Three years later, at a conference in Locarno, Switzerland, the Germans voluntarily entered into treaties with Britain, Belgium, France, and Italy guaranteeing the existing Franco-Belgian-German borders. Germany accepted the loss of Alsace and Lorraine and agreed to keep the Rhineland demilitarized. France also won the right to defend Czechoslovakia and Poland under its existing alliances without being considered an aggressor against Germany or losing British support. Italy and Great Britain were to guarantee the agreements, but they assumed no obligations to ensure their implementation.

The Locarno Treaty was a fine work of diplomacy, but it depended entirely on the good faith of the signatories, in particular Germany. The pact did usher in a brief period of optimism that peace could be maintained. Less than a year after it was signed, Germany was rewarded for its concessions with acceptance into the League of Nations. Though resentment over Versailles lingered, Germany’s newly elected president, Paul von Hindenburg, believed changes could be made peacefully and remained faithful to the terms of Locarno. The German public was not anxious to return to the battlefield.

War Lore

The Communist revolution of 1917 occurred after the Russian army’s devastating losses in World War I. Vladimir Ilich Lenin and his successor, Joseph Stalin, were determined to prevent their nation from ever being threatened again. Toward that end, they concentrated on rebuilding the old Imperial Army into the powerful new Red Army. Their success helped determine the outcome of the next war and, later, provoked the Cold War.

A Law Against War

The Americans, who otherwise showed little interest in foreign affairs in the ’20s, sought to legislate war out of existence. Under public pressure, President Calvin Coolidge sent Secretary of State Frank Kellogg to negotiate an agreement with his French counterpart, Aristide Briand, that would outlaw all but defensive wars and encourage nations to settle international disputes by peaceful means. The Kellogg-Briand Pact (also called the Pact of Paris) was signed in 1928 and ultimately ratified by 62 nations. Practically, the agreement was worthless given the loophole that virtually any aggression could be justified as self-defense.

Brothers, Can You Spare a Billion?

While the Europeans concentrated on borders and security, the Americans began to focus all their energy on domestic affairs. America’s financial position had shifted dramatically from debtor to creditor as a consequence of the war, and the United States economy was becoming as strong as its military.

In less than a decade, the United States went from owing $4 billion to being owed $16 billion. Most of this debt was incurred by the Allies as a result of wartime loans, and the Americans were growing impatient with their failure to pay back the money.

The British and French argued that the debts should be forgiven because they had paid their share with the blood of their soldiers for almost three years prior to the United States’ entrance in the war. They also resented the fact that the American economic boom was largely due to their borrowing.

While they tried to escape their debts to the United States, the British and French still pressed the Germans to pay $32 billion in reparations. The German refusal prompted the French to move troops into Germany’s Ruhr Valley in 1923. Germany’s government encouraged German workers not to cooperate with the French and printed huge amounts of money to pay them, which stimulated hyperinflation and caused the German economy to collapse.

It is difficult to conceive of the hyperinflation of that time—price increases that made the German mark virtually worthless. In 1913, the German mark was worth 2.38 dollars. By 1918, it had fallen to 7 cents, and by the middle of 1922, 1 U.S. cent would buy 100 marks. Despite the French occupation of the industrialized Ruhr, the German public blamed their predicament on the Versailles Treaty and Jewish speculators, a preview of the scapegoating Hitler would later exploit.

Animosity also grew between the British and French, to the point where some feared the next war would be fought by the former allies. In 1924, as the arguments grew more heated and the situation more tense, American Charles Dawes negotiated a more realistic, scaled-down schedule of reparations payments. The terms were less onerous, and the Germans did make payments for the next five years. When the United States allowed private bankers to increase loans to the Germans, a circular trail of money was created, whereby Americans lent money to the Germans, who used it to pay reparations to the British and French who, in turn, repaid their loans to the United States.

War Lore

Finland was the only nation that did not default on its loans from the United States. It continued to make payments until its debt was paid off—in 1976!

The circle was broken in 1929 when the American stock market crashed, and the global economy went into a tailspin. The Germans had no chance of paying further reparations (or at least made that claim), and the Allies defaulted on their loans. The result was that the Europeans were embarrassed and embittered, and the Americans were more determined to further isolate themselves from troubles abroad.

People Don’t Kill, Guns Do

As German economic fortunes declined and the government unsuccessfully battled inflation, the German people focused their anger on the conditions the Allies imposed on them at Versailles. One of the Germans’ main complaints concerned the restrictions the treaty had imposed on their army. In 1919, the powers had planned to begin a process of disarmament, believing that weapons were causes of war. No specifics were laid out in the Versailles Treaty, but limits on naval forces were later established at the Washington Disarmament Conference called by the United States in 1921 to 1922.

The one country left largely exempt from the new restrictions was Japan, which feared attacks from the West and insisted on reassuring concessions. This sensitivity to Japanese concerns would come back to haunt the United States 20 years later.

The disarmament talks did produce two other notable agreements. The first, the Four-Power Treaty, committed the United States, the Commonwealth of Nations, France, and Japan to respect each other’s possessions in the Pacific. The second, involving all the participants at the Washington conference, was the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922. This treaty guaranteed Chinese territorial integrity and a commitment to the Open Door Policy.

These agreements did not alleviate German discontent. A decade after Versailles, little progress had been made toward balancing the competing forces. The Germans began to insist that their rivals either reduce their armies to the German level or allow a German buildup.

In 1929, the Germans found a more sympathetic audience when a new Labor government took power in Great Britain and began preparations for a disarmament conference. By the time the conference took place in 1932, the Labor Party had been voted out of office, and the positions of both the French and Germans had hardened. The French insisted on ensuring their security, which would be impossible if Germany rearmed. The Germans were equally determined to achieve military parity with the other powers.

A Wolf at the Door

In hindsight, it is easy to question why anyone in France or Britain would have had the slightest interest in redressing the arms imbalance with Germany. But in 1932, the German economy was still in shambles. The British believed a well-armed France facing a disarmed Germany was the most likely cause of a future war.

At this point, the Treaty of Versailles and the agreements of the decade that followed became little more than interesting historical documents. The new world utopia Wilson envisioned when he formulated the League of Nations had sunk into chaos, with each nation looking desperately for ways to recover its own prosperity and seeking to take advantage of the suffering of the rest. The Western European leaders of the time were consumed with their own problems, and the United States remained in its isolationist funk. No one foresaw that a psychopath was prepared to fill the vacuum. The world’s supposed powers had become as meek as sheep, and a wolf was now at their doorstep.

The Least You Need to Know

◆ World War I, the bloodiest conflict to that point in history, rearranged European boundaries, but left Germany as a major power.

◆ The Versailles Treaty was supposed to ensure future peace, but the humiliating terms imposed on Germany produced feelings of resentment that would eventually undo the settlement.

◆ President Woodrow Wilson’s idea of creating an international forum for resolving disputes became a reality, but the effectiveness of the League of Nations was crippled by isolationists in the U.S. Senate who prevented the United States from becoming a member.

◆ The Great Depression had a ripple effect throughout the world, preventing Germany from paying reparations, forcing Great Britain and France to default on their debts to the United States, and sowing discontent everywhere.

◆ Germany wanted its military to be equal to that of its neighbors, but its neighbors were determined to prevent the imbalance from being redressed.

◆ By the end of the 1920s, the treaties signed after World War I had ceased to be effective, and the growing unrest offered an opportunity for a strong leader to step forward and bring order to the chaos.

Chapter 2

The Little Artist Seeks a Bigger Canvas

In This Chapter

◆ Hitler’s lack of talent changes history

◆ The Beer Hall Putsch

◆ Nazis as democrats

◆ The ruthless suppression of opposition

◆ Ideals and ideologues

Only a few men in history have had their names become synonymous with evil. In the twentieth century, and for all time, Adolf Hitler has become associated with unspeakable wickedness. And to think he might never have become the scourge of the earth if he’d had enough talent to become an artist.

A few historians argue that Hitler did not have a conscious plan, that he often improvised and exploited opportunities. This argument is far too forgiving a reading of the evidence. In truth, Hitler was a unique politician, a man who said what he thought and then acted to implement his ideas. The only exceptions were when he told gullible foreign leaders that he was satisfied with his latest conquest. Otherwise, Hitler made quite clear early on his desire to purify the world, particularly by ridding it of the poisonous Jews, and then to dominate it.

Picture Imperfect

It is evidence of the incredible hold Hitler assumed over the Germans that he could promote the ideal of the blond-haired, blue-eyed, Aryan superman when he, their leader, was none of those things. The black-haired, brown-eyed Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889.

His father, 52-year-old Alois Schickelgruber Hitler, was an Austrian customs official. His mother, Alois’s third wife, was a young peasant girl named Klara Poelzl. Young Adolf resented his stern father and was relieved by his death in 1903. He was devastated, however, when his mother, whom he adored, died in 1908 of cancer.

A Portrait of the Artist

Hitler was never a good student and dropped out of school at 16. He left his home in Linz and went to Vienna hoping to become an artist. Having more confidence than talent, Hitler twice failed auditions at the Vienna Academy of Art. He spent the next five years in self-described misery, trying to sell hand-painted postcards to tourists.

During these formative years, Hitler began to develop the racist, amoral worldview that would shape his political life. He was particularly influenced by two Viennese politicians, Karl Lueger and Georg von Schoenerer. Lueger was the popular socialist mayor who showed Hitler that the public would forego freedom to get economic security. Schoenerer was more interested in race than economics, blaming Jews for all of the world’s evils, an argument that struck a responsive chord in young Adolf.

War Lore

A persistent myth is that Adolf Hitler was Jewish or had ancestors who were. The idea seems to arise from the remote possibility that Hitler’s grandfather was Jewish. Hitler’s father, Alois, was registered as an illegitimate child with no father. Alois’ mother worked in the home of a wealthy Jew and there is some chance a son in that household got the woman (that is, Hitler’s grandmother) pregnant. Adolf Hitler was not Jewish.

Years in the Service

When World War I began, Hitler avoided service in the Habsburg Empire’s (Austrian) military, primarily because he would have had to fight beside inferiors—Jews and Slavs. Instead, he volunteered for a Bavarian (German) infantry regiment. During the war, Hitler fought with distinction and was twice decorated for bravery, but he never advanced beyond a rank equivalent to a U.S. Army private first class. He was wounded twice and spent several weeks at the end of the war recuperating from being gassed by Allied forces.

During his service, Hitler felt for the first time as though he had found a real home, a place where he made lifelong friends. He was enraged, however, by the devastating defeat and the humiliating terms imposed on Germany by the Allies at Versailles. He was convinced that the outcome was due to Marxists and Jews stabbing the Fatherland in the back.

A Nazi Is Born

It would take Hitler less than a year to find an outlet for his frustration. Hitler was assigned by the army to spy on political parties and was sent to investigate a small group of nationalists who called themselves the German Workers’ Party. In 1919, Hitler joined the German Workers’ Party, becoming only its seventh active member. Two years later he was chairman of what was then called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP) and later became known as the Nazi Party.

War Lore

The original abbreviation of National Socialist was Nasos. Nazi was a term of derision first applied to the group by journalist Konrad Heiden.

Hitler saw the NSDAP as an instrument for gaining power and sought to give it a military caste. He created his own personal army of storm troopers, the Sturmbabt-eilung or SA. The group wore brown uniforms—the same color as the victorious British army—hence the nickname Brownshirts. They eventually had their own marching song, which was named after the Berlin leader of the SA, Horst Wessel, who according to Nazi legend was murdered by a Communist in 1930. Wessel resigned from the Nazi Party after falling in love with a prostitute; the Communist who killed him happened to be the woman’s pimp.

The party adopted an ancient religious emblem, the swastika, as its symbol. Its objective was to impose state control over much of society, but its greater emphasis was on a foreign policy that would bring about the creation of a greater Germany, an abrogation of Versailles, and an end to the malignant influence of the Jews. Germany, Hitler believed, was threatened by its neighbors and could never become the power it should be so long as the size of its army was restricted.

By the time he took control of the party, Hitler had already displayed his talent as an inspirational orator. Still, when he decided to make his first bid for power, he had only about 3,000 followers.

As you saw in the last chapter, the German economy was in distress in the early 1920s, and the German currency had collapsed by 1923. Hitler saw the public’s discontent as his opportunity to seize power. On November 8, he led his army to a beer hall in Bavaria where local government leaders were holding a meeting. The Nazis quickly captured the politicians, and Hitler put himself in charge of a new national government. The group then marched on the former Bavarian War Ministry building when the police opened fire. The man beside Hitler was killed as he pulled his leader to the ground, and the Nazis all fled.

War Lore

Swastika comes from the Sanskrit name for a hooked cross (Hakenkreuz in German) used by ancient civilizations as a symbol of fertility and good fortune. It has been found in the ruins of Troy, Egypt, China, and India. It was adopted by the Nazis and transformed into a symbol of Aryan supremacy.

A Room with a Viewpoint

The failure of the Beer Hall Putsch (revolt) brought the obscure man with the funny mustache his first national publicity. Hitler was arrested and, after a 24-day trial, sentenced to 5 years in prison.

The most important aspect of Hitler’s incarceration was that it allowed him to dictate his views to his friend and cellmate, Rudolf Hess. Those views would later be published as the book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a volume that remains a bible for racists, anti-Semites, and sociopaths. When it was first written, however, Hitler would not permit the book to be published in English.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his views on the centrality of Aryan purity to historical progress, the mortal danger posed by world Jewry and international communism, the necessity of rebuilding German power, and the importance of expanding Germany’s borders to provide the living space—Lebensraum—the German people required. Hitler did not conceal his intentions; they were in black and white for anyone to read. The hard part, especially in the 1920s, was to take him seriously because he was not known well outside of Germany and had not yet achieved any significant standing within the nation. On December 20, 1924, Hitler was released from prison, having served only nine months.

War Lore

While in prison, Hitler envisioned the development of a people’s car, a Volkswagen, from the word Volk, meaning people or nation.

From Democrat to Dictator

The failure of the Beer Hall Putsch taught Hitler valuable lessons that he would use to win and hold power later. One obvious lesson was not to get into any more battles with an enemy that was larger and better armed. Hitler also decided that his best chance to gain power would be through the use of ballots rather than bullets. Hence, the would-be dictator started out as a democrat of sorts.

The Nazi Party had temporarily been banned, but as soon as the ban was lifted in 1925, Hitler began to build a constituency. The following year, he established himself as the führer (leader) of the party and organized the armed and black-shirted (after the Italian fascists) SS—the Schutzstaffeln or protective units—to control the party.

The Allies, meanwhile, were continuing to press the German government to pay war reparations and adhere to arms limitations, stimulating a steadily rising tide of public resentment. These external pressures were partially offset, however, by an economic recovery. After the hyperinflationary period at the beginning of the decade, which Hitler had misread as an opportunity to seize power, the German government succeeded in stabilizing the currency, and the nation’s industry began to make a comeback, lowering unemployment.

America Crashes the Party

Although Germany’s neighbors paid close attention to that nation’s every move, Americans showed little interest in developments abroad. The Roaring ’20s were in full swing, and the public was captivated by Charles Lindbergh’s flight