FREE ESSAY ON ADOLF HITLER

ADOLF HITLER

William L. Shirer was born February 23, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois. He went to Europe after
graduating from Coe College in 1925. He stayed for nearly two decades. Working for the
Chicago Tribune he covered Lindbergh 's landing in Paris in 1927, the 1928 Winter
Olympics in St Moritz, and League of Nations meetings in Geneva. Then he spent two years
in India covering Mahatma Ghandi before returning to Europe in 1932. He arrived in Berlin
in 1934 as Chief of Universal News Service's Berlin Office reporting first-hand the
Hitler taking over of Germany. He began broadcasting from Berlin in 1937 for the American
CBS network. His reports covered the Anschluss with Austria in March 1938, the Munich
Crisis over Czechoslovakia in September that year, and Hitler's road to war in Poland in
1939. In 1940 he went into France with the German Sixth Army, entering Paris with the
victorious Germans in June and covering the French surrender at Compiegne. Shirer left
Germany in December 1940, returning as a war correspondent to England in 1943, France in
1944, and Germany in 1945. He was at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco,
and the Nuremberg trials in 1946. His most remembered work was on Hitler's Germany - 'The
Rise and Fall of the Adolf Hitler' published in 1961. He died in December 1993 at aged
89. 
The Beginning 
At six thirty on April 20th, 1889 a child was born in the little town of Branau, Austria.
The child's name was Adolf Hitler. He was the son a Customs official Alois Hitler, and
his third wife Klara. He was a pretty good student, getting pretty good grades, but one
of the teachers in his high school classified young Hitler as notorious, cantankerous,
willful, arrogant, and irascible. He has an obvious difficulty in fitting in at school.
He dropped out of school at the age of 16. . From childhood one it was his dream to
become an artist. He had moved to Vienna, the capital of Austria where the Academy of
Arts was located but they would not except him. Some think had he been excepted the
Holocaust might never have happened. In 1913 Hitler decided to move to Munich. Although
he was Austrian by birth, Hitler believed himself a German and did not like Austria
because of all the Slavs. Then in 1914, when WWI began, Hitler volunteered for the
Imperial Army. Hitler received awards of bravery and courage and held the rank of
corporal but was wounded one day when some British soldiers lobbed explosives at them
while they were getting food rations. One day September 12, 1919, Hitler was sent to
investigate a small group which called itself the German Workers Party or
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. His natural ability to speak impressed
the leader of the group and at the end of the meeting he initiated him. He later was put
in charge of Propaganda. The party was small at first but Hitler's took a liking to it
and it's ideas , and with his great skill at speaking attracted more and more listeners
and it soon became the Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or National
Socialist Worker's Party. A man name Ernst Rohm organized a group of Storm Troopers
(Storm Abtcilung) for Hitler. The storm troopers would beat up any hecklers or critics
and when there weren't any they would find Jews to beat up. By the summer of 1923, the
Nazi party had grown to 150,000. Hitler captured the government leaders and forced them
to join him. His 3,000 men then marched to Berlin in an attempt to take it over. The
German police were waiting. Shots were fired and sixteen Nazis and two policemen died. He
was arrested and sentenced to five years in jail although he only served nine months of
it and was allowed large adjoining cells and to have visitors. There, in jail he wrote
Mein Kampf or my struggle. This book went on to become the second best seller ever in
Germany. 
The End
The Great Depression caused the economy in Germany to fall and thus giving the Nazis two
million more votes than the communist party. This put them just under the democratic
party and Hitler planned on running against Paul Von Hinderburg, a social democrat.
Although he did not win he was made Chancellor. Next, He forced Hindenburg to abolish the
freedom of speech, press, and assembly. In 1934 President Hindenburg died. Using his
unlimited powers, he combined President and Chancellor. At the end of the war, on April
30, 1945, Hitler shot himself to avoid capture. He ordered his elite SS troops to take
his body and set it on fire with gasoline. Hitler's Reich was over, millions gassed,
millions shot. Hitler could have saved his armies had he listened to his generals and not
tried to run the entire army by himself. The German forces were stretched too far into
Russia and the cold was too much. Stalin gathered his men and attacked. His men
surrounded German fortifications and Hitler's Field Marshal Paulus gave up. By this time
Hitler's mind had completely lost contact with reality. To think that so many people
could be suckered into believing and following Hitler. He has come to be the most
mysterious yet well known person in the history of mankind and he also has the number two
best-seller.
I believe William Shirer wrote a very good book, and I believe I understand Hitler a lot
better after having read it. He really made Hitler out to be an amazing extraordinary
man, even though it was not hard because Hitler was pretty amazing to begin with. I like
how he talks first about Hitler's beginning conquests of politic, and then later of
blood. William Shirer did a good job of putting all the emphasis on Hitler, while still
telling how WW II began and all the important battles in Europe as well as Germany. I
believe I learned a lot of the in's and out's of WW II better than I would ever have
known had I not read this book. Shirer did not talk about the horrible ghettos, and death
camps. His main focus was on "The Rise and Fall of Hitler," and although definitely did
not try to make him out to be a good guy, they did not talk about the dirt very much just
the politics and battles. From my own interpretation of what I've heard about Adolf
Hitler, I believe he was a sinister devil of a man and I hope there is never another man
like him again. I have German roots and it scares me to think what the Germans have done
in WW II.