Hitler's Last Days (24 page)

Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Creighton “Abe” Abrams
had a long and successful military career. He went on to become a four-star general and chief of staff of the army during the Vietnam War. Abrams's lifelong fondness for cigars caught up with him, and he died of complications from lung cancer surgery in 1974, just shy of his sixtieth birthday.

U.S. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe
, the hero of Bastogne, would never shake his connection with the “Nuts” response, which has gone down in history as one of wartime's great quotations. His military career continued until 1956, when he retired and went into industry. He recounted his weariness about his claim to fame: “One evening a dear old Southern lady invited me to dinner. I had a delightful time talking to her and her charming guests. I was pleased because no mention was made the entire evening of the ‘nuts' incident. As I prepared to depart and thanked my hostess for an enjoyable evening, she replied, ‘Thank you and good night, General McNut.'” He died in 1975 at the age of seventy-seven.

General Anthony McAuliffe in Bastogne, Belgium.
[Alamy]

THE RISE OF HITLER AND THE NAZI PARTY

A
DOLF
H
ITLER
(1889–1945)
WAS BORN IN
Austria. An indifferent student, Hitler was allowed to leave school and pursue studies in the arts; he dreamed of becoming an architect. When World War I began, Hitler applied to join the German army and was accepted. He spent the war years behind the front lines, carrying messages for powerful commanders.

Perhaps the seeds for his anti-Semitism and intolerance can be found in this letter he wrote during the war: “Those of us who are lucky enough to see our homeland again will find it purer and cleansed of affections for foreigners.”

After the war, Hitler worked as an intelligence officer, reporting on the activities of Germany's many small political parties. The party he felt most akin to was the German Workers' Party, founded in 1919 with a platform of nationalism and anti-Semitism. Hitler began to speak in cafés and taverns about his extreme nationalistic views. He was a very good speaker, the kind of person whom people found mesmerizing. Within six months, Hitler convinced leaders to add “National Socialist” to the party name, and two years later, he was the leader of the Nazi Party.

Young Nazi supporters stand next to a sign that reads, “Adolf Hitler will provide work and bread!” Behind them are posters urging women and workers to vote for the Nazi Party.
[Stadtarchiv Rosenheim]

Hitler decided that the party needed a new flag, something striking that would look good both large on a poster and small on a uniform patch. In his autobiography,
Mein Kampf
, Hitler describes the Nazis' new flag: “In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic.” The swastika is a centuries-old symbol that, before its use by the Nazis, meant life and good luck.

A balcony hung with Nazi flags and the flag of Imperial Germany, 1933.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

As a result of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I, Germany was required to pay more money that it had in reparations, and its citizens suffered wide-scale unemployment. As people worried about their livelihoods, many became attracted to politicians who had radical, forceful views and spoke with conviction about how their plans would solve the problems of the citizens. Hitler, representing the Nazi Party, had such conviction. He ran for president of Germany in 1932 and came in second. The winner, Paul von Hindenburg, named Adolf Hitler as head of a coalition government in 1933, a position called chancellor.

Using the power of the chancellor, Hitler pressured the parliament to pass the Enabling Act, which allowed him to ignore the constitution and gave his decrees the power of law. He forced the other political parties to disband. After von Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler appointed himself president and chancellor.

Hitler would take over the German government from Paul von Hindenburg (left), 1933.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Beginning on April 7, 1933, German law required that obtaining a certificate of racial purity was mandatory for any individual wishing to hold public office in Germany or to gain membership in the Nazi Party. The Nazis prized people who were Aryan, thought to be of Nordic and Germanic ethnicity. The defining characteristics of Aryans were blue eyes, blond hair, a tall, strong physique, and Caucasian skin pigment. The Aryan bloodline was thought to be purer because it had not mingled with that of other ethnicities. Even top-level military officers had to prove their racial purity by providing records of their family lineage dating back to 1750. This practice of achieving racial superiority was based on “scientific racism,” which suggested that some races were more advanced than others. Further laws allowed for the sterilization of people deemed unworthy of propagating the German race and banned marriage between Jews and Germans.

A Jewish family, wearing the required Star of David badges, is deported from a ghetto in 1939.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Hitler's anti-Semitic policies led hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens to emigrate from Germany, a number that included 83 percent of all German Jews under the age of twenty-one. But no more were allowed to leave once war was declared.

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. England and France promptly declared war on Germany. World War II had begun. On January 30, 1942, Hitler told the German people, “This war can end two ways. Either the extermination of the Aryan peoples or the disappearance of Jewry from Europe.”

Now trapped in Germany and the countries the Nazis occupied, the remaining Europeans of Jewish ancestry were being systematically rounded up and murdered. Dachau—the first concentration camp, opened in 1933 to house political prisoners—soon evolved into a death camp.

The Nazi Party was outlawed at the end of World War II. Many of its most powerful members were brought to trial and sentenced for the deaths of an estimated six million Jews and four to six million other enemies of the state, such as Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, and disabled people.

THE SYMBOL OF THE SWASTIKA

F
OR THOUSANDS OF YEARS BEFORE
the rise of the Nazi Party, the swastika was a symbol of good and of the sun. It comes from a Sanskrit word,
svastika
, which means “to be well.” Found in ancient cultures all over the world—including ancient Troy of 1000
B.C.
, Tibet, Greece, Africa, India, China, and Native American faiths—its meaning has largely been changed by its association with Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Some nineteenth-century Germans believed that the swastika represented pure Aryan identity. They began to use it on magazines and posters as a secret symbol of nationalistic theories. Hitler thought the symbol would look dramatic on the flag of the Nazi Party. On August 7, 1920, it was adopted by a Nazi Party conference.

Buddhists and Hindus continue to use the shape of the swastika in their art and building decoration to mean infinity and life.

HITLER'S STATURE, HEALTH, AND DIET

A
DOLF
H
ITLER STOOD FIVE FEET
eight inches high and weighed approximately 160 to 165 pounds.

Although it is impossible to know for certain, it seems that Adolf Hitler suffered illnesses from his youth. He is known to have complained of stomach cramps and had a lung infection that kept him out of high school for a time.

It seems clear to many researchers that Hitler suffered from idiopathic Parkinson's disease.
Idiopathic
simply means that the cause of the disease is unknown. People with Parkinson's disease experience tremors, rigidity, and slowness of movement. Eyewitnesses describe Hitler as shaking so much he couldn't hold a fork, having to move his right arm with his left to position it, and walking hunched over. For many people, Parkinson's eventually leads to memory loss. By late September 1944, Hitler's memory had begun to deteriorate; he could not remember some people's names.