Biography of Adolf Hitler | The nazi leader.

The expansionist policy of the nazi leader led Europe to World War II, the deadliest in history.
The first world war had left a Germany defeated politically and economically, in a frustrated process by implementing liberal democracy that will replace former monarchies. This, coupled with the roots of their military tradition and romantic nationalism according to which the State was the embodiment of the spirit of the people, as well as certain authoritarian habits of German society, was an excellent breeding ground for any national socialism, so in vogue at the time.
Adolf Hitler masterfully added the element of racism to form explosive and paranoid mix that galvanizaría to an entire nation. He got the support of an army wounded in his honour; the industrialists faced unions and fears of Marxist ideology; a frustrated middle class and the proletariat «victim of trade unions and political parties». He knew how to attract all the I hate the Jews, as a cohesive element, and propose the superiority of race aria as the only valid for world domination.

Adolf Hitler
His work Mein Kampf (my struggle) became Gospel of masses, without being treated in politics, and in the Holy Book of the life and ideas of the Supreme Leader, without being any confession of the author, despite the title. As explained in the, the Aryan race is superior by nature; the State is the unit of "blood and soil"; the Furher is the embodiment of the State and therefore of the people... Nothing new. But the most effective weapon for the cruellest defeat of the people who used it, the greatest genocide in history and the destruction of Europe.

Blood ties

The search for a family history that could justify the imbalance of Hitler prompted the construction of different stories about their origins. The darkness of the few actual data and the low reliability of some of the discharges by him in his book Mein Kampf, helped raise them. Thus, there has been speculation about possible alcoholism from his father, on which this died confined in a mental institution, or that his mother was a prostitute and had a Jewish grandfather. None of these hypotheses have been tested and only we can say with absolute certainty that Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau at Inn, border town of the high Austria, and was the third son of the marriage formed by the inspector of customs Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pólzl.
Assumes that his grandfather was Johann Georg Hiedler, Miller of the lower Austria which, in 1842, married a peasant, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, who already had one natural son of five years, Alois, whose father was, apparently, that the own Hiedler, but gave it his name. Nearly forty years later, in 1876, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, brother of the former, appeared with Alois before the parish priest in Döllersheim and asked that it cancelled the registration the word "illegitimate" and placed him as Alois Hiedler by expressed desire of the father. Johann-Georg was twenty years buried and his mother thirty, but the priest agreed. Alois, the next year of their legitimation, changed his surname Hiedler, of Czech origin, by Hitler, similar to its phonetic spelling.
Alois Hitler had entered the Imperial service in customs at eighteen and until 1895 he worked as official in different villages of the austrobavara border. He had contracted marriage with Anna Glass in 1864, much older than him, who died childless in 1883. A month later was married to Franziska Matzelberger, who had already given him a son, Alois, and three months after the wedding gave him a daughter, Angela, the only one with whom Adolf had maintain relationship throughout his life, and whose daughter Geli Raubal came to fall in love. This second wife also died shortly later of tuberculosis. In January 1885, Alois married Klara Pólzl, third wife. In May was born Gustav. Both this and a daughter born in 1887, died in his childhood. In 1889 was born Adolf and Paula.
Adolf Hitler was six years old when his father retired. The family then left Passau, his ultimate destination, moved to Hafeld-am-Traun, then to Lambach and finally bought a house in Leonding, village on the outskirts of Linz. There Hitler would spend his childhood and for that reason is considered to be the 'hometown of the Führer"and therefore nazi pilgrimage centre. His father died on January 3, 1903, leaving a pension to his widow. Two years after her mother sold the House by ten thousand crowns and settled in Linz.

A young Hitler
In the summer of 1905 Adolf concluded his studies by obligation, because their mediocre performance in the Realschule had earned him expulsion without getting any title. When his mother died, in 1907, he moved to Vienna with inheritance money. Drawing as a hobby, and hoped to become an academic painter. He enrolled for testing of access at the Academy of fine arts, but failed in the entrance examination. The following year, he met many of his drawings and he returned to the Academy, but the institution, after observing them, this time not even admitted it to test.
It was then, at the end of the year 1908, when it came into contact with through the theories of Liebenfels anti-Semitism. Already in them looms the germ of his subsequent ideology: Liebenfels was called Arioheroiker (Aryan ' heroes') the blond race of Lords and facing lower beings, the Affingen ('apelike'), to conclude that the need to tithe to the latter was biologically justified, because it would wipe out the spawn of miscegenation.
Throughout the year following Hitler consumed quantities of those racist pamphlets. Already then living miserably, it had exhausted its heritage and not working; It is housed in a residence for indigent men and starving in their wanderings by Vienna. In addition, not arose to repeated calls for military service and, at the age of twenty-four - age at which ceased the obligation of entering rows-, crossed the German border, settling in Munich.

The germ

The Austrian authorities found out his whereabouts and was forced to appear at its Consulate in Munich and then the Committee's recruitment of Salzburg. There, given his weak physical condition, he was declared not suitable and useless for the militia. On 16 August 1914 was presented as a volunteer to the German Army: the first world war had begun. Wounded and gassed in front, he was awarded two iron crosses the military merit of second and first class, honor this very rare for a Sergeant, as he was last.

Hitler acclaimed by the crowd
According to witnesses, it was a brave soldier and won the sympathy of his superiors soon thanks to its marked anti-Semitism. He was appointed officer of the Reichswehr, the regular army, propaganda and devoted himself to preaching the ideal nationalist and fighting the Bolsheviks among his comrades, giving numerous lectures. On September 12, 1919 he was commissioned to attend an Assembly of the incipient worker German party (DAP) in order to gather information on this Association. Hitler exchanged impressions with the Chairman of the DAP, Anton Drexler, and everything would have ended there, perhaps, if it had not received shortly after a postal card in that the direction of the Party (then did not have more than fifty members) communicated you your income in the same.
In March of the following year he left the militia to devote himself entirely to his political activity; It was then that the party added to its name National Socialist, becoming the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbei-terpartei (whose abbreviation would emerge the word nazi), and Hitler became the head of propaganda. As such he managed to recruit outstanding personages of Munich society, essentially nationalist, to a lesser extent, workers, whose number was decreasing as the NSDAP waxed, and he called himself the Presidency, after Drexler.
In November 1923, following the example of Mussolini in Italy, tried a coup, known as the putsch of 1923. The two ringleaders of the attempt, Hitler and Ludendorff, were arrested and tried; his failure earned him a sentence of five years in prison, which was only nine months due to pressure from his comrades. The first draft of Mein Kampf, dictated to Rudolf Hess emerged from that stay in Landsberg prison.

Hitler and Ludendorff, protagonists of the putsch
The economic crisis of 1929 allowed the nazi party one considerable development. In 1932 he appeared presidential elections, and although it was defeated, won thirteen and a half million votes. In January 1933 he held the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the conservative Von Papen. Hitler disbanded the Parliament, began a campaign financed by the magnates of the Ruhr (Von Thyssen, Otto Wolff, Voegeler) marked by the violence of the Schutz Staffel, SS, police militarized of the nazi party, and the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin, on 27 February, made that used in its favour ascribing its authorship to the Communist subversion and that gave him standing to institute a State of emergency.
They were the necessary steps to put an end to their opponents. First he enacted a law vaguely intended to restore 'the operation of race', but that it actually served to debug the Jews and Marxists of the State, and that in general everything that occupy a place coveted by the new Nazi heads. After his first encounter with Mussolini, on June 14, 1934, in Venice, the headquarter of national socialism and Hitler (Göring, Goebbels, Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler) is unloaded from its once appreciated Ernst Röhm and other opponents to the regime: Gregor Strasser, Schleicher, Kahr, at the head of a hundred, all executed at point-blank range which was called "Night of the long knives" (June 30, 1934). Von Papen was spared from burning through the protection of Marshal Von Hindenburg, still President of the Reich; but just in case he was to resign from his position as Deputy Foreign Minister, went to Vienna as Ambassador and later continued to serve Hitler in Ankara.

With Marshal Von Hindenburg
On August 2, 1934 died the aged Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and Hitler, thanks to a law enacted in the same instant, became Supreme Head of State, unified both ministries (State Chancellery) and the army swore loyalty to the Führer and Chancellor Adolf Hitler". At that time the SS had over one hundred thousand men led by a former fan farmer who, according to some, surpassed in recklessness to own Führer: Himmler.

The III Reich

Under the feint of the cult of the duty and the Prussian jargon, the new State reflected the traits of its creator: effective, but messy, aggressive and centralized. Hitler was loyal to Viennese traditions: he got up at noon, and protected by a large number of Secretaries with ministerial rank seeping visitors, received just who wanted him and only for a couple of minutes. Their vitality appeared during the night, when his terror leading to loneliness to maintain extensive monologues until dawn.
There were no Government meetings. The laws promulgated by succinct orders and later it would only suffice with a whimsical observation. Its stalwarts scoring all their spontaneous occurrences and transmitting them to the nation as the Führer orders. There is a story here that is, founded or not, certainly illustrative: Hitler told his companions, opposite the Church of San Mateo de Munich, next time do not want to see this pile of stones. He was referring to loads of paving stones that were stacked near the entrance, but his remark is interpreted as an allusion to the Church and this is demolished without more the next day.
Thus running mechanisms of Government of a nation of 70 million people, and despite everything worked; Thanks to your intuition, your nose, your systematic choice of viable solutions. Its social policy had an extraordinary effect on the masses. Ordering works which, according to him, mixed facts «socialism» to the «theoretical socialism»: loans "to marry" that drove the creation of new families; protection and rest to mothers; massive sending of children (the first year 370,000) colonies of vacation; services, kindergartens; works with as strange as "winter relief" denominations, ' home', 'strength through Joy' and campaigns with titles such as «light», «green areas in the company», "popular education", «Department of leisure», or «the beauty of the work», all of them are designed with a strategic vision for the future and for a people that came out of the misery.
Meanwhile, Himmler held half a million of people in 20 concentration camps and hundred and sixty labour camps, and that excluding the millions of Jews, Poles, suspicious, Soviet prisoners of war of Semitism and subversives who passed through the camps and perished in the gas chambers or were annihilated by the work. First clandestinely, then more open, the extermination was responding to the objectives set out in Mein Kampf. And also its foreign policy; as Mussolini, Hitler helped Franco in his fight against the Republic. Then he camouflaged, with the name of "fight against Bolshevism", the Alliance with the dictators. Japan sticking, could threaten the rear of the Soviet Union, which, with France, were their greatest threats.

Hitler and Mussolini
At the end of 1937, he decided to gather all German-speaking countries until the Western powers were of rearm. To the alarm of the more conservative of the army, hostile to the SS wing, got rid of Blomberg, Von Neurath and dismissed the Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht, Von Fritsch, accusing him of homosexual, and to the Chief of the Beck, assuming the same command.
Secure the adhesion of the Duce, in March 1938 she gripped Austria. In September, with the fear of the war in their favour and Western anti-communism, he obtained the signature of the Munich Agreement, which won a quarter of Czechoslovakia. On March 15, 1939, as organized Slovak secession, put under their protection to Bohemian-Moravian and occupied Memel. From April he claimed the German districts of Poland, reinforced its alliance with Italy through the Pact of steel, May 22 and signed the Pact of germano-sovietica neutrality. On 1 September he invaded Poland, triggering World War II.

Goodbye to Berlin

The domination of Hitler soon spread throughout Europe. On June 22, 1941 he attacked the Soviet Union and the failure against Moscow drove him to take command of the army itself. Even at the end of 1942 the company was successful. That year had already been announced, even if dimly, the "final solution to the Jewish question", and the mass murder of Jews across Europe were. In Poland just build new camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec. Including Russian Jews, the least pessimistic estimate at more than four million victims.
On 10 September had gotten the maximum expansion of the Germans in the Soviet Union. The war was stagnant and the adversary forcing Germany to defend themselves. In November, the Allied forces landed in Morocco and Algeria, and in January 1943 the Anglo-American Conference in Casablanca demanded the unconditional capitulation. A month later, the German army should surrender in Stalingrad. Goebbels then declared "total war".
During the following months, however, German power was decaying overwhelmed by different events. In April and may the resistance rebelled in the Warsaw ghetto and the italo-German Afrika-Korps capitulated in Tunisia. In July the allies entered the phase of mass bombardment of Hamburg and destroyed much of the city; day 10 Englishmen and Americans landed in Sicily and 25 fell Mussolini. Italy then declared war on Germany. December 1 meeting at the Tehran Conference, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin raised the desirability of dismember Germany. In June 1944, the allies landed in Normandy.

After the attack of Rastenburg (July 1944)
Hitler, harassed, suffered in addition an attack planned by a group of officers when he was in his headquarters in Rastenburg (East Prussia) and resulted in minor injuries. In revenge, he did execute at least two hundred resistant politico-military elite, and Kluge and Rommel committed suicide. On 25 September he called popular forces as a last attempt to protect 'the empire'. Worn by the defeats, it was only a mental patient. However, believed still in triumph through the secret weapons in preparation and even oversaw the last German offensive in the Ardennes. He then returned to the Chancellery bunker.
In April 1945, Adolf Hitler, fully insulated, except for an already reduced Court of sycophants and his mistress Eva Braun and Goebbels, looked at how his once faithful servants trying to quit: Göring, who was trying to speed up the inevitable end; Himmler, who even tried to contact the enemy... True to itself, as expressed in 1939, never would pronounce the word "surrender". Day 13 provided with Göring over the death of his despised Roosevelt. The 20 returned to give their few followers by their sixth anniversary. Russian troops, meanwhile, continued their inexorable advance towards Berlin.
In the early hours of April 29 ordered to a civil registry official is present before him and married with Eva Braun, his 'faithful student"who had known when he was Hoffmann, its photographer, store employee in 1932, few months when her first love, Geli Raubal, the daughter of her half-brother, committed suicide in the home of Hitler in Munich. Hitler and Eva Braun already planned to kill themselves when they decided their marriage. The Führer had just received was a few hours the news of the execution of Benito Mussolini lakefront as. He had then ordered that they envenenasen to their German Shepherd, Blondi. At the end of the ceremony he gave political legacy by naming Admiral Dönitz as his successor. The next day, three o'clock in the afternoon they heard two shots: Hitler and Eva Braun had died.

Towards the end of the war Hitler
While the two bodies were consumed by flames in the garden of the bunker, Bormann told radio Dönitz that Hitler had appointed him his successor, but hid the death of the Führer even twenty-four hours more. During this period, he and Goebbels tried to new negotiations with the Soviets; but it was a futile effort. Then they telegraphed again to Dönitz informing him of the death. The news was given radio on May 1 with background of Wagner and Bruckner, implying that the Führer had been a hero who fell fighting Bolshevism to the end. That night it was held a mass flight and many were those who managed to escape from Berlin. Goebbels preferred to poison their children, then killed his wife shot and killed himself a shot. On May 7, 1945 was signed the capitulation in Reims and the 9th was repeated the signing in Berlin. On the same day all hostilities were suspended in the European fronts. The Third Reich had outlived its creator exactly seven days.

Adolf Hitler and Nazism

At the beginning of the century appeared the beginnings of an ideology that years most afternoon crystallized in national socialism, doctrine also known by the name of Nazism. The principles of national socialism, reinforced by the theory of the superiority of the Aryan race, are characterized by his anti-Semitism, his advocacy of action and violence, and authoritarianism.
Supporter of these theories, Adolf Hitler joined in Munich to the German workers party after the first world war. In 1920, the Party adopted the name of Labor Party National Socialist German and, the following year, Hitler became their leader. In the book My struggle (Mein kampf) Adolf Hitler describes the program of the movement, added that some vague Socialist and anti-capitalist ideas, which were subsequently abandoned. National Socialism recruited his followers mainly among the demobilized officers, soldiers and members of the class lower middle.

Poster of the National Socialist Party
with the legend Live Germany!
The party had organized military units, the Sturmabteilungen (SA), more popularly known by the "brown shirts" because of the color of their uniforms. Next to these, the Schutzstaffeln (SS), linked to the own elite units Hitler by oath, had to charge the internal security of the State. Arguing that the party would be governed by a single leader, the Führer, Adolf Hitler emerged as undisputed leader of the same. The swastika or swastika was chosen as the emblem and, with the raised right arm salute was introduced in 1926, and the exclamation "Heil Hitler".
The movement grew with unexpected speed, due in large part to the intelligent propagandistic use of the dream of a homeland recovered, free from the constraints imposed by the Treaty of Versailles; It grew also by the fear of communism and social tensions caused by economic depression and unemployment. The nazis used the violence to eliminate their opponents and, thanks to an attractive advertising and a clever tactic, Hitler came to power legally to be named Chancellor of the Third Reich (1933), then starting the dictatorship of the party. The masses were caught by the spectacular parades military, perfectly organized; by suggestive rituals of party meetings and by effective slogans about the greatness of the country. All citizens were thoroughly controlled by the Gestapo, the dreaded secret police.

Nazi in Nuremberg (1934)
Hitler was not the theoretician of Nazism (limited culture would have prevented it is), and rude vitalist philosophy of which was erected in carrier stemmed rather from irrational and authoritarian currents that had already appeared in the German and European tradition of the past centuries (from Bobineau to H. S. Chamberlain or from Spengler to real nazi racism theorist) (, Alfred Rosenberg). On the other hand, yes it was the ruthless and excellent Organizer, the first nazi movement, and the German State, then.
Their convictions and political interests triumphed thanks to the rigor with which always applied the laws of violence, and the absolute lack of respect for any kind of opposition, even internal, as the dramatic episode of the night of the long knives, June 30, 1934, when all the leading nazis with whims of independence were wiped out along with his followers. He knew to be interpreter of the frustration and the contradictions of a society shattered by war, exacerbated by the lack of far-sightedness of the victors and the pressure of the conditions they imposed.
The Nazis hid his ruthless and anti-democratic nature after a confusing philosophy that mingled the evocaciones to the romantic tradition of a Germany "barbaric" but vital, the cult and the exaltation of the force as a manifestation, contempt for democratic ideals, seen as an obvious sign of weakness and low virility, the racist exaltation of the German people intended to destroy and replace the other races, lower and decadent, and more concrete political issues such as the controversy surrounding the Treaty of Versailles, the militarization of the economy and national life through the introduction at all levels of the Führerprinzip (hierarchical principle), and the need for a huge industrial expansion as the only solution to the economic crisis.
The idea of the superiority of the Aryan race led to genocide: six million Jews and members of other races (called "inferior" by the nazis, including Gypsies) were murdered in concentration camps. It is one of the crimes against humanity more monstrous that never occurred in the universal history.

My struggle

Although it is second hand, Hitler personally expressed these principles in his spiritual autobiography, My struggle (Mein Kampf, 1925) which, in 1961, was published unpublished part of most teorico-programatico character. The work was written in 1924 (during the nine months of prison that went into the fortress of Landsberg, through the putsch in Munich in 1923) and also published in Munich the years 1925 and 1927, in two volumes, which reached enormous diffusion up to power the nazi regime (four million copies until 1939).
The first part of My struggle is autobiographical in nature and reconstructs his youth in Austria, and in particular, the period of Vienna (until 1912), when in the restless mind of Hitler germinated the dreams of German greatness and anti-Semitic hatred; the period of Munich; participation in the war, that Hitler joined as a volunteer in a regiment of Bavaria; the activist action in the "Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" of far right, with their background made up of nationalism, racism, Germanic superiority; the founding of the nazi party.
Hereafter, autobiographical details and propagandist preaching, the foreshortenings of an absurd philosophy of history and the mystique of the race are mixed in such a way that they constitute the manual of Nazism. Especially, the principle of racial and the German superiority. "Which speaks of a mission of the German people on Earth, must know that this can only consist in the formation of a State that considers, as his supreme goal, the preservation and development of the elements most noble and most intact of our lineage ("Volkstum"), to all mankind... "
The bourgeois conception and judeomarxista, contrary to the philosophy of the Volk said that the importance of humanity is linked to the fundamental elements of the race. This conception sees in man only a means to an end: the preservation of the racial substance of man. Therefore does not believe in equality of the races, but, along with their differences, recognises a hierarchy of values and promotes the best and the strongest victory. From these premises it already derived explicitly all the "Aryan" exaltation and the genocide that took place later. He was not only affirm: "must transform to all German and make it a new kind of man", or "fustigar the masses to throw them ahead even with hysterical violence", but to establish that "only who is healthy can procreate, that escandoloso is to beget children unhealthy or defective".

Stop military
Anti-Semitism is the center of all this doctrine: you must destroy the "insect", prohibit the mixed marriage that engenders "monsters half monkeys men and half" and finish with the Hebrew seed in the German land. On the other hand, the undemocratic and hierarchical principle of the best ends in the exaltation of "unique" personality, i.e., the Chief; Therefore, the Führerprinzip: "there are no decisions of the majority, but only responsible persons. Each man has his side advisors, but the decision is a matter of a single man. It will only have the authority and the right to send: Parliament will be limited to giving advice, but no camera may decide by voting. This principle, which associates the absolute authority with full responsibility, will gradually create an elite of heads".
And as well as the internal of the most pure and strong hierarchy, so it is also alleged the German people will exercise, as a pure Aryan, his dominion over all the others, after having destroyed the enemy within, the Jew. Here also the "vital space" theory as necessary for the expansion of the Germanic dominance, first and foremost, for the full unification of the German-speaking world. The same presumption of a divine mission is in this superiority of the German, and the persecution of the Jews ("fighting Jew, defending the work of the Lord").
The development of my fight was a more immediate political agenda. From the apocalyptic forecast, Hitler was descended to demand radical revision of the Treaty of Versailles and the humiliation of France. However, since then Hitler foresaw the expansion of Germany would take place towards the plains of East better than in the submission of Oocidente.

Poster inviting to enlist in the Navy
The book, written in conditions of total propagandistic excitation, defies all critical sense, i.e., not is reason no principle or affirmation. Each proposal is worth for its tough violence, every idea has no more cultural history that the nationalist and racist advertising more recent (from Spengler to Moeller and Feder's Die Juden, which is the sole author of this "tradition" remembered by Hitler) and a great admiration for Nietzsche and Wagner badly interpreted; without any finesse or originality, as non-hatred without measure and most immediate racial mysticism.
The raw violence, the dogmatism of the inexhausta repetition and the primitive frivolisation may have been precisely that have constituted the strength of penetration and the inhuman propagation of their formulas. Whatever the dictator put into practice ten years later was perfectly exposed in this book, but despite this no one felt so threatened to try to stop, before it was too late, the dangerous fanatic who announced in its pages.

Adolf Hitler and World War II


To understand the causes that led to the second world war should understand how international relations were developed in the interwar period (1919-1939), stage marked by the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles and the economic crisis of 1929. It was mainly in Germany where there were a series of economic and social circumstances that favored the development of German fascism. All countries established, in the wake of the economic crisis of the 29, policies of intervention of the State in their economies. But it was in totalitarian regimes, for reasons of demographic development, and especially in Germany, where the living space was linked to nationalist sentiment. This fact is a clear consequence of the Treaty of Versailles which, over time, resulted in the German expansionist policy that led to the war.
Historians are in agreement on the role of Hitler as the cause of the war. It should not be forgotten that Hitler made use of power that gave him its Constitution to act as Chief of the armed forces (Wehrmach) and organize a high command of the armed forces that sent. Hitler attained union with Austria (Anschluss) and the acquisition of the Sudetenland, which was admitted by the Western democracies at the Conference in Munich (1938), negotiations that were the subject of much criticism by European countries, especially directed to Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister. The next step, the occupation of the so-called corridor of Dantzig, was the event that led to the second world war.

The armies

Western democracies had not signed formal alliances that unite them at the German danger, although there were Covenants after the arrival of Hitler to power as the ill-fated Pact Stressa. Each of the allies against the axis (Roma-Tokio - Berlin), futures had developed radically differently their media war: France improved and developed its system of trenches (the famous Maginot line), foreseeing a war of positions during the first world war, but this system of trenches was not going beyond Holland and Belgium, because it relied on its neutrality.

Hitler in a parade
With regard to Great Britain, did not develop a weapon that would become vital (, for example, was the aircraft carrier), but was right in two basic weapons: radar and aviation. The USSR, for its part, had its huge human resources; another global giant, United States of America, at the beginning of the war not kept a large military capability, but focused its industrial production to the manufacture of weapons, including battleships, aircraft carriers and bombers.
In the German case, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles demanded the demilitarization of the country, which meant that they discarded the old weapons; for this reason, when Hitler saw in the army and the war industry medium to promote production, absorb unemployment and favouring its annexation policy, oriented economic policy of Germany towards the production of modern weapons, especially tanks and aviation. Although he dismissed the manufacture of aircraft carriers and other surface ships, he built a large fleet of submarines. It should not be forgotten that Germany had a great economic development and significant technical potential, both in metallurgy and chemical industry and power, of great application in the industry of war. However, the weak of Germany and decisive point in the development of the war was their lack of certain essential commodities, including iron.

The invasion of Poland and Western Europe

Once Germany signed the Pact of non-aggression pacts with the Soviet Union of Stalin, Hitler was with forces to continue its expansionist policy, by annexing the corridor of Dantzig that separated the territories of Prussia from the rest of Germany. After the invasion of Poland (September 1939), Germany occupied Posnania, the high Silesia and, later, the remainder of the Polish territory.

Hitler announces the invasion of Poland in the Reichstag
In this invasion took place a new tactical system known from then as Guerra lightning: important weapons resources, above all divisions of tanks, which prevented a quick and effective response of the enemy were employed in it. Meanwhile, the USSR, in accordance with a secret clause of the Treaty side, occupied the eastern part of Poland, territory which had belonged to the Czarist Russia.
After the occupation of Poland, Germany received an ultimatum from France and Great Britain. In the Treaty of Munich on the issue of Sudeten Germans had pledged to defend the poles of a similar assault, which was predictable according to the nazi political program. By not accepting it Germany, the allies declared war. At that moment, going beyond the Pact with Germany, Russia began the occupation of the territories of the Baltic and Finland, with great suspicion by Hitler.
Germany, before the war and thinking about the effects of a crash similar to the carried out by the allies during the first world war, be used in furthering economic autarky (self-sufficiency and low dependence on outside). But I could not create all products by replacing and, for example, iron was an indispensable material for its war industry. It depended on the Scandinavian iron, so began the occupation of Denmark and Norway from 1940, at the same time that the Western campaign began: he invaded France through Belgium and Holland, making useless French defensive line (Maginot line), as the action was carried out using an enveloping manoeuvre with massive use of tanks (Panzer) and divisions specialized units such as aviation (Lufftwaffe) and paratroopers that were destroying key points.
The Governments of the occupied countries moved to London. Hitler put in place Governments proalemanes (collaborators) and established a new method of administration, and occupation. Therefore, the German troops managed to reach the channel but, inexplicably, stopped for two days in their advance, giving time to French and British could re-embark his troops to Great Britain.
Later, Germany managed to occupy the part North of France, moment in which marshal Pétain was made with the power of France and agreed an armistice with Hitler. In this way, France was divided in two: a busy area, giving Hitler control the capital and across the Atlantic, and a zone of French jurisdiction that had its seat of Government established in Vichy. Meanwhile, general Charles de Gaulle, who did not accept this Pact, organised from London inner resistance through the radio, throwing slogans of a National Committee of the free French.

Hitler and Mussolini
With the surrender of France was just Britain, headed a coalition Government presided over by Churchill, who promised to resist at the cost of blood, sweat and tears was placed. The invasion of the Islands by Germany (the battle of Britain) was impossible, since the allies had the use of a key weapon: radar. Germany did not have nor a powerful marine neither now nor, the mastery of the airspace. Meanwhile, taking advantage of the German campaign in the West, the USSR managed to recover all the territories ceded to the Government in the peace of Brest-Litovsk in 1918.

The war in North Africa and the invasion of the Balkans

Once France signed the Armistice, Mussolini decided that Italy entered the war to satisfy its territorial ambitions in the Balkans and North Africa. In autumn, Italy occupied Greece from Albania, but Greeks and British managed to repel them. In North Africa he tried to occupy Egypt from their colony of Libya, but they were also rejected.
Hitler, who already was thinking about the attack on the USSR, had to divert part of its troops and media in support of his disastrous ally. In North Africa, Rommel, head of the Africa Korps (mechanized troops of the desert), managed to reach the Egyptian city of El Alamein, where the troops of the British Montgomery managed to reject them due to inferiority in tanks and fuel and food shortages. In the Balkans, German troops tried to troubleshoot the Italian and occupied the area to be sure the Romanian oil supply. Balkan countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary) decided to adhere to the tripartite pact, signed between Germany, Italy and Japan in 1940 and known as the Roma-Tokio - Berlin axis. Germany ended the occupation of the Balkans with the invasion of Crete in 1941.

The invasion of Russia

While Germany and the USSR had a Pact of non-aggression pacts, the annexations carried out by Stalin greatly bothered Hitler. Germany did not want to give up your living space and, at the same time, seen as its greatest enemy to the Bolshevik system; for this reason, Hitler thoroughly prepared Operation Barbarossa to conquer the USSR and, later, fold the British power in the Middle East. In July 1941 began the campaign of Russia, to which three bodies of armies were sent: North (Leningrad), towards the Center (Moscow), and South (Ukraine). The Russians signed an agreement with the British, and at the same time moved its industry towards the inside so that it would not fall into German hands.

Pearl Harbour: United States enters the war

The Americans, who initially wanted to remain strictly neutral, gradually began to serve the interests of the allies, a fact that became apparent when Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, that the Congress approve the law of loan and lease allowing allies to refill all kinds of materials and weapons without having to pay at the time of purchase. It was helping with all the money the fight against Germany.
On the other hand, Japan began to deal with the British, French and Dutch colonies in the Pacific and the East with support, in many cases, indigenous nationalists. Japan needed living space but also needed supplies that United States refused him by supporting China, a country which was in conflict with the Empire of the rising sun. The intervention of United States seemed imminent, but Japan wanted to give a surprise coup and, without a prior declaration of war, bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbour (Hawaii). The Japanese had a previous Pact of non-aggression pacts with Russia and began to occupy, without major problems the Pacific Islands (Philippines, Thailand, Burma...), which is added to the previous conquests of Indochina and Indonesia.
As a result, United States declared war on Japan and, later, to Italy and Germany, universalizing definitely conflict. The entry in war of the Americans made all the difference: not only was it the biggest economic and industrial power, but that I didn't have to spend money to defend its territory. 86,000 tanks and 300,000 aircraft manufactured for war.

The Allied counteroffensive

Until mid-1942 the Germans took the initiative in military campaigns, but from 1943, began the first Allied victories: in the Pacific, the Japanese attacks on American bases of Midway and Guadalcanal were arrested, while in the Atlantic production of boats and submarines of the allies was ahead the German effort.
In North Africa, Rommel troops were defeated by the landing of Eisenhower in Morocco and Algeria and by the offensive of Montgomery in Egypt, which initiated, then the landing in Italy. In the Soviet front, German troops were defeated at Stalingrad despite having the best troops.
The offensive weight fell on the three great powers: Soviet Union, United States of America and Great Britain. Eastern fronts and the Pacific were reserved to the Russians and Americans respectively; Meanwhile, in Western Europe and Africa, Americans and Britons have agreed on a strategy to carry out and those finally won by the superiority of its peacekeepers. The initiative to attack in Europe was in North Africa, British and American.

Battle of Stalingrad
After being defeated the Africa Korps in 1943, was the landing of the French in Sicily to pass to the Italian peninsula from the South and to the North. Then Mussolini was taken by the prisoner, the political system was transformed and Italy declared war on Germany. By then, the Allies began the systematic bombing of Germany to demoralize and destroy vital points.
But the decisive attack came from England, with the Normandy landings, while the Soviets did back the Germans and freed Eastern and central with the support of the guerrillas of resistance. Western and Soviet came together in Berlin, but the entry into the city was reserved for the troops of Stalin, which took the capital, days after Hitler's suicide in May 1945.
In the Pacific, the offensive against Japan was led by generals MacArthur and Nimitz, who conquered positions in the area facing the resistance that opposed the Japanese and their kamikazes. Entry into the war against Japan by the Soviet Union was the launch of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as a means to achieve the capitulation of Japan. The signing occurred in the American ship Missouri, before MacArthur. The war ended on September 2, 1945.

A new order

Shortly after war broke out, belligerents began to prepare peace: those of the shaft according to their authoritarian and imperialistic projects and according to democratic principles and freedom of the people of Western. Preparatory conferences include the Atlantic Charter (August 1941), where Churchill and Roosevelt defined their common goals: just peace and destruction of nazi tyranny. Likewise, the Yalta and Potsdam conferences spoke of these purposes, giving the area freed by the Soviets to these while the West was under the influence of the allies. Germany would be divided into four parts administered, respectively, by England, the USSR, United States and France.
The unforeseen consequence of these conferences was the creation of two great powers, United States, and the USSR, which began to dominate world affairs at the expense of Great Britain and, in general, from all over Europe. On the other hand, the war caused the decolonization movement and the division of the world into two blocs, established by the fact of choosing the new countries by Western influence and the Soviet. The great defeated began to receive economic and political support from allies and were integrated into the Western block.
Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas
Biographies of historical figures and personalities