Christopher Rowe

The day we set out for our walking tour was also the morning after Berlins most significant snow fall so far this winter, and the days forecast promised a whole lot more. For that very reason, both Michelle and I were worried that our Third Reich walking tour may be cancelled due to the unfavourable weather conditions.

We made our way up what we had become to know as the main promenade of Berlin, walking towards the gates of Berlin where most of the tours set off from. Despite the large amounts of snow, the area was abuzz with tourists. Everywhere you looked, people were laughing, children throwing snow balls and dodging for protection behind the ankles of strangers. All this a far cry from the image of thousands of Red Army soldiers and tanks that stormed the gates many years before, and probably even more frightful, the years earlier still which saw the Nazi army of terror at their prime march through the gates down the promenade in honour during one of the many celebrations of their Führer.

We found our group by chance, after overhearing one of the guides announce that they were going to cancel their tour due to lack of numbers. Interrupting him we asked whether this was the Third Reich tour, his eyes lighting up, he spun back around to the rest of his tour group – “okay, we have a go” he said in a thick English accent.

Our guide was perhaps the woolliest person you would ever encounter. He hadn’t shaved or cut his hair in about 6 months due to a dare he had with his house mate – which was up in a week or so. What he clearly lacked in personal presentation he more than made up for with his tour, being very knowledgeable and more importantly a good story teller. Trudging our way through the snow he started the story of how the Third Reich came to be.

Adolf Hitler long before becoming Fuhrer of Germany, started life in Austria-Hungary. At eight years old he took singing lessons, sang in the church choir and even considered becoming a priest. The death of his younger brother, Edmund, from measles on 2 February 1900 deeply affected Hitler. He changed from being confident and outgoing and an excellent student, to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.

Hitler became obsessed with German nationalism, expressing the utmost loyalty to Germany from a young age. Hitler and his friends used the German greeting ‘hail’ and sang the German national anthem instead of the Austrian Imperial Anthem.

From 1905, Hitler lived in Vienna, to pursue a career as an artist. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1907, and was rejected. Showing his determined persistent nature, he applied again the following year. After the Academys second rejection, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909 he lived in a homeless shelter and by 1910 was living in a house for poor working men.

He then left Vienna for Munich in an effort to evade being conscripted into the Austrian army. Hitler later claimed that he did not wish to serve the Habsburg Empire because of the mixture of ‘races’ in the army.

At the outbreak of World War I, Hitler was a resident of Munich and vouinteered to serve in the Bavarian army. He served as a dispatch runner on the western front in France and Belgium, spending nearly half his time well behind the front lines and becoming quite well associated with the generals.

He was later decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class in 1914. Recommended by Hugo Gutmann, he received the Iron Cross, First Class in August 1918, a decoration rarely awarded to someone of Hitler’s rank. Hitler’s post at regimental headquarters, providing frequent interactions with senior officers may have helped him receive this decoration.

Hitler became embittered by Germanys defeat and his ideological development began to firmly take shape. The experience reinforced his passionate German patriotism, and belief in the German army that it was undefeated in the field, but stabbed in the back by the civilian leaders back home thus beginning his life of politics.

Impressed with Hitler’s oratory skills, Drexler invited him to join the DAP (German Workers Party). At the DAP, Hitler met the party’s founding members and began exchanging ideas. To increase the partys appeal, it changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) Hitler designed the party’s banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background. The NSDAP was referred to by English speaking nations as the Nazi Party.

Hitlers vitriotic beer hall speeches began attracting regular audiences, capturing the audience in a mezmerized trance from which they could not break loose. He used his personal magnetism and an understanding of crowd psychology to his advantage while engaged in public speaking.

In 1922, with the help of a former World War I general, he attempted a coup of the current government. It failed. He was arrested for high treason and was sentenced to five years imprisonment, but only ended up serving one year of that sentence. His time in prison allowed Hitler to gather his thoughts and think how he could seize control of the government legally. Upon his release, he began rebuilding the NSDAP.

Germany had begun to prosper at this time, and it seemed unlikely that the NSDAP would receive the support required. Then the crash of 1929 hit Germany, and everything changed. The impact to Germay was dire, millions were thrown out of work and several major banks collapsed. Hitler and the NSDAP prepared to take advantage of this emergency to gain support for their party. They promised to strengthen the community and provide jobs.

The party was elected, leaving nothing to chance, to ensure full political control, Hitlers government brought in the ‘Enabling Act’ to a vote. The act gave Hitler’s cabinet full legislative powers for a period of four years and (with certain exceptions) allowed deviations from the constitution. The enabling act passed by a vote of 441-84, transforming Hitler’s government into a de facto legal dictatorship.

“At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense I tell you that the National Socialist movement will go on for 1,000 years! … Don’t forget how people laughed at me 15 years ago when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. They laugh now, just as foolishly, when I declare that I shall remain in power!”
— Adolf Hitler to a British correspondent in Berlin, June 1934

Along with the plans to make Germany pure with the extermination of the Jews, Hitler also planned to increase Germanys borders by invading neighbouring countries. With a non-aggression pact signed with Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, both the Soviets and Germans pushed their way into Poland and prepared for an ongoing assault throughout Europe.

Perhaps one of the biggest tactical errors made was, whilst pushing strongly through the west towards London, Hitler sent three million German troops to attack the Soviet Union. The invasion seaized a huge area including the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine. However, the German advance was stopped outside of Moscow in December 1941, by the Russian winter and fierce Soviet resistance.

With Soviet troops now concentrating on Germanys east borders in the spring of 1942, and continuing resistance from the Allied forces in the west, Germany was now fighting a war on both fronts. And just to make sure it was a fair fight, four days after Japans attack on the United States in Pearl Harbour, Hitler formally declared war on the United States of America.

Hitler’s military judgement became increasingly erratic, and Germanys military and economic position began to deteriorate along with Hitler’s own health. Kershaw and others believe that Hitler may have suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

The Holocaust and Germany’s war in the east was based on Hitler’s long-standing view that the Jews were the great enemy of the German people and that conquering territories was required for the expansion of Germany. He believed that Eastern Europe was the ideal location for a Germany expansion once Poland and the Soviet Union were defeated and the Jews killed. This plan, referred to as the ‘General Plan for the East’ called for the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to be deported to West Siberia, used as slave labour or murdered; the conquered territories then to be colonised by German people. The original plan called for this process to begin after the conquest of the Soviet Union. When this failed to happen, the plans were moved forward. By January 1942 the decision had been taken to kill the Jews and other deportees considered undesirable.

The various concentration camps containing the Jewish population were set up outside of Germany. By this time Germany had started using nerve gas – a derivative of the gas that was used with killing bed bugs – but with the odour and colouring removed, making it virtually impossible to detect until you began bleeding from the ears. Special air-tight facilities were then set up at the concentration camps, as Hitler had the view that it would be overall demoralizing for his soldiers to individually execute the detained prisoners. The Jews and other undesirables, adults, children, families, were then led towards the newly developed chambers. Instructed to remove all clothing and to enter the chambers naked, the Nazis had eluded the Jews that they were entering a de-lousing facility, as living conditions in these camps were rather poor. Once the cries and screams for help had subsided, the Nazis waited a few extra moments to ensure full effect, dumped the bodies in a trench, and escorted the next group of prisoners in for ‘treatment’.
This swift method of disposal allowed the Nazi’s to destroy over a million Jewish people in a matter of days.

With Allied forces having re-taken France and Italy, and the Soviet forces pushing their way past the Berlin gates, Hitler realised is worse fear. Determined not to be taken alive, he took his own life. Under ordered, his officers then took his body to the surface, dumped it in a bomb crater and set fire to it. Germany continued to fight westward for seven more days so that they could surrender to the Western Allies rather than the Soviets.