Hist 33D, L 3: Adolf Hitler, 1889-1925
by Prof. H. Marcuse (homepage), UCSB, Sept. 30, 2003

Note 10/3/05: this outline has been superceded by my 2005 Hitler lecture page.

• Prelim: roll, enrollmt., books, reader, images
• Historical approach: chronological, controversial
  (Riefenstahl then vs. now; aspects of Dachau)
• Hitler's life, 1889 - 1933 (†Apr. 29, 1945)
• Hitler's role in rise of Nazism, Holocaust

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

• born in German-Austrian border town
• his family life: mother and father (discussed based on family tree, below)

• 1905: left school at age 16, 2 years at home
• Oct. 1907 to Vienna. double trauma: no art school, mom †
  Sold tourist postcards to make a living, Jewish dealer helped with sales.
  How good an artist was he?
  How much of an antisemite was he really?
• antisemitic milieu (source: Mein Kampf)
  Mayor Lueger, Artamanen
• May 1913 move to Munich (draft Feb. 1914)
• Great War Aug. 1914: dispatch bearer
  47 battles/4 years; twice injured, two medals
  (2nd: captured an officer and 15 men)

Family Tree (after Ian Kershaw, Hubris, w/ Prof's notes)

4th grade class in Leonding, 1899 (top center)	Hitler with WWI buddies and dog Foxl in 1915
Munich, August 2, 1914 declaration of war is announced, crowd cheers	ca. 1917: w/ Schmiedl

After the Great War

• sailors' mutiny, Kiel, Nov. 4, 1918
• Berlin revolution Nov. 6-9, 1918
• SPD vs. USPD:
  Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands=Sozis
• Workers' Councils ("soviets"; "Räte" [Judenrat])
• Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht (†1/1919)
  turned USPD into Kommunistische PD, 12/18
• Hitler member of SPD council in April 1919
• Free Corps: demobilized veterans

Beginning of "Weimar Rep."

• Weimar: small city near Berlin where constitution was written
• Hitler asked to report on SPD councils,
  by Anton Drexler, founder of Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (again: Hitler was a Sozi)
• Membership card: no. 7 or no. 555?
  Alternative possibilities and how history remains indeterminate.
• impressive speaking talent, joins DAP
• Versailles Treaty, June - Aug. 1919: no choice vs. "stab in the back" legend
• Feb. 1920: national and social DAP=NSDAP, "Nazis" (nickname like Sozis)

Weimar Republic

• difficulty meeting reparations payments
• 1923: printing money, runaway inflation, France and Belgium occupy industrial regions
• Nov. 1923: attempt to take over gov't in Bavaria, plan from there: Berlin
  (coup d'etat, or Putsch)
  Generals Ludendorf, Hindenburg, 1847-1934)
• Failed, 16 dead; trial: national celebrity
• Landsberg prison, Apr-Dec. 1924, wrote autobiography Mein Kampf (My Struggle)

How Hitler fits in

• intentionalism: Hitler had a plan since the early 1920s
• functionalism
• structuralism

Films tonight

• The Wave, 46 mins
• 1961 biography of Hitler, 40 mins.

prepared for web by H. Marcuse, Sept. 30, 2003
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