At
half past six on the evening of April 20th, 1889, an innocent child was
born in the small town of Braunau Am Inn, Austria. The name of the child
was Adolf
Hitler. He was the son a Customs official Alois Hitler, and
his third wife Klara. Initially Alois had taken his mother's name,
Schicklgruber, but changed it in 1876 and became Hiedler, or Hitler.
Quite important - it is hard to imagine tens of thousands of Germans
shouting Heil Schicklgruber! instead of Heil Hitler! Adolf
Hitler later confided to his only childhood friend, August Kubizek,
"that the name Schicklgruber seemed to him so uncouth, so boorish,
apart from being so clumsy and unpractical. But 'Hitler' sounded rich
and was easy to remember."
From the first day that Hitler seized power, January 30, 1933, he knew
that only sudden death awaited him if he failed to restore pride and
empire to post Versailles Germany. His adjutant Julius Schaub recorded
Hitler's jubilant boast to his staff on that evening, as the last
celebrating guests left the Berlin Chancellery building: No power on
earth will get me out of this building alive!
12 years and three months later History saw Hitler's prophecy
fulfilled, as a handful of remaining Nazis trooped uneasily into his
underground study on April 30, 1945, surveyed his still-warm remains
slouched on a couch, with blood trickling from the sagging lower jaw,
and a gunshot wound in the right temple and sniffed the bitter-almonds
smell hanging in the air.
Wrapped in an army blanket, he was carried up to the shell-blasted
Chancellery garden. Gasoline was slopped over him in a reeking crater
and ignited while his staff hurriedly saluted and backed down into the
shelter.
Adolf Hitler announced at many occasions the "annihilation of the
Jews" living in the territory under his control. In
his mind, murdering millions of Jews could only be accomplished under
the confusion of war - from the beginning he was planning a war that
would engulf Europe. World War 2 caused
the greatest loss of life and material destruction of any war in
history, killing twenty-five million military personnel and thirty
million civilians.
Approximately 11 million people were killed because of Hitler's
genocidal policy and his Nazi Regime led to the annihilation of more than six
million Jews during the Holocaust. The Third Reich would survive him for one week - the
nightmare he had unleashed was over.
