Historians and biographers note some difficulty in identifying Adolf Hitler's political views. His writings and methods were often adapted to need and circumstance, although there were some steady themes, including anti-Semitism, anti-communism, anti-parliamentarianism, German expansionism, belief in the superiority of an "Aryan race" and an extreme form of German nationalism. Hitler personally claimed he was fighting against Jewish Marxism.
His views were more or less formed during three periods:
- His years as a poverty-stricken young man in Vienna and Munich prior to World War I, during which he turned to nationalist-oriented political pamphlets and anti-semitic newspapers out of distrust for mainstream newspapers and political parties.
- The closing months of World War I when Germany lost the war; Hitler is said to have developed his extreme nationalism during this time, desiring to "save" Germany from both external and internal "enemies" who, in his view, betrayed it.
- The 1920s, during which his early political career began and he wrote Mein Kampf. Hitler formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on April 7, 1925, but did not acquire German citizenship until almost seven years later; thereby allowing him to run for public office.
Read more about Adolf Hitler's Political Views: V-Mann For The Army, German Workers’ Party, The Beer Hall Putsch, Mein Kampf, Anti-communism, Racial Nationalism, Social Conservatism, Distrust of Democracy, Laying Blame On The November Criminals
Famous quotes containing the words adolf hitler, adolf, hitler, political and/or views:
“This war no longer bears the characteristics of former inter-European conflicts. It is one of those elemental conflicts which usher in a new millennium and which shake the world once in a thousand years.”
—Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)
“The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is “what should be.” Now, if you’re taught to live up to a “what should be” that never existed—only an occult superstition, no proof of this “should be”Mthen you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!”
—Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)
“All the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown?... U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atomic bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)