WRITTEN REPORT

Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945) was an iconic Austrian born German politician who, through his works, was responsible for approximately 11 million deaths. He was the leader of the Nazi Party and was at the very centre of World War II and the Holocaust. Though his doings were cruel and brutal, Hitler was one of the most influential people to walk this earth and was a very dictatorial leader who fought for what he believed in and for what he wanted. Hitler was born in 1889 and had a few factors that heavily influenced him as a child. He had intense conflict with his father and experienced both his younger brother’s death as well as his father’s by the age of 14 which resulted in the deterioration of his school performance. From a very young age Hitler developed German Nationalist ideas and he and his friends often used the German greeting: ‘Heil!’ which, with a salute, eventually became the Nazi Party’s signal of obedience to him. Hitler envisioned a new world order with Germany at the centre of it. His aim was to widen the living space of Germany and wipe out communism. He also saw Jews as the plague of Europe and, his cruellest objective of all, was calling the Holocaust as a final solution to exterminate the entire Jewish community. Hitler once said “demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.” Though around 6 million of those killed by the Nazis were Jews, the remaining 5 were made up of others that Hitler either despised, thought unnecessary or simply didn’t fit in to his Master Race. These included Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, the Polish army, many priests and pastors, homosexuals, the disabled and anyone of dark skin or African descent. Hitler ruled autocratically, he being the supreme, infallible leader and his followers ranked beneath him in order of loyalty and obedience. He arranged them so that their positions overlapped to ensure that distrust and competition was present amongst his subordinates so as to heighten his own power. The typical characteristics of an autocratic leader is that they accept little or no input from group members, make decisions solitarily, dictate the work methods and processes and rarely trust their group members. Hitler adopted all of these characteristics and was a very dominating sort of leader. Hitler was very task-oriented and this influenced him as a leader. The Holocaust was a major example of this. At first he decided to make things so bad for the Jews that they wanted to leave, but the west were not accepting refugees. Then he tried to ship them to Madagascar but Africa had sided with the allies and, when both failed, he resorted to the extermination of all Jews and ended up killing over two thirds of the Jewish population in Europe. Hitler had cleverly thought this out in an Plan A, B and C method so that even if his plans failed (which two did) he would still succeed. His tasks were always highly structured and he gave his subordinates clear guidelines in order to complete these tasks. It was also very important to Hitler to maintain a healthy relationship with his followers and this also influenced him as a leader. He achieved this, not by befriending them as such, but by luring them in and almost brainwashing them. Many Germans who followed Hitler speak of him as ‘hypnotic’ as if he mesmerised the nation into hearing what he had to say and into obeying him. Many Germans believed, due to Hitler’s reassuring words, that there was a rational reason behind the capture, mistreatment and death of so many Jews. In a sense, he brainwashed a nation and had them doing all the terrible things he asked of them. However evil his doings were, it is certain that Hitler was an excellent leader. Many argue that if he had put his energy into something good, he could have truly conquered and changed the world for the better. He viewed the mass murders of the Jews as necessary, feeling that they were