Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945) was chancellor of Germany from 1933 until his death, and, from 1934 until his death, he was the Führer (Leader) of Germany. He was also the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), the Nazi Party.

Hitler gained power during Germany's period of crisis following World War I. He pursued an aggressive foreign policy with the intention of expanding German Lebensraum (living space). This policy saw the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia before the invasion of Poland forced the Allies to act in 1939, touching off World War II. However, Germany was able to subdue France and the Low Countries in 1940, and force Britain off the continent. The following year, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. This proved to be Hitler's ultimate undoing, as German forces were not able to subdue the country before the onset of winter. The next three years saw the slow grinding down of Germany's military.

Concurrently, after Japan, Germany's ally, attacked the United States in December, 1941, Germany also declared war on the US. The United States followed a policy of Europe first, engaging Germany military, in concert with Britain, in North Africa and then Italy. In 1944, a joint British-American-Canadian expeditionary force invaded Normandy, France. Germany was now caught in a vice, as the Anglo-Americans pushed from the west, and the Soviets pushed from the east, until 1945, when Germany was overrun, and Hitler committed suicide.

Central to Hitler's worldview was race. Hitler held that the Aryans were the master race, and all others were inferior. Slavs would become subservient to German Aryans. Jews would be destroyed. To this end, Hitler initiated the Holocaust, which would eventually claim nearly 6 million Jews, along with the lives of other groups deemed inferior.

Adolf Hitler in The Man With the Iron Heart
Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in April 1945 as the Red Army drove on Berlin. While Germany fell, however, those loyal to Hitler fought on under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich in the form of the German Freedom Front.

Adolf Hitler in "Ready for the Fatherland"
Adolf Hitler (1889-1943) was killed by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein after unreasonably demanding that the general launch a doomed offensive. To make matters worse, Hitler had called Manstein a Jew. Without thinking, Manstein shot Hitler dead.

Adolf Hitler in "Cayos in the Stream"
Ernest Hemingway's profound hatred for Adolf Hitler was a surface reason for his decision to patrol for, and ultimately sink, a German u-boat.

Adolf Hitler in Worldwar
Adolf Hitler (1889-195?) had lead Germany to its zenith from 1939 until 1942. By the time of the arrival of the Race's Conquest Fleet, Germany was engaged in wars with most of the other great Earth powers, including the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain. He was also supporting Japan in its wars against the United States and China. Though Germany had made great strides early in the war on most fronts, it was outnumbered and in all likelihood would have found it harder and harder to defeat the Allied Forces as the war progressed.

This all ceased to matter when the Race invaded Earth and World War II was aborted. At this point Germany joined all other human powers in resisting the alien invasion. For the next two years Hitler led Germany through a period of military desperation during which German physicists, led by Kurt Diebner, developed the atomic bomb. This invention forced Atvar to include Germany in a summit meeting called in Cairo.

Hitler sent Joachim von Ribbentrop to represent Germany at this meeting with orders to make very aggressive demands of the Race. These included the restoration of all territories conquered by Germany early in World War II except Poland; recognition of the German right to annex Italy; and recognitions of the sovereignties of Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, all of which became German client states.

Hitler continued to serve as Führer and Chancellor until his death, at which point he was succeeded in that position by Heinrich Himmler. He did not live to see the arrival of the Race's Colonization Fleet.

Although Hitler's leadership saw both the restoration of Germany's military might lost in World War I and its recovery from the economic catastrophes which marked the Weimar Republic, he was a cruel and brutal dictator. Perhaps his greatest crimes were a series of genocides against those deemed Untermenschen, most famously the Jews. These were made to suffer a wide variety of atrocities, from loss of citizenship and property, to imprisonment, to extermination in concentration camps. Though other humans allied with Hitler out of necessity when the Race invaded, it is safe to say that he was the most despised man on Earth when he lived.

Hitler, along with Joseph Stalin, most closely resembled of all the Tosevite "not-emperors" the Race's conception of a true "emperor". However, neither man had any hereditary claim to their position, which explained, from the Race's perspective, why both ruled through terror and force.

Adolf Hitler in "The Last Article"
Under Adolf Hitler's leadership, Nazi Germany conquered all of Europe, the Soviet Union and India by 1947. Although Mohandas Gandhi regarded Hitler as a madman, he nevertheless did not believe the refugee Simon Wiesenthal's claims of the destruction being visited upon the European Jews as he felt that such behavior would be to a country's ruination. Events proved Gandhi wrong.

Adolf Hitler in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Adolf Hitler (1889-196?) was the first and greatest Führer of the Greater German Reich. He led his country to victory in the Second World War, expanding Germany's empire throughout Europe, including the conquest and defeat of the Soviet Union and Britain. All of the major government offices and buildings in Berlin lined Adolf Hitler Platz.

While Hitler was responsible for the largest empire the world had ever seen, he inadvertently planted the seeds for that empire's demise. In the First Edition of his political tract, Mein Kampf, Hitler espoused the virtues of the party democratically electing the Führer. After World War II, Hitler oversaw the revision of Mein Kampf to remove that language. Nonetheless, in 2010, upon the death of the third Führer, Kurt Haldweim, the British Union of Fascists harkened back to the First Edition. Fourth Führer Heinz Buckliger espoused the virtues of the First Edition.

Hitler was also responsible for the Reich's policy of eradicating the Jews. For seven decades, Germany and its allies slaughtered any Jews they could find within and without their borders. Despite Hitler's best efforts, Jews survived, hiding in plain sight, long after Hitler's death. .

Many Germans emulated Hitler's type of moustache. However, in time this came to be considered a bit old-fashioned. By 2010, such moustaches were seen mainly among old, white haired men, though they were undergoing a revival among young men.

One of Hitler's favorite films was the adaptation of Gone with the Wind. Consequently, it was re-released in the cinemas of the Greater German Reich every few years into the early 21st Century.

Adolf Hitler in "Shtetl Days"
During and after the War of Retribution, Adolf Hitler, the First Führer of the Greater German Reich, oversaw the destruction of the Jews and other undesirables. Over a century later, actor Veit Harlan reflected that Hitler's works were still present in the Thousand Year Reich he'd built.

Adolf Hitler in The War That Came Early
Adolf Hitler (1889-1944) was chancellor of the German Reich from 1933; from 1934, he was also the Führer (Leader) of Germany. He led Germany into a global war in 1938 with the intent of restoring Germany's prestige. Instead, after six years of fighting, Hitler's hubris led to his own downfall, and very nearly to that of Germany's.

On September 29, 1938, Hitler was holding diplomatic talks with Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain, Edouard Daladier of the French Republic, and Benito Mussolini of Italy at the Munich Conference. Hitler was actually very unhappy with this turn of events; he'd wanted to provoke a showdown with Germany's enemies, but Chamberlain's decision to hand over the Sudetenland left Hitler with no alternative but to accept it. Privately, Hitler was also disappointed with Mussolini, who'd been critical in assembling the Conference. Only Marshall José Sanjurjo, Hitler reflected, truly understood the need for aggressive actions.

However, fortune soon went Hitler's way, when came news of the murder of Konrad Henlein on German soil by a Czech citizen. Though he had nothing to do with the crime, and as far as he knew no one else under his orders did either, Hitler took advantage of it to declare war on Czechoslovakia on the spot, in front of his distinguished and horrified foreign guests.

Germany attacked Czechoslovakia on September 30. In response, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union declared war on Germany. French forces did invade Germany, but the response of the Western Allied Forces was hardly aggressive. The Soviet Union, which had been engaged in a proxy war with Germany in Spain, did actively aerial bomb German positions in Czechoslovakia, but did not share a border with its ally. Czechoslovakia fell within a month, and was carved up by not only Germany, but by Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Germany also encouraged the creation of a vassal state, the Slovak Republic.

Hitler next turned his attention more fully west. He ordered the invasion and occupation the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. By the early months of 1939, the three countries had fallen, and German forces were pounding France itself. Concurrently, the Soviet Union pressed territorial demands on Poland throughout the Winter of 1938. In desperation, the Polish government concluded an alliance with Germany. German forces entered Polish territory.

Despite these successes, a group of generals were discovered to have been contemplating a coup against Hitler in 1939. The extent of the plot was kept from the German people, including the Wehrmacht. While the apprehension of these generals did not overtly impact the German offensive, it did heighten Hitler's paranoia, and he gave the SS free-reign to investigate the military.

In the Spring of 1939, the German advance into France was halted outside of Paris. Soon, German troops were beginning to fall back. In the east, the tenacity of the Poles stymied the Soviets. Despite this, Hitler remained defiant, and ordered an invasion of Denmark (which, completely taken by surprise, fell in days) and then Norway (which immediately fought, with help from Britain and France). By the end of the year Scandinavia and the East were more or less secure, but the situation continued to worsen in France where the German troops were pushed almost to the border with Belgium. Another coup attempt was launched, prompting the SS to conduct a second, more violent crackdown on the Wehrmacht that took the shooting to Germany itself and made civilians reminisce about the collapse of the Kaiser's Empire in 1918.

Hitler still stood defiant, and conducted a massive rally in Münster despite being aware that the city was a recurrent target of the RAF and the French Air Force. He refused an offer from United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt to negotiate an end to the war with a return to the status quo ante bellum, but he was careful not to anger the U.S., no mean task, as a German u-boat had sunk the luxury liner SS Athenia in January, 1939. While Germany was able to successfully blame Britain for the sinking, Hitler took additional steps, including helping American tourist Peggy Druce, trapped in Europe since the outbreak of war, to go first to Denmark and then on to neutral Sweden after Denmark fell.

In 1940, Hitler's fortunes changed dramatically (albeit temporarily) for the better when he sent his deputy, Rudolf Hess into Britain. Here, Hess was able to convince the governments of both Britain and France to end their war and arrange a new alliance where in Britain and France joined Germany in its war against the Soviet Union. Hungary and Slovakia also joined the alliance, as did Romania early the following year. Concurrently, Hitler announced plans to force the Jews in the former Czechoslovakia into ghettos.

While the coalition made substantial gains into Soviet territory in the following year, discontent in the British military led to an unprecedented coup the Spring of 1941 which deposed the appeasement government of Horace Wilson. Britain then withdrew from the Soviet Union. As France remained a German ally, the British could not return ground troops to Europe, and concentrated on aerial bombings. Britain also engaged Italian forces in North Africa. As Britain gained the upper hand in the closing days of 1941, Hitler decided to aid his ally, opening a new front. In December, 1941, France, which had been seeking to exit the German alliance, completed negotiations with Britain and the USSR, and withdrew from Russia. Now Germany was again fighting in both the east and the west.

Discontent with Hitler began to grow throughout 1941. Münich was a center, led in part by Bishop Clemens August von Galen, who was critical of the Nazis' euthanasia programs. Finally, Hitler overplayed his hand when the government arrested von Galen, prompting a round of demonstrations in Münster. In the spring of 1943, another demonstration in the square outside of Münster's cathedral erupted into violence when police officers fired on the crowd. While several protesters were shot, other were able to charge the line of police, inflicting damage in return. In response, German government sent the SS into Münster, who fortified the cathedral. While the people of Münster publicly accepted martial law, resentment boiled just below the surface.

Hitler also grew more reckless with regards to the U.S., which had been attacked by Japan in January, 1941. Despite this war, the U.S. continued to ships arms to Britain, France, and the USSR. Hitler issued an ultimatum that the U.S. would suffer consequences unless it ceased aiding the Allies. He further ordered that German troops were no longer to retreat.

Things continued to go poorly for Germany throughout the remainder of 1943 and into 1944. Münster continued to fester. Despite fortifications in the Low Countries, the Allies continued to press German positions in Belgium, and Soviet troops continued to move into Ukraine and Poland. Marshal Sanjurjo was killed by a sniper in Fall, 1943. Despite efforts to maintain his cult of personality, Hitler's popularity waned.

Hitler's downfall came after a series of blunders. In the Winter of 1943, Münster erupted into open revolt, prompting marshal law. Further, after months of tension, Hitler decided to initiate war with the United States when U-boats attacked several American merchant ships in March, 1944. This prompted several military leaders to form the Committee for the Salvation of the German Nation, with General Heinz Guderian as their leader. When Hitler decided to broadcast a speech from Münster in April, in an attempt to regain the country's trust, the group successfully assassinated him with a bomb, despite the heavy security measures the SS put into place.

A civil war broke out almost immediately. Several of Hitler's would-be successors were arrested or killed. Ultimately, Guderian and the Committee triumphed. Ironically, while Germany withdrew from the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, France, and the USSR, Guderian was able to keep many of the territorial gains Hitler had made in 1938, including Austria, the Sudetenland, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Adolf Hitler in Joe Steele
Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945) rise to power in Germany was concurrent with the rise US President Joe Steele. The two shared a deep and abiding hatred of each other for most of the 1930s. For Steele, the conflict was political: he hated the ideology of Nazism and the threat it posed to order in Europe.

Ironically, Steele used a number of tactics used by Hitler as part of his own reign. Steele used Hitler and Nazism as tools to denounce his enemies; investigations of Steele's critics very often turned up "ties" to Hitler. This was the case in with the Supreme Court Four,, Huey Long, Father Coughlin , and a number of other supposed enemies.

For his part, Hitler paid little attention to the U.S, until March, 1936, when Steele condemned Hitler's decision to remilitarize the Rhineland. In addition to Hitler's actions, Steele condemned France's failure to respond. Hitler thumbed his nose at Steele, proclaiming that Steele had never been told that the U.S. did not have the right to fortify its own borders. Steele, clearly enjoying the essentially meaningless back-and-forth, reminded Hitler (and the world) that the U.S. border with Canada was 3000 miles long and completely unfortified, proving that trust counted more than fortifications.

In March, 1938, Hitler ordered the annexation of Austria, and immediately began making claims on the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. Despite loud support from Steele and Soviet leader Leon Trotsky (who loathed each other more than either loathed Hitler), France and Britain, rather than fight Hitler, brokered a deal in which the Sudetenland was granted to Germany in September, 1938. Six months later, Germany annexed Bohemia and Moravia and created the independent Republic of Slovakia; Germany was now positioned to move on Poland, a situation the world at large was painfully aware of.

Hitler now turned his attention to the Polish Corridor. Leon Trotsky, realizing that France and Britain could not be counted on, sent his foreign commissar, Maxim Litvinov to Berlin to negotiate a non-aggression pact with Litvinov's German counter-part, Joachim von Ribbentrop. (Some found it ironic that the Jewish Trotsky had sent the Jewish Litvinov into the "world's capital of anti-Semitism." ) Germany invaded Poland a week later, setting off World War II. The Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east a few weeks after that.

In the end, both were content to saber-rattle at each other until World War II broke out. Steele, realizing how little distance there was between the U.S. and Europe, began sending financial aid to Britain, and then the Soviet Union, until the US entered the war in 1941.

In 1943, the German army was crushed at Trotskygrad. The following year, the US and Britain invaded Europe. Germany was quickly crushed between the Soviet hammer and the Western anvil. In 1945, Hitler committed suicide.

Literary comment
Hitler's role in the both the novel and the short story parallels OTL. The novel details the antagonism between Hitler and Steele more fully.

Adolf Hitler in "Uncle Alf"
Feldwebel Adolf Hitler of the German Feldgendarmerie was sent to Lille, in occupied France in 1929, with orders to capture communist agitator Jacques Doirot. He shared his experiences in letters to his niece, Geli Raubal. In Hitler's view, the French were a degraded race, and deserved their defeat in the war of 1914. But Hitler was also disgusted with how complacent and corrupt the local German officers in Lille had become. Under the guise of a traveler from Belgium, Hitler was able to get a lead on Doirot. Nonetheless, he had to overcome the laziness of a fat sergeant, and convince Brigadier Philipp Engelhardt (whose life Hitler had helped protect during the brief war of 1914) to raid a meeting at the residence of fortune-teller Madame Lea. Hitler fanatically believed Doirot would be there, although he had no direct evidence of this, but willingly put his career on the line. Hitler's confidence in himself was justified; Doirot was present, and Hitler was able to arrest the subversive gathering nearly single-handedly.

Adolf Hitler in Southern Victory
Adolf Hitler was a sergeant in the army of Germany. He served in the Great War and was awarded the Iron Cross, First Degree, which was rarely given to enlisted men. He accompanied Heinz Guderian to Canada in the 1920s and met Irving Morrell. During his brief visit to Morrell's office (during which he did not give his name), he expressed virulent hatred for the Jews. He alienated Morrell's Jewish aide, Ike Horwitz, who (privately) said to Morrell that the sergeant reminded him of Jake Featherston.

Literary Comment
While Hitler is not named in the text, Turtledove has admitted that the character is indeed Hitler.

Adolf Hitler in Curious Notions
In an alternate where Germany won a war similar to World War I, Adolf Hitler lived out his life in total obscurity. When Lawrence Gomes commented that Hitler's irrelevance in that particular world wasn't a bad thing, his son Paul reflexively responded that the alternate still wasn't a pretty place.

Adolf Hitler in The Gladiator
In an alternate where the Soviet Union triumphed in the Cold War, Adolf Hitler was a sort of historical bogeyman.

Gianfranco Mazzilli was given a homework assignment to write a canto imitating Dante Alighieri's Inferno. One canto was to be devoted to a fascist; Gianfranco chose Hitler, placing him at the center of Hell, as Hitler had betrayed several parties. He privately noted that almost everyone in the class would probably choose Hitler, and discovered his father had when he had the same high school assignment.