Adolf Hitler's political views

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 anti-Semitism, anti-capitalism, anti-communism, anti-parliamentarianism, German expansionism, belief in the superiority of an "Aryan race" and an extreme form of German nationalism were steady themes. 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.

V-Mann for the army

After the war, Hitler stayed in the army, which was mainly engaged in suppressing socialist uprisings across Germany, including in Munich, where Hitler returned in 1919. He took part in "national thinking" courses organized by the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr, Headquarters 4 under Captain Ulrich Mayr, which helped...
Read More