The work the Nazis did before the war often influenced their later occupations and behaviors. While many of Hitler's followers had backgrounds from complex and wealthy families, most were similar to Hitler, drifting socially and producing no productive force toward society.
Thus, before the nazi party was founded, the work of many people who were about to become Nazi officials was usually trivial or unhelpful, and many of the top Nazis, including Hitler, directed their frustration, hatred, and hostility into a political movement, which ended perhaps the most famous in history. The Nazi officials before the beginning of the Third Reich, and before they became infamous, were fairly ordinary people, but inside there was a boiling pile of fiery, burning hatred.
Adolf Hitler: Failed art student and wanderer
Adolf Hitler had a chaotic childhood. His father was a sadist, an alcoholic, and a bully of his mother. Hitler – Although his father wanted him to become a customs officer, he himself was interested in pursuing art. For this reason, Hitler deliberately performed poorly in school. At the age of 16, he lived in Vienna as a part-time worker, living on an orphan's pension and his mother's upbringing. He also applied several times to the Academy of Arts in Vienna, but all were rejected, and the paintings he submitted were considered "unsatisfactory". With no financial resources, he was almost homeless, so Hitler ended up living in male shelters and cheap hotels. Later his father's legacy saved him from this life. In 1913, he moved to Munich and joined the army at the outbreak of World War I.
After leaving the army, he became a professional politician and joined the Nazi Party. In 1934, he became the official leader of the government. The source of Hitler's anti-Semitism has been debated throughout history, but his anger at the refusal to enroll in art schools, and his belief that Jews and Communists were responsible for Germany's demise in World War I, undoubtedly added to this hostility.
Herman Goering: War hero, pilot and drug addict
Hermann Göring was born in 1893 in Marienbad, Germany. From an early age, Goering aspired to earn a career in the army, and in 1912 he became a cadet in the German army. During World War I, as a fighter pilot, he received a great deal of recognition, while also receiving many military medals, including the coveted Medal of Honor. After the war – although he was a true war hero, he later worked as a commercial pilot for a time at a Swedish airline, where he met his future wife, Carin, a baroness of a wealthy Swedish family.
In the 1920s, Goering became friends with the young Adolf Hitler, and the two joined the nascent Nazi Party together. Goering was wounded in Hitler's failed attempt to take over the German government (known as the "Beer Hall Riot"), for which he had to flee Germany with his wife. Later, because Goering received morphine after surgery to repair the wound, he quickly became a serious addict, and even tried to quit drugs on several different occasions, and of course eventually succeeded in quitting morphine. However, after the fall of the empire, he obtained cyanide and committed suicide a few hours before being hanged in Nuremberg as a war criminal.
Joseph Goebbels: Bank clerk and aspiring playwright
Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister of the Third Reich, was born in 1897 near Düsseldorf, Germany. Goebbels, who did not participate in World War I due to a deformed foot, later spent his early adult years at heidelberg University and eventually received his Doctor of Philosophy in Germany in 1922. Because of his Ph.D., Goebbels was more of an "intellectual" than most of the Nazi class. After graduation, he wrote an expressionist novel in 1923 and wrote two unpublished plays, but without success.
Apparently, his less brilliant writing career could not sustain him, so in order to survive, he worked on the stock exchange and worked as a bank clerk in Cologne. After being dismissed in August 1923, he found a job in the Nazi Party. Goebbels's abilities as a speaker and organizer of rallies were quickly recognized, and in 1926 he received an important appointment that would change his life: becoming leader of the Nazi Party. After winning Hitler's respect, he was appointed Nazi propaganda minister in 1933. In the last days of the war, Goebbels and his wife poisoned their six young children at the Führer's bunker and then committed suicide.
Heinrich Himmler: Unemployed student and agronomist
Heinrich Himmler, the man who became the second most powerful figure in the Third Reich as head of the Gestapo, was born in Munich in 1905. Although he trained as a cadet in the Military Academy during World War I, he was not exposed to any battlefield operations. After the war, he went to college and studied agriculture. There are many reports about Himmler's chicken-rearing experience, but in fact, his studies and employment were reduced by the Great Depression in Germany, which prevented his parents from funding his education. Between 1919 and 1923, Himmler lived with his parents and worked in a manure processing plant until the mid-1920s, when his political career in the Nazi Party turned into his full-time career. In 1945, Himmler committed suicide while captured, which is consistent with many of his Nazi brothers.
Albert Speer: Architectural Wizard and Memoirs
Unlike most of his work associates and middle-class Nazis, Nazi monument architect Albert Speer came from an educated upper-class family. After earning a degree in architecture, Speer attended a rally in 1931 and joined the Nazi Party. Before achieving a breakthrough, he designed various architectural projects for the Nazis: for the Nuremberg rally in 1933. The episode gave Speer personal contact with Adolf Hitler, and Hitler enjoyed discussing art theory with his young aides. In 1934, at the age of 29, Speer was appointed chief architect of the Third Reich. Over the next five years, he received a lot of commissions. In 1942, Hitler appointed Speer minister of armaments, a position in which he maintained most of Germany's armaments production until the final months of the war.
At the Nuremberg trials, Speer avoided condemnation at the Nuremberg trials by pleading guilty and admitting that the Nazi government had committed war crimes. In the end, he was sentenced to only 20 years in prison. After his release from prison, Speer found success as a former Nazi memoir writer, giving readers an insight into the inner workings of the Third Reich in his best-selling memoir, Inside the Third Reich.
Hans Frank: Lawyer
Hans Frank was born in 1900 in Karlsruhe, Germany, the son of a successful lawyer. Frank was a fanatical Nazi and a longtime member of the right-wing separatist group that founded the Nazi Party. Frank studied law, passed the bar exam in 1926, and became Hitler's personal legal adviser. Frank held various government positions before the outbreak of war, including Bavaria's attorney general. However, after the successful conquest of Poland in 1939, Frank was appointed Governor-General of Poland.
After being arrested and tried in Nuremberg, Frank tried to place the blame for the massacre and extermination camp entirely on Heinrich Himmler, but this was later proven wrong. Although he expressed some remorse for his actions and converted to Catholicism after his arrest, he was convicted and hanged on October 16, 1946.
Adolf Eichmann: Oil salesman
Born in 1906, Adolf Eichmann was eventually hanged by Israel for war crimes. Eichmann was an all-rounder before beginning his career in crime against humanity, and he was an oil salesman until he lost his job during the Great Depression in Germany. From then on, Eichmann joined the Nazi Party in 1932. He was once a full-fledged Nazi and was assigned to a unit stationed near the newly opened Dachau concentration camp. Tired of various military assignments, he requested a transfer to the German National Security Service (SD) and eventually joined the department responsible for immigration and overseeing German Jews. At first, individuals can immigrate as long as they are willing and able to pay the price. As soon as the war ended, Nazi policy shifted from voluntary expulsion to forced eviction, and Eichmann played an important role in the "resettlement" program.
Eichmann, who had most of his daily tasks in Budapest, Hungary, personally orchestrated the deaths of most of the Hungarian Jewish community. He fled Budapest in late 1944 and to Argentina with his family in 1948, where he was the Nazis' most wanted man until he was arrested by Israeli intelligence agencies in Buenos Aires in May 1960. He was then secretly transported to Israel, tried in 1961, and sentenced to death by hanging on June 1, 1962.
Ribbentrop: Vintner
Ribbentrop was born on April 30, 1893. As a young man, he enjoyed traveling the world and spent most of his youth in boarding schools in Switzerland, england and Canada. Eventually, he settled in Montreal for a while, working for different companies. He even did business in Canada, importing German wine and champagne, but returned to Germany at the beginning of World War I and enlisted in the army. After the war, he married the daughter of a wealthy wine producer and resumed his marketing career.
After being introduced to Hitler in 1928, he made overtures to the Führer, but was not popular with other Nazis. In 1936, he was appointed ambassador to Britain, when he nearly knocked down King George VI during a routine handshake ceremony, using a Nazi military salute, and caused a diplomatic uproar. Due to his gaffe, he failed to ally himself with Britain. However, his British-phobic hatred of the country was completely in line with Hitler's, and the non-aggression pact he subsequently negotiated with Stalin as German foreign minister shocked the world. This was the heyday of Ribbentrop's career, because after the outbreak of the First World War, he had little need for diplomacy. In October 1946, he was hanged in Nuremberg.
Martin Bowman: Agricultural worker, real estate manager, criminal
Martin Bowman, the son of a worker, was born in 1900. In order to join the army during World War I, he suspended his studies in agriculture before graduating. However, after working at a manor, he found a job as a manor manager in 1919. Since the German economy was experiencing hyperinflation at the time, crops and food became very precious, so Borman's work was guaranteed, so this was different from many potential Nazis of the time. Bauman was an outspoken anti-Semite who joined the Free Corps, a right-wing paramilitary group. He even went to jail for a year on suspicion of murdering whistleblowers and was released in 1925. After serving his sentence, he resumed his management position, but soon lost his job. Eventually, through various intrigues and tricks, Borman became responsible for Hitler's residence in the Bavarian Alps, Berghof, and gradually became more powerful through this position, becoming Hitler's personal secretary.
He was a fanatic of Hitler's life and the executor of the German leader's will. He is thought to have been killed in an attempt to break through Hitler's bunker, but his body was not finally confirmed until 1998. Regardless of his body, he was tried and condemned in absentia at the Nuremberg trials.
Franz van Papen: nobleman, spy, "undesirable"
Franz von Papen was born on 29 October 1879 to an aristocratic family in Weery, Germany. Given his aristocratic status, he had been sent to the German General Staff at the outbreak of World War I. In 1914, he was sent to Washington, D.C., as a military attaché and quickly became involved in espionage, leading to his expulsion from the United States.
The U.S. government declared him an "undesirable persona" and deported him to Germany. In 1916, he was accused by a U.S. grand jury of involvement in a conspiracy to blow up Canada's canals. Von Papen is segregated with diplomatic immunity and is already in Germany, so he will never formally answer the allegations. When he became Chancellor of Germany, the charges were formally dropped.
Von Papen was a centrist and conservative politician who remained relatively unknown throughout the 1920s until 1931, when Paul von Hindenburg unexpectedly appointed him Chancellor of Germany. He tried to negotiate with Hitler in the hope of gaining his political support, but instead he was defeated and driven out. In 1934, van Papen openly opposed some nazi atrocities and was therefore placed under house arrest. Soon after, he resigned from the government and the Nazis were able to exercise full political power in Germany. Because of his prestige, Hitler did not want to eliminate Van Papen, but he also did not want him to lead any secret political opposition. So he gave von Papen a diplomatic position, first as ambassador to Austria, then in Turkey, where von Papen served to end the war. Although Franz von Papen was charged with war crimes in Nuremberg, he was one of three defendants found not guilty.
Julius Stryche: Teacher and journalist
Julius Strescher was born in Bavaria in 1885 to the son of an elementary school teacher. In order to keep the family business, Streicher became a primary school teacher. However, he also fought in World War I, and after the End of World War I, he became radicalized. Strycher believed that communists, especially Jews, were the root cause of all the evils of German society, and he organized fringe political groups based on vulgar speeches full of hostility and anti-Semitism, and had many followers. In 1922, he listened to Hitler's speech and immediately joined the Nazi Party.
In 1923, Stryche founded Der Sturmer, a newspaper described by its publisher as an outspoken disseminator of official anti-Semitism. Strycher fought alongside Hitler in the Beer Hall coup and earned him personal respect. In the mid-1930s, his actions in Nuremberg earned him the nickname "The Beast of Franconia". He demanded the destruction of the synagogue in Nuremberg in Kristallnacht and spread rumors about other members of the Nazi leadership, which eventually led to his being stripped of his official powers. However, he was allowed to continue publishing The Attacker and maintain friendly relations with Hitler personally. Although he did not play any role in the Holocaust, his writings and speeches were so provocative that he was tried as a major war criminal in Nuremberg and hanged on October 16, 1945.
Reinhard Heydrich: Violinist and "Incompetent Official"
Reinhard Heydrich was born in 1904 to the son of an opera singer. For a time, his family was wealthy and prominent, and his childhood was surrounded by music. Heydrich was even a violinist. However, when the prosperity of the family ended with the depression in Germany, it all collapsed. In order to escape the family's financial crisis, Heydrich joined the Navy as a cadet in 1922, and soon his career was frequently promoted. However, he was also known for his arrogance and instability, and this seemed to be a theme for Nazi leaders. In 1930, Heydrich, a notorious womanizer, terminated his six-month engagement after dating another woman. Admiral Erich Raeder, the commander of the Navy, dismissed Heydrich from office for "conduct that did not fit into officer status." However, through personal connections, he interviewed Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was so impressed with Heydrich that in August 1931 he was hired as head of the fledgling National Security Agency (SD).
From this moment on, Heydrich would begin to be one of the most powerful and evil members of the Third Reich. As the script designer of the Holocaust, he enforced the "Night and Fog" decree, which wiped out citizens deemed a security risk, and his actions as an imperial protector of Bohemia and Moravia (conquered Czechoslovakia) marked the brutal embodiment of the bureaucracy of the Nazi state. The Czech government-in-exile considered Heydrich to be very vicious and sent a specially trained commando to hunt him down. On June 4, 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in Prague and died of his wounds.
Robert Ray: Chemist, Editor, Alcoholic
Robert Ray was born on 15 February 1890 in the Rhine to a poor peasant family. He joined the army during World War I and was assigned as a flight observer, but was shot down in July 1917. It is believed that after the accident, he suffered brain damage, speech impairment, unstable behavior, and alcoholism. After the war, he received a doctorate in chemistry and was hired by IG Farbenindustrie as a chemist. Later, after reading Hitler's speech during the beer hall coup trial, he became a staunch Nazi. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed leader of the German Labour Front, a government trade union organization, in 1931. Later he began to embezzle union funds, accumulating a series of villas and estates, a motorcade, an art collection and a group of mistress resources. Thus his actions earned the German Labor Front the reputation of Germany's most corrupt institution.
However, because of his fanatical dedication and anti-Semitic writings and speeches, he remained in Hitler's inner circle. Shortly after the war, he was arrested and indicted by the Nuremberg courts, but hanged himself in his cell before the trials began in October 1945.
Roland Fleisler: "Commissar", prisoner of war, defense lawyer
Roland Fleisler was born in 1893 in Celeste, Germany, the son of an engineer and a teacher. He joined the German army during World War I and was wounded and captured in October 1915. Flesler learned to speak Russian and was labeled a "commissar" when he was deported to Germany in 1917, which later led many to say that he had "Bolshevik" tendencies during his imprisonment. He completed his law studies in 1919, received his Doctor of Laws degree in 1922, and joined the Nazi Party. He often defended party members accused of violent crimes in court and was eventually elected to Parliament. Fresler's reputation grew, but some party members found him overly enthusiastic and moody. As a jurist, Fresler became a distinguished member of the German Ministry of Justice and played an important role in subverting the concept of the Nuremberg (Race) Law of 1935.
In August 1942, Fresler reached his most notorious position as chief justice of the court. Here, he sentenced many of the defendants to death, including White Rose, Sophie Shore, and another 17-year-old who had been sentenced to death simply for distributing leaflets. His personality was so extreme that a video of the public trial prepared for the German people was never broadcast. It was thought that his actions were meant to make up for his previous "Bolshevik" stigma, which was even suspected by Hitler himself. On February 3, 1945, during an air raid in Berlin, Fresler was smashed to death by a courtroom girder.