EVIL PSYCHOPATHS (True Crime) (21 page)

On 24 May, Frau Kürten went to the police with her story, informing them also that she had arranged to meet her husband outside St. Rochus Church at three that afternoon.

That afternoon, the area around the church was completely surrounded and as Peter Kürten appeared, four officers rushed towards him. He put his hands up, smiled and said, ‘There is no need to be afraid.’

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born in an inn, the Gasthof zum Pommer, in Braunau am Inn, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire on 20 April 1889, the fourth of a family of six. His father Alois, a customs official, had to obtain papal permission to marry his third wife, Klara, who was also his half-niece. Only Adolf and his younger sister, Paula, survived to adulthood. Hitler’s childhood was unhappy. His father was frequently violent towards him as well as to his mother to whom Hitler was deeply attached.

The family moved frequently but in spite of the disruption the young Hitler performed well at school until, aged around eleven, he had to repeat a year. He claimed he was rebelling against his father who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps as a customs official, but Hitler wanted to be a painter. His father died in 1903 and Hitler dropped out of school a couple of years later, aged sixteen.

He claimed his passion for German nationalism emerged around this time, when he read a book about the Franco-Prussian War and wondered why German Austrians did not join with Prussia against the French.

In 1905, Hitler went to live in Vienna but was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts and was told he was more suited to being an architect but he did not have the requisite qualifications to attend the architectural school. He struggled to make a living as a painter, copying postcards and selling to tourists. By 1910, he was living in a house for poor working men.

In 1913, he received money from his father’s estate and was able to move to Munich which allowed him to escape military service in Austria. He was arrested eventually by the Austrian army but was deemed unfit for service and allowed to return to Munich. On the outbreak of World War I, however, he enlisted in the Bavarian army, serving in Belgium and France. At the end of the war, he held the rank of lance-corporal but his role in the war had been dangerous. He had been engaged as a runner, a position that exposed him regularly to enemy fire. He fought at Ypres, the Somme, the battle of Arras and at Passchendale and was twice decorated for bravery. His award of the Iron Cross, First Class, in 1918 was one rarely given to a soldier of his rank. It seems, however, that his superiors did not believe that he possessed sufficient leadership skills to be made full corporal. He was wounded in the leg in 1916, but returned to the front in March 1917.

Germany’s surrender in 1918 was a great shock to him. He had become a fervent German patriot and believed in the Dolchstoßlegende (dagger-stab legend), that the army and the country had been stabbed in the back by the poiliticians and Marxists at home. The Treaty of Versailles did nothing to allay this feeling. It punished Germany severely for the war – depriving it of territories, almost totally demilitarising the German armed forces, demilitarising the Rhineland and imposing massive reparation payments. It would help Hitler later when he persuaded Germans that this must not be allowed to happen again.

Hitler remained in the army at the war’s end, based in Munich. He became a police spy working for the Aufklärungskommando (Intelligence Commando) with responsibility for influencing his fellow soldiers and for infiltrating the German Workers’ Party, founded by Anton Drexler. The party was anti-semitic, anti-Communist and nationalist and it immediately appealed to Hitler. Drexler, for his part, was impressed with Hitler and he was invited to become the party’s fifty-fifth member.

He met a formative influence at this point – Dietrich Eckhart, one of the party’s founders. He and Hitler exchanged ideas and Eckhart advised him on everything, even how to dress. He also provided him with introductions to many important people. Soon, the party changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (the national Socialist German Workers Party).

Discharged from the army in March 1920, Hitler became fully involved with the party and they made full use of his greatest skill – his oratory. His audiences began to grow, on one occasion 6,000 turned up in Munich to listen to him rail against the Treaty of Versailles, Marxists and Jews.

In July 1921, Hitler staged a coup within the party, replacing Drexler as chairmen. At his first meeting as leader, he was introduced as ‘der Führer’, a name that would continue to be used until his death.

The party began to grow, attracting followers fired by Hitler’s inflammatory speeches. Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring and Julius Streicher were all early members. Hitler became accepted in Munich society and formed relationships with business leaders.

Hitler was very impressed by Mussolini’s fascists and wanted to emulate the drama of their ‘March on Rome’, the
coup d’etat
that brought them to power. He had the support of a number of important people, including Gustav von Kahr, de facto ruler of Bavaria and General Erich Ludendorff, as well as leading figures in the army and the police.

On 8 November 1923, Hitler and his Sturmabteilung (storm troopers) launched what has become known as the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ when they stormed a public meeting in a large beer hall outside Munich. He proclaimed the establishment of a new government and demanded support of von Kahr and the local military leaders. The following day as Hitler and his group marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government, they were attacked and dispersed by the police who killed sixteen members of the National Socialist Party.

Hitler was arrested for high treason and became a national figure at his trial when he expressed his nationalist sentiments. Sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison, he was released after serving just nine months as part of an amnesty for political prisoners.

In prison, Hitler had used his time to dictate his book
Mein Kampf
, an autobiography and a political manifesto to his deputy, Rudolf Hess. Published in two volumes, by the end of World War II, it would have sold around ten million copies.

Following his release, there was an attempt to unseat him as leader of the party and he reacted to this challenge to his authority with the introduction of the Führerprinzip (leadership Principle). By this, leaders were appointed by their superiors and were responsible to them while being accorded unquestioning obedience by those below them.

The Depression was a godsend to Hitler who, by the time it struck Germany in 1930, was keeping within the law as he tried to gain power, while still appealing in his oratory to German nationalist sympathies. Meanwhile, the government of the Weimar Republic which had ruled the country since the war was deeply loathed by all, from the extremists on the right to the communists on the far left. In 1930, Chancellor Heinrich Brüning led a minority government and was forced to use emergency decrees to implement his measures. This was a form of government that endured for several parliaments and certainly prepared the ground for Hitler’s authoritarian style of government.

In 1932, Hitler finally obtained German citizenship which rendered him eligible to run for the German presidency against the incumbent, Paul von Hindenberg. He lost.

Elections were called in July 1932 and the Nazis won 230 seats, their best result so far, making them the largest party in the Reichstag, the German parliament. The new Chancellor, Fritz von Papen, tried to get Hitler to become his Vice-Chancellor, but Hitler would accept nothing less than the top job. Soon, the von Papen government had collapsed and fresh elections were called. The Nazis remained the largest party with thirty-three per cent of the vote.

After several more attempts to form a minority government had failed, President von Hindenberg had no option but to appoint Hitler Chancellor of a coalition government, but with politicians from other parties taking the key roles in the cabinet. On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler took the oath of office in von Hindenberg’s office.

Again, as no party had a majority, the Reichstag was dissolved in readiness for new elections in March 1933, but on 27 February, the Reichstag building was the victim of an arson attack which was blamed on the communists. The government reacted by suspending basic civil liberties and by banning the German Communist Party. Communists were rounded up, fled or, in some cases, murdered.

The Nazis campaigned for the elections, building up anti-Communist hysteria and increased their share of the vote to forty-three per cent. Again, however, they had to form a coalition government. Hitler now introduced the Enabling Act which allowed the cabinet to introduce measures without first gaining the approval of the Reichstag. It was to last for four years and represented his first step on the way to total power. On 14 July 1933, the Nazi party was declared the only legal political party in Germany and the power of the state governments was abolished.

Between 30 June and 2 July 1934, Hitler carried out a purge of the leadership of his SA stormtroopers, in which a number of its members represented a threat to him. This became known as the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ and around eighty-five people are reckoned to have died during it, although the final death toll may actually have been in the hundreds.

When President von Hindenberg died in August 1934, the cabinet declared the presidency dormant and transferred the powers of head of state to Hitler as Fuhrer and Reichskanzler. He was now in command of the armed forces whose officers and men swore an oath not to Germany or the constitution but to Hitler himself. A plebiscite voted overwhelmingly in favour of the changes. Hitler was now unchallenged dictator of Germany.

Hitler implemented a massive expansion of industrial production as well as a huge campaign of improvement to Germany’s infrastructure. Numerous dams, autobahns, railways and other civil works were constructed and he sponsored architecture on a massive scale. The 1936 Olympic Games gave him an opportunity to demonstrate so-called Aryan superiority to the world. Of course, he did not allow for the extraordinary feats of the black American sprinter, Jesse Owen, who disproved his theories by winning four gold medals and infuriating Hitler in the process.

Hitler had written about Germany’s need for Lebensraum (living space) in the east in
Mein Kampf
and it was a critical element of his foreign policy. He also advocated Anschluss (merger) with Austria, restoration of the pre-World War I frontiers, abolition of the restrictions on the German armed forces, return of Germany’s former African colonies and a German zone of influence in eastern Europe.

He tried to build an alliance with Britain with the aim of obtaining Britain’s support for an increase in the size of army Germany was allowed, an increase that would help him in his plan to destroy Russia. However, Britain refused to be drawn in and said it would prefer to wait ten years before it could provide such support.

In March 1935, he rejected the part of the Versailles Treaty limiting Germany’s armed forces, publicly announcing an increase in the army to 600,000, six times the number permitted. He also introduced the Luftwaffe and increased naval strength. The League of Nations condemned these acts, but no one did anything.

On 15 September 1935, Hitler made a speech at the Nuremberg party rally in which he announced new laws regarding Germany’s Jewish population. The Nuremberg Laws banned sex and marriage between ‘Aryan’ Germans and Jewish Germans and deprived ‘non-Aryan’ Germans of German citizenship.

Germany and Italy declared an Axis in October 1936 and Japan entered the Axis later in the year.

In 1939, Hitler began systematically killing Jews in concentration or ‘death’ camps. He had already made efforts to purify the German race by killing children with physical and developmental disabilities in a programme known as T4. Between 1939 and 1945, somewhere between eleven and fourteen million people, including six million Jews, died in the camps, in ghettoes and in mass executions. The methods used were poison gas, starvation and disease while working as slave labourers.

In 1938, Anschluss happened when Hitler persuaded Austria to join together in a Germanic union. His next target was the German-speaking Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. On 30 September 1938, a one-day conference in Munich between Hitler, British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, French premier, Daladier, and Mussolini came up with the Munich Agreement which gave Hitler what he wanted – the Sudetenland. Chamberlain famously claimed that they had secured ‘peace in our time’. Hitler ignored the agreement and invaded the Czech half of the country in March 1939.

Poland was next and German tanks rolled into western Poland on 1 September. Hitler had by this time made a non-aggression pact with Russia and the plan was to divide Poland between them. However, Britain had already guaranteed Polish independence and Chamberlain declared war on 3 September. Hitler at last had the war he had wanted all along.