VIDEO SCRIPT

TITLE:
Hitler's Rise to Power
HOOK
It is Germany in the 1920s. Everyone's buzzing about in their old-timey
cars, minding their own business. But in the midst of all this hustle and
bustle, there's one man who's cooking up trouble in his soup pot of
dreams. He is Adolf Hitler – failed artist turned wannabe big shot.

The Great War had just wrapped up, leaving the country in a bit of a
pickle, like a jumbled-up puzzle missing a few pieces. Our main man,
Hitler, was busy dreaming up schemes wilder than a cat in a bathtub.
Little did he know, these schemes were about to send him on a
rollercoaster ride straight to the top.

But hold your horses, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let us rewind to
what type of man he was till he became the Hitler we know today. Let us
begin with his backstory

CONTENT

The Backstory
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in a small Austrian town called
Braunau am Inn, not too far from the border between Austria and
Germany. His dad, Alois, used to work as a customs official, but once he
retired, the family moved to Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

Young Adolf wasn't too keen on following in his old man's footsteps as a
civil servant. He struggled in school and eventually dropped out. When
Alois passed away in 1903, Adolf decided to chase his dream of becoming
an artist. Unfortunately, his application to the Vienna Academy of Fine
Arts got the ol' rejection slip.

So, off to Vienna he went in 1908. There, he made ends meet by painting
scenery and monuments and selling his artwork. Despite keeping busy
with painting gigs, Adolf felt pretty lonely and turned to books for
company. That's when he started diving into politics and brewing up
ideas that later became the backbone of Nazi ideology.

In 1913, Adolf packed his bags and headed to Munich in Bavaria,

Germany. When World War I broke out the next year, he convinced the
Bavarian king to let him join a reserve infantry regiment. He served
throughout the war and even snagged a couple of bravery medals,
including the Iron Cross First Class.

But the war wasn't all glory for Hitler. He got injured twice – once in the
leg during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and then temporarily blinded
by a British gas attack near Ypres in 1918. While recovering in a hospital
near Berlin, he got the news of Germany's defeat in the war.

Like many folks in Germany, Hitler blamed the country's loss on what he
saw as unpatriotic "traitors" back home, rather than the Allied forces.

The Entry Into The Nazis

After his return to Munich in late 1918, Hitler jumped aboard the German
Workers' Party train, a small group aiming to blend working-class
interests with German nationalism. With his gift of gab and infectious
energy, he quickly climbed the party ladder. By 1920, he bid farewell to
his military days and took the reins of the party's propaganda machine.

In a move straight out of the propaganda playbook, Hitler rebranded the

party as the National Socialist German Workers Party, or as we know it,
the Nazi Party. And get this – he chose the swastika as the party's
emblem. Now, the swastika might've been a sacred symbol in Hinduism,
Jainism, and Buddhism, but Hitler slapped it onto a red background with
a white circle, giving it a whole new, terrifying meaning.

By the end of 1921, Hitler was calling the shots in the ever-growing Nazi
Party. He rode the wave of dissatisfaction with the Weimar Republic and
the harsh Versailles Treaty terms. Joining him were a bunch of
disgruntled ex-army folks from Munich, including Ernst Röhm, who
rounded up the "strong arm" squads known as the Sturmabteilung (SA).
These tough guys weren't shy about throwing their weight around – they
protected Nazi meetings and gave opponents a run for their money.

The Journey To The Top

On the fateful evening of November 8, 1923, things took a wild turn in
Munich. Members of the SA, along with others, barged into a big ol' beer
hall where a different right-wing leader was holding court. Armed with
nothing but bravado and a revolver, Hitler declared the start of a
national revolution. With a ragtag group of marchers, he made his way to
the heart of Munich, where they clashed with the cops in a good ol'
fashioned gun battle.

But things didn't exactly go according to plan. Hitler made a hasty

retreat, and before long, he and his rebel buddies found themselves in
hot water with the law. Yep, they got busted. Despite the whole escapade
ending in a spectacular flop, the Beer Hall Putsch did something pretty
unexpected – it turned Hitler into a household name and, in the eyes of
many, a hero of right-wing nationalism.

Now, you'd think getting slapped with a treason charge would put a
damper on Hitler's spirits, but not quite. He got sentenced to five years in
the slammer but only ended up serving nine months in the cushy
confines of Landsberg Castle. And what did he do with all that time on
his hands? Well, he started jotting down his thoughts and dreams in a
little book called "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"). In this book, Hitler went
on and on about his nationalistic and anti-Semitic views, laying out his
grand plans for the world – all while chilling in his prison digs.

But Hitler didn't stop there. Oh no, he had more to say. After his release,
he hightailed it to a cozy mountain village called Berchtesgaden and
finished up the second volume of "Mein Kampf."

The book didn't exactly fly off the shelves at first, but with Hitler's rise to
power, it became Germany's hottest read after the Bible. And let me tell
ya, Hitler had some real wild ideas in those pages – he was all about
racial purity and this idea of a supreme leader, or Führer, ruling the roost.

Now, back in the real world, things were getting shaky for the Weimar
Republic thanks to the Great Depression. But Hitler wasn't about to let a
little thing like an economic crisis stand in his way. Nope, he started
cozying up to all sorts of folks – army bigwigs, business tycoons, you
name it – to build up support for his Nazi party. And that, my friends,
was just the beginning of Hitler's wild ride to the top.

Nothing Could Stop Him

In 1932, Hitler threw his hat in the ring for president, facing off against
the war hero Paul von Hindenburg. While he didn't clinch the top spot,
he still managed to snag a hefty 36.8 percent of the votes. With the
government in shambles and three chancellors biting the dust,
Hindenburg, in late January 1933, decided to take a chance on the 43-
year-old Hitler, naming him chancellor. And just like that, on January 30,
1933, the Third Reich was born – or as the Nazis liked to call it, the
“Thousand-Year Reich.” Quite the ambitious title, if you ask me!

But hold onto your lederhosen, folks – things were about to get wild. A
month later, a massive fire broke out at the Reichstag, Germany's
parliament building. While the blame game played out, Hitler saw his
chance to crank up the political oppression and squash his opponents
like bugs. In March, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, handing
Hitler all the power on a silver platter and sealing the deal with a big ol'
hug from Hindenburg himself.

With his autocratic power secured, Hitler wasted no time. He snapped his
fingers, and suddenly, the Nazi Party was the only game in town. All
other parties and unions vanished quicker than you can say "auf
wiedersehen."

But Hitler wasn't content to just rule the roost in Germany – oh no, he
had bigger fish to fry. By 1933, he'd given the ol' League of Nations the
boot and was busy gearing up Germany for some good old-fashioned
territorial conquests.

And just when you thought things couldn't get any wilder, along came
the infamous Night of the Long Knives in June 1934. Hitler pulled off a
real shocker, ordering the murder of his own party members who were
causing a ruckus, including his pal Ernst Röhm. With Hindenburg
kicking the bucket shortly after, Hitler swooped in and snagged both the
presidency and chancellorship, effectively becoming the Big Cheese of
Germany.

But Hitler's reign wasn't all sunshine and rainbows – far from it. He
ramped up the persecution of Jews with the Nuremberg Laws, stripping
them of their citizenship and basic rights. And let's not forget his cultural
takeover, from burning books to forcing everyone to toe the Nazi line in
schools and media.
Meanwhile, as tensions simmered across Europe, Hitler went full steam
ahead with his Blitzkrieg strategy, conquering countries left and right
like a kid in a candy store. From France to Poland, he steamrolled his way
through, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

But just when it seemed like nothing could stop him, the tides turned.
With the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States
jumped into the fray, and Hitler found himself facing off against a united
front of Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union. And thus began a whole
new chapter in Hitler's wild ride – one filled with twists, turns, and a
whole lot of drama.

The COncentration Camps And Rest

Starting in 1933, the SS set up a network of concentration camps, with

the notorious Dachau camp near Munich being one of the first. These
camps weren't holiday resorts – they were hell on earth, where Jews and
other targets of the Nazi regime were held captive.

As the war heated up, the Nazis shifted gears. Instead of just kicking
Jews out of German-controlled territories, they started exterminating
them. Mobile death squads called Einsatzgruppen went around executing
entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion. Meanwhile,
concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland were
expanded to include death camps where mass exterminations took place.

But the horror didn't stop there. At Auschwitz, certain Jews were singled
out for nightmarish medical experiments by a guy named Josef Mengele,
who earned himself the charming nickname of the “Angel of Death.”
Mengele's twisted experiments, focused mainly on twins, subjected
thousands of child prisoners to disease, disfigurement, and torture in the
name of so-called medical research.

Now, let's not forget – the Nazis didn't just stop at Jews. They
imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma
(gypsies), and the disabled. But above all, their target was clear – Jews.
By the end of the war, an estimated 6 million Jews had been killed in
German-occupied Europe, marking one of the darkest chapters in human
history.

As the war turned against Germany, Hitler's health took a nosedive. He

became increasingly isolated and dependent on medications, with
several attempts made on his life.
BOTTOM LINE
In April 1945, as Soviet forces closed in on Berlin, Hitler tied the knot
with his longtime companion Eva Braun in a bunker beneath the
Chancellery. But their wedding bells were quickly followed by tragedy –
Hitler shot himself, and Braun took poison. Their bodies were burned as
per Hitler's instructions.

With Soviet troops overrunning Berlin, Germany surrendered

unconditionally on May 7, 1945, bringing an end to the war in Europe.
Hitler's dream of a "Thousand-Year Reich" may have crumbled after just
over 12 years, but the destruction and devastation left in its wake would
haunt the world for generations to come, forever altering the course of
history.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/how-did-adolf-
hitler-happen#:~:text=Hitler%20rose%20to%20power%20through,Allies
%20compelled%20the%20new%20German
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler/Rise-to-power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/adolf-hitler-1