A hundred year old Nazi and the price of silently aiding a crime13 min read

Part 2 of this story is available. Click on the next page at the bottom of this article.

Do you recognise this man?

The chances are that you do. That is because that man is Adolf Hitler, the world’s most famous dictator. And if you recognise him, you probably have at least a vague idea of what he did. And if you know what he did, you know that his actions and beliefs were both vile and awful. 

After being appointed the chancellor (leader) of Germany, Hitler declared himself the Führer and effectively became the country’s dictator.

Who is a dictator?

A dictator is someone who rules a country single-handedly. Their word is final on all decisions for the country and its people. Most dictators rule with an iron fist. That means people can’t speak up against them or voice their opinions unless they match with the ideas of the dictator. Dictatorships don’t have fair and free elections, and generally, a dictator stays in power until they are either forcibly removed, die or by some stroke of luck decide not to be dictators anymore. (The last option, as you’d imagine, has not proven to be quite as popular with dictators so far) 
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While a full explanation of Hitler’s atrocities would require books and books (and many have been written, one by the man himself), here’s a short Hitler recap. To the few of you that have been spared the stories of Hitler and the evil that he embodied, I apologise in advance. But, nonetheless, Hitler’s story is most important because it helps humankind know the terrible power of hatred and the acute pain that comes with it. Anyhow, without further ado, let’s dip our metaphorical toes into the hellish rule of the hauntingly hateful dictator, Adolf Hitler. 

A brief rundown on the horrible Hitler- Nazi affair

Adolf Hitler was the dictator of Germany from  1933 to 1945. He believed that German success would come from people who belonged to what he called the Aryan race. One group of people, specifically, was left out of this ‘elite’ class of Aryans, and that group included the followers of the religion of Judaism known as Jews. His beliefs were not based on scientific fact nor observation but rather on a hateful fantasy that the troubled leader had constructed in his own mind. 

The Holocaust

The most unfortunate part of all this was that hundreds of thousands of Germans and a few others decided to follow and believe in the baloney delusions that Hitler spewed. These people were known as Nazis, and to Nazis, Jews were a problem. A problem that they decided had to be handled in the most inhumane way. They built myths around the Jews and then used those myths to justify killing and torturing poor innocent people. The Nazis built concentration camps where Jews were herded and killed with poisonous gasses and shot en masse. This brutal genocide or mass murder of the Jewish people in Germany and the regions that Germany had occupied came to be known as the Holocaust.

Luckily, the rest of the world fought back, and eventually, after the second world war in 1945, Nazi Germany came to its bitter end. Hitler killed himself, and the surviving Jews returned to freedom. Needless to say, the pain of the Holocaust can never be forgotten, and the people who survived the Nazis deserved and continue to deserve justice.

Woah! That was a lot to take in. Pause, and come back to discover the fate of the Nazis after the war.