Good afternoon. Hope you had a beautiful beginning of September 2019. We all welcome with gratitude, one of the most beautiful seasons on earth, Autumn! Let´s recapitulate what we saw during our last episode, by watching this video from Business Insider:

Now, let´s land into our main today´s topic:

Who was Adolf Hitler?

For me, he was a failed criminal kaiser or an “evil puppet emperor” who “probably” was able to escape to South America, before WWII finished.

Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945?) was born in Austria, in a petit village called Braunau Am Inn. Interesting enough he was not German, but Austrian by place of birth. Personally, I encourage you to read the whole biography here: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler/Hitlers-place-in-history

Let´s read some “official” historic highlights about him.

• When he was younger he wished to be a painting artist, but he couldn´t pass the test to join the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. As a result, he was advised to continue studying architecture. What would have happened to this planet if would have been admitted to study art?
• According to biographists of Adolf Hitler, he was living in miserable conditions, and unable to pay his own studies, worked as a construction worker. It was during these times that his mind got messed up. Meanwhile, he was living in poverty, his thoughts were full of resentment and anger. He did not like his job activities, nor his peers, neither the workers´organizations. His biography asserts that he learned to hate the jews because, at that time in Central Europe, Jews were blamed as the cause of fortunes losses.
• By 1914, he joined the Military German army. After his participation at WWI, he started to nurture his own revenge strategy against everything that resembled democracy, communism, capitalism, jews and syndicalism workers.
• He founded the Nazi party with the soldiers defeated by the Great War, in conjunction with German politicians and leaders who were suffering the economic consequences and privations.
• As an avid speaker in front of the masses, the fuhrer sat up the hate speech against communism, democracy, and the jews to gather a solid value proposition to gain public support. Remember the economic context of Germany: they were living difficult times (poverty, job scarcity, lack of opportunities). At that time Germany was also hit by the Great Depression in the USA.
• By 1929, he suffered jail at the Landsberg prison, where he wrote his autobiography Mein Kampf, a book that served him later to push his ideas and doctrine.
• Once he was released from prison, he started to pave the way for the Nazi party strategy. By  1932, Hitler promised racist “greatness and glory” that Germans were entitled to prosperity above the rest of cultures or countries.
• By 1933, Hitler got support from a group of businessmen, industry leaders and politicians (included the President from the German Republic).  I can´t blame if the Hohenzollerns´descendants (former Emperors of Prussia-Germany) were supporting Hitler´s imperialist plans. I am not a historian. But this is a theme that I recommend to explore to historians who wish to update history.
• In January 1933, Hitler rose to the political leadership of Germany as Prime Minister-Chancellor. Immediately, in power, Hitler dissolved any type of opposition changing the rules of the game. Straightaway, Germany was the first country to separate from the League of Nations, violating the Treaty of Versailles.
• Please watch the following  TED-Ed complimentary video:

• From 1933 to 1939 Hitler started his revenge strategy not just internally, but also through foreign affairs by political and diplomatic mechanisms. Internationally, the Fuhrer was a fan of using tit for tat strategic alliances with Italy (under Mussolini), Japan, Russia and later Spain (under Franco´s regime as of 1939). Within,  Hitler established Germany´s spirit for the war.
• He reduced his political enemies either by assassination, persecution of the Jews´ businesses and their commercial interests. In parallel, he accelerated the armament technology design of unique weapons and its production.
• Installing racism: Hitler was able to pull a Nazi youth indoctrination of his values at a general level. He knew that he needed the unconditional German youth (kids, teenagers, youngsters, etc) for his plans. He needed unconditional soldiers, mid-managers, leaders, researchers, technologists and specialized workers. Racism or German superiority over others was his brainwash core campaign to install the German supremacy ideology.
• After the Great War, the rest of the European countries did not want another war. Particularly France and England hesitated to stop Hitler´s moves during years, particularly when he initially invaded some territories from France, Czech Republic, and Austria.
• When Hitler got the support from Italy, by helping Mussolini to invade Ethiopia, the Rome-Berlin-Japan cooperation axis began.  Previously, Japan subscribed an anti-communist pact of cooperation with Germany (1936). Hitler negotiated with Mussolini that he wouldn´t oppose to Rome´s interests in the Mediterranean, in exchange for the German domination of Austria. Hitler remilitarized the Rhin Zone, and the tension was evident in every of the German´s neighbors, such as Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Baltic countries (Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania).
• By March 1939, when General Franco ascended to Spain power, Hitler was unstoppable. He intervened Austria, his home town completely. After Austria, the nazi domino´s effect game followed. After Austria, the Czech Republic went under the nazi protectorate, Eslovaquia was next, followed by Poland.
• The 1^stof September 1939, France and England declared the war to Germany. And officially WWII started.

Watch the following WWII summary please:

In any war, each contending party or quarreling block of nations against another group of contenders depicts their own war strategy and tactics. It is not my aim to analyze them here. But what I wish to state, is that the abominations of WWII are so remarkable, not because Hitler followed a different strategy than his emperors´ predecessors of Egypt, Persia, Rome or Greece. The bottom line: Hitler´s criminal value proposition of racism and superiority was expressed in slavery, forced work, concentration camps, and the destruction of innocent people BY USING THE MOST DEVASTATING WAR TECHNOLOGY OF THAT TIME.  And the worst abomination made by Hitler at WWII was the “revengeful idea that massive extermination of the jews with the brutality of his holocaust measures was a conventional war action”. Can you believe it?

Even though war prisoners and slavery over conquered populations are not ethically correct either, the monumental execution of Jewish root populations and another non-German origin innocent communities has no comparison. And I can reassure you that Hitler´s supremacist ideology and tactics against the Jews were planned for years and years, before the execution.

Reflection about the consequences of WWII:

When writing the introduction of this example, I wrote that it is important to revisit the World War II as an example in our revenge strategy journey, not because “the Jews were nastily imprisoned in concentration camps and were used as guinea pigs by the Germans who slave them using a “train to death” strategy. Not because the Germans´ doctors tested massive extermination measures and medical dreadful experimentation programs as if the Jews were animals instead of human beings. And not because thousands of families were separated and obliged to stop their “ usual” life routines and businesses…”. I wrote these phrases to shake your brain. We all know these facts. We all have read plenty of articles or movies about the consequences of Hitler´s revenge strategy. I wanted you to see all of them as the consequences of Hitler´s team criminal minds and his financial sponsors who put him into power in 1933. One thing is the consequences of WWII, which you can read or watch all over the google internet universe. Another thing is to understand the root of the causes of WWII.

Why do you think I wanted you to think in all causes of the WWII atrocities (included the Jews´Holocaust) of a revenge strategy which started to be planned more than 100 years before? Why?

Well, it is very simple. People tend to see the consequences without understanding the causes. And leaders tend to solve consequences, and that is a mistake. What needs to be fixed are the causes.  We tend to judge based on results only, without understanding the causes of these outcomes.

The WWII deadly Holocaust, as one of many consequences of Hitler´s mind, could have been avoided when Hitler was a youngster. Probably if he would have been accepted to Vienna´s Academy of Fine Arts, we wouldn´t have had a criminal as such in power. Of course, Hitler´s Prussian sponsors would have found another leader, but this particular one would have never emerged.

Reflections about the importance of choosing the correct leaders:

Let me finish this post, with your reflections about the following: Every single time an odd criminal or bizarre leader raises to power, particularly in democratic regimes, we all are connected to it. We share a collective responsibility to elect our leaders. It is a commitment for each person who lives in democracy to think twice before voting for someone who may become a new Hitler. It is a duty to check each leader´s background and reasoning or clear-mindedness in relation to democracy. Any leader with dictatorial speech or disrespectful supremacy discourse must turn the red flags to the communities. Each potential leader has to be verified and in constant scrutiny.  Dictators can be perceived years ahead. We must learn to read the signs before it is too late. In the case of Hitler: The League of Nations,  France and England could have stopped him, they saw the signs coming but did nothing. More than 25 years passed between WWI and WWII, and so many nations couldn´t stop him. Why?

On my next publication, you will continue reading specifically about the significance of Pearl Harbor, about Hitler´s probable “fake death” and escape to South America, and the lessons learned from WWII corporate strategy analysis. That will be my last episode about this example. Furthermore, we will proceed with the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act (1930), a United States Act implementing protectionist trade policies.

Thank you. And see you next week. Until then, tons of hugs for you!

Sources of Reference utilized to write this article:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler/World-War-II

https://brewminate.com/a-timeline-of-hitlers-rise-and-fall/

https://www.historyonthenet.com/what-were-the-causes-of-world-war-ii

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/rise-to-world-power/us-wwii/v/beginning-of-world-war-ii

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/a-psychological-analysis-of-adolph-hitler-his-life-and-legend-complete-bibliography

https://theconversation.com/us/topics/world-war-ii-1678

Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. All the presentation slides shown on this blog are prepared by Eleonora Escalante. Nevertheless, all the pictures, images or videos shown on this blog are not mine.  I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated. 

Published by eleonoraescalantestrategy

Corporate Strategy Artist, San Salvador, El Salvador View all posts by eleonoraescalantestrategy