Adolf Hitler was the ruler of Germany from 1933 to
1945. Guided by concepts of elitism and racism, he established a brutal
totalitarian regime under the ideological banner of National Socialism, or
Nazism. His drive for empire Line resulted in the devastation of World War II,
culminating in Germany’s defeat and the reordering of world power relationships.
Hitler failed as a student in the classical secondary schools, a situation that
contributed to his desire to become an artist. He went to Vienna in 1907 but was
unable to gain admission to the Academy of Fine Arts. He lived a shadowy,
alienated existence in multiracial Vienna until 1913. His years were
characterized by melancholy, aimlessness, and racial hatred—in Vienna he
developed his lifelong obsession with the danger that world Jewry posed to the
Aryan race. Hitler’s rise to power paralleled the unstable
course of the Weimar Republic, which replaced the fallen Hohenzollern
monarchy(霍亨索伦王朝). The abortive Communist revolution in Germany and the dictated
Peace of Versailles determined Hitler’s decision to enter politics. In 1919 he
joined a small political faction in Munich and within the next year formed the
National Socialist German Workers’ Party. He directed the organizations with an
iron hand and used its meetings to deliver forceful rhetorical assaults on
Germany’s enemies. In 1923 he led the party into the ill-fated Munich Putsch.
This action resulted in his imprisonment. While in prison at
Landsberg, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf(我的奋斗)(德语), which became the standard work of
Nazi political philosophy. He defined the enemy as world Jewry, international
communism, effete liberalism, and decadent capitalism. Hitler offered instead
pure Aryan blood and the renewal of German nationalism under a fighting elite.
Germany would once more become the leading power on the Continent and gain its
living space in central Europe and Russia. According to the passage, ______.
A. Hitler replaced the failed Hohenzollern monarchy with the Weimar
Republic
B. the Weimar Republic installed Hitler to replace the failed Hohenzollern
monarchy
C. Hitler’s ascendance coincides with the decline of the Weimar
Republic
D. Hitler’s decline coincided with the ascendance of the Weimar
Republic