Trama

A profile of the life of Adolf Hitler with a unique slant, as a child and his rise through the ranks of the National Socialist German Workers Party prior to World War II.

This movie describes the life of Adolf Hitler from childhood to manhood, and how he became so powerful. It describes his poor childhood in Austria, it describes World War I from his point of view, and how he became the strongest man in Germany. This movie shows us how Hitler turned from a poor soldier into the leader of the Nazis, and how he survived the attempts to kill him. It describes his relationship with his mistress Eva Braun, and his decisions and enemies inside Germany and inside the Nazi party.—rsilberman

The opening is a montage of Adolf Hitler's life from 1899 to 1913, when he left Austria for Munich. His participation in the First World War on the German side is then shown in a series of episodes that include his promotion to the rank of corporal, his awarding the Iron Cross for bravery and his blinding during a gas attack and his subsequent medical treatment, during which he learns Germany has surrendered.

In 1919, Hitler returns to a revolutionary Munich and, still employed by the Imperial German Army, is assigned to report on the newly formed political parties in the city. After attending a meeting on the German Workers' Party, he is recruited by the party's leader, Anton Drexler, to organize its propaganda activities and give increasingly popular speeches that harp on the themes that Germany has been betrayed by the leaders that surrendered in the last war and that Communists and Jews are sapping the German spirit from within. After meeting the wealthy art publisher Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler is encouraged to refine his image and create a symbol for the party, which he does by adopting the swastika. Hanfstaengl also puts Hitler into contract for the city's influential figures, including the war hero Hermann Goring, and the militant Ernst Rohm, eventual organizer of the paramilitary SA, who Hitler had met previously but was unable to afford him and his men. In 1921, Hitler forces Drexler to resign and takes over as leader of the renamed National Socialist Party.

In 1923, the Minister of Bavaria, Gustav von Kahr, urged on by his speechwriter, the journalist Fritz Gerlich, attempts to outfox Hitler by convincing him that he prepared to stage a military coup against the national government in Berlin and that Hitler must remain silent, or his party can play no part into this. Upon learning that the proposed putsch is merely a ruse, Hitler confronts Kahr at gunpoint and coerces him and his associated into supporting his own plan for a putsch. Rohn and the SA plan to take over the military barracks into preparations for a march on Berlin, but the attempted coup is quickly crushed. Hitler takes refuge at the Hansftaengl home, almost resorting to suicide before Ernst's wife takes the gun from his hand.

Arrested by the authorities and tried for treason, Hitler manages to use the trial to his advantage, winning over the audience and the judge with his courtroom theatrics, with only Gerlich and the prosecutors unmoved by his speeches. Consequently, he is awarded a lenient sentence in Landsberg Prison, where he writes his memoirs (later published as "Mein Kampf"). In 1925, Hitler goes to the countryside to escape from politics and is joined by his older half sister, Angela, and her daughter, Geli Raubal. When he returns to Munich, Hitler takes Geli with him.

Eschewing revolution, Hitler now demands that the party follow a democratic course to power. That declaration puts him into conflict with Rohn, but Hitler's demand for complete subordination of the party to himself as Fuhrer (Leader) wins the approval of most others, including a young agitator named Joseph Goebbels. During the late 1920s, the party's political fortunes improve on account of Hitler's speeches and the stock marker crash ruining the economy, with the National Socialists gaining more and more seats in the Reichstag with each election. Alarmed by the party's growing popularity, Gerlich continues to write articles into opposition to Hitler and, when the paper's editor fires him, forms his own newspaper called The Straight Path.

Meanwhile, Hitler forms a relationship with Geli but eventually, distraught by his overbearing control of her life, she commits suicide, after which Hitler forms a relationship with Eva Braun.

In 1932, Hitler becomes a German citizen and runs for president against the incumbent, Paul von Hindenburg. Although he is unsuccessful, the party becomes the largest in the Reichstag shortly after, which emboldens Hitler to demand that he be made Chancellor of Germany. Though Hindenburg despises Hitler, the former Chancellor Franz von Papen helps bring that about in January 1933. Later, the Reichstag building is set on fire, allegedly by a communist. and Hitler uses the incident to have members of the Reichstag award him dictatorial powers, which includes suspension of civil liberties such as freedom of the press. As a consequence, Gerlich's newspaper is shut down and he is arrested by the SA and sent to a concentration camp.

Germany now becomes a police state, and Hitler crushes most of his opponents, both inside and outside the party, which sees Rohm being arrested and the SA greatly reduced. Rohm is later sentenced to death along with others like von Kahr and Gerlich, and the rest of the SA is absorbed into the Reichswehr army. After Hindenburg's death on August 2, 1934, Hitler combines the office of president and chancellor into one, finally making him the ultimate ruler of Germany.