ABSTRACT
The crimes against humanity perpetrated between 1933 and 1945 were largely due to the murderous regimes of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in Russia. Scholars most certainly try to understand his anti-Semitism and many have attributed great significance to his putative Jewish grandfather. Although he did feel quite special and loved by his mother, her masochistic submissiveness to her husband left young Hitler feeling unprotected and unable to trust her. Hitler’s father died when Hitler was fourteen and this was followed four years later by his mother dying from breast cancer. Despite the competent ministrations of her Jewish doctor, whom Hitler quietly helped escape Europe years later, he was left on his own with no guidance. The accompanying mass murder of Josef Goebbels’s children and the suicide of the adults in his underground bunker was the grand finale of this tragic “hero” who refused to be captured and be at the mercy of his inferior enemies.
