The holocaust was a moment in history when time stopped and the soft skies were blackened by the soot of human corpses. It was a time when hate was so nurtured that 6 million innocent people lost their lives. Who was the master of this bloody circus? Whose finger wound that sharp clock of violence and pain? His name was Adolph Hitler, or as the European Jews cried out to the world, the dark monster.

He was born on a rainy spring day in Austria, 1889. His siblings called him “Adi” before they died tragically at young ages. Only his sister Paula survived childhood. When Hitler was just 13 he buried his strict father and later his mother who slipped away from breast cancer. It was a Jewish doctor that could not save Hitler’s precious mother. After her death many who knew him argue he was never the same. Nurtured by death and raised by loneliness Hitler turned to his one love for comfort; Art. But life still refused to permit him happiness. Vienna Academy of art refused him twice and marked his work as childlike scribbles. He lived on the streets, selling his unloved art for spare change.

Now a man, Hitler decided to serve in World War One for the German military. He fought a harsh four years and earned two Iron crosses for bravery. But these metals of honest appreciation did not ease his heart when Germany admitted defeat and surrendered. He felt “betrayed” and “stabbed in the back.” And so he pointed his war stained fingers at the Jews, firmly believing they had been the cause of Germany’s defeat. Delusional with rage and lost in a world where he loved no one, Hitler decided to exterminate Jewish people.

With his goal fresh in his mind Hitler entered into the squeaky world of politics. He bounced around from position to position, eventually even trying to take down the government through his group, The Beer Hall Putsch. After this stunt he was thrown behind bars where he wrote a memoir called My Struggle. In it he painted his twisted visions out onto paper and organized his demented thoughts. After serving nine months in prison Hitler dove back into the government and became chancellor of Germany. Power cloaked him in a mask of trust that won over the people of Germany and when the president died in 1934 he placed himself high as supreme leader of the German people. And so his scarred reign began

The message was this: Jews were vermin and needed to be exterminated. He wanted Germany to be a clean slate, one where only the superior Arian race lived. Suddenly death camps polluted German soil. Inferior people such as Jews, the mentally ill, Gypsies, and dark headed people were sent die in Hitler’s slummy camps. 12,000 succumbed to death every day, their skeleton bodies falling into the graves they dug themselves. Others were pushed into gas chamber where they chocked on noxious fumes. How could the Nazi’s be so cruel? How could so blatantly murder children and helpless people based on one man’s nod? According to Hitler, “If I tell you a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough it will be believed.” So there it is; the frequent lie that killed.

Hitler committed suicide with his adoring wife in 1945. It wasn’t long after that the curtains were drawn on World War Two. Although Hitler is now dead his terrible legacy lives on. Still today people follow his lies and kill for the sake of killing.