{"id":582,"date":"2012-04-20T08:41:54","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T14:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=582"},"modified":"2012-08-11T13:31:30","modified_gmt":"2012-08-11T19:31:30","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-15-april-21-april-1940-hitlers-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 15 April&#8211;21 April 1940: Hitler&#8217;s birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=2006\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2006\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-2006\" title=\"Hitler as a baby\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Whitlerbaby-102x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"102\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Whitlerbaby-102x150.jpg 102w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Whitlerbaby-205x300.jpg 205w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Whitlerbaby.jpg 410w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 102px) 100vw, 102px\" \/><\/a>Saturday 20 April 1940 was Adolf Hitler&#8217;s fifty-first birthday. In a typically ebullient radio broadcast, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said, &#8220;The German people have found in the Fuehrer the incarnation of their strength and the most brilliant exponent of their national aims.&#8221;\u00a0American journalist, William L. Shirer, quoted this passage in his <em>Berlin Diary (1934&#8211;1941)<\/em>, noting that the birthday celebrations were poorly attended that year. (The fighting in Norway still continued and German casualties were mounting).<\/p>\n<p>Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria, son of Alois and Klara Hitler, and spent his formative &#8216;<em>bohemian&#8217; <\/em>years in Vienna before serving in the German army during\u00a0World War I. These experiences formed the basis for his monograph, <em>Mein Kampf<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=637\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-637\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-637\" title=\"Hitler\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Whitler5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Whitler5.jpg 300w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Whitler5-150x105.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Hitler&#8217;s rise to power, both nationally and internationally, the Nuremberg rallies, the Berlin Olympics, the Phoney War, the events surrouding the <em>Blitzkrieg<\/em>, and the French surrender in the forest of Compiegne, were all observed and recorded by Shirer in his capacity as chief of Universal News Service&#8217;s Berlin office.<\/p>\n<p>Shirer\u00a0finally left Germany when it became clear that the Gestapo had taken an interest in his activities.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=659\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-659\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-659\" title=\"The Rise and Fall...\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Wriseand-fall.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"181\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Wriseand-fall.jpg 181w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Wriseand-fall-90x150.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 181px) 100vw, 181px\" \/><\/a>Hitler, along with his mistress, Eva Braun, would die on 30 May 1945 in the ruins of Berlin. Shirer went on to write several non-fiction books based upon his wartime experiences, most notably <em>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich<\/em> (1960).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday 20 April 1940 was Adolf Hitler&#8217;s fifty-first birthday. In a typically ebullient radio broadcast, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said, &#8220;The German people have found in the Fuehrer the incarnation of their strength and the most brilliant exponent of their &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=582\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[45,7,43],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-world-war-ii","tag-eva-braun","tag-hitler","tag-shirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2007,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions\/2007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}