Details About Hitler We Can't Ignore Any Longer

That the Nazis were given power by the German electorate is a popular simplification of the history of fascism, one that posits a wave of middle- and working-class resentments elevating Hitler and company to power (per The Atlantic). It's a view not entirely unfounded. But it's one that doesn't account for the peculiarities of German politics in the 1930s, the state and system of the Weimar Republic, the tactics of the Nazis, and what surviving records show about their supporters. The whole picture looks less like a despot swept in by a frenzy of disgruntled voters and more like an opportunistic gaming of politics and media — backed up by violence. Read on for the story of how Adolf Hitler really came into power.

On a February night in 1933 in Berlin, flames leaped from the roof of the parliament building called the Reichstag. Police captured the suspected arsonist, Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist. The newly appointed German Chancellor Adolf Hitler watched the flames and saw opportunity. According to an eye witness, Hitler shouted, "'There will be no mercy now. Anyone who stands in our way will be cut down" (via The German Historical Institute). The young politician from the Nazi party continued, "Everybody in league with the Communists must be arrested. There will no longer be any leniency for Social Democrats either."

Adolf Hitler was addicted to opiates — to many, this may seem like an accusation out of the blue, but author Norman Ohler makes a compelling case for this exact fact in his book "Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany." Within the book, Ohler outlines how the Nazi forces and Hitler himself turned to drugs in order to keep up their energy and the Nazi war effort. Ironically, during the rise of the Nazi regime, users of Illicit drugs were viewed as "undesirable social elements," per The New Republic, and those who partook were persecuted along with the other targets of Hitler's ire. But Hiter's drugs came from his personal doctor.

When Adolf Hitler died by suicide with the fall of the Nazi Third Reich on April 30, 1945, he did so having been forced into the "Führerbunker," a series of subterranean rooms where he and his closest allies shielded themselves from the heavy bombardment of Soviet forces during the Battle of Berlin. The bunker in question was built many feet below the New Reich Chancellery, a sumptuous primary residence that the Nazi leader had commissioned in 1938 to "make an impression on people." According to "Inside the Third Riech," the memoirs of the man tasked with creating the new chancellery, Albert Speer, Hitler had ordered him to make the building quickly but "of solid construction," telling him: "The cost is immaterial."

Hitler's love life has been the subject of considerable speculation, and Braun was far from the only woman associated with him. Perhaps predictably, there's a trend in the women that he was seen with, and that's a grisly end. So, who were they, what was their relationship to the dictator, and what happened to them? History is a little unclear on some of the details, but let's talk about what we do know.