Leopold Poetsch
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Leopold Poetsch was a German professor and a high school teacher of Adolf Hitler who influenced the future leader's later views.
Poetsch came from the southern German border regions. There, political fights between Slavs and ethnic Germans angered him and turned him into an active supporter of the Pan-German movement. He began teaching in Maribor, Slovenia and later moved to Linz, Austria to teach history.
Hitler was very interested in the professor's emotional speeches. Poetsch hated the Habsburgs and argued that all ethnic Germans should be united by a single government. He said that the Aryan race was stronger, healthier, and more fit to rule than any other people. Poetsch said that Jews and Slavs were what he called "inferior races". (This view was fairly common in Germany after World War I.)
Hitler began reading a local anti-Semitic newspaper. In his later years, Hitler spoke of Poetsch as a "great man." As dictator of Germany, Hitler tried to unite all German-speaking people and persecuted Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, and other minorities. Hitler eventually tried to kill them all in the "Final Solution."
[change] References
- Shirer, William L. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon & Schuster, 1990. ISBN 0-671-72868-7