Leopold Poetsch

Leopold Poetsch (or Pötsch) 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 struggles between Slavs and ethnic Germans angered him and turned him into a loud and fiery proponent of the Pan-German movement. He began teaching in Maribor, and later moved to Linz to teach history.

Hitler became enamored of Poetsch as a teenager, captivated by the professor's fiery speeches. Poetsch despised the Habsburgs and forcefully argued that all ethnic Germans should be united by a single government. He asserted that the Aryan race was stronger, healthier, and more fit to rule than any other people. Poetsch declared that Jews and Slavs were what he termed "inferior races". (This position was not uncommon among impoverished Germans after World War I.)

Hitler was captivated by Poetsch's teachings and began regularly reading a local anti-Semitic newspaper. In his later years, Hitler spoke of Poetsch as a "great man." As dictator of Germany, Hitler attempted to unite all German-speaking people, just as Poetsch's lectures had demanded, and persecuted Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, and other minorities, eventually attempting to exterminate them in the "Final Solution."

References

• Shirer, William L. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon & Schuster, 1990. ISBN 0-671-72868-7