Adolf Hitler, one-time Austrian vagabond who rose to be the dictator of Germany, "augmenter of the Reich" and the scourge of Europe, was, like Lenin and Mussolini, a product of the First World War. The same general circumstances, born of the titanic conflict, that carried Lenin, a bookish professional revolutionist, to the pinnacle of power in the Empire of the Czars and cleared the road to mastery for Mussolini in the Rome of the Caesars also paved the way for Hitler's domination in the former mighty Germany of the Hohenzollerns.

Like Lenin and Mussolini, Hitler came out of the blood and chaos of 1914-18, but of the three he was the strangest phenomenon. Lenin, while not know to the general public, had for many years before the Russian Revolution occupied a prominent place as leader and theoretician, of the Bolshevist party. Mussolini was a widely known Socialist editor, orator and politician before making his bid for power. Hitler was nothing, and from nothing he became everything to most Germans.

Lenin dreamed of world revolution. Mussolini thundered of the coming world victory of fascism. Hitler actually challenged the earth to combat by unleashing another war of nations. Emerging from the field in 1918 as an obscure lance corporal, he led Germany twenty-one years later as supreme Fuehrer and War Lord.

Subdued Many Nations

Before the climax of a career unparalleled in history, he had subdued nine nations, defied successfully and humiliated the greatest powers of Europe, and created a social and economic system founded upon the complete subjection of scores of millions to his will in all basic features of social, political, economic and cultural life.

Sixty-five million Germans yielded to the blandishments and magnetism of this slender man of medium height, with little black mustache and shock of dark hair, whose fervor and demagogy swept everything before him with outstretched arms as the savior and regenerator of the Fatherland.

Austria, with 7,000,000 inhabitants, succumbed helplessly to his invasion. More than 2,000,000 Germans in the Sudeten country were added to his domain when he threatened to invade Czechoslovakia, and 10,000,000 Czechs and Slovaks were tied to his chariot wheel, their nation stripped of its defenses, their State destroyed, while all of Central Europe trembled before what appeared to be the irresistible advance of the goose- stepping Nazi hordes of his adopted country.

For more than six years after his advent to power in January, 1933, there seemed to be no one who would dare to challenge Hitler's progress from victory to victory until he met resistance from Poland, backed by the Anglo-French alliance.

Shortly after his dismemberment and subjugation of Czechoslovakia Hitler was reported to have said, "My time is short." His blow against Poland and challenge to France and England less than a year later were taken as indications that he had determined deliberately to stake all he had achieved and all that he still yearned for--domination of Europe--upon one card, war, sensing, perhaps, that time was against him, that he had unleashed forces of hatred and opposition throughout the world that might eventually destroy him.