Naturalization of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (now in modern-day Austria) in 1889. Although an Austrian citizen, he served in the Imperial German Army on the Western Front during World War I. In 1919, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party (DAP) which would subsequently become the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). He gained national notoriety with a failed putsch (armed insurgency) in Munich in November 1923, which led to a trial for high treason and prison for nine months in 1924. The Bavarian authorities attempted several times to deport Hitler afterwards, but Austria refused to take him back.

The court explained why it rejected the deportation of Hitler under the terms of the Protection of the Republic Act:

Hitler is a German-Austrian. He considered himself to be a German. In the opinion of the court, the meaning and the terms of section 9, para II of the Law for the Protection of the Republic cannot apply to a man who thinks and feels as German as Hitler, who voluntarily served for four and a half years in the German army at war, who attained high military honours through outstanding bravery in the face of the enemy, was wounded, suffered other damage to his health, and was released from the military into the control of the district Command Munich I“.^[7]

Thus, since the court refused to deport Hitler, he was allowed to remain in Germany.^[8]

When Hitler's legal status became a matter of public discussion in 1924, he made a public declaration which was printed on 16 October 1924 that stated:

The loss of my Austrian citizenship is not painful to me, as I never felt as an Austrian citizen but always as a German only. ... It was this mentality that made me draw the ultimate conclusion and do military service in the German Army.^[9]

On April 7, 1925, Hitler applied to the High Magistrate of Linz in order to be released from his Austrian citizenship:^[10]

After some weeks, the request was granted and Hitler became stateless, stating it clearly and officially wherever he went.^[11]

At this point Hitler began trying to acquire German citizenship in various ways, while also being involved in the rebuilding of the Nazi Party from the ground up.

The easier way to become a German citizen was to become a Beamter, a German civil servant, because it automatically resulted in naturalization, in accordance to the 1913 Reich and Nationality Act.

Wilhelm Frick, the first Nazi minister in a local German cabinet and a member of the national Reichstag in 1924, tried to force the Bavarian government to grant citizenship to Hitler in 1929 and then to nominate him professor of art at Bauhaus University in Weimar, but failed, as the government was not willing to hire anyone new in that position.

Another attempt was made only a few months later, in July 1930: the Thuringian state parliament was in summer recess and Frick thus gained power over political affairs for a time, as prescribed by the parliament's rules. Frick found no objections to his plan to make Hitler a gendarmerie commissioner in the Thuringian district town of Hildburghausen. Everything was done in secret and the task was accomplished, but Hitler ultimately refused, because that job did not suit him even from a purely formal point of view, thus canceling the naturalization process attempt.^[6]

The next attempt was made at the Free State of Brunswick in 1931, where some Nazis were part of the local government: in particular interior minister Dietrich Klagges, who received the order to naturalize Hitler quickly. Klagges had the idea of appointing him professor for Organic Social Studies and Politics, made possible by making a professorship vacant: SPD member August Riekel [de] was fired for this purpose.^[12] But these shenanigans came to be fiercely debated in the Braunschweig state parliament and thus impossible to carry out.

In January 1932, the scheme was uncovered, leading to the establishment of a parliamentary committee of inquiry. Hitler and several other Nazi politicians were called to testify, though Hitler largely failed to remember most facts and no further legal action was pursued.

Hitler wanted to run in the 1932 presidential election and needed to obtain German citizenship quickly in order to do so. After the scheme was uncovered in January, Klagges had to involve the DVP in order to act with more discretion. Following some debate, which also involved Hans Frank and Ernst Zörner [de] (President of the Braunschweig State Parliament and a friend of Hitler), a solution was found: Hitler was to be placed in the Braunschweig legation to the Reichsrat in Berlin.

To meet legal requirements, Hitler had to be a resident of Braunschweig and became Zörner's subtenant, officially reporting to him from February 26, 1932, to September 16, 1933.

On February 26, 1932, Hitler was sworn in during a ceremony at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin,^[13][14] receiving citizenship from both the Free State of Braunschweig and the Reich. The naturalization process was officially completed on March 1, 1932.

Hitler said as a personal note to the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in the 1938 Anschluss:

I, myself, as Führer and Chancellor, will be happy to walk on the soil of the country that is my home as a free German citizen.^[15][16]

An attempt was made to revoke Hitler's German citizenship in 2007, but this effort failed.^[17][18][19]

• Adolf Hitler's rise to power