Adolf Hitler:

Birth:
At half past six on the evening of April 20th, 1889 an innocent child was born in the small town of Braunau Am Inn, Austria. The name of the child was Adolf Hitler.

Secretive Background:
During his lifetime, Hitler was very secretive about his background. He was the son of a Customs official Alois Hitler, and his third wife Klara. He falsified his father's occupation, changing him from a customs official to a postal official. He repulsed relatives who tried to approach him. One of the first things he did after taking over Austria was to have a survey carried out of the little farming village of Dollerscheim where his father's birth had been recorded. As soon as it could be arranged the inhabitants were evacuated and the entire village was demolished by heavy artillery. Even the graves in the cemetery where his grandmother had been buried were rendered unrecognisable.

Adolf's mother, born Klara Pölzl, was 23 years younger than Alois. She was so closely related to her husband that a special dispensation was sought from Rome before they could marry in 1884. Of the six children born of this marriage, only two survived, Adolfand a younger sister called Paula.
Klara Hitler died from cancer when Adolf was nineteen. She was held in love and affection by Hitler, her Jewish doctor, Eduard Bloch, later recalled: 'I have never witnessed a closer attachment.' Hitler carried her picture with him down to the last days in the bunker. Her portrait stood in his rooms in Munich, Berlin, and at his alpine residence near Berchtesgaden, Obersalzberg. His mother may well have been the only person Adolf Hitler genuinely loved in his entire life.


Centre young Adolf with schoolmates 1900


Initially Alois had taken his mother's name, Schicklgruber, but changed it in 1876 and became Hiedler, or Hitler. Quite important - it is hard to imagine tens of thousands of Germans shouting "Heil Schicklgruber!" instead of "Heil Hitler!"

Adolf Hitler later confided to his only childhood friend, August Kubizek, "that the name Schicklgruber 'seemed to him so uncouth, so boorish, apart from being so clumsy and unpractical. But 'Hitler' sounded rich and was easy to remember."

His father, Alois, retired from civil service in 1895, when Hitler was only six, which created a tense, strict atmosphere at home.

Young Adolf attended church regularly, sang in the local choir and spent hours playing 'cowboys and Indians' and revelled in the westerns penned by Karl May. He grew up with a poor record at school and left, before completing his tuition, with an ambition to become an artist or architect. Alois Hitler had died when Adolf was thirteen and Klara brought up Adolf and his sister, Paula, on her own. Times were tough for the Hitler household. In 1905, at age 16, Adolf quit school and never returned.

A neighbour of the Hitler family later recalled:'When the postmaster asked him one day what he wanted to do for a living and whether he wouldn't like to join the post-office, he replied that it was his intention to become a great artist ...'



Hitler as an Artist:
Hitler dreamed of becoming an artist, so in 1907 he applied to the painting school at the Vienna Academy of Art. He did not pass the entrance exam.

In 1908 he again tried to apply to the Vienna Academy of Art but this time was not even allowed to take the test. Two months later, his mother passed away from breast cancer.

Hitler didn't get much out of it - but in 1999 two paintings and a line drawing by Hitler - completed between 1911 and 1914 - were sold at auction for a total of $131,000.

Hitler spent the next four years in Vienna, living off what little he earned from selling postcards of his architectural drawings and the small inheritance from his mother.Within a year he was living in homeless shelters and eating at charity soup-kitchens. He spent his time reading anti-Semitic tabloids and pamphlets available at the newsstands and at local coffee shops. He had declined to take regular employment and took occasional menial jobs and sold some of his paintings or advertising posters whenever he could to provide sustenance. During this period of time, Hitler started to dabble in politics and became especially influenced by pan-Germanism.

Hitler left school at 16 with no qualifications and struggled to make a living as a painter in Vienna. This was where many of his extreme political and racial ideas originated.



Hitler's nature:
His only boyhood friend, August Kubizek, recalled Hitler as a
*shy,
*reticent young man,
*yet he was able to burst into hysterical fits of anger towards those who disagreed with him.
The two became inseparable during these early years and Kubizek turned out to be a patient listener. He was a good audience for Hitler, who often rambled for hours about his hopes and dreams.
*Sometimes Hitler even gave speeches complete with wild hand gestures to his audience of one.
*Hitler would only tolerate approval from his friend and could not stand to be corrected, a personality trait he had shown in high school and as a younger boy as well.

Adolf Hitler already showed traits that characterized his later life:
*inability to establish ordinary human relationships,
*intolerance and hatred of especially the Jews,
*a tendency toward denunciatory outbursts,
*readiness to live in a fantasy-world and so to escape his failure.





Decisive event in Hitler's life:
Then one day in 1905 the pair went to see a performance of Wagner's Rienzi at the Linz Memorial Theater. This became a decisive event for the teenaged Hitler, as he was to refer to it after he came to power. In Kubizek's biography of Hitler The Young Hitler I Knew, 1953, he recalls how it had a terrifying impact upon Hitler, who left the Theater in a state of trance: "Adolf stood in front of me; and now he gripped both my hands and held them tight. He had never made such a gesture before. I felt from the grasp of his hands how deeply moved he was. His eyes were feverish with excitement .. Never before and never again have I heard Adolf Hitler speak as he did in that hour, as we stood there alone under the stars, as though we were the only creatures in the world. He now spoke of a mission that he was one day to receive from our people, in order to guide them out of slavery, to the heights of freedom .."

Thirty years later, the boyhood friends would meet again in Bayreuth, and Kubizek told Adolf Hitler what he remembered of that night, assuming that the enormous multitude of impressions and events which had filled these past decades would have pushed into the background the experience of a seventeen year old youth. But after a few words Kubizek sensed that Hitler vividly recalled that hour and had retained all its details in his memory. Hitler's words were unforgettable for August Kubizek: "It began at that hour!".

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Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.