Adolf Hitler 1 Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler Hitler in 1937 Führer of Germany In office 2 August 1934 – 30 April 1945 Preceded by Paul von Hindenburg (as President) Succeeded by Karl Dönitz (as President) Chancellor of Germany In office 30 January 1933 – 30 April 1945 President Paul von Hindenburg Deputy • Franz von Papen • Position vacant Preceded by Kurt von Schleicher Succeeded by Joseph Goebbels Reichsstatthalter of Prussia In office 30 January 1933 – 30 January 1935 Prime Minister • Franz von Papen • Hermann Göring Preceded by Office created Succeeded by Office abolished Personal details Born 20 April 1889 Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary Died 30 April 1945 (aged 56) Berlin, Germany [1] Nationality • Austrian citizen until 7 April 1925 • German citizen after 25 February 1932 Political party National Socialist German Workers' Party (1921–1945) Adolf Hitler 2 Other political German Workers' Party (1920–1921) affiliations Spouse(s) Eva Braun (29–30 April 1945) Occupation Politician, soldier, artist, writer Religion See Adolf Hitler's religious views Signature Military service Allegiance German Empire Service/branch Reichsheer Years of service 1914–1918 Rank Gefreiter Unit 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment Battles/wars World War I Awards • Iron Cross First Class • Iron Cross Second Class • Wound Badge Adolf Hitler German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler was at the centre of the founding of Nazism, the start of World War II, and the Holocaust. A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe. Hitler's foreign and domestic policies had the goal of seizing Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germanic people. He directed the rearmament of Germany and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939, leading to the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Under Hitler's rule, in 1941 German forces and their European allies occupied most of Europe and North Africa. By 1943, Hitler's military decisions led to escalating defeats. In 1945 the Allied armies successfully invaded Germany. Hitler's supremacist and racially motivated policies resulted in the systematic murder of eleven million people, including an estimated six million Jews. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. On 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two committed suicide to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Adolf Hitler 3 Early years Ancestry Hitler's father, Alois Hitler (1837–1903), was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of Alois's father, so Alois bore his mother's surname. In 1842 Johann Georg Hiedler married Anna. After she died in 1847 and he in 1856, Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler.[2] It was not until 1876 that Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest before three witnesses.[3] While awaiting trial at Nuremberg in 1945, Nazi official Hans Frank suggested the existence of letters claiming that Alois' mother was employed as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Graz and that the family's 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger, had fathered Alois.[4] However, no Frankenberger, Jewish or otherwise, was registered in Graz during that period.[5] Historians doubt the claim that Alois' father was Jewish.[6][7] At age 39, Alois assumed the surname "Hitler", also spelled as "Hiedler", "Hüttler", or "Huettler". The origin of the name is either "one who lives in a hut" (Standard German Hütte), "shepherd" (Standard German hüten "to guard", English "heed"), or is from the Slavic words Hidlar and Hidlarcek.[8] Childhood and education Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Ranshofen,[9] a village annexed in 1938 to the municipality of Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary. He was the fourth of six children to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl (1860–1907). Adolf's older siblings – Gustav, Ida, and Otto – died in infancy.[10] When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany.[11] There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, rather than Austrian German, which marked his speech all of his life.[12][13][14] In 1894 the family relocated to Leonding (near Linz), and in June 1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld, near Lambach, where he tried his hand at farming and beekeeping. Adolf attended school in nearby Fischlham. Hitler became fixated on warfare after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War among his father's belongings.[15][16] The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father-son conflicts Adolf Hitler as an infant caused by Adolf's refusal to conform to the strict discipline of his school.[17] (c. 1889–1890) Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and in 1897 the family moved to Lambach. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even entertained thoughts of becoming a priest.[18] In 1898 the family returned permanently to Leonding. The death of his younger brother, Edmund, from measles on 2 February 1900 deeply affected Hitler. He changed from being confident and outgoing and an excellent student, to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.[19] Adolf Hitler 4 Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps.[20] Hitler later dramatised an episode from this period when his father took him to visit a customs office, depicting it as an event that gave rise to an unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed.[21][22][23] Ignoring his son's desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist, in September 1900 Alois sent Adolf to the Realschule in Linz.[24] (This was the same high school that Adolf Eichmann would attend some 17 years later.)[25] Hitler rebelled against this decision, and in Mein Kampf revealed that he did poorly in school, hoping that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to my dream."[26] Hitler became obsessed with German nationalism from a young age.[27] He Hitler's mother, Klara expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg Monarchy and its rule over an ethnically-variegated empire.[28][29] Hitler and his friends used the German greeting "Heil", and sang the German anthem "Deutschland Über Alles" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem.[30] After Alois' sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's performance at school deteriorated. His mother allowed him to quit in autumn 1905.[31] He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in September 1904; his behaviour and performance showed some slight and gradual improvement.[32] In the autumn of 1905, after passing a repeat and the final exam, Hitler left the school without showing any ambitions for further schooling or clear plans for a career.[33] Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich From 1905, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna, financed by orphan's benefits and support from his mother. He worked as a casual labourer and eventually as a painter, selling watercolours. The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna rejected him twice, in 1907 and 1908, because of his "unfitness for painting". The director recommended that Hitler study architecture,[34] but he lacked the academic credentials.[35] On 21 December 1907, his mother died aged 47. After the Academy's second rejection, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909 he lived in a The house in Leonding where Hitler spent his homeless shelter, and by 1910, he had settled into a house for poor early adolescence (c.1984) working men on Meldemannstraße.[36] At the time Hitler lived there, Vienna was a hotbed of religious prejudice and 19th-century racism.[37] Fears of being overrun by immigrants from the East were widespread, and the populist mayor, Karl Lueger, exploited the rhetoric of virulent antisemitism for political effect. Georg Schönerer's pan-Germanic antisemitism had a strong following and base in the Mariahilf district, where Hitler lived.[38] Hitler read local newspapers, such as the Deutsches Volksblatt, that fanned prejudice and played on Christian fears of being swamped by an influx of eastern Jews.[39] Hostile to what he saw as Catholic "Germanophobia", he developed an admiration for Martin Luther.[40] Adolf Hitler 5 The origin and first expression of Hitler's antisemitism have been difficult to locate.[41] Hitler states in Mein Kampf that he first became an antisemite in Vienna.[42] His close friend, August Kubizek, claimed that Hitler was a "confirmed antisemite" before he left Linz.[43] Kubizek's account has been challenged by historian Brigitte Hamann, who writes that Kubizek is the only person to have said that the young Hitler was an antisemite.[44] Hamann also notes that no antisemitic remark has been documented from Hitler during this period.[45] Historian Ian Kershaw suggests that if Hitler had made such remarks, The Alter Hof in Munich.