January 27, 2010 Period 1 Research Paper: Adolf Hitler Hitler is most commonly known for the unforgivable deeds that he committed in his lifetime. Those acts were terrible and left a scar on the world that can never be mended. However, Hitler did possess extreme brilliance. He was innovative and smart, but as his mind was tainted and as he turned against non-Aryans over time, the possibility of using his brilliance to be an artist slowly drifted from his mind. He was originally a young man who moved to Vienna to become an artist, but his dreams changed to something completely different. On April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, a town located on the borders of Austria and Hungary. He was the fourth child of the marriage of Alois Hitler, a custom official who was 51 years old at the date of Adolf’s birth and his wife was 28. Adolf had a sister, Paula; a half brother, Alois; and a half sister, Angela. Six years after Adolf’s birth, his father retired and moved to Linz, Austria where Adolf received good marks in elementary school, but he did not do well in high school. Adolf’s harsh, short-tempered father was angry about how poorly he did in high school and wanted him to become a civil servant, not an artist like his son wanted to. Later, he wrote: “I yawned and grew sick to my stomach at the thought of sitting in an office, deprived of my liberty; ceasing to be the master of my own time and being compelled to force the content of a whole life into blanks that had to be filled out” (Haugen, 20). In 1903, Alois died and Adolf was able to convince his mother to let him drop out at the age of sixteen 2 ½ years later. Hitler’s mother drew a widow’s pension and owned some property. Adolf did not have to work, spending his days daydreaming, drawing pictures, and reading. Hitler went to Vienna, the capital of Austria-Hungary, in 1907, to continue to pursue his dream of being an artist. The first time he attempted to get into art school, the art he showed the Academy of Fine Arts was considered good but he was unable to get into the school nonetheless. On his second time he was not allowed to even take an entrance examination to see if he could enter. On December 21 of that year, Hitler’s mother died from cancer and Hitler never told his mother he wasn’t admitted into the art school. Later, Adolf wrote “The death of my mother put a sudden end to all my high-flown plans. …It was a dreadful blow, particularly for me. I had honored my father, but my mother I had loved” (Haugen, 25). Adolf lived in Vienna with his best friend, August Kubizek, who were both there to study music. As he spent time in Vienna he developed a growing hatred toward non-Aryans, a supposedly perfect race of non-Jewish, pure blooded Germans with blue eyes and blond hair. In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, Germany, where the Austrian Army called him for a physical examination and was found unfit for service, but Hitler volunteered immediately to become a messenger and was accepted. He was in the Western front for the majority of the war, taking part in some of the most gruesome battles. He had a few near death experiences, such as the time a bullet went through the sleeve of his shirt and didn’t even hit his actual body, which convinced him that he was part of some bigger purpose in life. When Germany surrendered in November 1918, Hitler was very disturbed by the news of the armistice when he was in a military hospital recovering from temporary blindness and believed that he must try to save Germany since the unity of the German nation was jeopardized. The German people were shocked that they were defeated in World War II and the army found a bankrupted country run by a socialist-liberal republic in which millions of Germans could not find word when it returned. Following the war, Germany had to sign the Treaty of Versailles which held Germany responsible for the war and took much of Germany’s territory. The German Army was restricted to a hundred thousand men and provided for a fifteen year foreign occupation of a part of western Germany called the Rhineland; the worst part was the demand Germany pay huge reparations which made peace difficult. It was demanded that the “criminals” who signed the treaty were punished, Hitler included. Hitler returned to Munich following his recovery from the blindness caused by the mustard gas and served in the army until March 1920. In the fall of 1919, he began to attend meetings of a small nationalist group called the German Workers’ Party, which he joined. When he was part of it, he renamed it the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and the group soon became known as the Nazi party. The Nazis called the union one nation of all Germans, including the Austrians and German minorities in Czechoslovakia and other countries, and demanded the deprivation of German citizenship to those who were of non-German or Jewish origin. The cancellation of the Treaty of Versailles was demanded as well. Adolf was a great politician and organizer who became leader of the Nazis and quickly increased the number of Nazi members. Hitler said in his speeches that the Nazi party could restore the economy, assure work for all, and restore .