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From the first day that Adolf Hitler seized power, January 30, 1933, he knew that only sudden death awaited him if he failed to restore pride and empire to post Versailles Germany. His close friend and adjutant Julius Schaub recorded Hitler's jubilant boast to his staff on that evening, as the last celebrating guests left the Berlin Chancellery building: No power on earth will get me out of this building alive! Adolf Hitler, murderer of millions, master of destruction and organized insanity, did not come into the world as a monster. He was not sent to earth by the devil, nor was he sent by heaven to "bring order" to Germany, to give the country the autobahn and rescue it from its economic crisis.
At half past six on the evening of April 20 th, 1889 an innocent child was born in the small town of Braunau Am Inn, Austria. The name of the child was Adolf Hitler. He was the son a Customs official Alois Hitler, and his third wife Klara. Initially Alois had taken his mother's name, Schicklgruber, but changed it in 1876 and became Hitler, 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's owned rich and was easy to remember. " Adolf's mother, born Klara Plan, 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, Adolf and a younger sister called Paula.
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. 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... ' 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. 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!" .
During his lifetime, Hitler was very secretive about his background. Only the dimmest outline of his parents emerges from the biographical chapters of Mein Kampf. 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. 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. To fulfil his dream, Hitler in 1909 moved to Vienna, the capital of Austria, where the Academy of Arts was located. To his own surprise he failed to get admission. 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. 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. By Hitlers own accounting, he painted between one and three watercolours a day during his Vienna years. If one assumes he painted only one painting a day, and only three days a week, then the minimum number he would have painted would be six hundred, which is remarkably close to Hitler's own recollection over a thousand.
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. He learned to loathe brilliant, charming, cosmopolitan Vienna for what he called its Semitism. More to his liking was homogeneous Munich, his real home after 1913. To this man of no trade and few interests World War I was a welcome event - it gave him some purpose in life. So Hitler went to Munich, Germany and when World War I began in 1914, he volunteered for service in the German army. Hitler was twice decorated for bravery, but only rose to the rank of corporal.
When World War I ended Hitler was in a hospital recovering from temporary blindness possibly caused by a poison gas attack. The Versailles Treaty that ended the war stripped Germany of much of its territory, forced the country to disarm, and ordered Germany to pay huge reparations. When the army returned to Germany the country was in despair. The country was bankrupt and millions of people were unemployed. In 1920, Hitler joined the National Socialist German Workers Party known as the Nazis. The Nazis called for all Germans, even those in other countries, to unite into one nation; they called for a strong central government; and they called for the cancellation of the Versailles Treaty.
Hitler became leader of the Nazi party and built up membership quickly, mostly because of his powerful speaking ability. Adolf Hitler endorsed the fall of the Weimar Republic, and declared at a public rally on October 30, 1923 that he was prepared to march on Berlin to rid the government of the Communists and the Jews. On November 8, 1923, Hitler held a rally at a Munich beer hall and proclaimed a revolution. The following day, he led 2, 000 armed "brown-shirts" in an attempt to take over the Bavarian government. This putsch was resisted and put down by the police, after more than a dozen were killed in the fighting. Hitler suffered a broken and dislocated arm in the melee, was arrested, and was imprisoned at Landsberg.
He received a five-year sentence. Hitler se...
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