HITLER, Adolf (1889-1945)
The rise of Adolf Hitler to the position of dictator of Germany is the
story of a frenzied ambition that plunged the world into the worst war in
history. Only an army corporal in World War I, Hitler became Germany's
chancellor 15 years later.
He was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria, of German
descent. His father Alois was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna
Schicklgruber. In middle age Alois took the name Hitler from his paternal
grandfather. After two wives had died Alois married his foster daughter,
Klara Poelzl, a Bavarian, 23 years younger than he. She became Adolf's
mother.
Hitler's rambling, emotional autobiography 'Mein Kampf' (My Struggle)
reveals his unstable ...
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verge of tears." From boyhood he was devoted to Wagner's
operas that glorified the Teutons' dark and furious mythology.
Failure dogged him. After his father's death, when Adolf was 13, he
studied watercolor painting, but accomplished little. After his mother's
death, when he was 19, he went to Vienna. There the Academy of Arts
rejected him as untalented. Lacking business training, Hitler eked out a
living as a laborer in the building trades and by painting cheap postcards.
He often slept in parks and ate in free soup kitchens.
These humbling experiences inflamed his discontent. He hated Austria as
"a patchwork nation" and looked longingly across the border at energetic,
powerful Germany. He wrote, "I was convinced that the State [Austria] was
sure to obstruct every really great German and to support . . . everything
un-German. . . . I hated the motley collection [in Austria] of Czechs,
Ruthenians, Poles, Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, and above all that ever-
present fungoid growth ...
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Ypres.
The armistice found him in a hospital, temporarily blinded by mustard
gas and suffering from shock. The news of Germany's defeat agonized him. He
believed defeat had been caused by "enemies within," chiefly Jews and
Communists.
Now no longer an Austrian citizen and not yet a German citizen, Hitler
at the war's end was a man without a country. Bewildered, he remained in
the army, stationed in Munich. In the political and economic tempest that
swept defeated Germany, Munich became a storm center. Officers of the
beaten Reichswehr (German army) conspired to win control of Germany. They
maintained "informers," one of whom was Adolf Hitler. He was assigned to
report on "subversive ...
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"HITLER, Adolf (1889-1945)." Essayworld.com. December 28, 2007. Accessed April 19, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/HITLER-Adolf-1889-1945/76590.
"HITLER, Adolf (1889-1945)." Essayworld.com. December 28, 2007. Accessed April 19, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/HITLER-Adolf-1889-1945/76590.
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