Adolf Hitler | Biography, Rise to Power, Quotes, & Facts

Adolf Hitler History

Where Edmund was buried just so happened to be across the street from their house, so he was never able to properly mourn and move on with his life. Adolf Hitler was only 11 years old at that time, and he became very depressed.

The boy spent a lot of time hanging out in the graveyard, lying next to his brother’s grave late into the night. He would talk out loud to his dead brother and stare at the stars. According to Hitler, he was afraid of his father and only loved his mother. Adolf could probably see that his son desperately needed discipline and structure in his life, but Klara was always there to swoop in and baby him. Unfortunately, Alois did not live long enough to make sure Adolf learned to take responsibility for himself.

About Adolf Hitler Facts

Full name:	Adolf Hitler
Age:	56 years
Height:	1.75 m
born:	20 April 1889
death:	30 April 1945
Son:	Jean-Marie Loret
Spouse	Eva Braun
Parents	Alois Hitler, Klara Hitler

Adolf Hitler’s Early Life

Hitler’s Mother Dies

Adolf Hitler was 14 when Alois Hitler died in 1903. When Adolf chose to drop out of high school at the age of 16, Klara didn’t object. Instead of pushing him actually to do something with his life, his mother allowed him to become a “NEET”- which is someone who is not participating in education, employment, or training. As we mentioned earlier, their family was middle-class.

They were not wealthy by any means, and now that his father passed away, his mother was on a strict budget. But young Adolf liked to walk around town wearing fancy clothes and a cane, pretending to be an independently wealthy man.

He had never worked a single day in his entire life. His mother built up his ego so much that he truly believed that he deserved to get everything handed to him simply because he existed. Whenever people in town asked young Adolf Hitler what he planned to do with his life, he declared that he would be the greatest artist in the world. Hitler applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts but was denied admission. “I was so confident that I would be successful that receiving my rejection came as a bolt from the blue,” he wrote.

The works of art attributed to Hitler are nothing special, even after years of practice. He had delusions of grandeur. Klara Hitler died of breast cancer in 1907 when Adolf Hitler was 18 years old. He was crushed because he loved his mother more than anyone in the world. Now that both of his parents were dead, you would think that he would- know, get a job, maybe? But, no. He still had a baffling sense of entitlement and believed that he shouldn’t have to work because he still believed he could be Europe’s greatest artist.

Hitler moved to Vienna and lived like a king off of the inheritance his parents left behind. Alois Hitler worked his entire life to save up that money for retirement, and Adolf spent all of it in just one year. He was so broke that he was forced to live in homeless shelters. Desperate for income, Hitler wrote to family and friends, asking them to support his life as an artist.

Considering that the majority of his relatives were in the working class, the replies were not surprising; They told him to get a job. However, he convinced at least one aunt to start sending him money for his basic needs. After years of practicing on a daily basis, he finally started making a small income by selling watercolor paintings to local businesses and tourists. Still, he would never be able to support himself fully from his art. Life in Germany After World War I In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, Germany, and continued to paint and sell his watercolors.

Adolf Hitler World War 1

When World War I began, there was a new sense of enthusiasm in German pride. His career as a painter wasn’t going anywhere, so he joined the German army. Once he was in the military, he thrived after having some discipline and structure in his life.

He still had a lot of confidence in himself no matter what he did, and this helped him rise through the ranks until he became a Corporal. He believed Germany should have won the war, of course, and he blamed “Jewish propaganda” as the reason why they didn’t win. When the war was over in 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to step down from his throne.

Germany created a new government called the Weimar Republic, and they signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Article 231 of the treaty says, “The Allied and Associated Governments affirm, and Germany accepts the responsibility […] for causing all the loss and damage[…] as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

They were forced to pay money to all of the countries for all of the damage that they caused, as well as give up 13% of their land. Following the war, the Weimar Republic struggled to deal with the crippling debt from the Treaty of Versailles.

This new government tried to create new jobs through public works projects, but the country could not afford to pay for them. So, instead of taking responsibility for their problems and trying to come up with a solution that made sense, they tried to take the easy way out and print more money. Now, if you have even basic knowledge about how economics works, printing excess money means that there is more currency in circulation, and its overall value goes down.

The people in charge had absolutely no idea what they were doing. Between 1921 and 1923, they went through a period of “hyperinflation,” where the value of one US dollar was equal to several trillion German marks. Money was so worthless that kids were using stacks of money as building blocks and cutting it up to make kites.

Whenever someone needed to buy something at the store, they had to carry a wheelbarrow full of cash with them. Adolf Hitler secured a job working for the German Army as a “confidential informant,” which was basically someone who spied on average citizens to make sure they didn’t get into trouble.

Adolf Hitler’s Book Mein Kampf (My Struggle)

Adolf Hitler: In 1919, he attended a meeting of the German Workers Party at a beer hall. Even though he was sent as a spy, he realized that he actually agreed with everything the Workers Party was saying. They blamed the Jews for all of the country’s problems, and they wanted Germany to go back to the glorious land it once was.

This organization was the precursor to the National Socialist German Workers Party, or- you guessed it- the Nazis. Adolf Hitler decided to join the party. He was good at public speaking, so he was able to encourage new members to join, too. As the years went on, he began to rise to the ranks of the Nazi leadership. And by November 8th, 1923,

Hitler led over 2,000 members of the Nazi party into the center of Munich, and they attempted to overthrow the German government. The Beer Hall Putsch was born out of this. Hitler and many of the other protestors were arrested for treason. While he was in jail, Hitler began to write about his life and his ideas. He was supposed to be in prison for five years, but he only served 9 months and was released in 1925. When he was free, he published his autobiography, Mein Kampf, which means “My Struggle.”

The book became a best-seller, and the proceeds made Hitler a millionaire. It sold so well that he continued to make $1 million a year, which is the equivalent of over $14,000,000 a year in today’s money. The German people felt that the Weimar Republic was a total failure because the members of their government were incompetent. Many people could tell that it was only a matter of time before there was another revolution. Thousands of people joined either the Communist Party or the Nazis.

However, the wealthy business owners in Germany did not want the Communists to take over because capitalism would be destroyed. As a result, the wealthy began to financially assist the Nazis. These donations, along with Hitler’s new windfall of money, helped make the Nazi Party bigger and better. In a world where there was so much poverty, the Nazis seemed to be prospering, and many people began to believe that it was truly the best option.

In the 1920s and ’30s, investigative journalists began to dig into Adolf Hitler’s past once he was becoming more of a public figure. Several magazines published a theory that Hitler’s mysterious biological grandfather was actually Jewish. Of course, Hitler claimed that this was all fake news propagated by the Jews and that he was a pure-blooded Aryan German, even though his dark hair and eyes were far from the blonde-haired-blue-eyed ideal he loved so much.

The Great Depression

Adolf Hitler’s grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber, got child support payments from a Jewish man named Leopold Frankenberger, according to Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor of Poland.

The young man was just 19 when he got 42-year-old Maria pregnant, and he did not want to marry her after their affair. In 2010, a DNA test confirmed that Hitler did, in fact, have Jewish and even African ancestry. Hitler’s Rise to Power It was clear that the German people were angry, and plenty of people were trying to come up with peaceful solutions to retain a democratic government.

In 1924, a man named Charles G. Dawes came up with the plan to borrow money from American banks and use those loans to pay for the coal industry. Germany would sell coal to France, and it would help to pay down its debt. This was known as the “Dawes’ Plan,” and it actually worked for a while. For the first time in years, Germany had hope of recovery. Charles Dawes was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925. However, in 1929, the United States stock market crashed, and Germany could no longer rely on American loans. The Great Depression was just getting started at this point.

The Weimar Republic’s constitution contained a clause called Article 48, which gave the President the power to enforce any law. In 1930, President Paul von Hindenburg began to use Article 48 to create new laws in a desperate attempt to fix the nation’s economy. There was a tremendous amount of civil unrest, and the Nazi party was growing larger and more powerful every day.

Germany – The Third Reich

Adolf Hitler claimed that the Communists did this, and he convinced President Hindenburg to create laws that banned the freedom of the press and peaceful protest. Of course, this was just a ploy to get rid of the Communist Party from Germany, and many people believe that the Nazis were actually behind the arson. In the summer of 1934, Hitler and his devout followers, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goring, began The Night of the Long Knives.

They staged a major coup by assassinating the Weimar Republic’s most influential members. Hitler began to ban all of the trade unions and made all other political parties illegal. The only choice a German citizen had anymore was to be a Nazi. This was his “Third Reich,” an empire that was apparently going to last a thousand years. Hitler used a lot of hyperbole in his talks. He claimed that everything was the “greatest” and made outlandish promises about the future of Nazi Germany.

A lot of people look back in history and wonder how the German people could have let this happen. How could they have been so foolish as to give so much power to a madman? But put yourself in the German’s shoes for just a second. You’re at rock bottom, with absolutely no hope of feeding your family or finding any meaning in your life and career. When suddenly, a man with confidence comes along and convinces you that you are special. You’re a part of this magical “master race,” and he knows exactly who to blame for all of your problems and how to make it all better.

The Germans were caught off guard and fell for it hook, line, and sinker. During the Holocaust and World War II, Hitler’s plan to improve the German economy was exactly the same way he got money all his life. Instead of working for it, he was going to take it from the people who worked hard to actually earn it. One of his first decrees was to increase the wages of the German people by 10.9%, which made everyone happy straight away.

Then, he declared that they would decrease trade with foreign nations and put the money towards military spending instead because they were going to make Germany great and glorious once again. At this point, Germany was just as broke as it was before, and the money had to come from somewhere.

Adolf Hitler believed that by conquering other countries, they could steal the wealth of other nations and use that money to run the Third Reich. So, if you’re going to steal from someone, why not start with the wealthiest people in Europe? The homes of Jews were raided, and valuable artwork, gold, and property were taken. Then, he moved on to the ethnic cleansing of the Sinti and Roma people simply because they were vagabonds, “gypsies” that he didn’t like having around.

Hitler was determined to disregard the restraints of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany entirely. As we mentioned earlier, Germany had lost 13% of its territory, but he believed that this perfect Aryan race needed space to grow…Like, a lot of space.

He called this the “Lebensraum” which means “living space,” and he wanted to spread German territories throughout the world. Even though he claimed that he wanted to exterminate all of the Jews, Hitler decided to pick and choose who he felt was worthy of living. He was grateful to a Jewish doctor named Eduard Bloch, who treated his mother’s breast cancer. Bloch and his wife were successfully evacuated from Austria. Hitler’s chauffeur, Emil Maurice, was also half-Jewish, and yet he was still allowed to join the SS because they had been friends for years.

Hitler continued to find like-minded friends and signed a treaty in 1936 to join forces with Italy under the rule of Benito Mussolini. Meanwhile, Japan was invading China, and they had similar aspirations to conquer territory for their own empire, so they also joined the Axis Powers. These three nations began their plan for the new world order. The concentration camps created a source of free slave labor for the Nazis, which dramatically cut down on costs.

The Third Reich continued to become more powerful as the years went on. Millions of people were dying, all because one man decided to selfishly take everything he could possibly want, and he convinced others to do the same. The Women of Hitler’s Life After becoming wealthy from the sales of Mein Kampf in 1925, Hitler had his older half-sister, Angela Raubal, move into his home with her children, and she became his housekeeper.

Geli Raubal, his 17-year-old niece, was his obsession. Her friends would say that they always thought they had an oddly close relationship For an uncle and niece, and many historians have gone as far as to say that Geli was the “love of his life When Geli was 19, she began having a secret affair with Hitler’s half-Jewish chauffeur, Emil Maurice. When Hitler found out, he was outraged, and Maurice was fired. Hitler sent his sister Angela and her children to live in a large house that he purchased in order to get them away from the city. Because Geli was a medical student in Munich, Hitler recommended that she stay in the apartment with him alone.

Hitler forbids her from having friends. She became a prisoner in the apartment, and he would not allow her to go anywhere outside of school unless he was there as a chaperone. Even before becoming Chancellor of Germany, Hitler still employed a driver and Nazi bodyguards, who were also there to make sure Geli never escaped. In 1931, Geli was now 23 years old, and she asked if she could go on a trip to Vienna to start taking singing lessons. Not surprisingly,

Hitler refused to let her leave. Geli finally snapped, and they got into a heated argument. During the fight, Geli announced that she had fallen in love with a young man in her classes at medical school, and they were now engaged to be married. She demanded that he let her leave the apartment so that she could be with her fiance.

The next morning, Geli’s body was found in her bedroom with a gunshot wound to the chest. She was holding Hitler’s gun in her hand. It was ruled a “suicide”. But since she had so much to live for, plenty of people theorize that Hitler’s jealousy got the best of him and that he murdered his niece. Many historians consider this to be a huge turning point in Hitler’s life because it would have been the first time he murdered outside of the war. Historians have been able to find romantic connections to 8 different women in Hitler’s life, but he had just one long-term relationship with a woman named Eva Braun.

Adolf Hitler met her during a Nazi party meeting the same year that Geli died, in 1929. Eva was just 17 years old, and he was 40, but they were very attracted to each other. Since there was such a huge age gap, Hitler claimed that she was his “private secretary and kept their relationship a secret.

He wanted it to be a casual relationship so that he could remain single and enjoy sleeping with other women whenever he wanted. But Eva Braun was truly in love with Hitler, and it was breaking her heart that he refused to acknowledge that she was his girlfriend. She attempted suicide by shooting herself in the chest in 1932. Apparently, she purposely copied what happened to his Niece because she knew it would trigger an emotional response from him.

The bullet missed her heart, and she got medical attention right away. If this was an elaborate cry for attention, it worked because Hitler ran to her bedside at the hospital with a bouquet of roses and told her that he loved her. Satisfied that her guilt trip worked, Eva Braun continued to act like the crazy, lovesick teenager that she truly was.

She propped up pictures of Hitler during meals whenever she ate alone so that she could pretend he was there, too. Eva even gets jealous of the attention Hitler gives to his dog, Blondi. She would reportedly kick the dog whenever it got close to her. But Hitler could never see Eva as anything more than one of his many mistresses.

Adolf Hitler Death: She never got the love and attention that she wanted from him. In 1935, she attempted suicide again- this time by overdosing on sleeping pills. After she recovered, she demanded that if Hitler didn’t want her to reveal his secret affairs, they needed to live together in his bunker. He agreed to let her stay as long as they slept in different rooms.

Adolf Hitler Death

Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, died by shooting himself in the head on April 30, 1945, in his underground bunker in Berlin. After years of death and destruction, World War II was finally over, and the Allies won the war.

On April 30, 1945, Soviet soldiers were closing in on Adolf Hitler’s bunker. He finally agreed to marry Eva Braun, but only if she agreed to a suicide pact with him. She happily agreed, and she wore a black dress to their wedding. Their modest ceremony was officiated by Joseph Goebbels, who was the best man. In his last will and testament, Hitler requested that his body should be burned after his death. When the Russians stormed the bunker, they discovered that his skull and other bone fragments had survived the flames.

For years, the USSR did not allow anyone else to access Hitler’s remains. Since those bodies in the bunker could have belonged to anyone, many people felt that they did not have any real proof that he actually died. This sparked conspiracy theories that he may still be alive. Some people believed that he escaped in a submarine to start a new life in Argentina, in a German colony called La Cumbrecita.

The idea was so ridiculous that it turned into a comedy movie called Iron Sky. But in 2018, scientists finally confirmed that the teeth extracted from the skull in Russia were, in fact, Adolf Hitler because they matched his dental records. People can finally have closure because he did indeed die in that bunker in 1945.

The Nazi party became illegal in Germany, and it was forbidden to even read his autobiography, Mein Kampf, until very recently. Unfortunately, Nazism has not gone away completely. It was never outlawed in the United States, and this brought on a revival of the Neo-Nazi movement. As long as we continue to imagine Hitler as a monster that only comes along once in a lifetime, we will fail to be prepared for when another evil dictator comes along. When power falls into the wrong hands, history may be doomed to repeat itself.

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