Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945)

Personal Background

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau, on the Austrian side of the border with Bavaria, on 20 April 1889 (he did not acquire German citizenship until 1932). Alois Hitler, his alcoholic father who had been brought up as “Alois Schicklgruber” (his mother's maiden name), was a fifty-two-year-old customs officer when Adolf was born; Adolf's mother, Klara Pölzl, was the twenty-nine-year-old second cousin of Alois and also his third wife. Alois died in 1903 when Adolf was fourteen and, although Klara doted on her son, his general arrogance and laziness ensured that he failed to take his school-leaving certificate when he was sixteen. He then spent two years in Linz, posing as an artist, but failed to gain entrance to the Vienna Academy of the Arts. In 1907 his mother died of cancer following an anesthetic provided by a Jewish doctor, and it has been suggested that this provoked a deeply rooted, but unconscious, connection between Jews and the death of the only thing dear to Hitler. However, recently uncovered evidence shows that the family doctor, Ernest Bloch, a Jew, had tried to help Hitler in 1895 when he was suffering from nightmares, possibly brought on by beatings from Alois. Bloch had suggested that Hitler be sent to a psychoanalyst in Vienna (possibly Sigmund Freud), and although Alois forbade it, Bloch appears to have been the only Jew whom Hitler personally saved from death, instructing the Nazi leader Martin Bormann to grant Bloch safe passage to Switzerland in 1938.

Following his mother's death Hitler became a vagrant in Vienna, eking out a living from his meager inheritance by selling postcard sketches before drifting to Munich in Germany. There he was arrested for evading military service but was excused on the grounds of physical weakness. Yet, when the war came in 1914, he eagerly joined the Bavarian army as a regimental runner; although he did not rise above the rank of corporal (he was considered lacking in leadership skills), his bravery earned him an Iron Cross. In many ways the time in the trenches was the crucible for Hitler's character formation, and he often looked back to this period of kampfgemeinschaft (community of warriors) born in the struggle at the front.

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