ADOLF HITLER'S EARLY YEARS

Baby Hitler

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), a Catholic, born on April 20 1889 in  Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary. Adolf attended school in nearby Fischlham. After the family moved to Lambach in 1879. Eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even entertained thoughts of becoming a priest. 
       how did this innocent boy turn out to be a very mean person? :O 

Hitler as child

Adolf lived for six months across from a large Benedictine monastery after another family move.By 1900, Hitler's talents as an artist surfaced. He did well enough in school to be eligible for either the university preparatory gymnasium or the technical/scientific Realschule. Because the latter had a course in drawing, Adolf accepted his father's decision to enroll him in the Realschule. He did not do well there. After Adolf's father died in 1903, Adolf suffered from lung infections, and he quit school at the age of 16, partially the result of ill health and partially the result of poor school work.

Teenage Hitler

In 1906, Adolf was permitted to visit Vienna, but he was unable to gain admission to a prestigious art school. Adolf’s mother died on December 21 1907. Hitler spent six years in Vienna, living on a small legacy from his father and an orphan's pension. Hitler was poor in 1909 and struggled to make a living. It was during this period that he developed his prejudices about Jews, his interest in politics, and debating skills.In May 1913, Hitler, seeking to avoid military service. In January, the police came to his door bearing a draft notice from the Austrian government. The document threatened a year in prison and a fine if he was found guilty of leaving his native land with the intent of evading conscription. Hitler was arrested on the spot and taken to the Austrian Consulate. 

When the World War 1 started, Hitler's passions against foreigners, particularly Slavs, were inflamed.  Hitler submitted a petition to enlist in the Bavarian army and after less than two months of training, Hitler's regiment saw its first combat near Ypres, against the British and Belgians. Hitler was badly injured in October 1916 but after recovering and serving a total of four years in the trenches, he was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack in Belgium in October 1918.Communist-inspired insurrections shook Germany while Hitler was recovering from his injuries.

Soon after the war, Hitler was recruited to join a military intelligence unit and was assigned to keep tabs on the German Worker's Party.Hitler built up the party, converting it from a de facto discussion group to an actual political party.The turning point of Hitler's mesmerizing oratorical career occurred at one such meeting held on October 16, 1919. Hitler's emotional delivery of an impromptu speech captivated his audience. Through word of mouth, donations poured into the party's coffers, and subsequent mass meetings attracted hundreds of Germans eager to hear the young, forceful and hypnotic leader.Hitler's party benefited by the reaction toGermany to settle a reparations dispute and exploited it by holding mass protest rallies despite a ban on such rallies by the local police.The price of an egg, for example, had inflated to 30 million times its original price in just 10 years. Economic upheaval generally breeds political upheaval, and Germany in the 1920s was no exception when the Nazi party began drawing thousands of new members.

Hitler endorsed the fall of the Weimar Republic, and declared at a public rally on October 30 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 served only nine months of his five-year term. While in prison, he wrote the first volume of Mein Kampf, an autobiographical book. A second volume of Mein Kampf was published in 1927. It included a history of the Nazi party to that time and its program, as well as a primer on how to obtain and retain political power, how to use propaganda and terrorism, and how to build a political organization. While Mein Kampf was crudely written and filled with embarrassing tangents and ramblings, it struck a responsive chord among its target those Germans who believed it was their destiny to dominate the world. The book sold over five million copies by the start of World War II.

Hitler as an adult