Adolf Hitler

"Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future." "Germany will either be a world power or will not be at all." "Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice." "Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong."

Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was an Austro-Hungarian born German artist, statesman, theoretician, politician, soldier, and writer. He became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and Führer from 1934 to 1945. He led the National Socialist German Workers Party Party (more commonly known as the Nazi Party) and created The Third Reich. He was most well-known for starting, causing and waging World War 2.

He is often considered to be one of the evilest people to have ever existed, otherwise the evilest.

Early life
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary (now in modern Austria) right on the Austro-German border. He was the fourth of Alois and Klara Hitler's six children.

When Adolf was three, his family moved to Kapuzinerstrasse 5, where Adolf would acquire his lifelong accent. As a child, he tirelessly played "Cowboys and Indians" and became fixated on war after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War in his father's room.

When Adolf was 11 years old, he started secondary school. It was his father's idea to send him to a Realschule, where they taught mainly science and technical skills. But Adolf was a reluctant student. He much preferred drawing and writing to science and numbers. And he resented the hour-long walk to and from the school.

On February 2nd, 1900, Adolf's younger brother Edmund died from measles. The death deeply affected Adolf that it caused a change in his personality; he went from a confident, outgoing boy to a detached, sullen boy who constantly battled his father and his teachers. Many psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and psychohistorians have post-humously diagnosed or described Hiter as suffering from.

Adolf's father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become a high-ranked official, and this became a huge source of conflict between them. Adolf wanted to go to classical high school and become an artist but his father sent him to the Realschule in Linz, a technical high school.

For young Adolf Hitler, German nationalism quickly became an obsession, and it was a good way to rebel against his father, who served the Austrian government. Like many Austrian Germans he showed pride in his German ancestry, he expressed loyalty only to Germany despising the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After Alois' sudden death on January 3, 1903, Hitler's behaviour at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave. Adolf enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr but was expelled during his second year. He never returned to school again. When he was 14, he fell into a frozen lake, but thankfully a priest was able to pull him out before he drowned. The priest later regretted his decision.

From 1905 on, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna on an orphan's pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, citing "unfitness for painting", and they told him his abilities should be used for architecture. He followed this recommendation, and he became convinced that this was his path to pursue, but he lacked the academic preparation for architecture school.

In 1907, Adolf's mother died of breast cancer, and he was forced to give some of the money his mother had sent him to his sister. He ran out of money after the second time he was rejected by the Art Academy. Adolf Hitler always said he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna, which had a large Jewish community.

Hitler claimed that Jews were enemies of the Aryan race. He held them responsible for Austria's crisis. He also identified certain forms of socialism and Bolshevism, which had many Jewish leaders, as Jewish movements, merging his antisemitism with anti-Marxism. He later blamed Germany's military defeat in World War I on the 1918 revolutions and he considered Jews the culprits of Germany's downfall and economic problems.

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, where he became more interested in architecture. When Germany entered World War I in August 1914, he asked permission to serve in a Bavarian regiment. This request was granted, and he enlisted in the Bavarian Army.

World War I
Hitler served in France and Belgium as a runner for the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, which exposed him to enemy fire. His duties at regimental headquarters, while often dangerous, gave Hitler time to pursue his artwork. When he had the time he drew cartoons and instructional drawings for the army newspaper. Hitler had long admired Germany, and during the war, he had become a passionate German patriot. Hitler was twice decorated for bravery, once in 1914 receiving the Iron Cross Second Class and in 1918, the Iron Cross First Class. Additionally, in 1917 he received the Wound Badge for injuries he suffered on his leg. On October 15th, 1918; Hitler was admitted to a field hospital, temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack. During his stay there he received news that Germany lost World War I. To Hitler, as too many other Germans and German-speakers, this was a betrayal by the cowardly politicians. He was shocked by Germany's capitulation even while the German army still held enemy territory. Like many other nationalists, Hitler believed Germany was stabbed in the back by civilian leaders and Marxists back on the home front. These politicians were later dubbed the November Criminals.

According to the most recent book about Hitler's life as a soldier in WWI, it was revealed that he was considered to be a wimp by several of his comrades and that his supposed brutality in WWI was actually heavily exaggerated by NatSoc propaganda.

World War 2
So he tried a failed coup. This was a one-way ticket to prison for six months. During his stay, he wrote a book/rant/political treatise called Mein Kampf (“My Struggle” in English). This bought him publicity and revealed his true intentions and means to create a better Germany then the former Weimar Republic which was a very scary place to be living in. He joined the then-tiny National Socialist party, made it into a giant, and in time he became both president and chancellor of NatSoc Germany.

He outlawed his competition, re-militarized Germany, and started World War II in Europe in a bid to control much of the world by military means. Over his seven years in power, Hitler had built up a huge army and air force, with massive numbers of planes, tanks, and trucks. Now he used them to great effect, conquering Denmark and Norway, and launching attacks on France. By this time, French troops were stationed all along Germany's western border. But Hitler distracted them by invading the Netherlands and Belgium. As the French and British responded by moving north, German tanks broke through to the south and advanced into France. A month later, a triumphant Hitler was in Paris.

Only a narrow stretch of the sea now let between Hitler and the British Isles. He hoped that the Britsh would willingly surrender. But the new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was determined to fight to the end.

Hitler watched, frustrated, as the British air force won the battle for control of the skies. Eventually, he gave up and turned his attention east. Recklessly breaking his pact with Stalin, he now sent his troops into Russia.

The Russian troops were slow to respond but mighty in number. By November, German forces were engaged in bitter warfare, as the temperature plummeted below freezing.

Death
By mid-1945, Hitler was utterly defeated, and, finding no way out of the situation, committed suicide on April 30th, 1945 by shooting himself in the head. His wife of one day, Eva Braun, committed suicide with him by taking a cyanide pill.

Legacy
Hitler has been widely regarded as one of the evilest people ever to have existed. Nevertheless, given the fear and disgust that surrounds them, Hitler and the Nazis still have many admirers and followers of him and their ideologies. Nazis have been rather popular as villains in fiction, and Hitler has been a character in alternative history novels, such as those who call for his assassination, WWII novels, such as Holocaust survivor novels, movies, and at least one rather popular Internet meme. He is also a character on the villains wiki.

He was mentioned as being a painter in the Only Fools and Horses episode  Uncle Albert says that he used to be a painter but Raquel asks how long he has been french to which Rodney asks "And who in their right minds would call a hotel 'The Hotel Hitler?'"

More Quotes
"Hate is more lasting than dislike."

"The party must not become the servant of the masses, but their master."

- Hitler on the Nazis

"Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows-at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example; as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of public hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews."

"I see no reason why humanity should not be as cruel as nature."

"At the end of the second World War, Germany was in ruins. The Führer, Adolf Hitler, lay dead, killed by his own hand in a Berlin bunker. When Hitler came to power, he had promised his people a brave new world and a bright new future. Instead, he murdered their sick relatives in hospital cellars and brutally castrated thousands of their children. He persecuted gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled. He oversaw a campaign of industrialized slaughter, which killed over six million Jews. And to the world, he brought a war of unparalleled destruction - a war that would claim over 40,000,000 lives, over half of them civilians."

- Introduction to a documentary on Discovery Channel

"Where Napoleon failed. I shall succeed."

"If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed."

Most evil acts

 * The Holocaust - A Genocide aimed at European Jews that killed between 6,000,000 and 11,000,000 people. It is considered to be the worst crime ever committed.
 * Waging World War II - A Global War considered that resulted in the deaths of between 40,000,000–85,000,000 people. It is widely considered to be the deadliest conflict in human history, and one of the largest clashes of major ideologies that would evolve throughout the decades.

Trivia

 * Hitler only got drunk once in his life. It was when he was 15–16 years old after getting his (obligatory education) school certificate. He was happy and went out partying with his classmates. He got drunk and by mistake used his school certificate in lieu of toilet paper. It was later found dirty and in 4 pieces.
 * Hitler once mentioned that he used to smoke between 25-40 cigarettes a day when he was young, broke and pretty much lived in the streets of Vienna. He said he only ate bread and milk, never had a warm meal, yet spent 30 kreuzers a day on cigarettes. When he realized that for 5 kreuzers he could have bought some butter to put on his bread, he quit smoking.
 * Allegedly, Hitler was a serial prankster, often playing jokes on his ministers and generals. This would backfire on him tremendously, when a stunt on Ernst Hanfstaengl (who believed he was being set up for a suicide mission, whilst headed to Spain on a plane full of Gestapo men), let him to escape to Switzerland. He would then seek refuge with the Allies, revealing vital information on his former friend and leader.
 * He is rumored to have had a micropenis with one testicle.
 * There are conspiracy theorists who claim Hitler and Eva didn't die in Berlin, but he and Eva had escaped to South America and later died there in the mid 1960's.
 * Hitler's name means "Noble wolf", which is ironic because Adolf Hitler was anything but noble.
 * He has influenced numerous fictional villains, such as Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars and Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter.
 * In the Downfall Parodies, Hitler is referred to as the "real Hitler" by the Downfall Hitler (played by Bruno Ganz).
 * The surname Hitler is probably a spelling variation of the name Hiedler, meaning one who resides by a Heidi - in Bavarian dialects a term for a subterranean fountain or river.