Adolf Hitler

"Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future."

- Adolf Hitler "Where Napoleon failed. I shall succeed."

- Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945) was a German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP). The NSDAP is more commonly known as the Nazi Party. He was the Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and he was head of state. He ruled Germany as an absolute dictator.Early Life

Childhood
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria. 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, his younger brother Edmund died of measles. This caused change in Adolf's personality He went from a confident, outgoing boy to a detached, sullen boy who constantly battled his father and his teachers.

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. He expressed his loyalty only to Germany, despite being Austrian-born.

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 erolled at the Realschule in Steyr, but was expelled during his second year. He never returned to school again.

Early Childhood
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. Moving to Munich also helped him escape military service in Austria for a time, but the Munich police, acting in cooperation with the Austrian authorities, arrested him. After a physical exam he was deemed unfit for service and allowed to return to Munich. When Germany entered World War I in August 1914, he asked permission to serve in a Bavarian regiment. This request was granted, and Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian Army.

World War I
Adolf Hitler served in France and Belgium in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment. He served on the Western Front in a relatively safe job, since he was based at regimental headquarters, several miles from the Front. He was present at a number of major battles on the Western Front, including the First Battle of Ypres, Batthe of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele. The Battle of Ypres (October 1914) saw approximately 40,000 men killed in 20 days, and Hitler's own company of 250 reduced to 42. It is likely that this experience drove Hitler to become aloof and withdrawn for the remaining years of war.

Hitler was decorated twice for bravery. He received the relatively common "Iron Cross, Second Class" in 1914 and the rarer "Iron Cross, First Class" in 1918. It is unclear why Adolf Hitler was never promoted to a higher rank. Some say it is because he wasn't a German citizen, while others state that he didn't have enough knowledge of the military system.

World War 2
Adolf was injured, and during his stay in a hospital he received news that Germany lost World War I. To Hitler, as to many other Germans and German-speakers, this was a betrayal by the cowardly politicians, so he tried a failed coup. This was a one way ticket to prison for 6 months. During his stay he wrote a book/rant/ political treatise called "Mein Kampf". This bought him publicity and revealed his true and dark intentions. He joined the then-tiny Nazi party, made it into a giant, and in time he became both president and chancellor of Nazi 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. He came up against a couple of heroes (America and Great Britain) and at least one other villain ( Joseph Stalin ), and, outmatched, Hitler's forces had to retreat. By mid-1945, Hitler was utterly defeated, and, finding no way out of the situation, killed himself.

Legacy
Hitler is widely regarded to be one of the most evil men ever to have existed. Nevertheless, given the fear and disgust that surrounds them, Nazis have been rather popular as villains in fiction, and Hitler has been a character in alternative history novels, WWII novels, movies, and at least one rather popular Internet meme.

There also several conspiracy theories surrounding Adolf Hitler and Nazism, such as supposed links to the Occult and the infamous "Nazis on the Moon" theory (the Occult theory at least has been somewhat disproven as Hitler did not practice occult, although some officers did he saw it as largely unproductive (though legends still persist he tried to obtain the Spear of Destiny) )