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Early years
Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn on the Austro-German border on 20th April 1889. His father, a customs official who died when Hitler was 13, was cold and strict, while his mother was gentle and loving and pampered her son, who adored her. Hitler was clearly intelligent but bored by much of his formal education, except for history, which was taught with a strong German nationalist bias. -
Growing up
Hitler's school career ended in failure, but the death of his father had removed the pressure on him to get a job.Invariably polite and well turned out, his behaviour was marked by a combination of arrogance and insecurity not unusual in adolescence, but in his case extreme.But there is no suggestion from anyone who knew him then that he was homosexual. -
Vienna
Having moved to Vienna in 1907, his failure to get into Art school came as a major blow. His money from an orphan's pension and borrowed from relatives eventually ran out, and he was forced to take refuge in men's hostels where he lived from 1909 to 1913. His experiences in Vienna sharpened the Pan German nationalism that he had absorbed in his school days, increasing his contempt for the Habsburg Empire.Although Hitler absorbed the racist and anti-Semitic discourses that so shaped the Viennese -
Joining the war
In 1913, Hitler's desire to avoid military service for the hated Habsburg Empire prompted him to move to Munich, the German city of his dreams, a move facilitated by coming into a small legacy from his father's estate. Here he continued a life similar to that in Vienna until, with the outbreak of war in 1914, he enthusiastically volunteered to serve in a Bavarian regiment. Service in the Army at last provided Hitler with a purpose in life, In November 1918 -
Hitler was recruited
Fortunately for him, the Right soon took over and he was recruited by the Bavarian Army's Intelligence/Propaganda section to undergo political indoctrination. For it was at this point that anti-Semitism emerged as the core of Hitler's 'world view'. Defeat, revolution, and the humiliating Treaty of Versailles (1919) had challenged Hitler's whole sense of worth and personal identity. -
demogic gifts
His emergence as unchallenged 'Führer' of the NSDAP and his determination to become dictator of Germany only occurred during the period 1921-23 as a result of his growing self confidence, which was in turn partly the result of the increasing hero worship of his supporters. 8-9 November 1923, when, as he saw it, they stabbed him in the back. It was only at this point that Hitler became a conviction from which he then never wavered.
