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ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccADOLF HITLER

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Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, was an illegitimate child of
Maria Anna Schicklgruber, so his paternity was not listed on his birth
certificate; he bore his mother's surname..In 1842, Johann Georg
Hiedler married Maria and in 1876 Alois testified before a notary and
three witnesses that Johann was his father..At age 39, Alois took the
surname Hitler..This surname was variously spelled ¯

, ¯
,
¯

 and ¯ 
, and was probably regularized to ¯ 
 by a clerk.
The origin of the name is either "one who lives in a hut" ( Standard
German ¯
), "shepherd" (Standard German 
"to guard",
English 

), or is from the Slavic word ¯ 
 and ¯ 

.

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Despite this testimony, Alois' paternity has been the subject of

controversy. After receiving a "blackmail letter" from Hitler's nephew
William Patrick Hitler threatening to reveal embarrassing information
about Hitler's family tree, Nazi Party lawyer Hans Frank investigated,
and, in his memoirs, claimed to have uncovered letters revealing that
Alois' mother, Maria Schicklgruber, was employed as a housekeeper
for a Jewish family in Graz and that the family's 19-year-old son,
Leopold Frankenberger, fathered Alois. No evidence has ever been
produced to support Frank's claim, and Frank himself said Hitler's full
Aryan blood was obvious. Frank's claims were widely believed in the
1950s, but by the 1990s, were generally doubted by historians. Ian
Kershaw dismisses the Frankenberger story as a "smear" by Hitler's
enemies, noting that all Jews had been expelled from Graz in the 15th
century and were not allowed to return until well after Alois was born.


cc
ccccccc dolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 at half-past six in
the evening at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Braunau am Inn,
Austria±Hungary, the fourth of Alois and Klara Hitler's six children..
Adolf Hitler as an infant At the age of three, his family moved to
Kapuzinerstrasse 5 in Passau, Germany where the young Hitler would
acquire Lower Bavarian rather than Austrian as his lifelong native
dialect. In 1894, the family moved to Leonding near Linz, then in
June 1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld near
Lambach, where he tried his hand at farming and beekeeping. During
this time, the young Hitler attended school in nearby Fischlham. As a
child, he tirelessly played "Cowboys and Indians" and, by his own
account, became fixated on war after finding a picture book about the
Franco-Prussian War in his father's things.He wrote in 

X
"It was not long before the great historic struggle had become my
greatest spiritual experience. From then on, I became more and more
enthusiastic about everything that was in any way connected with war
or, for that matter, with soldiering."

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His father's efforts at Hafeld ended in failure and the family moved to
Lambach in 1897. There, Hitler attended a Catholic school located in
an 11th-century Benedictine cloister whose walls were engraved in a
number of places with crests containing the symbol of the swastika. It
was in Lambach that the eight year-old Hitler sang in the church
choir, took singing lessons, and even entertained the fantasy of one
day becoming a priest.In 1898, the family returned permanently to
Leonding.

His younger brother Edmund died of measles on 2 February 1900,

causing permanent changes in Hitler. He went from a confident,
outgoing boy who found school easy, to a morose, detached, sullen
boy who constantly battled his father and his teachers.

Hitler was close to his mother, but had a troubled relationship with his
authoritarian father, who frequently beat him, especially in the years
after Alois' retirement and disappointing farming efforts. Alois
wanted his son to follow in his footsteps as an Austrian customs
official, and this became a huge source of conflict between them.
Despite his son's pleas to go to classical high school and become an
artist, his father sent him to the Realschule in Linz, a technical high
school of about 300 students, in September 1900. Hitler rebelled, and
in 

 confessed to failing his first year in hopes that once
his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical
school he would let me devote myself to the happiness I dreamed of."
Alois never relented, however, and Hitler became even more bitter
and rebellious.

After Alois' sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's behaviour at the

technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to
leave. He enrolled at the 


in Steyr in 1904, but upon
completing his second year, he and his friends went out for a night of
celebration and drinking, and an intoxicated Hitler tore his school
certificate into four pieces and used it as toilet paper. When someone
turned the stained certificate in to the school's director, he "... gave
him such a dressing-down that the boy was reduced to shivering jelly.
It was probably the most painful and humiliating experience of his
life."Hitler was expelled, never to return to school again.

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At age 15, Hitler took part in his First Holy Communion on

Whitsunday, 22 May 1904, at the Linz Cathedral. His sponsor was
Emanuel Lugert, a friend of his late father.

 
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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 (1907±1908), citing
"unfitness for painting", and was told his abilities lay instead in the
field of architecture.The purpose of my trip was to study the picture
gallery in the Court Museum, but I had eyes for scarcely anything but
the Museum itself. From morning until late at night, I ran from one
object of interest to another, but it was always the buildings which
held my primary interest..

Following the school rector's recommendation, he too became

convinced this was his path to pursue, yet he lacked the proper
academic preparation for architecture schoolX

In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an

architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I
had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One
could not attend the Academy's architectural school without having
attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a
high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfilment of my
artistic dream seemed physically impossible.

Ý

  
 
 
  , by Adolf Hitler, 1914

On 21 December 1907, Hitler's mother died of breast cancer at age

47. Ordered by a court in Linz, Hitler gave his share of the orphans'
benefits to his sister Paula. When he was 21, he inherited money from

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an aunt. He struggled as a painter in Vienna, copying scenes from

postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists. After
being rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Hitler ran out
of money. In 1909, he lived in a shelter for the homeless. By 1910, he
had settled into a house for poor working men on Meldemannstraße.
Another resident of the house, Reinhold Hanisch, sold Hitler's
paintings until the two men had a bitter falling-out.

Hitler said he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna, which had a

large Jewish community, including Orthodox Jews..

r
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Hitler served in France and Belgium in the 16th
Bavarian Reserve Regiment (called 
 
   after its first
commander), ending the war as a 


 (equivalent at the time to a
lance corporal in the British and private first class in the American
armies). He served on the Western Front as a regimental runner, "a
relatively safe job" based at regimental headquarters, several miles
from the Front..According to research by Dr Thomas Weber of the
University of Aberdeen, earlier historians of the period had not
distinguished between regimental runners who were based away from
the front "in relative comfort", and company or battalion runners who
moved among the trenches and were often subjected to machine gun
fire. He was present at a number of major battles on the Western
Front, including the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme,
the Battle of Arras and the Battle of Passchendaele. The Battle of
Ypres (October 1914), which became known in Germany as the
 
 

 (Massacre of the Innocents) saw
approximately 40,000 men (between a third and a half) of the nine
infantry divisions present killed in 20 days, and Hitler's own company
of 250 reduced to 42 by December. Biographer John Keegan has said
that this experience drove Hitler to become aloof and withdrawn for
the remaining years of war..

On 15 October 1918, Hitler was admitted to a field hospital,

temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack. The English
psychologist David Lewis and Bernhard Horstmann suggest the

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blindness may have been the result of a conversion disorder (then

known as "hysteria")..In fact, Hitler said it was during this experience
that he became convinced the purpose of his life was to "save
Germany." Some scholars, notably Lucy Dawidowicz argue that an
intention to exterminate Europe's Jews was fully formed in Hitler's
mind at this time, though he probably had not thought through how it
could be done. Most historians think the decision was made in 1941,
and some think it came as late as 1942.

Two passages in 

 mention the use of poison gasX

At the beginning of the Great War, or even during the War, if twelve
or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had
been forced to submit to poison-gas . . . then the millions of sacrifices
made at the front would not have been in vain.. These tactics are
based on an accurate estimation of human weakness and must lead to
success, with almost mathematical certainty, unless the other side also
learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas. The weaker natures
must be told that here it is a case of to be or not to be..

Hitler had long admired Germany, and during the war he had become
a passionate German patriot, although he did not become a German
citizen until 1932. Hitler found the war to be "the greatest of all
experiences" and afterwards he was praised by a number of his
commanding officers for his bravery.. He was shocked by Germany's
capitulation in November 1918 even while the German army still held
enemy territory..Like many other German nationalists, Hitler believed
in the 


("dagger-stab legend") which claimed that
the army, "undefeated in the field," had been "stabbed in the back" by
civilian leaders and Marxists back on the home front. These
politicians were later dubbed the 

  
.

The Treaty of Versailles deprived Germany of various territories,

demilitarised the Rhineland and imposed other economically
damaging sanctions. The treaty re-created Poland, which even
moderate Germans regarded as an outrage. The treaty also blamed
Germany for all the horrors of the war, something which major
historians such as John Keegan now consider at least in part to be

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victor's justice; most European nations in the run-up to World War I

had become increasingly militarised and were eager to fight. The
culpability of Germany was used as a basis to impose reparations on
Germany (the amount was repeatedly revised under the Dawes Plan,
the Young Plan, and the Hoover Moratorium).

ccc
A copy of Adolf Hitler's forged German Workers' Party
(DAP) membership card. His actual membership number was 555
(the 55th member of the party ± the 500 was added to make the group
appear larger) but later the number was reduced to create the
impression that Hitler was one of the founding members.. Hitler had
wanted to create his own party, but was ordered by his superiors in
the Reichswehr to infiltrate an existing one instead.

After World War I, Hitler remained in the army and returned to

Munich, where he ± in contrast to his later declarations ± attended the
funeral march for the murdered Bavarian prime minister Kurt Eisner..
After the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he took part in
"national thinking" courses organized by the ô
 

!





 (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian 
"

Group, Headquarters 4 under Captain Karl Mayr. Scapegoats were
found in "international Jewry", communists, and politicians across the
party spectrum, especially the parties of the Weimar Coalition.

In July 1919, Hitler was appointed a #
  

(police spy) of
an $% 
 (Intelligence Commando) of the

"
, both to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate a small
party, the German Workers' Party (DAP). During his inspection of the
party, Hitler was impressed with founder Anton Drexler's anti-
semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist ideas, which
favoured a strong active government, a "non-Jewish" version of
socialism and mutual solidarity of all members of society. Drexler
was impressed with Hitler's oratory skills and invited him to join the
party. Hitler joined DAP on 12 September 1919, and became the
party's 55th member. He was also made the seventh member of the

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executive committee. Years later, he claimed to be the party's seventh

overall member, but it has been established that this claim is false.

Here Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the early founders of the party
and member of the occult Thule Society,Eckart became Hitler's
mentor, exchanging ideas with him, teaching him how to dress and
speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people. Hitler thanked
Eckart by paying tribute to him in the second volume of 



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Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka with Hitler in
Berlin, In February 1938, Hitler finally ended the dilemma that had
plagued German Far Eastern policy, namely whether to continue the
informal Sino-German alliance that existed with Republic of China
since the 1910s or to create a new alliance with Japan. The military at
the time strongly favoured continuing Germany's alliance with China.
China had the support of Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath
and War Minister Werner von Blomberg, the so-called "China Lobby"
who tried to steer German foreign policy away from war in Europe..
Both men, however, were sacked by Hitler in early 1938. Upon the
advice of Hitler's newly appointed Foreign Minister, the strongly pro-
Japanese Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler chose to end the alliance
with China as the price of gaining an alignment with the more modern
and powerful Japan. In an address to the 

, Hitler announced
German recognition of Manchukuo, the Japanese-occupied puppet
state in Manchuria, and renounced the German claims to the former
colonies in the Pacific held by Japan. Hitler ordered an end to arms
shipments to China, and ordered the recall of all the German officers
attached to the Chinese Army. In retaliation for ending German
support to China in the war against Japan, Chinese Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek canceled all of the Sino-German economic
agreements, which deprived the Germans of raw materials such as
tungsten that the Chinese had previously provided. The ending of the
Sino-German alignment increased the problems of German

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rearmament, as the Germans were now forced to use their limited

supply of foreign exchange to buy raw materials on the open market.

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Adolf Hitler's face on a German stamp 1944. The country's
name has changed to the Greater German Reich since 1943 and this as
part of the anti-British course, it was deemed necessary by Hitler to
have Poland either a satellite state or otherwise neutralized. Hitler
believed this necessary both on strategic grounds as a way of securing
the 
's eastern flank and on economic grounds as a way of
evading the effects of a British blockade. Initially, the German hope
was to transform Poland into a satellite state, but by March 1939 the
German demands had been rejected by the Poles three times, which
led Hitler to decide upon the destruction of Poland as the main
German foreign policy goal of 1939. On 3 April 1939, Hitler ordered
the military to start preparing for &
 '
 (Case White), the plan
for a German invasion to be executed on 25 August 1939. In August
1939, Hitler spoke to his generals that his original plan for 1939 had
to "... establish an acceptable relationship with Poland in order to fight
against the West" but since the Poles would not co-operate in setting
up an "acceptable relationship" (i.e. becoming a German satellite), he
believed he had no choice other than wiping Poland off the map. The
historian Gerhard Weinberg has argued since Hitler's audience
comprised men who were all for the destruction of Poland (anti-Polish
feelings were traditionally very strong in the German Army), but
rather less happy about the prospect of war with Britain and France, if
that was the price Germany had to pay for the destruction of Poland, it
is quite likely that Hitler was speaking the truth on this occasion. In
his private discussions with his officials in 1939, Hitler always
described Britain as the main enemy that had to be defeated, and in
his view, Poland's obliteration was the necessary prelude to that goal
by securing the eastern flank and helpfully adding to Germany's



. Hitler was much offended by the British "guarantee" of
Polish independence issued on 31 March 1939, and told his associates
that "I shall brew them a devil's drink". In a speech in Wilhelmshaven
for the launch of the battleship Ý  ( on 1 April 1939, Hitler
threatened to denounce the Anglo-German Naval Agreement if the

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British persisted with their "encirclement" policy as represented by

the "guarantee" of Polish independence..

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Hitler took up residence in the Führerbunker on 16 January
1945, where the Allies advanced from both east and west.. By late
April, Soviet forces had entered Berlin and were battling their way to
the centre of the city.. On 22 April, Hitler said defeat was imminent
and that Germany would lose the war. He expressed his intent to kill
himself and later asked physician Werner Haase to recommend a
reliable method of suicide. Haase suggested combining a dose of
cyanide with a gunshot to the head.

Hitler had a supply of cyanide capsules.. He also learned of

the execution of his ally Benito Mussolini, whose body was hung up
and publicly beaten after death, and vowed not to share a similar fate..

After midnight on 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small

civil ceremony in a map room.. Hitler and Braun lived together as
husband and wife in the bunker for fewer than 40 hours..

Late in the morning of 30 April, with the Soviets less than 500
metres from the bunker..

Hitler, two secretaries, and his personal cook then had lunch..At
around 14X30 Adolf and Eva Hitler went into Hitler's personal study.

Some witnesses later reported hearing a loud gunshot at around

15X30. After waiting a few minutes, Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, with
Bormann at his side, opened the door to the small study. Linge later
stated he immediately noted a scent of burnt almonds, a common
observation made in the presence of prussic acid, the aqueous form of
hydrogen cyanide. Hitler's SS adjutant, Sturmbannführer Otto
Günsche, entered the study to inspect the bodies, which were found
seated on a small sofa, Eva's to Hitler's left and slumped away from
him. Günsche has since stated that Hitler "...sat...sunken over, with

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blood dripping out of his right temple. He had shot himself with his
own pistol..."The Walther PPK 7.65 mm pistol lay at Hitler's feet.
According to Hitler's SS bodyguard, Oberscharführer Rochus Misch,
Hitler's head was lying on the table in front of him.

Blood dripping from his temple and chin had made a large stain
on the right arm of the sofa..Eva's body had no visible physical
wounds and Linge assumed she had poisoned herself..

Günsche announced that the Führer was dead. Immediately

afterwards, several people in the bunker began smoking cigarettes
(which had been forbidden, given Hitler's strong dislike for smoking).
Several witnesses said the two bodies were carried up to ground level
and through the bunker's emergency exit to a small, bombed-out
garden behind the Chancellery where they were doused with petrol
and set alight by Linge and members of Hitler's personal SS
bodyguard..