Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was leader of the Nazi Party, Reich Chancellor and guiding spirit of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945.

Hitler was Head of State and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau- am Inn, Austria on 20 April 1889.

The son of a fifty-two year old Austrian customs official, Alois Schickelgruber Hitler, and his third wife, a young peasant girl, Klara Poelzl, both from the backwoods of lower Austria, the young Hitler was a resentful, discontented child.

Moody, lazy, of unstable temperament, he was deeply hostile towards his strict authoritarian father and strongly attached to his indulgent hard-working mother, whose death from cancer in December 1908 was a shattering blow to the adolescent Adolf Hitler.

After spending four years in the Realschule in Linz, he left school at the age of sixteen with dreams of becoming a painter.

In October 1907 the provincial, middle class boy left home for Vienna, where he was to remain until 1913, leading a bohemian vagabond existence.

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