II.

Early Years

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, in 1889, the fourth child of Klara and Alois Hitler. Hitler’s father worked his way up in the Austrian customs service to a position of considerable status, and as a result Hitler had a comfortable childhood. His grades at school were above average. It was decided that he would attend a Realschule, a secondary school that prepared students for further study and emphasized modern languages and technical subjects. However, Hitler and his father strongly differed over career plans. His father wanted him to enter the civil service; Hitler insisted on becoming an artist. As a result, Hitler did poorly in Realschule, having to repeat the first year and improving little thereafter.

During this time, Hitler began to form his political views: a strong sense of German nationalism, the beginnings of anti-Semitism, and a distaste for the ruling family and political structure of Austria-Hungary. Like many German-speaking citizens of Austria-Hungary, Hitler considered himself first and foremost a German.

The death of Hitler’s father in January 1903 changed everything. The family income was adequate to support Hitler, his mother, and his sister, but the absence of a dominant father figure altered Hitler's position in the family. He spent much of his time playing and dreaming, did poorly in his studies, and left school in 1905.

A.

Life in Vienna

Hitler had hoped to become an artist but was rejected as unqualified by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in October 1907. His mother died in 1908, and Hitler pretended to continue his studies in Vienna in order to receive an orphan’s pension. In reality, he mostly wandered about the city admiring its public buildings and frequently attending operas, especially those of Richard Wagner, whom Hitler adored for his heroic portrayals of German mythology.

When he had exhausted his inherited funds, Hitler, unwilling to take a job, ended up in a homeless shelter. It was there that he was first exposed to extreme political ideas, particularly the racial concepts of Lanz von Liebenfels. Liebenfels published a periodical about the supposed superiority of Aryans, an ill-defined race that included Germans, and the inferiority of other races, especially Jews. At the same time Hitler acquired a hatred for socialism and came to equate it with the Jews.

Between 1910 and 1913 Hitler’s life improved when he began to paint and sell postcards and pictures for a living, copying famous paintings and drawing public buildings. He debated ideas with others in the hostel in which he lived, developing the beginnings of his public speaking style. Failure to register for conscription in Austria led him to flee for Munich, Germany, in 1913 to escape the Austrian authorities. He was extradited to Austria but was found physically unfit to serve in the military. He then returned to Munich.

B.

World War I

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 came as an opportunity for Hitler, as his money was running out. He volunteered for a Bavarian unit in the German army and served the whole war. Though repeatedly decorated for bravery, he was never promoted beyond private first class. In a war of very high casualties, this is difficult to explain. Perhaps officers considered him a loner who could carry messages and perform other dangerous duties but who was unsuited to commanding men.

Hitler saw trench warfare as a form of the struggle for survival among races, a struggle that he was coming to see as the essence of existence. At the same time, his anti-Semitic feelings were growing extreme. When Germany was defeated in 1918, Hitler was lying in a military hospital, temporarily blinded by mustard gas. He decided Jews had caused Germany’s defeat and that he would enter politics to save the country.

Hitler returned to Munich after the war. He was selected to be a political speaker by the local army headquarters, given special training, and provided with opportunities to practise his public speaking before returning prisoners of war. His speaking successes led to his selection as an observer of political groups in the Munich area. In this capacity, he investigated the German Workers' Party—one of the many nationalist, racist groups that developed in Munich in the post-war years.

C.

Beginnings of the Nazi Party

The German Workers' Party, later renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (abbreviated to NSDAP or Nazi Party), became Hitler’s political focus. Here he found an outlet for his talents in political agitation and party organization. The party espoused essentially the same ideas Hitler had picked up in Vienna: violent racial nationalism and anti-Semitism. He also shared the Nazis’ opposition to the liberal democracy of the German Weimar Republic, which had been established after the war.

Though still in the army, Hitler quickly became the new spokesman for the party. His talent for public speaking and the use of the local army's resources to generate publicity drew large audiences to events sponsored by an organization that had only 100 to 200 members. When he presented the party's official programme to a gathering on February 24, 1920, there were almost 2,000 present.

Hitler was discharged from the army the following month, and he soon attained dominance in the Nazi Party. He was the party’s most effective recruiter and, thanks to paid attendance at his speeches, its most successful fundraiser. When opposed within the party, he found ways to push out rivals and dissenters. Several times he did so by threatening to leave the party himself. Hitler obtained enough support to have himself chosen as Führer (absolute leader) of the party on July 29, 1921.