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Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was born to Alois and Klara Hitler on April 20th, 1889. His childhood was unhappy, but not totally miserable. His father wanted him to be a civil servant, but Adolf wanted to become a painter. Hitler did well in Elementary school, but later on he failed miserably, which he blamed his teachers for. His father died in 1903, and Adolf dropped out of school two years later. In "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), the autobiography Hitler dictated while in Landsberg prison in 1924, he says the period in his life from 1905 to 1908 as "…the happiest days of my life…almost a dream." In those years he becamse obsessed with politics and developed his hatred for the Hapsburg monarchy. He applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, who rejected him, saying "test drawing unsatisfactory." In 1908, his mother died. A year later, he moved to Vienna and began what he called "the saddest period of my life." He lived first on the streets, then in a doss house, selling paintings of Vienna and continuing with his anti-semitic views. In 1913, he moved to Munich, to avoid Austrian military service. After listening to the Bavarian government's proclamation of war, he joined the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, where he won, in 1918, the Iron Cross First Class, which was rarely awarded to ordinary soldiers. In January 1919, he joined the German Workers Party, a small, powerless talkshop group under the leadership of Anton Drexler. At the first major meeting, Hitler made a speech stating that Jews should be denied office and citizenship. A year later, the group changed it name to ‘National Socialist German Workers Party'- the first Nazis. Hitler, now the obvious leader of the group, spoker for the first time in Berlin in 1921, and the Nazi group grew to thousands. In 1923, Chancellor Stresemann and President Ebert in Berlin declared a State of Emergency. The people, the army, and the Bavarian government all wanted to overthrow the Berlin socialists. Hitler believed...