Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in the small Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, near the German border. To the outside world, it was an ordinary birth in a humble home but in that swaddled child stirred ambition darker and deeper than the Danube River that flowed nearby.
His father, Alois Hitler, was a strict, bureaucratic man with a fiery temper and an obsession with control. His mother, Klara, by contrast, was gentle and doting: her Adolf was special, she believed, destined for something more than the quiet life of a customs officer’s son.
As a boy, Hitler was moody, artistic, and deeply emotional. He loved drawing buildings, reading tales of Germanic legends and warfare. He dreamt not of empire yet but of being a painter.
A Failed Artist, A Growing Resentment
At 16, Hitler dropped out of school and moved to Vienna to pursue his dream of entering the Academy of Fine Arts but dreams can be cruel. He failed the entrance exam. Not once but twice. His drawings lacked human figures, they told him.
His ego bruised, his pride shattered, he began to drift. Sleeping in hostels, surviving on charity and odd jobs, Vienna became not a city of inspiration but one of bitterness.
It was here, amidst the crumbling grandeur of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire, that Hitler’s ideologies began to form. He grew to resent the cosmopolitan diversity of Vienna, particularly its Jewish population, whom he blamed, irrationally, for his failures. He read anti-Semitic pamphlets and German nationalist texts, he found enemies everywhere: Marxists, Jews, liberals, foreigners. Each one, in his mind, was part of a conspiracy weakening the German spirit.
A War That Gave Him Purpose
When World War I broke out in 1914, Hitler was living in Munich, Germany. He enlisted in the Bavarian Army, thrilled by the chance to fight for what he called “the Fatherland.”
To many, war was horror. To Hitler, it was clarity.
He served as a messenger on the front lines, dangerous work, and was wounded twice. He earned the Iron Cross, a rare decoration for someone of his rank. He would wear it proudly, even in later years as dictator.
But Germany’s defeat in 1918 was like a personal betrayal.
Hitler, recovering from temporary blindness caused by a mustard gas attack, received word that the war was lost. He wept.
The Treaty of Versailles that followed humiliating Germany with reparations, military limits, and territorial losses lit a fire in him. A fire that would one day ignite the world.
Finding His Voice
In the chaos of postwar Germany, Hitler found direction in the German Workers' Party, a small nationalist group with radical ideas. It was 1919.
He began as a recruiter, but his fury-fueled speeches, theatrical and hypnotic, turned heads. He blamed the Jews, the Marxists, the Treaty, the “November criminals” who signed it. He preached purity, German pride, and revenge.
And people listened.
By 1920, the party had renamed itself the National Socialist German Workers’ Party: Nazi for short and by 1921, Hitler was its undisputed leader. From failed artist to fiery demagogue, the transformation was complete but his real climb was just beginning.
Next Time: Adolf Hitler Part Two | Power Seized, Democracy Dismantled
The beer halls of Munich echo with rebellion as Hitler tries to take power by force. What follows is prison, a book, and the rise of one of history’s most terrifying regimes.
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