Adolf Hitler was a very famous person that was in the Holocaust. He was a very cruel person who thought that everyone who wasn’t a pure blooded German was low and filthy. He put a lot of people through misery and pain. He didn’t even know the people he was killing could be nice and pleasant. All he cared about was that they weren’t pure blooded Germans.
Hitler was born on April 20, 1889. He was the fourth child of Alois Schickelgruber and Kara Hitler. He was born in the town of Braunqu. Two of Adolf’s siblings died from diphtheria when he was a young boy and one died soon after birth. A house maid described him as a, “very strict but comfortable man,” and there is evidence that his father beat him when he was young.
When Adolf was 3, he and his family moved to Passau along the Inn River. His brother Elmond was born two years later. In 1895 they moved to the farm community of Hafeld. Which was 30 miles south west of Linz. His sister Paula was born in 1896. He had one half sister and one half brother from his father’s other two marriages. Hitler stayed 6 months in a house across from a large Benedictine monastery. The monastery’s coat of arms’ main feature was the swastika, the symbol that later became the Nazis sign.
A Nazi
Hitler’s dream as a young boy was to be a priest. You may think that is very strange, but it is true. By 1909 Hitler’s talent as an artist surfaced. Adolf did well enough in school to be accepted to either the university preparatory “gymnasium” or the technical/scientific Realschule. Because the Realschule had a course in drawing Adolf agreed with his father’s decision to go to the Realschule. Hitler did not do well in his new school.
Hitler’s father died in 1903 from suffering a pleural hemorrhage, (bleeding lungs). Adolf himself suffered from lung infections. He quit school at the age of 16. One reason he quit school was because of his lung problems. Another reason was because of poor school work.
Hitler’s mother developed terminal breast cancer and was treated by a Jewish doctor who served the poor, Dr. Edward Bloch. She had an operation and went through excruciatingly painful and expensive treatments. She took a very dangerous drug while having the treatments. She died on December 21, 1907.
In 1906 Adolf was permitted to visit Vienna, a city in Austria, but he was unable to get into the art school that he wanted to. He spent 6 years in Vienna while living on a small inheritance from his father and an orphan’s pension. He was basically penniless by 1909, he wandered the streets as a homeless person. He slept in a different place almost every night. It was in this time when Hitler began being prejudiced about Jewish people, developing his knack for politics, and forming his debating skills. According to John Toland’s biography, Adolf Hitler, two of his closest friends at this time were Jewish. He also admired Jewish art dealers and Jewish operatic performers and producers. However, Vienna was a center of anti-Semitism, and the mediaŐs portrayal of Jews as scapegoats (the people who bear the blame) with stereotyped attributes (something that someone said that was not true about them but people believed) fascinated Hitler.
In May of 1913 Hitler left Vienna and went to Munich, which is the capital of Bavaria, to avoid military services. In January the police came to him with a notice from the Austrian government. It threatened a year in prison and a fine if he was found guilty of leaving his native land with the intent of avoiding conscription (enrolling for the military). Hitler was arrested right then and taken to the Austrian Consulate. When he reported to Salzburg for duty, he was found “unfit...too weak...and unable to bear arms.”
Hitler served in World War I. He was enlisted in the Bavarian army. After less than two months of training Hitler’s regiment saw it’s first combat near Ypres, against the British and Belgians. Hitler almost died that day and many others. He was awarded two Iron Crosses for bravery. In October of 1916 he was wounded by an enemy shell and moved to a Berlin area hospital. After recovering, and serving four years in the service, he was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack in Belgium in October 1918. Communist revolts shook Germany while Hitler was recovering. Some Jews were leaders of these revolutions and this was part of Hitler’s hatred for Jewish people.
Now you see that HitlerŐs life was very sad, like many others at that time. The way he was treated when he was young, his family life, might have affected the way he turned out to be an adult.
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