Austrian-German politician who became the Dictator of Germany in 1933, retaining power until 1945. He gained political character and purpose in WW I, joining the Worker’s Party after the war was over. He was appointed Chancellor in January 1930 and quickly rose to power, becoming Fuhrer of the resurgent National Socialist Party by the fall of 1931. He became Reich chancellor, his first political office, in 1933 and by 1939, over-ran Europe. His infamous dictatorship, lasting for only 13 years, created a permanent shift in world politics and was directly responsible for the death of over 30 million people.
Of the seven children conceived by Hitler’s mother, Klara, four died prematurely, one was moronic, and another was hidden from public view as an idiot. Her marriage was so close to being labeled incestuous that the pope had to give the couple a special dispensation, and all of her life, she called her 20-year-older husband “uncle.” The inbreeding led Hitler to feel that his own blood was “tainted,” and he used leeches to “purify” himself. He had an abiding, and secret, fear all of his life. His grandmother, Anna Maria Schicklgruber, while an unmarried servant girl, had produced Hitler’s father, Alois. It was never really known whether or not the child was the result of a seduction by her employer’s student son – a Jew.
Hitler’s first goal was to be an artist but he flunked the application twice, 1907 and 1908, to Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. In the early 20th century, bitter about the rejection of his application, he was scratching out a living selling postcards he painted of local landmarks. During the Great War he joined the army on 1 August 1914 and served in a Bavarian infantry regiment. He survived four years of front-line combat, winning the Iron Cross twice for bravery. It was not until after Corporal Hitler returned to his adopted Munich and became leader of the National Socialist Party that he began to take the shape of his future.
In 1920 Hitler joined the German Workers’ party and turned the tiny, ineffective group into a formidable paramilitary organization. At Munich on 8 November 1923, he tried to force the Bavarian government into a full-scaled revolution against the Weimar Republic but his beer hall putsch failed. He was tried and spent nine months in prison, where he wrote the first volume of “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle), his plan for Germany’s dominion over the world.
Aided by Germany’s internal chaos and worsening economic condition, Hitler schemed his way into authority and in 1933 was named Chancellor. It was a time of economic depression in Germany with a third of the country out of work. Hitler’s speaking power was awesome, winning him the support of the masses. He built a private army of 100,000 men, the brown-shirted Storm Troopers and purged potential threats to his leadership, murdering or jailing political rivals on the infamous “Night of the Long Knives,” 30 June 1934. His policy of Aryan supremacy sent over six million European Jews, Gypsies and political dissidents to the gas chambers. He had “immoral books” burned in his police state. He offered national pride and jobs, offering hope for an economic recovery.
Hitler re-armed Germany, re-occupied the Rhineland, took over Austria and seized Czechoslovakia as his first steps toward conquering Europe – then the world. In November 1938 he ordered a huge pogrom with Jewish arrests all over Germany for his demonic vision of Aryan dominion. On 1 September 1939, his armored columns rolled across the Polish border, triggering WW II. When battlefield casualties numbering in the millions provoked an unsuccessful assassination plot on his life in 1944, he condemned the men responsible to death. They were hung on meat hooks and strangled with piano wire – but short of death. They were revived and rehanged, repeatedly, the episodes filmed for Hitler’s later enjoyment.
Toward the last days, and particularly after injuries suffered in the bomb plot of 20 July 1944, Adolf Hitler showed marked signs of physical deterioration. His shoulders were bowed and his face deeply lined, his gait was shuffling and there was a tremor in his left hand. After the failure of his Ardennes offensive, he and his mistress Eva Braun took up quarters in the chancellery in Berlin. Early on 29 April 1945, yielding to her wishes, they were married in a civil ceremony in the bunker under the chancellery. Immediately after, he dictated his will in which he blamed the war and most other human woes on Jewry. At 3:30 PM on April 30, he and his bride committed suicide. The dictator shot himself through the mouth and Eva took poison. Their bodies were carried to the courtyard where they were doused with gasoline and torched.
The women in Hitler’s life had uniformly tragic fates. Geli Raubal, Hitler’s 20-year-younger half-niece and romantic obsession, was found dead in her bed on 19 September 1931 with a bullet through her chest and Hitler’s gun by her side, in the Berlin apartment that she shared with her uncle. “A mysterious darkness surround the death of this unusual beauty,” the newspapers wrote. Whether the death was a murder or suicide has never been resolved. There was a hasty attempt to cover up the death with the announcement of suicide “that she was nervous about an upcoming recital.” The Munchner Post wrote that “Herr Hitler and his niece had yet another fierce quarrel.” The report continued that the 23-year old girl wanted to go to Vienna, where she intended to become engaged.
Hitler first was captivated by Geli (short for Angela) in 1925, when she was 17. He persuaded her and her mother, his half-sister, to serve as his live-in housekeepers, first at his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden. Before long “Uncle Alf” had ensconced the girl into an apartment building next to his in Munich and was escorting her to cafes and cinemas. He hovered at her side, the picture of an infatuated adolescent. In 1929, he moved her into his apartment. Historians have debated the nature of their relationship ever since, debating the assertion that Hitler was entirely asexual to the belief that he led a normal sexual life, to stories of perversions and phobias. It has been established that Hitler had one testicle and that he had a huge pornographic collection. Whatever the explicit form Hitler’s affections took, it seemed evident that Geli was increasingly confined and resistant to her position.
Was this one death meaningless in the face of the millions to come? Or was it the cornerstone, the symbol of the ultimate power of a madman, the power of death itself?
In the mid-’30s, Hitler met Renate Muller, then 29 and an established star in German movies. The petite, blue-eyed blonde accepted a command invitation to the private quarters of Der Fuhrer. In October 1937, the meetings ended abruptly. Renate Muller either jumped 40 feet from her Berlin apartment window – or was thrown out by the Gestapo, after being charged with having a Jewish lover.
Hitler met 17-year-old Eva Braun when he was 40; she was working part-time in a photography shop. Braun became his mistress the following year in an “open secret,” and remained loyal to him for 15 years from the glory days to the bitter end of Nazi Germany. She had no political interest or social conscience, but enjoyed her home, garden, dogs, movies and clothes. Braun wrote in her diary the observations that any light-minded young girl might make.
The dark side of her role apparently made its mark, as she attempted suicide twice, once on 1 November 1932 and once on 29 May 1935. When the Allies closed in during the last days, Braun joined Hitler in Berlin and followed him into death the following day.
From Werner Maser, “Hitler,” the baptismal records are quoted for the date of Hitler’s paternal great-grandfather, Johannes Schicklgruber, 29 May 1764, Spital am Pyhrn, Austria, 14 E.20, 47 N.39.
Paternal grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber, 15 April 1795, Strones, Austria, 15 E.19, 48 N.36. She became pregnant by Johann Huttler, Hitler’s maternal great grandfather.
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