Background and career
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany in the Nazi era from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 under his leadership marked the outbreak of the Second World War. Throughout the ensuing conflict, Hitler was closely involved in the direction of German military operations and was central to the perpetration of the genocide of about six million Jews in the Holocaust as well as the deaths of millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and moved to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in the First World War, receiving the Iron Cross. In 1919, he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and in 1921, was appointed the leader of the Nazi Party. In 1923, he attempted to seize governmental power in a failed coup in Munich and was sentenced to five years in prison, serving just over a year. While there, he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf ('my struggle'). After his early release in 1924, he gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles as well as promoting pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. He frequently denounced communism as being part of an international Jewish conspiracy. Following elections to the Reichstag in November 1932, the Nazi Party held the most seats in the Reichstag ('parliament'), but not a majority. Subsequently, former chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservative politicians convinced Reichspräsident ('president') Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933. Shortly thereafter, on 23 March, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933, which ultimately began the Weimar Republic's transformation into Nazi Germany. Upon Hindenburg's death on 2 August 1934, Hitler replaced him as head of state and thereafter, Germany became a totalitarian dictatorship. Domestically, Hitler began to implement numerous racist policies, which marginalised and scapegoated German Jews. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the abrogation of restrictions imposed on Germany after the First World War, and the annexation of territories inhabited by millions of ethnic Germans, which won him significant popularity. One of Hitler's key goals was Lebensraum ('living space') for the German people in Eastern Europe. His aggressive, expansionist foreign policy is considered the primary cause of World War II in Europe. On 1 September 1939, Hitler oversaw the German invasion of Poland, thereby causing Britain and France to declare war on Germany. After ordering an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, he declared war on the United States in December of the same year. By the end of 1941, German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed after 1941 until the Allied forces defeated the German military in 1945. On 29 April 1945, Hitler married his longtime partner, Eva Braun, in the Führerbunker ('leader's bunker') in Berlin. They committed suicide the next day to avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army. The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw described Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil". Under Hitler's leadership and racist ideology, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of an estimated six million Jews and millions of other victims, whom he and his followers deemed Untermenschen ('subhumans') or socially undesirable. Hitler and the Nazis were also responsible for the deliberate killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 28.7 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre. In absolute terms, the number of civilians killed during World War II was unprecedented in warfare, and the casualties make it the deadliest conflict in history.
Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate child of Maria Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, and Alois initially bore his mother's surname, Schicklgruber. In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois's mother. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. Alois worked as a civil servant from 1855 until his retirement in 1895. In 1876, Alois was made legitimate and his baptismal record annotated by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Alois's father (recorded as Georg Hitler). Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled Hiedler, Hüttler, and Huettler. The name is probably based on the German word Hütte (lit. 'hut'), and has the meaning 'one who lives in a hut'. The Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Alois's mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the family's 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois, a claim that came to be known as the Frankenberger thesis. Nobody named Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of a Leopold Frankenberger's existence, so historians dismiss the claim that Alois's father was Jewish. In 2025, blood from the sofa in Hitler's study was used by Turi King of the University of Bath for DNA analysis. The blood was confirmed to be Hitler's by comparing it to that of a male-line relative, and the DNA analysis also showed that Hitler did not have Jewish ancestry through his father. "If that was the case, we wouldn't have got the DNA match with him," King said. "That DNA match not only confirmed that this is Hitler's DNA but also confirms that the story of human Jewish ancestry through his father is just simply not true."
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria), close to the border with Germany. He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pölzl. Three of Hitler's siblings (Gustav, Ida, and Otto) died in infancy. Also living in the household were Alois's children from his second marriage: Alois Jr. (born 1882) and Angela (born 1883). In 1892, the family moved to Passau, Germany, following Alois's promotion to the customs administration in Passau. Hitler was three at the time. Alois was promoted and transferred to Linz, Austria, on 1 April 1893, but the rest of the family remained in Passau. The family returned to Austria and settled in Leonding on 9 May 1894, and in June 1895, Alois retired to Hafeld, near Lambach, where he farmed and kept bees. Hitler attended Volksschule (a state-funded primary school) in nearby Fischlham. The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father–son conflicts caused by six-year-old Hitler's refusal to conform to the strict discipline of his school. Alois tried to browbeat his son into obedience, while Adolf did his best to be the opposite of whatever his father wanted. Alois would also beat his son, although his mother tried to protect him from regular beatings.
Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld were unsuccessful, and in 1897, the family moved to Lambach. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even considered becoming a priest. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding. Hitler was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother Edmund in 1900 from measles. Hitler transformed from a confident, outgoing, and conscientious student to a morose, detached boy who frequently clashed with his father and teachers. Paula Hitler recalled that Adolf was a teenage bully who would often slap her. Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. Hitler later dramatised an episode from this period when his father took him to visit a customs office, depicting it as an event that gave rise to an unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed. Ignoring his son's desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist, Alois sent Hitler to the Realschule in Linz in September 1900. Hitler rebelled against this decision, and in Mein Kampf states that he intentionally performed poorly in school, hoping that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to my dream". Like many Austrian Germans, Hitler began to develop German nationalist ideas from a young age. He expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg monarchy and its rule over an ethnically diverse empire. Hitler and his friends used the greeting Heil, and sang the "Deutschlandlied" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem. After Alois's sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's performance at school deteriorated, and his mother allowed him to leave. He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in September 1904, where his behaviour and performance improved. In 1905, after passing a repeat of the final exam, Hitler left the school without any ambitions for further education or clear plans for a career.
In 1907, Hitler left Linz to live and study fine art in Vienna, financed by an orphan's benefits and support from his mother. He applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna but was rejected twice. The director suggested Hitler should apply to the School of Architecture, but he lacked the necessary academic credentials because he had not finished secondary school. On 21 December 1907, his mother died of breast cancer at the age of 47; Hitler was 18 at the time. In 1909, Hitler ran out of money and was forced to live a bohemian life in homeless shelters and the Meldemannstraße dormitory. He earned money as a casual labourer and by painting and selling watercolours of Vienna's sights. During his time in Vienna, he pursued a growing passion for architecture and music, attending ten performances of Lohengrin, his favourite of Richard Wagner's operas. In Vienna, Hitler was first exposed to racist rhetoric. Populists such as mayor Karl Lueger exploited the city's prevalent antisemitic sentiment, occasionally also espousing German nationalist notions for political benefit. German nationalism was especially widespread in the Mariahilf district, where Hitler then lived. Georg Ritter von Schönerer became a major influence on Hitler, and he developed an admiration for Martin Luther. Hitler read newspapers and pamphlets that promoted prejudice and warned of an influx of Eastern European Jews, as well as writings by figures such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon, and Arthur Schopenhauer. During his years in Vienna he also developed strong anti-Slavic sentiments. The origin and development of Hitler's antisemitism remain a matter of debate. His friend August Kubizek claimed that Hitler was a "confirmed antisemite" before he left Linz. The historian Brigitte Hamann describes Kubizek's claim as "problematical", because it was made retroactively in 1953. While Hitler states in Mein Kampf that he first became an antisemite in Vienna, Reinhold Hanisch, who helped him to sell his paintings, disagrees. Hitler also sold some of his art through a Jewish businessman named Samuel Morgenstern while living in Vienna. Many of Morgenstern's clients were Jewish; for example, a lawyer named Josef Feingold purchased several of Hitler's paintings of Vienna's historical architecture. The historian Richard J. Evans states that "historians now generally agree that his notorious, murderous antisemitism emerged well after Germany's defeat in World War I, as a product of the paranoid 'stab-in-the-back' explanation for the catastrophe". Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich. When he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army, he journeyed to Salzburg on 5 February 1914 for medical assessment. After he was deemed unfit for service, he returned to Munich. Hitler later claimed that he did not wish to serve the Habsburg Empire because of the mixture of races in its army and his belief that the collapse of Austria-Hungary was imminent.
In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Hitler was living in Munich and voluntarily enlisted in the Bavarian Army. According to a 1924 report by the Bavarian authorities, allowing Hitler to serve was most likely an administrative error, because as an Austrian citizen, he should have been returned to Austria. Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (1st Company of the List Regiment), he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium, spending nearly half his time at the regimental headquarters in Fournes-en-Weppes, well behind the front lines. In 1914, he was present at the First Battle of Ypres and in that year was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class. During the war, he was saved by his commanding officer, Fritz Wiedemann, who pulled Hitler out of the rubble of a collapsed building while under heavy fire. During his service at headquarters, Hitler pursued his artistic interests, drawing cartoons and providing instructions for an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout. Hitler spent almost two months recovering in hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917. He was present at the Battle of Arras of 1917 and the Battle of Passchendaele. He received the black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918. Three months later, in August 1918, on a recommendation by Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, his Jewish superior, Hitler received the Iron Cross, First Class, a decoration rarely awarded at Hitler's Gefreiter rank. On 15 October 1918, he was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk. While there, Hitler learned of Germany's defeat, and, by his own account, suffered a second bout of blindness after receiving this news. Hitler described his role in World War I as "the greatest of all experiences" and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery. His wartime experience reinforced his German patriotism, and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918. His displeasure with the collapse of the war effort began to shape his ideology. Like other German nationalists, he believed the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth), which claimed that the German army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" on the home front by civilian leaders, Jews, Marxists, and those who signed the armistice that ended the fighting—later dubbed the "November criminals". The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany had to relinquish several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland. The treaty imposed economic sanctions and levied heavy reparations on the country. Many Germans saw the treaty as an unjust humiliation. They especially objected to Article 231, which they interpreted as declaring Germany responsible for the war. The Versailles Treaty and the economic, social, and political conditions in Germany after the war were later exploited by Hitler for political gain.
