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Infancy
Adolf Hitler is born in an inn in the Austrian village of Braunau-am-Inn. He is the third child of Alois Hitler and his third wife Klara, but the other two children they had died in infancy. Adolf has a half-brother, Alois Jr, and a half sister, Angela, from Alois' previous marraige. -
Period: to
Adolf Hitler
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Childhood games
Hitler's family move closer to the city of Linz and Hitler starts school in the village of Fischlham. Adolf quickly becomes the leader of his group of boys. He enjoys games like “Cowboys and Indians” and organizes reenactments of the Franco-Prussian War. -
Swastika
Hitler attends a Benedictine monastry school in Lambach where he sang in the choir and had allusions of joining the priesthood. He probably first sees the swastika there engraved into crests in the building’s walls. This “crooked cross” was an an ancient religious symbol and was to become a symbol of right-wing parties in Germany, including, of course, the Nazi Party. -
Brother dies
Edmund dies of measles and the family is distraught, no-one more than Adolf, who is torn between his parents. The overwhelming love and affection Adolf receives from his mother is offset by the physical beatings and emotional distance he gets from his father.
Alois wants his son to aim for a steady job in the civil service, but young Adolf refuses to set himself on a career path. He dreams of becoming an artist.
Alois sends Adolf to a technical high school in Linz where his grades and behavior -
father dies
Alois dies suddenly of a lung hemorrhage at an inn wheere he had gone to drink his morning glass of wine. Adolf is forced to change schools because of disruptive behavior. -
Hitler's parents
Hitler's parents Klara and Alois. Whereas
Klara was kind and loving, Alois was
a petty tyrant who yelled at and beat his
children. -
Poverty, war and the pains of growing up
Hitler uses a lung ailment as an excuse to take time off from school and eventually drops out altogether. He spends his time going for walks, attending the opera in Linz, reading, drawing and dreaming. Hitler makes no effort to get a job, he considers himself far beyond that. -
Leaves school (1905 - 1907)
Hitler uses a lung ailment as an excuse to take time off from school and eventually drops out altogether. He spends his time going for walks, attending the opera in Linz, reading, drawing and dreaming. Hitler makes no effort to get a job, he considers himself far beyond that. -
Rejected
Hitler tries and fails the admission exam at the Vienna School of Fine Arts, and the proctor says he should focus on architecture instead. -
mother dies
Klara Hitler dies from breast cancer and Adolf is overcome with grief. He decides to move to Vienna and live off his inheritance and orphan’s allotment until he can sit the entrance exam for the art school again. But Hitler makes little progress with his art and after seeing his sketch pad the school's board refuse to let him even sit the test. -
Just Scraped
Hitler runs out of money and moves into a homeless shelter in Vienna. There He becomes friends with another resident, Reinhold Hanish, who suggests the two can make money by selling Hitler's paintings.
Hitler starts to paint scenes of Vienna's landmarks, copied from postcards, and the smooth-talking Hanish sells them to shops and tourists. They sell enough to be able to move into Männerheim, a kind of flop -
Visit Great Britain
Hitler visits his half brother, Alois Jr, who is living in Liverpool. Hitler is fascinated by Britain's industrial strengh and wants to keep living there, at one point renting an appartment of his own. But with only a few words of English, Hitler fails to get a job and is forced to return to Vienna. -
Munich
Hitler moves to the Bavarian capital of Munich, Germany, to avoid enlistment in the Austrian Army. The Austrian authorities demand he joins up in 1914, but Hitler fails the physical and is allowed to return to Munich. -
War
Hitler joins a Bavarian regiment of the German Army after World War I breaks out. He serves in Belgium and France as a private. Hitler wins several awards for bravery including the Iron Cross First Class for saving his unit from being mistakenly shelled from behind by German artillery. -
Wounded
Hitler suffers a serious thigh wound at the Battle of the Somme. This was one of the bloodiest battle of the war and it left over one million dead. Hitler is sent back to Munich to recover and this is when he clips his moustache into its familiar form. -
Rejoing the Unit
Hitler volunteers to go back to the front and lives through rat-infested trenches and gas attacks -
Blinded
Hitler is blinded in a British clorine gas attack near Ypres soon before the end of the war. He is dismayed when Germany surrenders on November 11 with the Treaty of Versailles.
The treaty imposes harsh sanctions on Germany and Hitler, along with other nationalists, sees it as a "stab in the back" by influential German Jews and Marxists
