THE NAZI TOP BRASS
ADOLF HITLER
Born in 1889 in Braunau am Inn, on the Austro-German border, Hitler left school with no qualifications and twice applied – unsuccessfully – to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
After the death of his mother in 1907, he spent a few years moving around Vienna’s hostels, painting postcards to make a living. At this time, Vienna was a hotbed of racial rhetoric, and the city’s mayor Karl Lueger was a well-known anti-Semite – a man Hitler admired.
Hitler moved to Munich in 1913 and enlisted to fight in a Bavarian regiment almost as soon as World War I was declared in 1914. Decorated twice for bravery, he was wounded at the Somme and suffered temporary blindness from a gas attack. Once the war had ended, he was employed by the army to monitor extreme nationalist
