Eight Lesser-Known Facts About Adolf Hilter’s Life Until 1919
Did you know Hilter only had one friend?
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We don’t know much about the early life of Hitler, do we? Well, this article will try to shed some light on what Hitler’s life was like until the end of the first world war.
1. Hitler carried a photograph of his mother to the war.
On April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was born at Braunau am Inn. His father, Alois Hitler, was a customs official and served as a bureaucrat in the old Austrian government. Hitler’s father usually stayed away from his home. He would spend long hours at work, followed by beers with his colleagues.
Hitler’s mother filled this void of fatherly affection. Hitler was particularly close to his mother, and he even carried her photograph with him when he went to war in Vienna. When Hitler committed suicide in 1945, the photo of his mother was still present at his desk. We don’t know much about Hitler’s relationship with his siblings. Three of his siblings died infants, and just one of Hitler’s many siblings survived into adulthood.
2. Hitler may have suffered physical abuse at the hands of his father.
Historians suspected that Hitler faced physical abuse at the hands of his father. These suspicions were confirmed when in 2005 when two experts discovered journals that belonged to Hitler’s sister. In one of the journals, his sister wrote,
“It was especially my brother Adolf who challenged my father to extreme harshness and got his sound thrashing every day… How often on the other hand, did my mother cares him and try to obtain with her kindness what the father could not succeed [in obtaining] with harshness!”.
Historians have drawn a connection between the treatment endured by Hitler as a young boy and his brutal actions later on.
