Adolf Hitler was the all-powerful sole leader of Germany for a tumultuous 12 years in the first half of the 20th Century, the prime instigator of World War II, and one of the architects of the Holocaust.

He was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, in what was then Austria-Hungary. He was the fourth son of Alois and Klara Hitler. His father was a state customs official, and his mother ran the family house. The family moved to Passau, Germany, when young Adolf was 3 and then, two years later, back to Austria-Hungary, to Leonding. In 1895, Alois retired and the family moved to Hafeld.

The Hitlers had six children in all; only Adolf and his sister Paula survived into adulthood, the others dying of varied illnesses when very young. Alois Hitler, who treated his children poorly, insisted that his surviving son, Adolf, follow in his footsteps and join the civil service; to that end, father sent son to a school in Linz. Adolf refused to follow that path; his school grades also suffered. Father and son became estranged, and young Adolf showed no remorse when his father died of a sudden brain hemorrhage, in 1903. He changed schools, to one in Steyr, and his grades improved. He passed the final exam and left, in 1905. He had not, however, completed a secondary school education.

What Adolf Hitler really wanted to do was paint, and so he moved to Vienna in 1907, to attend the Academy of Fine Arts there. He was twice rejected, mainly because of his lack of secondary school completion credentials. His mother died near the end of the year, and with her went his monetary support. He worked for a time doing odd jobs and satisfying his true passion, painting, creating watercolors of the sights of Vienna and selling them. His admiration for the arts extended to architecture and especially to music; he gained a strong admiration for the German composer Richard Wagner, especially the opera Lohengrin.

It was in his time in Vienna that Hitler also gained an admiration for attitudes of nationalism, racism, and antisemitism. He well appreciated the works of the Reformation leader Martin Luther and of more recent writers Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzche, absorbing the teachings of the latter pair as he shaped his view of the world and the people in it.

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