Hitler's Austrian Birth: A Historical Mystery

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, in 1889. The town is now part of Austria and is located near the German border. Hitler's birthplace has been a source of contention for the Austrian government, which has struggled to prevent it from becoming a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.

Hitler's birthplace in Braunau am Inn

Braunau am Inn is a picturesque town in Upper Austria on the border with Germany. It is known for being the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. The town is on the lower River Inn, which forms the border with the German state of Bavaria. Braunau is connected by bridges over the Inn to its Bavarian counterpart, Simbach am Inn.

The earliest written mention of Braunau am Inn was in 1120, and the town received its town rights in 1260, making it one of the first in present-day Austria. It became a prosperous fortress town and an important trading route junction, dealing with the salt trade and ship traffic on the Inn.

Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn on 20 April 1889. His father, Alois Hitler, was a customs agent working for the Austrian government and was posted to Braunau in 1875. Hitler was born in an apartment building at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, which housed a craft brewery and several rental flats, one of which was occupied by Alois, his third wife, Klara, and their children. The family lived in Braunau until 1892, when Alois was transferred to nearby Passau, in Germany.

The house where Hitler was born has been many things over the years, including a school, a bank, and a centre for the disabled. The Austrian government has long wrestled with the question of what to do with the house, and there has been strong political pressure to demolish it. In 2016, the government expropriated the property and initially planned to tear it down. However, this decision was met with opposition from those who wanted to preserve the historically significant building.

In 2020, it was announced that the building would be remodelled and used as a police station and a training centre for police in human rights. The exterior will be redesigned, and the interior will be completely different. The restoration is expected to be completed in 2025, with the police station moving in the following year.

Hitler's early life in Austria-Hungary

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria), near the German border. He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara. Hitler's father, Alois, was a mid-level customs official. Born out of wedlock to Maria Anna Schickelgruber in 1837, Alois Schickelgruber had changed his name in 1876 to Hitler, the Christian name of the man who married his mother five years after his birth. Hitler's mother, Klara, was her husband's third wife and also his cousin.

Hitler's family moved around a lot during his childhood. When he was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany. There, he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, which marked his speech throughout his life. The family returned to Austria and settled in Leonding in 1894, and in June 1895, Alois retired to Hafeld, near Lambach, where he farmed and kept bees. Hitler attended a state-funded primary school in nearby Fischlham.

Hitler's move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father-son conflicts caused by 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.

In 1898, the Hitler family moved to Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. Hitler wanted a career in the visual arts, but his father wanted him to enter the Habsburg civil service. After his father's death in 1903, Hitler eventually persuaded his mother to permit him to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. However, Hitler failed the entrance exam to the Vienna Academy of the Arts. In early 1908, some weeks after Klara's death in December 1907, Hitler moved to Vienna, where he lived between February 1908 and May 1913.

Hitler's time in Vienna was marked by poverty and a growing passion for architecture and music. He attended ten performances of Lohengrin, his favourite Wagner opera. It was also in Vienna that Hitler was first exposed to racist rhetoric. He developed fervent anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic sentiments, influenced by the city's prevalent anti-Semitic sentiment and the racist nationalism propagated by the Upper Austrian Pan-German politician Georg von Schönerer.

In May 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, Germany, to avoid arrest for evading his military service obligation to Habsburg Austria. He financed his move with the last instalment of his inheritance from his father.

Hitler's time in Vienna

Adolf Hitler moved to Vienna in 1907, when he was 18 years old. He wanted to study at the Academy of Fine Arts but was rejected twice due to his drawings being deemed unsatisfactory. Hitler moved to the city with his friend August Kubizek, with whom he shared a room at Stumpergasse 29. The two would often stroll the Ringstrasse, a three-mile-long boulevard lined with classical and modern architecture. They also admired the Hofburg Palace and the Neoclassical parliament building, where Hitler attended parliamentary debates.

Hitler and Kubizek were aspiring artists, and Hitler wanted to study at the Academy of Fine Arts at Schillerplatz. Kubizek would study music. However, Hitler was twice rejected by the Academy, which left him deflated and living in a succession of homeless shelters and men's boarding houses. He sold hand-painted postcards on the streets of Vienna to pay for his accommodation. Historians debate whether Hitler's racist views were formed during his time in Vienna, but it is confirmed that he admired the city's then-mayor, Karl Lueger, who was known for his anti-Semitic views and oratory skills. Hitler was also a regular at Café Central, which was frequented by Leon Trotsky.

Hitler spent much of his time in Vienna reading right-wing and pan-German writings, which he would expound upon to anyone who would listen. He left Vienna in 1913, having spent a great deal of time developing his anti-democratic and anti-Semitic beliefs.

Hitler's move to Germany

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, in 1889. He moved to Germany in 1913, aged 24, to avoid conscription into the Austrian army. Hitler had no desire to fight for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which he despised due to its ethnic diversity. He lived in the German city of Munich and joined the Bavarian army in 1914, fighting for the German Empire in World War I.

Hitler's early life in Germany and his experiences during World War I had a significant impact on his political ideology and ambitions. He received the Iron Cross for his service in the German Army, which decorated his military career. However, his time in Germany also exposed him to racist and nationalist ideologies that influenced his later actions.

Hitler's involvement in World War I

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna in the first decade of the 1900s before moving to Munich, Germany, in 1913. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Hitler was living in Munich and voluntarily enlisted in the Bavarian Army. He was 25 years old at the time.

Hitler 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. He was a runner, one of the most dangerous jobs on the front, carrying messages from one position to another. Hitler was described by other soldiers as aloof, quiet, and a loner, never receiving mail from home, but regularly reading pamphlets and literature. He was also known for expressing outrage at his fellow soldiers visiting French prostitutes. Despite being considered odd, Hitler was liked and accepted by his peers.

Hitler was an infantryman in the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914, which Germans remember as the Kindermord bei Ypern (Massacre of the Innocents at Ypres) due to the high number of casualties. Hitler's regiment entered the battle with 3,600 men but ended with only 611. Hitler's own company of 250 was reduced to 42. This experience is said to have driven Hitler to become more aloof and withdrawn for the remaining years of the war.

Hitler was promoted from private to lance corporal and was assigned to be a regimental message-runner. In early 1915, he adopted a stray dog he named Fuchsl (Little Fox), who became his companion. In August 1917, the List Regiment transferred to a quiet sector of the front in Alsace, but during the journey, Hitler's portfolio of sketches and paintings, as well as Fuchsl, were stolen. Hitler took his first leave, visiting Berlin for 18 days.

Hitler fought in many battles, including the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the Battle of Arras in 1917, and the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. During the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916, the Bavarians repulsed the attackers, who suffered significant losses. Hitler's bravery during the war was recognised, and he received the Iron Cross Second Class in 1914 and the Iron Cross First Class in 1918, an honour rarely given to a lance corporal. Hitler's Iron Cross First Class was awarded after an attack in which messengers were indispensable, and on a day when the depleted regiment lost 60 killed and 211 wounded.

During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, Hitler received a wound in his left thigh when a shell exploded at the entrance to the dispatch runners' dugout. He was sent to the Red Cross hospital at Beelitz in Brandenburg for almost two months. Thereafter, he was ordered to the depot in Munich. He wrote to his commanding officer, Hauptmann Fritz Wiedemann, asking to be recalled to the regiment because he could not tolerate Munich when he knew his comrades were at the front. Wiedemann arranged for Hitler's return to his regiment on 5 March 1917.

On 15 October 1918, Hitler and several comrades were temporarily blinded by a British mustard gas attack. After initial treatment, Hitler was hospitalised in Pasewalk in Pomerania. While there, he learned of Germany's defeat from a pastor, which, by his own account, caused him to suffer a second bout of blindness. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that this was when he decided to become a politician, stating, "When I was confined to bed, the idea came to me that I would liberate Germany, that I would make it great. I knew immediately that it would be realized." However, it is unlikely that he committed himself to a career in politics at that point.

Hitler was outraged by the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which forced Germany to accept responsibility for starting the war, deprived Germany of various territories, demilitarised the Rhineland, and imposed economically damaging sanctions. He was discharged from the Pasewalk hospital on 19 November 1918 and returned to Munich. On 21 November, he was assigned to the 7th Company of the 1st Replacement Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment. In December, he was reassigned to a Prisoner of War camp in Traunstein as a guard.

Hitler returned to Munich and spent a few months in barracks waiting for reassignment. Munich was in a state of chaos at the time, with several assassinations occurring, including that of socialist Kurt Eisner, who was shot dead by a German nationalist. In this political turmoil, Berlin sent in the military, called the "White Guards of Capitalism" by the communists. On 3 April 1919, Hitler was elected as the liaison of his military battalion and again on 15 April. During this time, he urged his unit to stay out of the fighting and not join either side. The Bavarian Soviet Republic was officially crushed on 6 May 1919.

In June 1919, Hitler was moved to the demobilisation office of the 2nd Infantry Regiment. Around this time, the German military command released an edict prioritising the surveillance of the population to prevent the ignition of unrest. In May 1919, Karl Mayr became commander of the 6th Battalion of the guards regiment in Munich and head of the "Education and Propaganda Department" of the Bavarian Reichswehr. In this capacity, Mayr recruited Hitler as an undercover agent in early June 1919. Hitler attended "national thinking" courses arranged by Mayr, primarily designed to educate on German history, the course of the war, and to stem the spread of Bolshevism. Hitler impressed Mayr and realised during these courses that he had a particular strength in oratory, regularly making anti-Semitic speeches.

Hitler was assigned to an anti-bolshevik "educational commando" as one of 26 instructors in the summer of 1919. As an appointed intelligence agent of a reconnaissance commando of the Reichswehr, Hitler's job was to influence other soldiers and infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP). Hitler monitored the activities of the DAP and became attracted to the founder

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