Adolf Hitler

Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate child of Maria Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, and Alois initially bore his mother's surname, Schicklgruber. In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois's mother. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. Alois worked as a civil servant from 1855 until his retirement in 1895. In 1876, Alois was made legitimate and his baptismal record annotated by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Alois's father (recorded as Georg Hitler). Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled Hiedler, Hüttler, and Huettler. The name is probably based on the German word Hütte (lit. 'hut'), and has the meaning 'one who lives in a hut'.

The Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Alois's mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the family's 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois, a claim that came to be known as the Frankenberger thesis. Nobody named Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of a Leopold Frankenberger's existence, so historians dismiss the claim that Alois's father was Jewish. In 2025, blood from the sofa in Hitler's study was used by Turi King of the University of Bath for DNA analysis. The blood was confirmed to be Hitler's by comparing it to that of a male-line relative, and the DNA analysis also showed that Hitler did not have Jewish ancestry through his father. "If that was the case, we wouldn't have got the DNA match with him," King said. "That DNA match not only confirmed that this is Hitler's DNA but also confirms that the story of human Jewish ancestry through his father is just simply not true."

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria), close to the border with Germany. He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pölzl. Three of Hitler's siblings (Gustav, Ida, and Otto) died in infancy. Also living in the household were Alois's children from his second marriage: Alois Jr. (born 1882) and Angela (born 1883). In 1892, the family moved to Passau, Germany, following Alois's promotion to the customs administration in Passau. Hitler was three at the time. Alois was promoted and transferred to Linz, Austria, on 1 April 1893, but the rest of the family remained in Passau. The family returned to Austria and settled in Leonding on 9 May 1894, and in June 1895, Alois retired to Hafeld, near Lambach, where he farmed and kept bees. Hitler attended Volksschule (a state-funded primary school) in nearby Fischlham.

The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father–son conflicts caused by six-year-old 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.

Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld were unsuccessful, and in 1897, the family moved to Lambach. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even considered becoming a priest. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding. Hitler was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother Edmund in 1900 from measles. Hitler transformed from a confident, outgoing, and conscientious student to a morose, detached boy who frequently clashed with his father and teachers. Paula Hitler recalled that Adolf was a teenage bully who would often slap her.

Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. Hitler later dramatised an episode from this period when his father took him to visit a customs office, depicting it as an event that gave rise to an unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed. Ignoring his son's desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist, Alois sent Hitler to the Realschule in Linz in September 1900. …

After the war, Hitler returned to Munich. Without formal education or career prospects, he remained in the army. In July 1919, he was appointed Verbindungsmann (intelligence agent) of an Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance unit) of the Reichswehr, assigned to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP). At a DAP meeting on 12 September 1919, Party chairman Anton Drexler was impressed by Hitler's oratorical skills. He gave him a copy of his pamphlet My Political Awakening, which contained antisemitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas. On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party, and within a week was accepted as party member 555 (the party began counting membership at 500 to give the impression they were a much larger party).

Hitler made his earliest known written statement about the Jewish question in a 16 September 1919 letter to Adolf Gemlich (now known as the Gemlich letter). In the letter, Hitler argues that the aim of the government "must unshakably be the removal of the Jews altogether". At the DAP, Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the party's founders and a member of the occult Thule Society. Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and introducing him to a wide range of Munich society. To increase its appeal, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), now known as the "Nazi Party"). Hitler designed the party's banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background.

Hitler was discharged from the army on 31 March 1920, and began working full-time for the party. The party headquarters was in Munich, a centre for anti-government German nationalists determined to eliminate Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic.

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen commented in his 1947 book Diary of a Man in Despair:

He had come to a house where he had never been before, wearing gaiters, a floppy, wide-brimmed hat, and carrying a riding whip. ... Eventually, he managed to launch into a speech. He talked on and on, endlessly. He preached. He went on at us like a division chaplain in the Army. We did not in the least contradict him, or venture to differ in any way, but he began to bellow at us. The servants thought we were being attacked and rushed in to defend us. …

Hitler ruled the Nazi Party autocratically by asserting the Führerprinzip (leader principle). The principle relied on absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors; thus, he viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself—the infallible leader—at the apex. Rank in the party was not determined by elections—positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank, who demanded unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader. Hitler's leadership style was to give contradictory orders to his subordinates and to place them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped with those of others, to have "the stronger one [do] the job". In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power. His cabinet never met after 1938, and he discouraged his ministers from meeting independently. Hitler typically did not give written orders; instead, he communicated verbally, or had them conveyed through his close associate Martin Bormann. He entrusted Bormann with his paperwork, appointments, and personal finances; Bormann used his position to control the flow of information and access to Hitler.

Hitler dominated his country's war effort during World War II to a greater extent than any other national leader. He strengthened his control of the armed forces in 1938, and subsequently made all major decisions regarding Germany's military strategy. His decision to mount a risky series of offensives against Norway, France, and the Low Countries in 1940, against the advice of the military, proved successful, though the diplomatic and military strategies he employed in attempts to force the United Kingdom out of the war ended in failure. Hitler deepened his involvement in the war effort by appointing himself commander-in-chief of the Army in December 1941; from this point forward, he personally directed the war against the Soviet Union, while his military commanders facing the Western Allies retained a degree of autonomy. Hitler's leadership became increasingly disconnected from reality as the war turned against Germany, with the military's defensive strategies often hindered by his slow decision-making and frequent directives to hold untenable positions. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that only his leadership could deliver victory. …

Hitler created a public image as a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the nation. He met his lover, Eva Braun, in 1929, and married her on 29 April 1945, one day before they both committed suicide. In September 1931, his half-niece, Geli Raubal, committed suicide with Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment. It was rumoured among contemporaries that Geli was in a romantic relationship with him, and her death was a source of deep, lasting pain. Paula Hitler, the younger sister of Hitler and the last living member of his immediate family, died in June 1960.

Hitler was born to a practising Catholic mother and an anti-clerical father; after leaving home, Hitler never again attended Mass or received the sacraments. Albert Speer stated that Hitler railed against the church to his political associates, and though he never officially left the church, he had no attachment to it. Speer added that Hitler felt that in the absence of organised religion, people would turn to mysticism, which he considered regressive. According to Speer, Hitler believed that Japanese religious beliefs or Islam would have been a more suitable religion for Germans than Christianity, with its "meekness and flabbiness". The historian John S. Conway states that Hitler was fundamentally opposed to the Christian churches. According to Bullock, Hitler did not believe in God, was anticlerical, and held Christian ethics in contempt because they contravened his preferred view of "survival of the fittest". He favoured aspects of Protestantism that suited his own views, and adopted some elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchical organisation, liturgy, and phraseology. In a 1932 speech, Hitler stated that he was not a Catholic, and declared himself a German Christian. According to Albert Speer, even after 1942 Hitler maintained the hope that "Through me the Evangelical Church could become the established church, as in England."

Hitler viewed the church as an important politically conservative influence on society, and he adopted a strategic relationship with it that "suited his immediate political purposes". In public, Hitler often praised Christian heritage and German Christian culture, though professing a belief in an "Aryan Jesus" who fought against the Jews. …