Editing Adolf Hitler (section)

== Biography ==

=== Early life ===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1989-0322-506, Adolf Hitler, Kinderbild retouched.jpg|thumb|left|Hitler as a baby, c. 1889/90.|256x256px]]
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20<sup>th</sup>, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary (now in modern Austria), right on the Austro-German border. He was the fourth of [[Alois Hitler|Alois]] and Klara Hitler's six children.

When Adolf was three, his family moved to Kapuzinerstrasse 5, where Adolf would acquire his lifelong accent. As a child, he tirelessly played "Cowboys and Indians" and became disturbingly fixated on war after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War in his father's room.
[[File:Adolf Hitler as a child.jpg|left|thumb|279x279px|An 11 year old Hitler.]]
When Adolf was 11 years old, he started secondary school. It was his father's idea to send him to a ''Realschule'', where they taught mainly science and technical skills. But Adolf was a reluctant student. He much preferred drawing and writing to science and numbers. And he resented the hour-long walk to and from the school.

On February 2<sup>nd</sup>, 1900, Adolf's younger brother Edmund died from measles. The death deeply affected Adolf that it caused a change in his personality; he went from a confident, outgoing boy to a detached, sullen boy who constantly battled his father and his teachers. Many psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and psychohistorians have post-humously diagnosed or described Hitler as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia or possible psychopathy/sociopathy.

Adolf's father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become a high-ranked official, and this became a huge source of conflict between them. Adolf wanted to go to classical high school and become an artist but his father sent him to the Realschule in Linz, a technical high school.

For young Adolf Hitler, German nationalism quickly became an obsession, and it was a good way to rebel against his father, who served the Austrian government. Like many Austrian Germans he showed pride in his German ancestry, he expressed loyalty only to Germany despising the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After Alois' sudden death on January 3, 1903, Hitler's behaviour at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave. Adolf enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr but was expelled during his second year. He never returned to school again. When he was 14, he fell into a frozen lake, but a priest was able to pull him out before he drowned. The priest later regretted his decision.

From 1905 on, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna on an orphan's pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, citing "unfitness for painting", and they told him his abilities should be used for architecture. He followed this recommendation, and he became convinced that this was his path to pursue, but he lacked the academic preparation for architecture school.

In 1907, Adolf's mother died of breast cancer, and he was forced to give some of the money his mother had sent him to his sister. He ran out of money after the second time he was rejected by the Art Academy. Adolf Hitler always said he first became started following [[Anti-Semitism|antisemitism]] in Vienna, which had a large Jewish community.

Hitler claimed that Jews were enemies of the Aryan race. He held them responsible for Austria's crisis. He also identified certain forms of socialism and Bolshevism, which had many Jewish leaders, as Jewish movements, merging his antisemitism with anti-Marxism. He later blamed Germany's military defeat in World War I on the 1918 revolutions and he considered Jews the culprits of Germany's downfall and economic problems.

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, where he became more interested in architecture. When Germany entered [[World War I]] in August 1914, he asked permission to serve in a Bavarian regiment. This request was granted, and he enlisted in the Bavarian Army.