Adolf Hitler (1942: Differently)

**Adolf Hitler** (born: **Adolf Ludwig Hitler**, 20 April 1889—23 September 1962 [aged 73]) was a Danubian-born German philosopher, painter, mystic, religious leader, linguist, and soldier. He is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, having developed a Pan-Germanic cultural and political movement called Hitlerism, which involved the foundation of the Germanic League, the creation of an auxiliary Germanic language called Deutschensche, and the spread of the Lovanuatru, a new religious movement, throughout Europe. Hitler helped create the concept of a Germanic world, still widely influential on the politics and culture of central and northern European nations to this day.

Hitler's main intellectual influences were aspects of the philosophies of Kant, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Steiner, and Nietzsche, particularly the criticism of traditional religions and racial relations, whereas certain other aspects were rejected. As a mystic, Hitler acquired his knowledge and inspiration from English occultists Aleister Crowley and Gerald Gardner.

Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, and was raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in the Great War. In his twenties, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, anti-semitism, anti-communism, and the restoration of Germanic neopaganism, later known as Vanatru. With charismatic oratory, he frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as part of a Jewish conspiracy and supported the creation of a greater social democratic state uniting all Germanic peoples of Europe. Hitler believed these countries were a single nation that was fragmented and weak, and endorsed a modern restoration of it under one powerful state with its own language and religion.

## Ancestry

Hitler's father, Alois Hitler (1837–1903), was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna 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. 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', or 'Huettler'. The name is probably based on the German word *Hütte* (lit., "hut"), and likely has the meaning "one who lives in a hut".

Adolf Hitler's colleague Hans Frank suggested that Alois' 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. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenberger's existence, and Jewish residency in Styria had been illegal for nearly 400 years and would not become legal again until decades after Alois's birth, so historians dismiss the claim that Alois's father was Jewish.

## Early Years

### a. Childhod & Education

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (currently Upper Cisleithania, Danubia), close to the border with the German Empire. 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). When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany. There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, rather than Austrian German, 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 *Volksschule* (a state-funded primary school) in nearby Fischlham.