Adolf hitler age at death
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‘Hitler: A Global Biography’ Review: His Enemy Across the Ocean
On July 17, 1918, in the waning months of World War I, Pvt. Adolf Hitler of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment escorted two American prisoners to brigade headquarters. The encounter with his prisoners changed Hitler’s life, according to Brendan Simms in his fascinating “Hitler: A Global Biography.” From that day on, the Austrian soldier—and, soon, the war veteran-turned-racist ideologue—convinced himself that the doughboys were in fact descendants of sturdy German emigrants to the New World whom the Fatherland had allowed to slip away. They had now, in Mr. Simms’s words, “returned as avengers in the ranks of an unstoppable enemy.” Stopping that unstoppable enemy, America, became Hitler’s lifelong obsession—an obsession that, according to Mr. Simms, led to the creation of the Third Reich and eventually to Auschwitz and World War II.
A weary reader might ask why we need yet another biography of Adolf Hitler. Mr. Simms, a fellow of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and the author of several books on European hist
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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) is unquestionably the central figure in the story of the Holocaust. It was the combination of his virulent hatred of Jews and his success in creating a political movement that was able to seize control of Germany that made the campaign to exterminate the Jews possible.
Hitler’s origins: Hitler was born in a small town in Austria in 1889. He was the son of a local customs official and his much younger third wife. Hitler’s father was an illegitimate child and it is uncertain who his father was, but there is no evidence for the legend that this unidentified grandfather was Jewish. Hitler’s father was harsh and distant. He had a closer relationship with his mother, and her death from cancer when he was 17 was traumatic for him.
Hitler had a normal education. As a young man, he showed no special talents. He wanted to study art, and moved to Vienna after his mother’s death in hope of being accepted to art school, but was turned down for l
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The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler
The biography begins with a recounting of Hitler’s birth on April 20, 1889. The fourth out of six children, he was born to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl. During childhood, Hitler fought frequently with his father, who was unempathetic and emotionally abusive. Alois rejected most creative and humanistic pursuits, and would later disapprove of his son’s desire to become an artist. Shortly after Hitler turned 10, his brother Edmund died, inaugurating an era of detachment and introversion in Hitler’s personality.
Giblin notes the evidence that from an early age, Hitler was interested in themes of German nationalism. He rejected the authority of the union between Austria and Hungary, and his emotional resistance to political power outside his control colored his future motivations. In 1903, Hitler’s father suddenly died. Hitler’s mother struggled to take control of the parenting of her children, allowing Hitler to drop out of school in 1905. She died in 1907, orphaning Hitler just as he transitioned into adulthood. After her death, Hitler moved to V
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