Hitler ruled Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945 as a dictator. His policies led to World War II and the death of millions of people, destruction and devastation all around the world.
We will meet propaganda with propaganda, terror with terror, and violence with violence –
Adolf Hitler
Here is a list of facts about Adolf Hitler – the infamous tyrant and dictator.
Table of Contents
Fact #1 Family
On 20 April 1889, Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, a small town in Austria-Hungary near the German border. He was born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl. He was christened as “Adolphus Hitler” and was the fourth of six children.
In 1900, Hitler’s younger brother Edmund died of measles. His death impacted Hitler a lot and he became detached and introverted.
Hitler’s father was in the customs bureau and wanted him to be a civil servant. Hitler wanted to join a classical high school and become an artist. Alois paid no attention to his son’s desires and sent him to the Realschule in Linz in September 1900.
Hitler mentioned in Mein Kampf that he intentionally performed poorly in school, hoping that his father, upon seeing his performance, would allow him to pursue his dream of studying fine arts.
Fact #2 Young Hitler
Hitler’s father suddenly died in 1903. Struggling in the school he dropped out of school two years later. On 21 December 1907, his mother died of breast cancer. He left Linz and moved to Vienna to study arts. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna twice but was rejected both times.
Hitler had run out of money and started living in homeless shelters and men’s dormitories. He worked as casual labour and earned by painting and selling watercolours of Vienna’s sights. He became interested in politics during his years in Vienna
Read More: Top 12 Interesting Facts about Leonardo da Vinci
Fact #3 Military Career of Adolf Hitler
In Army 1913, Hitler received his father’s estate and moved to Munich, Germany. During the breakout of World War I, he voluntarily joined the Bavarian Army. As per a report by the Bavarian authorities in 1924, his recruitment in the army was an administrative error; as he was an Austrian citizen and he should have been returned to Austria.
He served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium. He was present at the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele, and was wounded at the Somme.
He was decorated for bravery and received the Iron Cross, Second Class and Iron Cross First Class. He also received the Black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918.
During his service he also pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. He was wounded twice during World War I. He was hit in the left thigh during the Battle of the Somme in Oct 1916 and temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack near Ypres in 1918 and was hospitalised in Pasewalk. It was in the hospital he came to know about Germany’s defeat in World War I.
Like other German nationalists, he believed the Dolchstoßlegende stab in the back myth, which claimed that the German army, “undefeated in the field”, had been “stabbed in the back” by civilian leaders.
Fact #4 Nazi Germany
After World War I, Hitler was appointed as an intelligence agent and was assigned to influence other soldiers and infiltrate the German Workers’ Party (DAP). He joined the party on orders of his army seniors and adopted the anti-Semitic, nationalist and anti-Marxist ideas of party founder Anton Drexler.
Hitler was discharged from the army on 31 March 1920 and began working for the party full time which changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party; NSDAP) to increase mass appeal.
Hitler, himself designed the party’s banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background. He soon gained quite a reputation for his rhetoric propaganda speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, and especially against Marxists. In 1921, Hitler replaced Drexler as the Nazi Party chairman by a vote of 533 to 1.
Fact #5 Beer Hall Putsch
On November 8, 1923, Hitler and the members of SA were forced into a public meeting under Bavarian Prime Minister Gustav Kahr at a large beer hall in Munich and an attempted coup. He challenged the government and announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government with World War I General Erich Ludendorff.
Hitler and his followers were arrested several people died and their coup attempt failed. Though the coup failed Beer Hall Putsch established Hitler as a national figure and a hero of right-wing nationalism.
Hitler was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment at Landsberg Prison for high treason. Later, pardoned by the Bavarian Supreme Court, he was released from jail on 20 December 1924, and he served just over one year in prison.
Read More: Top 10 Amazing Facts about the Beatles
Fact #6 ‘Mein Kampf’
Germany will either be a world power or will not be at all
Adolf Hiter
Hitler in prison dictated most of the first volume of his autobiographical book Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) first to his chauffeur, Emil Maurice and then to his deputy, Rudolf Hess. It was originally entitled Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice. It was dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart. It was a comprehensive description and explanation of his ideology.
The first volume was published in 1925, and a second volume came out in 1927. It was translated into 11 languages, selling more than six million copies by 1940. Mein Kampf became Germany’s best-selling book after the Bible.
In his book, he outlined the plans for transforming German society into one based on race. He shared his anti-semitic ideology and equated the Jews with germs. The second volume outlined his plan to gain and maintain power.
He wrote his second book in 1928 “The Zweites Buch,” which talked about his foreign policy. It was not published during his lifetime and its English translations came in 1962 with the name “Hitler’s Secret Book.”
Read More: Top 10 Most Famous Native Americans
Fact #7 Rebuilding the Nazi Party and Rise to Power
If you want to shine like sun first you have to burn like it
Adolf Hiter
The Great Depression and millions of unemployed, Germans were looking for a political alternative. Germans looked for opportunity in Hitler’s Nazi ideology and extremist approach and were unsure of the parliamentary republic. Hitler ran against Paul von Hindenburg in 1932 and came second in both rounds of the elections.
He got more than 35 per cent of the votes in the final election. Initially reluctant Hindenburg had to appoint him as chancellor to promote political balance.
Fact #8 Hitler as Führer
It is not truth that matters, but victory
Adolf Hiter
After becoming chancellor, Hitler failed all the attempts made by NSDAP’s opponents to make a majority government. After the suspicious fire at Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag Fire Decree was announced. It suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial.
The new Reichstag was constituted on 21 March 1933 in Potsdam. The Day of Potsdam was held to demonstrate unity between the Nazi movement and the old Prussian elite and military.
To achieve full political control despite not having an absolute majority in parliament Hitler’s government brought the Enabling Act. It gave Hitler’s cabinet the power to enact laws without the consent of the Reichstag for four years.
The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler’s government into a de facto legal dictatorship
Read More: 5 Weird Facts about Americans
Fact #9 Night of the Long Knives
Once Hitler got full control over the legislative and executive branches of government and began to suppress the remaining opposition. He targeted all his opponents and rivals in a series of assassinations from June 30 to July 2, 1934, Night of the Long Knives
Fact #10 Hitler was a Vegetarian, Loved Animals, Anti-Smoking campaigns
But there’s one thing I can predict to eaters of meat, that the world of the future will be vegetarian!
Adolf Hiter
In January 1933, the Nazi Party under Hitler came to power and he passed laws for the protection of animals. He said,” In the new Reich, no more animal cruelty will be allowed.” Another interesting fact about Hitler was that he was a vegetarian.
The first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history was led by Hitler in the world during the 1930s and early 1940s
Fact #11 The Holocaust and Concentration Camps
We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews
Adolf Hiter
During World War II, Nazis and Hitler’s forces were responsible for the deaths of at least 11 million people, which included six million Jews about two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe
His forces persecuted homosexuals and people with disabilities and even children with disabilities were not spared. Between 1933 to 1945 he almost arrested 100,000 men that were sent to concentration camps. Nazis considered homosexuality a crime and a disease; gay prisoners were forced to wear pink triangles to identify them
As part of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” the genocide enacted by the regime would come to be known as the Holocaust
Nazi forces killed nearly two million non-Jewish Poles, over three million Soviet prisoners of war, communists and other political opponents, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists, and trade unionists.
Prisoners were used as forced labourers and were subject to starvation, torture and horrific brutalities, including gruesome and painful medical experiments.
Hitler did not speak publicly about the killings and never visited any of the concentration camps
Fact #12 How Did Hitler Die?
Hitler and Eva Braun married at the midnight of 28-29 April in a small civil ceremony in the Führerbunker. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, by shooting himself in the head and Eva Braun took cyanide.
Their bodies were burned with petrol outside in the garden behind the Reich Chancellery
Berlin fell to Soviet troops on May 2, 1945. Five days later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.
Some More Interesting Facts about Hitler
- Hitler never regarded the Chinese and Japanese as inferior to the Aryans. He thought that “their history was superior to our own.”
- He regarded Henry Ford as his inspiration and had a portrait of him behind his desk.
- Elevator cables of the Eiffel Tower were cut by the French Resistance as they wanted to keep Hitler away from visiting it when Paris fell. Hitler had to climb over 1500 stairs, but he opted out.
- All the profits from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and artwork used to go to charity. Bavaria owned the rights but they always found difficulty in finding a charity to accept them as people considered it “Blood Money”
- Hitler’s nephew joined the US NAVY to fight against him when Hitler accidentally bombed his house in Liverpool.
- Hitler was sleeping when the D-Day forces landed. None of his generals dared to wake him or send reinforcements without his permission.
- Hitler Only Had One Testicle. During World War I Hitler fought for the Germans and sustained a wound in his left thigh and this injury caused him one testicle.
- Ailurophobia is the fear of cats. Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler all suffered from it. Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito and Freud all lived within a few miles of each other in 1913 in Vienna and some of them were regular to the same coffee house.
- Hitler had planned to build a “Museum of An Extinct Race” after the war and had collected thousands of Jewish artefacts. He never visited a concentration camp.
- The American secret services tried to feminise Hitler by spiking his food with female hormones. He was TIME Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1938.
- Hitler farted uncontrollably, he suffered from chronic flatulence and to fight it took 28 different drugs. He inhaled cocaine to clear his sinuses and soothe his throat. He also received injections of bull testicle extracts to bolster his libido.
- Hitler in 1939 was nominated for the Nobel Prize. Later he banned the Nobel Prize and started his own German National Prize for Art and Science. Ferdinand Porsche was awarded one, who developed the Volkswagen Beetle also the world’s first hybrid car.
- One of Hitler’s chauffeurs and close friends Maurice was found to be Jewish by Heinrich Himmler military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. But upon knowing that Maurice was Jewish, Hitler made an exception for Maurice and his brothers and called them “honorary Aryans.”
- Eduard Bloch a Jewish-Austrian doctor who didn’t charge Hitler’s family due to their economic hardship was never sentenced to the concentration camp and Hitler had him protected, by the Gestapo and called him “Noble Jew”.
- A priest saved Hitler from drowning when he was 4 years old. Moreover, Hitler was lucky a couple of times more and ditched death. During World War I he was wounded and his life was spared by a British Soldier. On July 20, 1944, Hitler survived an assassination attempt, called the July Plot. A top military officer during a conference meeting at Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair had placed a suitcase bomb under the table and Hitler survived with some injuries to his arm and some hearing loss.
