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Adolf Hitler, one of the most notorious men of all time, was not only a dictator but also a man who made Germany into a superpower overnight. Born on April 20, 1889 in the small town of Braunau on the Inn River in Austria, Adolf was the son of an Austrian customs official of moderate means. During Hitler’s early youth in Linz on the Danube, his life seems to have been influenced very little by his father and mother as he usually ran wild. His father died in 1903. Adolf had a very good performance in elementary school. Soon enough he became rebellious and began failing “realschule,” a preparatory college school. After changing to another school, he withdrew from formal schooling altogether in 1905. In 1907, his mother died and he moved to Vienna to enroll in the famed Academy of Fine Arts. His failure to be able to pay admissions for his first and second year led to him having to quit the school, and sent him into a period of deep depression. In May 1913, in an attempt to avoid military service after failing to register for conscription, Hitler ran across the German border to Munich, but was arrested and returned back to the Austrian Police. He asked the Austrian authorities to test him for the Trankovsky 2 draft, which he failed, so he returned back to Munich. After the outbreak of WWI, he volunteered for action in the German Army. During the war he fought on the German western front where he became a corporal. He was injured twice, and won several awards for bravery, among them the highly respected Iron Cross First Class. Although he was isolated with his troop, he seemed to enjoy his success on the front and looked back on his war experience fondly. The end of the war suddenly left Hitler without a place or goal and drove him to join many veterans who continued to fight in the streets of Germany. In 1919, he found employment as a political officer in the army in Munich. At this time Hitler attended meetings of the German Workers Party. In April 1921, Hitler became head of the party and renamed it the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party. In the following years after he became leader, the German economic conditions worsened and inflation wiped out the savings of a great number of the middle class income, there was massive unemployment, and finally foreign occupation of the economically crucial Ruhr Valley, contributed to the continued rapid growth of the party.
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