Summary Cambridge A-Levels & IGCSE History notes- Germany, Chapter 1. Hitler's rise to power
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History (9489)
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Sunway University
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Hitler and Nazi Germany
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Cambridge A-Levels & IGCSE History notes- Germany, Chapter 2. Hitler's governing of Germany
Cambridge A-Levels & IGCSE History notes- Germany, Chapter 3. Hitler's economic policies
Cambridge A-Levels & IGCSE History notes- Germany, Chapter 4. Life in Hitler's Germany
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A2 History: Hitler’s Germany
Part 1- Hitler’s rise to power
Hitler’s background and early life
Father: Alois Hitler
• Adolf was hostile to him, who was strict and domineering. He often
used a whip on him
• Alois wanted his son to be a civil servant, but Adolf wanted to be an
artist. He described their relationship as ‘a battle of competing wills’
• Despite portraying his father as a lowly worker, he in fact had a
successful career as a customs officer
• Died when Hitler was 14- a great relief to Adolf, who could now freely
pursue his dream
Mother: Klara Poelzl (Alois’ 3rd wife & second cousin)
• Adolf genuinely loved his mother, who pampered him
Siblings: Younger sister- Pauline, Half-sister- Angela (4 more siblings died in infancy)
Birthday: 20th April, 1889; Austria
Family background: Adolf Hitler was a clean, provincial, middle-class boy who lived in affluent
circumstances
• As a child he liked playing war-games. He later admitted that as a child he was ‘enthusiastic
about everything that was in any way connected with war’
• As a child and youth (till early 20’s) he was relatively stable and quite ordinary. He showed
no signs of madness and gave no indication he would go on to become a messianic leader
Schooling
• Generally remembered by teachers as a resentful, moody, and generally lazy pupil
• He took very little interest in most subjects except:
o History- where his teacher fired his imagination with stories of German nationalism
o Geography- he loved reading maps
o Art- his greatest passion
• Hitler claimed to have become a fanatical German nationalist in secondary school. His
heroes were the soldier king Frederick
o Otto von Bismarck (1st German Chancellor)
• He failed secondary school- this self-inflicted failure at school left him with a lifelong
contempt of book-learned academics and intellectuals
1
Notes compiled by: Chew Wen Min
, Hitler’s trauma
1. Mother’s death- Dec 21, 1907 (Hitler Aged 18)
o Was wracked with grief, and promised thanks to Jewish family physician forever. This
was true, he escaped Nazi prosecution when Hitler came to power
2. Failure to enter the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts
o For a school drop-out without qualifications, this was an overambitious plan
o He was not even a very good artist- his paintings showed that he was competent at
copying other’s work, but he lacked the ability to create original works of his own.
Hitler’s Vienna years (1908-1913)
• Hitler described his time in Vienna as the saddest years of his life
• Oct 1908- Hitler’s 2nd failure into the Academy of Fine Arts, plunging Hitler into a deep
depression and anxiety
o He made no attempts to find a proper job, slept on park benches, sold paintings
o The brief, possibly self-inflicted experience lasted less than 3 months, and was greatly
exaggerated by Hitler in Mein Kamf
• At this time he was described as an opiniated person full of bright ideas, prejudices and
grand plans, but seemingly too lazy to put in the effort to carry them out
• In 1909 he moved into a men’s hostel funded by a wealthy Jewish family- where he made a
living from selling his paintings
• Political ideas in Vienna
o Started developing an ideal political party
▪ Admired Dr Karl Luger (Christian Socialists), a brilliant orator that could fill the
lower and middle classes with horror stories and power of Jews, but had no
nationalist agenda
▪ Hated the Socialist Democratic Party because of its devotion to Marxist ideas,
but admired its propaganda ability
▪ Most attracted by the Pan-German Nationalist Party’s ideas- but it couldn’t
appeal to the masses
▪ Decided the ideal party would be the best of the 3- extreme nationalism,
charismatic leadership and mass support
o Hitler claimed he came to hate the Jews after reading anti-Semitic pamphlets and
observing life in Vienna
▪ But the anti-Semitic attitudes Hitler expressed at the time were fairly common,
and were not extreme. It seemed that his hatred only grew after 1918.
Hitler moves to Munich (1913)
• Hitler moves to Munich to avoid conscription into the Austrian military
• Still, authorities caught up with him and pronounced this future champion of the ‘master
race’ unfit for service due to a minor chest complaint
• He called his time in Munich “the happiest and far by the most contented of [his] life”
2
Notes compiled by: Chew Wen Min
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