Immediately after the collapse of Adolf Hitler‘s Germany, the Führer became the personification of the regime for Germans: a true demon who hypnotically affected the crowd of ordinary citizens – deceived, enchanted victims. It took more than a decade for Germans not only to reassess the deeds of Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Göring, and other Nazis but also to realize their own participation in the crimes, even if it was expressed in silence and non-resistance to evil. On the other hand, Hitler’s appearance did not correspond at all to the superhuman qualities attributed to him: he seemed too caricatured. These ideas merged into numerous myths that surrounded the image of one of the most terrible dictators in history after the war.
Hitler Didn’t Finish High School
From 1899 to 1905, the Hitler family lived in their own house in Leonding, a suburb of the Austrian city of Linz. Adolf attended primary school, or as it was then called in Austria, Volksschule, and did well. When he turned 11, he entered secondary school: there he studied very unevenly, getting good grades only in subjects that interested him. Apparently, he was not capable of prolonged orderly work and could spend whole days doing nothing. After the first year of secondary school, the boy repeated the grade.
Further on, he perceived school as an unnecessary obligation, and after his father’s death, he stopped studying altogether. His mother tried to transfer 14-year-old Hitler to a boarding school, but it didn’t change anything: in his surviving report card, he has good grades only in drawing and physical education, and unsatisfactory in all other subjects. Later, Hitler repeatedly expressed his contempt for the traditional education system in Germany, attacked the school for clogging children’s minds with unnecessary information without giving them the right guidelines for life, and said that all universities were replaced for him by self-education and the trenches of World War I.
Verdict: This is true.
He Became A Dictator Because He Couldn’t Become An Artist
Hitler did indeed dream of becoming an artist, and nothing came of it, but it can’t be said that he became a dictator because of this. After finishing boarding school, Hitler did nothing for two years – he only went to the theater and the art museum in Linz, gathering the determination to go to Vienna to enter the Academy of Arts. In 1907, leaving his terminally ill mother in Linz, Hitler went to Vienna. He tried twice to enter the Academy of Arts. The first time, despite the huge competition, he managed to pass the selection stage, but failed at the next one: there were “too few heads” in his drawings — he didn’t like drawing people. The second time he was cut off already at the selection stage.
Nevertheless, Hitler didn’t give up his dream of becoming an artist: he drew watercolors from photographs and nature, which were sold by his friend Reinhold Hanisch (for Hitler himself, enduring rejections in art shops was unbearable). Having spent the inheritance he received from his mother, Hitler scraped by with small earnings but never worked permanently anywhere.
In 1913, to avoid serving in the multinational Austro-Hungarian army, Hitler moved to Munich and immediately after the start of World War I, volunteered for the German army. He considered Germany his true fatherland, for the victory of which it was not a pity to give his life. In November 1918, wounded, he found himself in a hospital where he learned the news of the revolution in Germany and the shameful armistice that declared Germany the instigator of the war. From this moment on, he became obsessed with the idea of becoming a politician to save Germany and restore its greatness.
In September 1919, Hitler would speak at a meeting of the German Workers’ Party and demolish an orator who called for the separation of Bavaria from Germany and unification with Austria. The success of this speech would lead to him first joining the leadership of the DAP, and then a small cohort of like-minded people recognizing him as their leader. Hitler would transmit his artistic views already as the head of state, ordering the creation of a museum of the greatest works of “Aryan” artists in Linz, spending hours on plans for the reconstruction of the German capital, approving the burning of “hostile” books that did not correspond to the ideology of National Socialism.
Verdict: This is rather untrue.
His Real Name Wasn’t Hitler
The myth that Hitler was not the Führer’s real surname appeared because of his father, Alois. He was born in 1837 in the village of Strones, 80 kilometers northwest of Vienna, and until the age of 40 bore his mother’s surname, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, as she gave birth to him out of wedlock. When Alois was five years old, Maria Anna married miller Johann Georg Hiedler, and gave her son to be raised by her husband’s more wealthy brother, named Johann Nepomuk Hüttler (discrepancies in the spelling of the same surname were common in villages).
It’s impossible to establish who the boy’s biological father was: after his brother’s death, Hüttler agreed to adopt Alois but didn’t acknowledge paternity, insisting that the father was still his brother, who allegedly confessed this to mutual acquaintances. In the birth registration book, the entry “out of wedlock” was replaced with “in wedlock,” and a note appeared in the margins: “The recorded father Georg Hitler, well known to the undersigned witnesses, being named by the child’s mother Anna Schicklgruber, acknowledged himself as the father of the child Alois and petitioned for the entry of his name in this metric book, which is confirmed by the undersigned.”
In January 1877, Alois Schicklgruber became Alois Hitler, although instead of witness signatures, there were three crosses. His children bore this surname from birth.
Verdict: This is untrue.
He Started the Fashion for Toothbrush Mustaches
In fact, this fashion appeared in Europe much earlier: at the end of the 19th century, mustaches of this shape were worn in Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia. The toothbrush mustache was considered practical, didn’t require as much care as lush or even curled mustaches, and at the same time emphasized masculinity. Rather, Hitler contributed to another surge of this fashion in Germany in the early 1930s.
Verdict: This is partly true.
Hitler Was Actually A Jew
This legend is also related to the unclear origin of Alois Schicklgruber-Hitler. According to one version, Maria Anna served in the house of the Frankenberger (or Frankenreiter) Jews in Graz: it was at this time that she became pregnant with Alois. This version surfaced at the Nuremberg trials: Hans Frank, a close associate of the Führer, reported that in 1930 Hitler had instructed him to investigate Alois’s origin — however, Frank had no evidence. In his book published in 1971, historian Werner Maser tried to trace the Führer’s genealogy using documents from the Waldviertel district, to which the village of Strones belonged.
Maser managed to prove that in the 19th century, there were no Jews among the inhabitants of Graz, nor people with the surname Frankenberger. Maria Anna herself came from an Austrian peasant family, and the Hiedler-Hüttler brothers also had no Jewish roots.
Verdict: This is untrue.
He Shouted “Heil Hitler!” and Was Constantly Yelling, Was Insane, A Satanist, and An Occultist
The image of the “possessed Führer” is based on newsreels where Hitler shouts incomprehensible phrases from the podium and raises his hand. At rallies, he did indeed shout the word “heil” — the official Nazi greeting, but without his surname. Moreover, Hitler appears as a shaking, screaming hysteric with mad eyes in feature films. According to eyewitnesses, the Führer did indeed look like this in the last months of the war, but before that, he behaved quite differently.
As for insanity, by the end of the war, Hitler suffered from hypochondria, but doctors didn’t give him psychiatric diagnoses. Rather, he was a fanatic with an insane belief in the ideology of National Socialism, in the sacred power of the blood of the “Aryan race” and the necessity of its “purification.”
Finally, regarding occultism, there is no evidence that Hitler belonged to such societies. Rather, his associates were involved in them: Rudolf Hess and Hans Frank were members of Rudolf von Sebottendorf’s Munich society Thule-Gesellschaft, Hess and Heinrich Himmler were interested in astrology, developed special rituals for SS members, and patronized the Ahnenerbe organization. Hitler himself did not tolerate competitors in the struggle for influence, and after 1933, such societies were banned. Hitler ruthlessly cut off anyone who believed in anything other than National Socialism.
Verdict: This is untrue.
Hitler Was Also A Vegetarian
Some of Hitler’s contemporaries who attended his receptions recalled that Hitler was a vegetarian. In reality, Hitler had to follow a diet for medical reasons. Fish and meat were always served to guests. It is also known that the Führer introduced the tradition of “Eintopf Sundays”: on one Sunday each month, instead of meat dishes, housewives across Germany and even cooks in expensive restaurants prepared vegetable stew, and the money saved was sent to poor “Aryans”. Thus, it cannot be said that Hitler was a vegetarian for ideological reasons — rather, he was restrained in his eating habits.
Verdict: This is not entirely true.
Hitler Was A Brilliant Orator
Hitler’s oratorical talent began to manifest itself with his entry into politics. In the DAP, Hitler was responsible for propaganda from the very beginning, speaking at several rallies every day. His oratorical abilities manifested themselves in this way — in private settings, he gave the impression of being a not very interesting conversationalist. Hitler had a rather ordinary voice, but he always spoke emotionally, observing the reaction of his listeners. Subsequently, he would speak very differently, changing the content and tone of his speeches depending on the audience: with military and industrialists – calmly and rationally, with the crowd – aggressively and forcefully.
Hitler developed a special set of orator poses. As one of his biographers, Joachim Fest, wrote, “he ingeniously combines the staging elements of the circus and opera theater with the solemn ceremony of the church-liturgical ritual”. Proof of Hitler’s oratorical talent is his speeches before crowds of thousands, which interrupted his speeches with thunderous peals of “Heil!”. His last speech was broadcast on the radio on January 30, 1945, when the front lines were already passing through Germany.
Verdict: This is true.
There Were 40 Attempts to Kill Him
In 1981, the famous German writer and publisher Will Berthold published a book “Die 42 Attentate auf Adolf Hitler“, which has been reprinted more than a dozen times. In fact, according to Gestapo investigation files declassified after the war, there were far fewer such attempts.
The most famous of the assassination attempts is Operation Valkyrie on July 20, 1944. On this day, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and his adjutant brought a briefcase with explosives to a meeting with Hitler. It was placed next to the Führer — the detonator was supposed to work only after ten minutes. The conspirators found an excuse to leave the meeting and did not know that the briefcase had been moved – several officers were killed, Hitler himself was concussed, temporarily deafened, received burns and shrapnel wounds.
This was a conspiracy of Wehrmacht officers who wanted to eliminate the Führer and save Germany from defeat in the war. After the Führer’s death, the conspirators planned to seize power and create a provisional government that would immediately appeal to the Western powers with an offer of a truce.
This assassination attempt was not the only one, but the exact number is unknown. Four more cases were reported by the initiators of the assassination attempts themselves, but there is no other confirmation of these four cases.
Verdict: This is not entirely true.
Hitler Didn’t Actually Kill Himself, But Faked His Death and Lived for A Long Time
Before committing suicide, Hitler ordered the destruction of his body and that of Eva Braun, who had become his wife the day before. According to the testimonies of Schutzstaffel (SS) security chief Hans Rattenhuber and Hitler’s personal adjutant Otto Günsche, the corpses were doused with gasoline and set on fire, but did not burn completely. On May 2, 1945, Soviet military entered Hitler’s bunker. The found remains were sent for forensic examination, which showed that among them was “presumably Hitler’s corpse”. The jaw, which could confirm Hitler’s identity by comparing it with dental treatment protocols, and other remains were placed in secret storage facilities of the State Archive, where they still lie.
When Stalin was asked at the Potsdam Conference whether Hitler’s corpse had indeed been found, he, not wanting to admit that the remains had been taken to the USSR, answered negatively, thus giving rise to the myth that the Führer was alive. This version was overgrown with incredible conjectures: he escaped, flew away on a plane, sailed away on a submarine, lived on a remote ranch in South America either with Eva or with a mulatto woman surrounded by children, and quietly died many years after the collapse of his regime. But these are all legends: authoritative historians believe that Hitler did indeed commit suicide on April 30, 1945.
Verdict: This is not true.
Bibliography:
- Bezymenski, Lev (1968). The Death of Adolf Hitler (1st ed.). New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
- Hanfstaengl, Ernst ‘Putzi’. Hitler: The Missing Years. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957. Arcade Publishing, reprint 1994 ISBN 1-55970-278-8
- Berthold W. Die 42 Attentate auf Adolf Hitler. München, 1981.
- Maser W. Adolf Hitler. Legende — Mythos — Wirklichkeit. München, Esslingen, 1971.