Adolf Hitler neither finished school nor had any vocational training.
He occasionally lived in homeless shelters or on the street. He refused to pursue a regular job.
To this day, it seems inexplicable that he could come to power.
Out of nowhere, Hitler became the Führer, leader of the German Reich.
One of the most powerful men of the 20th century who brought the world to the brink of disaster,
and death to millions of people.
The nation worshiped him and followed him blindly into the abyss.
During his lifetime, he kept his origins and his life secret.
No one should know how or who he was.
Hitler's contemporaries from his birth to his death flesh out the picture. Who was Hitler?
On June 30th, 1903, the 72-year-old Kaiser Franz Joseph I
visits Braunau am Inn to celebrate its 700th birthday. In a historical coincidence,
this border town to Bavaria, of all places, is the origin of the oldest film footage shot by an Austrian cinematographer.
In the late '80s of the last century, my parents lived in this small town in the Inn,
which is Bavarian by blood and Austrian by nationality.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. The Customs Inspector Alois Hitler, and his family,
occupy a small apartment on the top floor of the Pommer Hotel in Braunau.
At Easter time on April 20th, 1889, at about 6:30 in the evening,
Adolf Hitler is born.
Parish register, Braunau. Adolfus Hitler, born on April 20th,1889, at 6:30 in the evening.
Baptized on April 22nd at 3:15 by Ignaz Probst.
To begin with, there is this picture of little Adolf from the year 1889, a few months after his birth.
One thing worthy of note in this first picture of Hitler is the close resemblance of Adolf to his mother.
August Kubizek, a childhood friend of Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler is the third of the couple's six children. He and his younger sister, Paula,
are the only ones to survive beyond childhood. The mother is 28 years old at the time of birth.
The father is 51. Klara Hitler is related to Alois Hitler.
She's her husband's second cousin. When Hitler is three years old, his father is transferred to a new post
and decides to move into an apartment in Passau on the German side of the border. Adolf Hitler lives with his family in Bavaria for three years until 1895.
Actually, Hitler didn't speak a typical Austrian dialect.
August Kubizek. In my youth, German was the dialect spoken in Lower Bavaria.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
The oldest film recording made in Austria-Hungary was shot by foreigners, the Lumière brothers.
It shows Vienna, the capital of a multinational empire, in the year 1896.
In old Austria, you could travel without a passport from the Mediterranean, over the Alps, way into the East, the West and the North.
Oskar Kokoschka, painter and writer.
Hitler's ancestry from lower Austria, as well as a total of 21 years spent in upper Austria and Vienna,
do not suffice to make him an Austrian in the sense of a citizen of that nation.
Kurt Schuschnigg, an Austrian Chancellor from 1934 to 1938.