ABSTRACT
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in the small Austrian town of Braunau am Inn, where his father was a customs official. After five years at primary school, some time as an undistinguished pupil in Linz and experience as a boarder in Steyr, the apparently unremarkable Hitler, who never enjoyed his schooling (apart from his history lessons) and did not get on too well with his father, moved to Vienna in 1907. With sufficient support from relatives he remained for a time idle, doing little but daydream. The temporary end of such support led him to go through a short period of real hardship in 1909, when he lived rough, slept in the gutters and then found refuge in a doss house. Money from an aunt then put an end to this hardship; and Hitler made a living selling paintings and drawings of the Austrian capital and producing posters and advertisements for small traders. His two attempts to gain entry to the Academy of Graphic Arts failed, however, leaving the young Hitler an embittered man.
