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| 1 | Maria Mauth, a 17-year-old German schoolgirl at the time, recalled her father's reaction to Hitler invading the Soviet Union: "I will never forget my father saying: 'Right, now we have lost the war!'.". |
| 2 | Hitler's Army High Command had several objectives - Army Group North, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) by the Baltic Sea; Army Group Center, Russia's capital, Moscow; Army Group South, Kiev, capital of the Ukraine. They severely underestimated the total fighting strength of the Red Army. Instead of 200 divisions, the Soviets could field 400 divisions when fully mobilized. This meant there were three million additional Soviets available to fight. |
| 3 | There was a serious attempt to establish a Nationalist interpretation of Science: Deutsche Physik or Aryan Physics, which was absorbed into the Nazi Party when Philipp Lenard joined. |
| 4 | Napoleon captured Moscow in 1812, but failed to defeat the Russians. Germany defeated Russia in World War I and imposed the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Hitler believed defeating the Red Army was more important than capturing individual cities. |
| 5 | Attributed his survival of the July 20th plot to "Divine Intervention". |
| 6 | The Nazi regime is often used as an example of "Why Evolution is Evil", even though, ultimately, it failed. |
| 7 | Not taking Moscow in September 1941 was often cited as a mistake on Hitler's part. However the move allowed the Wehrmacht to destroy a main Soviet army, netting more than 600,000 prisoners. Hitler knew the Soviets would not surrender if the capital city fell, and in any case the Axis would have to defend the city against repeated Soviet counterattacks. |
| 8 | About 345,000 World War II casualties were from Czechoslovakia, 277,000 of them Jews. As many as 144,000 Soviet troops died during the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Red Army. |
| 9 | The German occupation of Romania in late August 1940 raised tensions with the Soviets, who responded that Germany was supposed to have consulted with the Soviet Union under Article III of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Pact was terminated on 22nd June 1941. |
| 10 | On 26 October 1939 Nazi Germany unilaterally annexed Zaolzie. It had been under Polish occupation for just over a year. After World War II it was returned to Czechoslovakia. |
| 11 | Invaded Poland before Joseph Stalin did in order to demonstrate his commitment to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. |
| 12 | Poland helped Hitler overrun Czechoslovakia by annexing Zaolzie on 1 October 1938, following the Munich Agreement. |
| 13 | Quentin Tarantino made a popular movie on a Second World War Theme. The film had alternative history elements, and included a scene in which Hitler's face is obliterated by machine gun fire. |
| 14 | Decided war with the United States could no longer be avoided when Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a speech on 11 September 1941 confirming that all American ships had been ordered to fire on any Axis ships. |
| 15 | He always maintained that the invasion of the Soviet Union was a pre-emptive strike before Joseph Stalin was ready for war with the Axis Powers. It has been suggested that Stalin was preparing to attack Axis forces in eastern Europe in 1941 in the Soviet Offensive Plans Controversy. |
| 16 | He was initially reluctant to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, but was persuaded to offer military assistance by Hermann Göring and Wilhelm Canaris. The Luftwaffe bombed rebel-held areas at the request of the Spanish nationalist government. |
| 17 | Hitler met with the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco once in 1940. Franco asked for French colonial possessions in return for entering World War II, but Hitler refused as he did not want to damage his relations with the new Vichy French government. After the meeting, Hitler reportedly said that he would "rather have three or four teeth pulled out", than barter with Franco again. Historian Pere Ferrer has claimed that Winston Churchill bribed Spanish generals to influence Franco not to enter the war on the side of Germany. |
| 18 | Outlawed atheist and freethinking organizations in Germany in 1933. The German Freethinkers League had around 500,000 members. |
| 19 | In March 1940 the Germans intercepted a message that the UK planned to invade Norway as part of a general strategy to slowly encircle Germany and cut it off from its trading partners. However the British postponed the invasion of Norway until April, when they began laying mines in Norway's neutral waters. This time the goal was to draw Germany into a conflict, instigate an engagement at sea and use the situation as a cover to invade Norway in an operation called "Plan R 4". However, just as the first mines were being laid, the Germans found out about the plan, landed in Norway and seized the Norwegian ports. |
| 20 | The Blitz ran from 7 September 1940 to 21 May 1941, with 16 UK cities affected. The British began bombing Germany on 10 May 1940 in response to the invasion of France and the Low Countries. The existence of Germany's Air Force broke the Treaty of Versailles. |
| 21 | Invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940 as a preventive manoeuvre against a planned, and openly discussed, Franco-British occupation of Norway. |
| 22 | Norway was neutral with regard to World War II and protection from British-French influences was the pretext Germany used to officially justify the occupation, along with securing the ore mines of Sweden and fulfilling propaganda about a larger Germanic Empire. There was a 40,000 strong Norwegian Resistance Movement called the Milorg. |
| 23 | On 25 January 1940 he issued an order which specifically forbade air raids against the UK, including the ports. He also prohibited attacks upon British naval forces unless the RAF bombed Germany first, noting, "the guiding principle must be not to provoke the initiation of aerial warfare on the part of Germany.". |
| 24 | The Enigma Machines had a number of Security Features, not including not being retrievable from sunken submarines. |
| 25 | Hitler offered to treat Soviet prisoners of war according to the Geneva Convention if the USSR did the same for German POWs in their captivity, even though the Soviet Union had not signed the document. Joseph Stalin refused as he considered anyone who surrendered to be a traitor to Communism. |
| 26 | It has been suggested by some historians that Hitler should have focused on North Africa and the Mediterranean after the Fall of France, in order to bring about the collapse of the British Empire and get Greece and Turkey to join the Axis. If Malta had been captured it is likely Spain would have entered the war in order to invade Gibraltar, thus closing the Mediterranean to the Royal Navy. |
| 27 | Philip K Dick wrote an alternative history novel on what the World might be like if Hitler had won: "The Man in the High Castle". |
| 28 | Mussolini found Hitler's "Mein Kampf" to be boring and cliché-ridden and George Orwell thought it was clumsily written. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn commented that it lacked original thought and was just a collection of commonplaces. |
| 29 | A Scottish Psychiatrist, Dr Donald Ewen Cameron, used the example of Nazi Germany to bolster his theories that mental illness had "social contagion" qualities. |
| 30 | Hitler had hoped for Japanese support in his war against the Soviet Union, but the Japanese maintained their pact with the Soviets. |
| 31 | In April 1941 he sent German forces to aid the Italians in the Battle of Greece, mainly so the British Royal Air Force would not be able to bomb the oilfields in Romania. Hitler later blamed the need to help the Italians in Greece for the delay of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, from 15 May 1941 to 22 June 1941. However most historians agree the delay of Barbarossa was due to many other factors, especially the delay in building aircraft bases in eastern Europe. |
| 32 | Hitler was not impressed when Italy formally entered the war on 10 June 1940. He felt Benito Mussolini had deliberately remained neutral when the war began, and had opportunistically only entered the war with the Fall of France imminent, having left Germany to do all the heavy lifting. Hitler actually tried to dissuade Mussolini from joining the war in March 1940. |
| 33 | Along with Italy's Benito Mussolini, Hitler declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese had attacked the US naval bases at Pearl Harbor. The US was keeping the British Empire and the Soviet Union in the war with Lend-Lease. Hitler could no longer ignore the amount of economic and military aid America was giving the UK and the Soviet Union via the Lend-Lease programme. He needed to declare war so his U-Boats would be able to start sinking American ships carrying armaments to the UK and the USSR. |
| 34 | Considered declaring war on the United States in September 1940 after the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, and in March 1941 after the start of Lend Lease. |
| 35 | He was a militant anti-smoker. |
| 36 | Authorised Operation Barbarossa on 18 December 1940 after Joseph Stalin's request on 25 November that Axis forces should withdraw from eastern Europe. This threatened to cut off Germany's main supply of oil from Romania. |
| 37 | Hitler wanted to destroy the Soviet Union economically by seizing the resources of Ukraine. For this reason he did not consider taking Moscow the priority during Operation Barbarossa. |
| 38 | Showed little interest in the possibility of Spain formally joining the Axis, partly because the country had been economically destroyed in a brutal civil war, and also because he needed officially neutral harbors to import war materials from Latin America. Hitler felt Spain would be a burden to Germany's war effort, like Italy. |
| 39 | The Kriegsmarine (the German Navy) sent out battle instructions in May 1939 which included the ominous phrase "fighting methods will never fail to be employed merely because some international regulations are opposed to them". |
| 40 | Development of the Nuclear Bomb was hastened out of concern that the Nazis would develop it first. Albert Einstein wrote to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt expressing this concern in 1939. |
| 41 | Showed little interest in the independence movements of the colonies of the British Empire, except India. There were plans for the European Axis forces to link up with Japanese forces in the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal in 1942 to bring about the collapse of the British Empire in Asia and the Pacific. This plan was foiled when the Axis lost the Second Battle of El Alamein in November 1942. |
| 42 | Maintained the British naval blockade of Germany was illegal under international law, and that the United States was violating its official neutral position by supplying the UK with warships and munitions. |
| 43 | It has often been said that the state of Israel would not have been created in 1948 were it not for Hitler, and that without him the European colonial empires would have lasted for longer. |
| 44 | It is often observed that Hitler would have stood a more realistic chance in World War II if he had focused all resources on the war effort, rather than expending large amounts of money and manpower on building and maintaining concentration camps. |
| 45 | Offered the UK and France a peace proposal on 6 October 1939, following the German-Soviet conquest of Poland. |
| 46 | He could only invade Poland if Joseph Stalin agreed to invade as well, otherwise Germany risked fighting a two-front war in 1939 before it was ready. Hitler and Stalin agreed their joint invasion of Poland in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939. Stalin deliberately waited until 17 September 1939 before launching his invasion, as he knew France and the British Empire would not be able to declare war on both Germany and the Soviet Union. |
| 47 | Unlike his Italian ally, Benito Mussolini, Hitler had no interest in overseas colonies. This was partly because few of Germany's colonies before World War I were profitable. |
| 48 | Violated the Treaty of Versailles in 1935 by introducing compulsory military conscription in Germany and rebuilding the armed forces. |
| 49 | Originally Hitler only wanted to expel Jews from Germany. After the Fall of France the Madagascar Plan was drawn up to relocate Europe's Jews to the French colony. However the British naval blockade meant this was impossible. |
| 50 | Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) was filmed in Germany, but had to import performers from elsewhere to play the Oompa Loompas because after the Nazi atrocities local midget performers could not be found. |
| 51 | Mountain Dew launched a promotion in 2012 to have its Internet Fans name a new drink. The competition was flooded by inappropriate "funny" suggestions and the project had to be abandoned. The winner up to that point was "Hitler did nothing wrong". |
| 52 | Contrary to popular belief, Hitler was never elected. In the final free election in November 1932 his party lost considerable support. |
| 53 | In order to knock France out of the war he was forced to go through Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg so as to avoid a costly frontal assault on the Maginot Line. He also needed to seize control of the Belgian ports to prevent the British Royal Navy from reimposing its blockade of 1914-1919. The blockade was widely regarded as illegal under international law as it contravened the Hague Convention of 1907 which the UK had signed. The tenth treaty of the 1907 Hague Convention concerned Maritime Warfare and the UK did not ratify that one, although its blockades of Germany during both world wars were still widely regarded as being clearly illegal under international law. |
| 54 | Brother-in-law of Gretl Braun and Ilse Braun during the brief time he was married to Eva. Two hours before the wedding, Hitler had Gretl's husband, Hermann Fegelein, shot. On May 5, 1945, Gretl gave birth to her and Fegelein's daughter, whom she named Eva. Eva committed suicide on April 25, 1971 after her boyfriend was killed in an auto accident. |
| 55 | As a racial supremacist Hitler told his soldiers they could ignore the Geneva Conventions with regard to Slavs, because he considered them "subhuman". |
| 56 | He forbade celebrations for the Fall of Singapore as he felt it was a bad day for the white race. |
| 57 | Under the Nazi regime, Jews were not permitted to own a pet or a bicycle. Smoking was forbidden. Persons of low IQ were sterilized and the disabled or deformed were put to death. |
| 58 | The UN Declaration of Human Rights emerged in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials. |
| 59 | Signed the Munich Agreement with the UK, France and Italy in September 1938. Hitler later broke the agreement when he overran the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, probably in response to German economic problems. |
| 60 | Publicly offered to end the war in the West in July 1940 after the Fall of France, saying he had no desire to destroy the British Empire. In May 1941 he again offered to end the war and evacuate northern France if the UK allowed Germany a free hand in the East against the Soviet Union. The UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill chose to turn down both offers. |
| 61 | The word "Fuhrer" is German for "leader" or "guide", but due to the stigma people use the word "Leiter" for "Leader" now. |
| 62 | Ordered Operation Barbarossa as a pre-emptive strike against the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, before Stalin had enough time to prepare for war against the European Axis Powers. Stalin had already violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by annexing Bukovina in 1940. |
| 63 | Ordered the London Blitz on 7 September 1940. The British Royal Air Force had bombed German cities from 11 May 1940. On 14 May 1940, three days after the RAF began bombing Germany, the Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam. The Rotterdam Blitz was deliberately exaggerated by the British press, with some newspapers increasing the casualties figures tenfold. Under the Treaty of Versailles, from 1920 Germany wasn't allowed to have an air force. |
| 64 | Hitler's impact on History is a tragic study in the effects of charisma. Hitler apologists are frequently people who might not be alive if the Axis Powers had won. |
| 65 | Followers of Michel de Nostredame believe he named Hitler as the second of three anti-Christs, Napoléon Bonaparte as the first, and the third not revealed. |
| 66 | Although Hitler's declaration of war on the United States has been described as a mistake, it is likely that it made no difference. After the UK had declared war on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor, all US restrictions on aid to Britain had been immediately lifted. It would only have been a short matter of time until German U-Boats began sinking American ships carrying supplies to the UK, giving the US government its casus belli to declare war on Germany. The German and Italian war declarations made the Second Happy Time possible for U-Boats. |
| 67 | After World War I ended, his former commander, Karl Meyr, recruited Hitler to infiltrate a fringe political group, the German Workers' Party, formed over founder Anton Drexler's outrage by the Treaty of Versailles. Impressed with his oratory skills, Drexler invited Hitler to join. Hitler eventually assumed leadership of the group, renaming it the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Initially pro-Nazi, Meyer, a Jew, ultimately joined the rival Social Democratic Party. After the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, he was arrested in Paris by the Gestapo, sent back to Germany, and died at the Buchenwald concentration camp. |
| 68 | The life of Adolf Hitler is featured in the documentary "Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told". |
| 69 | In a documentary entitled "Profiling Hitler", it is related how the OSS required a Psychiatrist to create a profile of Hitler. The model of the day was Psychoanalysis, and the profile speculated that as the war turned against Hitler he would withdraw from public appearances and probably commit suicide. |
| 70 | Artist Austin Osman Spare would tell a story that he was asked to paint a portrait of Hitler, but refused, saying "If you are Superman, may I be forever animal.". |
| 71 | In 1977, German historian Werner Maser wrote in Zeitgeschichte Magazine about Jean-Marie Loret, who claimed to be Hitler's son. Loret's aunt confirmed that her nephew was fathered by a German soldier stationed in France during World War I, yet denied that he was Hitler. Balthasar Brandmayer, who served with Hitler, noted in his memoirs that Hitler was a prude who reproached comrades intending on taking up with French girls as having "no German sense of honor". In 2008, Jean-Paul Mulders obtained DNA samples from Loret's and Hitler's living relatives, and concluded Hitler was not Loret's father. Anton Joachimsthaler, Timothy Ryback, and Ian Kershaw have also stated that, given the inaccuracies in Maser's account (for example, Maser claimed Loret's mother was allowed to follow Hitler from town to town, something Hitler's superiors would never have allowed) Hitler's paternity of Loret is impossible. |
| 72 | It has been alleged that Hitler may have had an (unknown) Jewish Grandfather as his father (Alois Hiedler) was the illegitimate son of an Austrian peasant woman from Upper Austria and an unknown father while his (Alois Hiedler) mother was in domestic service in Graz in Styria. However this theory has been debunked several times. |
| 73 | Hitler's father died when he was aged thirteen. |
| 74 | Hitler's father was born Alois Schicklgruber, the illegitimate child of a domestic. Alois's mother married Johann Georg Hiedler in 1842. After their deaths, Alois was raised by his step-father's brother. When Alois was legitimated in 1876 via adoption by his step-uncle, the baptismal registry mistakenly changed the family's surname from from "Hiedler" to "Hitler". Alois then assumed the surname Hitler. In 1885, Alois married his step-uncle's granddaughter, Klara, Adolf's mother. |
| 75 | Forced French officials to sign the treaty of surrender in the same train carriage the Armistice had been signed in. |
| 76 | Dutch-German actor/singer Johannes Heesters was reportedly Hitler's favorite actor, especially in his role of Count Danilo Danilovitch from Franz Lehár's "Die Lustige Witwe" (The Merry Widow). |
| 77 | The reason that the Vienna art school turned Hitler down was because he could not draw the human form. |
| 78 | His mother Klara had three children before Adolf, all of whom died in infancy. Klara was always fearful that Adolf would die, too. |
| 79 | Was close friends with German film actress Lil Dagover. |
| 80 | His favorite film actresses were Pola Negri and Lina Basquette, among others. At his behest, Basquette was offered a film contract in the 1930s. Obviously, she turned down the offer. |
| 81 | He was born four days after Charles Chaplin. Hitler modeled his mustache after Charlie Chaplin's mustache. |
| 82 | In 1983, Stern Magazin bought and published what it purported to be Hitler's diaries. When it was revealed that the 61 volumes were fakes by forger Konrad Kujau, he and the Stern reporter he sold them to were arrested. |
| 83 | German industrial titan Fitz Thyssen, an early supporter of Hitler and the Nazi Party who turned against them, was instrumental in propagating the myth that Hitler was partly Jewish. In his 1941 book "I Paid Hitler", he wrote: "According to the published records, Hitler's grandmother had an illegitimate son, and this son was to become the father of Germany's present leader. But an inquiry once ordered by the late Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss disclosed that the Fuhrer's grandmother became pregnant during her employment as a servant in a Viennese family . . . And the family . . . was none other than that of Baron Rothschild." Thyssen was the scion of the family who owned the Thyssen mining and steel works. After taking over the company upon the death of his father, he formed and headed a conglomerate that dominated the vital steel industry. A conservative stung by Germany's loss in World War I and the Allies' brutal policy of reparations, he turned to nationalism and thus was attracted, initially, to Nazism and Hitler. He became a member of the Council of State after the Nazis rose to power, but grew disillusioned with Nazism and Hitler in the antebellum years of the 1930s. Of the man he once supported, Thyssen wrote in the introduction to his 1941 book, "If human civilization is not to perish, everything that is possible must be done to make war impossible in Europe. But the violent solution dreamed of by Hitler, a primitive person obsessed by ill-digested historical memories, is a romantic folly and a barbarous and bloody anachronism". In November of 1938 Thyssen resigned from the Council of State in protest over the Nazis' brutal Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews. With the outbreak of World War II, he emigrated to Switzerland. After moving to France, Thyssen eventually was apprehended by the Nazis after they took over France and he wound up in the notorious Dachau concentration camp, which he survived. The man who financed Hitler and later broke with him outlived him by nearly six years, dying in February 1951. |
| 84 | Allegedly, his medical records revealed that he was afflicted with monorchism (having only one testicle descended into the scrotum). However this has been debunked. |
| 85 | From the moment of his ascension to power in 1933 to his death in 1945, there were 17 attempts on his life. |
| 86 | Was possibly the first media-driven politician in history to understand the power of film. All his public appearances were carefully choreographed. |
| 87 | Born in Austria, he did not become a German citizen until 1932. German citizenship was necessary to run for the parliamentary elections of the same year, which resulted in Hitler being appointed German Chancellor on January 30, 1933. |
| 88 | His favorite movies were King Kong (1933) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). |
| 89 | Wrote a sequel to "Mein Kampf", but then, perversely, refused to allow it to be published. The manuscript was discovered decades after WWII ended; in it, Hitler revealed his plan to attack the United States. |
| 90 | Allegedly, at the Munich conference, British Foreign Minister E.F.L. Wood actually mistook Hitler for a servant. |
| 91 | Allegedly, Rudolf Hess, his private secretary, complained that Hitler's grammar was terrible, and that much time was spent correcting his papers before they could be published. |
| 92 | In 1943 conspirators placed a bomb on his private plane but the timer was faulty and it failed to detonate. |
| 93 | Allegedly, after the failed Beer Hall Putsch he retreated to the attic of a building and tried to shoot himself in the head. A policeman wrestled the gun away from him. |
| 94 | Almost froze to death while sleeping on the streets in Austria. He was saved, ironically enough, by a Jewish charity group. |
| 95 | Was reputed to have been a big fan of American football. |
| 96 | His original title for Mein Kampf was "My Struggle for Five Years Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice". |
| 97 | Learned of the armistice ending World War I while in a hospital from a sobbing pastor. |
| 98 | Was reportedly a member of the Thule Society (Thule-Gesellschaft), though this is disputed. The Thule Society was a group originally dedicated to articulating and preserving a genuinely German heritage (and was linked to the study of the hermetic arts) that was founded on August 17, 1918, by Rudolf von Sebottendorff, a Freemason who also was a student of Islamic mysticism, alchemy, Rosicrucianism and other occult disciplines. The original name of the Thule Society was Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum (Study Group for German Antiquity), and it was closely connected to if not an offshoot of the Germanenorden secret society. Formed by prominent German occultists in 1912, Germanenorden secret society -- whose symbol was a swastika -- had a hierarchical fraternal structure similar to freemasonry. Its ideology included nationalism and the idea of the superiority of the "Nordic" race, as well as anti-Semitism in addition to its witch's brew of occult and magical philosophies. The Thule Society soon started to disseminate anti-republican and anti-Semitic propaganda among the urban proletariat to counter the doctrinaire Marxism of the communists and the socialist and republican ideals of the Social Democrats. It gave birth to the Workers' Political Circle, which was founded contemporaneously in August 1918 with Thulist Karl Harrer as chairman, that in turn became the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party) in 1919. Working as an agent of military intelligence, Cpl. Adolf Hitler was assigned to the task of infiltrating the German Workers Party, but soon became a convert. One year later the German Workers' Party became the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or Nazi Party) and was soon under the leadership of Herr Hitler. Other top Nazi leaders, including Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg, were members of the Thule Society, though Hitler likely was not. However, Serbottendorff stated, "Thule members were the people to whom Hitler first turned and who first allied themselves with Hitler." There has long been speculation that Hitler was involved in the occult and was an initiate into the so-called "Nuremburg Mysteries", but nothing has ever been proven to any degree of certainty. What is undeniable is that, after the political victory of the Nazi Party in 1933, the occult tradition rooted in the Thule Society and other secret societies was carried over into Hitler's Third Reich, mainly by the SS, whose Reichsfuhrer, Heinrich Himmler, was an avid student of the occult. An SS occult research department, the Ahnernerbe (Ancestral Heritage), was established in 1935 with SS Col. Wolfram Sievers at its head. Occult research took SS researchers as far afield as Tibet (the department's activities were reflected in the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)). Sievers had the Tantrik prayer, the Bardo Thodol, read over his body after his execution at Nuremberg. Thus, the Third Reich can be seen as an attempt by occultist "adepts" to establish a brave new world based on their twisted ideas of the "Laws of Nature." Similarly (in scope if not kind), the American republic was founded by Masonic adepts 150 years before, but as it was rooted in Enlightenment ideals and democracy rather than unsound fables, it managed to flourish for two centuries rather than engender its own destruction in less than a generation. |
| 99 | Although Hitler went to great lengths to stress his humble beginnings, it has been suggested that his family was quite well off by the standards of the time and that when his father died, he actually inherited a small fortune, which he spent in less than a year in a frivolous lifestyle. Other reports state that he did not inherit a fortune and gave his share of orphan's benefits to his sister, Paula Wolf. |
| 100 | His mother died of breast cancer. |
| 101 | According to his valet, Hitler's vision was so bad, that he read speeches that were printed with inch-high type. |
| 102 | He suffered from many illnesses and medical conditions, including hypertension, headaches and heart trouble. Being gassed during World War I harmed his vision. After suffering from two episodes of blindness (one of which may have been hysterical), Hitler later suffered from pain in his eyes and blurred vision, as if "viewing objects through a thin veil.'' Beginning in the 1930s, he suffered from tinnitus. Towards the end of his life, Hitler was afflicted with Parkinson's syndrome. |
| 103 | Beatle John Lennon wanted to put Hitler in the crowd on the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", but The Beatles' record label refused, for obvious reasons. |
| 104 | He emigrated to Germany to escape service in the Austro-Hungarian army. He was not opposed to military service per se, however, and when war broke out in 1914 he immediately enlisted in a Bavarian regiment. He served as an infantryman, then as a message runner, survived 50 battles, and won the Iron Cross, First Class, rare for a lance corporal. |
| 105 | Had a Mercedes touring car with a special seat which could be raised up so that he could be more easily seen when he rode through the streets. This touring car was at the Lars Anderson Auto Museum in Boston until 1994. |
| 106 | The only American favorably mentioned in his magnum opus "Mein Kampf" was industrialist Henry Ford. |
| 107 | Forensic pathologists have determined, from both historical records and what little remains of Hitler that still exist, that he probably committed suicide by simultaniously biting into a glass capsule filled with potassium cyanide and shooting himself in the head. |
| 108 | According to Leni Riefenstahl , he was anything but happy about hosting the 1936 XI. Olympic Games in Berlin and just agreed because it could have been a great publicity event for his "superior German race". Even though the German team indeed won most of the medals, probably the biggest disaster for the Nazis was the black so-called "subhuman" Jesse Owens not only winning four gold medals, but becoming the audience's hero of the games, too. |
| 109 | Recently discovered medical records show that he was receiving doses of methamphetamine as often as six times a day. |
| 110 | After World War II, Soviet forces bulldozed the location of the "Führerbunker" (Hitler's last command post and site of his suicide), and paved over it, fearing it would become a shrine for Nazi sympathizers. |
| 111 | Was a talented painter, but was rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts twice, allegedly because of unfitness for painting and was told that his abilities lay instead in the field of architecture. |
| 112 | Was the first child of his mother's to survive past infancy. |
| 113 | While serving in World War I, he found a terrier he named "Little Fox." He taught the dog many tricks to entertain his fellow soldiers. |
| 114 | William Patrick Hitler, son of Adolph's half-brother Alois Hitler, fathered four sons. One son died in an auto accident in 1989. Another son has described his ancestry as "a pain in the ass." William Patrick's three surviving sons are the only living descendants of Hitler's paternal line of the family and are, quite literally, the last of the Hitlers. |
| 115 | Did not drink or smoke. |
| 116 | From 1925 to 1945, Hitler held the official title of SS Member #1, a title which he gave to himself upon the group's creation in 1925. |
| 117 | He held membership card number 555 of the NSDAP, but the Nazi Party started numbering from 500 to make themselves appear larger |
| 118 | His favorite opera was Richard Wagner's "Reinzi," which he claimed to have seen at least 40 times. In his younger years, he befriended the Wagner family and even twice proposed to Wagner's daughter in-law, Winifred, after her first husband died (she turned him down because he didn't have "an important position"). He was known to her children as "Uncle Wolf," and members of the Wagner family affectionately referred to Hitler as "Wolf," even after he became Germany's dictator. |
| 119 | While many insist that Hitler was a lifelong vegetarian, medical and historical records prove that he adopted a strictly vegetarian diet in the modern sense only in the last 12 years of his life. He was however a follower and fierce defender of the vegetarian life style, reportedly calling broth "corpse tea" and asking his dining partners how they can "eat dead beings" (around 1930). To maintain a vegetarian diet back then was not as easy as today, and not all vegetarians managed - or wanted - to take it too strictly. |
| 120 | One story regarding Hitler's death is that when Soviet troops reached Berlin and located the "Führerbunker", the body of a man was found amid the rubble. He had died from a gunshot to the forehead and resembled Hitler so closely he was mistakenly identified as him. His body was even filmed by newsreel photographers with the Soviet soldiers who found the body. A servant from the Führerbunker identified the man as Gustav Weler, one of Hitler's personal cooks. Supposedly he had been used as a decoy for "security reasons". The sensationalist book "The Bush Connection" by Eric Onion claims that SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny shot Weler to distract invading forces. Weler's body was taken to Moscow for identification and buried at Lefortovo Prison. |
| 121 | Hitler's last command post, the Berlin "Führerbunker," was also his 13th. |
| 122 | Was involved in a scandal following the death of Geli Raubal, daughter of Hitler's half-sister, Angela Hitler. Originally deemed a suicide by Munich police, present-day theories indicate that Hitler had a love affair with Geli and might have murdered her in a jealous fit. She was living in his apartment and had become a subject of gossip within the ranks of the Nazi Party. She had also had an affair with a Jewish man from Vienna, and was reportedly pregnant with his child when she died. Geli's brother Leo blamed Hitler for her death. |
| 123 | Contracted Parkinson's Disease in the later years of his life. Recently discovered newsreel footage shows Hitler addressing members of the Hitler Youth (the last footage taken of him alive), with his left hand visibly trembling. |
| 124 | Has been spoofed by Mel Blanc, Mel Brooks, Christopher Carroll, Charles Chaplin, Eric Idle, Adrian Edmondson, Gilbert Gottfried, Benny Hill, Spike Jones, Michael Moriarty, Peter Sellers, and The Three Stooges . |
| 125 | The Boys from Brazil (1978) was based on a theory that Hitler wanted to clone himself. |
| 126 | Was taking 92 different drugs towards the end of his life. |
| 127 | Served as an army messenger in World War I (he was initially deemed "unfit" and "unable to bear arms" after being arrested for attempting to avoid military service), and won two Iron Crosses for bravery. |
| 128 | There were unconfirmed sightings of him in Denmark and Argentina after his death. |
| 129 | After his death his corpse was never officially discovered. |
| 130 | Was Time Magazine's 1938 "Man of the Year". Time's definition of "Man of the Year": "The person who most influenced the news" in the indicated year, *no matter whether for good or bad*. |
| 131 | Leader of Nazi Germany (The Third Reich) from 1933 to 1945. |
| 132 | He has been held responsible for the deaths of over 11 million people in concentration camps from 1942 to 1945. Most were Jewish, but others included communists, homosexuals, the retarded (the experiments conducted upon them convinced Nazi officials that mass extermination of people was feasible), Christians, and Roma and Sinti gypsies. There is no record of Hitler ordering the Holocaust. However on 18 December 1941, during the invasion of the Soviet Union, he was asked by SS leader Heinrich Himmler what should be done about the Jews in the Soviet Union. Hitler replied, "Exterminate them as partisans". |
| 133 | Arm was paralyzed during an assassination attempt by a group of Wehrmacht generals in 1944. |
| 134 | After his suicide in April 1945 his corpse was imperfectly cremated due to lack of petrol, and some remains were not burned. Pieces of his skull (including one with a bullet hole) and leg bones were recovered by the Soviets, and now reside in the Russian National Archives. |
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