Hitler Born: The Dictator Who Plunged the World into War
Adolf Hitler was rejected twice by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. The admissions committee said his architectural drawings showed talent but his figure studies were weak. He wanted to be a painter. He spent years as a homeless artist in Vienna, sleeping in shelters and selling postcard watercolors. He served in World War I as a corporal, was wounded and gassed, and was in hospital when Germany surrendered in 1918. He called it a stab in the back. He was a failed artist, a wounded veteran, a man who belonged to no class and no party, who found that hatred gave him a purpose and that he was extraordinary at communicating it. He wrote Mein Kampf in prison. By the time the world understood what the book described, 60 million people were dead.
April 20, 1889
137 years ago
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