Childhood of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, at Braunau am Inn, Austria, a small town in Upper Austria, on the border with Germany. He was the fourth of six children of Alois Hitler (1837-1903), a customs official, and Klara Pölzl, Alois's niece and third wife. Of these six children, only Adolf and his younger sister Paula reached adulthood. Alois Hitler also had a son (Alois Junior) and a daughter (Angela) by his second wife. In Mein Kampf Hitler describes his father as an "irascible tyrant," although there is little indication that Alois Hitler treated his son more strictly than…