When asked who was the world's most feared and vicious leader of a country during a world war, military historians and world leaders would state that it was Adolf Hitler. He was the dictator of Germany and was the most powerful and ruthless leader of his time, 1933 to 1945, during World War II. However, few people know of Hitler's youth and what sparked his fascination to do what was later labeled the spread of anti-Semitic values among the German people, and commit genocide upon the Jewish population. .
Adolf Hitler was born at 6:30 p.m. on April 20, 1889 in the small Austrian village of Braunau Am Inn to the parents of Alois Hitler, 48, and Klara Polzl, 24. Braunau Am Inn is located just across the border from the German Bavarian border ("The Rise of Hitler").
"Adolf Hitler would one day lead a movement that placed supreme importance on a person's family tree even making it a matter of life and death. However, his own family tree was quite mixed up and would be a lifelong source of embarrassment and concern to him." ("The Rise of Hitler").
Alois was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber and possibly Johann George Hiedler, a poor Jewish mill worker or the 19 year old son of a Jewish family, she worked for as a cook, named Frankenberger. Adolf never knew for sure who his grandfather was. But he did know his grandmother, Maria, married Johann Hiedler when his father Alois was five-years-old. Alois, at the age of 39, after a successful career in the Austrian civil service as a Senior Assistant Customs Inspector, changed his last name to Heidler through the encouragement of an uncle to carry on the family name. However, when the Heidler family name was written in an official name recording book, it was spelled as Hitler. And so in 1876, Alois Schicklgruber became Alois Hitler. This is important to history because it would be very hard to imagine tens of thousands of Germans shouting "Heil Schicklgruber!" instead of "Heil Hitler!" ("The Rise of Hitler").
