One stray bullet, one artillery round fired just a second later- that is all
it would have taken to end the life of history's most infamous
mass murderer. How in the world did Hitler survive World War I?
Prior to the war to end all wars, Hitler was living in Vienna as a starving artist.
The city was the cultural mecca of the world at the time, and Hitler had come with hopes of
joining the prestigious Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. However, his drawings were so poor that he
was denied even a chance at taking the official exam. This deeply affected the already moody,
disenfranchised teenager, spinning him even further into a world of his own making.
By all accounts Hitler was a moody, largely insufferable young man who loved to launch into
spirited political speeches or debates- but would immediately be enraged if anyone corrected him on
any matter. Today, he would be the reason video games have banlists. He also showed no interest
in the few women who were attracted to him, preferring to remain solitary and rebuffing
any woman who wished to get near him. Making no effort to find a job as he believed he was
above doing 'common' work, Hitler lived on ever-shrinking savings, spending what little
money he did have attending the opera in the evenings and dressing like a young gentleman.
When his friend was accepted to the Vienna Conservatory to study music,
Hitler was naturally enraged and one day left the apartment the two shared without warning.
On his own in Vienna, Hitler was forced to move from place to place,
but his lack of family or friends in the city made it difficult to find permanent housing.
Despite his money running out, Hitler still refused to find work and instead pawned all
his possessions and started sleeping outside on park benches. He was soon starving on the street,
a miserable, smelly wretch of a man- until he was accepted into a local homeless shelter.
Finally Hitler deigned to stoop so low as to work shoveling snow or doing some other physical labor
in order to earn some cash. He maintained this lifestyle for a few years, becoming exposed to the
political chaos of Vienna in the final days of the weakening Austrian-Hungarian empire. It was here
that he began to form his hard-edged anti-semitist views, despite the fact that he had befriended a
Jewish man who helped Hitler sell artwork to local shops so he could earn a meager living. Many of
those same shops were run by Jews, and without them Hitler would have been starving again.
Hitler continued his habit of long speeches, immediately flying into a rage if anyone opposed
or corrected him. With war looming in the horizon, Hitler was summoned for military service but
seethed with hatred at the idea of serving in the mixed-race Austrian-Hungarian military. Instead,
Hitler opted to ignore his draft letter and, with the help of the inheritance he received upon his
father's death, moved to Munich. If war was going to break out, he wanted to serve in a pure-race
German military, not the mongrel military of the cosmopolitan Austrian-Hungarian empire.
The Austrian authorities however tracked Hitler down in Munich and arrested him. Hitler was
now in serious trouble, as he was facing prison time for dodging the draft. However,
he wrote an impassioned letter to the Austrian Consulate, apologizing for skipping out on his
military service and speaking about his difficult and troubled youth. The consulate was so impressed
that Hitler was not punished for dodging the draft, but he was however forced to return
and serve anyways. Hitler easily failed the required medical exam and was soon free to return
to Munich- despite the fact that he should have been deported by German authorities. To this day,
no one knows why this didn't happen, or how it could have changed history.
In Munich Hitler spent the short time before the war once more painting to make a living,
selling cheap paintings of local landmarks to tourists and shops.
One day Hitler was asked how he planned to make a permanent living,
to which Hitler ominously replied that it did not matter, as soon there would be war.
Hitler would prove to be terrifyingly right.
On August 1st, 1914, Hitler gathered along with a horde of other people at a big public plaza in
Munich. A city official hastily addressed the crowd. War had been brewing for over a year,
and now it was official- Germany was at war with the Russian empire. The assembled people began to
celebrate the glorious conquest that was to come, with a jubilant Hitler standing in their midst.
Two days later Hitler volunteered to enlist in the German Army, and would enlist in a Bavarian
regiment. In the words of history's worst mass murderer, “For me, as for every German,
there now began the greatest and most unforgettable time of my earthly existence.
Compared to the events of this gigantic struggle, everything past receded to shallow nothingness.”
Hitler was assigned to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16,
and soon saw battle at the First Battle of Ypres- a battle that would come to be known to
the Germans as the 'massacre of the innocents' for the incredible casualties inflicted on the young,
inexperienced recruits of the German army.
As one of the first battles of World War I, it was expected to be a quick and decisive action
with a clear victor and loser. However, military commanders on both sides were
beginning to realize that modern weapons were making mass battles all but impossible,
and that the invention of modern artillery and the machine gun so heavily favored the defender,
that battles would grind to a stalemate, with both sides dug into miles of trenches.
Hitler would find himself in one of these soaked, miserable trenches, battling the elements,
Allied artillery bombardments, and the general misery of a gridlocked war.
Despite this though, Hitler was actually in high spirits. After so many years of being
a disenfranchised youth Hitler had finally found people he fit in with,
and a place where his ultra-nationalistic, far-right views were welcomed.
Nonetheless, the First Battle of Ypress proved to be a relentless meat-grinder,
with the only way to secure victory being through massed assault against allied trenches defended
by machine guns and artillery. These human wave attacks proved to be devastatingly costly for
both sides, but the failure of the German army to break the Allied lines would set the Germans
on a defensive posture for the rest of the war as their grand strategy was rethought. Rather than
try and defeat the allies as a whole militarily, they would hold a defensive posture in the west
while assaulting in the east, until the Russian Empire was forced to peace terms
and the entire German military could be brought to bear on the western allies.
Germany suffered upwards of 130,000 casualties in a month of fighting,
and yet miraculously Hitler managed to survive every action relatively unharmed. He even began
to grow a reputation for being incredibly lucky, always managing to avoid an exploding artillery
shell that moments later killed or seriously injured the men Hitler had just been chatting
with. In Hitler's mind it was only further proof that he was destined for some great work.
The horrible casualties Hitler saw inflicted on both sides though took
their toll on the young dictator-to-be, and he became even more sullen and reserved,
Hitler's unit had entered the battle with 3,600 men, but at its end only 611 were fit for duty.
Hitler began to withdraw from others, the stress of the slaughter taking its toll on his mind.
Hitler was soon promoted to lance corporal, and assigned to become a regimental message-runner.
While many have claimed that this was a safe job in the rear areas,
It's unclear if Hitler truly did operate in the rear areas or if he had the more dangerous job
of running messages along the actual front. Hitler was thought of as a peculiar loner
by his comrades, and he was teased for his aversion to graphic stories of sexual conquests,
earning the nickname of “Adi”. He was also a staunch non-smoker,
and would trade his tobacco rations for the jam rations of other soldiers. Well liked, Hitler
was still thought of as a strange individual, who would only grow more sullen and distant as
the war progressed and gradually turned against Germany. At times he was known to leap up off
his cot and launch into a rant about Germany's “invisible enemies”- namely Jews and Marxists.
Even with his peculiarities, Hitler was thought of as eager to please his
superiors and commended for his bravery. Despite his willingness to serve though,
Hitler was passed up for promotion repeatedly, as his superiors believed that he was simply
not a commanding enough figure to earn the respect of men placed under him. The
peculiarities of his personality and the obvious fact that he did not belong in a
military organization also influenced the decision to not promote him to sergeant.
If Hitler was frustrated by this, he never showed it, and instead continued to serve dutifully.
During lulls in the fighting Hitler would paint landscapes of the war, and at one point adopted
a stray dog which he nicknamed Fuchsl. The dog quickly became a beloved pet to Hitler, and would
follow him everywhere that his unit was deployed to. He taught Fuchsl many tricks and the dog
quickly became a favorite amongst the soldiers. Then one day in August of 1917, Hitler's regiment
was sent to a quiet sector of the front in Alsace for a bit of rest. Tragically,
someone stole Fuchsl during the regiment's transition, and even went so far as to pilfer
Hitler's artwork. The loss of Fuchsl broke Hitler's heart, and he finally took his first
leave of the war, taking an 18 day leave to Berlin to stay with the family of a fellow soldier.
In Berlin Hitler was shocked at the anti-war sentiment of the civilian population. The
promised rapid defeat of the Allies had turned into a three year-long meat grinder that was
taking the lives of thousands of young men every day. The civilian population was sick of it,
and the war's popularity was rapidly declining. Hitler however blamed
this collapse in community morale on hidden agents working to undermine glorious Germany-
Jews and Marxist who hoped to see the German empire collapse.
Disgusted by what he saw taking place back home, Hitler quickly returned to duty, showing once more
incredible luck at avoiding death or serious injury. Just a year earlier during the Battle
of the Somme, Hitler had been wounded in his left thigh by an exploding shell. That shell wiped out
several of Hitler's fellow message runners when it exploded right at the entrance of the dispatch
runner's dugout. Hitler, as usual, had just left the location, but was near enough to be struck. As
a result of his injury, Hitler spent two months at a Red Cross hospital, and was scheduled to
be transferred back to Munich to work at a depot. However, Hitler wrote an impassioned letter to his
commanding officer, asking that he be allowed to return to the regiment because he couldn't' stand
the thought of being in the safety of home while his fellow soldiers fought and died on the front.
Impressed by his sense of duty and bravery, Hitler was allowed to return to the front.
Hitler's next injuries would come as a result of gas attacks. During a chlorine gas attack
Hitler and his comrades were temporarily blinded. A follow-on mustard gas attack
took Hitler's voice- which would also return in time. Due to his injuries however Hitler was sent
to a hospital in Pasewalk behind the lines. It was there while lying in his hospital bed that
Hitler's thoughts became increasingly darker as he contemplated the defeat of glorious Germany. Then,
on November 10th a pastor tending to the sick and wounded broke the worst news of Hitler's life:
Germany had surrendered to the allies. Upon hearing the news,
Hitler would later recount that he immediately suffered a second bout of blindness.
By all accounts, Hitler's military career was an honorable and distinguished one- receiving
the Iron Cross Second Class in 1914 and the Iron Cross First Class- a rare honor for such a low
ranking soldier- in 1918. He showed bravery throughout the war, and while he was never
quite the military man that he would claim in his own, later fictionalized account of his service,
he was a dutiful and obedient soldier. Sadly, the great war would further taint the mind of the
troubled young man, and in his own mind the blame for the defeat of Germany would not be due to
superior Allied economies and numbers, but because of Jewish and Communist enemy agents, working
to undo the great German people from within. Hitler would vow that he would be the one to make
Germany great once more, and he’d have his revenge on those that had tried to end its existence.
Now go check out Ways They Tried To Assassinate Hitler, or click this other video instead!