Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria. From age 11 to 16, Hitler attended secondary school; that was the only formal education that he received. When he was 13, Hitler's father died. His mother died five years later of breast cancer. Hitler was an amateur artist and at the age of 18, he took the entrance test for the Vienna Academy of Art's School of Painting, but he failed.
By the time he was 19, Hitler had made Vienna his home; the year was 1908. He lived off of welfare payments that he received as an orphan. Antisemitism was everywhere in Vienna; the mayor had even been elected on a political platform that stressed his antisemitism. Hitler considered his years in Vienna to be formative and decisive in shaping his world-view and his opinions of Jews.
In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, Germany, and when World War I broke out in 1914, he volunteered for the Bavarian (German) army. He served as a corporal and received medals for bravery. He was wounded in a gas attack; the German army surrendered while he was recovering.
After Germany signed the humiliating Treaty of Versailles, Hitler agreed to work for the government spying on radical political groups. One of these groups was the German Workers Party. Hitler found their ideas very similar to his own, and he soon quit his work as a spy and joined the party. He was a spellbinding speaker and rapidly rose within the party ranks to take over as leader of what became the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis for short.
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