Warlords
Under scrutiny
Personal relationships
Hitler |
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Hitler described his father as an 'irascible tyrant' who beat him frequently as a boy and tried to force him to become a customs official when he wanted to be an artist. His mother died of cancer in 1907, when he was 18. The biggest influence on his personal relationships in adulthood was the First World War, during which he fought and was wounded and gassed. A man of great charisma, he had an almost hypnotic effect on many who met him, including the British socialite Unity Mitford, who idolised him. However, his relationships with women were private, almost furtive, in nature, with his most famous lover Eva Braun being kept in the background until the very end, when he married her the day before their joint suicides. He also had a strange, probably incestuous, relationship with his niece, and it is still debated whether she shot herself or was murdered on Hitler's orders.
