The Dark Truth Behind The Woman Who Raised Hitler
By Leslie Veliz
and Amy Beeman
History - Science
One might think that Adolf Hitler, a dictator responsible for the Holocaust and millions of deaths, would be raised by people just as monstrous as himself. While his father, Alois, was by all accounts a violent, abusive alcoholic, his mother was a different story.
Klara Hitler (born Klara Pölzl) was a gentle, caring figure who did her best to protect and comfort her son Adolf, the only one of her four children to survive infancy. The third wife of Alois, in addition to being his younger second cousin (so much younger, in fact, that she called him “uncle”), Klara initially joined his household as a maid before marrying him in 1885.
After Alois died in 1903, Klara was left to raise her son alone; she wholeheartedly supported his dream to pursue fine arts in Vienna and even bought him a grand piano when he wanted one. Hitler later referred to this brief period of his life as "the happiest days which seemed to me almost like a beautiful dream."
Unfortunately, Klara died from breast cancer in 1907, leaving the young Hitler utterly devastated. He later named her birthday (August 12) as “a day of honor for the German mother” and always kept photos of her with him, even up to his death in a Berlin bunker in 1945.