The Birth of Nazism  A couple of years ago, I began a series
based on a very long college essay I was writing. I decided to
start over…here is part one of five.  Young Adolf Hitler was an
artist. Most people who don’t follow history closely don’t know
this important fact about the man. When he was a teenager, his
father insisted on sending him to a technical school so he could
learn a trade skill that would make real money; Adolf, raised by
a very strict authoritarian father (Alois) and an
oversympathetic, doting mother (Klara), deliberately failed at
school in his teen years in the hopes of forcing his father to
enroll him in art school.  We all know now that his drive was
fruitless. Adolf was Austrian and he grew up with friends who
believed that Austria belonged to Germany. German nationalism
was strong in the run-up to WWI. Only after his father’s passing
did Adolf finish school and he only passed by the skin of his
teeth – he still wanted to be an artist, and his mother
supported his ambition. He ended u