20 Mind-Blowing Facts About Adolf Hitler

What's that about Hitler and blow-up dolls?

Hitler TIME Magazine
TIME Magazine

Adolf Hitler, a name which brings connotations of death, warfare, murder, misery and the attempted extermination of an entire race. Yes, the Nazi leader established himself as the Fuhrer of all of Germany before leading the world into a second brutal World War between the years of 1939 and 1945, but he also went about trying to do so much more than that.

Six-million Jews and an estimated 11 million people in all were killed as a result of the Holocaust, which he orchestrated, and more than 20 million more died during the course of World War II.

An authoritarian dictator, Hitler's Nazism drew upon Italian Fascism for inspiration and shunned the capitalistic methods of the Western Powers or the socialistic theories of the Soviet Union. He believed in the Aryan Race of Germans and in Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the bermensch who should rule above the slave-like under-classes of the sub-human Untermensch.

But what do we actually know about Hitler the man  what was he like? What hobbies did he have? Which hard drugs did he take? And why did he shave his moustache into the unusual yet distinctive toothbrush-style that his name has become synonymous with?

