On
January 21, 1896, an innocent child was born in the
small farm community of Hafeld, Austria, 30 miles
southwest of the old provincial capital of Linz, on the
Danube. The name of the child was Paula Hitler,
the last child of Alois Hitler and his third wife Klara.
Paulas mother, born Klara Pölzl, was 23 years younger
than Alois. She was so closely related to her husband
that a special dispensation was sought from Rome before
they could marry in 1884.
Klara and Alois Hitler
The
couple had five children, but only two survived to
become adults: Paula and her elder brother, Adolf
Hitler, murderer of millions, master of destruction
and organized insanity. Two of her siblings died from
diphtheria when they were children, and one died shortly
after birth.
Little Adolf
Their
father, Alois, was a hard, conscientious Customs
Official, punctilious to a fault with a difficult temper
that flared with no apparent provocation. Paula later
recalled how Adolf bore the brunt of the father's
discipline:
"Adolf
challenged my father to extreme harshness and got his
sound thrashing every day. He was a scrubby little
rogue, and all attempts of his father to thrash him for
his rudeness and to cause him to love the profession of
an official of the state were in vain. How often on the
other hand did my mother caress him and try to obtain
with her kindness where the father could not succeed
with harshness ..."
In 2005 the discovery of a
journal written by Paula Hitler revealed how Klara
Hitler tried to protect her son from his father and the
regular beatings:
"Fearing
that the father could no longer control himself in his
unbridled rage, she decides to put an end to the beating
... She goes up to the attic, covers Adolf who is lying
on the floor, but cannot deflect the father's final
blow. Without a sound she absorbs it."
Another excerpt described
how Adolf Hitler was a little bully in his teens and
would beat her. Recounting the earliest memories of her
childhood, Paula wrote: "Once again I feel my
brother's loose hand across my face."
