by Ian Kershaw
152. NA, NND-88I077, 3;Bloch, 39. See also Kubizek, 138–41. Jetzinger’s account, 176–81, claiming that Hitler did not return to Linz before his mother’s death was at least in part aimed at discrediting Kubizek. However, both Paula Hitler and Dr Bloch independently confirm that Adolf was present while his mother was dying, thus lending support to Kubizek’s account, despite its containing a number of factual inaccuracies. Smith, 110 and n.54, follows Jetzinger. See Waite, 180–83, and Hamann, 84–5.
153. Jetzinger, 179; Hamann, 54. According to two witnesses, Adolf sketched his mother on her deathbed (Bloch, 39; IfZ, MA-731 (= HA, Reel 1), ‘Adolf Hitler in Urfahr’).
154. Bloch, 39. Dr Bloch went on to mention Adolf’s avowed lasting gratitude. Hitler subsequently sent Dr Bloch a number of picture-postcards and a present of a picture he had painted (Bloch, pt.II, Colliers, 22 March 1941, 69–70; Hamann, 56). After the Anschluß, Dr Bloch appealed to Hitler and was granted relatively favourable treatment. Even so, he lost his livelihood, was forced to emigrate to the USA, and died in straitened circumstances in New York in 1945 (Bloch, pt.II, 72–3; Hamann, 56–7).
155. MK, 16 (trans., MK Watt, 17).
156. Jetzinger, 181.
157. MK, 16–17 (trans., MK Watt, 17).
158. MK, 19–20 (trans., MK Watt, 19).
159. Jetzinger, 180; Hamann, 55; Marckhgott, 272.
160. Hamann, 58, 85.
161. E.g. Maser, Hitler, 81. See Hamann, 58.
162. Jetzinger, 180–82, 185–9; Smith, 111–12.
163. NA, NND-881077, 4; Jetzinger, 182, 186–7.
164. Jetzinger, 187.
165. Marckhgott, 271.
166. Kubizek, 146–55; Jetzinger, 189–92; Smith, 114–15.
167. IfZ, MA-731 (= HA, Reel 1), ‘Adolf Hitler in Urfahr’.
CHAPTER 2: DROP-OUT
1. Above quotations from MK, 20–21 (trans., MK Watt, 20–21).
2. MK, chs.2–3, 18–137.
3. MK, 137.
4. The best account by far is that of Brigitte Hamann, Hitlers Wien. Lehrjahre eines Diktators, Munich, 1996.
5. See Hamann, 77–83, 264–75, for the credibility of these accounts.
6. Josef Greiner, Das Ende des Hitler-Mythos, Zürich/Leipzig/Vienna, 1947. Jetzinger, 225, 294; Waite, 427–32; Hamann, 275–80, are rightly dismissive, Smith, 165–6, less so.
7. See Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. Politics and Culture, New York, 1979, xviii, 3.
8. See William A. Jenks, Vienna and the Young Hitler, New York, 1960, 219.
9. See Schorske, 6, 12, 15, 19, 22.
10. Schorske, 129.
11. Hamann, chs.2–5, 9–10, provides an excellent description of the social and political fabric of the Vienna that Hitler experienced.
12. Jenks, 38–9.
13. Jenks, 39.
14. Jenks, 118.
15. See Jenks, 119–21.
16. See Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Antisemitism in Germany and Austria, rev. edn, London, 1988, esp. chs.14–15; Hamann, 470–71.
17. Schorske, pp. 146–80; Hamann, 486–8.
18. Jenks, 118.
19. MK, 135 (trans., MK Watt, 113).
20. See Hamann, 128–9; Joachimsthaler, 39–40.
21. Jenks, 53.
22. Jenks, 107.
23. Schorske, 130–31.
24. Hamann, 177–9.
25. Jenks, 54–5, 101.
26. MK, 80–101.
27. Jenks, 73–8.
28. Schorske, 129.
29. See, for Schönerer, Hamann, 337–64 (here esp. 362); and Andrew G. Whiteside, The Socialism of Fools. Georg von Schönerer and Austrian Pan-Germanism, Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1975.
30. Jenks, 106.
31. Schorske, 128.
32. Jenks, 91–6, 103–10.
33. MK, 106–30; and see Jenks, 110.
34. MK 106–10, 130–34. During reminiscences more than three decades later, Hitler was still singing the praises of Lueger (Monologe, 152–3, 17 December 1941). On Lueger, see esp. Hamann, 393–435, and John W. Boyer, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna. Origins of the Christian Social Movement, 1848–1897, Chicago, 1981, esp. ch.4.
35. MK, 108, 130.
36. Schorske, 139; Jenks, 88.
37. Cit. Hamann, 417; Schorske, 145.
38. Schorske, 145.
39. Jenks, 50.
40. Schorske, 140.
41. Hamann, 411.
42. Hamann, 413.
43. Hamann, 412.
44. Hamann, 412, and see 490.
45. MK, 132–3; and see Hamann, 431–2.
46. MK, 133–4.
47. MK, 108, 130.
48. Jenks, 168, 175.
49. Jenks, 158.
50. Jenks, 181–2.
51. Jenks, 178–9.
52. Jenks, 181.
53. Jenks, 168–9.
54. Jenks, 158.
55. Jenks, 179–80.
56. Jenks, 180.
57. Quotations from MK, 43–4 (trans., MK Watt, 38–9); and see Hamann, 254–7.
58. Marckhgott, 271.
59. Jetzinger, 206.
60. NA, NND-881077, 4, testimony of Paula Hitler (1946).
61. Marckhgott, 273, 275.
62. NA, NND-881077, 4; Jetzinger, 230–32, speculates that Adolf inherited a substantial legacy from Aunt Johanna in 1911. But she had loaned him 924 Kronen no later than 1908 (probably towards the end of 1907), a sum amounting to around a fifth of her savings, and probably constituting his share of the inheritance (Marckhgott, 275–6; Hamann, 196, 250). There is no hint from Hitler’s lifestyle that he benefited from a significant inheritance in 1911.
63. Kubizek, 128, 148.
64. NA, NND-881077, 4.
65. Kubizek, 148–9.
66. Smith, 108, for the renting of the room in late September or early October 1907; he gives the date for the return to Vienna as 14–17 February 1908. The card to Kubizek is dated 18 February; Hitler was still in Urfahr on 14 February (Jetzinger, 187–8). Hamann (49) points out that Maria Zakreys was Czech and not Polish, as Kubizek (157) implied. She also corrects Kubizek’s error (132, 156) that the address was Stumpergasse 29, not 31.
67. Kubizek, 152.
68. Kubizek, 153–4 (trans., August Kubizek, Young Hitler, London, 1973, 99).
69. Kubizek, 157–8.
70. Kubizek, 150, points out that Adolf was continuing more or less to lead the same sort of life in Vienna.
71. Kubizek, 159.
72. Kubizek, 159, 161.
73. Kubizek, 159–60.
74. Kubizek, 160.
75. Kubizek, 161–7; quotations 167 (trans., Young Hitler, 113).
76. Kubizek, 167 (trans., Young Hitler, 114).
77. Jetzinger, 187–8.
78. Kubizek, 163.
79. Kubizek, 165 (trans., Young Hitler, III, where the words ‘and cheated’ – ‘und betrogen’ – are omitted).
80. Kubizek, 182 (trans., Young Hitler, 129).
81. Kubizek, 163 (trans., Young Hitler, 109).
82. IfZ, F19/19 (copies of the correspondence). See Jones, 33–7; Smith, 113; Joachimsthaler, 35; Maser, Hitler, 81–4; Hamann, 59–62.
83. Monologe, 200. According to one story, Hitler tried several times to see Roller, but eventually gave up and tore up his letter of introduction (John Toland, Adolf Hitler, London, 1977, 31, 929 but on the basis of an interview carried out decades later, in 1971. See also Jones, 51).
84. Maser, Hitler, 84–5; Jones, 33, 121 (though on 311 n.65 he accepts the weakness of the evidence). And see Joachimsthaler, 35.
85. Despite Kubizek’s propensity to fantasize parts of his memoirs (see Jetzinger, 117–21, I35ff.), the very singularity of the episodes he describes, when relating Hitler’s ‘projects’, suggests they were beyond his own originality or fantasy, and the picture of Hitler which emerges has an authentic ring to it. See Hamann, 80–82. Hitler himself, in his wartime monologues, spoke of starting to write a play at the age of fifteen (Monologe
, 187, 8–9 January 1942). The English translation, Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944, London, 1953, 191, omits the relevant sentence.
86. Kubizek, 164–5.
87. Kubizek, 184–5.
88. Kubizek, 200–208, quotation, 208 (trans., Young Hitler, 153).
89. Kubizek, 179 (utopian plans); 172, 176–8 (housing in Vienna); 178–9 (new popular drink); 209–18 (travelling orchestra); 174, 197 (rebuilding of Linz).
90. Kubizek, 176–8. Jones, 62–3, 68–9, accepts Kubizek’s story, though attributes Hitler’s interest in the housing problem to his own conditions in the dismal room in Stumpergasse more than to any humanitarian sympathy with the underprivileged.
91. Kubizek, 211.
92. Jones, 52–8, 63–7. Hitler did later acquire some erotic paintings by Klimt’s Munich counterpart Franz von Stuck, who was one of his favourite artists (Jones 57; Waite, 66–9).
93. For the ferocious opposition in Vienna to the work of Klimt and Kokoschka, see Schorske, chs.5, 7.
94. Kubizek, 186–7.
95. Kubizek, 173–4.
96. Kubizek, 173.
97. Kubizek, 188.
98. Kubizek, 153.
99. Kubizek, 188. Hitler had paid the relatively high subscription of 8.40 Kronen on 7 January 1908 to become a member of the Linzer Musealverein, giving him access to the Linz Landesmuseum and library. He resigned his membership on 4 March 1909 (Hamann, 57, 197).
100. Kubizek, 188, 191.
101. Kubizek, 189–90.
102. Jetzinger, 216.
103. Kubizek, 190; Jetzinger, 217. Hitler was later capable of conversing about the comparative merits of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, though this is no proof that he had read their works (TBJG, II.7, 181, 21 January 1943). He had, in fact, been caught out ‘lecturing’ on Schopenhauer in the Men’s Home in Vienna, conceded that he had only read ‘some’ of his work, and been admonished to ‘speak about things that he understood’ (Reinhold Hanisch, ‘I Was Hitler’s Buddy: III’, New Republic, 19 April 1939, 297). According to Hans Frank, Hitler told him that he read Schopenhauer during the First World War and Nietzsche during his imprisonment in Landsberg in 1924 (Frank, 46).
104. In MK, 43, 56, 58, Hitler explicitly mentions the Social Democratic Arbeiterzeitung, the Liberal Neue Freie Presse and Wiener Tagblatt, and the Christian Socialist Deutsches Volksblatt. For his daily newspaper reading he probably turned first of all to the organ of the Schönerer movement, Das Alldeutsche Tagblatt, which was published a few doors down Stumpergasse from where he lived (Hamann, 50). He read these, and no doubt other newspapers as well as periodicals and political pamphlets, mainly in cafés (MK, 42–3, 65).
105. MK, 35–6. Maser, Hitler, 179–82 accepts that the sources on Hitler’s reading in this early period are unreliable – which does not prevent him citing at length a passage from Greiner that is pure fantasy. See Binion’s scathing comments on Maser’s views of Hitler’s alleged extensive reading in ‘Foam on the Hitler Wave’, JMH, 46 (1974), 522–4. Jones, 312 n.12, casts doubt upon Hitler’s use of the Hofbibliothek.
106. NA, NND-881077, 4· An indication that the young Hitler had been something of a bookworm before he left Linz can be gleaned from the testimony of neighbours and relatives, though of course this was only gathered in 1938 (HA, Reel 1 (IfZ, MA-731), ‘Adolf Hitler in Urfahr’, and reported recollections of Johann Schmidt).
107. MK, 36–8 (trans., MK Watt, 33–4).
108. Maser, Hitler, 110; Monologe, 198; Jenks, 14; Zoller, 58.
109. Kubizek, 198.
110. Kubizek wrote (196) of ‘the perfect interpretations of the musical dramas of Wagner by the Viennese Court Opera led by Gustav Mahler’, and mentions (192) Hitler’s admiration for Mahler, ‘at that time the conductor’ in the opera. Whether Hitler experienced Mahler conducting during his first two stays in Vienna cannot be established, but he and Kubizek could not have seen Mahler together, since Mahler’s last performance, before leaving to take up his appointment at the New York Metropolitan Opera, was on 15 October 1907, five months before Kubizek’s arrival in Vienna (Jones, 40, 48; Maser, Hitler, 264; Hamann, 44, 94–5).
111. Kubizek, 196. Hitler’s sister Paula claimed to remember him seeing Götterdämmerung thirteen times even while still in Linz (NA, NND-881077, 4). Hitler himself said he had seen Tristan (which he thought Wagner’s greatest opera) ‘thirty to forty times’ during his years in Vienna (Monologe, 224, 294 (24–5 January 1942, 22–3 February 1942)).
112. Kubizek, 195.
113. Schorske, 163.
114. Jenks, 202; and see Hamann, 89–95.
115. Kubizek, 195 (trans., Young Hitler, 140).
116. Monologe, 234 (25–6 January 1942; trans., Table Talk, 251).
117. A point made by Joachim Fest, Hitler. Eine Biographie, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Vienna, 1976 edn, 75.
118. Heiden, Der Führer, 52–3.
119. For an overdrawn depiction of Hitler as a self-styled Wagnerian hero, see Köhler, esp. ch.13; and also Waite, 99–113.
120. See Carr, 155; Waite, 184–6.
121. Without him, it has been rightly said, the reduction of politics in the Third Reich to drama and pageantry would be difficult to imagine (Fest, 74–7). It is nevertheless a gross oversimplification and distortion to reduce the Third Reich to the outcome of Hitler’s alleged mission to fulfil Wagner’s vision, as does Köhler, in Wagners Hitler.
122. Kubizek, 162, 238.
123. Kubizek, 163.
124. Kubizek, 162.
125. Kubizek, 193.
126. Kubizek, 230.
127. Hanisch, 297.
128. Hamann, 523–4.
129. Hanisch, 297–8.
130. See Hamann, 519–21.
131. Hanisch, 297.
132. Cited Waite, 51 (‘Eine Frau muß ein niedliches, molliges, Tschapperl sein: weich, süß und dumm’).
133. MK, 44 (trans., MK Watt, 39).
134. Kubizek, 231.
135. Maser, Hitler, 527–9.
136. Heiden, Der Führer, 63–4, makes this point.
137. The evidence that Hitler had only one testicle depends solely upon the Russian autopsy evidence (Lev Bezymenski, The Death of Adolf Hitler, London, 1968, 46, 49). This stands diametrically contradicted by several detailed medical examinations carried out at different times by his doctors, who were adamant that his sexual organs were quite normal. In a critical review in the Sunday Times, 29 September 1968, Hugh Trevor-Roper gave cogent reasons for scepticism about the general reliability of Bezymenski’s report. Maser, Hitler, 527–9, summarizes the medical examinations of Hitler by his own doctors and raises the possibility that the body on which the Soviet autopsy was performed may not have been that of Hitler. Waite, 150–62, accepts the dubious evidence of monorchism and builds it into an elaborate explanation of Hitler’s psychological abnormalities. Binion, in his biting review of Waite, Journal of Psychohistory, 5 (1977), 296–7, is more properly sceptical, coming down – as the weight and nature of the testimony surely demands – in favour of the several examinations of Hitler while he was alive, none of which indicated any genital abnormality.
138. Greiner, 54–67; Fest, 63, repeats the Greiner story and regards it as a plausible cause of Hitler’s antisemitism. For reasons why Greiner’s book should be totally discounted as worthwhile evidence, see Waite, 427–32.
139. See Schorske, chs.1, 5.
140. Jenks, 123–5; Jones, 72–9; Hamann, 519–22.
141. Jones, 73; Kubizek, 158–9.
142. Kubizek, 237.
143. Kubizek, 228–9.
144. Kubizek, 237.
145. Kubizek, 237.
146. Kubizek, 239. Later rumours that he had himself been infected with syphilis by a Jewish prostitute were without foundation. Medical tests in 1940 showed that Hitler had not suffered from syphilis. (See Maser, Hitler, 308, 377, 528).
147. Kubizek, 235–6.
148. MK, 63. Reliable figures on the extremely large numbers of prostitutes in Vien
na at the time are unobtainable. That prostitution was run by Jews was a standard weapon of the antisemites’ armoury. As always, it was a gross distortion. But to combat such allegations, the Jewish community itself supported and publicized attempts to break the criminal trade, in which some eastern Jews were involved, in importing young Jewish girls from poverty-stricken backgrounds in eastern Europe to Vienna’s brothels. (See Hamann, 477–9, 521–2.)
149. Hitler’s juvenile entry to the adult part of the Linz waxworks (see Monologe, 190) can doubtless be attributed to normal adolescent curiosity.
150. Kubizek, 233–5, 2.37; and see Waite, 241.
151. See Kubizek, 170–71, where it was said that he was ‘almost pathologically sensitive about anything concerning the body’, and ‘disliked any physical contact with people’ (trans., Young Hitler, 116–17).
152. See the references in ch.1, n.63.
153. Much goes back to ΝA, The Hitler Source Book, the OSS wartime compilation, and the book substantially based upon it, Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler, Pan Books edn, London, 1974, esp. 134, 165ff. The sensationalism of David Lewis, The Secret Life of Adolf Hitler, London, 1977, rests in good measure on the same material and adds little or nothing. Waite (237–43) infers that the perversion existed but accepts (239) that the ‘shreds of evidence’ are ‘insufficient in themselves’ to support such a conclusion. Based mainly on Langer and Waite, Jones, 91–4, 308, describes the same perversions (though they contribute nothing to his account of Hitler in the Vienna years). Hitler’s erstwhile comrade, later bitter enemy, Otto Strasser was a source of some of the stories.
154. MK, 20.
155. MK, 17 (trans., MK Watt, 17).
156. Hamann, 58, 85; Maser, Hitler, 81; Smith, 108; Jetzinger, 172, 180–83. For further attempts to estimate Hitler’s financial position at this time, see Smith, 112; Toland, 29, from NA, The Hitler Source Book, 925–6, interview with William Patrick Hitler; and Jones, 300–301 n.35. Hitler claimed in 1921 that he had had only 80 Kronen on him when he went to Vienna (Letter of 29 November 1921, in IfZ, MA-731 (= HA, Reel 1), reproduced in Joachimsthaler, 92.
157. Kubizek, 156 (trans., Young Hitler, 101).
158. Kubizek, 158.
159. Kubizek, 157, 160, 162, 170, 223, 247, 258 for descriptions of the room and surroundings.
160. Kubizek, 161.
161. Kubizek, 157, 161–2, 178, 273 (for eating and drinking habits).