by Ian Kershaw
162. Kubizek, 178. According to one account, he did smoke very occasionally when in the Men’s Home (Honisch testimony in HA, Reel 1,File 17 (IfZ, MA-731), printed in Joachimsthaler, 58). Hitler himself much later claimed to have smoked, when down and out in Vienna, between twenty-four and forty cigarettes a day, before realizing how foolish this was when he had no money for food. It has the ring of a moralistic homily rather than a true story. (Monologe, 317, 11–12 March 1942).
163. Kubizek, 192.
164. Kubizek, 193.
165. Smith reckoned (119) that Hitler’s monthly expenditure was in the region of 80–90 Kronen, meaning that his savings were falling by around 60 Kronen a month. The basis of his reckoning is not, however, given.
166. Monologe, 294 (22–3 February 1942).
167. Kubizek, 192–3.
168. Smith, 123.
169. Kubizek, 253–5.
170. Kubizek, 272–8.
171. Kubizek, 256–61.
172. Smith, 121. Two of his relatives told the NSDAΡ-Hauptarchiv in 1938 that they had last seen Hitler in the Waldviertel in 1907 (Binion, ‘Foam’, 523). The Kubizek postcards seem, however, to confirm that he paid a visit there in August 1908 (Kubizek, 260–61; Jetzinger, 204–6).
173. Kubizek, 261–2.
174. Jetzinger, 218; Smith, 122.
175. Heiden, 49.
176. Smith, 122. Hitler’s shame at his failure was lasting. In 1912, according to the account of an anonymous co-resident of the Men’s Home, he said that he had completed a few semesters at the Academy of Fine Arts but then had left because he had been too involved in student political organizations and because he did not have the means for further study (Anonymous, ‘My Friend Hitler’, 10 – see below, n.253, for full reference). If the account is accurate, then Hitler was already a practised liar.
177. See Smith, 8–9.
178. Kubizek, 246. See Jetzinger, 210–11 on the worker demonstration Kubizek allegedly witnessed with Hitler, and 210–14 on criticism of other parts of Kubizek’s account of Hitler’s political views at this time. The ‘pacifism’ might have been Kubizek’s garbled version of Hitler’s dislike of the Habsburg army and the annexation of Bosnia in 1908.
179. At the end of his lengthy contemptuous description in Mein Kampf (MK, 80–100), Hitler claimed (100) that he had attended the Vienna parliament for two years.
180. Kubizek, 249.
181. MK, 135 (trans., MK Watt, 113).
182. See MK, 14.
183. MK, ch.3.
184. MK, 59. In his letter to the anonymous ‘Herr Doktor’ of 29 November 1921 (IfZ, MA-731 (= HA Reel 1), repr. in Joachimsthaler, 92) Hitler wrote that he ‘became an antisemite in scarcely a year’ after arriving in Vienna. However, the letter contains numerous chronological inaccuracies. It would be unwise to accept the dating literally, as do Waite, 187 and Marlis Steinert, Hitler, Munich, 1994, 50. Smith, 148 is rightly sceptical that Hitler’s ‘conversion’ took place in 1908, during the time he was mainly with Kubizek.
185. Kubizek, 251.
186. He was resident there from 18 November 1908 to 22 August 1909 (Smith, 122–3, 126).
187. Testimony of Marie Fellinger (née Rinke), IfZ, MA-731 (= HA, Reel 1), part of the recollections of Marie Fellinger and Maria Wohlrab (née Kubata) about Hitler in Vienna, collected for the party’s archive on 11 June 1940. These relate to Hitler’s frequenting of ‘Kaffee Kubata’, owned by Frau Wohlrab between 1912 and 1919, where Marie Fellinger had been an assistant. The café was in the vicinity of Felberstraße, but Hitler had long been departed from that area when Frau Wohlrab took over its running. She claimed to recall a lady-friend of Hitler – ‘Dolferl’ as she called him – by the name of Wetti or Pepi calling in the café to tell her that he was leaving for Germany and Hitler bidding her, Frau Wohlrab, a gracious farewell, saying he did not expect to return to Austria. It seems highly unlikely that Hitler would, in 1913, have been frequenting a little café in the south of the city when he had for three years been living in Brigittenau, in the north. The whole tale sounds like a fabrication. Jones, 133, 271, 283, 344 n.92 accepts the story as valid (and turns Hitler’s supposed lady friend into a man). See Joachimsthaler, 20, 161.
188. E.g. Smith, 148; implied in Jones, 135–8, and Fest, Hitler, 59–65; this timing is central to the argument of Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab, Vienna/Cologne/Graz, 1985.
189. The magazine claimed a circulation for itself of 100,000, and was apparently well known in student circles. However, it may be doubted that the circulation was anything so wide as Lanz claimed. (See Daim, 47, 127.)
190. Daim, 48; and see Hamann, 308–19.
191. Hamann, 293–308, here 293, 299, 303–5.
192. Hamann, 300–303.
193. Hamann, 309.
194. Daim, 48–207, describes at length Lanz and his extraordinary ideas. See also Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, Wellingborough, 1985, 90–105.
195. Daim, 25.
196. The title of Daim’s book.
197. See e.g. Fest, 59–60; Steinert, 56, 109; Hamann, 317.
198. MK, 59–60 (trans., MK Watt, 52).
199. See Daim, 190–207, for illustration of the point in the dissection of Lanz’s crackpot ideology. Issue Nr 25 of O stara (July 1908) did have a section on ‘the solution of the Jewish Question’, within an essay on ‘Aryanism and its Enemies’, but was prepared even to state (7) that ‘not all Jews are naturally hostile to aryanism’ and that, consequently, ‘not all Jews should be lumped into one pot’. Issue Nr 26, ‘Introduction to Racial Knowledge’, contains nothing specifically on the ‘Jewish Question’, and is largely devoted to evaluation of skull types, etc. I am grateful to Gerald Fleming for supplying me with these two issues of Ostara.
200. Daim, 25–6, 269–70 n.8.
201. A point made by Rudolph Binion, in the symposium following his paper, ‘Hitler’s Concept of Lebensraum’, History of Childhood Quarterly, 1 (1973), 251. The suspicion must be that the obscure occultist Lanz was keen to establish his own place in history as ‘the man who gave Hitler his ideas’. Compared with his apparently clear memory of the young Hitler, it is striking that Lanz could not remember the name of a journalist he also allegedly influenced, who was with Hitler in Landsberg after the putsch (Daim, 270 n.8). On the other hand, he claimed to have met Lenin, who had allegedly studied his ideas and approved of them (Daim, 110–11). Evidently, Lanz was keen to assert an influence for his ideas on important historical figures.
202. Daim, 36–7, 274–5 n·39·
203. Daim, 40, 275 n.42; Hamann, 318, for the absence of any provable ban on Lanz’s works during the Third Reich.
204. As pointed out by George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, London, 1966, 295.
205. Binion, ‘Hitler’s Concept of Lebensraum’, symposium, 251.
206. See Hamann, 318–19.
207. Cit. Hamann, 318.
208. Address registration: IfZ, MA-731 (HA, Reel 1); Smith, 126; Hamann, 206.
209. Smith, 127; Hamann, 206. It was three months before he resurfaced in the police records. There is no first-hand account of his activities in this period.
210. Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn (eds.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, Stuttgart, 1980 (= JK), 55 (letter to the Magistrat der Stadt Linz of 21 January 1914). Hitler went on to claim that he had no income whatsoever when down and out. He was, in fact, still in receipt of his orphan’s pension until 1911 (Jetzinger, 220).
211. Hitler later spoke of living on milk and dry bread in this period, and not having a warm meal ‘for months’ (Monologe, 317 (11–12 March 1942)).
212. Heiden, Der Führer, 50; Jetzinger, 219; Smith, 127.
213. Hanisch, 239.
214. Heiden, Der Führer, 50; Smith, 127 n.33; Joachimsthaler, 48–9, who also points out that Hitler by this time had no money to rent a furnished room; Hamann, 206–8, notes that the publicity given by the Nazis after the Anschluß to this one addres
s at which Hitler was supposed to have lived in Vienna may well have been consciously intended to obscure any investigation of his time in the city.
215. Joachimsthaler, 49, 51 (Hanisch’s testimony), for Hitler’s appearance. For conditions in such hostels, and the life of down-and-outs in Vienna at that time, see Heiden, Der Führer, 60; Jenks, 31–9; Jones, 157–61; Hamann, 222–5. For Hitler, who had always been punctilious about personal hygiene and fearful of infection, the squalor must have been hard to take, and almost certainly contributed to his later cleanliness fetishism. In Mein Kampf he wrote: ‘Even today it fills me with horror when I think of those wretched caverns, the lodging houses and tenements, sordid scenes of garbage, repulsive filth, and worse’ (MK, 28 (trans., MK Watt, 26–7)).
216. See MK, 22.
217. Reinhold Hanisch, ‘Meine Begegnung mit Hitler!’, H A, Reel 3, File 64 (two-page account from 1933, reproduced in Joachimsthaler, 49–50); Reinhold Hanisch, ‘I Was Hitler’s Buddy’, 3 parts, New Republic, 5, 12, 19 April 1939, 239–42, 270–72, 297–300. The lengthier version published only in English in New Republic appeared two years after Hanisch’s death. The following passages are based on these descriptions, which, despite different length, correspond closely with each other. (See Smith, 161ff., and Hamann, 265–71, for Hanisch as a source and the context within which his accounts were written. Biographical details on Hanisch are provided by Joachimsthaler, 268 n.115. Hanisch was an important source for Heiden’s early biography. See Heiden, Der Führer, 51ff.)
218. Joachimsthaler, 268. Hitler told the police in 1910 that he had met Hanisch in the Asyl in Meidling, and that he had only ever known him as Fritz Walter (Jetzinger, 224).
219. See Smith, 129 n.39 for acceptance of Hanisch’s story of how he met Hitler, despite doubts raised by police records.
220. HA, Reel 3, File 64 (printed in Joachimsthaler, 49); Hanisch, 240; Heiden, Der Führer, 51. Hanisch found work again in domestic service on 21 December 1909 (Joachimsthaler, 268 n.115).
221. Hanisch, 240; Heiden, Der Führer, 51; and see Smith, 130–31 and n.41.
222. See Kubizek, 183–5.
223. According to Hanisch, he did contemplate digging ditches, but was dissuaded from the idea on the grounds that it was ‘difficult to climb up’ once started upon such a job (Hanisch, 240).
224. Joachimsthaler, 70.
225. MK, 40–42. In his 1921 account (IfZ, MA-731, repr. in Joachimsthaler, 92), Hitler claimed he was working as a labourer on a building site before he was eighteen years old. That was before he had even gone to live in Vienna.
226. Hanisch, 240.
227. See Hamann, 208–11. The suspicion voiced by Heiden, Der Führer, 60, that it might even have been ‘copied… with small changes’ from the autobiography of the first leader of the Nazi Party, Anton Drexler, Mein politisches Erwachen, Munich, 1919, seems baseless. None of Drexler’s text bears close comparison.
228. Smith, 131–2; Jetzinger, 223; Hamann, 227. Hanisch’s presumption (HA, 3/64; New Republic, 5 April 1939, 240) that Hitler had written to his sister and received the money from her was most probably incorrect.
229. Hanisch (HA, 3/64; New Republic, 5 April 1939, 240) stated that Hitler purchased the overcoat at Christmas 1909. In his account in the NSDAP-Hauptarchiv, he then inaccurately remarked that Hitler lived ‘from now on’ in the Men’s Home in Meldemannstraße. In the later New Republic article, he more correctly states that Hitler subsequently moved to Meldemannstraße (where he lived from 9 February 1910) (Hamann, 227).
230. Hanisch, 242; Heiden, Hitler, 15; Heiden, Der Führer, 61; Smith, 136.
231. Hanisch, 241. Hanisch was registered on 11 February 1910 at an address in Herzstraße in the Favoriten district. He claimed (240) that he also moved into the Men’s Home in Meldemannstraße. There is no record of him living in there at that time, though he certainly frequented it, and was indeed later resident, from November 1912 to March 1913, living under his pseudonym of Friedrich Walter (Joachimsthaler, 268 n.115; Hamann, 542).
232. Hanisch, HA, 3/64 and New Republic, 5 April 1939, 241; and Karl Honisch, ‘Wie ich im Jahre 1913 Adolf Hitler kennen lernte’, HA, Reel 1, File 17, printed, with some minor inaccuracies, in Joachimsthaler, 50–55; though this latter description relates to 1913, there is little doubt that it was the same in 1910. See also Smith, 132–3; Jenks, 26–8; Hamann, 229–34.
233. Hanisch, 272.
234. Hanisch, 241, 271–2. See Joachimsthaler, 67–9, 270 n.161; Smith, 137–8; Hamann, 499–500.
235. Hanisch, HA, 3/64, and New Republic, 5 April 1939, 240–41; Honisch, HA, 1/17; Smith, 135–6. Joachimsthaler, 58–76, deals with Hitler’s pictures, and forgeries of them, including some by Hanisch (58–61). See also Hamann, 234–7.
236. Hanisch, HA, 3/64, and New Republic, 5 April 1939, 241–2. See also Smith, 137–40.
237. Hanisch, 297. And see Smith, 139.
238. Hanisch, HA, 3/64. For Karl Hermann Wolf, see Hamann, 375–93. About this time, too, according to Hanisch’s account (also in New Republic, 5 April 1939, 242), Hitler was impressed by a silent film called The Tunnel, based on a novel by Bernhard Kellermann, in which the masses were stirred by a demagogue. Though he was said much later to have referred approvingly to the film (see Albert Speer, Spandau. The Secret Diaries, Fontana edn, London, 1977, 328), Hitler certainly did not see it during his time in Vienna. The film was only completed in 1915 (Hamann, 238, 605 n.20).
239. Hanisch, 241–2.
240. HA, 3/64; New Republic, 12 April 1939, 271; Smith, 136–7.
241. Hanisch, 241, 271–2, 297–8. See also Smith, 137, 139.
242. HA, 3/64; New Republic, 5 April 1939, 241; 19 April 1939, 298–9; Smith, 140.
243. Hanisch, 299.
244. Hanisch, 241.
245. See Joachimsthaler, 69; Smith, 138. Speculation – it can be no more – on a possible visit to the Waldviertel is made by Hamann, 245.
246. Smith, 137; this is one story that Hanisch and Greiner (39–42) have in common, and which has been taken to demonstrate that Greiner, for all his inaccuracies and fabrications, did indeed know Hitler in the Men’s Home, and was almost certainly writing without any knowledge of Hanisch’s account. (See Smith, 165–6.) Other anecdotes about Hitler in the Men’s Home where Greiner overlaps with Hanisch – the poor state of Hitler’s clothing, his support of the Schönerer movement, the disturbances caused by his verbal aggression towards Social Democracy – may also, therefore, be based on reality, unlike some of his wilder flights of fantasy. The most likely explanation is, however, that Greiner had come to know Hanisch, or at least to hear some of the stories he was putting round, in Vienna in the 1930s, and opportunistically embellished them for his own purposes.
247. Hanisch, 298–9; on Hanisch’s later forgeries of Hitler paintings, Joachimsthaler, 59–61; Smith, 140; Heiden, 61–3; Hamann, 265–71.
248. Honisch, in HA, 17/1 (printed in Joachimsthaler, 54, 58).
249. When Hanisch had asked in 1909 about his future aims, Hitler had confessed that he did not know what they were (Hanisch, 240).
250. Honisch, HA, 17/1 (Joachimsthaler, 55).
251. See Christa Schroeder, Er war mein Chef, 134.
252. HA, 17/1 (Joachimsthaler, 55, 57–8); Smith, 141–2; Br.Anon. (Hamann, 541).
253. Anonymous, ‘Muj Prítel Hitler’ (‘My Friend Hitler’), Moravsky ilustrovanyzpravodaj, 40 (1935), 10–11 (in Czech). I am grateful to Neil Bermel for providing me with a translation.
254. Hanisch, 242, 272.
255. Smith, 141.
256. Jetzinger, 230–32; Smith, 143.
257. Jetzinger, 231.
258. Jetzinger, 226–7; Smith, 143.
259. Marckhgott, 273, 275–6; Hamann, 250–51.
260. Hamann, 251.
261. Smith, 9.
262. Smith, 140–41; Honisch, HA, 17/1 (Joachimsthaler, 54–5). Hitler was disparaging about his own paintings – though proud of his architectural drawings – when speaking to his photograph
er, Heinrich Hoffmann, in 1944, commenting that it was ‘madness’ to pay such high prices as they were fetching. He added that he had in Vienna around 1910 never received more than about (the equivalent of) 12 Reich Marks for a picture. He had painted, he said, only to earn a bare living and so that he ‘could study’. He had not wanted to become an artist, he somewhat disingenuously claimed (omitting the fact that this had been a very real ambition in 1907–8) (Schroeder, 134).
263. Honisch, HA, 17/1 (Joachimsthaler, 54).
264. MK, 35 (trans., MK Watt, 32). And see Honisch, HA, 17/1 (Joachimsthaler, 54)·
265. Above based on Honisch’s testimony, in HA, 17/1 (Joachimsthaler, 54–7).
266. See MK, 117–21, for Hitler’s attitude towards the Churches, and recognition of Schönerer’s mistakes. For the lack of influence on Hitler of the National Socialist movement which had emerged in Bohemia in 1904, see Smith, 146–7.
267. MK, 40–42.
268. Greiner, 43–4.
269. Franz Stein, born in Vienna in 1869 in humble circumstances, was a fervent Schönerer admirer whose raucous agitation was directed at winning German-speaking workers in the industrialized region of northern Bohemia to a national, German, socialism. See Hamann, 354–75, here 367, and ch.9 for anti-Czech feeling. The growth of anti-Czech nationalist feelings among workers is dealt with by Andrew Whiteside, Austrian National Socialism before 1918, The Hague, 1962, ch.4.
270. See Heiden, Der Führer, 53.
271. MK, 30 (trans., MK Watt, 28).
272. MK, 22 (trans., MK Watt, 21).
273. MK, 40 (trans., MK Watt, 36).
274. See Kubizek, 30 (trousers under the bed to obtain correct creases); 156 (appearance when he meets Kubizek); 170 (anxious to keep clothes and underclothes spotlessly clean).
275. See Heiden, Der Führer, 60; the point is also made by Alan Bullock, Hitler. A Study in Tyranny, Harmondsworth, 1962 edn, 36.
276. MK, 22 (trans., MK Watt, 21–2).
277. MK, 24 (trans., MK Watt, 23).
278. MK, 43.
279. MK, 46 (trans., MK Watt, 41).
280. See Joachimsthaler, 45, and his comment: ‘That Hitler already put forward in Vienna his political arguments of 1920/21 is not credible.’