by A G Mogan
To the Magistrate of Linz:
In the summons, I am described as an artist. I bear this title by right, but it is only relatively accurate. I earn my living independently as a painter, being totally deprived of income (my father was a civil servant), and I work only in order to further my education. Only a small portion of my time can be spent in earning a living, for I am still educating myself to become an architectural painter. My income therefore is just enough to cover my expenses. As testimony, I refer you to my income tax statement, which is enclosed, and I would be grateful if it could be returned to me. It will be seen that my income is estimated at 1,200 marks, which is rather more than I really earn, and does not mean that I actually make 100 marks a month …
With regard to my failure to report for military service in the autumn of 1909, I must say that this was for me an endlessly bitter time. I was then a young man without experience, receiving no financial assistance from anyone, and too proud to accept financial assistance from others, let alone to beg for it. Without support, compelled to depend on my own efforts, I earned only a few kronen, and often only a few farthings from my labors, and this often insufficient to pay for a night’s lodging. For two long years, I had no other mistress than sorrow and need, no other companion than eternally unsatisfied hunger. I never knew the beautiful word “youth”. Even today, five years later, I am constantly reminded of those experiences, and the reminders take the form of frost-blisters on my fingers, hands, and feet. And yet I cannot remember those days without a certain pleasure, now that these vexations have been surmounted. In spite of great want, amid often-dubious surroundings, I nevertheless kept my name clean, had a blameless record with the law, and possessed a clear conscience, (except for that one constantly remembered fact that I failed to register for military service). This is the one thing I feel responsible for. It would seem that a moderate fine would be ample penance, and of course, I would pay the fine willingly.
I am sending this letter independently of the testimony, which I signed today at the Consulate. I request that any further orders should be transmitted to me through the Consulate, and beg you to believe that I shall fulfill them promptly. All the declarations made by me concerning my case have been verified by the Consular authorities. They have been exceedingly generous, and have given me hope that I may be able to fulfill my military duties at Salzburg. Although I cannot dare to hope for such a thing, I request that this affair not be made unduly difficult for me.
I request that you take the present letter under consideration, and I sign myself,
Very Respectfully,
Adolf Hitler
Artist, Munich, Schleissheimerstrasse 34/III
It works. My talent in persuasion always proves fruitful. I am absolved from dreadful days in jail and allowed to go to Salzburg, rather that Linz, for the mandatory medical examination.
Thus, on 5 February, I arrive in Salzburg. A military doctor, whose name I don’t remember, orders me to undress. I go cold all over. Undress? Stand bare in front of another human being? I am so ashamed of my body that the doctor’s simple suggestion knocks me down like a feather. Alas, what can’t be cured must be endured.
“Why do you close your eyes, son?” the doctor asks me in a soft voice, lifting my arms to examine them.
“Did I? I didn’t realize. Maybe a bit tired.” My words sound unconvincing and I notice a smile on his face.
“There’s no need to feel embarrassed, son. In my job, I only scrutinize the potential afflictions. I am so used to nudity that I could be the one closing my eyes and still do my job brilliantly.”
His words work their magic and I relax a little.
“An admirable job, if I may say,” I add, unwilling to let the silence distress me further. He grabs my face and turns my head to both sides, checks my ears, looks for lice, listens to my heart and lungs with a strange apparatus, and looks observantly into my mouth. He then feels my abdomen and my private parts. I am so embarrassed that I wish I could run and hide underground. He pauses … down there … and I know what his next question is.
“Monorchism or injury?”
“The former.” My cheeks burn so badly that I really pray some natural catastrophe would intervene to save me from my embarrassment.
“And what is this?” he asks next, pointing his finger at the pinkish rash on my calf.
“A question better fitted for yourself, doctor.”
“Yes, yes. What I really wanted to ask was for how long you’ve been having it.” I detect a trace of worry in his voice and wonder if I should be alarmed.
“Well, it must have been about four years ago when I first spotted it, I could not say the date exactly. But what I can say is that it disappeared by itself, only to re-appear recently.”
“I see. Well, if it becomes infected then it could prove contagious, you know,” he says, meeting my stunned gaze.
“I got it when I was shoveling snow for the rich. It was a dreadful winter, I remember, and I had no winter coat. I didn’t think a simple frost-bite could be contagious!”
“It isn’t, but this isn’t a frost-bite. Tell me, were there any other symptoms at that time?”
“Yes, the usual symptoms of a simple flu. High-temperature, muscles and abdominal pain, headache, and─”
“Son, do you have regular activity?”
“What?”
“Sexual activity. Intercourse.”
I feel his question like a swift strike to the groin. His query enrages me. The fact that he seems to have already come up with a diagnosis, yet keeps it to himself enrages me. The very smell of his office enrages me. I stare blankly into his face.
“Yes or no? Simple question.”
“No, sir.”
“Then it must be only an eczema,” he whispers, as if only for his own ears.
“How do you mean it must be only an eczema?” I snap. “What else could it have been? And why is my having or not having regular sex relevant to your diagnosis?”
“Son, your rash could be the result of many things and I wanted to clear that out. It can be a simple eczema or it could have been a symptom of the French Disease. Among other things, of course, hence, the questions you seem to think inappropriate.”
“What is that? The French Disease?”
“Syphilis.”
“That’s the Jewish disease!”
“Call it as you will. One cannot be sure of its history.”
“I am sure of its history!”
He looks at my quizzically.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is to come up with a proper diagnosis, and for that you need to take some tests. Old cases are very difficult to diagnose for sure. Especially in the absence of a blood test. You know there is a new method to diagnose syphilis, which had been made available only a couple of years ago at the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin … Wassermann it is called.” He jabbers on, but I can barely hear him.
The dreadful disease of the Jews … but how? Thousands of questions speed through my mind, yet I seem unable to halt at any. I slide into a chair as an insufferable dizziness overtakes me. The doctor hands me a glass of water and I greedily gulp down the cold liquid.
“But it can’t be … my symptoms disappeared entirely. I feel nothing else!”
“That’s how syphilis works.”
“Is it fatal?”
“Untreated … yes, eventually.”
I feel his words striking me across the head like Father’s heavy blows. My terror must be visible, as the doctor squats and places his hand sympathetically on my knee.
“Look son, why worry unduly? Just take the test to rule it out. My best guess is eczema, but a treatment shouldn’t be given based on guesses. I did not say you had syphilis, only encouraged you to rule it out.”
I avert my eyes from him and look through the bright window. Now I am like the rest of humanity…the Jewish bacillus’ prey. They infected me with their devilish poison, just as they will infect the rest
of the world. But how in the world?
The image of Father blowing smoke rings while admiring his bees hits my conscience suddenly and painfully. Father, the son of a Jew? No, no, no! This can’t be true! No, no, no! This doctor is wrong. I swear by it. He is so wrong. He’s probably seen so many cases of it that he is no longer able to see anything else. They’re all incompetent, anyway. If they weren’t, Mother would still be alive.
But still … what if? No, it can’t be. Father wasn’t half-Jew, I don’t believe the nonsense my aunt told me. Even if Father wasn’t a Jew, he still could have had the disease. Probably from a Jewish whore! God knows, for he was a monster! Maybe that’s why Paula came out retarded, and not because my parents were related! Maybe that’s what brought cancer to Mother and killed her! Maybe that’s why I have a missing…why I suffer from monorchism. I hate him! I hate him!
“I hate him!”
“Hate who?” The doctor’s question startles me, as I wasn’t aware that I was thinking aloud.
“Nobody.”
“Very well then. You may dress, son, while I fill in the report.”
“Report?”
“I must fill it in for the─”
“Yes, yes, of course,” I reply, back to my senses again. “Doctor, can I ask you a favor?”
“Certainly, son. What is it?”
“Well, could you, please, omit this detail from your report? I mean, this rash of mine?”
“Oh no, I am afraid not. This isn’t a simple detail, you might prove contagious if the irritated skin of eczema becomes infected, and sending you for the military service without having properly treated it first, would be … simply too great a mistake.”
You bloody idiot! I am not contagious!
“Please! I beg of you! I am an orphan, I am a poor beggar! There aren’t many opportunities this life will send my way, and with such information out in the open for everyone to see … it could ruin my future. Please, I only ask for a bit of kindness!”
“But I cannot send you among other men to─”
“Then don’t. I don’t have to go, I don’t want to go! Please!”
He looks at me for the longest time, obviously pondering the matter in his head, then quietly fills in the report. When he’s finished, he asks me to sign it and hands me a copy of it before seeing me out. Once in the street, I read the doctor’s observations aloud: Unfit for military or auxiliary services, too frail, unable to carry firearms.
I don’t know how I get back to Munich, so engulfed am I in struggling with the harrowing feelings taking over me. The depression returns to crush me in its suffocating embrace. I feel ill…even though the symptoms have long passed. What is wrong with this world? What is wrong with its people? I howl at the sky, but of course, my question remains without an answer.
On my next visits to the library other books fall into my hands.
The hereditary transmission of syphilis from generation to generation, not only is the ‘bad seed’ passed along, but each new generation receives a heavier and more destructive dose of whatever the evil influence is. The first generation is characterized by nervous temperament and a tendency toward cerebral vascular congestion, as well as irritability, quick temper and resulting violent behavior. The second generation runs the risk of cerebral hemorrhages, epilepsy and hysteria. In the third generation, degeneration manifests itself as insanity and psychosis.
Alcoholism and syphilis are the ‘twin racial poisons’, as alcohol leads to vice, and vice to syphilis. The feeble-minded are a threat to the race, but the feeble minded prostitute is a national disaster. What is alarming is the high-fecundity of these women. The ‘unfit’ are out-breeding the ‘fit’. Indeed the vast majority of births of syphilitic children is the result of the union of degenerates.
All of the sudden, it all becomes clear. There is no longer any reason to doubt what is plaguing me and who is responsible for it. For ruining my life.
Oh, Father! May your soul be cursed forever! May it burn in the fires of Hell until the end of times!
Silent guidance always reaches me in unexpected ways, I realize. All I need to do is pay attention to the signs. As I unpack the rucksack I carried with me to Salzburg, I chance upon the book I had forgotten about, the book given to me by Lanz von Liebenfels, The Invincible. Its author, Guido von List, reproduced out of his bottomless soul and wisdom, an alternative to the existing religion, an alternative free of Jewish political interests, and completed with ten commandments of its own. The content’s wisdom strikes a chord in me and heals the open wounds inflicted by the Old Testament. The 10th commandment awakens in me a willpower I never before experienced: Thou shall be loyal to your people and your country to the death.
This is a command I don’t have to follow, but want to follow. It is the essence of what I really am in the deepest human aspect. I want to give my last drop of sweat to the Motherland. I want to fight until my last drop of blood for the destruction of my country’s enemy … my enemy … the degenerate Jew. I suddenly become religious, but only in regard to my people, my brothers, and in my prayers, when I ask God to purify the blood of my holy race. I am thus saved again from the emptiness of a sterile life of ease. Nothing could now stop the Superman born to fulfill the prophecy.
Lately, I acquire the habit of frequenting the taverns in Schwabing, where I meet like-minded people and can express my most ardent viewpoints and theories. Some search for company elsewhere, while others remain and listen. From this latter group, a certain beer-pal, as I like calling him, asks me about my plans for the future. I always hated this question—oh, how I hated it! Yet tonight, I decide to indulge my friend.
“I don’t have any sensible plan. And you know why? Because the war will break out soon and it wouldn’t matter if I had a profession or not. In the army, a corporate director has as much value as a dog groomer.”
Two weeks after my statement, a Serbian student named Gavrilo Princip kills Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Now I know that the Slavs must perish alongside the Jews. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia and, in response, Russia’s Tsar, Nicholas II, orders pre-mobilization measures. The time has come to exterminate the inferior races, the leeches sucking the Aryan blood.
On 1 August 1914, Germany declares war on Russia. The heavens’ gates open to allow the army of the Great Goddess of Justice to descend.
I close my eyes, taking a deep breath into my lungs, and fill my entire being with the magnificent scent floating around in the air. The magnificent scent of the World War.
The following morning, once the first stabs of light poke through my narrow window, I jump out of bed, wash my face, and oil my hair to the left. I pull on my best suit, the navy blue one Herr Popp had given me, and stare in the mirror. I wish I had a red cape, like the one in von Stuck’s painting of me. The suit is a bit loose now, for I’ve lost a few pounds since the dreadful news of my affliction. But it doesn’t matter. The world has greater problems than my own. Goaded by the inner euphoria I now feel, I step into the street. The sun burns my face and makes me sweat underneath my thick suit. My destination this morning is the Odeon Square and I rush my still-sleepy feet to reach it.
The square is choked to the brim. The people gathered were driven here, like myself, by the wind of change. A broad smile animates my face as I look around, wanting to memorize the thrill on everyone’s faces. I feel we are all one, an entity bursting with energy and enthusiasm. It is making my body break out in goosebumps.
At the entrance of the Feldherrnhalle building, the main attraction of the Odeon Square, I see children. They are sitting on top of and around the two great stone lions flanking the entrance, their faces animated by the same happiness and energy dominating the entire gathering. In their crude minds, they probably have no idea what makes them so happy.
I shift my gaze to the middle-aged man addressing the crowd:
“Russia has thrown her protective arms around the shoulders of Bosnia! And in doing so s
he has become our enemy! We must fight not only for Austria but also for our own existence, for our future freedom! Germany must fight in the name of our German ancestors who shed so much blood in the past! Let it be war! War! War! War!”
“Heil! Heil! Heil!” we all shout in response, throwing our hats above our heads and waving our fists in the air. The crowd is frantic, almost delirious. A man starts to sing behind me, and soon we all follow him in a high-pitched roar. It’s like a cry to the heavens above, a mantra for liberty. I follow the spirit of the crowd and sing my lungs and heart out:
Germany, Germany above all else,
Above all else in the world,
when, for protection and defense,
it always stands brotherly together.
From the Meuse to the Memel,
From the Adige to the Belt,
Germany, Germany above all else,
Above all else in the world!
Overwhelmed by emotions, I sink down upon my knees, and with tears streaming down my cheeks, I plunge my face in my hands and thank the Heaven out of the fullness of my heart for the favor of having allowed me to live in such times. At last, after many years of mental blindness, I can finally see clearly into the future.
In the evening, once returned to my room, I write a petition to His Majesty, King Ludwig III, expressing my burning desire to enroll in the Bavarian regiment as a volunteer. To my great surprise, I receive his prompt response the next day. With my hands shaking in anticipation, I rip open the envelope and read out his positive response, in which he urges me to report to the List Regiment.
I had become a soldier—a true soldier, about to risk his life in battle, not the sort who plays at war during peacetime, following orders and executing useless joint training. This doesn’t sound like cowardice, does it?