Hitler in Hell

by Martin van Creveld

  Once she had died and been buried, at considerable expense I must add, there was nothing left to hold me back in Linz. Accordingly, I moved to Vienna. I shall have more to say about my life there in the next chapter. Before doing so, though, I want to emphasize the obvious: namely that, if the family from which I came and the education I received were in some ways unique, so are every family and every kind of education that have ever existed and will ever exist.

  Taking into account the time and the place, millions of others had experiences not too different from mine. Fathers, who except among the very poor were the sole breadwinners, tended to dominate their wives. They were supposed to do so, especially, if they were much older than their spouses, as mine was. Father-son conflicts were frequent, as they have always been and still remain. The same applies to the love between a mother and her boy. Wasn’t it the aforementioned Freud who, somewhere in his voluminous but often fanciful writings, declared that it represented the strongest bond of all? And no one had heard of the idea that disciplining one’s offspring by hitting them, if necessary, was harmful. Let alone some kind of crime.

  Nor was I the only boy who hated school. Many American schools these days are protected by metal detectors, armed guards who patrol the premises, and what not. One or two even allow teachers to go armed and provide them with weapons! Even so, hardly two months pass in which some disturbed kid does not take up a machine gun—in the U.S., these weapons are easy to obtain—and kills everyone in sight before shooting himself. The feelings I had for school were and are widely shared; yet out of millions and millions of contemporary youngsters, not one developed the way I did or could point to achievements nearly as great as mine. The ways of Providence have always been a mystery. They remain so still.

  2. Vienna

  My biographers are a pedantic pack. Many seem to believe that, even when I was still an unknown teenager with little money and even fewer prospects, I regarded each and every minute of my life as if it were of earth-shaking importance. That is why, every time they find some trifling error in something I said or wrote, they call me a cheat and a liar. If that is scholarship, then let me have no part in it. In any case they claim that I arrived in Vienna at some time between 14 and 17 February 1908. Finding a place to stay was easy; the streets of the poorer districts bristled with little pieces of paper saying, “Room to rent.” I took up lodging at Stumpergasse 31, not far from the Westbahnhof. My landlady, the biographers don’t forget to add, was a certain Czech woman, Frau Zakreys. Big deal.

  On the 18th my friend Kubizek joined me. He had taken the train from Linz and arrived in a state of exhaustion. But such was my enthusiasm for the city that I gave him no rest. Instead, I immediately dragged him about to see the most important sights, enabling the indefatigable Kershaw to take this as more “proof” of what an insufferable person I had already become. Originally, Kubizek and I had planned to live at separate addresses. However, I soon managed to make him to change his mind. He and I stayed together in Frau Zakreys’ modest flat, where we exchanged my small room for a larger one, paying double as a result. For a few months I kept up a correspondence with the rest of my family. In August 1908 I visited Hanitante, who had moved back to the Waldviertel, where she had relatives. After that, I lost contact with her.

  There has been much speculation concerning my finances at this time. So here are the facts. First, I received a miserable pension of 25 kronen a month due to me as the son of a retired KuK official (the remaining 25 kronen went to my sister, Paula). Second, my family provided me with some money. Everything considered, I was not badly off. I had enough to live on and could even visit the opera provided that I contented myself with the cheapest available standing places. But I was certainly far from being rich. Anyone who says or writes otherwise is a liar.

  A few days after his arrival, Kubizek received notice that he had been accepted as a student at the Vienna Conservatory. Consequently, he rented a grand piano at Feigel’s Music Store in the Liniengasse, just around the corner, as Kershaw pedantically notes. Another big deal. He began to study regularly, filling our room with his music. Here and there we quarreled a little, especially because he insisted on playing his piano at times which were inconvenient to me. But we never argued nearly to the point where we separated or even came close to doing so.

  Arriving in Vienna, I had in my pocket a letter of introduction. It had been sent to Professor Alfred Roller, a well-known painter, graphic designer, and set designer. (Hess told me he got these facts from Wikipedia.) The author was Roller’s brother. He, in turn, had been contacted by the mother of a female acquaintance of mine who happened to know him and wrote on my behalf. Needless to say, I thanked her profusely, as courtesy demanded. Whatever other bad qualities I may have, ungratefulness has never been one of them. In any event Roller, who was no doubt a busy man, agreed to see me. However, I never took the opportunity. Looking back, I suppose I was too shy.

  By and large, Kubizek’s description of the life he and I led in Vienna is correct. Why shouldn’t it be? Yes, the room we had rented was cramped. It left me very little space in which to pace to and fro as, from ancient Greece on, many people have always done when sunk in thought and as I myself went on doing throughout my life. Yes, I was often carried away and took up many fanciful projects that quickly proved to be beyond my powers. But doesn’t building “castles in the air,” as the saying goes, form an essential part of youth? Looking back, I think that whoever did not do so at this point in his life so has never been young. Yes, I talked a lot. I was overwhelmed by the great city in which I now lived and which made such a tremendous impression on me. I needed somebody to listen to my thoughts, and Kubizek was the only one who did. Yes, my self-confidence suffered as a result of my apparent failure “to get ahead” in life. In the long run, though, it only made me more determined to succeed. Yes, I went to sleep late and got up late. I understand that Churchill, when he was prime minister, did the same; not that I would use him as an example for anything.

  And yes, I did read a lot. How much became clear recently when the historians at Munich’s Institute for Contemporary History analyzed Mein Kampf and pointed out the numerous texts that I had paraphrased or that had clearly influenced me. Kubizek went so far as to say that he cannot remember me ever being without armloads of books. Earlier, I had read Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Now I followed up with Dante, Herder, Ibsen, and Nietzsche. Much later, my sister Paula claimed that, after moving to Vienna, I had recommended Don Quixote to her, but I can no longer remember doing so.

  At that time, I also read the German classicists, Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller. However, I did not like them very much; they were too cosmopolitan. They were typical representatives of the so-called Enlightenment and its dreams concerning the brotherhood of men, but they did not sufficiently understand the destructive role the Jews have always played in history. In particular Lessing, in Nathan the Wise, came close to betraying the race to which he belonged. Why couldn’t they be more like Shakespeare, who gave the world not only Julius Caesar and Hamlet but The Merchant of Venice, too? Under the Third Reich, Shakespeare was performed more often in Germany than in Britain. After the outbreak of war, I personally made sure that his plays could still be produced by us. But the author I liked best was Schopenhauer. Just look at the title, The World as Will and Representation, and you will understand why.

  In recent years several historians, hoping to find the clue to my personality, have taken the trouble to research what one of them called “Hitler’s Vienna” at considerable length. For this I thank them, but I consider that their efforts have been largely wasted. To be sure, my environment was not without effect on my development. Even my birthplace at Braunau, very near the border between Germany and Austria that we young people sought to erase, might have been chosen by Providence. On the other hand, what distinguishes great men is precisely the fact that, unlike millions of others, they do not allow themselves to be shaped by circums
tances. Instead, rising above them, they deliberately set out to shape themselves and transform the circumstances in question. As, for example, Julius Caesar, who was an epileptic, and Frederick II, originally a weak and dreamy youth, did.

  We Germans have great respect for Bildung, variously translated (I am told) as education, knowledge, or learning. We always ask what diplomas a man has, not what he can do. What we often overlook is that learning, however great, in itself is useless. As the lives of a great many professors prove, beyond a certain point it can even turn into an obstacle to action. To make it useful it must be properly organized and registered. Above all, the essential must be separated from the inessential. The latter must be discarded, the former stored and remembered. Once understanding has been achieved, any subsequent reading can serve either as a correction or as a reinforcement. It was especially during my years in Vienna that I taught myself to read in this way. All other forms of reading may help one idle the hours away. They cannot, however, substitute for the method I have just described.

  Whoever wants to know what I learned during my years in Vienna needs only open Mein Kampf. That’s easy because by now it has been translated into dozens of languages and because demand for it is quite strong. Here I shall do no more than provide a brief summary. First, I learned how obsequious, how utterly spineless and cowardly and untruthful the so-called “great” Viennese press really was. Superficially, it was “tolerant,” “liberal,” and “progressive.” It could always be counted upon to support noble causes—bread for all, equality, freedom, what have you. This applied both at home and around the world. In reality, all it did was kowtow to the Hapsburgs at every step. No amount of flattery was considered too low. If it was “open to the world,” as some of its loudest proponents said it was, then mainly in the sense that it admired, indeed worshipped, everything French. Supposedly, it was from Paris that everything good in the world had come. Above all, it totally failed to defend the German character of the state. As, by advocating union with Germany and opposing the claims of the various nationalities that formed the Empire, it should have done.

  Second, I learned what democracy looks like. Close up! There were times when, with or without little Kubizek in tow, I visited parliament almost daily. The very fact that the deputies belonged to many different nationalities sufficed to repel a German nationalist like me. Besides, what a bunch of miserable crooks they were! Always talking and talking, or rather shouting and shouting. Always at loggerheads over every possible issue, including many that were of no interest to anyone except themselves.

  By one count there were no fewer than fifteen different parties, big and small. But even the largest of them barely held 20 percent of the seats. As a result, they were never able to accomplish anything. Nor, perhaps, did most of them want to. After all, deeds mean taking responsibility. And responsibility was absolutely the last thing they wanted. They never creased quarreling and fighting each other. On more than one occasion they even beat each other up. No wonder poor old Franz Joseph at one point said he wanted nothing to do with them (as if he had a choice). No wonder governments and ministers kept rising and falling like ninepins in a game of bowling. If what I saw is democracy, then I do not want any part of it.

  Third, I became an anti-Semite. In Linz at the time there were few Jews (700 out of a population of 60,000), and no one took much notice of them. It is simply not true, as someone has claimed, that I imbibed my anti-Semitism at home. My father, after all, spent his youth in the countryside, where Jews were even less thick on the ground than in Linz. Later, he was too busy exercising his hobby, which was bee-keeping, to care about the few representatives of “the Chosen People” he may have met. As for my mother, she was too good and, truth to be said, too simple a soul to worry about such things. The idea that my anti-Semitism had anything to do with a supposed encounter with that confused Jewish philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, is also false. It seems that he did in fact attend the same Realschule I did. But I never met him or heard of him. As far as I was concerned, he never existed.

  Vienna, by contrast, had no fewer than 147,000 Jews in a population of almost 1.8 million. A few, with the Rothschilds at their head, were filthy rich. They aped, or tried to ape, the manners of the town’s aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie. Many—especially those who, taking advantage of Emperor Franz Joseph’s liberal policies, had newly arrived from Eastern Europe—were very poor. Dressed in their caftans, often filthy and unwashed, they were very conspicuous. Their presence simply could not be ignored. The greatest concentration was in Leopoldstadt, the island between the Danube and the Danube Canal. The locals used to call it “Matzos Island.” They had a very high birth rate, with the result that Jewish students flooded the universities. Though I did not know it at the time, they comprised two-fifths of the students of medicine, a third of the law students, and a third of the entire student body. In 1889, the year I was born, of 681 lawyers practicing in Vienna, over half were Jewish.

  I have described my own first encounter with these creatures in Mein Kampf. Then and later, I found them revolting, but they did arouse my curiosity. So I decided to try to learn more about them. The more I learned, the less savory they appeared. Not just because of their appearance (and smell), which were bad enough. But because of what they were and what they represented. Until then, I had accepted the common idea that they were simply people who adhered to a religion different from that of the majority. Now I understood that they belonged to a different Volk altogether. The Jews themselves agreed with this view. Had they not developed, from the 1860s onward, a movement called Zionism which insisted on precisely that point?

  If anything, the power of the Jews was growing. In 1934, one source says, 73 percent of all textile plants and shops, 75 percent of banks, 82 percent of credit bureaus, 96 percent of advertising bureaus, and 100 percent (!) of scrap metal and metal dealerships were in their hands. And these are just a few fields out of a great many. Besides dominating the press, where they spouted the anti-German views that had made me so angry, the Jews ruled the arts and the cinema. They used their influence to put on shows that were the filthiest, most depraved productions imaginable. Jews also ran the workers’ movements, making tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of simple, hardworking souls adopt socialism and turn against their own people.

  The Jews’ idea of socialism went against nature itself. They themselves were the lowest of the low. Well aware of that fact, they repudiated the aristocratic principle, the eternal privilege of force and energy. In its place they and their toadies put numerical mass and dead weight. In this way they prepared the way for their own triumph over the rest of mankind and the latter’s destruction. Worst of all, the Jews were working in unison. The numerous sharp divisions that appeared to exist among them were just a façade intended to mislead gullible goyim so as to exploit them all the better. In reality they were following a plan that was as well-considered as it was demonic. Some, Goebbels included, considered the Protocols a forgery. Perhaps it was. But of the fact that it broadly expressed the Jews’ objectives and methods there can be no doubt.

  Naturally, I did not grasp all of this at once. Only much later did all the various pieces finally fall into place and form a complete picture. That is why, in Mein Kampf, I recommended that people should not enter politics before they are thirty years old. Thirty, incidentally, was exactly the age at which Roman citizens were first allowed to stand for election as public officials. Even so I continued to educate myself. Just at present I am using my place in Hell to familiarize myself with everything I find interesting; during my time at Landsberg I did the same. Like so many others before and after me, I made prison my university. At the time I brought my earthly existence to an end my private library comprised 16,000 volumes. The books were distributed between Berlin, Munich, and Berchtesgaden. At one time or another I read, or at any rate skimmed, almost all of them. Doing so, I developed my own original method. I would start in the middle of each volume. Next I worked my way in
both directions to see if there was anything valuable in it.

  Coming on top of my observations of what was going on around me, my reading enabled me to form my Weltanschauung. By that I mean my—the emphasis is on my—particular way of understanding history. And, through it, the way the world works and will always go on working. My Weltanschauung was the rock-solid foundation which, as I first entered politics, I did my best to turn into reality. Later, its rough outline came to be shared by millions of my fellow-Germans and, I can say without false modesty, quite a number of non-Germans as well. Needless to say, though, at the time I first started shaping it I did not have the slightest idea that this would or could happen.

  I do not want to say that all my impressions of Vienna were negative. Great as its shortcomings were, the city also taught me a lot. To be sure, already at a very early age I ceased to believe in the nonsense the priests were always dishing out. At school I used to make fun of our teachers of religion, often leaving them speechless. But I was impressed by the way the Church used pomp and pageantry in order to attract the masses. So much so that, at one point during my childhood in Linz, I sang in a choir! Vienna, with its numerous grand baroque churches, their elaborate decorations, and their splendid ceremonies, completed my education in this respect. Above all, I came to understand the amalgam of hypocrisy and business acumen on which the Church rests. Halleluiahs and indulgencies, what a team! An organization that has managed to survive for two thousand years must have many lessons to offer. The contrast with spineless, leaderless Protestantism could not be greater. That is why it has divided into tens of thousands of different sects.