1
Sketch of the Dictator as a Young Man
Adolf Hitler was born an Austrian by historical accident on 20 April 1889. His birthplace, Braunau am Inn, had been part of the Duchy of Bavaria for hundreds of years before being ceded to the Habsburg monarchy at the Treaty of Teschen which concluded the War of the Bavarian Succession in 1779. It changed hands several times during the tumults of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, returning to Austria for good in 1815. Culturally and ethnographically, the border along the River Inn between Germany and what became the Austro-Hungarian Empire marked a distinction without a difference, at least in Braunau and environs. The German dialect and traditional customs differed little on both sides of the river. Even though Hitler soon moved further east, residing in a number of other places, he remained within Upper Austria and thus the ‘Central Bavarian’ dialect area.1 Hitler later frequently referred to himself as a Bavarian.2
Politically, however, the gulf was enormous. For about a thousand years, Braunauers had been part of the Holy Roman Empire, a political commonwealth which embraced most Germans until its collapse in 1806. Their German orientation was maintained through membership of the German Confederation after 1815. In 1866–71, however, the Prussian chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, extruded Austria and crushed France in order to enable the ‘small German’ unification of the Second Reich. The Habsburgs responded by looking south and east, and by seeking a compromise with the unruly Magyars. Thanks to the new status of the Hungarian crown, Braunauers were now ‘Imperial and Royal’ subjects of a multinational empire, rather than of an expressly German polity. The border with the German Empire ran only 300 metres away at Simbach on the other side of the Inn. The Hitlers must have seen it every day. His father Alois’s sympathies are said to have been pan-German, coupled to a liberal or at least free-thinking outlook sceptical of the Roman Catholic Church;3 there is no reliable evidence that Alois was either disloyal to the Habsburgs, anti-Semitic, drunken or violent towards his children.
Adolf was a younger child in a sprawling family.4 He had an older half-brother, Alois Jnr, and half-sister, Angela, from his father’s first marriage to Franziska Matzelsberger. After her death, Alois had married his cousin, Klara Pölzl, with whom he had six children, of whom only two survived, Adolf himself and his younger sister Paula. Two of Hitlers’ four siblings died before he was born and one when Hitler was hardly ten years of age. Klara’s sister Johanna, nicknamed ‘Hanitante’, was a major figure in their lives. Alois’s work soon took the family from their home in the Salzburger Vorstadt street to nearby Hafeld, Lambach. He also worked for a while in the German border town of Passau. Alois eventually retired to Leonding,5 where he collapsed and died over a morning glass of wine in a local hostelry on 3 January 1903.
The widowed Klara moved the family first to Linz and then Urfahr on the other side of the Danube. Hitler’s education at the Staats Realschule Linz continued.6 The school at Linz was known for its German nationalist and anti-Habsburg sympathies. After doing well in his first years at school, Adolf became an indifferent pupil, with frequent absences, securing high marks only in drawing and sport, and only a ‘satisfactory’ for effort.7 Although Hitler joined various cultural organizations while in Linz and Urfahr, such as the Linzer Musealverein, the Oberösterreichischer Musikalverein and the Oberösterreichischer Volksbildungsverein,8 there is no contemporary evidence for any political engagement. There is nothing to suggest, either, that Hitler knew his fellow pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein, later a famous philosopher. One way or the other, Hitler was a poor student, who was forced to repeat a year, before finally leaving school aged sixteen.
What effect this drumbeat of death and change had on the young Adolf is not known. His experiences were in no sense remarkable: such emotional and financial insecurities were common at the time, and perhaps to all times. It is true that both father and son (as it later turned out) formed attachments to their female cousins, but this was not unusual in rural areas, then and since. He seems to have enjoyed normal friendships, especially with his fellow Wagnerian August Kubizek, whom he first encountered at a performance and who shared his artistic interests. There was therefore nothing in Hitler’s early childhood, about which very little is known for sure, to suggest what was to come later.
Hitler’s main preoccupations after leaving school were his financial security, his emotional life, pursuing a career as an artist and the health of his mother. The first known letter by Hitler was penned in February 1906, together with his sister Paula, asking the Finanzdirektion Linz for payment of his orphan’s pension.9 He visited Vienna on a number of occasions and soon moved to the imperial capital. There he pursued an interest in the operas of Richard Wagner. In the summer of 1906, Hitler saw Tristan and Isolde as well as The Flying Dutchman. He also attended the Stadttheater. He was engrossed by not only the music but especially the architecture of opera. A postcard of the Court Opera House Vienna recorded that he was impressed by the ‘majesty’ of its exterior, but had reservations about an interior ‘cluttered’ with velvet and gold.10
In early 1907, Hitler’s mother was diagnosed with cancer and operated on without success. She had no medical insurance, but bills were kept low by the kindness of her Jewish doctor, Eduard Bloch. Hitler helped to look after his mother during her illness and he seems to have been devastated by her death in late December 1907. He did, however, take time out to travel to Vienna during the treatment and even took a room there in the early autumn.11 It is certain, in any case, that Hitler neither blamed Bloch for his mother’s death nor became an anti-Semite in consequence. On the contrary, he remained in friendly contact with Bloch for some time after and even sent him a hand-painted card wishing him a happy new year.12 Much later, Hitler enabled Bloch to escape from Austria on terms far more favourable than those granted to his unfortunate fellow Jews.
Hitler’s artistic ambitions, meanwhile, suffered a severe setback. In early September 1907, he joined 111 other applicants to the Viennese Akademie für Bildende Künste. About a third were weeded out at the first stage, but Hitler was allowed to continue to the next round a month later. This time, however, he was less fortunate: his drawings were rated ‘unsatisfactory’, so that he was not among the twenty-eight candidates eventually admitted.13 Hitler decided to move to Vienna permanently regardless in February 1908. He borrowed a large sum of money from his ‘Hanitante’ in the course of 1908 to finance himself, and for the rest got by with his orphan’s pension.14 A family friend, Magdalena Hanisch, tried to ease his path in the capital by enlisting the support of Alfred Roller, a highly influential professor at the Kunstgewerbeschule, whose stagings of Wagner operas were hugely admired by Hitler; he dubbed Roller the ‘great master of stage illustration’. Her letter to her friend Johanna Motloch, who acted as the conduit, is the only contemporary description of Hitler that we possess. ‘I would like to help this young man,’ she wrote, ‘he has nobody who can put in a good word for him or help him with advice and deed. He came alone to Vienna and had to go everywhere alone, without guidance to gain admission.’15 All that was keeping Hitler in Linz, she added, was the question of his orphan’s pension. Röller agreed to see Hitler, who in turn thanked Johanna Motloch profusely. No meeting, however, took place.
Hitler’s first place of residence in Vienna was a room in the Stumpergasse. His landlady, Maria Zakreys, was Czech and by Hitler’s account spoke imperfect German. Hitler’s interests at this time were primarily musical and architectural. In mid February 1908, he announced his intention to buy a piano, and when two months later his friend Kubizek promised to bring a viola the young Adolf playfully threatened to buy two crowns’ worth of cotton wool for his ears. By the middle of the summer, however, Hitler had lost some of his exuberance. He confessed to living the life of a ‘hermit’, persecuted by bed bugs, made worse by the fact that there was nobody to wake him up: Frau Zakreys was away. Nevertheless, Hitler developed an interest in city-planning, especially the layout and architecture of Linz.
16 A month later, Hitler’s spirits had not lifted: he apologized to Kubizek for his long silence, adding that ‘I couldn’t think of anything to tell you.’ He occupied himself by reading newspapers–there was reference to a subscription–and writing, apparently about city planning and architecture: ‘I am now writing quite a lot, normally in the afternoons and evenings.’17 Hitler’s malaise may have been at least partly financial in origin. He certainly seems to have experienced a period of poverty, telling Kubizek subsequently that ‘you don’t have to bring me cheese and butter any more, but I thank you for the thought’. He was not too poor, however, to miss a performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin.18
Shortly afterwards, Hitler left the Stumpergasse and was swallowed up by the city for more than a year. He lodged with Helene Riedl in the Felberstrasse until August 1909. His only known activity during this period was a second and equally unsuccessful application to the Academy. Hitler then lived for about a month as a tenant of Antonia Oberlerchner in the Sechshauserstrasse, leaving in mid September 1909. Even less is known about what came next. He certainly underwent some sort of economic and perhaps psychological crisis, leading to a descent from respectability. A few years later, well before he was famous, Hitler told the Linz authorities that the autumn of 1909 had been a ‘bitter time’ for him.19 According to a statement he gave to the Viennese police in early August 1910, he spent time in a sanctuary for the homeless at Meidling. How Hitler extricated himself is not known, but he was able to pay for a bed at the more respectable men’s hostel in the Meldemannstrasse in Vienna-Brigittenau from February 1910.20 There he started to paint postcards and pictures which his crony and ‘business’ partner Reinhold Hanisch would sell to dealers; this relationship soured when he reported Hanisch to the authorities for allegedly embezzling some of the money.21
Hitler was now once more submerged by the city. We have extensive descriptions of what he did and thought during this time from his pen and from some of his contemporaries, but all of these accounts stem from after the time when Hitler became a public figure and was actively seeking to shape his own biographical narrative, especially in Mein Kampf. All we know for sure is that Hitler had to mark time in the Austro-Hungarian Empire until he was twenty-four so as to keep collecting his orphan’s pension. It did not help that he fell out with his half-sister Angela Raubal over their inheritance, and was forced to give way after a court appearance in Vienna in early March 1911.22 It is possible that Hitler heard Karl May, the best-selling author of western novels, in late March 1912.23 In the spring of 1913, Hitler collected the last instalment of his pension. There was now nothing to keep him in Vienna.
When Hitler went to Munich in May 1913 his worldly possessions filled a small suitcase. His known mental baggage was even smaller.24 It consisted mainly of negatives. He showed no sign of any anti-Semitism in his dealings with Eduard Bloch in Linz, quite the contrary. Later, Hitler had friendly business dealings with at least two Jews to whom he hawked his paintings in Vienna: the Moravian Jew Siegfried Löffner, who was questioned by police in connection with the alleged Hanisch fraud, and the Hungarian Jew Samuel Morgenstern, who kept a careful record of these purchases.25 Nor do we have any contemporary evidence that Hitler reacted badly to the multinational character of the Austro-Hungarian capital. He lived happily for nearly a year under the roof of a Czech spinster, Maria Zakreys, and betrayed no irritation at her limited command of German. His documented interests were architecture, town planning and music, particularly the connections between them. There was surely much more going on inside his head, but we cannot be certain what it was.
Hitler’s self-description varied, but the common denominator was creativity. He registered himself as an ‘artist’ in the Stumpergasse in mid February 1908, as a ‘student’ in the Felberstrasse in mid November 1908, as a ‘writer’ in the Sechshauserstrasse in late August 1909, and as a ‘painter’ at the Meldemannstrasse in early February 1910 and again in late June 1910.26 At this time, the constant changes of address cannot have been primarily designed to evade military service, as he always registered his arrivals and departures. They are in any case entirely typical for someone of Hitler’s background and interests. Drifting in and out of solvency, leaving a mark only where they tangled with the law or registered with the city authorities was the fate of millions in pre-1914 Europe.
When Hitler arrived in Munich in late May 1913, he engaged in his first documented political act. He and his new companion Rudolf Häusler took a room with the tailor Josef Popp in the Schleissheimerstrasse. He registered himself as ‘stateless’, which is a clear statement of hostility towards his native Austria-Hungary. It may also have been intended to throw the imperial authorities off the scent as they tried to call him up for the military service for which Hitler had been liable, like the rest of his cohort in the empire, since turning twenty years of age in April 1909. By August 1913, the Magistracy at Linz was indeed looking for him on suspicion of desertion, and were told in October by Hitler’s relatives that he had moved to Vienna. He had given the bureaucracy there no forwarding address, but enquiries at the hostel in Brigittenau soon established that he had moved to Munich. It took the Austro-Hungarian authorities until January 1914 to track him down to the Schleissheimerstrasse in Munich.27 Soon after, Hitler was ordered to appear before the Magistracy in Linz. This provoked a long apologia from him, pleading poverty, claiming that he had already reported for duty in Vienna in February 1910. He was eventually mustered in Salzburg by the Austrian authorities, in early February 1914, and found to be physically unfit to serve.28 In the meantime, Hitler continued to make his living by selling pictures, just as he had in Vienna.29
All this makes our picture of the young Hitler closer to a sketch than a full portrait. To be sure, he was already more than a mere cipher: his artistic interests were already well established; his hostility to the Habsburg Empire, though not the reasons for it, was a matter of record. There was no sign whatever, though, of the ideas and ambitions to come.30 How could it have been otherwise? What Hitler experienced in Linz and Vienna may well have shaped his later views on domestic politics, on race and on culture. But he had not yet seen anything, and–so far as we know–not taken in much of what was going on outside of the Habsburg Empire and its German ally. There is no surviving contemporary evidence that he was much aware either of France or the Russian Empire or the Anglo-World of the British Empire and the United States. That was about to change. If the Hitler of 1914 had as yet left almost no mark on the world, the world was about to make its mark on him.
2
Against a ‘World of Enemies’
Hitler appears to have responded to the outbreak of the First World War with enthusiasm. A contemporary photograph–taken before they had met by his later associate and propagandist Heinrich Hoffmann–seems to show Hitler among the cheering crowd on the Odeonsplatz in Munich on 2 August 1914.1 He volunteered to fight in the Bavarian army,2 and was recruited two weeks later into the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, known as the List Regiment after the name of its commander. This unit was not a ‘volunteer’ regiment as such, but consisted of a cross-section of mainly south Bavarian society, some of whom had volunteered, such as Hitler, others of whom were conscripted. It spent the next few weeks training, mainly in Munich itself, but also at Lechfeld camp south of Augsburg. He was taught to use the standard-issue rifle, before being sent to support the German advance through Belgium and northern France.3
Hitler did not, in other words, react to the outbreak of war by disappearing. Instead, he immediately volunteered for the German (technically, the Bavarian) army, an unusual choice. In August 1914, therefore, Hitler definitively turned his back not just on Austria-Hungary, but opted decisively for Germany. It was his first major documented political statement.
The main enemy, Hitler now believed, lay across the Channel. His very first surviving letter after he joined up, to his former landlady Anna Popp in Munich, announces his hope that he ‘would get to England’, presu
mably as part of an invading force.4 Strikingly, Hitler did not target the Tsarist Empire to the east, even though it was at this point menacing East Prussia; throughout the war, indeed, he made only a single (surviving) reference to the eastern front.5 Nor did he single out the French hereditary enemy. In focusing on Britain, Hitler may have been echoing the contemporary discourse of ‘England Hatred’ in Germany generally, and his unit in particular,6 or he may even have been ahead of it. A week later, when the List Regiment had arrived in Lille, northern France, they were assembled in the Place de Concert to hear an ‘Order by the Bavarian Crown Prince against the Englishman’. ‘We have now the fortune,’ they heard, ‘to have the Englishmen on our front, the troops of that people whose antagonism has been at work for so many years in order to surround us with a ring of enemies and strangle us.’7 One way or the other, Hitler’s expressed desire to get to grips with the British–long before he reached the front and at a time when the British Expeditionary Force only represented a small fraction of the allied troops facing Germany in the west–represents his second major political statement, and one which points to the future development of his world view, based in large part on respect for and fear of British power.
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