Hitler in Hell Page 2
In fact the family in which I grew up was not at all unusual for those days. Partly because of the difference in age and partly because of my father’s position in society—about which more in a moment—it was inevitable that he should seek to protect, direct, and, yes, dominate and discipline his wife up to a certain point. So, at a time when it was taken for granted that women should “love, cherish, and obey” their husbands and the great feminist revolt was still decades away, did a great many others. My father was not without his faults. However, he ran an intact household. He and my mother did not divorce as forty percent of married people in “advanced” countries do today. Assuming responsibility, he looked after his family as best he could. Nor did I grow up with step parents, lesbian “parents,” homosexual “parents,” transgender “parents,” surrogate “parents,” or God knows what other kinds of “parents” modern society keeps inflicting on its unfortunate offspring.
Socially and economically, we were lower middle class. Overcoming his humble origins as well as his lack of a formal education, my father worked his way up. In the end he occupied the respectable position of a KuK, meaning kaiserliche und königliche, customs official. As many of my biographers have noted, my father, partly because his bosses kept transferring him and partly because he wanted to, moved his family about quite a bit. The clear implication is that there was something very wrong with his life and that this “fact” had important implications for mine. But that, too, is nonsense. Many families throughout the world have moved much more often than mine did. This includes military families, which continue to do so down to the present day. And let us not mention business executives being “relocated” from one end of the world to another with little notice and less power to choose. Yet such movements do little, if anything, to explain their offspring’s subsequent lives.
Nor is it is true that he smoked “like a chimney,” as the English historian Ian Kershaw, by a mere sleight of hand and without any evidence whatsoever, has claimed. In reality he was no more addicted to the habit than most men at that time and place. Men considered smoking a sign of maturity and manliness. They were proud of doing so and often had themselves portrayed or photographed with a cigarette in their mouth. Franz Joseph, the first Austrian emperor who smoked, provided the example. Many libraries and clubs, which until 1860 or so had prohibited visitors from smoking on the premises, now permitted them to do so as a matter of course. Smoking was allowed—even expected—by every sort of committee and council during business hours. If you did not smoke, you did not count. More and more, that even applied to women; imitating men, they took it up as a sign of “independence.”
My father also spent time in the Kneipe, or pub, drinking his glass of wine or beer. Here and there he may have drunk a little too much. Like so many others he had a temper. Like so many others he did not take opposition lightly. I being his chief opponent at home, he beat me at times. But he never seriously hurt me. In any case there was nothing extraordinary about that either. Almost everyone did it as a matter of course. As the Old Testament, which I studied at school, says, “He that spareth the rod hateth his son.” Looking down from Hell upon Western society as it has developed since my time, I am inclined to agree.
As I explained at some length in Mein Kampf, most of the conflict between my father and me had to do with his expectations. He himself spent his life working in the service of Kaiser Franz Joseph, to whom he was both loyal and very, very grateful. Given this background, the effort he invested in his career, and the success he ultimately enjoyed, it is hardly surprising that he wanted me to continue in his footsteps. I was to become a government official. I, however, refused. On one occasion, to change my mind, he took me to the place where he worked and showed me around. But the effect was the opposite of what he had hoped for. Spending my life like a monkey in a cage, filling in forms? No way.
Instead, at the age of twelve and based on my talent for drawing, which was already becoming obvious even then, I decided I would become an artist. A painter. A painter? My father thought I had gone out of my mind. This was the turn of the twentieth century. Artists were famous—or, depending on one’s view of them, infamous—for their Bohemian lifestyle and also for their inability to work steadily and to keep regular hours. Supposedly, they needed leisure and a certain amount of disorder to develop their creativity. A point of view, incidentally, with which I fully agree. In this way they represented the exact opposite of everything he himself stood for: duty, conscientiousness, industry, regularity, and punctuality. That’s to say nothing of the fact that, then as now, for a young unknown man to make a living as an artist was anything but easy.
He and I often clashed over this matter and went on doing so until his death. As we did so my mother did her best to protect me. But she did not always meet with success. She was deeply religious, humble, devout, caring, and as sweet as sweet can be. Grieving for the four children she had lost, she did what she could to spoil my sister and me. Once again, this fitted the Zeitgeist. My home was not by any means the only one in which wives and mothers, fully accepting their lot and no doubt suffering some things in silence, acted as the family saint. Future U.S. President Richard Nixon, for example, said the same of his mother (who also suffered the death of some of her children). Judging by his biography, her influence on him seems to have been not a whit smaller than mine was on me. My mother, however, was the best of all. I loved her much more than I loved my father; what I had for him is better called respect.
My family’s frequent moves took me to a number of different elementary schools. But in none of them was I ever more than a mediocre student. As you may well imagine, that was not because I had any difficulty understanding or remembering what we were taught. On the contrary, most of the material we learned and the tasks we were assigned were ridiculously easy. In any case, as I often said later on, I consider schools a much overrated institution. It is true that society cannot do without them. After all, it needs people who can read, write, and figure. But a lot of what they teach was and is rubbish. For example, are classical languages really needed? Furthermore, schoolmasters are hardly society’s most successful members. Mine, I remember, were distinguished chiefly by their dirty shirts and unkempt beards. It’s no wonder that, with few exceptions, they did little to prepare students for the reality of life.
My behavior at school, which one of my teachers described as “variable,” reflected two factors. First, as I have just explained, it was a protest against my father’s ambitions for me. As a result, I simply neglected anything that did not interest me. Second, instead of doing my homework, I much preferred to play outside. There was a group of us young scamps who were always on the outlook for games we could play. And in many of those games I was the leader of the pack. Much of our inspiration came from Karl May, the author of countless books on the Wild West, of which I read and reread as many as I could lay my hands on. They were so easy to follow, so vivid, so colorful, and so full of adventure and imagination; I was overwhelmed! We divided into groups, distributed roles, and “fought” each other.
Another source of inspiration was an illustrated book about the Franco-German War of 1870-71 I found in my father’s library. Yet another one, newspaper—there were no “media” yet—reports about the Boer War of 1899-1902. We youngsters followed them avidly. Whatever some of my biographers may have said, there was nothing extraordinary about all this. To the extent that they are not glued to their computers, iPhones, and what not, children throughout the world still go on playing similar games.
Easily my best teacher, and the only one who left a lasting impression on me, was Professor Leopold Pötsch. Indeed, I would say that he helped determine my whole future life. Pötsch was an excellent speaker, as only someone who is enthusiastic about a cause can be. He had the gift of transporting us young students into the past while making that past come alive for us. As he did so, he turned me into a nationalist. I became aware of the endless life-and-death struggles between Germans and o
thers: Romans, Huns, Magyars, Latins, Mongols, Mohammedans—who twice laid siege to Vienna—and, last but not least, Slavs. Thanks partly to its geographical position at the southeastern corner of the Reich and partly to its own multinational nature, Austria was destined to play a crucial role in these struggles—much more so than most of the Reich-Germans of the time appreciated.
Starting with Otto the Great in 961 A.D., there had always been some sort of German Reich. Only in 1805 did that Reich, subdued by a foreign conqueror (Napoleon), cease to exist in the same form. Another blow to German unity was delivered in 1866 when Austria went to war against Prussia and lost. Later, in 1918-19, it was the victorious Allies who, acting very much against the Austrian people’s will, threatened to use force in case the two parts of our nation decided to join together. Given their declared principles, how hypocritical that decision was hardly requires pointing out.
However, around 1900 that was still in the future. We young people were convinced that the German nation should be reunited in a single state as it had been for almost nine centuries. Also, we felt that the chief obstacle standing in the way was the Hapsburg Dynasty, with its long supranational tradition and egoistic determination to stay on top. We did our childish best to promote the cause of Germandom against the great mass of non-German people who inhabited the empire and, multiplying like rabbits, threatened to engulf it, by wearing the appropriate insignia, waving the appropriate flags, gathering pennies, and the like.
The second thing Pötsch taught me, which was closely linked to the first, was the supreme importance of studying history, understanding history, and using history as it ought to be used. As I later wrote in Mein Kampf, “To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events.” In other words, we should not just learn by heart what happened long ago; doing so, however entertaining it may be, is useless. The real objective is to illustrate the present by means of examples from the past and to use the latter to draw lessons for practical life.
Much later, I once said that a man who does not know history is like a man who does not have a face. Not knowing the past, how can he (or, for God’s sake, she) arrive at a considered judgment of the present and the future? The more important the post he occupies, the more true that is. That is a view I still maintain. Indeed one of Hell’s greatest shortcomings is precisely that its routine is uniform and unvarying. It has neither a future not a past to study and draw lessons from, making it a totally uninteresting place where nothing ever happens. That in itself makes it worthy of the name Hell.
The turn of the century found us living in Linz, a lovely town on the Danube which from that time on I have always regarded as the home of my youth and of which I have many pleasant memories. The conflicts with my father still persisted, causing my grades to deteriorate further. I just did not want to follow the path he had laid down for me; it was one in which, as he himself once said, thought was not required. When I was in my thirteenth year, he was taken from us. He was still in robust health when a stroke painlessly ended his earthly wanderings and left us all deeply bereaved. His most ardent wish was to be able to help his son advance in a career, sparing me the harsh ordeal he himself had gone through. But it seemed to him then that all his longings were in vain. Yet though he himself was not conscious of it, he had sown the seeds of a future which neither of us foresaw at that time.
Once my father died, I had little difficulty persuading my mother that I should indeed become a painter. I continued to attend a lower Realschule, a kind of secondary school. Not offering Greek and Latin, it was considered inferior to the gymnasium. It did not ultimately lead to the Abitur, or high-school leaving, diploma, and was meant for those who did not expect to attend a university. I soldiered on, more or less. Occasionally, I had to re-sit for examinations or change schools. I did well enough to become eligible for admission to the higher Realschule. However, school did not interest me more at that time than previously.
In 1905 I fell seriously ill with some lung disease, worrying my dear mother almost to death. After my recovery, I finally left my school years behind me. Exceptionally talented people often do. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and, in my own time, Joseph Stalin; none finished college, let alone took a postgraduate degree, as almost anyone who aims at becoming someone is obliged to do today. At least one, Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines fame, did not even complete high school. The reason is easy to find. Success requires originality and innovation. Yet school can only teach what teachers learned twenty-five years earlier. Keeping children at school against their will until they are eighteen, which today has become almost standard practice, serves no purpose. In not a few cases doing so actually prevents them from growing up and developing their talents. I thank my stars that, in my time, things had not yet reached that point. Or else God knows what, acting out of sheer boredom, I might have done.
The next two years were among the happiest in my life. Since I was not attending school, had no classmates, and did not receive grades, they are also among the least documented ones. These facts have enabled historians to rack their imaginations and have field days inventing all kinds of disturbed stories about me. Reality, though, was prosaic enough. Yes, I did lead “a life of parasitic idleness”—to quote Kershaw—in the comfortable flat which my mother, being relatively well off, had rented. Yes, I had “still never earned a day’s income.” Yes, I led “a drone’s life without career prospects.” I was, after all, still growing up and not thirty-something, like many of the so-called “boomerang children,” who, early in the twenty-first century, are leading lives not so different from the one I led during that period.
Yes, I did like to dress well and go about town. Yes, I did often go to the theater and the opera. I did fall in love—an adolescent love, to be sure—with a girl, Stephanie. And yes, I did not have the courage to approach her. In fact, she never knew I existed. What is so unusual about that? Didn’t school teach my biographers that Honni soit qui mal y pense?
My companion on those occasions was my friend August (“Gustl”) Kubizek. Kubizek, who was eight months older than I, was the son of an upholsterer. His dream was to become a musician. After the end of each musical performance we attended, I used to talk to him about what we had just seen and heard. Truth to say, I did most of the talking while he did most of the listening, making us a well-matched pair! His subsequent account of those years went through various versions. It also lifted some passages straight out of Mein Kampf. Still, on the whole it is correct. Not for one moment in all that time was I bored. Boredom being something experienced only by those too dull to think for themselves. Not being bored, I never got into any trouble to speak of.
In the spring of 1906 I visited Vienna for the first time. It was, after all, the capital of a great, if already rickety, empire. Like so many others who visited it then and visit it now, I wanted to see the streets, the public squares, the buildings, the museums and the palaces. Also, I wanted to attend the famous Hofoper (Court Opera), which had much more to offer than its poor relative in the provincial town of Linz did. But the main attraction always consisted of the splendid buildings along the Ringstrasse. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that they had a magical effect on me.
One outcome of my encounter with Vienna was to revive my hope of becoming an artist. In September 1907 I returned to the city to take the entrance examination to the Academy of Fine Arts. There were a hundred and thirteen candidates, and after various tests, only twenty-eight were selected. I was not one of them. It was a terrible blow, the more so because it was totally unexpected. But again, was it in any way unusual? Just look at the math.
In 2014, in my residence in Hell, I was shown a letter allegedly addressed to me by the academy. Written (typed) on 2 October 1907, it was signed by Christian Griepenkerl, the professor who had also signed my rejection that year (and also in the next one, when I tried again). The text says that, given my work, “We [the c
ommittee in charge of admissions] do not have a moment’s doubt that you are suited to widen your horizons at our academy.” Supposedly, the letter had been lost at the post office and only recently discovered after it had been sent, by mistake, to a certain Herr Can Ölmez, who lived at my old address in Linz. It is a useless, crude forgery produced by some sensation-seeking hack; one of countless others that have been produced to discredit me. But it does show how much, seven decades after my death, I—and everything concerning me—still remain in the public eye.
Having failed, I went to speak to the rector. He was frank with me, saying that the work I had submitted showed I was more suited for a career in architecture than in painting. But that road was closed to me because I did not possess a school-leaver’s certificate. That was a fact which, at that time, caused me great regret. Accordingly, my dream of following an artistic career was in ruins.
In December of the same year my mother died of breast cancer, an agonizing disease if there is one. Johanna, my little sister Paula, and I took care of her. She was attended by our family doctor, Eduard Bloch, one of the very few decent Jews I have ever met or heard of. He did what he could for her. Recently, there has been a spate of stories alleging that he mistreated her and overcharged the family, causing me to become an anti-Semite. I want to take this opportunity to declare, as solemnly as I can: all that is simply a pack of lies. Or else, unless you consider me very stupid indeed, why do you think I allowed him and his family to leave Germany for the U.S. in 1938? Once he had arrived, he said and wrote some kind words about me. Never, he asserted, had he seen a young man as touchingly attached to his mother as I was. I had, in fact, done my best for her. Later, I had her photograph stationed in each one of my primary residences: in Berlin, in Munich, and at Berchtesgaden as well.