THE EDUCATION OF A DICTATOR(the best biography is Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 2 vols,

1998-2000)

1889: Born in Braunau, where his father collects tolls on the border between Bavaria and Austria

1898: Moves to Linz (where Adolf struggles in high school)

1905: Earns a “small diploma” at age 16 and persuades his widowed mother that his health does not permit further study; lounges about Linz with friend August Kubizek

1907-13: VIENNA YEARS—Hitler twice fails the entrance exam to the Vienna Art Academy and then scrapes by, painting watercolors for tourists

1914-20: SOLDIER YEARS—German Army recruits Hitler as a political agent at the end of WW I

The Hitlers came from the borderland between Lower Austria & Bohemia, in an Austrian Empire wracked by

ethnic tension

Austria granted Home Rule to Hungary in 1867 but no such rights to Czechs, Croats, etc.

Alois Hitler (1837-1903):This illegitimate son of a

maid achieved respectability as an Austrian civil servant

Klara Hitler (1860-1907), the third wife of Alois

and his second cousin

“I had honored my father, but my mother I had loved.”

(Mein Kampf, end of chap. 1)

Origins of the rumor of Hitler’s Jewish ancestryHitler’s Irish nephew

(son of Alois Jr.)Hitler’s personal lawyer,

Hans Frank

The rumor that Alois had a Jewish father makes no sense, but his “uncle” Johann Nepomuk Hiedler is a

likely candidate.

Where’s Adolf? (School photo in Leonding at age 10.)

Two years later Hitler was struggling in Realschule

and flunked his first year.

Richard Wagner at home in Bayreuth (1870s)

Alberich, guardian of the treasure of the

Nibelungen(1876 production

of THE RING)

Lohengrin(scene from the

London premiere, 1875)

THE GROWTH OF VIENNA’S POPULATIONRESEMBLED THAT OF PARIS AND BERLIN

(in 1910, 8.6% of the population was Jewish)

Austria’s new House of Parliament (1873-83):To honor Athens as the birthplace of democracy

“Carriage Shafts” (Austria, 1900):“Schmul’s Patented Automobile. Cheapest

operation!Completely safe!”

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

Gustav Klimt,“Judith and

Holofernes” (1901):

When Hitler arrived in Vienna, “modern

artists” warred against

traditionalists

Klimt, “The Kiss” (1908)

Adolf Hilter, “The Old Courtyard”(watercolor, Munich, 1914)

THREE “POST-LIBERAL” VIENNA POLITICIANS

Georg von Schönerer, the Pan-German

(1842-1921)

Karl Lueger, the Christian Social

(1844-1910)

Theodor Herzl, the Zionist (1860-

1904)

Munich’s Odeon Square, August 2, 1914

“To me those hours seemed like a release from the painful feelings of my youth. Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy

enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to

live at this time” (M.K., p. 161)

Adolf Hitler with two

fellow dispatch

runners and his dog, Foxl, in Fournes,

France (1915).

Soldiering was the first job he

ever took seriously, and

he won the Iron Cross, Second and First Class.

Only in Munich did the Communists actually gain power (the “Red Army” marches under Munich’s

short-lived “Soviet Republic” in April 1919)

The Free Corps “restore order” in Munich, May 1919

Some Free Corps men adopted the swastika as a symbol of

racial purity; many later joined the Nazi Party.

Most Bavarians approved of the summary execution of hundreds of “Reds”.

Postcard of Hitler in Landsberg Prison (1924), where he dictated vol. 1 of

Mein Kampf

TOTAL GERMAN SALES:

1929: 23,0001932: 80,000

1933: 1,500,000

1945: 10,000,000

WHILE WRITING MEIN KAMPF IN 1924,HITLER INSISTED ON THE FOLLOWING POINTS:

1. He had become a militant pan-German nationalist already in high school in Linz [pp. 11-13, probably true].

2. In Vienna he had learned about the “Social Question” and understood the grievances of workers [pp. 22-34--?].

3. In Vienna he had learned on a construction site that the socialist labor movement was a “pestilential whore” after Marxist trade unionists dragged the Fatherland, religion, and morality through the mud [pp. 38-41---???].

4. “Wherever I went [in Vienna] I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity.” Jews accounted for “nine-tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and theatrical idiocy” (pp. 56-58).

5. He had formed his complete Weltanschauung in Vienna and never learned anything important thereafter [???].

Efforts to popularize Nazi ideas in 1928:“The Blow Must Be Felt!” and “Death to the Lie”

Hitler with his niece, Geli Raubal (1929/30):

She shot herself in September 1931.

Did Hitler ever develop “the capacity to work and to love”?

Eva Braun in the studio of Heinrich Hoffmann; she attempted suicide in 1935 because Hitler so

neglected her.