Trudy Gold
Hitler: The Making of a Monster

Trudy Gold - Hitler: The Making of a Monster

- And, of course, tonight I am dealing with the dark side of the moon, but before we actually begin to talk about his biography, I have a few remarks to make. You see, the point is when you’re dealing with Adolf Hitler, you are dealing with a human being. You’re dealing with a human being who had a choice to go to the dark side. And what I’m trying to do in this presentation is to look at his early years and look at his years in Vienna, where you begin to see the makings of an ideology, which was the most destructive the world has ever seen. One of his most curious comments is, “I can never forgive the Jews for inventing moral conscience.” Important also to remember that Hitler actually saw himself as an intellectual. He was a cultural figure. He saw himself as an artist. He isn’t from the gutter up. It’s very important to remember this, that he was fascinated by art, by culture. He had an incredible drawing towards Wagner, and I’m going to be talking about that later on. So the first point that I want to make is that he’s within the human condition, and what he wanted to do was to create a new world, a brave new world order that smashed all the old trappings of conventional morality. Hugo Gryn later said, “To understand Nazism, understand the reversal of the Ten Commandments, and that is certainly part of it because there is no morality in Hitler’s world view, but what there is is blood, the need for the bloodline, and the creation of a world, which shall be run by the Aryan masters. So as I said, let’s begin and can we see the first picture?

There’s a baby picture of Adolf Hitler. He was the son of a 52-year-old customs official, Alois Schicklgruber. His father was illegitimate. His mother, his father’s mother, his grandfather later married the man, Hisler, Hitler. The name wasn’t even codified. And there is a certain rumour, she was a 40-year-old woman when she produced Hitler’s father, and she was a servant in the home of a family called Frankenberger. There is a rumour because people have tried to comb, How did he have this extraordinary hatred of the Jews?” There was an 18-year-old boy involved, the young Frankenberger boy, but every historian who’s combed it, all the evidence is is that his father was the son of this man Hisler, who later after his birth married the mother Shicklgruber. Okay? So there was this taint though, that he might have known about. And so he is the son of Alois Shicklgruber whose name is changed to Hisler Hitler, and his third wife, and also his cousin, Klara. She was a young peasant girl. She was 23 years the junior, the third wife, and they lived in the backwoods, very, very conservative Catholic area of lower Austria. Now, can we have a look at the family tree, please? Yeah. So there you see the father and the mother. Klara is the second cousin of Alois, and you will see that she only had two surviving children by him, Adolf and his younger sister Paula. Before Hitler was born, she had four babes who died in infancy. So you can just imagine the over-love that Hitler had.

Now, if you look at his first wife and then his second wife, he had other children, including if you go down, his grandson William Patrick Hitler actually lived in America, and Alois, Hitler’s half-brother, actually lived in Liverpool for a while, and you can see his half-sister, Angela, who had three children, can you all see that? Because the daughter, Geli, was probably the only woman that Hitler ever really loved, and she committed suicide. So just have a look at that very, very complicated family tree, and it tells us quite a lot, doesn’t it? It also tells us that Alois has pulled himself up by his bootstraps. His father was a peddler, a journeyman, but he is now a minor customs official. And so in the household is the father, the mother, Alois from the first marriage, Angela, Adolf, and Paula. So that’s the family half side. In addition, we know that his mother’s sister lived with them and she was classified as, and I’m quoting now, “feeble-minded.” The kind of terms that they use are absolutely horrific. But she helped around with the family chores. We also know that the father had fits of terrible drunken rages, and he beat up his eldest son Alois, who was in turn very jealous of Adolf, who was over-pampered by the young mother. Adolf was also beaten by the father. So it’s a very unhappy conservative home where the mother, 23 years younger than the father, his second cousin, is obviously terrified of the husband. Now, he was born in Braunau. Can we see a picture please, Judi? Braunau am Inn. Now, the nearest big city is Linz, and I just wanted to give you a flavour of the kind of area he came from. It’s very pretty, it’s very conservative.

It’s a very Catholic part of the world. It’s the part of the world where everybody knew their neighbor’s business. So between 1892 and 1895, Alois goes to work in Passau. It’s just over the German side of the border, so let’s see Passau. Those of you who have done the Rhine cruises will know that this is where it starts. Passau, an absolutely beautiful city, but at this stage an absolute hotbed of antisemitism. So from the ages of three to six, this is where Hitler lives. So in terms of his geographical surroundings, they’re actually very, very beautiful. And it’s also here that he develops his rather peculiar Bavarian accent. Now, 1895, after 40 years of work, his father retires, and he buys himself a farm in a very remote area called Lempa in upper Austria, and he decided he’s going to make a living as a farmer and also as a beekeeper, and this is from Goebbels. He’s talking about Hitler and his early background. And in 1942, he reports bee stings were normal. “Mother often took 45 or 50 stings out of my father when he returned from emptying the honeycombs.” After this terrible fight with his father, Alois Junior left home, and at 14 he was disinherited. So from now on in the household, there’s Angela, Adolf, and Edmund. Another boy is born. He only lives to be six years old. So the mother actually suffered from having four dead children. And in 1896, Paula, the youngest child, was born. So in May, 1895, Hitler enters the local village school.

The farm was very, very run down, the father couldn’t make any money, so they moved to temporary quarters in Lambach, and this is where Hitler enters the Benedictine Boys Choir School. And he writes in Mein Kampf, “I had an excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendour of the brilliant church festivals.” Later praised it again from Mein Kampf. “Wonderful exercising man’s need for something supernatural. It knows how to deal with people with its mystical cults, and its large, sublime cathedrals with blessed music, solemn rights, and incense.” So he’s brought up as a Catholic, only the mother goes to mass, but he’s very much brought up in the Catholic tradition. So important to remember, he’s exposed to the great choirs, the great cathedrals, because later on Hitler is going to become one of the most brilliant stage managers of crowds, and the other thing he’s going to develop, apart from his extraordinary charisma, I know when we watch films, we don’t really see it, but from every bit of evidence there is, he develops this incredible charisma, and he understood the panoply of drama, and he first encounters it in a Catholic church. Now, 1898, so he is now nine years old, the family moved to Leonding, which is just south of Linz. Let’s have a look at that little town as well. Because it’s important, you see, these are the pretty little rural backwaters, the desperation of them as well. But also have a look at the wonderful alpine scenery, which later on is going to be very important to the young Hitler. The father bought a little place next to the cemetery. Goebbels in his diary wrote, “This became the entire German’s people’s place of honour. This was his realm, small and low ceiling. This is where he designed plans and dreamt of the future. So this is where a genius developed. I’m beginning to feel quite sublime and solemn.” So when he’s nine years old, he goes to the school in Leonding and he later writes about this. “Even as a boy, I was no pacifist, and all attempts to educate me in that direction came to nothing.”

And one of his schoolmates, you’ve got to remember people have gone over his background with an absolute fine-toothed comb, because if you think about it, in many ways he’s the man that determined the 20th century. Very important to remember that. So one of his schoolmates, who later was an abbot, Abbot Baldaun of Wilhering, he recalls now playing war, nothing but playing war. “Even we children found it boring after a while, but he always found some children, particularly amongst the young ones, who would play with him.” Otherwise, this is from this particular eyewitness. “He practised his favourite sport shooting at rats with his handgun in the cemetery next to his house.” So obviously he had been brutalised, but then many people had been brutalised. Around 1900, the Boer War was getting an incredible amount of publicity in the press, and his father is an Austrian German nationalist, and as far as the Austrian German nationalists are concerned, this is David versus Goliath, so the headline from the local paper, “Poor farmers feed freedom fight.” And something else. Boer hats became very popular, herring and sausage becomes very popular, the food of the Boers. And, ironically, it’s still popular in Vienna today. And this is what Hitler later wrote about it. “Every day I witnessed impatiently for the newspapers, the privilege of witnessing this heroic struggle, even at a distance. A new game we played, the Boers versus the English. And as late as 1923, when he is already, of course, in Germany, on the side of the Boers, the just will to liberty, on the side of the British, greed for money and diamonds. And by this time he also would go into a rant, the Boer War, who was behind the Boer War? Of course, it was the Jews. In 1900, his six-year-old brother died of measles, and now he is the only boy in the family.

The difficulties with his father become absolutely out of control. The father evidently demanded absolute obedience, and according to stories in Hitler’s table talk, which were recorded by Goebbels, he put two fingers in his mouth to let out a whistle for Adolf. Wherever he was, he had to go to his father. Adolf loved to read. He was always a great reader, a very eclectic reader. He would amass all sorts of knowledge, but his father wouldn’t give him any money for books, and the only book at home that Alois had was a book on the Franco-Prussian War. The father was a Bismarck enthusiast but still an Austrian German. But Hitler becomes very interested, and actually in Mein Kampf he talks about his father’s library, but all the witness portrayed the mother was an incredibly doting woman. Alois wanted his son to become a civil servant like him. So in 1900, he goes to the Realschule in Linz. Now, he didn’t do very well. The reports from school are very unsatisfactory, he has bad marks in math, bad marks in natural history. He’s kept back. Every year, according to his school report, he got a reprimand for bad behaviour, and they waived his tuition fees as well, which proves that by this time the family are indigent. Now, this is a later report of his French teacher.

"He was decidedly gifted, if one-sided. He had difficulty controlling his temper. He was considerably intractable and willful and also always had to be right and always flew off the handle. He clearly found it difficult to accommodate himself to the limits of the school.” And also, this is from the report, “He demanded unconditional subordination. He enjoyed the role of leader and had been influenced by Karl May’s tall stories and tales about Red Indians.” Can we have a look at some more slides now? This is Linz old cathedral because he actually becomes a choir boy in Linz cathedral. I’ve been there actually. One of the most extraordinary events of my life was I had the opportunity to lecture in Linz on antisemitism. And, of course, my hosts took me to the cathedral. It’s incredibly imposing, and Hitler becomes a choir boy there. And for a while he had about six months of taking it all in, but he soon moved away from religion. He became completely disenchanted with religion. But can we have a look also please at the school if that’s all right? Yeah. That’s Hitler at school. It’s a very, very famous picture of him. And then can we go on to the next school picture? Now this is fascinating. There’s books on this. I don’t give it too much credence. When Hitler was at school, you can see him in the corner, there is another boy also circled in red, and that young boy is a man called Wittgenstein. It’s absolutely fascinating that Wittgenstein went to the local school in Linz, but it has to be said that it was a very, very good school, and it also has to be said that there were lots of different children from different parts of the Habsburg Empire there. So Wittgenstein… there’s a couple of books that say Hitler’s hatred of Jews actually developed from Wittgenstein, who was two years younger than him, but was ahead of him at school. No, sorry, was the same age as him, but he was two years ahead of him at school, and so they gave that as a reason.

But I don’t think that’s enough to explain what’s going to happen later as the beginnings, but the point is they are at school together, and it’s important also to remember that by this time the school is becoming very politically turbulent. There were the clericalists, the Habsburg nation loyalists, who fought against the German nationalists. Hitler later said that those who were most loyal in the end to Germany were the Austrian Germans. And what I’m actually doing in this presentation and the next presentation, I’m looking at the high number of members, high-ranking members of the Nazi party, who came from that milieu. In many ways, the Austrian Germans, as the empire is disintegrating, are the ones that are most nationalistic for Germany. Now some of them wanted German Austrian union. Others of them wanted Austria and Germany to leave behind the Slavic parts of the empire. Of course, at the school there were boys from other parts of the empire, so can you just imagine the conflicts, because if you look at student conflict, and it’s going to be exactly the same at the universities, these are the people who are fighting over the soul of what is to be the future in an empire that is obviously crumbling. The Austrian Germans, they collect black and gold ribbons and portraits of Franz Joseph and the Empress Elizabeth.

The German nationalists have busts of Bismarck and greater German pins, and we know it from Mein Kampf, because in 1923 Hitler’s going to write his autobiography. It’s not always accurate. You’ve got to be careful. A lot of it is fantasy. But he does talk about the student days and how he was really roused to all of this through what was going on at school. Now, Hitler’s favourite teacher, can we go on to the next slide please? By the way, this is Karl May. Karl May was a very popular author. Hitler never travelled, important to remember this. All his notions of foreign travel came from books, and these are adventure books, Karl May, and you can see that is a portrayal of an indigenous American. In those days it was called Red Indian. The other scene, of course, is a desert scene, and they fueled his imagination of faraway places, but he never ever travelled to them, and I think it’s very, very important. His favourite teacher, can we now see a picture of his favourite teacher, please? Now that’s Dr. Leopold Poetsch, and Hitler later wrote of him. “He used our budding nationalistic fanaticism as a means of educating us, frequently appealing to our national honour. Thus he was able to keep discipline to us little ruffians.” Hitler absolutely adored this man. He was Hitler’s teacher between 1901 and 1904. Remember, he was born in 1889, so from the age of 12 to the age of 15, he is his teacher. It’s incredibly formative years, and a charismatic teacher can do a lot, and this was a charismatic teacher.

He taught him, first of all, in geography, but then he taught him in history, and he loved history. Hitler develops an absolute passion for history. He also ran the school library. Hitler became a favourite of his. Hitler with his piercing quests for knowledge. This is the point. A lot of people talk about that. As I said, he was eclectic. He didn’t read in any kind of systemized way, but he was a bit of a magpie. But Poetsch actually very much fosters this. He’s particularly close. He later joins the Linz Council as a representative of the German People’s party, and he gave lectures in the town, the images of German history. Hitler later on liked to emphasise that in his experiences in the multinational empire, the German Austrians were the people he felt he had to bring to salvation. And even at that age, he was developing very strong volkisch national views, and he gradually begins to reject the empire. The multinational empire is something that is very sick. We don’t want to be involved in it. So he’s already rejecting that. And also Leopold Poetsch was a very, very strange man in many ways. Well, to the rationalist in me, he’s very strange. He was very involved in study groups of German antiquity. When I was talking to Wendy, I mentioned numerology. She was talking about numerology. They were fascinated almost to the verge of looking at occultism.

They are associated with later on many of the early Nazis, particularly Himmler, is a fascination for the occult, and it was off in Munich when Hitler was there, an offshoot of these kinds of views was actually the Thule Society, and they were absolutely fanatical nationalists, and it was the Thule Society later on that was going to assassinate the German Jewish foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, as an elder of Zion, so obviously Poetsch is a very strong nationalist. He believes in the whole dream of the Aryan peoples, the whole notion of the Aryan being the master race, going back to that time in German history when Germany was great. When was Germany great? When it completely destroyed those legions of the Roman Empire. That’s when Germany was great. And, of course, with it goes the whole panoply of the ideas of Gustav Wagner. Gustav Wagner when his dream of creating a world that to quote Nietzche, is beyond good and evil. So this is where Hitler first comes across these views from his absolutely beloved teacher. And, of course, later on he’s going to develop these ideas in Vienna when he comes across characters such as people I’ve already mentioned to you. People like Guido von List. So please take on that he’s already playing with these volkisch dreams. Going back to the volkisch people, many of these characters who lived outside the capital cities, they had a kind of paternalistic feel for the peasantry, and the peasantry is being destroyed by industrialization, by modernization.

They want to help the people. They want to help the volk, and this is absolutely critical. Now whilst all this is going on in 1904, Hitler was confirmed in Linz Cathedral. Later on, in 1942, looking back he said this. “At 13, 14, 15, I no longer believed in anything. Certainly none of my friends believed in the so-called communion. I thought at the time everything should be blown up.” Now, the problem with Catholicism for these volkisch beliefs is, of course, Christianity is a religion of morality. We might have a problem with its attitude towards the Jews, but it does take on the notion of equality before the Almighty. These volkisch views can never talk about equality. It’s about blood. If you are born of the Aryan blood, then you are fit to rule.“ Later on, Hitler is going to swallow the whole notion of the racial hierarchy, which he learns from characters like Houston Stewart Chamberlain. The Aryan is the master race. Under the Aryans are the Roman peoples, then the Slavs, etc., etc. It’s absolutely extraordinary that these ideas are put into the young man by his teacher of history when he is 13, 14, so he’s already rejecting religion. Okay. Hitler’s father. The relationship with the father becomes really, really bad. His father, he sees himself as a failure. He’s lost his job. He’s often in a tavern drunk, and it was Hitler who had to go and pull him out of the tavern. The younger brother had died, and in the end the father dies. He dies in a tavern, and there isn’t much money left. The mother moves to an even smaller apartment so that Hitler can still attend school, and then the mother becomes very ill. The family doctor was a man called Dr. Bloch, a Jew. Can we see Dr. Bloch? Yes. According to all the accounts, he was an incredibly righteous man. He was the local doctor to many poor people in that area of town, and he survived the war because he was Hitler’s good Jew, and Hitler allowed him and his wife to go to America. And this is what he said. He later gives a remarkable picture of the young Hitler.

To a very large extent, the boy lived in himself. His most striking feature was his love for his mother. I’ve never witnessed a closer attachment. She admired his watercolour drawings and supported his artistic ambitions in opposition to his father. Remember, his father wants him to become a civil servant, then the father dies. Hitler already decides he wants to be an artist. In the end, he really wants to be an architect. And one of the extraordinary aspects of the Third Reich is he was going to make Linz into the great capital of art. Don’t forget how much art was collected. But those of you, and I know because of Wendy’s interest, there will be a lot of you online who are very interested in art. What was acceptable art to Nazis is, of course, a very, very interesting picture. And the most popular exhibition in Nazi Germany was actually in 1937, an exhibition of degenerate art where you can just imagine who was considered a degenerate artist. Of course, all the impressionists, the expressionists, etc. I don’t even need to mention Kokoschka or Schiele. And next to them in this exhibition, there were pictures of people with mental or physical disabilities. But at this stage he’s already dreaming of art and architecture, and it’s no accident that the closest person to him in the Nazi hierarchy was, of course, Albert Speer, because what did they discuss together? Architecture.

And you all know those incredibly bombastic buildings that go back to the glory of Greece and Rome. That’s the kind of world that Hitler wanted to have. Now, so Hitler does say before his mother, really her illness, she succumbs to illness, that after the father’s death, even though they were in very dire straits, according to Dr Bloch, the family finances, nevertheless, Hitler says the two years in Linz were the happiest in his life. His father’s dead now. His adored mother. His mother absolutely worships him. He reads and he reads and he reads. He reads all the German nationalist newspapers. He’s acquiring more and more knowledge. He also discovered a great love for music. Standing room only in the Linz Opera House, the hundredth anniversary of Schiller’s death in 1905, the German nationalist had a huge display at the Opera House celebrating the Freedom Poet. The most popular speaker was, of course, his history teacher, Leopold Poetsch. Now in 1905, he met a boy who is going to become his closest friend. Can we see that boy, please? August Kubizek. Yes. He later wrote his autobiography, so we know a lot about Hitler from this young boy, and he met him when they were standing listening to music at the Linz Opera House. And Hitler profited a lot from his association with this young boy because this young boy was already being trained in music. And the first Wagner opera that the two boys heard together was Rienzi, and Rienzi is going to have an absolutely startling effect on the young Adolf Hitler. Rienzi is the story of a young tribune, Cola di Rienzi, who was the son of a Roman bartender, and he became the People’s Tribune. He united a splintered Italy into a powerful republic. It was actually based on the novel by the English writer, Bulwer-Lytton, who ironically was a close friend of Disraeli’s, and Wagner’s words, they absolutely grabbed him. This is what Kubizek said. "He was totally intoxicated.”

And these were Wagner’s words, an extreme enthusiast, this is Wagner talking about Rienzi. Rienzi like a flashing beam of light appeared amongst the people that had sunk so low. And, of course, you can imagine the dreamer, Hitler, who wasn’t very popular at school. He always played with younger boys. He kept himself apart. Kubizek loved the music, and he became, if you like, his companion, which is very useful for us because we can find out more about him. And Kubizek recounts that after watching Rienzi, Hitler was absolutely stupified by it. He’s now 16. He used the term transported, and he walked with him to the mountains just outside Linz until the early hours of the morning. And quoting Kubizek, In grand infectious images, he outlined to me the future of the German people. This has completely turned him. He’s had his fantasy. Just this man Rienzi from a humble background, he takes on the corruption of Rome and creates a united powerful people. The second part of the opera, of course, is Rienzi falls in flames. Gotterdammerung. It’s no accident what happened to Hitler, you know. So what can we put together already? He’s a powerful German nationalist. He’s an Austrian German from a very bourgeois, primitive part of the world. He’s already broken away from Catholicism. He’s infused with Wagner’s music. He’s infused with all these kind of ideas. And another point, the Rienzi Overture actually became the secret anthem of the Third Reich.

That was what was played at all the Nuremberg rallies, and Kubizek actually describes Hitler physically. He was a pale, serious young man, always simply but neatly attired, and according to Kubizek, Hitler fell in love with a blonde girl in Linz. She was a young beauty called Stefanie. He was so shy, he never ever spoke a word to her. He absolutely admired her from afar, but according to Kubizek, he told him that he dreamt of her as his wife, and he even designed the perfect house that she would live in, but he never once exchanged a word with her, which gives you a notion also of the fantasy world that he lived in. You know, it’s interesting. His mother’s already ill. It’s May, 1906, and even though the family has very straitened circumstances, he didn’t accept any jobs nor start an apprenticeship. He announced he wanted to go to Vienna to become an artist. So with his mother’s blessing, he comes to Vienna for the first time. Could we quickly have a look at the Linz Opera House, if you don’t mind, Judi?. Yeah. That, of course, is today, but that is Rienzi. Of course, the original Opera House was destroyed. That is Rienzi. And can we now go on to Vienna? He comes to Vienna. that is the School of Art and, of course, that’s a very famous shot outside the Opera House. Now what did he feel about Vienna? He admired the architecture of the Ring Boulevard. He talks about this. He studied the picture galleries. He went to the opera. He sent picture postcards to Kubizek.

He goes for two weeks. He sends Kubizek four picture postcards, and that’s how we have more knowledge of what he was doing. He witnessed Mahler conduct Tristan on May 8th. That’s fascinating, isn’t it, that he went to a Wagner performance conducted by the Jew, Mahler. And he has to go back to Linz, he’s only gone for two weeks, and on October 13th in Linz, he goes to the Opera House to hear the Merry Widow by Lehar. Now, ironically, the Merry Widow becomes a great favourite with Hitler. I know Patrick argues very strongly that Hitler was much more at home with Lehar than he was with Wagner, but I’ll leave that. Patrick has far more knowledge of that than I do, but I just think that’s an interesting aside. And, of course, Lehar was half-Jewish, but anyway. And with Hitler it’s always going to be about Jewish blood. By January, 1907, he’s taking music lessons with Kubizek’s teacher. His mother is in a terrible state. She has to have a biopsy. She has breast cancer. And so he has to come home, and the family had to move in order to pay the bills. Still, Hitler persuades his mother to allow him to go back to Vienna. He wants to get into the Academy of Art. He even found a small room to rent. But Hitler’s work does not meet the requirements of the Academy. He comes back to Linz. He’s told by Dr. Bloch that Klara’s condition was hopeless, and the good doctor, without being paid, called every day, and Hitler stayed by her bedside, and she died on the 21st of December 1907, and, ironically, her son actually sketched her as she was on her deathbed.

And the family did call on Dr. Bloch to express their gratitude for his treatment. And just to finish the story of Dr. Bloch, in 1938, Hitler placed Bloch under his special protection, and they were undisturbed. They were allowed to keep their money. And, in 1940, he and his wife managed to get to America, but, of course, his medical degree was not recognised in the States. He could no longer practise medicine, which had been his whole life. He’d worked with the poor, remember? He was an incredibly decent man, and he died in 1945. So the parents are both dead. He has a small pension, so he decides to come to Vienna, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And, of course, in Vienna, what’s happening in Vienna in 1907? Well, we’ve already looked at the racial madness in Vienna. Can we have a look at a few of the slides, please? Guido von List, I’ve talked to you about him. He was that character who believed in the runes, who believed in that whole panoply of going back in German history. He talked about the God figure who will come, the leader who will save the German people.

He had a huge following. He also had a disciple called von Liebenfels, very much the same kind of attitude. This is very popular in Vienna. The seances, the occult, this kind of notion. It’s turn of the century. It’s turn of the century where people in the malaise that was Vienna and Paris and Berlin, people were turning to astrology. There were seances, and this is the world. Now for a short time, Kubizek joined Hitler in Vienna, but gradually Hitler’s fortunes deteriorated. He would make sketches, he couldn’t get into the art school, and he becomes more and more part of the underworld of Vienna. And can we go and have a look at some of the other influences? Georg von Schonerer. He, of course, we’ve talked about him. He led the German People’s Party in Vienna. He wanted unification. He was a brilliant rabble rouser. He believed in nationalism with Germany and also socialism. He wanted, for example, the Rothschild’s railway to be nationalised. He wanted to help the poor folk against the wealthy of Vienna. Now, ironically, he was the man who created the Linz programme, and two of the characters on it were also Jewish, Jewish socialists, but he then decided only Aryans could join. He’s also imbued with all this kind of racial theory. 10% of Vienna is Jewish. The contribution of the Jews to the arts, the sciences, we’ve spent so much time on this. Remember? This is the Vienna of characters like Freud, it’s the Vienna of all these extraordinary characters like Herzl, Nordal. You can think about the intellectuals, the Vienna circles, the writers. This is the backdrop. Please, the next slide, Judi. And there is the handsome mayor of Vienna, Dr. Karl Lueger, who comes to power on an antisemitic ticket. And if you remember that Franz Joseph did not want to ratify.

He hated antisemitism. So you have an antisemitic mayor, and there’s absolutely no doubt that Hitler picked up a lot of his later methods from listening to characters like Georg von Schonerer in the Parliament, and also to Dr. Karl Lueger, the incredibly popular, handsome mayor of Vienna. Now we also know that Hitler spent an awful lot of time in Parliament. He would go to the speakers gallery, and I’m going to talk a bit about Parliament because it’s going to have an incredibly important impact on Hitler. In 1907, when he arrives in the town, there are 516 seats. It’s the largest parliament in Europe. It was relatively democratic. Every male over the age of 24 in the Habsburg Empire had the vote. You had to be in the city for over a year to be able to vote. Of course, it didn’t apply to women, but it also meant, now let me just go through the programme with you, the number of people in the various parties, because I think you’re going to get an understanding of why Hitler is so against parliamentary democracy. He’s totally undemocratic. When he first went there, he thought that maybe the British system was good, but in the party, the largest party were the Christian socialists. This is the party of the small businesses and the craftspeople. It’s violently antisemitic. There were 86 social Democrats. These are the liberal left, 31 of the German People’s Party, 21 German agrarians, 17 German progressives, 12 German radicals, three pan-Germans, that’s Schonerer’s party. Schonerer once had 21 in Parliament, but he would been discredited, and most of his support had gone to to Lueger.

So that’s the German side, speaking German. Now let’s have a look at the Czechs. Everyone could use their own language in Parliament. There were 28 Czech agrarians, 18 young Czechs, 17 Czech conservatives, seven old Czechs, two Czech progressives, nine Czech National Socialists, nationalism and socialism. Most of these people want to break away from Austria. Now let’s look at Galicia, the Polish regions within the Habsburg Empire. 25 Polish National Democrats, 17 Polish People’s Party, 16 Polish conservatives, 12 Polish Centre Party. All right. Now this is interesting. From Galicia, four Zionists, this is a Jewish representation, and one Jewish Democrat, plus 10 Italian conservatives thanks to the Habsburg Empire in its parts of Italy. Four Italian liberals, 18 Slovenian conservatives, five Slovenian liberals, 25 Ruthenian national Democrats, four old Ruthenians, etc., etc., etc. 10 languages were admitted as the language of Parliament. Kubizek said this on Hitler, “It amazed me that Adolf was already that energetic and active at 8:30 in the morning. He would spend a lot of time in Parliament watching and waiting.” And this is what he later wrote about it in Mein Kampf. “A wild, gesticulating, screaming mass all at once in every different key. And he said to Kubizek, "You can only build when the foundation is laid.” Again from Mein Kampf, The more the linguistic babble corrodes and disorganize Parliament, the closer draws the inevitable hour of disintegration of this Babylonian empire, and with it the hour of freedom for my German Austrian people.

Only in this way could Anschluss with the mother country be restored. Now this is very important. Anschluss. You know, at the end of the First World War, after the dismemberment of the empire, the German Austrians asked for Anschluss. One of the greatest sleights of hand in history, and I know that William’s going to be talking about this later on, is the notion that Hitler invaded Austria. Hitler went home to Austria, and when he entered Vienna, 90% of the population were on the streets screaming for Anschluss. The other 10% were the Jews. So very important to remember that he’s already dreaming of Anschluss. So in Vienna, it’s interesting when were the ideas that later became the German Workers Party, which changed its name to the National Socialist Party, when does it actually begin? Can we see the last slide, Judi? That is Munich because he hates Vienna. He loathes Vienna. He thinks of it as Jewish Vienna. I’m going to read a little, and he’s going to go to Munich. I’m going to read a few excerpts from Mein Kampf. You see, I believe that he was already antisemitic before he went to Vienna because of the milieu that he came from. When does it become a disease? Not until my 14th or 15th year did I come across the word “Jew” with any frequency, partly in connection with my political discussions. This filled me with a mild distaste. At that time, I didn’t think anything else of the question. There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of the centuries, their outward appearance had become Europeanized and had taken on a human look. He’s writing this in 1923. In fact, I even took them for Germans.

The absurdity of this idea did not dawn on me because I had no distinguishing features. But the strange religion, the fact that they had, as I believed, been persecuted on this account sometimes almost turned my distaste and unfavourable remarks about them into horror. Then I came to Vienna and I encountered the Jewish question. My views with regard to antisemitism must succumb to the passage of time, and this was my greatest transformation of all. At the time of this bitter struggle between spiritual education and cold reason, the visual instruction of the Vienna streets had performed invaluable services. There came a time when I no longer, as in the first days, wandered blindly through the mighty city. Now with open eyes, I saw not only the buildings, but also the people. Once as I was strolling through the inner city, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan, black hair lots. Is this a Jew was my first thought? Is this a German? And it’s important to remember though in one of the dosshouses, he did have a Jewish friend who was kind to him, or not a friend, the man who was kind who actually gave him that terrible greatcoat.

So consequently, he develops his absolute phobia about the Jews when he is in Vienna, and he also creates a total distaste for the city. He sees it as being completely corrupted by the Jew. He hates the decadent art of Vienna. Think of the secessionist school. He hates the beginnings of decadent music. Think about characters like Schoenberg. Think about all of this. He is a Wagnerite. He adores Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He swallowed List, he swallowed Liebenfels, he swallowed the charisma of Schonerer and Karl Lueger, and he goes to Munich, and there he is in a rally in 1913. And, of course, war breaks out, and he joins the Army, not the Austrian Habsburg army, he joins the German army when war breaks out in 1914. And, of course, when he emerges at the end of the war in Munich at the time of revolutions, that is going to completely solidify his ideas, and that’s for a later presentation. So let’s have a look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

No, Valerie. Hitler was born on the 20th of April definitely. No. Unless I’m going completely insane, that’s the 20th of April, 1889. I will double-check that. It is April the 20th. I read that Hitler’s mother wanted an abortion but couldn’t get one. No, no, no, no, no. She desperately wanted a child. She’d had three stillbirths. No. She’d had one babe that survived a little while. She desperately wanted a child. Yes. People are saying it is the 20th of April. Yeah.

Q: Was Hitler a common Austrian name?

A: It wasn’t common/uncommon. It wasn’t codified even. It was Hissler/Hussler in the documents.

He didn’t have any direct descendants. He had a half-brother, who had descendants in America. There was a Jewish family. Yeah. Yes. Linz and Passal are towns on the Danube. Yes. Arlene. Often youngsters. Needless to say such people are psychotic.

Arlene, I’m not going to take that because I think, look, a definition of a psychopath is someone who doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong, What if people want to throw away conventional morality because they believe that is wrong? You’ve got to think about this. To the rational humanitarian mind, these ideas are absolutely disgusting. But in order to understand, and I think it’s also important to understand his appeal, because the most important question for me is this. All you have to do is to read Mein Kampf. All you had to do was to look at the characters in the national socialist movement.

How was it that Hitler took power through the ballot box? How was he voted into power by ordinary Germans? They weren’t voting for the Holocaust. What was it? So it’s this gradual gradation.

This is Joan. My father loved Conway. Yeah, he was very, very popular. Yeah, he was incredibly popular. Isn’t it interesting? Hitler had an absolute fascination with foreign travel and architecture. There’s an extraordinary story. When he went to Paris, he only wanted three stops, but one of them was at the Paris Opera House. And can you imagine the fright for the Chatelet? He opens up the opera house and there is Hitler and his whole group, and he wants to see around the Opera House. And he had all the plans. And there was a door. He thought there’d be a door somewhere. And, in fact, it had recently been changed. And he knew the detail. He had an incredibly encyclopaedic mind. He had an incredible memory. The Chatelet actually died a couple of days later. Yes, there are many bios of Hitler.

Q: What happened to Dr. Bloch?

A: They went to America. In Vienna, there was an exhibition of degenerate art of the Nazi period. Yes, there are many of these exhibitions.

Oh, Valerie. I think to give him labels, I’m not sure. What I’m trying to do is to give background, because I also want to give background to the kind of milieu that creates these kind of monsters, because on Thursday I’m going to be talking about Eichmann, Kaltenbrunner. I’m going to be talking about other Austrian Germans and the place they took. And Hitler is the oldest. They all really come to manhood in the twenties when there’s a huge division in little Austria between cosmopolitan Vienna, which I’m going to be lecturing on the week after, and the lower countryside, which is conservative. They thought all their dreams had been smashed.

Yes, Rosalind. It’s fascinating. He was unable to make the leap from his family’s wonderful doctor who was Jewish. Yes. You’ve got to remember he is obsessed with race. He was a man without pity.

Q: What happened to Hitler’s sister after the mother died?

A: Well, his half-sister becomes his… after he becomes an important man, before he’s Fuhrer, she becomes his housekeeper, and her daughter becomes his mistress. Tragic story that. The other sister, she survived the war.

Yes. Maria Schindler. Yeah, we must cover Schindler. She’s not a historian though.

Q: Are there any estimates or comments on Hitler’s intelligence level?

A: Not on Hitler, but I know the IQ of all those at Nuremberg, because actually a Jewish psychologist, actually he performed IQ tests, not EQ tests. Wendy and I have often discussed this. EQ is far more important than IQ. Empathy. He obviously had no empathy whatsoever. I would imagine he was actually quite clever intellectually.

Yeah. Hitler saw Vienna as Jewish. He didn’t see Vienna the same as well… He didn’t like Berlin very much. Munich was the capital for the Nazis, bourgeois Bavarian Munich, which had undergone three revolutions in 1918 and 1919, and the problem was every one of them had a disproportionate number of Jews. I haven’t yet even brought the protocols of the Elders of Zion into the mix.

Q: What happened to Kubizek?

A: Nothing. Kubizek survived the war. He lived quite an ordinary life. He had one meeting with Hitler. He was fine with him. I think he was before a denazification tribunal, but he wasn’t a Nazi. He never had any power. So he just had a minor job, so nothing happened to him. Mitzi. I’ve always felt it was the humiliation of these Vienna . It’s part of it. I’m trying to create a collage for you.

Q: Wasn’t Hitler’s name Schicklgruber?

A: His grandmother’s name was Schicklgruber. If you remember, his father was illegitimate. She then married Mr. Hissler, Heidler, Hitler. The name isn’t codified and the name was changed. That’s why he’s called Schicklgruber.

Joan. The Holocaust and Genocide Centre in Johannesburg has an Underwood typewriter that belonged to Hitler. He used it for private correspondence before he became chancellor. He sold it to a Jewish friend called Joseph Mazner, who moved to South Africa in 1936.

A friend? That’s interesting. Jonathan. I recommend Ascent and Downfall by Volker Ullrich, a brilliant biographer who examines Hitler from the German perspective. Isn’t it fascinating how we are so fascinated? I have two whole bookshelves I’m trying to… I don’t know how many books I’ve got on the Third Reich.

Q: Do the Hitlers that live in America question their relation to Hitler?

A: It’s a complicated story. There’ve been documentaries on it. There are books on it.

Yes. Wittgenstein didn’t see himself as a Jew. Wittgenstein was evidently a very precious child. He was very remote from the other kids at school.

What was his art obsession? Because who do you think were the dealers in modern art, Susan? It’s something that Patrick talks about a lot. The Jews were outside the system.

Yes, I think so, Sally. Definitely. Let’s not confuse mental illness with people who are entirely sane but nevertheless make evil choices. You see, this is the point. Hitler, think of that quote, “I can never forgive the Jews for inventing moral conscience.” Well, of course, they didn’t. But it really gives you a notion of what he’s about. He wants to create a brave new world. He’s creating a new glorious world. I think that’s the point you’ve got to take on. It’s a glorious world. It’s a world for the Aryan superman. What he later develops is he wants a world in which you have a perfectly obedient mind within the physically fit body. You ought to be totally obedient. Now, if you read people like Guido von List, when he talks about the leader, the man to come, he says, “Everything the leader does is right because he is the leader.” The Fuhrer. The Fuhrer degree. Later on, this all happens. If it comes from Hitler’s mouth, it is right. And Guido von List and his disciple, Leibenfels, are already writing in that kind of vein, that the leader, we need this man, the superman. You know this is the superman who would lead us to greatness. I mean, Wistrich goes as far as to say that Hitler becomes the dark Messiah. The Messiah with a sword in his hand. The Messiah of the German nationalists who would lead them to greatness. Look, the time isn’t right yet. It’s after the First World War when everything collapses, where you have a social, political, and economic disintegration. That’s when it comes to the fore. When people are hopeless and helpless and they look for the glorious one. Of course, there were hundreds of thousands of people who didn’t believe it. There were hundreds of thousands of decent people, but the problem is decency and liberalism is never militant, and that is something I really believe in, that if we believe in decency and if we believe in liberalism, we have to be militant about it. Sorry.

Q: Was Dr. Bloch Jewish?

A: Oh, yes. How much of Hitler’s fanaticism do you think comes from anger resulting… I’m sure it’s part from his beatings, Richard, I’m sure it’s part of it, but then an awful lot of people are beaten and they don’t become Adolf Hitler. I think it’s an amalgam, isn’t it? He was a dreamer. He’s over-loved by his mother. Can you imagine she lost five children. She’s 23 years younger than her bully of her husband. He was over-loved by one parent and treated abysmally by another. Yes. We’ve been watching Vienna Blood, and I hope you listened to Frank Tallis who came in the week before last and gave a brilliant analysis. I hope we invite him back.

There is a difference between a psychotic and a monstrous psychopath. Rose, you’re a doctor, aren’t you? I’d love a proper definition of both. I can never get a success.

Q: Why are we so interested and need to learn how to identify truly dangerous people before they cause catastrophe?

A: Yes, Ron. That is why I am fascinated. I’m fascinated by that type, who has no self-knowledge whatsoever.

Barry. I’m so confused. He had a mother who adored him, he had a teacher who he loved and admired, he had a wonderful . Look, you’re being very rational and sane, Barry. I don’t think one can be when one looks at Hitler’s background. The Hitler salute is one of the many current attacks directed at Jews. This morning in a Toronto middle school, students greeted a Jewish teacher. Don’t forget what Howard Jacobson said. “They can’t forgive us the Holocaust.” It’s very profound.

Churchill called him Schicklgruber. Yes, of course he did. And I have to admit that Churchill is one of my heroes. I know he had flaws.

Q: Why do you think having had such an interest in history, he made so many military strategic mistakes.

A: Okay. Very good question, Melvin. After his generals failed, he took over the army because he believed in the strength of German blood over the Slavs. That’s why his generals, he drove his generals absolutely besotted and mad. Look, the German generals in the main were interested in military strategy. We also know that Hitler consulted occultists, and towards the end, of course, when he was addicted to all sorts of drugs, it’s a dark story.

Q: Did Hitler father any children?

A: Not as far as we know. There are many, many books on Hitler’s sex life, and it’s a very dark area. He had a girlfriend after Geli died, of course, Eva Braun. But he was married to the German people. He got that from Karl Lueger. Karl Lueger never married because the women adored him.

Q: Have you watched documentaries that show the adulation that women gave Adolf Hitler?

A: It’s almost like a rock concert. The faces of some of these women. It’s orgasmic. It’s bizarre. People didn’t question authority as much then. No internet, no social media. Three quarters of the countries of the world are not democratic,

Q: Mickey, We know he was born in 1889. Are we sure he died in 1945? What do you think? He might have left for South America?

A: Look, there are lots of stories. If he did survive, and I think it’s very, very unlikely he did, he didn’t do anything in South America. There is a very important story about South America. Peron was paid a lot of money by the Nazis, and it came through the Vatican by an Austrian archbishop called Alois Hudal. Read The Rat Lines by the wonderful Philippe Sand. There’s so many areas we still have to cover.

Q: The tragedy of Hitler, has it led to Putin?

A: Not necessarily. It’s a Russian story, and we’re going to start Russia after Pesach.

Catherine says, the Vienna Parliament seems to be a veritable Tower of Babel. Yes. That’s what he called it. How any decisions were made is beyond imagination. Yes, of course. That is so important. That’s why I spent time reading out to you all the different parties.

Human social pathology, says Ron. People need and seek a leader, will allow themselves to be led to the depths of hell. If that is true, how does one create then the open mind? That’s where I think we should be going in education. It’s time to tear up all the books.

Q: Michelle. Not that I wish to excuse the leader, but after the crash of the Versailles Treaty and the failure of the Weimar Republic and rampant inflation, is there any wonder they believed in inspiring teachers and voted him in?

A: No, but they read Mein Kampf, they saw the bully boys on the streets, they saw the cruelty, they had their newspapers, they should have seen, because that’s the lesson we have to learn. Believe me. Heller. A psychopath knows the difference between social standards of right and wrong and doesn’t care. Others are objects to be used for personal gain, and there is an erotic charge to getting away with crimes. I think, Mr. Heller, I don’t think Hitler believed, and this is going to sound insane, I don’t think Hitler believed he was doing wrong. He was creating a glorious new world, which was beyond the restraint of conventional morality. He was anti-Christian. He did deals with the Christian Church, of course he did, but he was a pagan, and once you get into looking at what Himmler was up to, you just don’t want to know.

Q: Do you equate Hitler’s not having self-knowledge, as you say, with the great effort he made in curating his own image?

A: You know, Max, one of the problems on his own image, he actually learned most of his tricks from a Jew, but that’s for another time.

This is again from Ron. A sociopath doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong, can distinguish between reality and unreality, has no empathy or compassion. Knows that you are doing evil things but doesn’t care.

If Wendy’s still there, I think we really are going to need a very, very good psychologist at some stage. Lots of science fiction stories are based on those who live above ground and those who live below. Those who are pure and those who are tainted. The intelligent, the uneducated.

Yes. It’s lovely. And she’s asking, is this a feature of the human mind? Joan, German students learn by rote, not by thinking, easy-to-follow party line. Most people learn by rote these days, Joan, don’t they? Something I’m very worried about. Platforming. Taking away people’s free speech. Anyway, on that happy note, I think that is more or less it, isn’t it, Judi?

• [Judi] Yes. That’s all the questions. Oh, there might be one more.

• Oh yes. Susan. Hi Susan. How are you? I never understood women’s adulation of Hitler. I’ve always found him utterly repulsive, but then I have the reason. Thank you, Susan.

Q: Am I giving us more and when?

A: Marty, What I’m doing on Thursday, I’m looking at Eichmann, Kaltenbrunner, and other Austrians. I think because obviously there’s so much interest in this, I’ll discuss it with my colleagues. I might continue with another session and take him into Germany. I think probably that’s what I should do. Don’t you, Jude?

• [Judi] Yes, I’m here. Sorry. Yes, Trudy.

• I think you and I better discuss that. On Thursday, I’m going to be looking at Eichmann and Kaltenbrunner. And I do need to look at Red Vienna with you so you get the background, and I think we could perhaps put in another session on Adolf Hitler and the beginnings of the Nazi party. I think that might be useful as a result of this session.

Yes? Okay. All right, everybody. Thank you very much. I’m sorry it’s dark, but you know sometimes you have to look at the dark in order to understand and come up with some sort of antidote to it.

Anyway, keep safe everyone, and lots of love.