the opposite of his conclusion. It is reasonable to assume that Hitler would have been prompted to such an act of consideration only if he wished to admit that he himself was the father and had legitimized Alois as his own son. All the other arguments are equally dubious. In general, Maser cannot suggest any plausible motive for Huttler’s conduct. It is a very old assumption that Hitler insisted on the change of name as a condition for appointing Alois Schicklgruber his heir; cf., for instance, Kubizek, p. 59. We must add that the question of who Hitler’s grandfather was is really of secondary importance. Only Hans Frank’s version could have given it a new psychological dimension; aside from that, it is merely a matter of minor interest.
4. Mein Kampf, p. 6.
5. Mein Kampf, pp. 8, 10.
6. Mein Kampf, p. 10.
7. Mein Kampf, p. 18. Hitler alleged a “serious lung ailment,” but the assertion will not hold water. Cf. Jetzinger, p. 148; also Heiden, Hitler I, p. 28. The episode is also reported in Zoller, p. 49, where Hitler traces his dislike for alcohol back to it. On the incident of the discarded report card cf. Maser, Hitler, pp. 68 ff.
8. Kubizek repeatedly stresses Hitler’s striking tendency to confound dream and reality. See, for example, pp. 100 f. For the episode of the lottery ticket (which follows here), see pp. 127 ff.
9. Kubizek, p. 79.
10. Ibid., pp. 140 ff. However, the scene appears to have been exaggerated and retouched. On the whole, Kubizek’s credibility is suspect. His memoirs were conceived with the intention of glorifying Hitler. The value of the book consists less in demonstrable facts than in the descriptions and character judgments that quite often emerge against the author’s will.
11. Mein Kampf, p. 5. Hitler speaks of the “lovely dream” on p. 18. Cf. the letter to Kubizek dated August 4, 1933, in which Hitler speaks of the “best years of my life”; facsimile in Kubizek, p. 32.
12. Oral communication from Albert Speer. On Hitler’s fantasy of withdrawing from politics see Tischgesprache, pp. 167 f.
13. Cf. Andies, p. 192. Also, for this and the previously mentioned facts and statistics: Jenks, pp. 113 ff. In 1913, 29 per cent of the students in the Faculty of Medicine were Jews, 20.5 per cent in the Faculty of Law, and 16.3 per cent in the Faculty of Philosophy. By contrast, the Jewish proportion among criminals was 6.3 per cent, considerably lower than the Jewish proportion in the population at large. Cf. Jenks, pp. 121 f.
14. Mein Kampf, p. 19. The following “classification list” is printed in Heiden, Hitler I, p. 30 (Der Fuhrer, p. 52).
15. Mein Kampf, p. 20.
16. Ibid., p. 20.
17. Quoted in Maser, Hitler, pp. 82 ff. Cf. also the report of the Vienna Gestapo dated December 30, 1941, quoted in Smith, p. 113.
18. Mein Kampf, pp. 21 f.
19. We owe the precise calculation of Hitler’s monthly income to Franz Jetzinger, who with pedantic ingenuity has tracked down all the sources of such income. The comparison to the earnings of a junior magistrate is also his. It is interesting to note, incidentally, that at this time Mussolini was employed in Austrian Trent as editor-in-chief of L’Avvenire del Lavoratore and secretary of the socialist Labor Bureau. For these two jobs he received a total income of 120 crowns—not much more than Hitler’s income as one of the unemployed. See Kirkpatrick, Mussolini.
20. Kubizek, pp. 126, 210–20, 256 f., 307. Also Jetzinger, pp. 194 ff. For Hitler’s remark that he heard Tristan in Vienna thirty or forty times, see Cameron and Stevens, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, pp. 270 f. Jenks, p. 202, has shown that during Hitler’s years in Vienna Richard Wagner was incontestably the most popular operatic composer; at the Hofoper alone Wagner operas were given on at least 426 evenings during that period.
21. Tischgesprache, pp. 275, 323, 422. Also Kubizek, p. 199, describes Hitler venting his anger upon the Academy. This must refer to his first rejection, since Kubizek was not in Vienna at the time of the second rejection and saw nothing of Hitler again after he returned.
22. Mein Kampf, p. 23. In much the same sense Stefan Zweig notes in Die Welt von gestern, p. 50, “the worst threat that existed in the bourgeois world was falling back into the proletariat.” See also Heiden, Geschichte, p. 16.
23. Greiner, p. 25. Greiner’s memories of Hitler raise many questions. In contrast to Kubizek he has no proof of the close acquaintanceship that he claims to have had with Hitler. Nevertheless, his work does contain a number of hints that increase our knowledge. His evidence can be used, however, only to the extent that it is supported by other accounts, or by other examples of similar behavior on Hitler’s part.
24. Mein Kampf, p. 40.
25. Cf. Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab. Lanz considered Hitler his disciple; he named, among other disciples who had early seen the importance of his doctrines, Lord Kitchener and Lenin! This fact sheds considerable light on Lanz himself and the pathological structure of his thought. His principal work, published in 1905, bore the illuminating title: Theozoologie oder die Kunde von den Sodoms-ufflingen und dem GotterElektron. Eine Einfuhrung in die alteste und neueste Weltanschauung und eine Rechtfertigung des Furstentumes und des Adels (“Theo-zoology or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electron of the Gods. An Introduction into the Oldest and Newest Philosophy and a Justification of Royalty and Nobility”). The blue-blond “Arioheroicans” were in his view “masterpieces of the gods,” equipped with electric organs and even transmitters. By eugenic concentration and breeding for purity the Arioheroic race was to be redeveloped and once again provided with the divine electromagnetic-radiological organs and powers it had lost. The age’s anxiety feelings, elitist leanings toward secret societies, fashionable idolization of Science by dabblers in the sciences, all tied together by a considerable dose of intellectual and personal fraud, combined to shape this doctrine.
Daim surely overestimates Lanz’s influence on Hitler; it seems certain that this influence did not extend beyond the limits described in the text. The situation is obviously different in regard to several other Nazi leaders, such as Darre and above all Heinrich Himmler. Directly or indirectly, in both the breeding catalogues of the SS Race and Settlement Bureau and in the practice of exterminating “unfit” lives, or Jews, Slavs, and gypsies, the weird and murderous notions of Lanz von Liebenfels in a way persisted.
26. Mein Kampf, pp. 56 if.
27. Greiner, p. 110. Cf. Bullock, Hitler, p. 39; but see also Shirer, Rise and Fall, p. 26.
28. Mein Kampf, p. 325. The assurance, urged as “a certainty,” that Hitler had no relations with women in Linz or Vienna, comes from Kubizek and of course applies only to the time Kubizek spent with Hitler (Kubizek, p. 276).
29. Mein Kampf, pp. 55, 69.
30. Ibid., p. 122.
31. Maser, Fruhgeschichte, p. 92, has a different opinion; he maintains that Kubizek was in the right as against Hitler, but adduces no evidence to justify his view. For the cited phrases from Hitler see Mein Kampf, pp. 39 f., where Hitler also admits that his knowledge of union organization at the time he began work at the building site was still “practically nonexistent.” There is no reason to doubt this assertion. Hitler’s anti-Semitism at this time was not yet thoroughgoing or consistent. As late as 1936 Hanisch, his companion from the home for men, insisted that Hitler in Vienna had not been an anti-Semite. Hanisch presented an extensive list of Jews with whom Hitler had allegedly maintained cordial relations. Cf. Smith, p. 149.
32. Cf. Jahrbuch der KK Zentralanstalt fur Meteorologie, 1909, pp. A 108, A 118, cited in Smith, p. 127. Werner Maser (Fruhgeschichte, p. 77) has challenged Konrad Heiden and the historians deriving from him. Making downright assertions on a flimsy foundation, Maser argues that financial reasons would “with certainty” not have forced Hitler to seek shelter in a doss-house. But in calculating Hitler’s financial situation Maser has assumed that Hitler’s inheritance from his father was available to him as a permanent annuity. In reality it amounted to about 700 crowns and, depending on how quickly Hitler
