Hitler Case

Hitler was born into the family of an Austrian customs official. His father had worked his way up to a responsible position from exceptionally poor beginnings as an illegitimate child. This latter fact has led to speculation that Hitler's grandfather might have been Jewish, but since there were no Jews in the town where Hitler's grandmother worked, this story, however often repeated, has no basis in fact. While the boy Hitler clearly did not get on well with his father, primarily because he neither applied himself to his schoolwork nor aspired to a substantial career as his father had, he very much loved his mother. He was devastated when she died of cancer in spite of the efforts of her Jewish doctor to whom Hitler always remained extremely grateful for the care he had provided.

The boy did not do particularly well in school, in part because he preferred to play rather than study and in part because he simply would not study hard. As a youngster he moved to Vienna, living with a friend who was studying seriously while Hitler was denied entrance to the arts academy, refused to admit to this failure to his family, and lived on the pension from his deceased father and funds provided by family members. As his money ran out, he moved into cheaper housing and in part supported himself by painting local buildings and scenes for sale to tourists. During the years in Vienna he evidently began to absorb some of the racist and antisemitic ideas that would dominate his subsequent elaboration of and dedication to them. Perhaps equally important, he observed the electoral politics of the time. In doing so, he simultaneously developed an understanding of how to appeal to masses of people, a vehement aversion to democratic procedures, and a hatred of Slavic peoples. These people were represented in the Vienna of his time primarily by Czech families from Bohemia who had moved to the city for jobs.

In May 1913 Hitler left Vienna for Munich to escape service in the Austrian army; his obsessive hatred of the Hapsburg dynasty clearly goes back to an early date. Obliged to return, he was found physically incapable of military service. This did not keep him from volunteering for the Bavarian part of the German army in August 1914 and being accepted into it right after the outbreak of World War I. He served, primarily as a messenger, on the Western Front. Although he was decorated for bravery, he was promoted only to the rank of private first class. He experienced the end of the war in a hospital at Pasewalk because of a temporary blindness evidently caused by hysteria rather than gas as often claimed. He was cured of his blindness by hypnosis.

Emerging into a defeated Germany, Hitler was shattered by this event. It would affect his outlook on the world - and his conduct of World War II - thereafter. Convinced that the German army had not been defeated at the front, he would join those in the German government, military, and society at large who attributed the nation's defeat to a legendary "stabin-the-back" by domestic enemies among whom Hitler, like