rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

BIRTH OF THE THIRD REICH 17and partook of all I had . . . My life was a continual struggle with this pitilessfriend. 39It never, however, drove him to the extremity of trying to find a regularjob. As he makes clear in Mein Kampf, he had the petty bourgeoisie’s gnawingfear of sliding back into the ranks of the proletariat, of the manual laborers – afear he was later to exploit in building up the National Socialist Party on thebroad foundation of the hitherto leaderless, ill-paid, neglected white-collar class,whose millions nourished the illusion that they were at least socially better offthan the ”workers.”Although Hitler says he eked out at least part of a living as ”a small painter,”he gives no details of this work in his autobiography except to remark that inthe years 1909 and 1910 he had so far improved his position that he no longerhad to work as a common laborer.”By this time,” he says, ”I was working independently as a small draftsmanand painter of water colors.” 40This is somewhat misleading, as is so much else of a biographical nature inMein Kampf. Though the evidence of those who knew him at the time appearsto be scarcely more trustworthy, enough of it has been pieced together to givea picture that is probably more accurate and certainly more complete. ∗That Adolf Hitler was never a house painter, as his political opponentstaunted him with having been, is fairly certain. At least there is no evidencethat he ever followed such a trade. What he did was draw or paint crude littlepictures of Vienna, usually of some well-known landmark such as St. Stephen’sCathedral, the opera house, the Burgtheatcr, the Palace of Schoenbrunn orthe Roman ruins in Schoenbrunn Park. According to his acquaintances hecopied them from older works; apparently he could not draw from nature. Theyare rather stilted and lifeless, like a beginning architect’s rough and carelesssketches, and the human figures he sometimes added are so bad as to remindone of a comic strip. I find a note of my own made once after going through aportfolio of Hitler’s original sketches: ”Few faces. Crude. One almost ghoulishface.” To Heiden, ”they stand like tiny stuffed sacks outside the high, solemnpalaces.” 41Probably hundreds of these pitiful pieces were sold by Hitler to the pettytraders to ornament a wall, to dealers who used them to fill empty picture frameson display and to furniture makers who sometimes tacked them to the backs ofcheap sofas and chairs after a fashion in Vienna in those days. Hitler could alsobe more commercial. He often drew posters for shopkeepers advertising suchproducts as Teddy’s Perspiration Powder, and there was one, perhaps turned outto make a little money at Christmas time, depicting Santa Claus selling brightlycolored candles, and another showing St. Stephen’s Gothic spire, which Hitlernever tired of copying, rising out of a mountain of soap cakes.This was the extent of Hitler’s ”artistic” achievement, yet to the end of hislife he considered himself an ”artist.”∗ See Das Ende des Hitler-Mylhos, by Josef Greiner, who was personally acquainted withHitler during part of his Vienna days. See also Hitler the Pawn, by Rudolf Olden; Olden’sbook includes statements from Reinhold Hanisch, a Sudeten tramp who for a time was aroommate of Hitler’s in the men’s hostel and who hawked some of his paintings. KonradHeiden, in Dcr Fuehrer, also quotes material from Hanisch. including the court records of alawsuit which Hitler brought against the tramp for cheating him out of a share of a paintingwhich Hanisch allegedly sold for him.