Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

HE IS BOTH TERRIBLE AND BANAL 55except when he was in 'ecstasy'; and this occurred as soon as theconversation turned to politics. Then he went up 'like a flame.' Onecannot vouch for every word of these reports, but it is safe to visualizethe young Adolf Hitler of those days going about like an eccentric andunkempt saint. There also are more precise reports.A year after his mother's death, he sank into the bitterest misery. Hehad no more money and was obliged, in November, 1909, to give up hislast real lodging, a furnished room in the Simon Denk Gasse. For a fewnights he wandered around without shelter, sleeping first in cafes, thenon park benches. He learned how it felt to be awakened by policemenand chased away from your bench. One night in despair he begged awell-dressed drunk for money; the drunk raised his stick and wanted tobeat him. This experience deeply embittered him; later he told the storyseveral times to comrades, who simply asked him if he didn't knowbetter than to beg of a drunken man.The downward path of the twenty-year-old ended in the beginning ofNovember, 1909, in a lodging-house in the suburb of Meid-ling. A lightblanket on a hard spring, his own clothes for a pillow, his shoes wedgedbeneath the leg of the bed lest they be stolen, to left and right of him hiscompanions in misery — thus Adolf Hitler passed the next months. Inthe cloister of Gumpen-dorfer Strasse he had free soup every day; in theevening his comrades in the lodging-house gave him a piece of horsesausage or a crust of bread. When the first snow fell, he hobbled outwith his sore feet a few times to shovel snow on one of the Danubebridges, but the hard work in the cold soon proved too much for him. Hehad no overcoat. He trudged through the snow with his comrades to thesuburb of Erdberg or the district of Favoriten; there they hung aroundthe 'warming rooms' where the homeless took refuge from the cold andfound soup and bread to still their hunger. These warming rooms were acharity of Baron Konigswarter, a man of Jewish origin. OccasionallyHitler stood outside the West Station, and carried travelers' suitcases fora few pennies. Then he wanted to apply for some digging work,advertised in the Favoriten section. But a newfound friend told him notto, saying that once he took to manual labor, the upward path would bevery difficult. Hitler followed his advice.