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Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship

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I thought I knew a lot about Adolf Hitler's life, even his youth, until I stumbled upon this book. Hitler's Vienna provides a fascinating glimpse into the social, economic, and political milieu in which young Hitler found himself immersed when he came from the provinces to the capital of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian empire in order to pursue his dream of a career in art or architecture.
The book is really less about Hitler himself than about the forces which helped to shape his weltanschauung. Though he reportedly not an anti-Semite as a youth, it was in Vienna that Hitler learned the language of anti-semitism and nationalism.
As I engrossed myself in the book, my thoughts often wandered to comparing the identity politics and quota demands of Austro-Hungarian politicians with the increasing ethnic balkanization here in the United States and wondered whether such a man as Hitler could not one day spring from our political landscape.
One of the chief things I learned is that political and ethnic anti-Semitism was already a very potent force among both the more radical German-nationalist followers of Georg Schoenerer as well as among the more mainstream supporters of the enormously popular mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger. There was also a large groundswell of anti-Czech sentiment due to a heavy flow of Czechs into Vienna and to the mistreatment by Czechs of Germans in Sudetenland, a situation that Hitler was later to temporarily rectify.
The most surprising fact about Hitler brought to light is that he had many Jewish friends during his Vienna days. And I had to laugh at the part where he was described by a former fellow boarder at the men's hostel as having arrived wearing shoulder-length hair and wearing nothing but a coat because he didn't have a shirt.
Though the book adds much to what we knew of Hitler, it comes no closer than any other of really getting inside his head to explain his true motivations. After all, hundreds of thousands of Europeans hated Jews and lived through the same hardships that young Hitler did, but only Hitler took that extra step and made the end of Jewry his life's work. Nevertheless, this book is a very valuable study and is an easy and fascinating read that comes highly recommended to all those who yearn to know more about the life and times of Adolf Hitler.

Brigitte Hamann has done a remarkable thing with this book. By examining Vienna during Hitler's formative years, she has unlocked a lot of mystery surrounding the great man himself. While it is true that she uncovered discrepancies in Hitler's description of those years in Mein Kampf, her real contribution is in helping the reader to understand what Hitler was talking about, and why he said the things he said.

Particularly useful is Hamann's analysis of the prominent politicians of the day. She first described these leaders and their political ups and downs. Then, with the testimony of the witnesses who knew Hitler during those years, she deftly draws a picture of the formative influences that helped shape the mature dictator. Hitler was obsessed with politics and he learned what worked and what did not work during those early years in Vienna. Many of his later policies first saw the light of day in the Vienna of his youth. There is a chilling passage about the problem of gypsy pickpockets expected for the 60 Anniversary Parade in honor of Emperor Franz Joseph, in 1908. One solution, seriously presented in Parliament at the time, was to tattoo a number on the forearm of every gypsy.

Hamann also provides an in-depth analysis of the Austro-Hungarian attempt at a multi-ethnic parliamentarism, the chaos and the inefficiency that it brought, and the consequent neglect for the common people. The Pan-German movement, which clearly influenced the young Hitler is clearly explained in considerable detail. At times while reading this book, I had to pause and remind myself that the period under review presaged the rise of Adolf Hitler to power by some 20 years!

Out of the murk emerges Hitler as a young man obsessed by politics, hot tempered, forceful in argument, with poor work habits, odd hours, and a penchant for talk. Hamann's decision to look at the politics that helped him to formulate his world view is brilliant history. This fascinating book is very worthy of your attention.

This excellent volume, which suffers from a poor translator, demonstrates that the overwhelmingly anti-semitic atmosphere of Vienna when Hitler lived there did not turn him into an anti-semite. It is surprising how little it seemed to influence him at that time; he seems to have successfully resisted becoming an anti-semite. Thus his war experience and the influence of post-WWI Munich must be seen as more decisive. One needs more concentration on the growth of anti-semitism in Germany and in Bavaria in particular during and shortly after the World War. However unfairly Hitler concluded that the Jews were responsible for all Germany's ills, his reaction must have been somewhat less irrational than has previously been thought. His equation of Jews and Bolshevism was widespread in Europe in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and must not be underestimated in assessing the growth of Fascism and anti-Semitism. Hamann's book makes Hitler both more and less an enigma.

Though this book is better in the original German (it loses something in the translation), Hamann is a diligent researcher who has unearthed some new facts about Hitler's period in Vienna. She uses primary sources and archive material without merely rehashing what other biographies have written in the past. The Franz Jetzinger book from the 50's is still the standard, definitive version of Hitler's Vienna years, but Hamann does a nice job and weaves in some new material. She also adroitly dismisses some claims from other German authors who have inaccurately written about Hitler's relationship with early roommate, August (Gustl) Kubizek. Thankfully, Hamann doesn't indulge in psychoanalyzing Hitler, which is sort of a deranged cottage industry amongst more recent Hitler biographers.

One small criticism is that Hamann veers away from Hitler too frequently. There is a plethora of material about Vienna's political climate in the 1910's, its mayor, the origin of anti-Semitism in the city and other ancillary details. Though all of this is relevant to Hitler, one wishes she would have stayed a bit more on topic. Still, the book is interesting, informative and devoid of errors. If you want to learn more about the young Hitler, this is an acceptable choice.

I oftened wondered about Hitler's upbringing in the men's hostels, and this vividly tells how that episode of his life may have been.

There is also a section called THEORETICIANS OF RACE AND EXPLAINERS OF THE WORLD (one of the shortest chapters)which might be of interest to anyone who has read _Occult Roots of Nazism_,with a short description of Guido von List, and Lancz von Liebenfels.

Good for the number of first hand accounts and cross-references that establish a credible history of who Hitler was around 1910.

This book takes a look not only at Hitler but at the Vienna political landscape that is increasingly becoming familiar to Americans, a multicultural society where ethnic groups formed factions, parties and their own newspapers and came to hate each other based on ethnicity alone. The difference was of course extreme poverty, so the masses were angry and hostile to each other.

This portrait of Hitler show an unemployed, pig-headed, stubborn, but politically astute orator practicing his speeches on his fellow hospice cohorts. Without money and barely a roof over his head, in rags, he preferred devouring newspapers and debating political issues. He resisted joining any of the radical parties, including anti-Semitic ones, because none of them suited his needs.

What we see is the development of a charismatic leader, one less interested in being a member of a party, but only in leading others. He was not particularly anti-Semitic, he hated the Slavs far more. But he honed his skills in debate in oratory.

The culmination of this man leading Germany in a drive for unification, his only real passion, overshadows any other aspects of his life. Not a decisive dictator like Stalin, he waited for events to happen and then made decisions. Absence is any causal reason or history that would suggest he ever wanted to annihilate the Jews. The final solution, whether it was even Hitler's plan in the first place, only came to fruition from the war and the influx of massive numbers of Jews from occupied lands.

Another Hitler book? Aren't there enough already? That's what I thought, til I read this. This is a fascinating story about the Vienna in which Hitler created his vision and plans. This is the Vienna of Adler and Freud, of coffee houses and intellectual debate. But did the young Hitler live in this mileiu from 1908 - 1913? Or was he relegated to Vienna's lower class and working class neighborhoods. What was life like there among the poor, single men? Were there any Jewish professors at the Visual Arts school he attended? (no) With the newly won right to vote, what kind of pan-German politicians caught the attention of the poor masses and of a young Hitler? What books and newspapers would he have read? How did Vienna's architecture influence Hitler's ideas symbolic art? How did Georg Schonerer affect Hitler's later ideas? Is this where he learned about anti-Semitism? A fascinating read that just draws you in.

I have spend a couple of years researching Hitler. I began to stop when I found that none of the books was giving me any new information. Hamann's book is an exception. She has researched extensively in Vienna and found records and witnesses that no other book in English has reported. An excellent book.

All the nonsense concerning Hitler's early years can be laid to rest thanks to the invaluable service of Brigitte Hamann.

Charting Hitler's youth in the provinces and formative years in Vienna up until the age of 24, Hitler emerges as a product of his social group (men's hostel disenchantment, the need to feel superior in a sea of immigrants), but already displays his vitriolic strain in uncontrolled, irrational outbursts brought on by his anxiety for a dominant German culture; a German culture he would ultimately bring to ruin.

The exclusion of Austria from the Reich created by Bismarck in 1871 spread a sense of insecurity among Germans living in an ethnically diverse city such as Vienna. Throughout the Austro-Hungarian empire, the German Austrians, although still out in front in terms of numbers (in 1910, almost 10 million with Czech's at 6.5) were nevertheless swamped by Slavs in total (Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians, Slovenians, Serbo-Croats) and were just another piece of the ethnic pie; interestingly, Hitler was anti-Slav before he was anti-Semitic.

Hamann explores the complex social texture to this environment in a comprehensive fashion, introduces us to many confused `theoreticians of race and explainers of the world' along with political role models such as Karl Lueger, anti-Semitic major of Vienna between 1897-1910; the reproduction of contemporary newspaper cartoons and illustrations are informative statements in themselves, particularly as these newspapers, in all likelihood, were read by Hitler. Many of the motifs to Nazi ideology that were superimposed on Germany after its collapse from the First World War and consequent economic shock waves, can largely be traced back to Vienna's pressure cooker mould out of which Hitler stepped.

Hamann successfully shows how late imperial Vienna, undermined by ethnic tensions, exerted a big influence on the formation of Hitler's outlook:

`The simultaneous search of various peoples for their own identity was particularly explosive in the Dual Monarchy's huge melting pot. The more a people nourished its own image as a people, the stranger the other peoples appeared to be.'

Highly recommended!

Brigitte Hamann is an eminent German historian. In "Hitler's Vienna" she turns her historical spyglass on Vienna and Adolf Hitler.

Hitler (1889-1945) was born in Linz Austria to a minor

governmental official and his third wife Klara. Adolf was abused by his father; was lazy and spoiled by his mother who died in 1907. Hitler and his friend Kubizek, a budding musician, decided to try their fortune in Vienna. Hitler survived by painting postcards; living in a men's hostel for three years and absorbing the right wing pamphlets and books produced there.

During his miserable few years in Vienna Hitler became a student of PanGermanic beliefs. His political idols were George Schroener a fanatical anti-semite along with such other far right thinkers and doers as Fritz Stein and Wolf. His idol was Karl Lueger the single Roman Catholic mayor of Vienna. Lueger was an anti-semite and self-described tribune of the people. Mayor Lueger was an outstanding orator. Hitler used Lueger as his political model. During the Vienna years Hitler was friendly with Jews in his personal life. He grew to become a bitter enemy of them only with his move to Munich in 1913 and his bitter experiences during World War I. (in which he blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat).

Hitler was a loner who stayed shy of women. He was upset after he was rejected as a student at the famous Vienna Art Institute. Hitler was argumentative and difficult to get to know. Hitler, while in Vienna, became a voracious reader of lunatic fringe writings on race. He also savored the joys of attending the opera seeing productions by his favorite composer the anti-semitic Richard Wagner. One of the reasons Hitler fled Vienna was his disgust at facing service in the Austrian military as a draftee. Hitler later won the Iron Cross while serving as a corporal in the List Regiment of the German army during World War I.

Much of Hamann's book is a study of Vienna. During the Hitler years the city was politcally chaotic as rival nationalities such as the Czechs, Hungarians and Germans battled in the parliament. The city was overcrowded lacking housing and proper sanitation facilities. Welfare was nonexistent. The city was crowded with poor people from eastern Europe and the Austrian-Hungarian provinces. Minorities such as Jews, Czechs and Italians were discriminated against. Vienna was not a happy or congenial place in these pre-World War I years.

Hamann's book is more than a biography of the young Hitler. Her scholary book explores the philosophical and cultural climate of Vienna that produced such a terrible tyrant as Adolf Hitler. The book of over 400 small print pages is an excellent study of the period when the mindset of Adolf Hitler was being formed.