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

HE IS BOTH TERRIBLE AND BANAL 39muller. A little anecdote has come down to us which characterizes thetemperament of the whole family: one day in a rage the young manthrew his change purse out of the window. It contained his whole pocketmoney consisting of a kreuzer. If he didn't have any more money thanthat, he cried out, he didn't need the kreuzer either.It will probably be impossible to find out whose son he was consideredby those who knew or should have known; but in the eyes of thevillage he apparently passed as a child of the Hiedler or Hutler family.To judge by his character as we see it in the meager documents, it isprobable that the odd man who wandered about Lower Austria as amiller's helper actually was the grandfather of the odd man who laterbecame a scourge and mystery to the world. It has also been suggestedthat not Georg Hiedler but his brother, Johann von Nepomuk Hutler,was the father of Alois Schicklgruber, and thus the grandfather of AdolfHitler. This is an hypothesis defying proof. But there is one curious factwhich cannot be argued away: the later National Socialist raciallegislation requires everyone desiring to pass as an Aryan to prove fourAryan grandparents; if brought before strict judges, Adolf Hitler mighthave difficulty proving the identity of his paternal grandfather.The young Alois Schicklgruber does not seem to have been happy inhis home. Apparently he was not treated as a legitimate child and waswithout expectation of inheritance. His son later related that his fatherleft his native village fully determined not to return 'until he had madesomething of himself.' This 'something,' in accordance with smallpeasants' conceptions, was a profession of command: the police career.At eighteen he became a border policeman in the Austrian customsservice near Salzburg. He guarded the national border and huntedsmugglers — in a word, he became a man-hunter. An honorableprofession, but scarcely friendly to man. In many countries it is thechildren of poor, out-of-the-way country sections who, from inbornhardness and contempt of humanity, choose the police profession. Thisillegitimate son of a small peasant took up his rifle and stalked theborders for human prey. The people in his native village must havelooked on him with timid amazement when they first saw him in