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

48 DER FUEHRERhis neighbor, Ransmaier. The Leonding death records report: 'Diedsuddenly of pulmonary hemorrhage.' Later his son sadly accusedhimself: 'His most ardent desire had been to help his son forge hiscareer, thus preserving him from his own bitter experience. In this, to allappearances, he had not succeeded.' Alois Hitler died in melancholydoubts concerning the future of his son.When Alois Hitler died, it seemed as though his line — rich inuncommonly strong temperaments and characters, violendy burstingforth from narrow circumstances and striving upward — had fallen intosudden decadence. Children upon children — but most of them haddied, and most of the others had turned out badly. The sudden shift intocity life seemed to be bad for these small peasants.The 'Waldviertel' in Lower Austria, from which both the Hitler andPolzl families came, is a gloomy, remote, impoverished section; likemany such regions, it has no lack of superstitions and ghost stories. Theancestors were mostly poor peasant people; 'small cottager' often standsin the church registers. Then comes the strange break in the series withthe gypsy-like character of Georg Hiedler, the grandfather; a breakwhich continues in the person of Alois Schicklgruber-Hitler and driveshis children in turn on the most unusual and varied paths. In a picture,old Alois Hitler strikingly resembles the aged Field-MarshalHindenburg; not only the same mustache, but also the same lurkingeyes, the same cheeks, mouth, and chin; the head represents the sameunmistakable square. There must have been something avid andspeculative in the man who in his old age sold farm after farm, and inhis youth had married a well-to-do woman fourteen years older thanhimself — a case which occurs no less than three times in Adolf Hitler'sancestry.A lavish yet destructive vitality dominates the paternal line. Childrenappear and die en masse. The number of Alois Hitler's legitimatechildren is seven, only four survive; but already, with regard to GeorgHiedler, the meager data permit all possible suppositions in addition tohis legal offspring. The striking mortality in the third marriage indicatesa predisposition to weakness, originating perhaps in the mother's blood;her picture shows a young woman of delicate type. The same sicknesscreeps strangely through the whole family: Alois Hitler's first andsecond wife die of consumption, he too succumbs to a lung ailment.