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

68 DER FUEHRER(My Political Awakening), which appeared in Munich in 1920; but theattitude it expresses is nevertheless genuine and his own.It was not among the oppressed, but among the shipwrecks, that AdolfHitler came to know the people. The class concepts of the labormovement can be regarded as true or false; but beyond a doubt they arebased on pride, self-respect, and sense of strength. But in the lodginghousethere is no self-respect or sense of strength, but only unreliabilityand distrust. A common striving for contradictory aims is the way ofthis degenerate community; to help one another up and then push oneanother down; to hold together and then cheat one another. This humanchaff molded the precocious Hitler's conceptions of human worth. Herefor the first time he saw the mass, the later object of his politics; and yetthis would have no decisive significance if it could not be said of thisdisloyal, loveless man that in it he saw himself.In his own self-portrait Hitler uttered not a word of this oppressed,impotent vegetating life amid the human wreckage; and in general thisself-portrait is a masterpiece of unreliability, concealment, occasionalfalse claims, self-praise and self-pity. Neither the lodging-house nor theHome for Men is found in it, neither the advertising drawings nor hisfriend Hanisch, not to mention his Jewish friend, Neumann. Themelting-pot of Vienna at that time teemed with sub-proletarian Jews,and Hitler, whether he liked them or not, belonged among them. Hewore the long coat given him by Neumann, and a stiff, greasy, blackderby; his matted hair hung down over his collar, his fuzzy beardformed a thick ruff around his chin — if we may believe Hanisch'sreport and the drawings which Hanisch later did from memory, heconstituted 'an apparition such as rarely occurs among Christians.'Cynically his comrade said to him, 'Your father must have been outwhen you were conceived,' and your shoes are also 'of the nomadbrand.' Neither in Adolf Hitler's physical appearance nor in the historyof his family is there any serious suspicion of Jewish strain, and yetamong the unkempt Jews of Vienna, he looked like an unkempt Jew ofVienna. Such is the force of environment. On the basis of these few whooutwardly resembled him, he formed his opinion about them all. Fromthese figures of the Vienna slums, unwashed like