What happened to Hitler as a child in Vienna?

Answer

Hitler had never given up his dream of being an artist and after leaving school he left for Vienna to pursue his dream. However, his life was shattered when, aged 18, his mother died of cancer. Witnesses say that he spent hours just staring at her dead body and drawing sketches of it as she lay on her death bed.

In Vienna, the Vienna Academy of Art, rejected his application as "he had no School Leaving Certificate". His drawings which he presented as evidence of his ability, were rejected as they had too few people in them. The examining board did not just want a landscape artist.

Without work and without any means to support himself, Hitler, short of money lived in a doss house with tramps. He spent his time painting post cards which he hoped to sell and clearing pathways of snow. It was at this stage in his life - about 1908 - that he developed a hatred of the Jews.

He was convinced that it was a Jewish professor that had rejected his art work; he became convinced that a Jewish doctor had been responsible for his mother�s death; he cleared the snow-bound paths of beautiful town houses in Vienna where rich people lived and he became convinced that only Jews lived in these homes. By 1910, his mind had become warped and his hatred of the Jews - known as anti-Semitism - had become set.

Hitler called his five years in Vienna "five years of hardship and misery". In his book called "Mein Kampf", Hitler made it clear that his time in Vienna was entirely the fault of the Jews - "I began to hate them".

However ...

In their biograhies of Hitler, Alan Bullock and Ian Kershaw cite evidence that contradicts this version of his years in Vienna. Hitler succeeded in persuading various female relatives to make regular payments to him. These were not large sums but he didn't suffer hardship and wasn't homeless, either. 'Mein Kampf' is not a trustworthy source. It's a work of propaganda and essentially one long rant by a man with a grudge.

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