What turned Adolf Hitler, a relatively normal and apparently unexceptional young man, into the very personification of evil? To answer this question, acclaimed historian Brigitte Hamann has turned to the critical, formative, years that the young Hitler spent in Vienna. For it was here, behind the glittering curtain of artistic creativity, liberalism and prosperity, that the architect of the Holocaust was born. As a failing, bitter and desperately poor artist, Hitler experienced only the dark underbelly of Vienna, which was seething with fear, racial prejudice, anti-semitism and conservatism. Drawing on previously untapped sources - from personal reminiscences to the records of shelters where Hitler slept - Hamann vividly recreates the dark side of fin de siecle Vienna and paints the fullest and most disturbing portrait of the young Hitler to date - the genesis of the most terrifying dictator the world has ever known.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Foreword by Hans Mommsen
Preface
1 From the Province to the Capitol
2 The Vienna of the Modern Era
3 The Imperial City
4 In Parliament
5 The Social Question
6 As a Painter in the Men's Hostel
7 Theoreticians of Race and Explainers of the World
8 Political Role Models
9 Czechs in Vienna
10 Jews in Vienna
11 Young Hitler and Women
12 Before the Great War
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
