[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
miss. He shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs
of Reason.
Now a curse upon Because and his kin!
May Because be accursed for ever!
If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought.
If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.
Also reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite & unknown; & all their words are skew-wise.
Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!'
The Book of the Law II 27-33
It is impossible to understand Hitler's political plans unless one is familiar with his basic
beliefs and his conviction that there is a magic relationship between Man and the Universe.'
22
Publisher Love(+)Wisdom(=)Truth
GERALD SUSTER HITLER AND THE AGE OF HORUS
Hermann Rauschning
The aim of human evolution is to attain a mystic vision of the Universe.' (Adolf Hitler)
I
Much of the writing about Adolf Hitler gives us no understanding whatever of the man. Some
explain that he was a madman, without explaining how a madman, by definition one not
responsible for his actions, could rise from the Vienna gutter to the lordship of the mighty
empire he created, and be worshipped as a god. Some dismiss him as a monster, which
automatically dismisses the possibility of comprehension of him as a man. Some admit that
he was a genius, which apparently lets them out of examining the sources of, and reasons
for his genius. Hitler is surrounded by a mystical fog. Therefore, if we wish to understand
him, let us try to approach him without prejudice, at least for the time being.
He was the son of Alois Hitler, a minor Austrian customs official, born illegitimately under the
name of Schiklgruber which he subsequently changed, and Klara Poelzl, who came from a
family of small peasant proprietors. He was not proud of this petty-bourgeois background
and in later life he refused to discuss it. He also possessed the typical petty-bourgeois fear
of slipping back into the working-classes.
Alois Hitler fully intended that his son would follow him as a civil servant, but the son, though
barely eleven, resolved to resist the prospect of this worthy but uninspiring career. Despite
the fact that the father was authoritarian and domineering, the boy fought bitterly against his
wish, and, comforted by his day-dreams, shocked his earnest parent by announcing that it
was his intention to become an artist. The battle of wills continued until the father's death in
1903, when Adolf was thirteen.
Possibly as a result of this conflict, Hitler was an unimpressive pupil at the high school in
Linz; at least that was his excuse. Furthermore, he detested his teachers:
Our teachers were absolute tyrants. They had no sympathy with youth; their one object was
to stuff our brains and turn us into erudite apes like themselves. If any pupil showed the
slightest trace of originality, they persecuted him relentlessly... 1
There was only one exception to this sweeping condemnation (which many of us have
echoed) and this was the history teacher, a fanatical German nationalist named Dr Leopold
Poetsch.
Dr Poetsch was responsible for arousing in Hitler an impassioned German nationalism and a
life-long love of history, though his school performance was only fair. So much in debt to this
teacher did Hitler feel, that he visited him in 1938, just after Austria had been annexed by
Germany, and remarked to his intimates, You cannot imagine how much I owe to that old
man.'
When Hitler was sixteen, a lung ailment forced him to drop out of school without graduating.
He did not return, nor did he ever forget his poor performance, and would in later life rail
against the academic world and angrily justify his own failure. The impression he had made
upon the school may be judged by the evidence of the science teacher, Professor Gissinger,
and the French teacher, Professor Huemar. According to the former:
As far as I was concerned Hitler left neither a favourable nor unfavourable impression in
Linz ... He was slender and erect, his face pallid and very thin, almost like that of a
consumptive, his gaze unusually open, his eyes brilliant.'2
According to the latter:
Hitler was certainly gifted, although only for particular subjects, but he lacked self-control
and, to say the least, he was considered argumentative, autocratic, self-opinionated and
bad-tempered, and unable to submit to school discipline.'3
From this we can build up an impression of Hitler as an awkward adolescent, probably
23
Publisher Love(+)Wisdom(=)Truth
GERALD SUSTER HITLER AND THE AGE OF HORUS
spoiled by his mother; a wilful, obstinate introvert, unwilling to work at anything which did not
interest him; an individualist remote from his school-fellows; the same can be said-for the
adolescence of many budding artists. This impression is supported by a boyhood friend, who
recalled him as a pale, sickly youth, shy and withdrawn, who used to explode unpredictably
against those who disagreed with him in a fit of temper so violent it bordered on the
hysterical.
The years from 1905-8 Hitler was to describe as the happiest days of my life'. He was free
of the school which he loathed and of the father whom he had defied, and though his mother
nagged at him to obtain a job, she had lost the control over her son which would have
enabled her desires to prevail. Hitler was free to follow the pursuits he loved, to visit the
opera and listen to the music of his idol, Richard Wagner, to read works of history and
mythology, to wander through country lanes and city streets, to dream, and to declaim the
contents of his dreams to his only friend, August Kubizek. He had much in common with
imaginative adolescents of all times and all places, including the incapacity to translate his
fantasies into reality. He fell in love with a blonde girl called Stefanie, but for four years
merely gazed at her from afar: this could have been prompted by shyness, or by the
emergence of the masochistic desires he would later reveal. He buried himself in a self-
created world of imagination, his dreams coloured by the facts that he was both an
impassioned nationalist and an ardent Wagnerian.
Hitler persisted in his belief that he would become an artist, but in 1907 failed the entrance
examination to the Vienna Academy of Fine Art. He was advised, after he had failed again
the following year, to give up painting and take up architecture, but unless he could
demonstrate special talent, he was barred from the Vienna School of Architecture on
account of his failure to graduate from high school.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]