It has long been believed that the genesis of the Nazi Holocaust was in the bad treatment of the German leader as a young man by Jews in Vienna.
But Australian author Paul Ham says there is not only no evidence of any mistreatment, but instead Hitler had numerous Jewish friends, benefactors and a love interest.
Whatever inspired Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Holocaust, Australian author Paul Ham says it was not his youthful mistreatment by Jews in Vienna.
When the penniless artist found his way to a Viennese men’s hostel in 1909, his benefactors included one-eyed, middle-aged Jewish locksmith’s assistant Simon Robinson.
Despite his limited riches, Robinson shared his pension pfennings with the new arrival.
Robinson was among several Viennese Jews who helped out desititute young Adolf Hitler in the city between 1908 and 1913.
A flowing frock coat that replaced the irate young artist’s blue suit, ruined after sleeping rough on park benches, was another hand-out, donated by Jewish copper polisher Josef Neumann. Neumann also introduced Hitler to Jewish art buyers Seigfried Loffner, Jakob Altenberg and Samuel Morgenstern, whose patronage kept young Hitler off the streets.
“Hitler later claimed his Vienna years formed the ‘granite foundation’ of his political struggle against Marxism and world Jewry,” Ham writes in Young Hitler: The Making Of The Fuhrer. “Clearly, this statement in Mein Kampf was a deliberate lie.”
Read the article by Marea Donnelly, History Writer in The Daily Telegraph.
Young Hitler: The Making Of The Führer by Paul Ham is published by Penguin Random House Australia on October 30, $32.99.