A Psychological Analysis Of Adolf Hitler

A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler
Emma Clark
December 3, 2012
University of Mary Washington

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ABSTRACT
Adolf Hitler is undoubtedly one of the most terrifying and significant figures of
the twentieth century. Historians and psychologists alike are fascinated by the many
unanswered questions that Hitler left behind. From the moment he came into power,
historians and psychiatrists have been captivated by Adolf Hitler. Authors continually try
to answer many burning questions in attempts to better understand Hitler as a man and as
a leader. This project will analyze Adolf Hitler’s early years and show how critical his
childhood was in directly influencing the development of his character.
Adolf Hitler is undoubtedly one of the most terrifying and significant figures of
the twentieth century. Historians and psychologists alike are fascinated by the many

2
unanswered questions that Hitler left behind. Even before his fall from power, literature
on Adolf Hitler was emerging, specifically, on the topic of his personality and way of
thinking; many authors attempted to figure out what influenced his decisions and
behavior. From the moment he came into power, historians and psychiatrists have been
captivated by Adolf Hitler. Authors continually try to answer many burning questions in
an attempt to better understand Hitler as a man and as a leader.
There are many different theories on how Hitler became the way he was. What
can be concluded is that, while no one event can claim responsibility, Adolf Hitler’s
childhood was a significant period in the development of his overall character. Events
and influences from his childhood through early adulthood, contributed decisively to the
development of his personal traits. This thesis paper will demonstrate how the many
events of Hitler’s childhood and early adulthood such as his parents and the nature of
their parenting, his lack of friends, his schooling, and his experience in Vienna and the
First World War, along with other influences collectively formed, by the end of World
War One, the Hitler that would eventually come to power in 1933.
The literature for this topic varies into several sections, the two of the most
important categories include biographies and psychological analyses. Each of the sections
have evolved over time in both approach and argument. The biographies differ based on
available sources and their portrayal of Hitler and the psychological studies differ in
argument and their perception of the influence of Hitler’s childhood on his later life.
Psychological analyses of Hitler began early, the first of which was written in
1943 by Walter Langer. Langer was a psychoanalyst who was hired by the Office of
Strategic Services to write an analysis of Hitler’s psychological makeup. As Langer

3
explained himself, “Psychoanalysts were chosen for this difficult task because
psychoanalysts, alone, had devised a technique for exploring the deeper regions of the
mind and exposing the importance of early experiences and unconscious components as
determinants of personality development.”1
Langer analyzed the few available sources on
Hitler’s childhood in order to understand its importance in the development of his psyche.
Adolf Hitler had always been a severe introvert; as Langer states, “The task was
particularly perplexing in the case of Hitler since so little was known about the formative
years of his life, and he had gone to great lengths to conceal or distort the little that was
known.”2
Dr. Henry Murray of the Harvard Psychological Clinic was also asked by the
Office of Strategic Services to submit a psychological report of Hitler. In 1942, Murray
came to many of the same conclusions as his colleague, Langer. Murray lists many of
Hitler’s strengths such as his appreciation of the masses, his recognition of the
importance of youth, etc. Murray also points out many of Hitler’s weaknesses and
contradictions such as his endorsement of masculine strength when Hitler was physically
weak and sickly. Murray recognizes the importance of Hitler’s childhood as he mentions
several times the influence of his parents; Murray states that Hitler’s father influenced his
inclination toward revenge. Murray reports that Hitler shows signs of paranoid
schizophrenia and concludes that he may go insane or kill himself.3
1
Walter Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler (New York: Basic Books, Inc.,
Publishers, 1972), 15
2
Ibid, 18.
3
Henry A. Murray M.D., "Analysis of the Personality of Adolf Hitler," O.S.S.
Confidential, Harvard Psychological Clinic (1943), 24.

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In 1975, T.L. Brink wrote a psychohistory of Hitler from an Adlerian Perspective.
Alfred Adler was an Austrian psychotherapist during the early 20th
Centruy and
developed what is known as the Adlerian Theory of Pshychotherapy. The central
comcept of the Adlerian Theory is (in German) Gemeinschaftgefühl, which best translates
to a ‘feeling of community.’4
As described by Dr. Martha Edwards and Dr. Henry Stein,
this ‘feeling of community’ is a multi-level concept; “Individuals may understand and put
into practice some levels and neglect the development of others.” Adler discusses the
relationship between self and society; Adler saw no conflict between self and society,
instead he believed that the “greater one’s personal development, the more able one can
connect positively with others.”5
In Adlerian Theory, the development of a personality is
“an active and creative process in which individuals attribute meaning to the life
experiences they have faced…they are not passive victims of heredity or environment but
active constructors and interpreters of their situations.”6
Dr. Edwards and Dr. Stein explain the process beginning in infancy, “children
become conscious of felt insufficiencies...when they compare themselves to older
children and adults…they experience…inferiority feelings…Adler describes this as
experiencing a “minus situation.” These feelings become motivation for striving
toward…a “plus situation.””7
Brink uses Adler’s Theories in his psycho historical
analysis of Hitler.
4
Martha Edwards and Henry Stein, Classical Adlerian Theory and Practice,
2005, http://www.adlerian.us/theoprac.htm (accessed 2013).
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.

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Published in the Journal of Individual Psychology, Brink’s analysis takes a much
more skeptical approach than that of Langer or Murray. He disagrees with Langer’s and
Murray’s diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. While Brink makes no mention of
Murray’s report, he says that Langer’s report shows a lack of reliable resources and
reflects “America’s wartime hysteria.”8
Brink discusses Hitler’s inferiority feeling and
the effects of his father’s harshness and mother’s pampering as well as three life tasks:
friendship, career and marriage.9
In 1979, journalist, Sebastian Haffner, wrote The Meaning of Hitler, an historical
and psychological examination of Hitler’s life. Haffner discusses Hitler’s early life and
the historical, political, and emotional forces that molded his character; he then discusses
how Hitler was able to come to power and why he was destined to fail. Of Hitler’s
character, Haffner states, “There is no development, no maturing in Hitler’s character and
personality. His character was fixed at an early age…and remains astonishingly
consistent; nothing was added to it.”10
In 1992, Edleff Schwabb published Hitler’s Mind: A Plunge into Madness. In
writing this analysis of Hitler, Schwabb had a unique perspective as he grew up in Nazi
Germany. His father had been an early member of the Nazi Party and Edleff Schwabb,
served in the German Army on the eastern front during the Second World War. Shortly
after the war, Schwabb emigrated to the United States where he studied to become a
psychologist. In A Plunge into Madness, Schwabb makes the argument that Hitler’s
8
T.L. Brink, "The Case of Hitler: An Adlerian Perspective on Psychohistory,"
Journal of Individual Psychology (University of Chicago Divinity School) 31, no. 1 (May
1975): 23, 24.
9
Brink, 25-27.
10
Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler, trans. Ewald Owens (New York:
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979), 7.

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psychosis gradually emerged over time and had several determining factors. While
Schwabb discusses Hitler’s early life and does not dismiss its importance, he does make
the point that many children suffered through similar events and did not grow up to
become psychotic dictators.
Schwabb does not try to pinpoint a specific time or event in which Hitler snapped
and became mentally ill; rather, Schwabb tracks the evolution of Hitler’s mental illness
throughout his life in four distinct stages that show the progression of his psychosis.
Unlike many other historians and psychiatrists, Schwabb does not place too much
emphasis on early childhood nor is he heavily influenced by Freudian thought. Schwabb
comes to the conclusion that “Hitler misused his power… Driven by a desire for
conquest, he meant to eliminate the “ultimate enemy” – Jews. In this thought the core of
the disturbance of his mind can be found, for a normal mind is not able to conceive of
violence as a blessing.”11
One of the earliest biographies on Adolf Hitler was written by Alan Bullock in
1962 entitled Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. This biography is divided into three sections
which outline various stages in Adolf Hitler’s life. ‘Party Leader’ begins with Hitler’s
birth in 1889 and ends with the beginning of Hitler’s chancellorship in 1933. Book II,
‘Chancellor,’ is devoted to those years leading up to the war, from 1933 to 1939. Book
III, ‘War-Lord,’ completes the biography, focusing on the years of war from 1939 to
Hitler’s demise in 1945.
The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler is another prominent biography written in
1973 by Robert Payne. Robert Payne was born in England in 1911 and studied at
11
Edleff H. Schwaab, Hitler's Mind, A Plunge into Madness (New York:
Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 1992), xxxvii.

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universities throughout England as well as in Paris and Munich.12
Like Bullock, Payne
believes that Hitler had “no loyalties, no religious faith, no culture, no family ties.”13
According to Payne, Adolf Hitler was a psychopath for whom killing became a habit.
Payne’s biography is divided into several sections that chronologically map out Hitler’s
life. While a small percentage of the biography covers Hitler’s early life, Payne states in
his introduction: “He was himself aware of the demonic nature of his gifts… Very early
in his life he saw that he was alienated from other men, shared few of their enjoyments
and ambitions, and could dispense with their company. He lived alone, cherishing his
loneliness and his singularity...”14
Payne’s biography was followed by John Toland’s, Adolf Hitler, published in
1976. John Toland was an award-winning American author and historian who became
much celebrated after his biography of Hitler. Like Langer, Toland focused on interviews
as a key part of research. He conducted over 250 interviews for this biography, which
resulted in seemingly the most well-researched and well-organized biography to date.
Toland did his best to remain free of opinion and judgment throughout the biography and
simply states the facts of his research in nine separate chronological sections on Hitler’s
life. Toland’s biography has no thesis because, “Hitler was far more complex and
contradictory than [Toland] had imagined.”15
Like Payne’s, and many other biographies,
only a small percentage of Hitler’s childhood is covered though Toland recognizes that
Hitler’s personality traits are visible very early on. At a young age Hitler was a
12
Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (New York, New York:
Praeger Publishers, 1973).
13
Ibid, xi.
14
Ibid, ix.
15
John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Boston: Houghon Mifflin Company, 1976), xv.

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‘ringleader’ in school, dominating over those weaker than himself, and he also had a deep
nationalism which he took more seriously than most schoolboys.16
One of the more recent and most celebrated biographies of Adolf Hitler was
written by Ian Kershaw in 2000. Kershaw is considered to be one of the world’s leading
experts on Adolf Hitler and his regime of Nazi Germany. Kershaw’s biography was
published in two volumes and he disagrees with Bullock’s idea that Hitler was a
‘mountebank’ but rather focuses “not upon the personality of Hitler, but squarely and
directly upon the character of his power – the power of the Führer.”17
Because Hitler had
no private life, his private and public lives were merged into one and became inseparable.
Kershaw states that Hitler played a role to perfection: “the role of the Führer.”18
In this
biography of Hitler, Kershaw is less interested in asking why, like a psychologist, but
what and how, but even Kershaw recognizes the early traits in Hitler as well as the
importance of his early life on his development but at the same time remains skeptical.
Whether he places much emphasis on the importance of Hitler’s childhood to his overall
development, Kershaw accurately portrays the complexity that was Hitler’s background.
Kershaw states: “For the formative period so important to psychologists and ‘psycho-
historians,’ the fact has to be faced that there is little to go on which is not retrospective
guesswork.”19
16
Ibid, 8 and 15 respectively.
17
Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889-1936 Hubris (W.W Norton & Company, 2000),
xxvi.
18
Ibid.
19
Kershaw, 11.

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Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th
1889 in an inn in the small town of Braunau,
Austria.20
Adolf was the fourth child of his father’s third marriage. The three children
born before Adolf did not survive past two years of life.21
When Hitler was five years old,
his younger brother, Edmund, was born and two years later a little sister, Paula, was
born.22
When Hitler was 11 years old, his brother Edmund died after only six years of
life. While Alois, Jr. and Angela (Adolf’s half-siblings) both survived to adulthood,
Adolf and Paula were the only children out of the six born to Klara Pölzl to survive to
adulthood.23
This caused Klara Pölzl to coddle her children to the point of harm. She
spoiled and babied them, especially Adolf, as he was more emotionally needy than his
sister.
20
Alan Bullock, Hitler, A Study in Tyranny (New York, New York: Harper &
Row, Publishers, 1962), 23.
21
John Toland, 10.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid.

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24
Adolf Hitler’s father went by the name of Alois Schicklgruber until the age of 39,
when he legally changed his name to Alois Hitler. Maria Anna Schicklgruber gave birth
to the illegitimate Alois in 1837.25
In 1842, she married Johann Georg Heidler.26
Five
years later, in 1847, Maria Anna passed away.27
After his mother’s death, Alois was
taken in by Johann Georg’s younger brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler.28
The reasons for
this “effective adoption of young Alois are unclear.”29
24
http://adolfhitlerbestpictures.blogspot.com/2009/12/pictures-of-adolf-hitler-
family.html
25
Kershaw, 3.
26
Toland, 4.
27
Ibid.
28
Kershaw, 6.
29
Kershaw, 5.

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The paternal roots of Adolf’s father remain a source of debate to this day.30
Some
believe that Alois’s father may have been Jewish, as Maria Anna had been employed in a
wealthy Jewish household prior to her marriage to Johann Georg.31
Kershaw does not
believe there to be any rational or realistic evidence toward this, in fact, he makes the
case against any speculation of any Jewish roots. Kershaw states that the origin of the
rumor of Jewish roots came from a man by the name of Hans Frank, a leading Nazi
lawyer, who dictated his memoirs from prison. Kershaw refutes most every piece of
information about the rumor as the ‘Jewish family’ for whom Maria Anna allegedly
cooked, simply did not exist in that area during that time period.32
According to biographer John Toland, Alois’ father may also have been Johann
Goerg Heidler who married Maria Anna after his birth, or his brother Johann Nepomuk
Heidler who raised Alois from a young age.33
Kershaw states the “only serious
contenders for the paternity of Hitler’s father remain…Johann Georg Heidler and Johann
Nepomuk Heidler.”34
When Alois legitimized himself at the age of 39 and changed his
name to ‘Hitler,’ the parish priest who altered the birth register replaced ‘out of wedlock’
with ‘within wedlock’ and furthermore filled in the empty box for the father’s name with
‘Georg Hitler’ who had long since passed away.35
According to Kershaw, it is possible
that even Hitler did not know the true lineage of his father, “though there is no firm
reason to believe that he doubted that it was Johann Georg Heidler.”36
30
Toland, 4.
31
Langer, 102.
32
Kershaw, 8.
33
Ibid.
34
Kershaw, 9.
35
Kershaw, 5.
36
Kershaw, 9.

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At the age of thirteen, Alois ran away from his uncle’s house in Spital and traveled
to Vienna. In Vienna, he first apprenticed to become a shoemaker, but five years later, he
enlisted in the frontier guards and began his climb as a civil servant.37
At the age of
twenty-four he was promoted to a supervisory rank and “in 1875 he was made a full
inspector of customs at Braunau.”38
Alois married three women and fathered eight
children throughout his life. His first marriage was with Anna Glass in 1864. Anna Glass
was thirteen years his senior.39
The marriage failed and the two separated since, as
Catholics, they could not get a divorce. In 1882, Franziska Matzelsberger gave birth to
an illegitimate son who was named Alois. In May of 1883, Alois’ first wife, Anna, died
and in the following month, Alois married Franziska Matzelsberger. A year later
Franziska gave birth to a daughter whom they named Angela.40
While Alois was married to Franziska, he took in his uncle’s granddaughter as a
foster child. His foster daughter was named Klara Pölzl.41
After his second wife died in
1884, Alois married his third wife, Klara; Klara was twenty-three years his junior and
still referred to Alois as “uncle.”42
Throughout her marriage to Alois, Klara gave birth to
six children, only two of which would survive to adulthood. As there is speculation that
Alois’ father may have been Johann Nepomuk Heidler, who was also Klara’s
grandfather, the fact that so few children survived may have been a result of inbreeding.
Klara had already lost three children by the time Adolf was born in 1889. While Klara’s
own background could be questioned as she herself was the eldest of only three surviving
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Langer, 103.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid.

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children out of eleven, the possibility of interbreeding with either a first or second cousin
may explain why so many of her own children did not survive and why Adolf was
rumored to have been underdeveloped with delayed maturation.43
When Adolf was six years old, he began school.44
Regardless of the fact that Alois
moved the family several times in Adolf’s early school years, he was an unusually good
student.45
In 1900, Adolf’s brother, Edmund, died. That same year Adolf’s grades
suffered so much, he failed and had to repeat a year of school.46
When he was fourteen,
Adolf’s father died in 1903. The following year, he transferred from Realschule in Linz
and went to one in Steyr.47
In 1905, Adolf dropped out of school altogether, using a lung
illness as an excuse. The family doctor, Dr. Bloch, was “ at a loss to understand how this
story ever got started because there was no sign of lung trouble of any sort.”48
Adolf Hitler attempted to create the impression that he was a leader among his
classmates: “I believe that even then my oratorical talent was being developed in the form
of more or less violent arguments with my schoolmates. I had become a little
ringleader…”49
According to Langer, the more likely situation was that he was unpopular
among his classmates as well as teachers; he was “lazy, uncooperative, and a
troublemaker.”50
43
Kershaw, 9 and Brink, 25.
44
Payne, 19.
45
Langer 112.
46
Ibid, 113.
47
Bullock, 26.
48
Ibid, 115.
49
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (1925), 6.
50
Langer 178.

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Adolf had almost always wanted to become an artist. A neighbor of the Hitler
family said of Hitler: “When the postmaster asked him one day what he wanted to do for
a living and whether he wouldn’t like to join the post-office, he replied that it was his
intention to become a great artist.”51
After a two month visit in 1906, Hitler finally
moved to Vienna in 1907.52
He got rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In
his first attempt his “Test drawing was unsatisfactory.”53
Adolf Hitler applied a second
time at the Academy and was not even admitted to the examination.54
Hitler lived in Vienna from 1907 to 1913. For most of those six years, he lived in
squalor and worked only when he was hungry. He sold postcards with his paintings of
buildings on them. A man by the name of Hanisch worked closely with Hitler and
describes him as he knew him in 1910 at the age of 21: “He wore an ancient black
overcoat… from under a greasy, black derby hat, his hair hung long over his coat collar,
his thin and hungry face was covered with a black beard above which his large staring
eyes were the one prominent feature.”55
In Mein Kampf, Hitler portrays himself as a child of poverty with a loving mother
and a father whom he respects. In reality however, Adolf lived a comfortable means with
a loving but depressed mother and an overbearing, tyrannical father. Kershaw states:
Adolf’s early years were spent, then, under the smothering protectiveness
of an over-anxious mother in a household dominated by the threatening
presence of a disciplinarian father, against whose wrath the submissive
Klara was helpless to protect her offspring…What the legacy for all this
51
Kershaw, 1.
52
Bullock 30.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid, 31.
55
Ibid, 34.

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was for the way Adolf’s character developed must remain a matter for
speculation. That its impact was profound is hard to doubt.56
Kershaw recognizes the profound impact of Hitler’s formative years on the development
of his character yet remains hesitant to make the claim that they were vital to his overall
nature. What is clear is that Hitler’s basic characteristics had already developed from a
young age.
In his memoirs, August Kubizek, Hitler’s only childhood friend, describes
Hitler’s character and mannerisms: “There was in his nature something firm, inflexible,
immovable, obstinately rigid, which manifested itself in his profound seriousness and
was at the bottom of all his other characteristics.”57
Kubizek also states that “Hitler’s
affiliative tendencies have always been very weak; he has never had any close personal
friends; he is entirely incapable of normal human relationships.”58
Even in school, he got
along poorly with students and teachers alike even though he perceived himself as being
a “little ringleader.”59
Adolf Hitler was a man of many contradictions; for example, he had a strong
contempt for weakness, yet he himself had many weaknesses:
As a child he was frail and sickly, emotionally dependant on his
mother. He never did manual work, never engaged in athletics, was turned
down as forever unfit for conscription in the Austrian Army. Afraid of his
father, his behavior was outwardly submissive, and later he was
annoyingly subservient to his superior officers. Four years into the Army,
he never rose above the rank of corporal. At the end he broke down with a
war neurosis, hysterical blindness. Even lately, in all his glory, he suffers
56
Kershaw 13.
57
August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew, trans. E.V. Anderson (Greenhill
Books, 2006), 35.
58
Murray, 12.
59
Hitler, 6.

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frequent emotional collapses in which he yells and weeps. He has
nightmares from bad conscience; and he has long spells when energy,
confidence and the power of decision abandon. Sexually he is a full-
fledged masochist.60
Kubizek, remembers the contradiction in Hitler as a young boy. His conversation over
school was the first outburst of temper he experienced with Adolf. August could not
mention school without Adolf’s temper flaring yet, when August mentions his own poor
grades, “He did not like it at all that I had done so badly in school in spite of all the
contempt he expressed for schooling. I was confused by this contradiction.”61
Another
contradiction of Hitler was his opinion of society. Kubizek remembered that “Adolf set
great store by good manners and correct behaviour. He observed with painstaking
punctiliousness the rules of social conduct, however little he thought of society itself.”62
From the accounts of Kubizek, it is clear that the young Hitler’s personality was one of
stubbornness, contradiction, and spite which accurately reflects the adult Hitler who
would come to rule Germany.
Murray states that Hitler’s personality is “an example of the counteractive type, a
type that is marked by intense and stubborn efforts to overcome early disabilities,
weaknesses and humiliations… and also…to revenge injuries and insults to pride.”63
This
counteractive type is achieved through a formula known as Idealego Reaction Formation,
which involves “the repression and denial of the inferior portion of the self, and strivings
to become the exact opposite, represented by an idealego, or image of a superior self
successfully accomplishing the once-impossible feats and thereby curing the wounds of
60
Murray, 4.
61
Kubizek, 10.
62
Ibid, 19.
63
Murray, 1.

17
pride and winning general respect, prestige, fame.”64
According to Murray this
counteractive type and formula are very common; however, in Hitler’s case, they are
compulsively extreme. Hitler has a need for dominance, counteractive aggression,
repressed conscience, and projection of criticism.65
Murray places emphasis on the effect Hitler’s father had on the development of
his psyche. In addressing the reasons for his counteractive aggression and desire for
revenge Murray discusses the amount of pent-up wrath within Hitler. Murray says of
Hitler: “That the will to power and the craving for superiority can not account for the
whole of Hitler’s psychology is evidenced by his immeasurable hatred, hatred expressed
in the absence of an adequate stimulus, an incessant need to find some object on which to
vent his pent-up wrath.”66
Murray ties this back to the counteractive type, when Hitler’s
pride was wounded: “This can be traced back with relative certainty to experiences of
insult, humiliation and wounded pride in childhood. The source of such insults, we have
many reasons to believe, was Hitler’s father, a coarse boastful man who ruled his wife
and his children with tyrannical severity and injustice.”67
According to William Langer’s study, Hitler’s father played a detrimental role in
the development of Adolf’s character.68
As indicated by Langer, the image a child has of
his father becomes the cornerstone of his later character-structure.69
In the case of Alois
Hitler, Adolf witnessed a web of contradictions and as a result grew to fear and hate his
64
Ibid, 2.
65
Ibid, 2.
66
Ibid, 8.
67
Ibid, 9.
68
Langer, 145.
69
Ibid.

18
father.70
Alois Hitler was a proud man who demanded respect. On the outside, he
portrayed himself as an upstanding citizen. Behind closed-doors, however, he is rumored
to have physically beaten both of his sons, his wife and even the dog.71
Alois Junior’s
son, William Patrick Hitler, reported that his father was beaten by his Alois Sr. to the
point of unconsciousness. And once beat Adolf close to death.72
At the age of fourteen,
Alois Jr. followed in his fathers footsteps and ran away from home.73
Once Alois Jr. was
no longer around to take the brunt of Alois Sr.’s anger, young Adolf was to become his
father’s main target.74
Because his own father did not serve to be a sufficient role model or father-figure.
Hitler searched for one throughout his life.75
He began by finding great men in history
who could fill this need such as Napoleon and Frederick the Great. They do not suffice
however, as they are not two-sided relationships. During his career as a runner in World
War One, Hitler was only too willing to submit to men who he viewed as strong male
figures. It was not long before Hitler would discover a weakness and reject these men
immediately.76
Hitler’s father was significantly responsible for a number of Adolf’s later traits.
Hitler’s considerable aggression and hatred are directly influenced by his father’s abuse.
He also learned much from the tyrannical ruling of the household. Hitler’s father
demanded respect and instilled fear in others through his abuse. Hitler feared his father
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid.
72
Ibid, 104.
73
Toland, 9.
74
Brink, 26.
75
Langer, 146.
76
Ibid, 147

19
but he also respected him and saw him as a strong man. Hitler’s mother, on the other
hand, spoiled and coddled the young boy. Brink states, “when a child perceives his father
as a powerful and arbitrary opponent, this is likely to heighten inferiority feeling...In
addition to a developing inferiority feeling, young Adolf was subjected to pampering by
his mother.”77
Brink believes that “The spoiled child is led to form the view that life will
take care of him, that his whim will prevail without personal effort.”78
Adolf had always had a close relationship with his mother. Kubizek stated,
“Apparently among all the grownups he accepted only one person, his mother.”79
Klara
had already lost three children before his birth and she, naturally, grew attached; Klara
spoiled Adolf and became overprotective.80
Kubizek says of the relationship between
mother and son, “She who forgave everything, was handicapped in the upbringing of her
son by her boundless love for him”81
Due to her husband’s age and disposition, it is
possible that much of Klara’s “affection that normally would have gone to [Alois] found
its way to Adolf.82
This resulted in a strong “libidinal attachment between mother and
son.”83
Life with Adolf’s mother would have been perfect in these early years apart from
his father’s intrusion which would disrupt the happy relationship between mother and
son. At a young age, Hitler witnessed his parents having intercourse. He did not fully
understand the act and thought his father was hurting his mother. This seemed to have
77
Brink, 26.
78
Ibid.
79
Kubizek, 12.
80
Langer, 150.
81
Kubizek, 37.
82
Langer, 150
83
Ibid.

20
affected him greatly. As he grew older, the attachment to his mother grew stronger and
toward his father both resentment and fear increased.84
As a result, Langer claims that
Adolf developed the Oedipus Complex which consists of “infantile sexual feelings”
toward his mother as well as “fantasies of a childish nature.”85
The Oedipus Complex had
a spiraling effect: the more he hated his father, the more dependant he became on his
mother and the more he loved his mother, the more afraid he became of his father.86
This spiraling effect would influence what is known as the Messiah Complex in
which the subject believes he is the product of a supernatural conception. Research has
shown that children who are “spoiled at an early age and establish a strong bond with
their mother tend to question their paternity.”87
According to Langer, “eldest children in
particular are prone to such doubts and it is most prominent in cases where the father is
much older than the mother.”88
In these cases, the child will reject their real father and
credit their birth to a supernatural conception. In the case of Adolf Hitler, each of these
instances was true. Adolf rejected his father and credited his birth to a higher being.
Usually such beliefs are dropped as the child grows older, however, the brutal nature of
his father probably caused Hitler to hold on to these beliefs.89
The Messiah Complex may
well have been the reason for Adolf’s failure in finding a sufficient father figure. When
one credits his birth to a supernatural conception, a father figure deserving of respect
would therefore need to be perfect in every way.
84
Ibid.
85
Ibid.
86
Ibid.
87
Ibid, 159.
88
Ibid.
89
Ibid.

21
Murray disagrees that Hitler formed the Oedipus Complex through the discovery
of his parents’ act of intercourse. He does agree with Langer that he grew even more
resentful of his father and protective of his mother after this event. As Langer stated, he
swore revenge: “…to dream of himself as reestablishing the lost glory of his mother by
overcoming and humiliating his father.”90
The humiliation of his father was impossible
for the boy to do so “the drive of passion of revenge was repressed and locked up within
him under tension.”91
This energy of revenge was later released when his motherland was
humiliated in the first world war.92
As Hitler hated his father and loved his mother, it may be said that he had the
Oedipus complex; however, his later actions do not show this. He shows another pattern:
“profound admiration, envy and emulation of his father’s masculine power and a
contempt of his mother’s feminine weakness. Thus both parents were ambivalent to him:
his father was hated and respected; his mother was loved and depreciated. Hitler’s
conspicuous actions have all been in imitation of his father, not his mother.”93
Whether
Hitler had the Oedipus Complex or not, “there is a vast reservoir of resentment and
revenge in Hitler’s make-up which accounts for his cult of brutality and his many acts of
inexcusable destructiveness and cruelty. He is possessed by what amounts to a homicidal
compulsion.”94
There is no doubt that the amount of pampering Hitler received from his mother
directly affected Hitler as a man, even into his political career; as a spoiled child he
90
Murray, 9.
91
Ibid, 8.
92
Ibid.
93
Ibid, 10.
94
Ibid, 10.

22
maintained a certain egoism and laziness that influenced many of his reactions to any
failure as well as the nature of his leadership. The effect of his spoiled childhood can be
seen in his school days as well as his time in Vienna. A spoiled child works for little in
life and is taught that with enough whining or pouting, he will receive what he desires.
As a young boy, he was lazy and unappreciative. His earliest friend, August
Kubizek recollects that he was surprised at the amount of spare time Adolf had and asked
if he had a job: Adolf replied, “Of course not.”95
Kubizek says of this: “He did not
consider that any particular work, a “bread and butter” job as he called it, was necessary
for him…Such an opinion I had never heard from anyone before. It contradicted every
principle which had so far governed my life.”96
Hitler was a good student in grammar school but when he was faced with more
challenging classes in secondary school, he simply gave up as opposed to working
harder. Hitler claims, in Mein Kampf, that his failure in school was a result of his revolt
against his father’s wishes that he become a civil servant and Hitler’s desire to become an
artist.97
The more likely situation is that Hitler simply gave up when faced with a difficult
task. After his father’s death, Hitler simply quit school to pursue a career as an artist.
Kubizek remembers that “There was always a certain element in his personality into
which he allowed nobody to penetrate…But there was one key that opened the door to
much that would have remained hidden: his enthusiasm for beauty.”98
95
Kubizek, 9.
96
Kubizek, 9.
97
Hitler, 10.
98
Kubizek, 25.

23
The failure to achieve his goal of attending art school in Vienna was another
setback and is yet another example of his reaction to failure, Brink believes this to be a
direct result of his pampered childhood:
Hitler had a large emotional investment along these career lines,
for it had been one way of rebelling against his father’s plans that his son
become a civil servant. On the other hand, a pampered child is poorly
equipped for such a rejection, for he has always imagined himself to be
esteemed above all others. Hitler’s reaction to this rejection was to ignore
it, and continue his “studies”: an unproductive life-style of doodling,
random reading, and walking tours.99
As seen through his failure to enter art school, Hitler handled failure by ignoring the said
failure and escaping into fantasies.100
Klara Pölzl died on December 21, 1907, and was buried on Christmas Eve.
According to the Dr. Bloch, the family physician who treated Klara through her illness,
Adolf was broken: “In all my career I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as
Adolf Hitler.”101
The death of his mother marked the end of Hitler’s family life. In early
1908, Hitler returned to Vienna for good where he developed both his political and anti-
Semitic ideas.
The origins of Hitler’s anti-Semitism continue to be a source of debate. There is
no evidence that he had any kind of anti-Semitic feelings before he left Linz or even that
he had any during his first years in Vienna. His “attitude toward Jews at this time was
99
Brink, 27.
100
Schwaab, 97.
101
Langer, 116.

24
ambiguous. While despising Handalees (East European Jews who wore long caftans and
lived by begging and selling knickknacks) he had high regard for Jewish musicians.102
Hitler had few friends to speak of throughout the entirety of his life but August
Kubizek, a Jew, was able to befriend Adolf Hitler as a boy and became as close a friend
as Hitler would allow. The family doctor who cared for his mother, Dr. Bloch, was a
Jewish doctor and after the death of his mother, he visited Dr. Bloch and personally
thanked him for the doctor’s wonderful and persistent care. Some of his closer
acquaintances and business colleagues during his stay in Vienna were Jewish.
Adolf even insisted on accompanying his friend August Kubizek to a synagogue
where a Jewish wedding was taking place. Kubizek assumed that Adolf was impressed by
the music and was shocked a few days later when Adolf announced he had joined the
Anti-Semitic League.103
August Kubizek served more as a submissive companion than a
friend to Hitler and he was easily forgotten.104
“He just had to talk and needed somebody
who would listen to him. I was often startled when he would make a speech to me,
accompanied by vivid gestures, for my benefit alone.”105
In Mein Kampf, Hitler pinpoints his anti-Semitism to a traumatic event in Vienna:
“Once I was strolling through the Inner City, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a
black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought… the longer I
stared… the more my question assumed a new form: Is this a German?”106
He began to
buy anti-Semitic pamphlets and his anti-Semitism grew from then on. Hitler was highly
102
Payne, 71.
103
Ibid.
104
Brink, 27.
105
Kubizek, 13.
106
Hitler, 56.

25
influenced by the anti-Semitic propaganda and began blaming the Jewish people for
every possible German ill, even for what he considered to be artistic failures:
Was there any excrement, any shamelessness in any form, above
all in cultural life, in which at least one Jew would not have been
involved? As soon as one even carefully cut into such an abscess, one
found, like maggots in a decaying body, often blinded by the sudden light,
a kike.107
Many historians and psychologists have debated over the origins of his anti-
Semitism. Some believe that his anti-Semitism originated from the suspicion that his
biological grandfather may have been Jewish.108
Others believe that the origins of his
hatred originate from the political pamphlets he studied in Vienna. In Mein Kampf, Hitler
places much importance on his time in Vienna:
In the years 1909 and 1910, my own situation had changed
somewhat in so far as I no longer had to earn my daily bread as a common
laborer. By this time I was working independently as a small draftsman
and painter of watercolors. Hard as this was with regard to earnings – it
was barely enough to live on – it was good for my chosen profession. Now
I was no longer dead tired in the evening when I came home from work,
unable to look at a book without soon dozing off. My present work ran
parallel to my future profession. Moreover, I was master of my own time
and could apportion it better than had previously been possible…I painted
to make a living and studied for pleasure.109
Hitler was not always so prejudiced against Jews. His family was not anti-
Semitic, so prejudice was not instilled in him from a young age. It was learned later on.
Anti-Semitism was not a new notion throughout Germany; it was already a traditional
belief long before Hitler. While his parents weren’t anti-Semitic and did not teach him to
107
Ibid, 57.
108
Langer, 102.
109
Hitler, 34.

26
be racist or prejudice, it is still easy to see how Hitler could become so racist from
looking at his childhood behavior. From early on, Hitler used projection as a tool to feel
better about his own flaws and weaknesses.
Murray shows that Hitler is hardwired to be racist and prejudiced. Hitler had
tendencies, from a young age, to criticize:
Hitler perceives in other people the traits or tendencies that are critizizable
in himself. Thus, instead of being devoured by the vulture of his own
condemning conscious or of his own disdain, he can attack what he
apperceives as evil or contemptible in the external world, and so remain
unconscious (most of the time) of his own guilt or his own inferiority. This
mechanism whereby a man sees his own wicked impulses or weaknesses
in others, is called projection. It is one way, the paranoid way, of
maintaining self-esteem.110
Langer, like Murray, addresses Hitler’s projection: “Hitler’s outstanding defense
mechanism is one commonly called projection.”111
According to Langer, “The Jew
became a symbol of everything Hitler hated in himself… his personal problems and
conflicts were transferred from within himself to the external world where they assumed
the proportions of racial and national conflicts.”112
While living in Vienna, Hitler, in fact,
was homeless and destitute. He looked like much like a lower class Jew in a dark trench
coat and long, scraggly beard; he was as dirty as the dirtiest and greatest social outcast,
yet during this time he came to view the Jew as the dirtiest and greatest social outcaste
and ultimately as the source of all evil.113
His hatred of Jews was a projection.
110
Murray, 13.
111
Langer, 183.
112
Ibid.
113
Ibid, 184.

27
Hitler’s projection is also evident in his sense of humor. Hitler’s chief architect,
Albert Speer, knew Hitler better than others as they shared an interest in architecture
recollects on Hitler’s sense of humor: “Hitler had no humor. He left joking to others,
although he could laugh loudly, abandonedly, sometimes literally writhing with laughter.
Often he would wipe tears from his eyes during such spasms. He liked laughing, but it
was always at the expense of others.”114
This quote from Speer shows how Hitler was
only able to laugh at others, he enjoyed poking fun at the weaknesses and flaws in others.
This reinforces what both Murray and Langer say about Hitler’s mechanism of
projection. Another personal recollection of Hitler’s projection comes from August
Kubizek: “…humour was confined to the most intimate sphere as if it were something
taboo. His humour was usually aimed at people in his intimate circle.”115
When it came to
laughing at himself, however, that was not an option; he only laughed at and criticized
others in order to project his own disappointments onto others. The Jewish people
received the brunt of his projections.
The Jew is the classic scapegoat because he does not fight back with fists and
weapons. Hitler’s personal frustration required as a scapegoat as focus for his repressed
aggression. In Mein Kampf, Hitler states that “The mightiest counterpart to the Aryan is
represented by the Jew. In hardly any people in the world is the instinct of self-
preservation developed more strongly than in the so-called ‘chosen.’”116
The Jew as an
object upon whom Hitler could suitably project his own inferior self (his sensitiveness,
weakness, timidity, masochistic sexuality) and Jews were also associated with several of
114
Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 123.
115
Kubizek, 26.
116
Hitler, 300.

28
Hitler’s personal pet antipathies such as business, materialism, democracy, capitalism,
communism.117
Throughout his political career, Hitler used anti-Semitism to his advantage.
Because anti-Semitism was already ingrained in the social consciousness, he was able to
provide the German people with the scapegoat they needed after the First World War and
the Depression that followed. The fact that he was persecuting a wealthier part of the
population helped finance his campaign through dispossession of Jewish goods.118
Anti-
Semitism was one of many things he learned during his time in Vienna. Vienna
introduced Hitler to politics and through politics, he further developed his anti-Semitic
beliefs.
In Vienna, Hitler learned that “men were moved by fear, greed, lust for power,
envy, often by mean and petty motives. Politics, Hitler was later to conclude, is the art of
knowing how to use these weaknesses for one’s own ends.”119
It was Vienna in which he
perfected his corrupt political skills: how to lie, cheat, and manipulate. Hitler already had
many of these skills but it was in Vienna where he discovered their use and power though
it would many years before he would utilize them. Hitler, himself, recognized the
importance of Vienna on his own development and education:
…Vienna was and remained for me the hardest, though most
thorough, school of my life. I had set foot in this town while still half a
boy and I left it a man, grown quiet and grave. In it I obtained the
foundations for a philosophy in general and a political view in particular
which later I only needed to supplement in detail, but which never left me.
117
Murray, 23-24.
118
Ibid, 24.
119
Ibid.

29
But not until today have I been able to estimate at their full value those
years of study.120
Hitler developed many of his opinions on the Jewish people through his discovery
of the political party, Social Democrats. In Mein Kampf, he describes how first he
encountered Social Democrats while working construction. They urged him to join the
trade-union organization and he refused, they urged him further and he quit, only to go
back after poverty overtook him. “I wrestled with my innermost soul: are these people
human, worthy to belong to a great nation?”121
After witnessing a demonstration by the Viennese workers, he bought a pamphlet
and read carefully only to get increasingly enraged as he read and he came to dedicated
himself to learning all he could on this political party:
The more independent I made myself in the next few years, the
clearer grew my perspective, hence my insight into the inner causes of the
Social Democratic successes. I now understood the significance of the
brutal demand that I read only Red papers, attend only Red meetings, read
only Red books, etc. With plastic clarity I saw before my eyes the
inevitable result of this doctrine of intolerance.122
As with his initial introduction to the Orthodox Jew in Vienna, this disturbing
introduction to the Social Democrats became an obsession and he devoted much of his
time and energy into learning as much as possible about them. Through his study of the
Social Democrats, Hitler learned much more about politics and what it takes to get to the
top; Bullock states:
120
Hitler, 125.
121
Ibid, 41.
122
Ibid, 42.

30
Astuteness; the ability to lie, twist, cheat and flatter; the
elimination of sentimentality or loyalty in favor of ruthlessness, these were
the qualities which enabled men to rise; above all, strength of will. Such
were the principles which Hitler drew from his years in Vienna.123
Hitler had the greatest interest in everything concerned with politics. He believed
that an interest in politics was a duty of “every thinking man” and “Anyone who failed to
understand this lost right to any criticism or complaint.”124
In studying politics Hitler
learned how he could utilize his many skills such as his skill of oratory:
…the power which has always started the greatest religious and
political avalanches in history rolling has from time immemorial been the
magic power of the spoken word, and that alone…Only a storm of hot
passion can turn the destinies of peoples, and he alone can arouse passion
who bears it within himself. It alone gives its chosen one the words which
like hammer blows can open the gates to the heart of a people. But the
man whom passion fails and whose lips are sealed – he has not been
chosen by Heaven to proclaim its will.125
Hitler had a natural talent for making speeches, one that was evident from early on in his
life. Kubizek wrote of his early skills in oratory: “He just had to talk and needed
somebody who would listen to him. I was often startled when he would make a speech to
me, accompanied by vivid gestures, for my benefit alone…These speeches, usually
delivered somewhere in the open, seemed to be like a volcano erupting.”126
Another political skill that Hitler learned in Vienna was to appreciate the use of
terror as well as the importance of the masses. Hitler believed that “The psyche of the
123
Bullock, 32.
124
Hitler, 35.
125
Ibid, 107.
126
Kubizek, 13.

31
great masses is not receptive to anything that is half-hearted and weak.”127
Hitler came to
the conclusion that terror was one of the most important tools in controlling the psyche of
the great masses as well as the individual:
I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical
terror toward the individual and the masses…Terror at the place of
employment, in the factory, in the meeting hall, and on the occasion of
mass demonstrations will always be successful unless opposed by equal
terror.128
Throughout his political career, Hitler used his power of speech to instill fear and terror
while at the same time pulling on the heartstrings of the masses and ultimately winning
them over. Hitler believed himself chosen from God as one who can “arouse passion” in
the hearts of people:129
The impression made by such a success on the minds of the great
masses of supporters as well as opponents can only be measured by those
who know the soul of a people, not from books, but from life…The more
familiar I became, principally with the methods of physical terror, the
more indulgent I grew toward all the hundreds of thousands who
succumbed to it…What makes me most indebted to that period of
suffering is that it alone gave me back my people, taught me to distinguish
the victims from their seducers.130
While Hitler’s basic characteristics had already developed by his stay in Vienna,
it was in Vienna where Hitler learned the value of his skills and, as previously stated, it is
also where he develops his ideas on Jews and politics. In his thorough study of the Social
Democrats he came to the realization that the Jew was dominating the entire party:
127
Hitler, 42.
128
Ibid, 44.
129
Ibid, 107.
130
Ibid, 44.

32
I gradually became aware that the Social Democratic press was
directly predominantly by Jews…from publisher down, they were all
Jews…Only now did I become thoroughly acquainted with the seducer of
our people…The better acquainted I became with the Jew, the more
forgiving I inevitably became toward the worker.131
Hitler believed he was doing the Lord’s work in fighting against not only the Social
Democrats, but the Jewish people as a whole:
If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the
peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and
this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether
devoid of men…Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with
the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I
am fighting for the work of the Lord.132
Hitler’s years in Vienna are a perfect example of his inability to face failure.
When he failed to be admitted into the art school in Vienna, he left his more successful
friend and lived in squalor on the Viennese streets. Even when he was desperate for
money, he failed to even make attempts at getting a job. As a young boy, he considered
himself above “bread and butter” jobs, and living as a homeless man on the Viennese
streets, he still refused to sink so low as to get a “bread and butter” job. Instead, he sold
postcards and store posters (mostly to Jewish shop keepers) and ate at soup kitchens; he
even worked closely with a Jewish man by the name of Hanisch who helped him sell
paintings.133
Rather than obtain a steady job, he simply sold small paintings for enough
money to feed himself and he devoted much of his time to studying. Hitler masked his
laziness in Mein Kampf:
131
Ibid, 61.
132
Ibid, 65.
133
Sydney Jones, Hitler in Vienna, 1907-1913 (New York: Paul Popper
Company, 1954), 146.

33
I was working independently as a small draftsman and painter of
watercolors. Hard as this was with regard to earnings – it was barely
enough to live on – it was good for my chosen profession…I was master
of my own time and could apportion it better than had previously been
possible…I painted to make a living and studied for pleasure.134
According to Brink, this laziness in unwillingness to obtain a real job can be directly
connected to his pampered childhood.
…a major setback occurred to the adolescent Hitler when he went
to Vienna and found himself unable to gain admission to the academics of
art or architecture. Hitler had a large emotional investment along these
career lines, for it had been one way of rebelling against his father’s plans
that his son become a civil servant. On the other hand, a pampered child is
poorly equipped for such a rejection, for he has always imagined himself
to be esteemed above all others. Hitler’s reaction to this rejection was to
ignore it, and continue his “studies”: an unproductive life-style of
doodling, random reading, and walking tours.135
His time in Vienna ended in 1913 when he moved to Munich. It is unclear why he
left. He gives many reasons in Mein Kampf such as “bitter enmity towards the Habsburg
empire for pro-Slavic policies…; growing hatred for the ‘foreign mixtures of peoples’
who were ‘corroding’ German culture in Vienna; the intensified longing to go to
Germany, to where his ‘childhood secret desires and secret love’ had drawn him.’”136
The
most likely reason that Hitler left Vienna was to evade military service for the Habsburg
State. “The prime and immediate reason he crossed the border into Germany was very
tangible: the Linz authorities were hot on his trail for evasion of military service.”137
134
Hitler, 34.
135
Brink, 27.
136
Kershaw, 81.
137
Ibid.

34
Hitler did not evade the Habsburg army out of cowardice, he did not wish to serve
the Austro-Hungarian because he “was repelled by this whole mixture of Czechs, Poles,
Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs and Croats, and everywhere the eternal mushroom of
humanity – Jews, and more Jews.”138
His evasion was in vain as he was later deemed
unfit for service – he failed his physical exam in 1914 and returned to Munich.139
Then,
the world went to war. Hitler reminisces on his enthusiasm when the war broke out:
“Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell
down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the
good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.”140
Finally there was a great struggle
of which Hitler could be a part. As a young boy, Hitler had been obsessed with great
wars:
As a young scamp in my wild years, nothing had so grieved me as
having been born at a time which obviously erected its Halls of Fame only
to shopkeepers and government officials…Why couldn’t I have been born
a hundred years earlier? Say at the time of the Wars of Liberation when a
man, even without a ‘business,’ was really worth something?!141
Hitler volunteered in the Bavarian army in efforts to show German national
enthusiasm. In Mein Kampf, Hitler states that “As a boy and young man I had so often
felt the desire to prove at least once by deeds that for me national enthusiasm was no
empty whim.”142
The First World War not only served to fulfill a boyhood lifelong dream
138
Hitler, 123.
139
William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1960), 27.
140
Hitler, 161.
141
Ibid, 157.
142
Ibid, 163.

35
to prove national enthusiasm and play a part in a world wide struggle but it also served as
an escape from years of failure.143
Hitler was an enthusiastic and eager soldier who did his best to be the model
soldier.
By his own account, Hitler remained a lost individual until he
joined the German army in World War I. Here he seems to have
undergone a veritable personality transformation. He was the model
soldier: never complaining, volunteering for dangerous missions, eager to
rejoin his unit after being wounded…In his own writings he looked back
at the time on the front as a golden age, a time without worries, when he
first learned to overcome fear.144
In the Bavarian Army, Hitler had finally found a place where he felt he belonged. Hitler
felt rewarded from all his hard work this only fed into his egoism. Brink believed “that
Hitler experienced a definite degree of compensation in the military life-style can be seen
in the growth of social interest. After his experiences at the front, he was no longer
plagued by the shallow egoism of the Viennese tramp.”145
When the war ended, he made attempts to stay in the army for as long as possible
and for the rest of his life, he craved intense military struggle and its rewarding aftermath.
Brink stated that he attempted to live a military lifestyle without the military struggle:
Unfortunately, the military life-style is not well suited for the
peaceful functioning of modern society…even though Hitler was
somewhat able to overcome his inferiority feeling, he acquired an
inappropriate understanding of the nature of life. At the front, Hitler had
been taught that all life was a fierce struggle. This insight became the
cornerstone of his social philosophy.146
143
Brink, 28.
144
Ibid, 29.
145
Ibid.
146
Ibid.

36
The military lifestyle without the war was a delusion and much of what Hitler valued was
based in this delusion. His ideal Aryan man and also Hitler’s self-image was that of a
superman fantasy. Brink said that such an idealization is called “masculine protest.”147
It is also significant that he launched into his rages whenever there
was an implication of doubt concerning his personal competence, not
when he had experienced concrete setbacks. To compensate for his own
lack of self-confidence, he built large monuments and spoke of a
thousand-year Reich.148
Another variety of masculine protest is the Messianic Complex which was earlier
discussed on page 20. Langer states that the Hitler’s Messiah Complex was a result of the
spiraling effect caused by the Oedipus Complex. Brink disagreed with Langer in
reference to the Oedipus Complex, though he does agree that Hitler had the Messiah
Complex, only that it was a result of other factors. Brink states that “Hitler may have
been disposed to this because of the early deaths of siblings, leaving him with the
impression that he was the chosen one. Such an interpretation may have been confirmed
by his experiences at the front, where he survived many of his comrades.”149
Hitler may have evaded death more than once but he was as mortal as any other
man, though perhaps more flawed. The origin of his many flaws and peculiarities may be
traced back to his early life. Celebrated biographer, Ian Kershaw, claims that “Attempts
to find in the youngster ‘the warped person within the murderous dictator’ have proved
unpersuasive.”150
Many disagree with Kershaw and make attempts, however
147
Ibid.
148
Ibid.
149
Ibid, 30.
150
Kershaw, 13.

37
unpersuasive, to find the warped person in the young Hitler. In the introduction of
Kubizek’s memoir, H.R. Trevor-Roper writes of Hitler:
Hitler was undoubtedly crafty and crooked and mean and inhuman,
the most obvious fact about his character was the devouring, systematic
will power which he was afterwards to show and which must have been
present in embryo even at that that time; and secondly, although we know
that Hitler became utterly cynical and inhuman, it is difficult to believe
that he was always thus. I do not believe that men are born sour and
inhuman: if they are so, it is because they have been made so; and what I
look for in Hitler’s early character is evidence not so much of the result as
of process of its formation.151
Early on in Hitler’s life, he showed signs of the man he would become. As a child
he was lazy, disobedient and unruly. As a student he was also lazy, unruly and
domineering. In Vienna, he was lazy, disdainful, close-minded and a recluse. There are
many factors that go into the development of these characteristics.
The fact that Hitler’s father was brutal, tyrannical and violent gave rise to the
Messiah Complex. Hitler rejected his father and credited his birth to a supernatural
conception. From an early age Hitler also tried to find a male father figure to look up to
and emulate though he continually failed at finding a sufficient guide. The smothering
love of his mother may have generated the Oedipus Complex in which he possessed
infantile sexual feelings toward his mother which, in turn, caused him to resent his father
further. The death of his mother was perhaps the most traumatic event in his life. She was
possibly the only person he ever truly loved.
The time he spent in Vienna introduced Hitler to new ideas as well as reinforced
others. It is in Vienna where he develops his anti-Semitism as well as learns the art of
151
Kubizek, xi. Introduction written by H.R. Trevor-Roper.

38
political trickery and manipulation. All of these factors must be added to the possibility
that Hitler may have had mental disabilities such as paranoid schizophrenia, which could
have originated from an incestuous relationship between his mother and father.
The mind of Adolf Hitler as well as his life in general is immensely interesting to
study, in part, because he was so secretive and partly because he was so crazed. Hitler
fascinates historians and psychologists alike as he left behind many unanswered
questions. What can be concluded from the evidence and studies conducted is that there
were many factors involved in the development of Adolf Hitler’s character and his early
life includes many of these determining factors.

39
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40
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