My character Gabriela in Schellberg 7 is about to start satirising Hitler. What has she got to go on?
He was born in Austria, not Germany.
It is likely that there was Jewish blood in his ancestors.
His father was cruel in his strictness.
He didn’t do well at school.
He lost four of his siblings in childhood.
He scratched a living in Vienna before the Great War.
He wrote a book that many of us would like to ban but we’re not going to get into banning books like the Nazis did.
He had a criminal record and had spent some time in jail before coming to power.
He was a failed artist: he failed to get into the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts – twice.
His mother died of breast cancer when she was just forty-seven and he was eighteen.
He was a despatch runner during the Great War.
He was wounded and gassed in the Great War.
He was awarded the Iron Cross for his participation in the Great War.
He was a very good speaker.
He was a vegetarian – good for him – it was particularly hard to be one in those days.
He admired the Italian fascists.
He actually supported the working class – as long as its members were Aryan.
He gave people hope as they struggled with the Depression – bad throughout Europe but particularly keen in Germany – the Germans were already suffering because of the harsh requirement of the Versailles Treaty.
He offered hope through road-building, employment and encouraging the Hitler Youth and associated organisations.
He believed that the Germans, and indeed the British, were the master race.
He was xenophobic.
He used the 1936 Olympics for propaganda
He saw Hindenburg as a doddery old man – no good for the German people and easy to overcome.
Politics and making German great again gave a purpose to his life.
He liked to escape to his retreat at Berchtesgaden and play with his dogs when he should have been thinking about military tactics.
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