# Adolf Hitler's Own Book Mein Kampf (My Battle)/Chapter 1

Mein Kampf
By Adolf Hitler
Chapter I
My Home
To-day I consider it fortunate that fate chose Braunau on the Inn as the place of my birth. For this little town lies on the border between two German States, the reunion of which we younger ones regard as a task that must be worked for with all our powers.
German-Austrians must return to the great German Fatherland, and not because of economic reasons. No no! Even if economically this union were unimportant—even if it were harmful—it must, nevertheless, still come.
Common Blood Belongs in a Common Reich.
Not until every single German is in one common Reich—and a Reich too crowded to provide bread—will the State have the moral right to acquire foreign soil. At that time, and only at that time, the sword becomes the plow, and bread is watered by the tears of war.
So this little frontier town is to me the symbol of a great task.
    (Hitler achieved his ambition to unite Germany and Austria when German troops marched into crushed Vienna in March, 1938. He states here that Germany will have no moral right to seize foreign soil until all Germans are living in a common Reich—but in March, 1939, he took Czechoslovakia, a state inhabited by millions of non-German people.)
My parents, Bavarian by blood and Austrian by nationality, lived here at the end of the 80’s of the last century. Father was a faithful civil servant, and mother kept herself busy with us children.
    (Adolf Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schickelgruber, and while in Nazi Germany it is alleged that Alois’ father was Johann Hiedler, the man Maria Anna married five years after the birth of Alois, this cannot be proven. Alois, a drunkard who would face sterilization if he lived in the Germany of today, used the name Schickelgruber until he was 40; then, due to his wife’s insistence that he be legitimized, he legally changed his name to Hitler, a derivation of Hiedler. Adolf was born to Klara Poelzl, third wife of Alois Schickelgruber-Hiedler-Hitler, on April 20, 1889.
(So the racial purist, Adolf Hitler, does not know his own grandfather.)
I remember little of this time, for before I was very old my father had to go down the River Inn to take a post at Passau in the German Reich. Soon after that he was again transferred, this time to Linz. There he was pensioned off, and after a time settled on a farm which he bought near Lambach in Northern Austria.
Hitler’s Foreword
On April 1, 1924, I commenced serving my sentence in the prison fortress of Landsberg on the Lech, according to decision rendered by the People’s Court of Munich.
I was thus able to undertake a task frequently demanded of me, a task which I, too, felt would be of service to the Movement. I decided to set down the aims of our Movement, and the story of our progress.
Also, I found opportunity to portray my own development—necessary if this book is to be understood and the filthy legends built up about me by the Jew press are to be destroyed.
I address myself here not to strangers, but to followers of the Movement, strong-hearted followers who seek more intimate enlightenment.
I know that people are won more by the spoken than by the written word, that every great world movement depends upon great speakers, not upon great writers. But the principles of a doctrine must be laid down for eternity.
This, then, is a stone which I add to our common structure.
The Author.
Landsberg on the Lech
Adolf An Abbot?
I did not brood over my future, but I had no sympathy for the life my father had led. I did extremely well in school, and singing lessons in the choir of the Lambach Convent gave me excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the splendor of the rich church festivals. I fixed upon the position of abbot as an ideal to look toward.
My longing to be an abbot disappeared very quickly, however, to make way for things more in accord with my temperament: in my father’s library I found books on military subjects—most important of all, two illustrated volumes telling of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871. These I devoured. And this great heroic campaign became my greatest spiritual experience. I was now excited—ever more and more—by everything connected with War and Militarism
Confused, I wondered if there was a difference between the Germans fighting this war and other Germans. Why did not my father and other Austrian-Germans battle in this war against the French?
Do not all we Germans belong together?
This problem racked my brain. I asked questions, and learned with greedy envy that not every German was fortunate enough to belong to the Reich of Bismarck.
I could not understand this.
At this time, my oratorical gift was trained by stirring, violent arguments with comrades: I became a ring-leader. Meanwhile, because of my nature, my father decided attendance at the Humanistic School was useless. He thought a non-classical modern school more suitable. He was impressed by my obvious talent for drawing, and this subject was neglected in the Austrian schools. But he was determined that like himself, I should eventually become a civil servant.
I flatly refused the thought, NO! and again NO! The thought of slaving in an office, not master of my own life, sickened me.
The ridiculously easy studies at school left me so much spare time that the fields and forests saw much of me in those days, and so when my enemies examine my life now, back into childhood, they can ferret out, if they will, the mean tricks this “Hitler” played in his youth in company with other robust boys. I thank Heaven for my happy memories of those times!
By the time I was twelve years old, I had decided I would become a painter. My father knew nothing of this ambition, but suddenly, after I rejected once again his plan for the future, he for the first time asked what I intended to be. I unexpectedly burst out with my decision. My father was speechless:
“A painter? An artist?”
He doubted my sanity, but hoped that he had misunderstood—then he opposed me with all the force of his character:
“An artist—No! Never as long as I live.”
I strengthened my resolve. The old man was embittered, and though I loved him, so was I. He commanded me to drop all thought of ever becoming a painter. I returned that I would no longer study anything else. My threat became action when he tried to impose his authority! I took no notice of my school work. I do not know if this reasoning was correct; but I learned only what I pleased—excelling only in my favorite subjects, geography and especially history.
The Young Nationalist
To-day when I examine this period, I find two outstanding facts:
    II. I became a nationalist;
    II. I came to understand the significance of history.
​Old Austria was a state of nationalities. Few Germans in the Reich had any idea of the constant struggle waged for the sacred German language, and the German life, by the ten million Germans living among forty-two million other people in Austria. Only now, with this misery put upon millions more of our people who dream of the Fatherland while living under foreign yoke, can the meaning of this battle for nationality be widely understood.
Now, perhaps, greater numbers will realize the character of the Germans in Austria, who for centuries preserved the Reich in the East, while the Reich itself was interested in colonies and not in its own lost flesh and blood so near at hand.
As in every struggle, there were three groups in the language battle of Austria:
The fighters, the lukewarms, and the traitors.
Significantly, this war engulfed the school, cradle of the oncoming generations. The fighting is ever chiefly over the child, and the first cry is:
“German boy, do not forget that you are a German!”
“German girl, remember that you are to be a German mother!”
Easily captured, youth in countless ways carried on the guerilla warfare, refusing to sing non-German songs, rebelliously wearing the forbidden emblem of its own German nationality, rejoicing in being punished—even beaten—for this. Youth came to glory in the grandeur of German heroes.
While very young, I, too, joined in this national struggle. My development was quite rapid: even at fifteen I knew the difference between dynastic patriotism to the ruling Hapsburg House of Austria, and the nationalism of the people.
There was really no Austrian history taught in the schools, yet, actually, the very separation into two states, Germany and Austria, was German history.
Probably my entire later life was influenced by my fortune in having at school in Linz an intelligent teacher, Professor Doctor Leopold Pötsch, who knew that history must not be taught merely as a jumble of dates and names. Only the important must be emphasized, the unimportant ignored; this I knew. He utilized our national fanaticism, repeatedly exploiting it. He made history my favorite subject.
“Every attempt made for the sake of a world idea fails unless the struggle takes the form of a violent attack. The weapon of ruthless, brute force is of greatest value in war between two diverse views of the world.”
Mein Kampf—Chapter V
Who could possibly study German history under such a teacher without becoming an enemy of the Austrian dynastic state which so disastrously betrayed the true destiny of the nation!
Who could keep allegiance to emperors who sold the cause of the German people for their own petty ends? Austria could not love us as Germans, and thus foreign poisons ate at the German body. Even Vienna became un-German. The House of Hapsburg favored Czechs wherever possible. It was the hand of the Goddess of Eternal Justice, plus implacable revenge, which caused Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the enemy of Austro-Germanism and the patron of Austria’s Slavization, to fall by bullets he himself had prepared.
The burdens which the German people bore were enormous—unimaginable sacrifices in taxes and blood. Most sad and outrageous of all was that all this was morally fostered by the alliance with Germany; and thus Germany herself partly helped along the gradual extermination of the German nationality in Austria. The hypocritical Hapsburgs created the impression abroad that Austria was still a German state.
Blind, the leaders of the Reich saw nothing of all this. Yet the tragic alliance between the new Reich and the old Austrian fake state brought the World War and the general collapse.
New Technique: “Protection” by Conquest
In earliest youth I grasped this conviction which ever grew stronger and stronger:
The protection of the German race required the destruction of Austria; further, national feeling is very unlike dynastic patriotism; above all else, the House of Hapsburg was fated to bring misfortune to the German nation.
I thus intensely loved my native German-Austrian country, and bitterly hated the “Austrian” state. I was no lukewarm—I was a fighter! I was a young revolutionary.
I never lost this art of historical thinking, and thus have always possessed a never-drained source of understanding for politics.
At the age of twelve I saw “Wilhelm Tell” and a few months later I saw my first opera. I was captivated. Convinced that I should never be a civil servant, and my talent for drawing now confirmed—appreciated in school—my resolve as to my future was unshakable. Pleas and threats were useless. I would be a painter. Nothing could make an official of me. Meanwhile as time passed I was more and more attracted by architecture, and assuming this to be the broadening of my talent for painting, I was delighted.
I never dreamed the future would turn out so differently.
When I was thirteen my father suddenly died, suffering a stroke which plunged us all in the depths of sadness. My life went on unchanged for a time, but I was determined more than ever. Suddenly an illness rescued me: due to a severe lung trouble the doctor strongly advised my Mother against ever allowing me to work in an office. And I had to stop school for at least a year. So all that I had warred for suddenly became reality. My mother agreed to send me to the Academy.
Must be Big as U. S. A.
“To aim merely at re-establishment of our 1914 frontier is nonsense. These old frontiers were unnatural since they were political and not racial, and the result would anyhow be so miserable that it would not, by God, be worth the blood sacrifice it would entail.
“The 1914 frontiers mean nothing to Germany’s future. They were not a protection in the past, and they would not mean power in the future. The distance to England would not be lessened, the size of the United States would not be equaled, nor would France be deprived of any political power.”
Mein Kampf—Chapter XVII
Then, in two years, my Mother’s death in a flash had ended all my happy plans. Her death was a fearful shock. I had respected my Father but I loved my Mother.
Need and the reality of life now forced me to make a quick decision, Meager funds inherited along with the customary orphan’s pension were not nearly enough for me to live on. I had now to earn my daily bread.
I went to Vienna with little luggage but with iron determination in my heart. I, too, hoped to wrest from fate the victory my Father had won, I, also, would become “something”—but no official.