Hitler in WWI

[kiwimac]

According to his doctors Hitler had a very 'british' sense of humour. After the mid-war assassination attempt, one of his doctor's asked him what his first thoughts were after the blast. He replied that he was annoyed as the bomb had ruined his only really good pair of pants and that his bum (his words) had, for a time, been shaped like a mutant potato!

I'll find the reference If I haven't sold the book!

Kiwimac

[plan_D]

No need to search for it, Kiwi. I've heard that quite a few times in a lot of places. I still find one of the best descriptions of Hitler comes from Heinz Guderian in his book Panzer Leader.

There's a picture of Hitler shaking Mussolinis hand after the blast, and his trousers are tattered.

[mahross]

There is a very good book about Hitler's service in the Great War published last year by Frank Cass. It is called Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914-1918: The List Regiment

Here is a synopsis of its content.

Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian Army in august 1914 as a war volunteer. Fanatically devoted to the German cause, between 1914 and 1918 Hitler served with distinction and sometimes reckless bravery, winning both classes of Iron Cross. Using memoirs, military records, regimental, divisional and official war histories as well as (wherever possible) Hitler's own words, this book seeks to reconstruct a period in his life that has been neglected in the literature. It is also the story of a German regiment (16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, or List Regiment), which fought in all the main battles on the Western Front. As a frontline soldier Hitler began his 'study' of the black art of propaganda; and, as he himself maintained, the List Regiment provided him with his 'university of life'. This is not only an account of the fighting, however. Some of the most profound influences on Hitler occurred on home leave or as a result of official wartime propaganda, which he devoured uncritically. His conversion from passive pathological anti-Semitism began while invalided in Germany in 1916-17. The language of anti-Bolshevik 'Jewish virus' propaganda became Hitler's language, confirmed, as he saw it, by the 'infected' recruits to the List Regiment in 1918. Hitler is here presented less as the product of high-cultural forces than as an avid reader and gullible consumer of state propaganda, which fed his prejudices. He was a 'good soldier' but also a 'true believer' in fact and practice. It is no exaggeration to say that every military decision made by Hitler between 1939 and 1945 was in some way influenced or coloured by his experiences with the List Regiment between 1914 and 1918.

Ross

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Adolf Hitler was not a Jew.

The doctor that was treating his mothers cancer was Jewish, the professor in Wien who told him his paintings were amateur crap was Jewish, but Hitler was not Jewish.

His grandmother possibly became pregnant by a Jewish man when she working as a servent for a Jewish Household. She never took on the Jewish faith and neither did anyone in his family.

Hitler was raised as a Roman Catholic by his parents. Later in school he took to Darwinism and rejected the Church and Catholicism.

The whole rumors of Hitler being Jewish or part Jewish is from US and Russian propaganda during the war that was dropped in the form of leaflets from aircraft.

Today modern research has proven all together that Hitler did not even have any Jewish relatives.

[ma056769]

I remember when no one knew if he was dead or in Brazil.