Brigitte Hamann

Hitler's Vienna Brigitte Hamann

Hitler's Vienna is the authoritative biography of Adolf Hitler's early life up to his departure from Austria as a 24-year-old. It is also the cultural and political history of Vienna as Hitler encountered it during his critical formative years: the Vienna of immigrants, the unemployed, and the homeless, and also of German Nationalism and antisemitism. Brigitte Hamann examines critically for the first time the few accounts of eyewitnesses and the many legends of Hitler's early years, bringing to light, for example, newly discovered letters and facts about his close contact with Jewish friends and benefactors. She also analyses the influence of the politicians who determined Hitler's political path. No one has produced such an extensive and well-founded picture of the climate and milieu in which Hitler's character was shaped. Hitler's Vienna demonstrates, using a wealth of individual examples, that central elements in Hitler's world-view were acquired during his Vienna years.