Volume II – The Seeds of Hate
Chapter 15 – The Fault Lines of a Century
Thebeautiful old world city of Vienna, capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, seemed eternal. Its streets hummed with the waltzes of Strauss, its walls still echoed with Mozart and Beethoven, and its cafés birthed philosophies and revolutions with equal ease. But beneath the polished façades, the empire was dying. Emperor Franz Josef, ruling since 1848, was now frail and senile by the early 1900s, and his ministers clung to power with corruption and intrigue. Nationalities clamored against one another; Czechs against Germans, Poles against Austrians, Croats against Hungarians. The empire was still magnificent, but its foundations were cracked.
Into this twilight grandeur, in February 1908, came a pale, lanky youth from Linz: Adolf Hitler, eighteen years old, carrying ambitions far larger than the suitcase in his hand. He came with the dream of entering the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, of becoming not just a painter, but an artist of renown. In his mind, Vienna was both stage and destiny.
His companion from Linz, August Kubizek, followed him soon after. The two roomed together, sharing cramped lodgings and long conversations. Kubizek remembered Hitler as a nocturnal figure, sleeping late, roaming the boulevards in the afternoon, then staying up until dawn spinning ideas about architecture, opera, and grand designs for Vienna itself. Hitler considered work beneath him. He dressed like a student of art, even when his purse was empty, and styled himself as a man destined for greatness.
But in October 1908, the Academy crushed his dream. His portfolio, judged weak in figure drawing, was rejected outright. It was not even close. Kubizek advanced into the Conservatory to study music; Hitler sulked in the shadows. He severed ties with his friend abruptly, moving out without farewell. His pride, wounded, could not bear the comparison.
By December 1909, Hitler's descent was stark. His savings were gone, his clothes ragged, his stomach often empty. He slept on park benches in the cold, begged coins, and finally sought shelter at the Meidling men's hostel. He queued for soup ladled out by nuns. It was here that his hardness was forged. As he later confessed in Mein Kampf: "I owe it to that period that I grew hard and am still capable of being hard."
The Hanish Arrangement
In February 1910, Hitler moved into the Männerheim on Meldemannstraße, a larger home for destitute men. It was here that he met Reinhold Hanish, a crafty drifter. Hanish quickly spotted Hitler's skill in painting buildings with precision, if not inspiration. He proposed a partnership: Hitler would paint watercolors of Vienna's landmarks; St. Stephen's Cathedral, the State Opera, the Karlskirche, copied from postcards. Hanish would hawk them to frame shops and small dealers.
For a time, it worked. Hitler produced, Hanish sold, and the trickle of coins kept Hitler clothed and fed. But quarrels came fast. Hitler thought Hanish underpaid him. Hanish thought Hitler lazy and arrogant. By August 1910, a dispute over missing paintings ended with Hitler denouncing Hanish to the police, accusing him of theft. Hanish was jailed for eight days. Their association ended in bitterness, but the lesson lingered: Hitler's suspiciousness, his inability to share credit, his readiness to denounce, were all traits Vienna sharpened.
The Library of Hate
In the Männerheim, Hitler read obsessively. He devoured Vienna's newspapers, pamphlets, and borrowed books. From Nietzsche, he took will; from Wagner, myth; from Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a racial theory that turned Jews into history's villains. Above all, he studied Karl Lueger, Vienna's mayor, who had transformed antisemitism into a political machine. Lueger's Christian Social Party showed Hitler the power of rhetoric and propaganda: how hatred, if shaped and repeated, could win crowds.
At first, Hitler claimed, he dismissed Vienna's antisemitic rags. As he wrote in Mein Kampf: "…the tone, particularly of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation." But soon, an encounter shook him.
"Once, as 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. For, to be sure, they had not looked like that in Linz… The longer I stared at this foreign face… the more my first question assumed a new form: is this a German?" (Mein Kampf).
The question became an obsession. He began to "study" Jews in Vienna, on the trams, in the markets, in the cafés. He convinced himself he saw a race apart, one he could neither join nor escape. His friendships with Jewish shopkeepers like Josef Neumann, who bought his watercolors, did not alter the fixation. The hatred was intellectual now, but soon it would be visceral.
Parallel Fates
Vienna's Jews numbered almost 200,000, and their lives were diverse. Bankers, doctors, tailors, and beggars, all were part of the same city. The Rothschilds still financed banks and hospitals, yet the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; that Russian forgery first printed in 1903, circulated in Vienna's bookshops by 1911, portraying them as Shylocks, symbols of avarice. Newspapers sneered that Rothschild wealth was proof of conspiracy. The insult stuck, eroding even genuine philanthropy.
In lecture halls, Jacob Asimov fought his own battles. He was a brilliant medical student, but antisemitic professors excluded him from assistantships, and classmates mocked him openly: "Galician rat!" He bore it, but the scars deepened.
Far away, the Zuckerbergs, already in New York since the pogroms of the 1880s, wrote to cousins still in Odessa: "Here we labor till our hands ache, but here no torches come for us. Come to America before the doors close." Some listened. Others clung to Europe.
And in Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, who had arrived in 1906, was draining swamps and reviving Hebrew in classrooms. The dream of Zion was alive, but most European Jews still hesitated to leave their businesses, salons, and professions. To trade Vienna or Warsaw for malaria and toil was a step too far.
The Jewish world was divided: assimilation, migration, or Zion. Hitler, meanwhile, turned division into doctrine.
Toward War
By May 1913, Hitler left Vienna, slipping away to Munich to avoid Austrian military service. He had grown to despise the multiethnic empire; he wanted only the German Fatherland. Tracked down by Austrian authorities in January 1914, he wrote a contrite letter to the consulate: "I never knew the beautiful word youth." The officials let him off after a failed medical exam.
In Munich, he painted again, sold postcards to shops, and waited. "There will be a war soon," he told an acquaintance, "and then all will be different."
He was right.
The Sarajevo assassination of June 28, 1914 lit the fuse. By July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within days, Europe's alliances snapped into motion; Germany and Austria against Russia, France, and Britain. Crowds poured into Munich's Odeonsplatz on August 2, 1914, waving flags, cheering, singing. Photographs from that day show Hitler among them, his face ecstatic, eyes wide with something close to religious fervor.
Two days later, he enlisted in the Bavarian Army. No longer a rejected painter, no longer a homeless drifter, he had found belonging at last.
As he wrote in Mein Kampf: "For me, as for every German, there now began the greatest and most unforgettable time of my earthly existence. Compared to the events of this gigantic struggle, everything past receded to shallow nothingness."
Transition to Volume III
Thus ended the era of Vienna's illusions and the "seedtime" of ideas. Hitler carried into the trenches a mind already shaped: by hunger, by rejection, by Karl Lueger's populism, by Reinhold Hanish's betrayal, by antisemitic pamphlets and personal humiliation.
The fault lines of a century were visible now: nationalism against empire, antisemitism against assimilation, Zion against exile, capitalism accused of conspiracy, socialism accused of betrayal. And here ends my volume II; The Seeds of Hate.