“He always looked so starved”, remembered people who had known him at the time. For that was what he had done in Munich before the outbreak of the war, as it was what he had done in Vienna, where he had led the life of a tramp. Once on his own, he could only slide back into his dreams of becoming a great architect, while having to earn a living selling water colour paintings of picturesque buildings and monuments. Therefore he did everything possible to postpone his demobilization, for the army still gave him a bunk to sleep and a chunk of bread to eat. What would become of him? He had no prospects, no future.
The war had been “the most unforgettable and greatest time of his earthly life” 2 as Hitler himself would write, he had been “passionately happy to be a soldier”. He was the example of the unknown soldier who quietly and unassumingly performed his duty.” 1 “In the field he has proved himself to be a brave, exceptionally reliable dispatch runner who really deserved the Iron Cross First Class, and who several times had been mentioned for it before he was awarded with it. “Nobody who has known from nearby will doubt his courage”, testified the Adjutant of the Regiment later on. As a battle dispatch runner ( Gefechtsmeldegänger, to use his own designation) in the regimental headquarters he had participated in a great number of murderous battles in France and Belgium he had escaped death narrowly on several occasions, and was awarded the Iron Cross Second and First Class for bravery.
#Royalty free photo sense of smell full
He had served most honourably from the first weeks of the war until the last days, a full four years. Now he was waiting in Munich, in the barracks of what remained of his regiment, to be demobilized.Īlthough Austrian by birth and still by nationality, Adolf Hitler had in August 1914 been allowed to enlist in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, the “List Regiment”. There he had touched the depths of his ordeal when hearing the announcement that the fighting had stopped on 11 November, that Germany had lost the war, that the Kaiser and all German princes had abdicated, and that a German republic had been proclaimed. For shortly before the armistice he had been blinded by gas near Wervik, on the French-Belgian border, and transported far northwards to a military hospital at Pasewalk, in Pommerania. He had not come back marching among the endless grey, weary throngs of soldiers carrying the smell of mud, gun powder and rotten human flesh in the folds of their uniforms. The First World War – the so-called “Great War” – was over, and the future of the corporal, who had no ties with relatives or friends, looked very bleak indeed.
As he had nothing else to do, he amused himself by throwing bread crumbs at the mice which were the regular visitors of his small room, and watched them playing with the crumbs or fighting for them. The corporal woke up rather early in the morning, before the start of his daily routine. The Beginning of the World War II (1 September 1939).The Munich Agreement (30 September 1938).A Higher and a Lower Choice: What Went Wrong.“A Little Guy Yelled Himself into a Fit”.“Without Christianity no anti-Semitism”.The Light of Apollo, the Frenzy of Wotan.
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