Tag: Austro-Hungarian Empire

6,990 words

Suppose your best friend from when you were a young’un became the meanest hombre ever to leave boot-prints on the ground. It indeed happened, on the wild frontier of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Had Attila the Hun been brought forward in time to meet him, he wouldn’t have challenged a gunslinger like that to a duel at twenty paces. The town of Linz might not be big enough for both of them, but the 5th-century “Scourge of God” would’ve known better than to tangle with the dastardly desperado of the Danube! (more…)

3,469 words

He came from a world where soft music lilted through dining rooms and ballrooms and salons . . . it was played to make life sweeter and more festive, to make women’s eyes flash and men’s vanity throw sparks . . . [his] music on the other hand didn’t offer forgetfulness; it aroused people to the feelings of passion and guilt and demanded that [they] be truer to themselves . . . such music is upsetting . . . [1] (more…)

3,844 words

Part 4 of 4

Brigitte Hamann
Hitler’s Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man
London: Tauris, 2010

The First Autiste: Hitler’s Self-Education[1]

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4,508 words

Part 3

Hitler is awake all the 24 hours of the day in perfecting his sadhana [self-transcendence]. He wins because he pays the price. His inventions surprise his enemies. But it is his single-minded devotion to his purpose that should be the object of our admiration and emulation. Although he works all his waking hours, his intellect is unclouded and unerring. Are our intellects unclouded and unerring? — Mahatma Gandhi[1]  (more…)

2,622 words

Part 2

Racial Pioneers: Aryan Mystics, Pan-Germans, & Eugenicists

The Slavization of Austrian mass politics and the Judaization of its elites naturally invited a backlash from the state’s founding population, the Germans. This took various forms, especially the Right-wing ethno-nationalist subculture of the pan-Germans and the more pragmatic, anti-Semitic populism of the Christian-Socials.  (more…)

5,168 words

Brigitte Hamann
Hitler’s Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man
London: Tauris, 2010

My colleague Andrew Hamilton has asked: “What is the best Hitler biography?”[1] While, as so often in Hitler studies, no conclusive answer is possible, surely Brigitte Hamann’s Hitler’s Vienna is an excellent contender for the position. This highly detailed and readable book may well be the single best volume for understanding the origins and context of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism, (more…)