Ebook: The Young Hitler I Knew - The Memoirs of Hitler's Childhood Friend (Original Uncensored Edition)

August Kubizek met Adolf Hitler in 1904 while they were both competing for standing room at the opera. Their mutual passion for music created a strong bond, and over the next four years they became close friends. Kubizek describes a reticent young man, painfully shy, yet capable of bursting into hysterical fits of anger if anyone disagreed with him. The two boys would often talk for hours on end; Hitler found Kubizek to be a very good listener, a worthy confidant to his hopes and dreams. In 1908 Kubizek moved to Vienna and shared a room with Hitler at 29 Stumpergasse. During this time, Hitler tried to get into art school, but he was unsuccessful. With his money fast running out, he found himself sinking to the lower depths of the city: an unkind world of isolation and 'constant unappeasable hunger'. Hitler moved out of the flat in November, without leaving a forwarding address; Kubizek did not meet his friend again until 1938. The Young Hitler I Knew tells the story of an extraordinary friendship, and gives fascinating insight into Hitler's character during these formative years. This is the first edition to be published in English since 1955 and it corrects many changes made for reasons of political correctness. It also includes important sections which were excised from the original English translation.


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REVIEW:


So much of what is taken and accepted as "FACT" about Hitler is full of inconsistencies and assumption. It has been my experience that the public will readily swallow whatever they are fed about "The Great Dictator" without giving so much as a second thought as to whether or not it is correct. I wish I could be indifferent to this and take a neutral stance, but I cannot. I have dedicated six years of my life to studying that of Hitler, and it pains me to witness the widespread ignorance displayed by the majority whenever Hitler's name is mentioned. Which is why this book is so important to me. It is by far the best ever written about his young adulthood and, in short, who he really was as a person. For, in order to understand who Hitler was, one must look into his past.
During the years the two spent together in Linz and later in Vienna, young Hitler was already developing into what he would later become. For getting a deeper perspective of the true nature of Adolf Hitler, August Kubizek is, in my humble opinion, the most reliable source for insight into this complicated human being. No one knew Hitler more intimately than he did. He was also reunited with his old friend three decades after their ways parted in Vienna, and thus gives valuable insight regarding "Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer". And, as Kubizek remarked, "Hitler didn't change."
The words Kubizek uses to describe his young friend convey the image of a deep, passionate, gifted and serious young man who, due to his great obsession with changing the world around him, did not enjoy his youth in any traditional sense. Kubizek did his friend a great service by writing this book. It is required reading for all serious students of Hitler's incredible life, for it is an honest, first-hand account of the young starving artist, open and unbiased, (unlike any other book ever to tackle the subject.)
Kubizek was, I am convinced, a good man who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by publishing the truth about Adolf Hitler's character and showing the world his "human" side. The world after the war (and today still) was not interested in the truth. So many were then and still are content to make Hitler into the embodiment of all evil, to reject his humanity. But therein lies the danger.


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To have two teenagers getting so excited about going to the opera that they'll wait in long lines, stand for the performance, and still go after a fatiguing day, may be hard for modern readers to imagine. This book takes you back to that time, to a childhood in Europe before TV and radio.

This book is absolutely fascinating. It's in the "read and re-read and re-read" category, and still controversial even today!

At the end of WWII in 1945, Kubizek must have been one of the very few people still alive who had known both the teenage Adolf Hitler AND Hitler's mother before she died. Kubizek writes about the funeral setting and arrangements, Hitler's reaction.

Though controversial, the dialog and reactions for the most part will "ring true" for students of Hitler and the NSDAP from other first-hand source material.

Kubizek tells of almost unbelievable living conditions in a packed, shared room with Hitler and a piano! He writes that he and Adolf once attempted to write an opera together, and that Hitler did play the piano (badly) and had had music lessons. He writes of time before Hitler became a vegetarian. He writes of several very early, pre-WWI, incidents involving Jews.

Kubizek credits Hitler, directly, for encouraging him to pursue his musical career.

After Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, Kubizek's accounts of further meetings with him, years after being teenage roomates, makes absolutely gripping reading. One amusing sidelight is the clever way Kubizek managed to turn away pressure from various NSDAP officials during the Third Reich period.

Kubizek's is an eyewitness account like no other known. Once you start reading this book, you want more, more, more! (It's really a loss that many more English-speaking historians, researchers, and camera men didn't get to Kubizek before his death!)

To Kubizek's credit, the reader has to consider that, when he wrote these reminiscences, after WWII, he had nothing to gain whatsoever in giving a sympathetic portrayal of Hitler, yet he does anyway.