I left school at 16 in 1905, intending to become a painter. Unfortunately, I was not very good at it. I went to Vienna in 1907 where I applied to the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts but was turned down twice.

I know for many generations to come, I will not be forgiven. But I am who I am, and there was no one to save me from my own sanity “If you want to shine like the sun, first you have to burn like it”

Iwas born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20th 1889 to Alois Hitler and Klara Poelzl. I was a moody child and you could say I grew up to be very hostile towards my father, mostly after we moved to the outskirts of Linz. Alois, my father died in 1903 but left money to take care of the family. I was close to my mother, who was highly indulgent of me.

My mother died. It was 1907. Gloomy day, it’s almost as if nature sends you signs of a bad day ahead.

I left school at 16 in 1905, intending to become a painter. Unfortunately, I was not very good at it. I went to Vienna in 1907 where I applied to the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts but was turned down twice. This experience further embittered me, and I returned when mama died, living first with a more successful friend and then moving from hostel to hostel, a lonely, vagabond figure.

I recovered to make a living selling my art cheaply as a resident in a community ‘ Men’s Home.’ During this period, I had formed a perspective of Jews and Marxists, this worldview turned to hate. I was influenced by the demagogy of Karl Lueger, Vienna’s deeply anti- Semitic mayor and a man who used hate to help create a party of mass support.

Previously I was influenced by Schonerer, an Austrian politician against liberals, socialists, Catholics, and Jews. Vienna was also highly anti- Semitic with a press extolling it. At that time, the hate was not unusual, it was simply part of the popular mindset, you could rephrase it as what the media spoon fed the population with. What I went on to do was present these ideas as a whole and more successfully than ever before.

I moved to Munich in 1913 and avoided Austrian military service in early 1914 by virtue of being unfit. However, when the First World War broke out in 1914, I joined the 16th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, serving throughout the war, mostly as a corporal after refusing promotion. I was able to prove that I was an able and brave soldier as a dispatch runner, winning the Iron Cross on two occasions.

I was also wounded twice, and four weeks before the war ended suffered a gas attack which temporarily blinded and hospitalized me. It was there that I learned of Germany’s surrender, which I saw as a betrayal. The anger brewing in me was tremendous. I especially hated the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany had to sign after the war as part of the settlement.

After WWI, I was convinced that Germany’s destiny was in my hands. This is when I lost touch with my sanity. I began with staying in the army for as long as possible because it paid wages, and to do so, I went along with the socialists then in charge of Germany. I was soon able to turn the tables and draw attention of army antisocialists, who were setting up anti-revolutionary units. In 1919, working for an army unit, I was assigned to spy on a political party of roughly 40 idealists called the German Workers Party.

I knew I was hysterical at some points, but it was obsession. I joined the German Workers Party. By this I swiftly rose to a position of dominance where I was chairman by 1921 and renamed it the Socialist German Workers Party ( NSDAP). I gave the party the

“He alone who owns the youth, gains the future”

In 1932, I acquired German citizenship and ran for president, coming second to von Hindenburg. Later that year, the Nazi party acquired 230 seats in the Reichstag, making it the largest party in Germany.

I continued to move with speed in radically changing Germany, consolidating power, locking up “enemies” in camps, bending culture to my will, rebuilding the army, and breaking the constraints of the Treaty of Versailles. I tried to change the social fabric of Germany by encouraging women to breed more and bringing in laws to secure racial purity; I targeted those filthy. Employment, high elsewhere in a time of depression, fell to zero in Germany. I was the head of the army, smashed the power of my brownshirt street warriors, and expunged the socialists fully from my party and state.

Such a relief, indeed. Nazism was the dominant ideology. Socialists were the first in the camps. Swastika as a symbol and organized a personal army of ‘ storm troopers’ and a bodyguard of black-shirted men, to attack opponents.

I also discovered I was charismatic, all the better. And used my powerful ability for public speaking.

In November 1923, I organized Bavarian nationalists under a figurehead of General Ludendorff into a coup ( or ‘ putsch’). They declared their new government in a beer hall in Munich and then 3000 marched through the streets, but they were met by police who opened fire, killing 16. It was a poorly thought out plan based mostly in the realms of fantasy and could have ended my career.

I was arrested and tried in 1924 but was sentenced to only five years in prison, a sentence often taken as a sign of tacit agreement

“Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.”

Irresistible. The power and the compulsive lying which I so fully endorsed and made believe. Germany was a beauty, in its true form. All I wanted, I truly tried to achieve.

But, Maybe it was a frenzy. It wasn’t always success for me and for Germany and its glory. I ordered genocide and I ranted and raved. There was a void in me, which I tried filling. When I was losing I didn’t want to explain. Anything at all. Why, How, When were all simply a pool of questions with my views after a trial I used to spread my name and my ideas widely. I served only nine months in prison, during which I wrote Mein Kampf.

It sold five million copies by 1939. Only then, in prison, did I come to believe that I was the one who should be leader instead of just their drummer. I realized that I was the genius who could take and use power. Was I thinking clearly, indeed. But whether my calculated judgements were clouded with emotion and revenge, most likely.

After the Beer- Hall Putsch, I resolved to seek power through subverting the Weimar government system, and I carefully rebuilt the NSDAP, which you may better know as the Nazi party. I was allying with future key figures like Goeringand propaganda mastermind Goebbels. Over time, I which I couldn’t find answers to, myself. But I was suffering too. The immense pressure and toiling, seeing death and pools of gore, it was hysteria and I laughed at the works of god and myself. But I suffered. Everyday. I will never explain. I cannot. You wouldn’t understand. Neither would I. Heil Germany, Adolf Hitler Written by Devuni Goonewardene Email any comments, queries and feedback to devuni@gmail.com expanded the party’s support, partly by exploiting fears of socialists and partly by appealing to everyone who felt their economic livelihood threatened by the depression of the 1930s until everyone payed attention to me. I had the ears of big business, the press, and the middle classes.

Nazi votes jumped to 107 seats in the Reichstag in 1930. I wasn’t a socialist. The Nazi party that I was molding was based on race, not the class of socialism, but it took a good few years for me to grow powerful enough to expel the socialists from the party.

I’m in hysterics thinking about how my tremendous effort payed off in the end. I didn’t take power in Germany overnight, neither was I able to take full power of my party overnight. Victoriously, I did do both eventually.