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Allen, Jerry: Directors of Destiny. Good Housekeeping 109 .pp. 30.31 1939.

The despair, the feeling of failure in her own life, never left (Klara Poelzl). She waited only for the day, when her son would realize all the hopes that she hadrenounced [sic]. She wanted him to have... education, money, a place in the world. (Her).... unhappiness drove her more and more to expect great things of her first-born, Adolf, her best loved. Her second child ... was always given secondplace [sic]. From the day he was born ... Klara Hitler fussed over her son Adolf. He was a sickly child, and he became, as he has since said, his mother's "pet". She could see no flaw in him, and many of those ever-recurring quarrels in the Hitler household were over Adolf. His father, a hard man himself, thought he was soft and coddled too much by his mother. Sober or not, he seldom lost his chance to lunge at his whimpering son with a cuff or a kick. And every time Klara, white with rage, would fly to Adolf's aid, taking the blows herself....

When later he brought back poor report cards, she was sure it was the fault of the schools, and she moved him from one to another.... In drawing and gymnasium... he was usually marked excellent. Klara was proud of that. She said Adolf would be an artist, a famous artist. And all artists, all great artists were "moonstruck." Her boy was different from other boys....

...She was afraid that he might grow up to be like his father, a man who drank too much, ate too much, smoked too much... Day after day she drilled it into the boy that his father's life was wrong. She swung him away from every temptation that he, by himself, would not have been strong enough to resist. So he did not run around with the boys of his age; he did not have a girl as they did, he did not drink or smoke. He avoided the taverns where the townspeople went....

Adolf hated his father. Fearing him, Adolf learned to lie facilely to avoid the conflicts he knew he must lose. Klara did not mind her son's audacious lies - she almost believed them....

....Until he was eighteen Adolf loafed at home, doing odd jobs for his adoring mother... She left her... son, penniless, too proud to work, and trained for nothing....

....Ever since then Adolf Hitlerhas [sic] has been trying to justify his mother's faith in him. (She) ... gave him his mission in life and his wish to achieve it; but his father alos [sic] gave him an inheritance....first of all a ruthless willpower that may break, but will never bend. From his father, too, Hitler learned what fear is and what force can do... He saw that the ability to give (him) those beatings, pure force (made his father) boss, even in his own home. And he has never forgotten that in boss rule it is force that counts....

...he is internally frightened... an unsure yet undeviating man who bursts into tears when his will is obstructed....

... Klara Hitler never cured a great deal of her son's weakness. For nineteen years she helped him to build an arrogant covering for it, and she coached him in greatness. She gave him a god complex, but she could not make him a god.

Allen, Jerry: Directors of Destiny. Good Housekeeping 109. pp.30.31.201.

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