Then whole weeks would go by without Hitler so much as budging out of the house. He just camped In his room like a [Page 4] hermit with his nose stuck in those thick, heavy books and worked and studied from morning to night.

During the whole of the two years he was with us I can't call to mind that he ever had a visitor. Only once in a while did he ever get a letter - from his sister who was married and lived in Vienna. Anyhow, I imagined that was who it was from. He never spoke of having any relatives.

We often asked him to come in the little kitchen of an evening and be with us a bit. But he always excused himself very nicely and said he'd got to work. Once, i remember, I said right out: 'Herr Hitler, don't take it amiss, but you'll make yourself ill with those books and keeping on reading and reading as you do. What's all that reading got to do with your painting?' Hitler got up and smiled and took me by the arm: 'Dear Frau Popp,' he said, 'does anyone know what is and what isn't likely to be of use to him in life?'

Well - that's just how he lived here with us those two years; He never changed his ways, painting all day, and studying, studying, studying all evening and night. Things seemed to look up a bit for him as time went on: he found a better market for his pictures.

And then came August 1914 and the War! I can see him now, that young Hitler, standing showing me the card he got from the Kabinettskanzlei letting him join the German Army.....

When he was in training he used to come along and see us sometimes, glad to get a rest from drill and exercises. My husband used to send young Peppi out to get him a glass of beer (Muenchener Loewenbraeu, possibly, the best in existence, and a Stein, less elegant than a Glas). Hitler'd drink it, just to please the youngster and us, though I know well he didn't hold with alcoholic drink even then. Only he was that obstinate - he would pay for it himself! We didn't want him to, but if we hadn't let him he'd say, 'All right, Frau Popp, then I don't blow in again! You haven't any too much to spend.'

He came the day before the regiment left Munich to say good-bye. He gripped my husband by the hand' and said, 'If I go west, Herr Popp, you'll write my sister, won't you, in case she'd like to have my bits of things? Otherwise - keep 'em yourself. Sorry to give you the trouble.' He shook hands with me, too, while I stood there and cried - we were all that fond of him! He hugged Peppi and Liesel, they'd always been such favorites of his, and turned tail and ran.

Then he wrote to us from the Front. Once, though when we sent him a little parcel at Christmas he was downright angry. He wrote back he had quite enough to eat, and we weren't to deprive ourselves on his account. He was very strong on the point, was Hitler.

Yes, well then, when the War was over, he turned up in our street again and would have come back to us, but that the boy and the girl were growing up now and we no linger [sic] had that room to let. Otherwise we'd have been as glad as glad to have him. So he bundled his things together and hunted round for somewhere else to go. He left his easel and gave it to Peppi. 'Peppi shall paint pictures on it, eh?'

[Page 5]

"He often came to see us, though, after that, and my husband went on making his clothes until 1928 when we gave up the shop. Yes, indeed - the Herr Hitler - he was the sort one don't come across in a hurry!"

Heinz A. Heinz, Germany's Hitler, pp. 56/60

I ...aksed [sic] (Frau Popp) if she had ever seen her lodger again since he had become Chacellor [sic] of Germany.

"Yes, indeed," sheanswered [sic] beaming, "I saw him last year on the 11th of September. I heard, one day, that he was in Munich on a visit to his architect, Professor Troost, so I put on my Sunday best and went there to see him. Only two S.S. men stood in the doorway of the house and wouldn't let me pass. I said I only wanted a minute with the Herr Reichskanzler - I had known him so long. They asked how long, and when I said twenty-two years, they changed their tune at once. They took me into the court-yard. of the house and asked me to wait a couple of minutes. I did so, standing near his automobile. Then Hitler came, accompanied by two other tall gentlemen. He caught sight of me and strode towards me, both hands outstretched, his face alight with pleasure. 'My dear Frau Popp,' he exclaimed, 'it is jolly to see you again.! How good of you to come along!' I was all of a flutter like and half forgot all I'd been planning to say to him. I managed to stammer out some congratulations about the great success he had achieved, calling him, of course, Herr Reichskanzler, but he cut me short at that.

'Oh, no, the Old way's best, please, Frau Popp - I'm still Herr Hitler to you! And waiving the rest, 'Now tell me all about Liesl and Peppi. How are they?'

He was putting me at my ease asking about the children so, just because I was all of a dither.

I told him as the two of them was married by now - Peppi was in Hamburg and Liesl at the Hague in Holland.

'Dear me,' he said, 'they are both a pretty long way off, aren't they? So you're all alone now with your husband? How are you two getting along?'

Nothing would do but I must tell him all about it, and all about the time in between since he left us. At last he declared once more how delighted he'd been to see me, and made me promise I'd come again. He sent no end of messages to my husband, but especially to Liesel and Peppi."

Heinz A. Heinz, Germany's Hitler, PP. 60/61

[Page 6]

Ignaz Westerkirchner ... war-time comrade of the Fuehrer:

After that hideous night in Flanders in 1918 when he got gassed .....I never bumped up against Hitler again until we ran across each other here in Munich, in the Sterneckerbraeu. That was in the beginning of 1920... Hitler used the place regularly .....

But In the March of that year ..... I went home to my own town .... Hitler was against it. He did all he could to persuade me to stop where I was. He said he was dead certain he would himself succeed over his own plans and political ideas, and that if I'd only hang on, he'd give an eye to it as well.

..... After a year or two .... I found myself among the workless and the unemployed.

I decided to clear out .... to the U.S.A. .....by the beginning of '33 ....... I was...out of a job.

Anyhow I'd kept up with some of the old List comrades and in the autumn of that year one of them sent me word that Hitler'd like a line from me from time to time. I wrote straightaway to him...but got no answer .....

The [sic], suddenly, one day at Reading in Pennsylvania, ...I got a telegram from a German shipping office informing me that the Herr Reischskanzler ... himself had defrayed all the expenses of my return with my family to Germany....

Overjoyed, the whole lot of us set sail early in December ... I just longer to see my old comrade again....

I got to the Chancellery and found him just the same as ever. His greeting was as warm as man could wish. He spoke, too, in our local dialect. 'Jolly glad to see you back, Westenkirchner! Suppose you just sit yourself down and tell me all the yarn.'

We had a good old talk....and he wound up by saying he'd got a job for me here on the party paper in Munich. Wouldn't hear a word of thanks.... 'Take it as read, take it as read', he said .....

pp. 64/66, Heinz A. Heinz, Germany's H.

(On war-time experience)

"Yes, yes," says Herr Westenkrichner, "Hitler was always the one to buck us up when we got downhearted: he kept us going when things were at their worst but he couldn't cook! That was the one thing he couldn't do.

One thing we couldn't understand - the rest of us - Hitler'd always attend church parade, even towards the end, when most of us had given all that up."

p. 67, Heinz A. Heinz. Germany's H.

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